Harvey and J.B. Foster
Could anyone out there tell me where I will find the recent debate between David Harvey and John Bellamy Foster on the character of the enviromental crisis ? I thought it was in a recent _MR_ but my search led me nowhere. Thanks in advance, John Gulick
[PEN-L:12084] Re: Diana and Pathological Markets
I absolutely refuse to use the used-and-abused word "tragedy" to describe Diana's untimely death. To call it a "tragedy" raises it to a level of historical significance which only validates the tabloid and mainstream press' morbid veneration of that completely disgusting institution, celebrified vestigial monarchies and royal families. While, as Tom Walker pointed out, what will follow will be an unprecedented faux thoughtful and profound media frenzy, millions of North Koreans are barely subsisting on a diet of straw and bark, with a virtual press blackout. Now that's not "tragedy" either -- that's a stupefying outrage. John Gulick
[PEN-L:11945] UPS/IBT provocateur
Pen-L'ers, Now that the UPS strike is over and the IBT has more or less "won" (although as one person here astutely remarked, the proof in the pudding rests with whether or not militant rank-and-filers are hired back and harassed), I wanted to throw out a few provocative remarks/questions about the meaning of this struggle and its "success". I should say that during the strike I did not have access to decent mainstream media coverage, much less "progressive" media coverage, so much of the info I'm going on has been gleaned from the Pen-L archives. I should also add that I worked as a part-time truck loader at UPS in Richmond, CA a few summers ago -- not as a badge of authority but as an experience shaping my views. From the purely factual standpoint of the material welfare of workers, I concur that this is the hugest victory for the labor movement in some time. But I fear that in the context of class warfare-from-above waged by the U.S. ruling class in the last 20 years (which has especially intensified during the last economic"expansion"), what with revived rates of profit and a booming stock market on the one side, and stagnant wages and job insecurity on the other, much of the left has become enamoured with distributionism, and has let the critique of work and community in a late capitalist society go dormant. Now I would be the first to agree that one can't maintain a lower middle-income standard of living with one or two people in a household working overtime for part-time wages, what with the relative price of child care, education, housing, etc. rising all the while. To the extent that the humane reproduction of labor- power should be a tactical ideal for the left, then all power to the IBT in their latest victory, what with its "ripple effects." But I've heard nary a peep aboutthe social/ecological utility of work -- i.e. rapid, flexible parcel delivery -- which has basically boomed in the era of deconcentrated, just-in-time production -- i.e. work which is basically anciallary to the spatio-temporal restructuring of capital production and realization in the last 25 years. The IBT leadership can't be accused of being "business unionist" in the sense of corrupt hacks cutting sweetheart deals with the employers, but I would call this strike "business unionist" in the sense that the IBT leadership stood idly by (if not in fact encouraged) while striking workers sought employment from other private sector package carriers. The target was a "greedy corporation" not the frantic disparate circulation of capital epitomized by UPS' massive growth. Would the left be content with a world in which the package carrying working class could afford to purchase and consume the mail order catalogue goods they deliver, in the private splendor of their tract homes with a sport utility vehicle in every garage ? Somebody on Pen-L commented that the victory proved that globalization is a ruse and that popular pressures can still force capital to pass on productivity gains in the form of higher wages, more stable employment, better fringes, and so on. Maybe so (depending on sectors, firms, etc.) but this argument assumes that the rejection of Keynesianism, social market economy, etc., is strictly pragmatic, not political. I prefer Michael Perelman's observation a few months ago that multiplying social democratic capitalist patterns of work/community standard of living production and consumption linkages is neither materially possible or existentially desirable over the long-run. My aim here is not to downgrade the salience of the victory or to see the glass as half empty, just to use the occasion as an opportunity for critical reflection. Ironically, insofar as truck- loaders can't perform this sort of backbreaking labor 8 hours a day, if these workers are upgraded to full-time status, they'll be doing double duty as loaders and sorters (or clerical work or inventory management or something like that), thus making variable capital more variable on capital's terms. Long live the red/green struggle !!! John Gulick UC-Santa Cruz Sociology Graduate Program
[PEN-L:11631] Re: The Beats
Jim, I usually agree with or at least enjoy what you write, but I could not let aspects of your blindsiding rant go undisturbed. Historically, anarchists have done very little for anybody or any just causes; often they have served repressive powers-that-be as wreckers obsessed with their own self-centered concepts and states of "Liberty" Which anarchists ? Which times ? Which places ? There have been brief shining moments in history when revolutionary anarchism has had a mass basis to the great service of liberation. Obviously, as one person here commented, there's the Spanish Civil War. Revolutionary anarchism was the anti-traditionalist and anti-capitalist ideology of choice for a large segment of the working class based on their own history, not on the outside agitation of dilettante artists or some such imaginaries. Not only did they turn convents into latrines, but posh hotels into popular cantinas, and instituted workers' control in the mines, mills, and factories of a Republican Spain under seige (not that they didn't have their own problems ...) In Germany many of the anarchists were instrumental in wrecking united fronts against fascism and easily came over to the side of the Nazis and cut their own Faustian Bargains Whereas the CP and SDP of pre-Nazi Germany had all of their ducks in a row, illustrated by their petty feuds over social imperialism and fealty to the Comintern ... My point here is not to raise the black banner against the red, but just to complicate the picture a bit more ... John Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
[PEN-L:3311] Buchanan redux
I know one treads on dangerous ground when one uses the denotation "fascism" in a pejorative way, but after reflecting on the subject for a while and gathering some fragmentary information, I don't see why it is inaccurate to label Buchanan at least a "proto-fascist." Many on the left label Buchanan's attacks on the consequences of globalization of late hypocritical and demagoguical populism, but I think his more or less consistent stances on these issues earn him the label "proto-fascist." He seems to believe that the principal problem with U.S. TNC's locating productive activity overseas is that this process sunders corporatist ties between employers and workers. Obviously not a far step away are the implicit attacks on the world economy being oriented to the profit-making acts of cosmopolitan (read Jewish) bankers. And then mix in all the well known nativism, patriarchy, homophobia, et al and I think you really have "proto-fascism." The only possible lacunae is his American republican individualism. Buchanan has no detailed plan about the relationship between the bureaucratic national state and private productive property. And possibly also his foreign policy isolationism. Given the ideological strength of this discourses on American soil, however, it seems to me that Buchanan's about as close to a homegrown "proto-fascist" as one could be. Not only is Buchanan a nativist, patriarch, homophobe, et al, but of course he has never ever spoken in favor of independent trade unionism, an increase in the minimum wage, and so on. But he does seem to genuinely believe in a system of unequal and hierarchical relations of liberties and obligations between employers/employees. This is all I have to say for now.
[PEN-L:2829] Re: quotes from Pat Buchanan
Other than bemoaning the lack of national loyalty of U.S. TNC's as a recruiting device for the "anxious classes," does Buchanan actually have a _plan_ to rein in capital mobility ? To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, Buchanan has concrete plans for sealing off U.S. borders, stripping entitlements and services from legal/illegal immigrants, instituting reactionary "family values" agenda and so on, but no _plan_ save appeals to "responsibility to the American worker" for reining in capital mobility. Problem is, even the "left wing" of the Democratic Party won't address the pitfalls of NAFTA, GATT, et al., except in nationalist terms ... (Bonoir from Michigan and Traficant from Ohio come to mind). John Gulick UC-Santa Cruz Sociology Graduate Program
[PEN-L:5659] recession question
In the U.S., consumer spending on household durables like furniture and appliances has been slowing for a number of months, and manufacturers are cutting back production and laying off workers. At the same time, office and factory automation system producers are doing a booming business. Bracketing for a second the question of to what extent the latter group is producing for sales in overseas markets, doesn't this scenario sound an awful lot like a textbook case of consumer goods mfgs. cutting production costs for fear of slumping markets by means of replacing living with dead labor ? And if so, is the recently anticipated recession just about here ? John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz
deep doo-doo ?
Someone sent a post recently wondering if self-dubbed progressive economists had anything of worth to contribute to a concrete discussion about the current conjuncture of U.S. capitalism. I'm not an economist, but in the spirit of the question posed, and from my vantage point as a resident of California, I ask the following: 6.8 % growth in final quarter of 1993, yet largely "jobless" growth, as companies restore profits by downsizing, merging, and then feel con- fident to start getting production up to speed again. (Is it an export- led recovery ? I don't know. The trade deficit is worse than ever, but I don't know what another answer would be ... cheap credit led to a wave of refinancing mortgages and other loans, but that's hardly an answer ...). Anyway, if the "recovery" has peaked, and we're headed for a slide sometime in the next year or so, can anyone imagine an outcome other than total social chaos, especially in a place like CA., where AFDC has been cut 40 % in the last five years, and a draconian prison- building and generation-imprisoning legislation is on its way ? When the next national plunge hits, I have a hard time imagining anything but a conflagration that will make L.A. `92 look like chump change ... Any takers ?
re: college tuitions
Someone asked why college tuitions are skyrocketing much greater than the rate of inflation. My understanding is that it has something to do with boards of trustees, etc., undertaking massive capital improvement drives (i.e. building high-tech bioengineering and other hard science labs) in order to attract corporate-sponsored research. Of course, the corps. get to reap the benefits of the patents, while the middle-class gets soaked on tuition. At least that was the situation when I was an undergraduate at a citadel of privelege, Oberlin College. Still, things are much worse at the lower state and community college levels, where professors are being laid off "professaratized," programs are being axed outright, AND tuitions are scaling upwards astronomically. At least that's the case here in Cali- fornia. Well, at least we have a governor who's got his priorities straight: three strikes and YOU OUT !!! --John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz (Research focus: eco-Marxist sociology of the built environment) email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
interest rates
Jim Devine wrote: Behind this were the limits set by class society: interest rates couldn't rise so far as to swallow more than the total mass of surplus-value (except perhaps in a transitory liquidity crisis) and couldn't fall below zero (except maybe in the very short run). I don't know what Marx said, but I do know _real_ short-term interest rates in the 1970's were frequently _negative_ in real terms. That is, the annual inflation rate was higher than the rate of profit for finance capital. I think so anyway. J. Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
interest rates
Jim Devine wrote: Behind this were the limits set by class society: interest rates couldn't rise so far as to swallow more than the total mass of surplus-value (except perhaps in a transitory liquidity crisis) and couldn't fall below zero (except maybe in the very short run). I don't know what Marx said, but I do know _real_ short-term interest rates in the 1970's were frequently _negative_ in real terms. That is, the annual inflation rate was higher than the rate of profit for finance capital. I think so anyway. J. Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
re: Karl on Krisis
While fidelity to the gospel should not be the measure of the truth of any statement regarding crisis, I too find the notion of permanent crisis to be somewhat ridiculous. There's the Luxemburg variety, which asserts that capitalism survives only by dumping unrealized surplus on regions external to the zone governed by the law of value. When the East Bloc was formed and many Third World states attempted to go the "third way," it was prophesied that capitalism would automatically crumble. When this didn't happen, then there was a shift to the Keynesian-state-eats-the-surplus theory. Now the Keynesian state is dead, and capitalism is still around, though hardly healthy. I think this should serve as an occasion to do away with any lingering "mechanistic" theories of capitalist crisis. Capitalism restructures itself _through_ crisis by devaluing values and by displacing costs onto features of the social totality external to the circuit of capital. This means that people starve and the environment is despoiled. Starving people and a ruined environment don't necessarily throw the system into crisis unless they make it so (I conceive of "nature" here as an active force which can tolerate only certain degrees of abuse). If capitalism sows its own seeds of final destruction, IMHO, it is only through destroying those fictitious commodities which capital must have access to if is to produce value at all, not through the inner workings of the law of value itself. --John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz (Research focus: eco-Marxist sociology of the built environment) email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
re: Karl on Krisis
While fidelity to the gospel should not be the measure of the truth of any statement regarding crisis, I too find the notion of permanent crisis to be somewhat ridiculous. There's the Luxemburg variety, which asserts that capitalism survives only by dumping unrealized surplus on regions external to the zone governed by the law of value. When the East Bloc was formed and many Third World states attempted to go the "third way," it was prophesied that capitalism would automatically crumble. When this didn't happen, then there was a shift to the Keynesian-state-eats-the-surplus theory. Now the Keynesian state is dead, and capitalism is still around, though hardly healthy. I think this should serve as an occasion to do away with any lingering "mechanistic" theories of capitalist crisis. Capitalism restructures itself _through_ crisis by devaluing values and by displacing costs onto features of the social totality external to the circuit of capital. This means that people starve and the environment is despoiled. Starving people and a ruined environment don't necessarily throw the system into crisis unless they make it so (I conceive of "nature" here as an active force which can tolerate only certain degrees of abuse). If capitalism sows its own seeds of final destruction, IMHO, it is only through destroying those fictitious commodities which capital must have access to if is to produce value at all, not through the inner workings of the law of value itself. --John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz (Research focus: eco-Marxist sociology of the built environment) email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
thought for the day
Marxist geographer Neil Smith paraphrasing the early 20th century geographer Isaiah Bowman: "...one can build a city of 100,000 at the South Pole and provide electric lights and opera. Civilization can stand the cost ... we can also build a mountain range in the Sahara high enough to evoke rainfall ... but man cannot move mountains -- not, that is, without first floating a bond issue." --John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz (Research focus: eco-Marxist sociology of the built environment) email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
thought for the day
Marxist geographer Neil Smith paraphrasing the early 20th century geographer Isaiah Bowman: "...one can build a city of 100,000 at the South Pole and provide electric lights and opera. Civilization can stand the cost ... we can also build a mountain range in the Sahara high enough to evoke rainfall ... but man cannot move mountains -- not, that is, without first floating a bond issue." --John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz (Research focus: eco-Marxist sociology of the built environment) email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
economic geography request
I am doing research for a professor who is exploring the meaning of globalization. His favored technique of exposition is to reveal how the terms that govern mainstream discourse contain hidden contradictions and are hence ideological. Instead of bashing the reader over the head with a revolutionary theoretical framework, he prefers to let the mainstream adherents come to a gradual understanding that the concepts they utilize have contradictory implications. I am telling you what his technique is because the forthcoming request might otherwise seem a bit arcane. I am seeking books/articles/research materials that would flesh out the following "hunches": Abstracting from the institutional form and the social class nature of various individual states, from the viewpoint of state managers it is generally considered a boon to have high value-added economic activity going on within the confines of one's own state. An example would be how the Clinton administration justified NAFTA as an instrument to juice high value-added exports (mainly capital goods) to Mexico, thus expanding the need for a "high-skill, high- wage" labor market in the U.S. On the flip side, however, it is also a staple of mainstream discourse that money, goods/services, and investment capital should be allowed to flow freely across national borders so as to optimize productivity on a global scale. Hence, free-trade agreements are hailed as devices to restore higher global growth rates. If we deploy a Marxist paradigm, is there not a contradiction between the notion of a "high value-added" sector/sectors and a global economic regime animated by the alleged ideal of equalizing rates of profit by breaking down protectionist trade barriers, doing away with national content laws and public sector suppliers, etc., etc. ? (Again, the idea here is to puncture the ideological nature of what is _said_ about what is going on, not to accept it at face value). In a liberal world trade regime, what makes high value-added industry genuinely high value-added, and why do industrial policy makers still clamor for it ? The professor who is sponsoring this research suspects I will have to look into the following two critical questions: 1) In a global economic order where labor still faces immobility at the borders, the role of national reserve armies of labor in disciplining the wage rate. Does anyone know of pathbreaking material available in the area of demography, transnational capital flows and industrial location, and differential rates of profit ? Saskia Sassen's book is the main work that comes to mind here and it is mainly empirical with little or no reference to differential rates of profit. 2) If high value-added comes from securing monopoly rents based on innovation, what is the relationship between product cycles and industrial location -- i.e., technological diffusion, declining monopoly rents, and the sourcing of new labor markets ? I know there's a ton of literature on this in economic geography; I thought perhaps someone might know the best two or three works. Finally, the professor is also interested in the question of S. Africa. Because divestment forced S. Africa to become a much more autarkic economy, it provides an interesting contrast to other states. Given political changes and subsequent reintegration of S. Africa into the global economy, the professor wonders what the motives of domestic S. African capital are in investing in other African states, and what such patterns prove/disprove about the logic of regional integration and globalization in general. Is it a low-wage export platform strategy or a consumer market-deepening regional growth strategy ? (To me, the latter seems utterly implausible in Africa, although I know very little). As a comparative study, what does the S. Africa case tell us about contradictions in the high value-added/global liberalism discourse ? Any finally, what about FDI in S. Africa (from Japan, namely) ? Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for putting up with this long-winded request. --John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz (Research focus: eco-Marxist sociology of the built environment) email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
economic geography request
I am doing research for a professor who is exploring the meaning of globalization. His favored technique of exposition is to reveal how the terms that govern mainstream discourse contain hidden contradictions and are hence ideological. Instead of bashing the reader over the head with a revolutionary theoretical framework, he prefers to let the mainstream adherents come to a gradual understanding that the concepts they utilize have contradictory implications. I am telling you what his technique is because the forthcoming request might otherwise seem a bit arcane. I am seeking books/articles/research materials that would flesh out the following "hunches": Abstracting from the institutional form and the social class nature of various individual states, from the viewpoint of state managers it is generally considered a boon to have high value-added economic activity going on within the confines of one's own state. An example would be how the Clinton administration justified NAFTA as an instrument to juice high value-added exports (mainly capital goods) to Mexico, thus expanding the need for a "high-skill, high- wage" labor market in the U.S. On the flip side, however, it is also a staple of mainstream discourse that money, goods/services, and investment capital should be allowed to flow freely across national borders so as to optimize productivity on a global scale. Hence, free-trade agreements are hailed as devices to restore higher global growth rates. If we deploy a Marxist paradigm, is there not a contradiction between the notion of a "high value-added" sector/sectors and a global economic regime animated by the alleged ideal of equalizing rates of profit by breaking down protectionist trade barriers, doing away with national content laws and public sector suppliers, etc., etc. ? (Again, the idea here is to puncture the ideological nature of what is _said_ about what is going on, not to accept it at face value). In a liberal world trade regime, what makes high value-added industry genuinely high value-added, and why do industrial policy makers still clamor for it ? The professor who is sponsoring this research suspects I will have to look into the following two critical questions: 1) In a global economic order where labor still faces immobility at the borders, the role of national reserve armies of labor in disciplining the wage rate. Does anyone know of pathbreaking material available in the area of demography, transnational capital flows and industrial location, and differential rates of profit ? Saskia Sassen's book is the main work that comes to mind here and it is mainly empirical with little or no reference to differential rates of profit. 2) If high value-added comes from securing monopoly rents based on innovation, what is the relationship between product cycles and industrial location -- i.e., technological diffusion, declining monopoly rents, and the sourcing of new labor markets ? I know there's a ton of literature on this in economic geography; I thought perhaps someone might know the best two or three works. Finally, the professor is also interested in the question of S. Africa. Because divestment forced S. Africa to become a much more autarkic economy, it provides an interesting contrast to other states. Given political changes and subsequent reintegration of S. Africa into the global economy, the professor wonders what the motives of domestic S. African capital are in investing in other African states, and what such patterns prove/disprove about the logic of regional integration and globalization in general. Is it a low-wage export platform strategy or a consumer market-deepening regional growth strategy ? (To me, the latter seems utterly implausible in Africa, although I know very little). As a comparative study, what does the S. Africa case tell us about contradictions in the high value-added/global liberalism discourse ? Any finally, what about FDI in S. Africa (from Japan, namely) ? Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for putting up with this long-winded request. --John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz (Research focus: eco-Marxist sociology of the built environment) email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
re: CA tex (that's tax) initiative
Small firms can't practice creative accounting techniques which shift tax obligations if they have only one site of operation, right ? My understanding is that a lot of the business flight from CA to Utah, Idaho, Arizona, etc. has been small, single-unit firms engaged in highly polluting production (paints and solvents, eg.) who are seeking some "regulatory relief" (in addition to less stringent environmental regulations, also less bureaucratic procedures regarding workers' comp, zoning, building permits, etc.). Also, a lower tax burden does mean more profits (since taxation means diverting surplus to the state), and less taxation can mean less social services, which is a way of disciplining local labor pool and inducing higher productivity.
re: CA tax inititaive
Small firms can't practice creative accounting techniques which shift tax obligations if they have only one site of operation, right ? My understanding is that a lot of the business flight from CA to Utah, Idaho, Arizona, etc. has been small, single-unit firms engaged in highly polluting production (paints and solvents, eg.) who are seeking some "regulatory relief" (in addition to less stringent environmental regulations, also less bureaucratic procedures regarding workers' comp, zoning, building permits, etc.). Also, a lower tax burden does mean more profits (since taxation means diverting surplus to the state), and less taxation can mean less social services, which is a way of disciplining local labor pool and inducing higher productivity. --John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz (Research focus: eco-Marxist sociology of the built environment) email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
