Re: Mark Jones Was Right
Agree with number 1. Not sure on no.2 (think coal and biomass may be more contributory than oil). Totally disagree with First the world is overpopulated... and everything following that. Apocalyptic Malthusianism is a dismal science. dms - Original Message - From: paul phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 1:44 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right Without trying to get into the specific debating points in this thread, I find the unreality of the debate to be numbing. There are a number of points that I think we can all agree on. _
Re: Will more violence provoke an extension of the US occupation?
MB is absolutely correct. But blocing with fundamentalists is not the issue, no more than blocing with the Taliban was the content, meaning or program of fighting the US invasion of Afghanistan. The issue isfirst, the recognition that the actual struggle going on has social, not religious roots, in the class structure; 2. the religious manifestation is inadequate, and will become, sooner rather than later, hostile to the tasks of that struggle-- changing the social structure at its root. 3. the only way to supplant the religious groups is in the development and practice of a combat program by revolutionists. That means being in the midst, and forefront, of every struggle against the occupation. dms - Original Message - From: Mike Ballard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 2:01 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Will more violence provoke an extension of the US occupation? Iranian workers, organized into workers' councils in the petroleum sector were instrumental in making the relatively peaceful political revolution against the Shah a success through the strikes they enforced. They were rewarded with death for their unity with the religious tendencies in this battle against an oppressive regime. Blocking with fundamentalists is not a healthy thing for proletarian revolutionaries to do.
Re: Will more violence provoke an extension of the US occupation?
I too am safely tucked away here in the U.S. I made no claim to be anywhere else. But I think my point that brave intellectuals in the west who seem to support anything and everything that seems anti-imperalist because it is violent has been made. Joel __ Like the Holy Roman Empire, I am neither brave, nor an intellectual, nor in support of anything and everything that is violent. My recommendation is to avoid close quarters combat whenever possible. Sometimes, however, it is just not possible to avoid. And then? Make sure you got a back up, a way out, extra ammunition. And water. Dry mouth is a gross understatement. But in the interim-- the situation in Fallujah, Baghdad is not a clash of two equal evils, or one greater one lesser evil, and the violence there has not been caused by the undemocratic militias, religious fundamentalists, or Ba'athist remnants, no more than the invasion of Iraq was precipitated by Saddam Hussein, any weapons of mass destruction, supposed links to terrorism, or the oppressive nature of his regime. The violence is caused by the presence of the occupiers. It is truly that simple. dms
Re: Will more violence provoke an extension of the US occupation?
Last comment on this. The mobilization of the general population into open combat against an occupying army, and/or its private equivalents, is fundamentally different than terrorist bombings. It is the eruption of the social struggle beyond the limits of both stabilizing and destabilizing forces, (as if the stabilizing forces weren't the biggest fomentors of destabilizaton). It is not just opportunism, not just a mistaken/failure, to confuse or ignore this critical distinction, it is outright reactionary, giving credence to the equal legitimacy of the occupation. No democracy is possible with, through the organizations sanctioned by the occupation. To preach about democracy while participating in the occupation government is to give new and true meaning to Hegel's description of liberalism as a philosophy of the abstract that capitulates before the world of the concrete. dms - Original Message - From: Joel Wendland [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Who says they are not involved in the struggle against the occupation?
Re: town country
Which just goes to show the links between the military-construction-real estate-sprawl-white flight industry as the interstate highway system was the creation of the National Interstate Highway for Defense (think that was the title of the original legislation) Act. And the wastefulness of the totality of capitalist accumulation. dms - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 10:53 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] town country the sprawl was also encouraged by the government, with the interstate highway system (in then 1950s and after) and earlier infrastructural investment. -- JD
Re: one up to al-Sadri
- Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 2:45 PM Subject: [PEN-L] one up to al-Sadri Interveners on the IGC, perhaps including the Iraq Communist Party, have clawed some influence. and al Sadri has succeeded in building links in action with the Sunni forces holding out in Falluhah. Within the range of Iraqi forces there has been some accommodation in line with the resultant of forces and a united front against arbitrary US action. Al Sadri's stock must have risen and his organisation will strengthen, but there is some alliance with liberal democratic elements. Seems that this is the opening moment in a period of great potential for a real social revolutionary movement-- if it can articulate a program addressing the economic distress of the population, demanding de-privatization of oil and other productive resources, reparations from the US and the UN for the embargo, damages from the US/UK for the war, improvements in sanitation, agriculture, equal rights for women--- and a moment of great danger if no such movement with a program does emerge, as religious fundamentalism will strengthen if there is no secular remedy. dms
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
Ok, so I broke my promise, but... this is too much.. And it proves exactly my points. The scarcity theorists are Malenthusiasts at the bone, concerned about nothing so much as the old in and out, who gets to reproduce and who gets cut. There's nothing good or lucky if the scare-mongers are correct. For one, you're not going to have anything to eat, unless you happen to have a farm, and the weapons to protect it. Secondly, even if you do, you won't be able to maintain the acreage. Dwindling output is the result of agricultural pseudo self-sufficiency. That is the truth of history. You won't be able to go anywhere-- no conferences, no seminars, no book tours-- petroleum supports 99% of the world's commercial transportation. Shift to coal? That would be the least of it. Every bit of biomass-- trees, bushes, dried grasses would be burnt. It would make Pinatubo look like morning fog. Solve the population pressure? Maybe. Like the plague solves overcrowding. Gee now that's a lucky day, isn't it? But you were both only kidding, right? dms From: paul phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 2:51 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right Yes, Jim, although if as some are suggesting we shift from oil to coal, the problem will get worse, not better. Furthermore, it does nothing to solve the population pressure on other resources, in particular water. Paul Devine, James wrote: it may be good luck if the scare-mongers are correct that we're going to run out of oil soon, since that would limit the burning of hydrocarbons and moderate the tendency toward global warmng. -- Jim D.
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
Excuse me, knowing I will unsubbed by the moderator, still -- this is a bad joke. An academic is telling Brother Melvin, one of the core members of the most important working classorganization in the USsince the CIO, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, that it's ideas like Melvin's that explains why the left has never made much headway in North America? Without apologies the statement of Mr. Philips shows only the ignorance of its author. Excuse me again, but it's ideas like there is a silver lining to the cloud of manipulated energy scarcity; that eating bison is aprogressive action; that Japanes rock gardens count for squat, that there are too many people and we can't support them in the style to which I've become accustomed, that explains why the "left" really isn't a left at all, but a circle of the privileged with more arrogance than brains. Yeah, yeah, I know all about my tone.Just before I go, I thought Penstood for Progressive Economists Network. Can anybody show me the progressive part? dms - Original Message - From: paul phillips To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 5:15 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Comment There are not too many people on earth and one has to examine the source of their thinking. When challenged to define the carrying capacity of the earth, what we end up talking about is economics and not the physical mass of the earth and its metabolic processes. How many people can the earth carry - what ever that means? Since I disagree totally with this, there is not much point in carrying on the debate. But as Max has said, it is ideas like this that explains why the left has never made much headway in North America.Paul Phillips
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
First a little point for point - Original Message - From: soula avramidis To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 6:19 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right That oil is a finite resource is not a question; I hope. because if we were to argue it is not, then that is a doosy per se. so what is the problem here, that oil will peak in 2006, 2010, or 2015 etc. is Hubbert's an imprecise forecast method. this is just like saying the bubble will burst but I do not know when give or take five years. dms: Or it's like predicting that the stock market is going to fall, or that it's going to rain. Make the prediction every day and eventually, maybe, you'll be right, but only half as right as a stopped clock which is right twice a day, with exactly the same lack of meaning. The point is not the predictive accuracy for yes, oil is indeed finite. The point is whether or not the current actions of the bourgeois order, of capital, are determined by the finite capacity of a"natural" resource, or by those contradictions inherent to a system where the means of production are organized as a property form requiring the aggrandizement of wage labor. In simpler language--is thedeterminant of the current situation based on the falling rate of profit in the oil industry based on the growth of constant capital, or is the determinant some quickly approaching depletion of the "natural" supply? ___ so what next, that production will peak and that bringing in new capacity to past levels will cost more per unit of output. and that oil price and control is relevant since oil is a principal commodity in all production. it is precisely the point at which cheap oil production evaporates when alternative energy sources are too costly to smooth the transition from one mode of energy dependency to another in the process if you like of capital accumulation. it is not like as if we were going to wake up tomorrow and find that oil is gone. it is like whenit becomes more expensive to draw oil out of the ground, going for control of high reserves of cheaply mined Arab oil (1 dollar per barrel) makes for a hell business, both in itself and insofar as you strangle others with it. that is why Iraq and the gulf where cost of production is cheap is the big prize for US bourgeoisie dms: There have been three OPEC price spikes since 1973. None of them had anything to do with increased costs of production. In fact, the latest one 1999 was in fact triggered by overproduction, itself a result of the declining cost of production below the 1949 post WW2 low. You can look it up. Further, the historic trend for finding and lifting costs for US petroleum majors has been downward since 1973, with an upturn around 1996-97 as more US effort went into deepwater drilling. The recent trend has resumed its downward costs. You are right. We sure aren't going to wake up and find the oil gone. And the bourgeoisie and the markets do NOT react topredicted 30 year scarcities. Capital does not allow that. It's all about fear and greed for capital, today's fear and greed, today's cash. Markets have no memory and less imagination.If it were otherwise, there would never be overproduction, or bubbles, or the repitition of the same old same old scams. __ . that is why Mark Jones was not only right.. his little peace on the castration of Japanese capital was one good piece of Leninist analysis, but he like I fall into the trap of becoming natural scientist when we are not. the point is not about natural science however, it is about the process during decline. dms: Don't know if I read that piece, but yes OPEC 1 in particular sure smacked the Japanese around, and OPEC 2 had some impact, but moreso in the 1986 price break, leading to the Plaza Accords,and the gutting of the USSR __ And now for the another, perhaps, bigger issue: The scarcity argument, and Mark Jones' argument was/is NOT about cost--the depletionist argument, which Jones embraced, is about an absolute zero of petroleum/hydrocarbon availability. That supposed Marxists can endorse this assertion without considering itsmeaning for all of Marx's work and critique, including that most important critique, the necessity of proletarian revolution, is mind-boggling. The depletionist argument is that the end is near, repenting won't help, and the future looks a lot like George Miller's Mad Max series of films ( love that motto of primitive accumulation..."Who run Bartertown?"). Socialism is no
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
They, socialists, are not at all doing their duty when they uncritically reproduce statements directly Malthusian claiming that the natural carrying capacity of the earth is 2 billion people. Such an assertion is more than nonsense, it is reactionary, antithetical to every single actual fact of social development. Some of us uncharitable sorts, not blessed with the forgiving, accommodating personality of others, might also point out that such a statement is ignorant. No species increases beyond natural limits by a factor of 3, without experiencing catastrophic population crashes. Now unless someone wants to take that next Maltushian step, an anti-baby step, and claim that wars are a function of overpopulation and for population control, there is no sense to discussing natural limits of populations. The notion of overpopulation is not scientifically based, it is, as Chase showed more than 30 years ago in his great The Legacy of Malthus, pseudo-scientifically based, and designed specifically to preserve the power of those already in power. Certainly population growth rates tend to decline as/when Louis Proyect describes it. But all those elements of the description, literacy, health care, etc. are functions of one single thing: economic development. Economic development means agricultural productivity leading to an urban expansion. And that takes energy. Big energy. (Aside: Kerala is very very interesting, having been more or less a matriarchy for years-- but currently, things are not quite so rosy there as we would like to believe. Kerala's development is not without contradiction, pollution, and social exploitation. It is no more the way forward than Cuba's experiments, remarkable as they may be, with bio-farming will lead to self-sufficiency in food production). I think Louis Proyect's statement re population and limits and global warming says all that is wrong in the naturalist analysis : However, we do know that there are *natural barriers* to unlimited population growth. The most dramatic of these is global warming which is a byproduct of energy consumption... Global warming is not a product of 6 billion people on a planet built for 2. Global warming is the product of the private property system of capital's need to garner profit no matter what the SOCIAL cost. If that isn't the case, then indeed, the more than 2 billion people living on a dollar a day, the 4 billion living in poverty, the 5.2 billion living on the rations determined by a ruling class, have no way out, as the energy requirements for their emancipation from privation, that is to say the emancipation of us all, cannot be fulfilled. dms
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
- Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 9:53 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right But clearly the Earth cannot sustain an infinite number of people. _ DMS: But the issue at hand is not about an indefinite future of an indefinite number of people. It's about the here and now as the assertions about natural limits and carrying capacity make clear. _ But you are wrong. Global warming is a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuel. There is no socialist solution to this problem. _ DMS: No, global warming is not simply a byproduct of burning fossil fuel, since global warming has accompanied, step for step, increases in fossil fuel use. Global warming is the result, in large part, of accumulation of CO2 and other emissions produced at a rate far above the recycling rate of the eco-system. This is a social, technological result, with a social, technological solution To say that rate of introduction cannot be reversed or controlled without a dramatic slaughtering of the earth's population (somebody out there know another way to get from 6 billion to 2 billion?) is not socialism. ___ You can put all sorts of scrubbers on factory burners, car engines, etc. to prevent sulfur emissions. But greenhouse gases are the inevitable byproduct of energy consumption. _ DMS: It is not the simple emission, it is the rate and mass of such emissions. Current EPA regulations have force locomotive equipment makers to produce engines releasing 2/3-3/4 less such by-products. And equipment makers are easily meeting that requirement. Switching locomotives designed for use in Grand Central Terminal, and capable of tractive efforts equivalent to 1500 horsepower, emit less than 10% of the by-products of earlier models. Next generation models emit less than half that already reduced amount. The Green Goat locomotive in use in California emits almost nothing. __ Of course there is a way out for a society that lives in balance with nature. The idea is to share equally in the resources of the planet without class divisions. DMS: But implicit in your argument is the sharing of reduced development-- dividing up equally, perhaps, a shrunken pie. This corresponds more closely to a notion of primitive communism than it does to a communism based on industrial development. __ Furthermore, the main problem facing the world's poor is not being deprived of automobiles or air conditioning. It is being driven off their land into the favelas and slums as Samir Amin pointed out in a recent MR article. The capacity to feed, shelter, clothe, educate and provide health care one's family is a function more of class relations than anything else right now. _ DMS: The last sentence is absolutely correct. Yet, the solution is not in the return of the newly urbanized populations to their pre-existing rural production relations. Those relations may have a modicum of self-sufficiency, but it's an immiserated self-sufficiency. Nobody can look at the history of the Philippines, for example, and think the period prior to the mass exodus to Manila, and other cities particularly on Luzon, was a better period, a pastoral golden age. Same goes for Indonesia. Only by crossing into the urban environment, the core of capitalist production, are the terms sets for its overthrow.
Correction:
"since global warming has accompanied, step for step, increases infossil fuel use" should read "has not accompanied... Anyway enough about that-- Interested if anyone else saw Fuse and/or Vodka Lemon at theFilm Center/MOMA new directors film festival? I thought they were both great movies. dms
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
1. Louis, the Green Goat is battery powered, a small diesel engine runs in brief spurts to charge the batteries. Carbon dioxide emissions as reported to us by their representatives are minimal, since the Green Goat uses very little carbon based fuel. Carbon dioxide is not an issue with this locomotive. 2. And as you must know, living in NYC, I do not advocate the New Jersey suburban standard of living, nor the Phoenix model as the goal of the proletarain revolution. But increasing the calorie intake of those now malnourished is a goal. Providing sanitation and clean water supplies are goals, particularly since the latter in underdeveloped areas of the world means much to the emancipation of women. I don't think we know what and what cannot be accomplished under a communist social system. We do know that it will involve production for use and the expansion of human needs along with the means for satisfying those needs. The content of the needs may change, but I don't think we should be getting ahead of ourselves, and start dictating what will or won't be planted, harvested, produced, base on our individual likes and dislikes. I'm sure many will think the production of sugar is a waste, but arguing about that is speculation, not Marxism. 3.Social solutions? How about disbanding the US military, currently the consumer of 22% of US petroleum supplies? How about revolution, so we don't provide a material incentive for burning rain forests to produce pasture? Technological solutions? How about emissions controls? How about elimination of biomass as a fuel, and the use of natural gas. How about a combination of the emission controls and natural gas (which current reserves are at 63 years)? Plus, the revolution. If you are skeptical about the feasibility of such solutions, then I'm afraid you are going to find yourself, despite your protests, right back in the corner of those Malthusian solutions you reject-- i.e. culling the herd, and imposing sterilizaton on women, since it's always imposed on women by men. 4. Finally, there is a real problem with what I have referred to as short-attention span radicalism, in that it never thinks through the consequences of its positions-- so someone can talk about a carrying capacity of 2 billion and ignore what that entails for at least 4 billion others on the planet. So that some might argue for the notion of closing down Phoenix, without explaining what that means, or how that would be accomplished. It makes little sense to argue for a humane sharing society when the program includes closing down a city of several hundred thousand and doing exactly what with the population? Forcibly dispersing them towhere? Retirement villages of the damned? Are we going to ship them, lox, stocks, and cracker barrels to other cities which we think are more sustainable? Sounds a little bit too much to me like strategic hamlets, or pseudo Stalinist organized deportation based on orders of a central committee. And when those gray panthers of Phoenix, and some indigenous peoples say to the central committee, we like it here...it's warm and dry... what will the central committee say-- Up Against the Green Wall, motherfucker. This is the ecology police.?
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
By the way, I think it would be more productive for others to respond to these issues, ergo, before the moderator tells me, I cede all my remaining time to my colleagues from anywhere. dms
Re: Will more violence provoke an extension of the US occupation?
It is pretty clear that uprisings in the last few days are not anti-imperialist but indeed are a struggle for power within the framework of the handover by the US on the June 30th. The forces at the head of these movements that have emerged in the past few days may have a lot to gain by forcing an extension of U.S. -dominated occuaption by displacing other democratic forces that opposed Saddam all along. This isn't revolutionary or anti-imperialist. Let's see: the fighters in the streets demanding the withdrawal of US forces are actually hoping for an extension of US dominated occupation by displacing other democratic forces that opposed Saddam all along? What other democratic forces-- those that now sit on the US dominated governing council? Chalabi? He opposed Saddam all along. He's a democratic force? Well he certainly has the credentials, having been convicted of bank fraud. This is actually an inter-petty capitalist squabble for power in and after the handover? That's why there is the growing alliance of Shia and Sunni forces? That's why some members of the governing group have resigned and denounced the US actions as unacceptable and illegal? From my position safely tucked away in NYC, as opposed to your position dangerously located.exactly where?, it looks to me like you're not really talking sensibly. Just one man's opinion, of course. dms
A different greenhouse...with the same economics
From the Financial Times of 4/6: "...Floriculture is Kenya's most recent success story... it now has a turnover of $180 million a year. Last year the industry grew 18 percent, and combined with fruit and vegetable production, overtook tourisma and coffee to become the country's second biggest foreign exchange earner after tea. The capital intensive industry dominated by 36 large growers has thrived...in response to rising demand, especially from Europe which now imports 25 percent of its flowers from Kenya. Oserian[the family owned company] is the first company in the world to pioneer the use of geothermal power to grown roses. Oserian has obtained permission from KenGen [the state electricity company]and... is using steam from the ground to heat the water, which is then circulated in pipesin the greenhouses to keep the temperature stable...The carbon dioxide generated is also fed to the plants. Oserian also uses hydroponics which involves growing the plants in an inert medium rather than soil, ensuring they get the exact nutrients they need and reducing water consumption as the water is sterilized and recycled. The rapid growth of the industry has led to the area around Lake Naivasha being virtually covered in greenhouses... Some companies pump more water out of the lake than they are allowed to, do not recycle it and do not worry about the ecosystem. Some companies, eager to maximize profits, pay their workers less than the minimum wage and provide no decent housing, job security, or health car. ...after 2007 Kenya stands to lose its least developed country status and...preferential treatment for its exports to the EU. "If we have to pay import taxes, the 10 percent difference would kill our margins" dms
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
Louis Proyect is wrong. The article he reproduces in no way proves Mark Jones was right. Mark Jones argued that the world had reached the end of its finite hydrocarbon reserves, particularly petroleum. The limit for Mr. Jones was natural, geological-- not economic. The NYT article concerns exactly economic limitations-- that horizontal drilling may not be the best, most efficient, cost reducing, output increasing technique in all circumstances. The difference between "natural" supply and proven reserves is economic not geological. Most of the scarcity theorists argue that a specific geological formation, defined chronological provided the origin and limits to petroleum formation. This pre-historic specificity is disputed by other geologists as the locations of petroleum reserves, the depths at which they are found, correspond to several different geological periods. There is another thing everyone should keep in mind before genuflecting before the altar of geology-- the twogreat US onshore fields, Spindletop and Texas East, where discovered and developedafter geologists had stated unequivocallythat no petroleum of significance would be found there. You can lookit up. As the petroleum engineers at the M King Hubbert Institute at the Colorado School of Mines will tell you,potential recoverable reserves from Canadianshale and sands, and heavy oil from Venezuela exceed current proven, accessible, reserves by a factor of 10-- at least 10. There are significant obstacles to that recovery, but in the world of the market, the obstacles are financial-- not geological,not ecological (an economy thatburns rain forests to graze cattle hardly gives a shit about ecological costs). You can look it up. Horizontal drilling itself has been used, in combination with other technologies, to extend the life of the North Sea fields, and the oil ultimately recoverd, and still recoverable, by some 10 years. Half the recoverable reserves still exist in the North Sea, despite theslowed decline in production, a decline that has actually been reversed in several North Sea fields. Petroleum majors are selling their platforms and rigs to smaller companies because the economics, the profits--the mass of profits-- available from this production does not meet margin requirements.You can look it up. dms
Re: Will more violence provoke an extension of the US occupation?
- Original Message - From: Joel Wendland [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2004 9:09 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Will more violence provoke an extension of the US occupation? Statement of the Political Bureau: About Recent Events This is without a doubt either a plant of disinformation designed to disgrace the very word communist in Iraq, or the self-delusion of a party that has absolutely no grounding in the reality of events in Iraq. The events in Iraq are the imperialist war cojoined with the civil war, and no surgical team can separate the two. The sore wounds the Iraqi people have endured are in no way extended, worsened by this armed rebellion for the wound will/would be inflicted irregardless. The wounds are the product of US capital's need to quite literally destroy the social fabric of Iraq, something not accomplished in the 12 years of sanctions. The armed struggle is a positive development, no less than the armed struggle of Palestinians against the Israeli occupation is a positive development. Communists do NOT condemn violence in all its forms. We do not condemn the violence of the slave against the slaveholder , of the oppressed against the oppressor of the occupied against the occupier. And so we must understand the unreason of reason, and the reason of unreason, the essential, and revolutionary rationality of unreason against the US occupation. Those who thought there was some rationality, that it was reasonable to regard the US occupation as a moderating, constructive, influence on Iraq, holding back the wolf at the door, and the dogs of war, have to account now for the constructive influence of collective punishment, the reasonableness of artillery and rocket strikes against the general population. dms
Query
I realize that my submissions generally don't measure up to the quality standards of the list and for that reason deserve to be ignored, but perhaps those in need of a little pro bono work might offer some enlightenment on the following perplexing matter. The Economic Research Service of the USDA produces an abundance of data on the condition of US agricultural production. I find particularly interesting that table on capital stock 1948-1999 which shows an approximate 50% increase in capital stock for the entire period, yet a real, and dramatic decline of some 33% between 1983 and 1999. Now this makes sense to me, given the "overweighted" portion of production value contributed by farms with sales greater than $1,000,000-- the ability ofconcentrated capital stock to be be smaller in volume, but denser in output and to "absorb" greater amounts of manufactured and farm based inputs. However, when looking at the DofC BEA NEA tables for investment in and net stock valuation of non-residential, private fixed investments for farms, such valuations show no decline but an increase for the 1983-1999 period. I'm having some difficulty reconciling the two, or even finding the paths of divergence. Has somebody encountered the same issue and perhaps found an explanation? Note to Sabri:The guy who knows what heteroskadastic (sp?) means doesn't understand obfuscation? That's precious.
Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper
Follow your own path, let the Americans talk! Sabri Last time I checked, I was classified as an American, as are thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who demonstrate their complete opposition to US military and economic occupation, and the possibilities of proxy occupation. What's the point of reproducing national/patriotic obfuscation from the left? Be that as it may, those who think there is a humanitarian reason for a continued occupation of Iraq have to confront, and accept responsibility for, the necessity of armed force against Iraqi resistance. You cannot and will not have any occupation, peacekeeping, etc. without continued armed attacks on the occupiers, peacekeepers, etc. In those real conditions the peacekeeping requires aggressive military action. And the nature of such military actions is quite similar to the nature of terrorism-- i.e. indiscriminate attacks against the general population. So if you're against terror, disorder, etc. the only rational position is to agitate for the immediate withdrawal of occupying forces, the payment of reparations, the release of all political/military prisoners including Hussein. dms
Re: dksfajdfsjkdfsjsda
Pretend I'm slow. What's the subject? - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 10:08 AM Subject: [PEN-L] dksfajdfsjkdfsjsda ignore pen-l [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper
Is this the same Arab League whose summit just collapsed or is this a different Arab League? Is this the same UN that imposed sanctions on Iraq for 12+ years, that backed down with a whimper when Israel refused to allow its inspection of Jenin, that has never even debated sanctions against the US for its invasion, or is this a different UN? The issue is, and is only, the immediate withdrawal of all the invading military forces from Iraq. The crocodile tears about the resulting anarchy from a precipitous withdrawal, are just that, crocodile tears shed after the reptile has eaten its fill and lays immobilized by its own gluttony. Let's recall, the banditry that took place, took place in Baghdad after its occupation not during sustained combat operations, not before. The banditry was accepted with a boys will be boys shrug of the shoulders by this same Secretary of Defense. dms ___ QA certified-- quality guaranteed by TA Inc. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 5:52 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper Doug Henwood wrote: a UN force without the U.S. to replace the U.S. Yoshie asks: Who do they think will contribute the troops to make up a UN force without the US? the Arab League has been mentioned... JD
Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq
Let's be clear, the determinants of policy, and anti-policy, are not polls imaginary or real that are conducted by pollsters. What somebody says a sample of the Iraqi people want or wanted had nothing to do with the invasion by the United States. What somebody now says the Iraqi people want has nothing to do with the determinants of future actions by the occupier. The occupation is not governed by polls, no more than anybody took a poll about shock and awe. Moreover neither the invasion nor the resistance have anything to do with national liberation and self-determination. National liberation has certain fundamental economic precipitants regarding land, industrialization, access to labor, articulated or not, and none of those are at issue in either the struggle for or against the US occupation. This war was precipitated by capital's need to destroy parts of the productive apparatus and maintain a high price for oil. In fact, if you look at the rise and fall and rise in the price of oil from 2001-2003, the war drums start and increase their pounding exactly when the price dips. The current increase in oil prices is the exact analogy of the increase in stock prices, and telecoms in particular, right before the shock and awe of the collapse in the second half of 2000. Supporting national liberation, or a self-determination devoid of a specific class content of that determination, i.e. a program that includes expropriation of the privatized, now and future, means of production, is ultimately meaningless. Polls are simply ideological justifications for existing conditions.
Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq
The Caucasus wars is fundamentally over control of oil nothing to do with fighting medievalism. _ That much of what LP writes is almost correct. It is fundamentally over control of the transport of oil, and for that reason alone the secession of Chechnya, its welcoming of Islamic fundamentalists, is another aspect of capital's attack on remnants of the Soviet Union, and should be opposed. Moreover, it is clear, from Afghanistan, and Iraq, Nigeria, that Islamic reaction, (medievalism is not really a proper application of the term, since during the medieval conflicts, those forces of Islamic culture were surely more advanced, modern, enlightened than the European medievalists), has carried capitalism's water in battling workers' struggles. dms
Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq
Well, we know where the Comintern's support of the Kuomingtang took the workers revolution, that's for sure. And I believe you pose a false choice, in that no bourgeois nationalist control of Iraqi oil, separate and apart from the domination, military or market of Western capitalism is possible. That's what the war itself has shown, as if it hasn't been shown a hundred times before; in China, India, Spain, Angola. As for the Irish struggle, Connolly himself established exactly that sort of litmus test-- in just those terms. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 10:03 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq dmschanoes wrote: Supporting national liberation, or a self-determination devoid of a specific class content of that determination, i.e. a program that includes expropriation of the privatized, now and future, means of production, is ultimately meaningless. Not really. The Comintern backed the Kuomintang in its struggle for national liberation even though it was a bourgeois-led movement. Nor did it require such litmus tests for the Irish or any other nation suffering from direct or indirect colonial rule. If the choice is between US corporate control of Iraqi oil and bourgeois nationalist control, we support the latter. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq
No I just don't know, I've actually studied the price of oil, rates of return on investment, fixed asset growth in the industry for 30 years. Here's a tip-- check the Baker Hughes rig counts going back to 1973, and overlay it with prices and the industry rate of return to 2003. Makes for an interesting graph. And you can always check the spot price of oil 2001-2003, and see how it dips in 2002 just before the time Bush starts banging the (44 gallon) drum. dms - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 10:03 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq dmschanoes wrote: his war was precipitated by capital's need to destroy parts of the productive apparatus and maintain a high price for oil. I hear people say things like this and I wonder how they know. How do you know this? Documentary evidence, or do you just *know*? Doug
Re: Job loss
Compared to what? It's hard to argue with its capacity to grow,innovate, and produce cheaper commodities over the centuries - at ahigh social and ecological cost, for sure, but I don't think you canwin the "efficiency" argument from the left. It has to be on othergrounds. Sympathetic we may be to Joanna's critique, but Henwood has hit on something important. But I think he's swung a little late. It's not so much that capital is efficient, more efficient, or most efficient, or less efficient-- it is simply that efficiency and non-efficiency, i.e. waste, are products and by-products, of profit. So the drive to reduce costs of production drives capital to the apparentbottom line of efficiency, but the need to realize the expropriated surplus value drives it to highest levels of waste and inefficiency. So the critique isn't containedin some imagined measure of higher efficiency but in the terms of capitalist production itself-- in terms of profit and the realization thereof, in terms of the organization of labor to develop productive forces, and the ability of the property relations to sustain that development. Carroll Cox may not agree, but thoseare indeed thecategories of Marx's critique dms
Re: Job flight
Supposedly, new technology lowers prices, which spurs new demand, which reemploy as the workers. I'm not saying I accept this argument, but I have not seen many economists eating crow. ___- That's Panglossian political economy. The destruction or creation of jobs is not a technical function, but a social one. The expulsion of labor power from the production process is essential to the expropriation of surplus value, to increased rates of expropriation. The derivative effect, of the rising tide raising all boats, or in this case, the reemployment of expelled labor, has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the rate of profitable reproduction. So applications of the same technology reduce jobs in on area of the world markets while increasing jobs in the other. We can look at steel, auto, oil, semiconductor production throughout the world to see the unity of these opposites at work. Still, certain critical moments are reached inside each of these areas when overproduction overwhelms the circulation and realization processes. This is manifested already in Mexico, and Brazil, where job losses in industrial production sectors parallel similar losses in the US, and it is becoming manifest in China where problems in transportation, infrastructure, i.e. ships waiting 30 days or more to unload, ports unable to move unloaded commodities out of ground storage quickly enough, electricity shortages, etc., all facets of circulation, are breaking through the euphoria of rapid growth. International semiconductor companies have reached an impasse, where the technology has advanced to such a level that the comparative advantage of reduced wage levels as in China is in fact minimized by the overwhelming technical inputs which require an elaborate and reliable infrastructure to protect uninterrupted production.
Re: Job flight
The great, sort of, and humbling, definitely, thing about a market economy is that it puts a dollar sign alongside all endeavors and makes them equivalent in that great democracy of the world market where lawyers, guns, and money make sure your vote counts because they're doing the counting. So writing a program and integrating an application unto a platform is precisely no different than assembling a pre-fab house of components from various countries. There is nothing special about San Francisco Bay Area Labor vs. Bay of Bengal or Tokyo Bay or Bayonne Bay of Bay of Fundy labor, intellectual, manual or anything else. What was it Marx said-- not that one man is as good as another man, but that one man's hour was as good as another man's hour? Time is everything man is nothing. That's all outsourcing really is. And another humbling thing about capital is that absent the proletarian revolution, it will always find a way to reconstitute itself and continue its ragged course-- because there is, in reality, not an absence leading to the reconstituton, but actually defeat. And that's exactly what WWII, pre and post, was. The defeat of that revolution. Henwood is right. Again. Unfortunately. There is no sense bemoaning the intervention of the capitalist state as the saviour of the capitalists' bacon. After all, that's what it's supposed to do. That's what it's always done, whether in the Golden Age of laissez faire, like saving the property of the East India Company after the great rebellion of 1857, like supporting the flimflam financing behind the expansion of the US railroads, etc. etc. etc. or in the Imperial Age, with defense contracts, regressive tax structures, subsidies, bailouts, and the ever popular wars to begin more wars. How good is capital? Good enough. Until it's overthrown.
Third Time is the Charm
I have received the following request from the moderator: From: "Michael Perelman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "DMS" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 10:39 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Crisis at the peak David, I don't think that your tone is very productive on the list. Maybe we should part ways. Far be it from me to disturb the peace, love, and good vibes of a family romance. dms
Re: oil crises.
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 8:14 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] oil crises. (a civil conversation) DMS: But Iraq is not a high cost producer of oil, having a cost of production approximately equal to Saudi Arabia, the low-cost producer. JD: I have heard otherwise from other sources. From the US Energy Information Agency http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/iraq.html Iraq's oil development and production costs are amongst the lowest in the world (perhaps $3-$5 billion for each million barrels per day), making it a highly attractive oil prospect. However, only 17 of 80 discovered fields have been developed, while few deep wells have been drilled compared to Iraq's neighbors. Overall, only about 2,300 wells reportedly have been drilled in Iraq (of which about 1,600 are actually producing oil), compared to around 1 million wells in Texas for instance. In addition, Iraq generally has not had access to the latest, state-of-the-art oil industry technology (i.e., 3D seismic, directional or deep drilling, gas injection), sufficient spare parts, and investment in general throughout most of the 1990s. Instead, Iraq reportedly utilized sub-standard engineering techniques (i.e., overpumping, water injection/flooding), obsolete technology, and systems in various states of decay (i.e., corroded well casings) in order to sustain production. In the long run, reversal of all these practices and utilization of the most modern techniques, combined with development of both discovered fields as well as new ones, could result in Iraq's oil output increasing by several million barrels per day
Re: Ceaucescu and Romanian transition
- Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 6:50 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ceaucescu and Romanian transition There is a man in a cell in Matrushina Tishina prison who can tell you that such sell-offs are not a very wise move in contemporary Russia... EXACTLY Putin and the dread siloviki (God do I hate that word) have a state-dirigiste model of capitalist development. We'll see what happens to the shares of Yukos that were frozen. I suspect they will either go to the state or to someone (Abramovich?) who can serve as a proxy for the state. Yukos will be like an oil Gazprom. EXACTLY AGAIN Hu? Why? I go to movie theaters all the time. Bad Joke. Probably not worth explaining dms
Picking up the thread....
Several days ago Carrol Cox took exception to my references to "the conflict between the means and relations of production" as being essential to Marx's analysis of, and to, capital. I answered him offlist to avoid overposting. In the attempt to exercise my full ration of bandwidth, I'll reproduce my reply today. Let's just call it a placeholder... I promise however not to re-enter the Greenspan discussion... - Carrol, Marx uses that exact phrase sparingly to be sure, but to say that is the extent of Marx's analysis thereof is to miss the point, and entirely, of everything he writes about capital being a contradiction reflected into itself, contradiction in motion, creating the terms, conditions, and actors in its own overthrow. Everything Marx writes about exchange value is about the social organization of labor and the necessity of that organization to correspond with development, (growth and rational deployment) of the means of production. Everything he writes about the problems of capital in the areas of expanded reproduction, overproduction, declining rates of profit, is a reflection of the conflict between the relations of production-- capital, i.e. means of production as private property, and wage-labor, each existing in the organization of the other, and the means of production-- the absolute growth of the fixed asset base, the constant portion, the accummulated dead labor and the necessity of social revolution triggered by this conflict. I don't know how it is possible to read Capital, Grundrisse, TSV, the notebooks, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and the Marx-Engels correspondence on the US Civil War, and not see how this central facet permeates every bit of analysis.l Overproduction is this conflict compressed into one "body" so to speak. The falling rate of profit is another compressed manifestation of this. I have written on this extensively and if you're interested I can send some of it to you. I do not cite scriptures and in my analysis of oil I pointed out exactly how the oil price marked that ongoing conflict between the means and relations of production. dms
Re: Picking up the thread....
Nothing worries me more than finding myself agreeing with others, save the prospect of others actually agreeing with me. Nevertheless, I find JD's exploration and explication of this issue very enlightening-- and indeed Marx never completed, even internally, this part of his work, expressing "ambivalence" as to the make-up and meaning of overproduction i.e. "under-consumption," "disproportionality," "over-accumulation." And capital certainly "deviates" or "manifests" the abstract in "imperfect," attenuated, distorted, real forms. Still, the centrality of this conflict between the abstract"means and relations" gives the clearest method and insight into actual analyses of the grim and grimey real forms, i.e the struggle of revolution and counterrevolution; property and labor. dms - Original Message - From: Devine, James To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 2:44 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Picking up the thread I agree with David S. that the idea of the clash of the relations of production and the forces of production is central to Marx's theory, even if Marx didn't use that phraseology very often. In his preface toA CONTRIBUTION TO THECRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, he made itclear that he was presenting only the "guiding principle of my studies" (aheuristic)rather than a finished theory. A lot of the rest of his theory is a development of that idea.
Re: ketchup, buns and manufacturing
- Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] At one time, manufacturing produced flour, but most produced their own bread at home. At a later date, manufacturing replaced the home as the locus of bread production. Doesn't Taco Bell manufacture food? If Wonderbread was sold at the factory would it cease to be manufacturing and become service? Carrol __ The answer to that is: NO Taco Bell does not manufacture food. Pepsico manufactures something called food products through its Frito Lay (and other divisions) but Taco Bell no more manufactures tacos than Col. Saunders manufactures chicken, or the Starbuck's outlet down the street manufactures coffee, or the Armani Exchange manufactures clothing. Supermarkets are not food manufacturing enterprises. The clerks stocking, pricing, checking out food at the supermarket are not food manufacturing workers, and Taco Bells, Starbucks, KFC, and Armani are all markets.. IF Wonderbread were sold at the factory, the bread itself would still be manufactured, (although we would still have an argument about whether or not it is actually bread. I vote for legislated requirements a la the baguette in France). The separation that capital develops between production and sales, is a division of labor in fact designed to allow non-manufacturing, circulation, marketing, the opportunity to keep up with production, to conversely not draw away from production time, and limit production to the simple inventory and requirements of the factory outlet. McDonald's contracts and sub-contracts for its potatos (introducing the Idaho spuds variety into Poland and Russia to get that authentic McDonald's flavor across the Elbe. I am not making this up), but it does not manufacture the spuds itself. dms
Re: ketchup, buns and manufacturing
While I disagree with the Gil's analysis of the convergence between manufacturing and manufacturing, I am in agreement with what the real question is-- the motive, the historical purpose for this reclassification, --and Gil's real answer. This is not something akin to removing US Steel from the DJ Industrial Index and replacing it with Intel, reflecting an evolution of an economic specific gravity, but a purely political machination designed to obscure what is painfully clear to the most casual observer. dms The real question, it seems to me, is thus not whether manufacturing is involved in such cases, but rather what is the motive underlying the proposed switch in classification. And in this case it seems pretty clear: the statistics on losses in manufacturing (by current definition) jobs are pretty damning for Dubya's domestic economic policy, so a change in definition would be politically convenient. But necessarily misleading, since fast-food jobs are low-wage jobs (as are 6 other of the top 9 or 10 fastest growing occupations in the US). Gil
Re: Ceaucescu and Romanian transition
Carrol, Of course it, the notion that all those with connections are leaders, is too simple. It's also something nobody has argued, logically, morally, empirically. Your version is that somebody, me I guess, argued ALL A (those with connections) ARE B (leaders), and then proceed to refute NOT ALL B are ALL A. So much for logic. Competence is an historical characteristic, based, literally on coincidence, the co-inciding the class need and individual performance. So the great practical bourgeois functionary, Richard Nixon is revealed to be petty thief whose venality perfectly matches that of his bankrollers, and then years after his resignation is feted as a statesman. If the same people now running the countries of Eastern Europe are the same people who presided over the previous collapse of those countries, how can competence be a factor? We're not talking morality. The promises of the ex-Soviet era bureaucrats/present quasi Soc Dems are not qualitatively different than the promises made by any and all bourgeois politicians who represent different moments of the same class interests. There was a very interesting article in the Financial Times several months ago that the only course really open to the current Russian oligarchs was the sale of their corporate assets to international companies. The oligarchs, the FT reported candidly, had obtained their businesses through fraud, flim-flam, etc and were not really interested or competent to manage these operations. Thus sale at the current height of the oil-induced recovery was the future. Clearly, Putin represents interests opposed to that future, but his opposing interests are no less capitalist, and Putin's power depends on that representation and not his ability to run the country. Quick tip to businesspeople enroute to Russia: When in Moscow, in-room movies are the safe entertainment choice. Avoid theaters. dms - Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 1:47 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ceaucescu and Romanian transition This is too simple. Not _all_ the people with connections and loyalty to exploiting class interests are also leaders. Some of them prefer to go and drown in New Guinea for sport or act in their own porn movies or loll on beaches in private Mediterranean islands. Others prefer to be CEO of Chase Manhattan or Under Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. Most of them (unfortunately for us) are pretty damn competent, though it's because of their connections that they get to exercise that competence.
Re: flaring off
I think it is important to separate the issues of petroleum scarcity and economic determinants. We can argue about both, but the real issue the connection between the two. I think it is painfully clear that the bourgeoisie are not driven forward or backward by an anticipated shortage of petroleum. In a nutshell, the way I would state this is...IS the war in Iraq all about oil? Absolutely not. Is the war in Iraq all about the capitalist production, and overproduction of oil? Absolutely yes. The difference between the two has important practical significance for determining a program of revolutionary opposition. Re Geologists there is little agreement among geologists about total petroleum reserves. I've said this before, but I always enjoy saying it again-- in the industry the saying goes: The geologists are always smiling because they know they can always find the oil. The petroleum engineers are always frowning because they know it's always too expensive to produce. Actually, I think that is one of the best restatements of Marx's analysis of the nature of the commodity, use value and exchange value, I've ever read. dms - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 10:40 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] flaring off I am glad that David responded to my question regarding future trends. I happen to think that Lou gave the correct analysis of the hydrocarbon future. I agree with David on the forces leading toward deflation in manufacturing. The runup in commodity prices, such as steel, may be a short run phenomenon, but water, petrochemicals suggest future price increases.
Re: flaring off
I was pointing out the critical rupture the scarcity theory makes with Marx's analysis regarding historical necessity and the agent of revoution-- the essential conflict between the means and relations of production. I, and I'm sure not only I, am well aware of your tendency to make every comment, every analytic disagreement, a personal attack, but really, it isn't about you, nor your history. It's about the quality of analysis, and where it takes us. In that regard, your analysis is, IMO, flawed, and flawed for the above, and other, reasons. To describe the Palestinian conflict as as water war is truly amazing. That's like describing the battle in apartheid South Africa as a battle over fertile soil. Class really does drop out of every bit of these resource scarcity arguments. Nobody's lecturing anybody, least of all you Louis. Really, try and curb your narcissism. And there's no point to waving the bloody shirt about your past service. I, for one, couldn't give a rat's ass. Try instead to answer Michael's question about the direction of the economy. Or even the questions about the WWII piece you posted. Does that sound like a lecture? It's in the ear of the beholder. You have an FBI file big as a phone book? That's impressive. Do you sit on it when you come to the table? dms
Re: communicating on pen-l
Just to set the record straight: Excuse me, Louis challenged ME directly. Remember? I posted first the piece about oil prices as an index to the direction of capital. Lou took exception to my dismissal of scarcity. I responded. Lou responded. I re-responded. Lou re-re-responded etc. If the issue has critical impact to economic analysis, and practical opposition, then why would anyone oppose continued exploration? dms Last for the day. All further responses off-list. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 11:02 AM Subject: [PEN-L] communicating on pen-l David challenged Lou and Lou responded regarding oil. First of all, please do not challenge people directly on the list. That way, we can avoid flaming [flaring] and people don't find the need to go on and on with interminable challenge and response threads. Also, David made his case already. Merely heaping on more of the same adds little to the discussion. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Alleged conflict of forces/relations of production
I will answer offlist. Others may contact me if they are interested in my reply. - Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 1:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Alleged conflict of forces/relations of production dmschanoes wrote: I was pointing out the critical rupture the scarcity theory makes with Marx's analysis regarding historical necessity and the agent of revoution-- the essential conflict between the means and relations of production. Marx speaks of this alleged conflict a couple of times, but it is an essentially un-marxist proposition. At the very least, it has to be argued for independently, not merely affirmed as you do here by reference to Holy Scripture, when Holy Scripture is itself rather contradictory on the matter. There is a fine chapter on this whole matter in Ellen Meiksins Wood, _Democracy Against Capitalism_. I changed the subject line because this is not intended as a contribution to either side on the subject of energy resources. Carrol
Wake up Call
Eisner Out as Disney Chairman Middle of night meeting leads to departure; Marines escort Eisner and wife toUS chartered jet, destination unknown. "He's not going to Disneyworld," says Marine Col. Bull Merde. Terrorist Bomb Threats Endanger French Railways Amtrak Chairman Gunn demands $5 billion from SNCF after French refuse to takeover ailing US system. "And we don't want it in dollars," says memo from US chief. How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web US FCC head Powell rejects GSM standard, insists "Motorola's Good Enough for George Tenet, it's good enough for Rice, it's good enough forall Americans. It was good enough to locate several bodies on 9/11." Administration Proposes Same-Sex-School Option "Go figure," says SF Mayor
flaring off
A short while ago, Michael asked for clarification, or prediction, as to the movement of the US economy. He received little enough response, which is really too bad. Unless we have all already grasped that what Marx really has done away with, has superceded, in his work is not philosophy so much as it is "economics," political economics.Comprehension, thought, is replaced by the appropriation of the material world through the labor process, by definition a social activity, creating a real history where the economic categories are unmasked as relations of production, and the analysis moves necessarily to the mode of expropriation and its immanent critique, which is the conflict between the means and relations of production, the class struggle. You might say then there are no economic questions, but only the defense of private property and the prospects for its overthrow.It is clear that since 1970, the significant shifts and movement in that struggle, that"economy" have been marked by changes in oil prices. 1973 brought OPEC 1, and the overthrow of Allende. 1979-1981 brought OPEC2, the proxy war against theUSSR in Afghanistan, the financial arson against industrial fixed assets in the US, the Reagan-Volcker double dip strikebreakers recession, and dramatic assault on living standards in North and Latin America. The OPEC price break in 1986 served to put the USSR between a rockier rock and a harder hard place, and triggered the SL collapse in the US, leading to the 1989-1990 recession, Gulf War 1 and, praise the lord, oil briefly at $40/bl.The overproduction that produced the decline in the rate of profit in 1997, leadingto the Asian currency crises, also produced the collapse of oil prices to $10/bl in1998. After that we got war against Yugoslavia, increased attacks on Iraq, OPEC 3, the hyper-activity of 2000 leading to the hard-landing in 2001. When the price ofoil started to slide back down in 2002-2003, we got the current edition of War Without End Amen. Yet in a perverse resuscitation of political economy, the painful social meaning of oil price rises is ignored in favor of speculative, and apocalyptic, depletion/scarcity theoriespositing past "peaks" ofdiscovery and extraction and predictinga steadily declining future where there is no coal, no natural gas, and no oil, which definitely limits vacation prospects. So a great hydrocarbon debate replaces an analylsis of capital, the declining rate of return and the overproduction of both product and capacity. The facts, historical facts, are clear. There is absolutely no shortage of coal reserves, no shortage of natural gas reserves. For example, Nigeria's natural gas reserves are currently estimated at 160 trillion cubic feet, enough to supply the entire world requirement forseveralyears.However, this (under)estimate is based solely on the natural gas encountered in the oil fields of Nigeria and does not include separate gas only fields, as no explorationhas been done for natural gas. And what doesNigeria do with its natural gas? It flares it off from the oil fields as production, transportation, and storage facilities do not exist.. Mexico, despite extensive reserves, is a net importer of natural gas from the US and flares its gasalso and for the same reason. And Nigeria and Mexico aren't the countries with the greatest reserves-- Russia and Iran are. So the focus becomesthe supply of oil. And oil is definitely the aqua regia of capitalism, at least of capitalist transport, fuelingalmost 100% of commercialtransportation requirements. Some argued that the US invasion of Iraq was an attempt to lower the price of oil, which doesn't quite make sense when you look at recent HISTORY, 1998, when oil producers were blaming Iraqi production for bringing the price to the$10 barrel.Another argument is that the USinvasion was designed to provide an alternate supply to Saudi reserves, except that doesn't make much sense when you look atHISTORY and examine the benefitsUS petroleum companies have gained from their marketing and services contracts with Saudi Aramco. And there is the argument that international reserves discovery andproduction volumes havepeaked, and its all downhill after 1997, I mean 2000, no 2003, could be 2004, 2007 at the latest, but maybe 2063. Clearly, capitalism does not organize itself around surpluses orshortages predicted 10 or 50 years in the future. If it could, there would never be any overproduction.Profit does not have a 60 year horizon, and while the bourgeoisie go to great lengths to preserve their personal wealth through generations, productive apparatus, capacity, and resourcesexist to be scrapped, as scrap. Development ofpetroleum reserves has outpacedoil consumption for the past ten years. New fields scheduled for production through 2007 exceed the fall off from existing fields by an estimated 10%. In 2002 reserves to production ratios (r/p)for
Re: flaring off
I am aware of both, except one is real and the other is not. The data does not support the scarcity scenario as I showed, I think, in the body of the text. The Apocalypse Pretty Soon theory does not drive nor explain capitalism's maneuvers, nor is the theory itself internally consistent as the peak of production keeps changing. The most optimistic predictions in no way suggest oil shortages by mid century-- what might be short is profits. Right now, 2D and 3D computer assisted seismic exploration has been dramatically curtailed. The reasons for that are economic not natural In any case, resources lose their natural state once they are appropriated into the social process of reproduction. Nevertheless, the point of the posting was not to engage in the great hydrocarbon debate-- but to, without equivocation, propose an answer to Michael's question. I would love to read other answer's to that particular question, which I, personally, find much more relevant to the practical prospects of class struggles than calls to be the guardians of the future, particularly since the future proposed by the guardians of the scarcity theory, is a regression. dms - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 9:00 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] flaring off There are two phenomena at work here, but David only seems aware of one of them. Oil is a commodity just like any other commodity. Due to the irrationality of the market system, there can be periodic gluts of oil just like there was an excess capacity of Japanese real estate. On the other hand, there is such a thing as finite resources under capitalism. Water is one of them. In my opinion, this is an even more apocalyptic prospect than oil depletion. Even among the most optimistic predictions, we are talking about severe oil shortages by the mid-century. I am of the opinion that socialists must adopt the outlook of guardians of future generations. Unless we can project a sustainable future, we will not be taken seriously by ecology-minded scientists. Just as Marx was consumed by the threat of soil sterility (a problem that has never been fully resolved), so must we be engaged with the inter-related problems of global warming, energy supplies and transportation. That is, if we want to be taken seriously. Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
Gee, I think it proves my point: that Greenspan, rather than being an erudite thinker with a misguided theory, is a scam artist, not unlike Keating,Skilling, or Fastow, hired to justify whatever the bourgeoisie need next in terms of cash flow. What character assassination? He did recommend Keating. He did tell Thailand to eat baht. He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if you look several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him stating that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection scheme. So what article were you reading? dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 7:56 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime Well I think that substantiates your argument and my argument. I think David Schanoes is entitled to his viewpoint, but surely if a pithy article is written in the NYT explaining what is wrong with Greenspan's idea, then that helps us much more than a bunch of abuse and character assasination ? J.
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
I'm not IN politics. Aint no opinion, it's a fact-- he's a scam artist, paid flack, not unlike the consultants paid to hype and protect Enron, Tyco, Parmalat. Look at the record of what he's done, his testimony. Next thing you'll be telling us is that Jack Welch is a great leader of men and women with a misquided theory, Kissinger is a great diplomat with a mistaken world view, Oliver North is a real humanitarian who made a poor career choice. dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 10:10 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime What character assassination? He did recommend Keating. He did tell Thailand to eat baht. He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if you look several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him stating that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection scheme. I think it is better to say that in your opinion Greenspan is engaging in scams, and then show what the scam is, rather than calling him a scam artist. You last longer in politics that way. So what article were you reading? I am no longer a student, hence I tell what I am reading only to my wife, my supervisor or people actually living with me. As I haven't got a wife, that option doesn't exit. As I don't have job, I don't have a supervisor. And my flatmate is not really interested in my intellectual concerns. I'd be interested to read a biography of Greenspan but I don't know if there is one. J.
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
And one last thing: Let's not forget to whom Mr. Greenspan is beholden: and that's not von Hayek, Ayn Rand, or Adam Smith, it's finance capital. And finance capital wants SS privatized so it can get the rake off. Ever since the collapse of 2000-01, Wall Street has been trying to re-establish support for this privatization. Greenspan's oh so erudite, rational, and even pained, advocacy of reduced benefits is the overture to the next act of this dismal play. It's not about theory. It's NEVER about theory. It's about cash. Mean Green. Dead Presidents. The Eagle. The Benjamins. That bulge in my pants that is my wallet and means I am happy to see you. Follow the cash. It's that simple. If it were any more difficult, Greenspan would be flipping burgers at McDonald's. That's a fact.
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
Ok, since you ask me specifically, I suggest you reread JB's original and follow up posts, where Greenspan is referred to positively as economic thinker with an incorrect theory. That is fetishization to the max. I didn't merely call Greenspan names, I pointed out why the labels fit--- scam artist, hack, equivocator in service of declining living standards, economic drivel in the service of fraud... etc. If econom ics doesn't do what the economist claims it does, sustain and expand the welfare of society, then it is apparent that we must ascertain what it really does do, and that is to justify the depreciation of such welfare. And that is not a theoretical exercise. That requires an analysis of the real history of the real players. Does anyone think the response to Friedman, and the neo-liberalist wave attached to Friedman's coattails should be a critique of his history of prices? Or should it be an examination of what his theory justifies, and the social reality required to institute his programs? You make the call. dms - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 12:11 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime What does this add to the list. Nobody here supports G. or his policy. Merely calling names is a waste of bandwidth. On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 10:21:51AM -0500, dmschanoes wrote: I'm not IN politics. Aint no opinion, it's a fact-- he's a scam artist, paid flack, not unlike the consultants paid to hype and protect Enron, Tyco, Parmalat. Look at the record of what he's done, his testimony. Next thing you'll be telling us is that Jack Welch is a great leader of men and women with a misquided theory, Kissinger is a great diplomat with a mistaken world view, Oliver North is a real humanitarian who made a poor career choice. dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 10:10 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime What character assassination? He did recommend Keating. He did tell Thailand to eat baht. He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if you look several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him stating that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection scheme. I think it is better to say that in your opinion Greenspan is engaging in scams, and then show what the scam is, rather than calling him a scam artist. You last longer in politics that way. So what article were you reading? I am no longer a student, hence I tell what I am reading only to my wife, my supervisor or people actually living with me. As I haven't got a wife, that option doesn't exit. As I don't have job, I don't have a supervisor. And my flatmate is not really interested in my intellectual concerns. I'd be interested to read a biography of Greenspan but I don't know if there is one. J. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 12:16 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime Well, since I'm being addressed specifically, let me violate the three and out rule: dms writes: Let's not forget to whom Mr. Greenspan is beholden: and that's not von Hayek, Ayn Rand, or Adam Smith, it's finance capital. And finance capital wants SS privatized so it can get the rake off. Ever since the collapse of 2000-01, Wall Street has been trying to re-establish support for this jd writes: finance capital wants? How can a fraction of the capitalist class want something, as if a large number of people share identical consciousness? This formulation fetishizes socio-economic categories and (in addition) makes it hard to talk to non-Marxists. It veers toward conspiracy theory or Hegelianism. DMS: That's like asking how can the steel producers, steel capitalists, want tariffs and import restrictions. How? They, the fraction, form groups, organizations and lobby for such things. They,the fraction now organized as a group, advocate it in their press, their internal and external discussions, their contributions to political candidates who will carry the water forward. That's how. It's how the airline industry did it with Bush prior and since the election. How the pharmaceutical indstry got its way with Medicare prescription coverage, etc. etc. JD: Instead, I'd say that many or most people and institutions which are financiers (or finance capitalists) would benefit from the privatization of the SS system. Because of their disproportionate political and economic power, they can have a lot of influence. They are endorsed by some intellectual hacks (usually economists or ignorami) who piously invoke H*yek, Rand, and/or Smith. This represents one faction of the political fight, which is counter-acted by other political forces, including capitalist ones. (George Soros, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry are also in the capitalist camp. Etc.) Unfortunately, labor doesn't have enough power these days to have much say. DMS: And the practical difference is? OK, let's say a hard core of the the financial capitalists... like we would say the hardest core of the capitalists supported Bush, wanted Bush. How could they, did they manifest that? By contributing more to the Repubs-- by a 2:1 margin. JD: I am sure that there's some internal debate about what exactly the long-term interests of the finance-capital fraction are. Privatization of SS might destabilize finance over-all and/or help delegitimize US capitalism. The truth of different factions' perspectives can only be determined after the fact. In addition, how does someone like AG reconcile (his faction's perception of) these long-term interests and the impatient greed of individual financiers? Dms: That, the above, is voluntarism. The issue is what are the historical requirements, determinants that bring this issue to the fore, that make it so high profile at this time and place. Neo-liberalism is not a theory, it is a social policy, an attack by capital, capitalism, capitalists, upon the living standards of the workers and poor, which gained currency at a specific time for a specific reason, having absoutely nothing to do with its economic accuracy. Reconciling different factions perspectives can be done with any of the tools of capitalism-- guns, lawyers, money. The specific circumstances, and the desperation of the economic predicament determines what combinations are used. JD: I agree that Greenspan is one of the anti-SS finance capital faction. A lot of our political work involves convincing people that the Fed and Greenspan aren't apolitical technocrats but are instead financier partisans, rather than taking this fact as Revealed Truth. DMS: That, the above, was/is the sole and whole reason I took issue with JB's characterization of AG as a deep economic thinker with a wrong theory.
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
In summation let me say a couple of things: 1. I am gratified to see a thread sustained that actually considers purpose and cause re economists and social struggle. I think far too often the lack of exchange is not a desire to save bandwidth, but simply the result of short attention span Marxism. 2. I wear the label of jeering Marxist proudly. The icons of bourgeois science and culture-- the officials and officialdom of intellectual and social poverty deserve nothing better than jeering, and a whole lot worse. 3. Re JB's notion on AG being dedicated to empirical examination, and the bourgeoisie not allowing a shallow thinker. From, The Greatest-Ever Bank Robbery, by Martin Mayer, 1990, 1992 (IMO the best analysis of the SL collapse of the 80s). P. 140: Keating hired lawyers, including four of the largest firms in New York. Arthur Limanrecommended that Keating reinforce Bentson with Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for Gerald Ford, at the height of his reputation because he had been chairman of the committee that crafted the compromise on Social Security taxation. Greenspan was then a private consultant heading a not very successful firm [my note: Greenspan Associates] that dissolved in 1987 on his departure to become chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. His specialty was what he once called 'statistical espionage,' and the book on him in that capacity was that you could order the opinion you needed. . Greenspan was paid $40,000 for writing a couple of letters and testifying for Keating. he [Greenspan] hailed his client as representative of the group of new SL venturers who were going to save the industry. Later, in a fawning and false letter to the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco supporting Keating's application for an exemption from the rule on direct investments, Greenspan expressed confidence that Keating's operation of his SL could not pose a risk of loss to the FSLIC 'for the forseeable future. Neither Greenspan nor Benston referred to-- or, pehaps, understood--the peculiar accounting conventions that permitted SLs to book a stream of profits on unsold land and construction profits. End of quote. There's much more but I don't want to take up too much bandwidth. Did I say scam-artist? flack? hack? a la Arthur Andersen? Fastow? Enron. Mike, there's a difference between name-calling, and calling things by their right name. Shit is shit. And that's Greenspan in 4 letters. The struggle against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois order requires demystification of their representatives claims to insight, wisdom, integrity. 4. Whatever personal problems JB has with me are purely of his own construction and not important to anyone, least of all me. 5. To JD: Yes people make their own history, but not as people but as members, agents, representatives of their class. So Greenspan leans to whatever side with the most power or money wants him to lean. And he espouses that view. He's paid to do that. He reconciles the current interest and economic need. My name is David Schanoes. I live in NYC. More information available offlist if so desired. dms
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
- Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 3:35 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime For 2003 as a whole, new money flowing into the hedging industry in the US is estimated at $72.2 billion, a more than fourfold increase over $16.3 billion in 2002 and more than double the previous annual record of $32 billion in 2001. In his latest Congressional testimony, Alan Greenspan notes that firms have increasingly hedged their currency exposures, which means the dollar might fall further. Do you understand what this means ? No. Does David Schanoes know this ? He doesn't. Talk about insignificant. Get with the program JB. Six years ago average daily trading of currencies was 1.5 trillion. That's each day. In financial derivatives alone 18 trillion dollars were traded for 1998. You're at 2003 and you are way way behind the times. Currency hedges were initially developed so corporations could protect their exposure to currency fluctuations and their impact on earnings. The mechanism then became directly its opposite-- a mechanism for aggrandizing earnings based on increased volatility. The decline of the dollar is 1. overstated. remember when the Euro was introduced it was at the official rate of 1.15 to the dollar. 2. symptomatic of trade difficulties, and a beggar thy neighbor attitude, itself symptomatic of the reduced rate of growth of profits. 3. very beneficial to the US as it can redeem its securities with depreciated dollars. So what's Greenspan's point? The Dept. of Commerce through any number of vectors, BEA, Census Bureau, Office of Trade, etc.and the FRB make these statistics available in real time and for free to anyone with an ISP. One more point-- your remarks to Joanna Bujes are completely out of line and have no place in public communications. dms dms
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
OK will do. Still, looking forward to your take on the conditions of capital using your statistically superior method. Actually, can't wait. But enough idle banter. dms
Re: Economic question
The shortages are not shortages at all, nor more than the price of oil is due to a shortage or a lack of production capacity. For example, world wide steel making capacity is approximately 25% greater than even the inflated demand generated by the China bubble. Natural gas has tripled in price since the lows of 1998, still it is down 40% from the death star days of Enron and the California power crisis. Going into 2002, and again in 2003 natural gas stocks were at record levels. The frenetic activity in metals, in commodity spot markets in general, is symptomatic of the storm before the calm, dead calm. I think that 2003 was the dead cat bounce for the economy Here's one scenario for you: China goes in 2004, and it will make the currency crises of 1997, the panic generated when Russia defaulted on its GKO debt, Argentina 2001, look like the ghost of Christmas past. dms - Original Message - From: michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 5:19 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Economic question I'm still trying to get a handle on the direction of the economy. I see tremendous overcapacity in many sectors, leading in the direction of deflation together with a stock market bubble, based on God knows what. At the same time, some sectors, such as steel, having gone through serious capacity contractions are now facing enormous shortages. Metals, in general, as well as lumber and natural gas are showing signs of inflation. I get the feeling that the international financial system is perhaps the weakest link in the whole world economy. When I have raised this question in the past, Doug has suggested that we have a creaky mini-recovery. I don't have the sense of an underlying stability that I would associate with the recovery -- even a very weak one. Any thoughts? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: demo fervor
To avoid over-posting, I conclude by directing all to this post of yours. There it is. dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 1:42 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor What are you talking about? Greenspan's positions of responsibility is to his class, the bourgeoisie. I would not be in that position. Then who would you prefer to be in his position ? Chairman of the FRB is not a class neutral position. He is the bankers' banker. Agreed. Civility? What exactly is uncivil about calling a bourgeois scam artist and ideologue exactly that? Because in civil society in the Marxian sense, if somebody is an ideologue or bourgeois scam artist, we say that s/he is on the basis of demonstrable evidence, and the burden of proof is on the accuser. Indeed Ernest Mandel wrote once, real Marxists do not accuse, they prove their case. All human moral conduct presumes some kind of no harm policy which, positively, could be stated do unto others as you would have them do unto you or negatively, do not do unto others what you would not like them to do unto you. An implication of this type of reasoning is, take care in your judgements and partisanship, it may be better not to judge, lest you be judged alike, and we have to live with the consequences of our actions and utterances. On the basis of this idea, consistent and predictable behaviour is possible, as well as a wellformed human personality. If you start demonising, disparaging and writing off government people not simply because of what they do but who they are, then you also have to live with the consequences of that. Do you actual believe that there is some supra-class component of being chairman of the FRB? Yes, absolutely. Karl Marx has no special epistemic privilege or advantage over Al Greenspan, purely for being Karl Marx. Jurriaan
Re: declaration of war?
Just for the hell of it, tell us how you feel about Friedman and the Chicago Boys. I mean character assassination ain't nothing compared to real assassination, and that's what political economy truly is-- the movement from the former to the latter. dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 2:02 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] declaration of war? I think you are correct. I already experienced this in the 1980s in New Zealand, it's just that the USA is much wealthier and so the processes work themselves out full with a greater time-lag. That is why we need good research, good argument, good professional organisation, and not lefty rhetoric and character assassinations.
Re: Reply to a Bad Subjects editor
And exactly why is this on the Pen L list? Sounds like a personal problem. You want help with this problem? Contact me offlist. dms - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 6:44 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Reply to a Bad Subjects editor Charles Bertsch wrote: Havven't they given you tenure yet, Louis? Oh, that's right. I forgot. Nice to hear from an old, um, whatever. Bertsch, I had no fucking idea who you are, but don't ever write me provocative shit out of the blue about tenure ever again. I am a computer programmer at Columbia University and the closest I get to professors is when I pass them on the campus on my way to the library that most of them never use. I left a message on your machine at work to let you know that I don't like getting unsolicited hostile emails, especially when I can't connect them to any political question that matters to me or that I have taken a position on publicly. Since I have a high profile on the Internet, I figured that you were some pissed off academic at U. of Arizona, but why I had no idea. After putting two and two together, I did a google search on Bertsch and Bad Subjects and discovered that you are one of the bullshit artists that puts that cyber-rag out. If you had a beef about what your pal Aldama wrote about Cuba, you should have made that clearer. I have half a mind to put you and all your postmodernist pals on Marxmail where we can teach you a thing or two about Marxist theory. You people should be ashamed at yourself. You accuse the Cuban government about running drugs without ANY EVIDENCE, not even from the reactionary press. I understand that postmodernism is about relative values of truth, but this should not inspire you to write the kind of lies that are normally found in David Horowitz's FrontPage. Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
Haven't we beaten this poor pony to death yet? Somebody produced an array of number showing that the Republican Party has consistently had support from a significant portion of the working class-- at least since 1952. Big deal. That's a surprise? We need statistics for that? I note in passing that hey, since 1980 or something the trend is downward. Another non-big deal. Certainly the observation, not a conclusion, but the observation is just as meaningful or not as the observation that the Republicans have had support. And from that we get X number of transmissions about the validity of statistical theory, etc. Personally, I think there is much more to be gained from the concrete analysis of the concrete conditions of exchange, production, overproduction, and profit, here and now, then and there, or any combination thereof. My remark about elections and trends was a throwaway remark, reflecting, in my opinion, the throwaway nature of election statistics. dms - Original Message - From: Hari Kumar [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 7:23 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor] Sabri Oncu : Heteroskedastic means non-constant variance. If you look at the way the data varies with time, the fluctuations are larger initially and the fluctuations attenuate as the time progresses, although they appear to get larger again towards the end. Moreover, you just have 13 observations. I would never reach any conclusions with that many observations. Q: Is this the same as regression to the mean? Thx H
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
- Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 11:34 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor] Hey dms! Tell me how you are planning to conduct that concrete analysis? Sabri ___ Ask and you shall receive... A CASE OF CURIOSITIES: UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF OVERPRODUCTION For every capitalist, profit appears as a function of cost-- as the discrepancy between cost and price. The capitalists as a class speak about value added in production, but that value added doesn't appear as a material component of the production process itself. Its materialization assumes form as a price bestowed, granted, by the market exchanging all commodities. It, profit, appears as a gift, a blessing, magic, arbitrary, chimerical, a miracle requiring priests, police, and quick hands. No capitalist can account concretely for the value generated in the production process. There is no accounting line item for the value of things obtained without cost, for value expropriated without compensation. There can't be. The expropriation is concealed within the form of compensation itself, which is of course, wages. And the value expropriated is the surplus value from wage-labor. Everything has its price and everything has a cost. In the confusion of the two every capitalist experiences glee and misery, triumph and despair, meat and poison. Cost is the disease and price is the cure. And vice versa. All of capitalist production tends, by necessity, to become overproduction. To the individual capitalist, overproduction is an unfortunate byproduct of attempts to reduce the costs of production, or the misreading of the markets. In reality, only through overproduction can the surplus value expropriated through wage-labor be transformed into a relation of profit to the capital it mobilizes; only the maximum production forcing all surplus values into the markets provides even a minimum return. The realization of a portion of the expropriated value requires the circulation of all values. This process contains the capitalist dream of value added, sure. And it contains within the dream a reality of devaluation, of a productive apparatus too expensive, not in the costs of production in relation to market prices, but in the relation of profit to capital as a whole. Case 1: Steel-- Overproduction in a Down-sized Place. When confronting a decline in the rate of profit, capital's usual course is to call on the army to rearrange certain relations of debt, of wages, of the existing profits themselves. Behind every free market there's a death squad ready for deployment. But in 1973, the US military was fully occupied licking its wounds after a ten year tour of Southeast Asia. The military was in no shape to come to the phone. So capital turned to the next best thing, oil, to do the rearranging. OPEC answered on the first ring. Oil prices spiked and all the profits of all the exchanges in all the markets entered that great pipeline belonging to the seven sisters. And their banks. And a funny thing happened on the way home from the bank. The inflated price of oil took its toll on behalf of the petroleum companies, sure. But the cascade of petrodollars, the general price inflation accompanying the inflated price of oil propelled manufacturing industries to accumulate hard assets, to expand the fixed asset base of production with the depreciating dollars realized in the markets. Between 1973 and 1980, the net stock (measured on the historical cost basis) of manufacturing fixed assets doubled. Manufacturing profits did not do quite as well in general, peaking in 1978 at $89.7 billion before falling back to $76.3 billion in 1980, a gain of 75 percent from 1973. Profits for the durable goods industry collapsed, rose to a peak of $45.5 billion in 1978, and collapsed again to $18.3 billion in 1980, below 1973's $25 billion. Profits for the primary metal industries, i.e., steel , peaked in 1974 at $5.0 billion but dropped to $2.6 billion in 1980. For the entire period, this sector's profits averaged $2.4 billion per year, essentially showing no growth from 1973 on a year to year basis. The market mechanisms of price had done half a job, on employment levels and living standards. But half won't do. Capital hit the redial button on its phone. The steel industry accounted for, then as now, approximately 3 percent of total energy consumed in the US. This time, when the phone rang, it was OPEC 2, and it was calling collect. The industry was asset heavy and profit short; capacity large and utilization small. It wasn't that OPEC caught steel short. Rather, OPEC 2 caught the industry going long. In 1980, the US steel industry production capacity was estimated at 155 million net tons. The utilization rate was 53% as shipments measured 85 million net tons. Net shipments shrank to 60 million net tons in 1982. The industry recorded losses for
Re: Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor]
Please go right ahead and do a better analysis of the two industries in question using your spacecraft.. Challenger or Columbia? - Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 12:15 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Stats OED: [Was Re: demo fervor] Hey dms! Tell me how you are planning to conduct that concrete analysis? Sabri ___ Ask and you shall receive... And I just took a look at what you sent. It is full of statistical obscurantism and inferences from them, possibly some of which are wrong because with your comments you demonstrated your lack of understanding of the tools you are using quite nicely. You cannot go to the moon by bike! You need a space craft for that... Best, Sabri
Re: demo fervor
Are you kidding me? Do you know anything about Greenspan? His history? His flacking for every flimflam artist in the 1980s? His Ayn Randism? This guy has given a new meaning to the word equivocation. Deregulation? What deregulation? That's total crap. When Long Term Capital Management collapsed, approximately one month after Greenspan testified that the markets did a better job of regulating hedge funds than any govt. agency could, the Fed intervened to arrange the loans and keep the corpse afloat. Deregulation only exists to the extent that it justifies the terms of expropriation. Theory? This guy has no fucking theory, he has an ideology which he uses and is used to adapt to the reality he happens to find at any given moment. Do you remember this clown's response to the emerging Asian currency crises in 1997? His smug talking down to Thailand and South Korea and Indonesia about restraint and budgets blah blah blah... Guy's a total fucking scam artist, a real hero of his times, with a face made out of silly putty and a mind to match. You're happy to say you admire this piece of shit? Well, as we used to say, There it is. Which means... No sense talking about it. dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 8:23 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor Personally, I'm happy to say that I do admire Al Greenspan for his great personal dedication to finding out about economics and his great concern for the facts of experience, which many economists simply do not have. It's just that I think that his deregulation policies have different economic effects and consequences from what he thinks they have. I think the real evolution of the monetary and credit system since 1981 raises questions which his theory just cannot answer, and indeed contradicts it. Regards, Jurriaan
Re: demo fervor
OK, thanks... but I think I'll stick with concepts like wage-labor, capital, return on investment, profit, overproduction, etc. Economics isn't really a dismal science-- unless you're enamored of the new Malthusianism, i.e too many people, too little oil, as much as it its concentrated, immediate history, i.e. a real social relation of production and expropriation. Ergo, weirder after some point in time than before, is de rigueur. dms - Original Message - From: Gassler Robert [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 7:11 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor 1. Heteroskedastic? What is that? Not in my concise OED. It means the trend gets weirder after some point in time than before. The problem is that concepts like heteroskedasticity refer to samples and how well they reflect the total population. Here we have the total population of US presidential elections, so we do not need statistical inference. Pleasure, dms - Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:26 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor dms: But the trend since 1980 has been pretty consistenly down. And the trend is your friend. But that data are clearly heteroskedastic. You cannot reach a conclusion like that about the trend since 1980 just by eyeballing. Best, Sabri
Re: Sex and the City
Come on, this show was narcissism on the runway, where every woman was an Imelda Marcos wannabe (not that I begrudge women their shoes. I even pay for them willingly, if their the right shoes to be worn at the right time). But this show. Hackneyed, unimaginative, not just self-absorbed, but culturally absorbed. Appropriate response would be The Contours First I Look at the Purse. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 10:52 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Sex and the City
Re:
No, actually I was not attempting to draw out the implications for future voting patterns. I was just remarking on what looked to be a counterpoint to the old lament about the conservatism of the working class. I think the elections statistics are worthless as indicators of anything, in as much as it is not the mood or will or votes of the people that decides the election, but the needs of the economy, and its ruling class. The arguments but what may or may not happen are all based and eviscerated by a sort of voluntarism, a notion of mood, choice, selection, none of which has any relevance to the revolutionary notion of necessity. dms - Original Message - From: Julio Huato [EMAIL PROTECTED] David was using samples of this population (the voting frequencies in previous elections) to draw inferences about the likely behavior of voters in 2004.
Re: demo fervor
No you said you respect him (and I infer, even admire his intellectual capacity). You go right ahead and respect this sycophant who has endorsed and legitimized embezzlers, felons, con-artists-- talk about whoring. Everybody knew, and I mean everybody in the financial world, that you could get Greenspan to endorse anything if you paid him enough when he had his consulting business. In this he is the perfect representative of his class. You go right ahead, respect this person, criticize his behaviour, while he impoverishes millions, and laughs all the way to the central bank. The critical task is to expose him for what he truly is-- a fraud, just as the bourgeoisie's notions of free markets are fraudulent and are deployed to justify the imposition of the death squad economy. Remember the Chicago boys? Remember that other phony, and psychotic, pseudo rationalist Friedman and his free markets? Remember where the Chicago boys got their first real jobs? Pinochet's Chile. Should we respect Friedman? Economics really is concentrated history. It is class struggle. You give Greenspan far more credit than he is due, and thus mystify, fetishize, the social relationship that makes him appear so erudite, so thoughtful, so dedicated, when in reality, all that is going on is the determination of the bourgeoisie to further reduce the living standards of those already on short rations. The ultimate argument of the bourgeoisie? It's not about buying and selling, it's about aiming and firing. dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 10:12 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor The ultimate argument of the bourgeois class concerning individual initiative and the market is, that everybody has something they can sell to get an income, and thus, if they don't do it, the inquality or disparity which results is just natural (the dispute then is about exceptions to the rule, such as the disabled and so on). I.e., the rich are rich because they are rich, and the poor are poor because they are poor. And for the rest, insofar as the market doesn't enforce a specific morality, it is a question of fostering a specific individual morality. And I think you can legitimately question that and argue about it. But I don't think I get anywhere if I say that people should be arguing about things completely differently from what they are actually arguing about, rather, I ought to explain why they are arguing about it, engage with what's being said, and if I say they're just stupid clowns or scam artists, I don't think I score many points. I don't claim to have the complete picture of Greenspan but I have followed him a bit over the years and feel able to make the comment I did make. I think you are wrong to think that Greenspan doesn't have a theory, but I think Greenspan is also a politician or ideologist of sorts, who is fully aware of the furies of private interest to which Marx refers in his comments about the political economists in the Preface to his magnum opus. I prefer to stick to the norm of respect the person, criticise/change the behaviour if at all possible.
Re: demo fervor
What are you talking about? Greenspan's positions of responsibility is to his class, the bourgeoisie. I would not be in that position. Chairman of the FRB is not a class neutral position. He is the bankers' banker. Civility? What exactly is uncivil about calling a bourgeois scam artist and ideologue exactly that? Do you actual believe that there is some supra-class component of being chairman of the FRB? dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 10:42 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor The ultimate argument of the bourgeoisie? It's not about buying and selling, it's about aiming and firing. Not sure I agree - it seems often more firing and then aiming, i.e. shoot first and talk later. I am not immune to lapses of temper or swearing myself, but I prefer really to restrict that event type to my own quarters, preferably at times when no one else is around. It's an ideal of civility I have. If you were in Greenspan's position of responsibility, what would you do ? J.
Re: Sex and the City
Fair enough. Not amusing, that was the point. No more amusing than having to sit next to a bunch of overpaid junior Wall Streeters with too much disposable income at their tender ages, and listen to them worry about next year's bonus. dms - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Of course it was about narcissism. So what. The real question is whether it was amusing or not. I find P.J, Wodehouse laugh out loud funny even though Bertie Wooster makes Carrie Bradshaw look like Rosa Luxemburg. Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Democratic Party?
Did you remember George I hitting hard over the paroled repeat offender? George II over the need for spirituality in government? Don't see much left-leaning in any of that. It may be standard public-choice theory, but the theory itself, like what it describes, is an ideological, not analytic device. dms - Original Message - From: Gassler Robert [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 8:14 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Democratic Party? I seem to remember George I hitting hard at the press early on and caving in to the religious right on the convention platform. That shored up his support from the extreme right. His acceptance speech attacked the Democrats but also mentioned the thousand points of light, showing in that cheap way conservatives do that he sympathizes with the poor and downtrodden without actually doing any significant work for them. His campaign after the convention attacked Dukakis's personality but went easy on rightist rhetoric. Time magazine after the election described how he shored up his rightwing base and then moved left to capture the middle of the electorate. They stressed that Dukakis did not do the same with the Rainbow Coalition, who sat out the election in many cases, giving George I the election. George II made his speech at Bob Jones University on the way to the convention, which also shored up his relations with the right. Then somewhere along the way he made noises about compassionate conservatism to soothe the middle and convince the press to see him as a moderate. All the while of course, his campaign was smearing Gore all over the place, so to speak. He almost won the election this way. (I stand corrected on my slip of the tongue -- keyboard -- saying he actually won it.) All this is standard public-choice theory, developed by right-wing economists to undermine legitimate democracy. But this particular model, based on the idea of the median voter in a single left-right continuum of issues, is not particularly antidemocratic. Please tell me how either Bush moved to the left to win a nomination and then moved left again to win an election, ignoring for the moment, the self-contradiction between your first paragraph Bush was not elected, and your description of how both Bush's won their elections. dms - Original Message - From: Robert Scott Gassler [EMAIL PROTECTED] George W. Bush in the 2000 election. George W. Bush was not elected in 2000. Gore was. Bush took the presidency using his family friends in the Supreme Court. Both Bushes did the same thing on the right to get elected: they pretended to be more right-wing than they really were, then moved to the left to get the nomination, and further to the left to win the election. That's the way elections are won. Once in power however, Bush Jr moved back to his core constituency and is right-wing again. Kerry could do the same.
Re: Democratic Party?
Please tell me how either Bush moved to the left to win a nomination and then moved left again to win an election, ignoring for the moment, the self-contradiction between your first paragraph Bush was not elected, and your description of how both Bush's won their elections. dms - Original Message - From: Robert Scott Gassler [EMAIL PROTECTED] George W. Bush in the 2000 election. George W. Bush was not elected in 2000. Gore was. Bush took the presidency using his family friends in the Supreme Court. Both Bushes did the same thing on the right to get elected: they pretended to be more right-wing than they really were, then moved to the left to get the nomination, and further to the left to win the election. That's the way elections are won. Once in power however, Bush Jr moved back to his core constituency and is right-wing again. Kerry could do the same.
Re: demo fervor
But the trend since 1980 has been pretty consistenly down. And the trend is your friend. - Original Message - From: Michael Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] although union members are more likely to identify themselves as dems than reps and labor organizations are more likely to support dem candidates, republicans have captured more than 33% of votes from union households in 10 of last 13 prez elections... michael hoover union households voting rep for prez 52/eisenhower 44% 56/eisenhower 57% 60/nixon 36% 64/Goldwater 17% 68/nixon 44% 72/nixon 57% 76/ford 36% 80/reagan 45% 84/reagan 43% 88/bush 41% 92/bush 32% 96 dole 30% 00 bush 37%
Re: demo fervor
1. Heteroskedastic? What is that? Not in my concise OED. 2. If we can't reach a conclusion about a trend since 1980 then we can't reacch any conclusion period about the degree, the change in the degreee, of union household affinity for the Republican Party, and the whole discussion is pointless. 3. Number 2 above is exactly the point. 4. So let's just disregard the statistical obscurantism in favor of an historical analysis: In the US, as in all bourgeois societies, the ruling class is able to win and maintain the allegiance of some elements of all other classes, including the working class. This historical conditions exists not to be interpreted, but to be change. Pleasure, dms - Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:26 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor dms: But the trend since 1980 has been pretty consistenly down. And the trend is your friend. But that data are clearly heteroskedastic. You cannot reach a conclusion like that about the trend since 1980 just by eyeballing. Best, Sabri
Re: Greenspan on Social Security
All you need to know about Greenspan is that he's the guy who wrote a letter of recommendation to the Federal Home Loan Banking Board (remember them? regulated the SLs pre Reconstruction Finance Fiasco) to get Charles Keating the charter for Lincoln Savings and Loan. Guy's got the integrity and spine of a tapeworm. dms - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9:09 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Greenspan on Social Security Is Greenspan working for the Dems.? Make the tax cuts permanent, cut social security to make the economy grow faster. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: dems, etc
Excuse me, re-read your history. The draft was eliminated in two phases, the first being the draft lottery, the second being outright elimination. US personnel were restricted from direct combat operations in IndoChina by the US Congress in 1971. The war in IndoChina did not end until the army of North Vietnam captured Saigon in 1975. Ending the draft, bringing the troops home, Vietnamization etc. etc. did nothing to end the war. That's what the chronology shows. It did allow the bourgeoisie to continue the war by proxy. The volunteer army is another one of those proxies. Nobody is arguing to make things worse in order to make them better, but it is a simple fact that a conscripted army from all of society is more responsive to the social conflicts at the root of war than a professional guard. People didn't say the same thing about Reagan and we got W. People said absolutely different things about Clinton, and we got W. Nuts? dms - Original Message - From: Robert Scott Gassler [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 6:49 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc Are you nuts? When has that kind of reverse strategy ever worked? The Vietnam War was started when the draft was in place and ended after the draft was abolished, which mitigates (though admittedly does not demolish) the argument that the draft fueled the antiwar movement. When Nixon was elected, some people said that that would expose the evils of the right and radicalize the population. So who was the radical president? Ford? Carter? Reagan? People said the same thing about Reagan, and we got W. Hello. It doesn't work. At 19:30 23/02/04 -0500, dmschanoes wrote: - Original Message - From: Peter Hollings [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:30 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc The mandatory service bill is a poison pill. It will make unjustified war unpopular and unsustainable. Peter Hollings And that is the single best reason for supporting reinstatement of the draft. dms Robert Scott Gassler Professor of Economics Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 B-1050 Brussels Belgium 32.2.629.27.15
Re: dems, etc
- Original Message - From: Peter Hollings [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:30 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc The mandatory service bill is a poison pill. It will make unjustified war unpopular and unsustainable. Peter Hollings And that is the single best reason for supporting reinstatement of the draft. dms
Re: demo fervor
Really? What working class people? African-American working class people? Hispanic working class people? Undocumented workers? Retired, white, former workers? No doubt. But the notion of a reactionary mass of workers is a convenient fallacy. But the facts are that the Republicans garner contributions from corporations at a rate and mass twice that of the Democrats-- that the biggest corporate contributor to Bush's 2000 campaign was.the airline industry, surprise, surprise. Followed by. more surprise, pharmaceuticals, insurance, etc. etc. Yes, Republicans do define themselves by class and property, and the Democrats try to obscure those specifics. Big deal. Here's the rule of thumb-- Republican elected when the bourgeoisie are going into a recession; Democrat when they want to come out of one. Republican workers? Sure. But that's a historical condition based on the lack of a specific class alternative. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 4:53 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor Is that so? The Repugs have been very successful in getting working class people to vote for them by way of wedge issues and making the Dems. seem out of the mainstream. Electorally, their clearly define constituency is a minority and the Dems. do a pretty good job of serving the corporations as well. On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 03:00:48PM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: That raises an interesting question of *class*. The Republicans are successful because they have a clearly defined constituency that they fight tooth and nail for. This includes first of all the big bourgeoisie, but it also includes small proprietors and privileged workers, especially whites. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: a miracle?
Wait a minute-- this wasn't the NYT taking an editorial and reporting position. This was an op-ed piece by Chomsky which does not express the view of the editors. So why make more of it than it is? It's an op-ed piece, that's all. NYT supported and supports the assault on Iraq, the occupation of Palestine, etc. dms - Original Message - From: Shane Mage [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 6:06 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] a miracle? An op-ed in the NY [TIMES] argues that since Israel's security barrier goes deep into the West Bank it's a less than ideal security barrier: What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. That's not an original argument but the author is: Noam Chomsky. Judging by a quickie Nexis search, it's the first time the linguist and super-critic of U.S. policy has had his byline in the paper. The NYTimes seems to have reached the entirely reasonable conclusion that Ubu and his Bushits are a vastly greater danger to essential capitalist class interests than the whole American Left could be even in its wildest dreams. Shane Mage (Not in favor of the mutual ruin of the contending classes)
Re: dems, etc
Disagree. Our work is not resisting the draft, it is carrying the class struggle into the very heart of capital's military machine. That cannot be done by resisting the draft. The failure of the new left, in particular SDS, to move from anti-Vietnam war, anti-draft, to anti-deferment, isolated it from larger class struggle inside the military. Draft to enable efficient imperialist war? Not any longer. Vietnam proved that. Grenada, Panama, Gulf War 1, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Gulf War 2 have proved it again. We don't support the death of draftees, no more than we support the death of workers who are compelled to work in unsafe conditions. What we don't support is the false privilege that isolates the military from the actual social conflicts precipitating and precipitated by their deployment. dms o- Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 7:46 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc dmschanoes wrote: - Original Message - From: Peter Hollings [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:30 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] dems, etc The mandatory service bill is a poison pill. It will make unjustified war unpopular and unsustainable. Peter Hollings And that is the single best reason for supporting reinstatement of the draft. No. It is true that the draft will make our work easier. Nevertheless part of our work is resisting the draft. That is not particularly contradictory either. The purpose of the draft is to enable efficient imperial war. We can't support that just because it will give us good slogans. If you want to you can secretly hope that despite our resistance the draft will be implemented. Just as you can secretly hope that wherever u.s. troops are sent there will be heavy u.s. casualties. But that really doesn't make very good agitational material. And objectively [that horrid word] what you are doing if you support reinstatement of the draft is supporting the death of draftees. The draft won't make our work easy unless it really hurts those who are drafted and their friends, relatives, neighbors, and only heavy casualties among draftees will do that. Mere experience of military service by everyone will have no effect on our work. Carrol dms
Re: more cheap Government Surplus!
To be used in forthcoming generations of body armor. You can look it up. - Original Message - From: Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 7:50 PM Subject: [PEN-L] more cheap Government Surplus! [Federal Register: February 23, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 35)] [Notices] [Page 8183] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr23fe04-57] --- DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Department of the Army Availability of Non-Exclusive, Exclusive License or Partially Exclusive Licensing of U.S. Patent Concerning Method for the Purification and Aqueous Fiber Spinning of Spider Silks and Other Structural Proteins AGENCY: Department of the Army, DoD. ACTION: Notice. --- SUMMARY: In accordance with 37 CFR Part 404.6, announcement is made of the availability for licensing of U.S. Patent No. US 6,620,917 B1 entitled ``Method for the Purification and Aqueous Fiber Spinning of Spider Silks and Other Structural Proteins'' issued September 16, 2003. This patent has been assigned to the United States Government as represented by the Secretary of the Army. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Robert Rosenkrans at U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command, Kansas Street, Natick, MA 01760, Phone: (508) 233-4928 or E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Any licenses granted shall comply with 35 U.S.C. 209 and 37 CFR part 404. Luz D. Ortiz, Army Federal Register Liaison Officer. [FR Doc. 04-3825 Filed 2-20-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 3710-08-M
Re: demo fervor
It is hard to imagine the Republicans being any more clear about what they are and who they represent. They are for private property, big private property, unrestrained private property. They say it they act it they live it. The fact that some workers support that is a fact of historical circumstance, i.e. a condition-- not the result of obfuscation. Does anyone think the fact that certain African-American elements support the Republicans is the result of Republican deception about their true agenda regarding social equality? - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 9:20 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor Maybe I was not clear. If the Repubs. were clear about what they were, no working class people would vote for them. In fact, many do, including union workers. On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 07:37:37PM -0500, dmschanoes wrote: Really? What working class people? African-American working class people? Hispanic working class people? Undocumented workers? Retired, white, former workers? No doubt. But the notion of a reactionary mass of workers is a convenient fallacy. But the facts are that the Republicans garner contributions from corporations at a rate and mass twice that of the Democrats-- that the biggest corporate contributor to Bush's 2000 campaign was.the airline industry, surprise, surprise. Followed by. more surprise, pharmaceuticals, insurance, etc. etc. Yes, Republicans do define themselves by class and property, and the Democrats try to obscure those specifics. Big deal. Here's the rule of thumb-- Republican elected when the bourgeoisie are going into a recession; Democrat when they want to come out of one. Republican workers? Sure. But that's a historical condition based on the lack of a specific class alternative. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 4:53 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor Is that so? The Repugs have been very successful in getting working class people to vote for them by way of wedge issues and making the Dems. seem out of the mainstream. Electorally, their clearly define constituency is a minority and the Dems. do a pretty good job of serving the corporations as well. On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 03:00:48PM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: That raises an interesting question of *class*. The Republicans are successful because they have a clearly defined constituency that they fight tooth and nail for. This includes first of all the big bourgeoisie, but it also includes small proprietors and privileged workers, especially whites. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: a miracle?
So? So what's so significant about an intra-bourgeois sign? History, the same history littered with corpses, is page after page of intra-bourgeois signs. There were intra-bourgeois signs everyday when Clinton was president. Lula is an intra-bourgeois sign, so is Kirchner-- and their significance is manifested precisely in the insignifcant change proposed and manifested in their regimes. It's an Op-Ed piece, nothing less and nothing more, one more manifestation of spectacle and recuperation. dms - Original Message - From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 9:01 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] a miracle? No, it's significant even though it's only op-ed. This is an intra-bourgeois sign. Joanna dmschanoes wrote: Wait a minute-- this wasn't the NYT taking an editorial and reporting position. This was an op-ed piece by Chomsky which does not express the view of the editors. So why make more of it than it is? It's an op-ed piece, that's all. NYT supported and supports the assault on Iraq, the occupation of Palestine, etc. dms - Original Message - From: Shane Mage [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 6:06 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] a miracle? An op-ed in the NY [TIMES] argues that since Israel's security barrier goes deep into the West Bank it's a less than ideal security barrier: What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. That's not an original argument but the author is: Noam Chomsky. Judging by a quickie Nexis search, it's the first time the linguist and super-critic of U.S. policy has had his byline in the paper. The NYTimes seems to have reached the entirely reasonable conclusion that Ubu and his Bushits are a vastly greater danger to essential capitalist class interests than the whole American Left could be even in its wildest dreams. Shane Mage (Not in favor of the mutual ruin of the contending classes)
Re: Roger Burbach reconsiders the state...
but the state doesn't reconsider itself. First as RB reports, during 2002-2003 Argentinian suffered a net financial outflow in international debt receipts and payments. So that even during the period when and after the government had "defaulted" on approximately $130 billion in debt, debt servicing continued. Secondly, the "default" does not exist in isolation from the overall attempt of Argentine capitalism to preserve protect and extend its property at the expense of any and everyone. Thus the default follows the freezing of bank accounts, the suspension of convertibility,dramatic devaluation, currency controls, wage reductions, unemployment and immiseration of the overall society.Default is part of a program. And partial payment of the debt at 25%is also part of that same program of that same class, that same social organization. So it seems the very least Marxists should do is a lot more than "critical support" of thecurrent leadership of the bourgeoisie'splan to preserve the bourgeois ship of state and vice versa. Like, hey, how about paying 0% of the debt? Is that too radical?It wasn't too radical in 1998 for Bono and the Jubilee types. Which brings us to the whole notion of critical support-- no such supportexists separate and apart from an overall program carefully distinguishingthe working class program and solution from the bourgeoisie's. Kirchner says 25cents on the dollar,critical support means counterposing 0 cents on the dollar as the 25 cents is going to come out of the depreciated living standardsof the poor. And it's 0 cents with wage increases and socialization of the banks to preventfinancial sabotage.. Its 0 cents with asset takeovers of international firms shuttering production. Just for starters, I mean. Critical support is a great tactic, based on a class distinction."Like the rope supports the hanged man." We're supposed to be the rope in that formulation. dms
Re: Maybe they should start calling him angry
Why do we care whether he runs or not? Does it make a difference in teasing apart the intertwined strands of the organs of power, the officals of private, state, and trade union bureaucratic property? I don't think it does. Not one bit. dms
Re: Secret Pentagon report on global warming
And of some importance... just what are we supposed to conclude from this Pentagon speculation? That the bourgeoisie are now trying to curb their less enlightened members who want to pillage and loot in order to give the more enlightened more time to set the stage for pillaging and looting? And that the same war-game entrepreneurs that back SDI, shock and awe, and the new army (meet the new army, same as the old army except better press coverage), now predict Apocalypse Pretty Soon? Headline reads: Doomsday Salesmen Predict Doomsday Near. That's news? Give me Janet's wardrobe malfunction anytime. This article is the complementary opposite of the science that has been used to justify rejection of the Kyoto measures. Bunch of crap not worthy of serious consideration. dms
Re: [political] industrial ecology
Brings to mind an interesting (perhaps) true life story. In the mid 1970s, when I was just a lad working for the Illinois Central Gulf RR in Chicago, the Chicago Sanitary Sewage District and the ICG participated in the development of a sludge train service, where processed sewage would be loaded into railcars for transport to central and southern Illinois. The sewage was to be provided to farmers for use as fertilizer. Apparently these guys had read Engels and decided to do their part to heal the metabolic breach, or maybe it was just the chance to make money, or maybe both, because we all know that nothing is more natural than capitalism... In those days there were peace trains, love trains, soul trains, and we had our shit trains, dubbed, by some genius in the marketing dept., as ICBMs. Well, didn't work as planned, and not because of the excess quantities of toxic chemicals-- lord knows that never would have stopped our dedicated entrepreneurs-- no, it was something far more insidious and immediately visible-- tomatoes. Yes, tomatoes. It seems tomato seeds not only pass through the human digestive track sullied but unscathed, but also through the chemical and heat treatments designed to eliminate pathogens of the bacterial, viral, fungal, protozoan type. So when the farmers spread this stuff on their fields of corn and soybeans (Illinois being no. 2 I think in the production of each), guess what? Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tomato plants sprouted, strangling the cash crops in their cradles. End of experiment, end of trains. So much for that early adventure ecological alchemy. dms
Re: the political economy of oil; minor historical footnote
Seems to me the question we need to be asking is *scarce for whom*? For the poor, schools are scarce, medical care is scarce, violence free communities are scarce, housing is scarce, nutritionally beneficial foods are scarce, clean water is scarce, democratic participation is scarce, electricity is scarce etc. etc Let's make the polysemy of the concept work *for* our goals. For capital only profits and passive people are scarce Ian _--- Well, I think you just settled the debate. dms
Re: Iraq Revenue Watch
Rhetorical question? Come on, nobody suggested any such thing. Read it critically, like you would or should read the NY Times, without illusion or denying its specific allegiance to a specific class interest. We read the WSJ, Financial Times, the WTO, IMF, WB, BIS, BEA, Statistics Canada, ETC ETAL IBID and OPCIT don't we? And Adam Smith, the Physiocrats, Hobbes, Locke.. Hell, I've even read Proyect and Henwood. Have to admit though, never read Ayn Rand or George Gilder I find this sort of thing, the speculator as reformer, to be the verification of the fact that thugs everywhere want to be regarded as gentlemen, or as was said 35 or so years ago by the then fop singer now fop MBE Jagger-- every cop is a criminal... dms
Re: Iraq Revenue Watch
Wait a minute, are the rules of engagement here that there is to be no engagement?
Re: the political economy of oil; minor historical footnote
But they, the US govt., didn't, use force that is, did they? As a matter of fact the oil majors experienced a miraculous recovery in their rate of return on investment after OPEC 1, and when the Saudi royal family decided to arrange for a compensated nationalization of Aramco, sort of like privatization in reverse-- absorbing the infrastructure and its costs while the oil majors skimmed the cream through marketing, downstream, contracting, consulting, and the benefits of price increases to their upstream operations-- did you hear one word of protest? Were there any threats then? Any saber rattling? Hell no. It is best to look at this report in context, the context of overall US belligerence-- during the Yom Kippur war, the Israel Army was cut off in the Sinai and threatened with real obliteration. The US, with Schlesinger as Sec. of Def., began a massive logistical and combat air support program, letting it be known to the USSR and Egypt that the US would not allow the destruction of the Israeli Army (think it was the 8th) and would undertake direct combat missions if necessary. We know what happened next. dms
Re: the political economy of oil; minor historical footnote
I've said just that at the time of OPEC 1. But most of all the myth of oil scarcity, and the reality of oil price rises, has been convenient in hobbling the living standards of the working class. 1973 is marked by two interlocked events-- OPEC 1 and the overthrow of Allende, both announcing capital's offensive against the wage and welfare levels established from 1948-1973, and there is a quantifiable decline in the rate of profit triggering both the specific and general maneuvers of capital. I don't know if the debate about scarcity can be settled here. But the argument is repeatedly offered that oil is scarce, water is scarce, cities are too large, industrial farming doesn't work, etc. etc., and I think it is essential to clarify the issues and elements surrounding this debate, and flatly oppose certain positions based on assumptions of scarcity. Otherwise you get a discussion list that isn't, or becomes a billboard for individuals to post their self-advertisements without engaging others, without engaging in a real exploration of the social relations that make up an economy, a history, a conflict. Regarding water, 11/29/03 online issue of Economic and Political Weekly -- http://www.epw.org -- has a couple of interesting articles about the meaning and history of water, scarcity, waste, and colonialism. dms
Re: the political economy of oil; minor historical footnote
sorry, wrong URL. Try: http://www.epw.org.in dms
Re: Abolition of the antithesis between town and country
What exactly is it that makes a large city unsustainable? Is there something inherent to size as opposed to social organization that is the problem. And if so, then how large is large before things become unsustainable. To speak in these terms is to beg the question as to how cities grow and why they decay. Those are historical issues with social answers, not mathematical quantities with precise limits. dms
Re: Abolition of the antithesis between town and country
But what makes a city unsustainable? Of course urban growth is consumptive of resources, but all of production is consumptive of resources. It's reproduction that's key, the ability of the social organization to not only sustain but expand and satisfy human needs. Now if somebody want to argue that size alone, not class organization, but simply size is a damning factor-- go right ahead, but that's Malthus not Marx. dms - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 9:46 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Abolition of the antithesis between town and country You might want to look at Grey Brechin's Imperial San Francisco -- a good study about how urban growth is very consumptive of the resources of the surrounding areas. On the other hand, cities appear as the source of creativity. Both sides have some truth -- moreso, the first. I guess that is the way dialectics work. Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Can sombody please help Mr. Hubbert find his curve?
From the NYT 12-30-03 Aging Oil Rigs Raise Safety Issues North Sea Fields Producing Longer BERDEEN, Scotland - Three decades ago, when the offshore oil fields that make Britain a net exporter of energy were being developed, most experts thought the fields would be running dry sometime around now. The industry planned accordingly, building platforms and rigs meant to last 25 to 30 years in the gale-force winds and towering waves of the North Sea. Since then, new technology, innovative methods and a bit of luck have extended many of the fields' productive lives by years or decades. "Instead of the North Sea being on its deathbed, it is at a healthy middle age," said Tom Botts, chief executive for European exploration and production at Royal Dutch/Shell. Indeed, the North Sea is expected to produce some five million barrels of oil a day in 2010, only about 20 percent less than it does today, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm; one-third of that comes from Britain's part of the sea. As is often true with mature fields, though, the big companies that developed them have started to move on. To maximize profits and free capital for fresh development elsewhere, they are cutting back on workers and investment in the North Sea, and selling some less productive properties to smaller companies that make a specialty of squeezing oil from them. To keep the oil pumping, the rigs, pipelines and other equipment must be kept in service much longer than originally planned, and that is raising concerns about maintenance and safety on the oldest of the North Sea rigs. These concerns came to a head in September when two Shell workers were killed on a platform in the Brent field. An official with an offshore oil workers' union, Jake Molloy, said the two workers were repairing a temporarily patched pipe inside one leg of the platform when a series of valves failed, filling the confined area with toxic gas. Regulators are still investigating the accident, and neither they nor the company would discuss it while the inquiry is in progress. But speaking in general about the North Sea, government officials said they were aware of the increasing risks. "While there's no evidence that companies have been deliberately negligent in cutting costs, we can't pretend we're not concerned as the North Sea rigs get older and change hands," said Taf Powell, head of the offshore division for Britain's Health and Safety Executive, a government agency that oversees worker safety. "It is very expensive operating people offshore; consequently, companies feel that that is a legitimate target when they are downsizing. But there comes a point where that downsizing becomes unsafe, and we're teetering on that threshold." The number of workers on Britain's offshore platforms and rigs has fallen 35 percent, to 18,900 in February from 29,500 in 1992, according to figures from the Department of Trade and Industry. On shore in Scotland, the industry employs some 85,000 people, mainly in Aberdeen and the surrounding Grampian Highlands. While the head count is not rising, "there's a lot more oil in the North Sea than people believed, and there will be a lot more employment coming out of oil" than had once been forecast, said John Reynolds, the lord provost of Aberdeen, whose post is equivalent to mayor. Speaking about the North Sea generally, Mr. Botts of Shell said, "The challenge has been to be more cost-effective, but it can't translate into poor safety." Since the September accident, the company has said it will share the lessons it learned with its entire operation. People who heard the briefings said Shell told its 2,500 North Sea workers that the kind of temporary patch job that had been done on the pipe was inadequate. The company said it would be inappropriate to discuss details of the briefings before the investigation was complete. The second- and third-tier companies that are moving into the North Sea are willing to drill for quantities of oil that are too small to matter to a major oil company like Shell, and use new methods to eke out a bit more oil from fading wells. But oil industry experts say that they may be deterred from investing in the North Sea if more serious accidents occur. "The philosophy of the majors in recent years has been to run the rigs for cash, and repair things as they've failed, rather than perform routine maintenance," said David Hobbs, director for exploration and production strategies at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "In the first few years after that philosophical change, you get a profit boost, as not everything fails immediately. But after a while that catches up with you." Many workers on the North Sea rigs have been there from the industry's start; the average age of offshore workers in the North Sea is 50. Last year, BP eliminated 1,100 North Sea-related jobs both on- and offshore, or about 20 percent of its
Heresy....
is always in order. Here's some wood for the fire: 1. Dominant position of US in the world economy is NOT dependent on "dollar hegemony." 2.Invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq's adoption of the Euro as the currency for oil transactions. 3. Invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the scarcity-- imagined, looming, anticipated, wished for-- of oil. No such scarcity exists 3.Euro and European Union as the successor to the dollar and the US is a "never happen," as we used to say,for many reasons, not the least of which is thatthere is no United Europe. 4. Chinese sales of US Treasury securitiesare not ominous turns of eventsfor the US as the debt is dollar denominated and the purchases of oil willrecycle the dollars into the lardersthe oil majors. 5.The emergence of the "global South" as an economic power is vastly overrated.The growth in South-South trade slowed during the second half of the 90s after the NIE currency crises andis hampererd by south-south tariffs and trade restrictions. 6. China is the mother of all bubbles with an economy so fragile, so lop-sided in development, so crumbling at its base-- agriculture, so riddled, no- determined- by overproduction that its sudden and rapid devaluation is a dead cinch lock in 2004. 7. There will be no USpresidential election in 2004. Happy New Year, Lock and loadand face front because it's coming head on. dms
Re: Heresy....
Name that film: This ain't no movie, MFer The point was to introduce discussion in counterposition to the hegemony/declining hegemony/euro vs dollar/emergence of global south crapola that is circulated ad nauseum by the critiques, prognosticators, etc of the established order, and then recirculated by the leftists who feel all dressed up when wearing these hand- me-downs. Yes, let's indeed look at the economy, at the source of its predicament, at the decline in the rate of profit and its apparent recovery. Let's look at the source-- and that is no profit squeeze brought about by higher wages, particularly since unit costs of production during the 90s showed significant and sustained declines-- in everything from steel to semiconductors to soft-drinks to mining to oil production. Look at capacity and utilization rates and tell me if you see the basis for a sustained recovery. Not enough capacity has been destroyed-- YET. Some was destroyed in the bombing of Yugoslavia after the 97-98 decline in the rate of profit, and coupled with the jacking of oil prices, the bubble expanded for two more years. Some has been destroyed in Iraq, oil prices are back to $30 and the shadow of a bubble returns. But not enough has been destroyed, devalued, physically decimated, along with the living standards, the social costs of reproduction, to create a basis for anything more than more depreciation. As far as the election...and imaginary enemies, hypotheses-- well on 9/12, having congratulated myself on being absent-minded enough to have forgotten to attend the 9/11 9AM meeting with the Washington International Group on the 92 floor of the South Tower, I said the only thing surprising about the whole thing is that CNN didn't have a camera crew on every plane-- that it was a set up deal from jump street. That then was characterized as an paranoid conspiracy theory. Well paranoids have real enemies too. What do you think the next step, the unavoidable next step is for this clown cadre of capitalists if it looks like the electorate is going to exercise its power to choose polio instead of cancer? Look how much money the bourgeoisie have invested in Cheney's reelection. Look at the staggering payoff they reaped after 9/11. This isn't the 70s, the Beatles are not going to get back together, and the Congress isn't about to take step one in opposition to Cheney/Bush. Ergo, comparisons to Nixon are inapplicable. I don't care much to speculate on scenarios myself, I just threw that one out there hoping others would see the value in NOT discussing tactics, strategy, speculations regarding the 04 elections. dms
Re: Scriptures
First, the CSM is not quoting Marx, rather it is making an assertion as toa fundamental of Marx'stheory. Of course, Marx offered no such "theory" except his analysis of capital and its immanent critique, i.e. revolution. However, the CSM is a bit closer to the spirit and quality of Marx's work than JB would like, or like us, to believe. Since wealth in the system Marx was analyzing wasbased on exchange value, and exchange value was the product and producer of the social relation where production was owned, was private, and labor was organized as wage-labor, then it istruly essential that the revolution's state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, eliminate thatsocial relation, that form of property, those private means. And especially in land. Aquick look at the recent history of the former USSR, Poland, and former Comecon states should prove just howdestructive enshrining private ownershipof land is for the general social welfare, the equality of those shared needs-- like food. As is always the case, law follows theeconomy, and this constitutional change only codifies what has been ongoing inChina since 1985 (and before. Iwould argue that the movement of Chinamore definitively into the world markets was the result of the success, Mao's success, with the cultural revolution.) The rural economy in China, its social organization, has just about been shattered by the ongoing economic transformation; this process started years ago with increases in taxes on collective and communal agricultural production, and the diminuation of social opportunities for education and health care. Unemployment, real unemployment, the unofficial kind, is estimated at 175-200 million people, the overwhelming bulk in the rural areas, which is to be expected since the population is overwhelmingly tied to the land. Whether the Chinese ever stopped trading is not the issue. Since the 1980s China has received 500 billion dollars in foreign direct investment-- this investment precipitates, requires, tremendous upheaval and reorganization of the system of landed property-- ain't no two ways about it-- because, at the same time as capital disemploys millions of workers, it requires access to millions and millions more in its impulse to expansion, whether or not the impulse is fulfilled. The Chinese government has no advantage in this, no more than the government of the former USSR, of Poland, had. Well functioning economy based on a variety of property forms? That's nonsense. Property forms are congealed products of the social organization of labor. Capitalist property, private ownership of land, is the ownership of production-- and production only functions on the basis of wage-labor, or labor forms presented in the market as sharing the in the production of value by wage labor. JB never tires of telling us he's no Marxist. Absolutely. dms
Re: Scriptures
What you don't know about it, Juriaan, is that there are significant debates and arguments going on at every level of the CCP about these social changes, and there is a considerable left wing which cannot reconcile the expanding capitalism with the historical allegiance of the party to Marx and collectivized property. This disagreement and opposition isn't a well kept secret; it seems even the Christian Science Monitor has bothered to pay attention to the discussions going on inside the CCP and the country rather than search through texts for quotes. My knowledge of thedisagreements comes fromUS individuals(members of Marxist organizations)invited by representatives of the CCPtoanalyze the collapse of the USSR and itsmeaning for China's transformation. dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 8:27 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Scriptures You are boring with your "impulse to expansion". Well functioning economy based on a variety of property forms? That's nonsense. That shows how much you know about it. J.
Re: dissatisfied
Me too. Bye. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 10:05 PM Subject: [PEN-L] dissatisfied A number of valued, longstanding participants have recently unsubbed. At the same time, a few people have been dominating the list. The threads that have occupied the most bandwith have been back and forth affairs that are repetitious. Sabri's 2 posts are exceptions. They elicited no replies. The discussion a couple of weeks ago regarding the falling rate of profit may have been technical, but I thought that they were very informational. What can we do to boost the signal to noise ratio. I will probably only be able to monitor the list sporadically for the next couple of weeks. So, happy holidays and joyous revolution. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: something new???
Kurt Waldeheim? - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2003 5:26 PM Subject: [PEN-L] something new??? Is Qadhafi the first person in US history to make the transition from demon to statesman? Usually, it goes the other way. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Not Understanding What This Has to do with Fidel Economics.. but Does Anatomy Rule?
ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ASK. It's the most important function of any discussion. No such thing as too basic a question. dms PS: To Michael Perelman: Lurkers may be here to learn! As me. I appreciated very much the naive economic questions from - I think Mike B - who received expert tuition in economics. As a non-economic lurker, I often feel that I may waste others' time if I did that - although several times the need to ask has hit me. So I very much appreciated the 'nerve' of Mike B in doing that. Cheers, Hari -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Not Understanding What This Has to do with Fidel Economics.. but Does Anatomy Rule?
Backhanded? I was referring to Hari, who stated he is afraid of asking questions because he might be wasting others' time. I don't consider a question about unequal exchange, given the fact that is a historical manifestation, a basic question. dms
