Re: The text of Bush's speech at Whitehall Palace
I don't actually know if I can make myself read it, but thank you for sending it. I guess it will tell me what the current voodoo words are, and perhaps I will be able to tell whether they have a real plan or a just another spin. Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: The NZH reports: Police were out in force in the evening to ensure activists did not breach a cordon in front of the palace, where Bush and his wife were to spend their second of three nights. Airline worker Dawn Totten, 50, said she had flown from her home in the United States to join the scattered protests. I came all the way from San Francisco because demonstrations go unrecognised and unreported there, she said. Her message for Bush? I'd like to tell him to stay here. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3535167thesection=newst hesubsection=world Entire text of Bush's speech: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3535168thesection=newst hesubsection=worldreportid=562588 Jurriaan
Re: Subject: Re: Re: value and gender
The relationship between nutrition and health is not a middle class or bourgeois prejudice. It is a fact. Joanna I don't know if that is good or bad, but anyway it is not true and more a middleclass or bourgeois prejudice. Seth Sandronsky
Re: value and gender
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: The wealth of a household = disposable income + unpaid work. You wouldn't catch me saying that. If I was married and said things like that, my wife would have a fit, and boot me out. Why, it would be the truth. The man who fixes a car or paints a room or shovels the snow is equally unpaid and also contributes to the wealth of the household. If the wife earns less than the man, then it is reasonable for him to expect her to do most or all of the housework. This doesn't follow at all. In the first place, it would depend on actual hours worked. Secondly, you cannot make such generalisations about what is reasonable in some logical or moral sense about personal or intimate relations. You can only make such generalisations, on the basis of systematically gathered empirical observations of what couples in households actually do, and why they do it (previously I have posted some findings about that on PEN-L). I put reasonable in quotes for a reason :) It's not quite clear to me why women wind up doing most if not all of the housework. Quite possibly it has nothing to do with the fact that they earn less. But if Shaw is right in noting that money is society's way of telling you how much it loves you, then this is a possibility. The wife earns less, therefore she is less important and her time and energy may be claimed in a disproportionate way. Some years ago, when I worked for a large, multinational computer company, I sent out an email to everyone in the company asking why men don't do housework. I was amazed by the torrent of email that came back. A handful of men said they helped, but for the most part responses came from working women who wrote despairingly of their situation. I'm very sorry I didn't keep those emails. Moreover, when household income is insufficent, a lot of women make it sufficient by sewing clothes, cooking from scratch, etc. I don't know whether that is so true in the USA. I found that in some places, eating out was cheaper than doing home cooking. I haven't got full data on this just now, but my estimate is that the vast majority of American women today under 32 years old wouldn't have a clue of how to make clothes. My sister does it at times, but that is only because my mother taught her how to do it. It is true that if you could not buy a good or service, then you would be inclined to work something up yourself, but these days there are other ways around that. There is very detailed data on this, because it is heavily used by marketing agencies, for example. Cheaper food is not necessarily better food. I read this anecdote once about a doctor who, when making housecalls, always went and shook the cook's hand first for giving him good business. If you eat crap, you'll save on food costs (maybe) but possibly see the doctor more often than those who eat healthily. I think it is impossible to measure the worth of the work women contribute to a household. Some of it is easy: you can compare the price of home-made clothing vs store-bought clothing. You can compare the price of women acting as chauffeurs, vs paying for a taxi...etc. But there are lots of things that are not measurable: how do you measure the value extracted from the myriad social connections/networks that women dedicate themselves to maintaining...which often translate into valuable information, contacts, free services, free babysitting, job opportunities, etc.? How do you measure the value of a woman's loving attention and awareness of her children, without which an army of shrinks couldn't fix the damage? I could go on a long time. But I'll conclude by saying that economics (which finds its root meaning in the running of the household) is not even in its infancy if it cannot talk about the significance of these non quantifiable elements of the reproduction/creation of life. Well in fact not just inadequate, but wrong. Household wealth in the material sense, refers to the total monetary value of physical and financial assets privately owned by the household, i.e. net asset values, and this is nowadays estimated statistically in most OECD countries and some developing countries, through household surveys or special asset surveys. Well then, I'd say that measuring household wealth in these terms doesn't tell us much. Statistically the vast majority of women do want to raise their own children, but most women also want to have childcare facilities available, primarily because they have to work for pay. That's not the only reason. It is indescribably exhausting to be a mother 24/7; and it doesn't necessarily make you into a better mother. Moreover, children need to be with other children and with other adults, so there are many more reasons for having some kind of community-based child care then that the mother has to work. I studied this in detail in 1980-81, looking at all the available modern literature from Wally Seccombe's NLR article onwards and data on voluntary labour. I did a fair bit
Re: value and gender
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: That's how things are in a number of households in many societies, but men would benefit if their wives made wages equal to theirs or higher wages than theirs and if combined incomes could purchase the housework services on the market whose quality is better than what the wives' unpaid labor could accomplish. Men would also benefit if, alternatively, the housework services were provided by social programs. -- The economist bug has bitten you too Yoshie. Why call them housework services? Why turn it into a featureless, interchangable commodity...and then argue that it provides better quality -- very odd. Joanna
Re: value and gender
It's pretty clear to me that men take a very different view of it than women. At the same time, they seem to enjoy the comfort of a clean house. I don't know why we'd call it bourgeois -- people have been cleaning themselves and their houses for ever. Joanna ravi wrote: joanna bujes wrote: Some years ago, when I worked for a large, multinational computer company, I sent out an email to everyone in the company asking why men don't do housework. isnt most of what is called housework mostly a meaningless bourgeouis activity? clean this, dust that, the sink should be empty at all times, put the books away in the shelf, fix the slightly leaky faucet in the fourth bathroom, etc. at least that's my excuse ;-). --ravi
Re: value and gender
I don't know what the hypothetical middle-class family does. The point is...eventually...when the bag is full or when you have run out of clean clothes...someone has to wash them and that someone often turns out to be female -- whether she works full time or not. Is enjoying a clean house the same as enjoying an SUV? Odd question. Is the enjoyment of clean air after the rain, the same as enjoying an SUV? Clean means tidy (you can find things) and hygenic (food isn't rotting)...besides, goddamn it, I've seen your house, it's cleaner than my house. Like waaay cleaner. Joanna ravi wrote: joanna bujes wrote: It's pretty clear to me that men take a very different view of it than women. At the same time, they seem to enjoy the comfort of a clean house. I don't know why we'd call it bourgeois -- people have been cleaning themselves and their houses for ever. sure we (men) might enjoy a clean house, but isnt that the same as the masses today enjoying an SUV? actually, i am not even sure that i care much about a clean house (as long as the flush works ;-)). and i would agree that there are some parts of cleaning that have always been there and even make sense (hygeine, etc). but as i outlined in my list, isnt most of the stuff that the middle-class family, with the 2 1/2 kids etc., occupies itself with in the name of housework, is quite meaningless? do you really need to resurface the deck hardwood? or do the laundry not because you have run out of clean clothes but because the bag is full? or put the books away? or organize the garage? etc, etc. --ravi
Re: the next wedge issue
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: I am always perplexed by the combination of an obsessive preoccupation of Americans with sexual relations, and a puritan christianist morality which stigmatises a frank and open discussion about it, which seems to lead to the idea that expressing or using sexual imagery is okay, if it markets or sells a product, but not if you are actually consciously communicating with somebody in public space. You can sort of see how the whole twisted culture fits together, but it's perplexing anyhow. In Holland, same sex marriage has been legal for some time, but caused no earthshaking controversy. Sometimes I have wished I was gay, because it would solve some problems of life, but it's an illusion really. Americans are the most over-stimulated and under-gratified people in the world. If you think about it, this is not a contradiction at all; the one requires the other -- to ensure compulsive behavior...like shopping. More interesting to me is the obsessive labeling. Why does it matter that one is homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, etc. What is any of this about? joanna
Re: value and gender
Thanks. I didn't know about the book. I saw the video and thought it was excellent. But I think the video was called Who Counts. Joanna Eugene Coyle wrote: I have not been reading all the posts in this thread and may have missed this. But Jurriaan gave a little bibliography and didn't list a key book -- by a New Zealand woman, no less. Marilyn Waring wrote If Women Counted, quite a moving and persuasive book on valuing women. And there is a good video interviewing her and about her. I was going to put a possessive s when I wrote on valuing women. On valuing women's . But I couldn't think of the several words to fill in the blank. Gene Coyle. joanna bujes wrote: It's pretty clear to me that men take a very different view of it than women. At the same time, they seem to enjoy the comfort of a clean house. I don't know why we'd call it bourgeois -- people have been cleaning themselves and their houses for ever. Joanna ravi wrote: joanna bujes wrote: Some years ago, when I worked for a large, multinational computer company, I sent out an email to everyone in the company asking why men don't do housework. isnt most of what is called housework mostly a meaningless bourgeouis activity? clean this, dust that, the sink should be empty at all times, put the books away in the shelf, fix the slightly leaky faucet in the fourth bathroom, etc. at least that's my excuse ;-). --ravi
Re: value and gender
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: The peculiar thing which Marx doesn't really mention in his 1844 Manuscripts is how human species activities such as caring for an infant can cease to be fully human expressions which offer satisfaction or interest, but just become work which has to be done, which we sigh about at times, i.e. simple human pleasures, or expressions of human bonding become transformed into work, but this work has the tendency to become abstract labour as well, i.e. the work does not appear as an expression of human species activity which humanises, despite all rhetoric and ideology to the contrary, but just work to be done. I consider this has everything to do with the commodity form, with the value form, as suggested by the oldest profession which Marx considers at the beginning of his manuscript Thank you...that was what I was trying to get at, but not very well. Yet, the issue predates capitalism. As a woman, I am particularly sensitive to the discussion of the value of woman's (reproductive) work and as far back as it goes...for me that's Plato's Phaedrus; what you see, over and over and over is a consistent dismissal of the value or meaning of this work. It gets sentimentalized in the nineteenth century...and that's about it. Asking that women get paid for it misses the point completely. Somehow, perhaps because it is always men who write about it, there is this notion that there is nothing creative about reproducing life. As if my children were nothing but copies of me...as if the next spring were nothing but the last spring at a later moment in time...as if life itself were not sufficient grounds for being, meaning, joybut that there must always be something other that sets itself above that and is greater than it. This setting itself apart and above always winds up justifying some kind of class priviledge...and infects all our thinking about the matter of mere reproduction. Joanna
Re: the next wedge issue
But therea re lot of people who have a visceral disgust about sexual behavior different from theirs that is independent of any religiosu beliefs. Visceral? I'm skeptical. Aren't you the one who argues against the causative value of inborn anything. Do you mean visceral disgust independent of religious beliefs only? or also independent of social conditioning? Joanna
Re: the next wedge issue
Well, Christ!, Justin. Many college students still find oral sex viscerally disgusting...it takes a while. Besides, one thing I can tell you is that while men may publically gag at the idea of having sex with another man, when they get older, like say, after 40, they all start to come clean about a variety of homosexual experiences. It surprised me too, but I have just been amazed at the number of men who have confessed something like this to me in the last five years. So, you know, there's the publicly display attitude...and then there's what people actually do. Joanna andie nachgeborenen wrote: I didn't say hardwired and independent of social conditioning, I said visceral, meaning, gut,; I wasn't speculating about its cause or origin. I used to see this when I was teaching. Ohio students found (male) homosexuality to be, eeww, yuck, gross, dis-GUST-ing. How would you describe that except as visceral? And their religious beliefs weren't determinative,a lthough the Godly definitely were more likely to share this reaction. So I mean, just independent of religious beliefs. As you knwo, I don't believe that it is even _coherent_ to talk about any sort of behaviore independently of social conditioning. (I'll send you a paper on this that I can'ts eem to get published . . . )jks --- joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But therea re lot of people who have a visceral disgust about sexual behavior different from theirs that is independent of any religiosu beliefs. Visceral? I'm skeptical. Aren't you the one who argues against the causative value of inborn anything. Do you mean visceral disgust independent of religious beliefs only? or also independent of social conditioning? Joanna __ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
Re: the next wedge issue
fair enough. sorry-- Joanna andie nachgeborenen wrote: Yes, and? Look, I was just saying that I didn't think that the only reason that homosexuslity was a lightning rod was that people thought that God hates fags. I said taht in my experience many peoples eem to find the thought disgusting. I did not offer a theory as to why. I did not say that the hatred was independent of social conditioning, and I didn't say that some people who display socially approved attitudes about male homosexuality don't engage in the behavior. Any other straw men for me explain that I also don't mean? --- joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, Christ!, Justin. Many college students still find oral sex viscerally disgusting...it takes a while. Besides, one thing I can tell you is that while men may publically gag at the idea of having sex with another man, when they get older, like say, after 40, they all start to come clean about a variety of homosexual experiences. It surprised me too, but I have just been amazed at the number of men who have confessed something like this to me in the last five years. So, you know, there's the publicly display attitude...and then there's what people actually do. Joanna andie nachgeborenen wrote: I didn't say hardwired and independent of social conditioning, I said visceral, meaning, gut,; I wasn't speculating about its cause or origin. I used to see this when I was teaching. Ohio students found (male) homosexuality to be, eeww, yuck, gross, dis-GUST-ing. How would you describe that except as visceral? And their religious beliefs weren't determinative,a lthough the Godly definitely were more likely to share this reaction. So I mean, just independent of religious beliefs. As you knwo, I don't believe that it is even _coherent_ to talk about any sort of behaviore independently of social conditioning. (I'll send you a paper on this that I can'ts eem to get published . . . )jks --- joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But therea re lot of people who have a visceral disgust about sexual behavior different from theirs that is independent of any religiosu beliefs. Visceral? I'm skeptical. Aren't you the one who argues against the causative value of inborn anything. Do you mean visceral disgust independent of religious beliefs only? or also independent of social conditioning? Joanna __ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree __ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
Re: value and gender
This of course means there are probably times when I am not part of the solution. There are times on the dance floor where I have stepped on my partners feet, but very few times when they have stepped on my feet. I wonder why that is? I asked my wife and she said something about trying to lead. :-( Ah, but as my tango teacher put it: In the home, the woman rules; but on the dance floor, it's the man. If, on the dance floor, the woman slips out of her a zen-like state of presentness (does not follow), then she will get her feet stepped on. I support the practice of men leading -- on the dance floor. Anywhere else, cooperation and reciprocity is best. Joanna
Re: Mickey Mouse
Yeah, fuck Disney and the mouse. Infinitely more delectable is the divine Betty (Boop), whose creator, Max Fleischer was far more imaginative, fun, creative, iconoclastic than Disney. You can get the complete (6 vol) Betty Boop cartoons on video for sixty bucks or so. Endless entertainment for the kiddies, highly recommended. Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: It's a true testament to Walt that he was able to create Mickey Mouse with such depth and personality that, on his 75th anniversary, Mickey continues to take us on adventures, make us laugh and inspire us, said Mark Eisner, chairman and chief executive of The Walt Disney Company. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/67309583-DB03-4DB7-B03D-79A61DE39E4B. htm In late 1971 -- when Disney World was opening in Florida -- an unauthorized book appeared in Chile. How to Read Donald Duck, first published as Para Leer al Pato Donald, later went into translation in more than a dozen languages. Worldwide, the book's sales topped 700,000 copies. From the outset, Donald's owners objected. They fought a losing legal battle, claiming copyright infringement and trying to keep the book out of the United States. (...) How to Read Donald Duck, written and published while socialist Salvador Allende served as Chile's president, was quickly banned after fascists took power in September 1973. By the time democracy returned to Chile, seven years ago, that country -- like so much of the rest of Latin America, Africa and Asia -- was enmeshed in global economic structures that Scrooge McDuck would appreciate. Those who can acquire, prosper; those who can't, suffer the consequences. http://www.freepress.org/Backup/UnixBackup/pubhtml/solomon/disney.html
[Fwd: [Fwd: Fwd: Bring Halliburton Home]]
Bring Halliburton Home lookout by Naomi Klein [from the November 24, 2003 issue of The Nation] This article can be found on the web at http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031124s=klein Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules. Those are a few suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations. But the Troops Out debate overlooks an important fact. If every last soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of another country, by foreign corporations controlling its essential services, by 70 percent unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs. Any movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonization as well. That means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation chief Paul Bremer has fraudulently passed off as reconstruction and canceling all privatization contracts flowing from these reforms. How can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer's reforms were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international convention governing the behavior of occupying forces, the Hague Regulations of 1907 (the companion to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, both ratified by the United States), as well as the US Army's own code of war. The Hague Regulations state that an occupying power must respect unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country. The Coalition Provisional Authority has shredded that simple rule with gleeful defiance. Iraq's Constitution outlaws the privatization of key state assets, and it bars foreigners from owning Iraqi firms. No plausible argument can be made that the CPA was absolutely prevented from respecting those laws, and yet two months ago, the CPA overturned them unilaterally. On September 19, Bremer enacted the now-infamous Order 39. It announced that 200 Iraqi state companies would be privatized; decreed that foreign firms can retain 100 percent ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories; and allowed these firms to move 100 percent of their profits out of Iraq. The Economist declared the new rules a capitalist dream. Order 39 violated the Hague Regulations in other ways as well. The convention states that occupying powers shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct. Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines usufruct (possibly the ugliest word in the English language) as an arrangement that grants one party the right to use and derive benefit from another's property without altering the substance of the thing. Put more simply, if you are a housesitter, you can eat the food in the fridge, but you can't sell the house and turn it into condos. And yet that is just what Bremer is doing: What could more substantially alter the substance of a public asset than to turn it into a private one? In case the CPA was still unclear on this detail, the US Army's Law of Land Warfare states that the occupant does not have the right of sale or unqualified use of [nonmilitary] property. This is pretty straightforward: Bombing something does not give you the right to sell it. There is every indication that the CPA is well aware of the lawlessness of its privatization scheme. In a leaked memo written on March 26, British Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that the imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorized by international law. So far, most of the controversy surrounding Iraq's reconstruction has focused on the waste and corruption in the awarding of contracts. This badly misses the scope of the violation: Even if the selloff of Iraq were conducted with full transparency and open bidding, it would still be illegal for the simple reason that Iraq is not America's to sell. The Security Council's recognition of the United States and Britain's occupation authority provides no legal cover. The UN resolution passed in May specifically required the occupying powers to comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907. According to a growing number of international legal experts, this means that if the next Iraqi government decides it doesn't want to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Bechtel or Halliburton, it will have powerful legal grounds to renationalize assets that were privatized under CPA edicts. Juliet Blanch, global head of
Re: the Clinton years
I don't know that I think in terms of socialist art. But I know what you're getting at. Here's a few -- off the top of my head -- there's nothing systematic about this list except that I read or saw everything on the list and thought it was great. Not all these are contemporary, but I figure 20th century is contemporary. The problems haven't really changed. In films, see The Bicycle Thief (Italy-De Sica) and, for a contrast, Beijing Bycicle (China-recent) Bitter Rice (Italy-??) The Battleship Potemkin (USSR-Eisenstein) The Apu Trilogy (India-Ray) The Middleman (India-Ray) Paths of Glory (USA-Kubrick) The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (England) In books, try Fontamara (Ignazio Silone) The Hour of the Star (Clarice Lispector) My Life, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya (Anton Chekhov) The Road (Jack London) Independent People (Harold Laxness) The Resurrection (Tolstoy) -- this is an odd one, but shows how close an aristocrat can come to something like socialist ideas. ...anyway, that's a start... Best, Joanna [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Joanna writes: That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon. Can you suggest any good socialist art? I've heard of a socialist realism movement in literature, but haven't found any specific authors. There are very few films that I know of that have a pro-worker, anti-capitalist bent, and the only one I can name off the top of my head is Wall Street. I can't think of a painter aside from Diego Rivera. Who are some contemporary artists who grapple with the issues of workers' rights, socialism, and capital? The purpose of art is to make revolution appealing. Benjamin Gramlich
Today in Iraq
Good site for Iraq news. http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/ Joanna
Re: value and gender
But now you have to prove to me that hubby proletarian actually benefits from the fact that his wife earns less per hour than he does, and it is clear as day that he DOESN'T, because it means that real disposable household income is less than it could be, and if her wage was equal to his, they would have more disposable income. The wealth of a household = disposable income + unpaid work. If the wife earns less than the man, then it is reasonable for him to expect her to do most or all of the housework. Moreover, when household income is insufficent, a lot of women make it sufficient by sewing clothes, cooking from scratch, etc. I'm not saying that only women produce for the household, I am just suggesting that for the working class household income is simply an inadequate way to measure household wealth. The capitalist market cannot adjust for the fact, that female labour-power must withdraw from the market to perform its child-bearing or childraising function, to put it clinically; it can at best accommodate it to some extent, as a result of struggles for women's rights which create institutions which compensate for the economic consequences of that withdrawal. Some of the child-bearing is unavoidably what women have to do, why that should extend to child-raising I don't get -- but this is some of the stuff that feminists (rightfully) bring up. Socialism stands for universal emancipation, universal liberation, and thus is based on the principle the liberation of each is conditional on the liberation of all, and the liberation of all is conditional on the liberation of each, and the only social classes who can consistently enact this program are the labouring classes, the workers and peasants of this world who produce the world's material wealth with their own hands and brains. Well, I agree, but certain issues do need to be thrashed out like what is women's work -- see above, or the general (both Marxist and Capitalist) dismissal of the mere work of reproduction. Joanna
Re: New anti-war slogan
Better, you're right. Joanna Devine, James wrote: but it suggests that a hand-out is a bad thing. How about a dollar for Bush is a dollar for war? -Original Message- From: joanna bujes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 11/15/2003 8:02 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] New anti-war slogan Pretty good, I'll pass it on. Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: A tax-dollar for Bush is a hand-out for war
Re: New anti-war slogan
So if I give money to a beggar, that's a bad thing? Joanna [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: but it suggests that a hand-out is a bad thing. How about a dollar for Bush is a dollar for war? Hand-outs are a bad thing. At least at the micro level.
Re: My working class students
That's great news. Thanks. Joanna MICHAEL YATES wrote: I have read with interest recent posts under the heading Step into the Classroom. I have been a labor educator since 1980. I have taught working class students, mostly local union activists, through labor studies programs at Penn State University, West Virginia University, The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Cornell, University of Indiana, Community College of Baltimore County, the University of Oregon, and the University of Hawaii. I have also taught course and seminars under the auspices of specific unions including the United Farm Workers (for whom I worked in 1977), the United Steel Workers, the Aluminum, Brick and Glass Workers (now part of the Steelworkers), the United Auto Workers, The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and probably some others I cannot remember. Over these 23 years, I have noticed a sea change in the things it is possible to discuss in these classes. In the early 1980s I had to be careful about my own politics. I had to sneak Marx in through the back door. I called Marx's economic theory the workers' theory! I was criticized because Philip Agee appeared in a film I showed. I had to be careful about the issue of union democracy. This is not to say that the students weren't very liberal in their thinking (with the exception of race and gender in some of the classes), even radical in some ways. But the leadership was still stuck in the cold war, so to speak. The first time I taught at UMass, some labor leaders were apparently leery about my radical writing; as one person told me a red flag went up when certain folks saw my application. But in the 1990s and today, things are dramatically different. Students always saw through the class bias of neoclassical economics, that it was largely an ideological construct aimed at getting people to accept all sorts of bad things. But now radical ideas can be discussed as a mater of course. Marx's name can be freely mentioned, and his ideas can be praised for the remarkable insights they give to working people. I can talk about the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba and explain the may things these nations accomplished through socialism, as well as their problems. I have used two of my books in these classes, and both have been extremely well-received. My current book, Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy would have marked me as a communist and unsuited for labor education twenty three years ago, but today, while it might mark me as a red, elicits a very positive response. This is not to say that the top leadership would like it. They probably would not. I sent copies of my book Why Unions Matter to several union presidents, along with offers to speak to union members for free, and never got a response, much less a thank you note. But among more grassroots leaders, radical ideas and books are gobbled up (a big problem is getting adequate publicity, especially when you publish with a small left-wing press like Monthly Review--which I do as matter of principle). Let me give two examples of recent receptivity of worker students to radical ideas. In my last UMass class, students were upset that I didn't get to Marx sooner than I did! One student kept whispering to a classmate, He's not there yet. And in a class I did just yesterday here in Oregon, a student asked Are you going to talk about alternatives to capitalism. Are you going to talk about socialism? No one batted an eye, and we had a great discussion. I had developed a Marxist explanation of how a capitalist economy functions and discussed capital accumulation could be regulated to the benefit of workers. We discussed this, and everyone agreed that it would be extremely hard to sustain progressive regulation over the long haul. All agreed to that some sort of democratic control of production and distribution were ultimately necessary. Of course the students I get are especially motivated (the most recent classes were on Friday evening and all day Saturday). But they will take back what they learned and share it with coworkers, just as the students in my old prison classes would use what they had learned to teach other inmates. I have had classes recorded or videotaped on many occasions. Most working people are woefully ignorant of many aspects of the economy, so knowledge is a powerful weapon. I urge radicals to do labor education. There are programs all around the country, usually affiliated with a college or university. Make contacts with unions too and offer your services. I still believe that there can be no fundamental change in society unless a lot of ordinary working people embrace it. It is great to write articles and books and
Re: New anti-war slogan
Right on. ...another bottom feeder I guess Joanna ravi wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hand-outs don't enable people for self-suffiency. are human beings capable of being self-sufficient? i do not know of a single one that is so, but perhaps thats because my friends and i are all bottom feeders. ;-) --ravi
Re: the Clinton years
Ian writes Welcome to the contradictions of the division of labor and bounded rationality. Seems to me that coaxing fellow learners to 'see' connections that weren't apparent in their quest to improve the quality of their lives is a small first step creating greater public discussion whereby everyone has the opportunity to bring forth the overarching vision in solidarity rather than having it imposed on them by a different set of elites who feign a non-existent omniscience. It remains to be 'seen' if there can be no such 'thing' as an overarching vision. In speaking to Americans about socialism, worker's rights, or in formulating any criticism of business-as-usual, I have encountered the same problem as I did once attempting to teach an eleven-year old girl how to multiply by ten. The problem was that articulating/expounding the rule of adding a zero for every power of ten was, somehow, incomprehensibleno matter how many ways I explained it. This little girl was willing to memorize what each number multiplied by ten would yield, but could not countenance/understand that an abstract rule (overarching vision) could cover each and every case of multiplying by ten. In the social arena, the same debility holds: Americans react to the articulation of a general case, which necessarily depends on concepts such as class, solidarity, capitalism, relations of production, power... as fundamentally violating their concept of the free individual: I'm nothing but a worker?, I have no particular power as an individual, divorced from other human beings?, I belong to a class? This is somehow significant?, The same rules apply to me as to everyone else? etc. It is understandable that as capitalism renders people more and more interchangeable (coupled with celebratory advertisement), there should be this desparate, visceral clinging to individual identity and exceptionalism -- but can the working class be made conscious of this process, because, until they are willing to trade in their insulation, nothing can happen... That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon. Joanna
Re: McJob
Good one, thanks. Joanna Dan Scanlan wrote: 2. Topical Words: McJob --- The Associated Press reported last Saturday that Jim Cantalupo, the Chairman and CEO of the fast-food firm McDonald's, had published an open letter to Merriam-Webster about the recently-published 11th edition of their Collegiate Dictionary. He complained about the inclusion in that work of the word McJob, and for defining it as low paying and dead-end work. The affairs of dictionary makers are rarely controversial. But it does occasionally happen that words, or their definitions, become contentious. And this isn't the first time that McJob has been in the headlines. A report in the Independent newspaper in Britain in 1997 claimed that the Oxford English Dictionary had been advised on legal grounds not to include the word, though this never led to anything and the term is in the online OED. There are several problems with Mr Cantalupo's objections. Not the least of them, as Merriam-Webster was quick to point out, is that they don't define the word in those pejorative terms, but use the phrase a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement. They are not alone: the Fourth Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, for example, says it is A job, usually in the retail or service sector, that is low paying, often temporary, and offers minimal or no benefits or opportunity for promotion. The online OED says: An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by the expansion of the service sector. There's little that Mr Cantalupo can dispute here; however unflattering it might appear to be to his organisation, that is indeed what people mean by the term. Critics might also argue that he should have complained five months ago, when the Collegiate was first published. Actually, he's more like 17 years too late. McJob appeared in the Washington Post in 1986, though it was the publication of Douglas Coupland's book Generation X in 1991 that popularised it. In the decade since, it has spread around most of the world. The job of dictionaries, their editors argue, is to reflect the way that the language is actually being used. Merriam-Webster rightly say that the word is in wide general use (not just on the Internet, as Mr Cantalupo asserts in his letter). They comment: In editing the Collegiate Dictionary, we bear in mind the guidance offered by Noah Webster that the business of the lexicographer is to collect, arrange, and define, as far as possible, all the words that belong to a language, and leave the author to select from them at his pleasure and according to his judgment'. Mr Cantalupo also objects on the grounds that McJOBS is a registered trademark of McDonald's used for the company's training program for mentally and physically challenged people. McDonald's has actually trademarked dozens of terms beginning in Mc, such as McDouble, McDrive, McExpress, McFamily, McFlurry, McHero, McKids, McKroket, McMaco, McMenu, McMusic, McNifica, McNuggets, McOz, McPlane, McPollo, McRib, McRoyal, McScholar, McSwing, and McWorld (for the full list, see http://www.mcdonalds.com/legal/). This plethora of terms, and the determined attempt on the part of the company to associate Mc with McDonald's in the public mind, has been all too successful. A whole range of sarcastic or deprecatory Mc words has grown up. Examples include McPainting (an unoriginal, paint-by-numbers type of work), McTheatre (for hyped-up big-budget musicals that are low on musical and artistic quality), and McPolicy (a political policy which is mainly cosmetic). Another is McMansion, which entered the lexicon in Britain a decade ago as a derogatory term for modest new homes, the architectural equivalent of the hamburger. Related to these is McDonaldisation, dating from about 1975, which the online OED defines in a carefully non-derogatory way as The spread of influence of the type of efficient, standardized, corporate business or culture regarded as epitomized by the McDonald's restaurant chain. More widely: the spread of the influence of American culture. This spread might result, some say, in a McWorld. One can't help feeling that McDonald's is on a loser, complaining about just one example of a widespread trend, especially one that has been stimulated by their own trademark practice. A famous libel case brought by the firm in the UK in the 1990s resulted in the term McCensorship being widely used. I'm watching for it to reappear. from.. Sent each Saturday to 18,000+ subscribers in at least 120 countries Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448 http://www.worldwidewords.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Clinton years
Not to mention the films -- a significant slice of the great art of the twentieth century. In the visual arts, they were the bomb!. And then there were the writers: Akhmatova, Yesenin, Trifonov, Bulgakov, and lots, lots more that I just don't know about ... ...and the dancers -- Galina Ulanova, Nureyev... Joanna Devine, James wrote: I'm no aesthete, but a lot of Russian art after the 1917 revolution was very good. (I don't know much about art, but I know the price.) Jim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 11/15/2003 10:53 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] the Clinton years Joanna writes: That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon. Can you suggest any good socialist art? I've heard of a socialist realism movement in literature, but haven't found any specific authors. There are very few films that I know of that have a pro-worker, anti-capitalist bent, and the only one I can name off the top of my head is Wall Street. I can't think of a painter aside from Diego Rivera. Who are some contemporary artists who grapple with the issues of workers' rights, socialism, and capital? The purpose of art is to make revolution appealing. Benjamin Gramlich
Re: New anti-war slogan
Pretty good, I'll pass it on. Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: A tax-dollar for Bush is a hand-out for war
Re: Paper bears anything; so does a certain public
Have you read this guy? Would you recommend? Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: The radical imagination of Cornelius Castoriadis, by Scott McLemee Paris in the forties was a city awash in forged identities and remade lives. But few transformed themselves as completely as Cornelius Castoriadis. When the young Greek émigré arrived, in 1945, he settled down to write a doctoral thesis on the inevitable culmination of all Western philosophies in aporias and impasses. But by the end of the decade, he had quit academia to lead a curious double life. As Cornelius Castoriadis, he worked as a professional economist, crunching numbers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Meanwhile, adopting a number of aliases, he developed one of the most influential bodies of political thought to emerge from the non-Communist left over the last half century. Mr. Castoriadis's covert writings helped to rally France's beleaguered anti-Stalinist left in the fifties and to inspire the spectacular Paris revolt of 1968. Yet even as other intellectual heroes of Paris '68 marched on to academic renown in the English-speaking world, Mr. Castoriadis's work has remained little known. That may change this year: As he turns seventy-five, academic presses are generating the biggest wave of Anglophone publications by and about Castoriadis yet. The Castoriadis Reader (Blackwell), with representative extracts from almost fifty years of political and philosophical writing, reflects his long march from Marx back to Aristotle. World in Fragments (Stanford) presents a selection of readings from Mr. Castoriadis's recent work, including papers on ancient Greek democracy, the French Revolution, psychosis, racism, and the history of science. (Both volumes are edited by David Ames Curtis, who for the past decade has been the Greco-Parisian thinker's authorized translator, and each bears cover graphics by Castoriadis admirer and renowned jazz improvisationalist Ornette Coleman.) Meanwhile, The Imaginary Institution of Society, Mr. Castoriadis's theoretical magnum opus, first published in 1975, is finally available in paper from Polity, after a decade of hardback near-oblivion. In these books, the high abstraction of his philosophical excursions alternates with an acid wit, trained by years of polemical writing. Typical is Mr. Castoriadis's pithy remark on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Four words, four lies. Though Mr. Castoriadis's work started out within the Trotskyist tradition, it soon transcended those origins. By the late forties, he saw in American mass production or the Russian labor camp the embodiments of a demented rationalism: an economic will to power that constantly engendered unforeseen crises in the division of labor and responded with totalitarian measures in a desperate effort to avoid its own collapse. In the fifties, Mr. Castoriadis analyzed the bureaucratic capitalism of Stalinist Russia, explored the philosophical implications of the 1956 Hungarian revolt against Soviet rule, and scrutinized the wildcat strikes of Detroit autoworkers in search of new forms of proletarian self-organization. Mr. Castoriadis took seriously Leon Trotsky's dictum that the future of humanity was a choice between socialism and barbarism-with the USSR being, for him, a decisive example of the latter. A circle of workers and intellectuals (including Claude Lefort, now a leading political philosopher) collaborated in hammering out a radically anti-hierarchical conception of direct democracy. To readers of the group's now-legendary journal Socialisme ou barbarie (1949-1965), Mr. Castoriadis was known as Paul Cardan, among other signatures; for, as a foreigner, he could be deported with twenty-four hours' notice-making the occasional change of pseudonym an understandable precaution, whatever the confusion to the public. Not that there was much of an audience: Given the intimate relationship between intellectuals and the Communist Party, he might as well have been writing in Greek. In 1967 the members of the group voted to disband. Then, in May 1968, everything changed. Students at the Sorbonne erected barricades and called on the workers to launch a general strike, which they happily did; and the vision of revolutionary spontaneity and worker self-management elaborated by Mr. Castoriadis and a few comrades years before suddenly went marching into the streets. In a manifesto, the student radical leader (and later Green Party politician) Daniel Cohn-Bendit, best known as Dany the Red, acknowledged the influence of the ideas of Pierre Chaulieu, another Castoriadis pen name. In the early seventies - as the rest of the intelligentsia caught up with the ideas he had helped launch years before - Mr. Castoriadis obtained French citizenship. He proceeded to reprint the old texts from the Socialisme ou barbarie years under his own name. After quitting his job as an economist to begin training as a psychoanalyst, he was not more gentle in
Drive, He Said
New York Press - November 12-18, 2003 Cage Match Back at the Wheel Thomas Friedman just loves to grind the gears. [Matt Taibbi] The New York Times' Tom Friedman has a thing about wheels. They recur in his columns with chilling frequency. The tendency is so overt that he often reads like a classic case study in sexual fetishism-particularly given the fact that he sometimes mentions wheels in conjunction with his wife. A few years ago, he began a column on the E.U. as follows: More and more these days when I return home from trips abroad and my wife asks me how it was, I find myself answering, You know, honey, the wheels aren't on tight out there. That is to say, more and more countries in Asia, Africa, even Central Europe feel like messy states, where the new institutions of free markets, democracy and the rule of law have not quite taken root, and just below the surface you find a web of corruption, criminality, mafia and a striking absence of any rule of law. Visit Russia or Indonesia today and you'll get a flavor of what I mean. This is what it's like to read Friedman: Open any page in his archives, pick a paragraph at random, and you'll find two or three different metaphors all jumbled up in Pollock-esque paint explosions. Here he takes the automobile of democratic institutions and within about three seconds turns them into a plant whose roots are corrupted, underground, by spider webs, some of which are woven with the taut strands of the absence of the rule of law. But it all comes back to the wheels. Friedman worries greatly about wheels. His vision of paradise is a clean, smoothly running car, wheels firmly screwed on, humming along on the road to profitable, eventless bilateral cooperation. The entire geography of his personal morality can be found within the parameters of this image. That is why, in moments of great excitement, you can find Friedman reinventing the very design of the automobile, tossing parts out the window with revolutionary fervor, explaining his radical new vision for humanity in terms of a new way to drive. Thus his famous pre-war description of Bush's Iraq policy: It's O.K. to throw out your steering wheel as long as you remember you're driving without one. Is it? Does that metaphor really work? Regardless of what you might think about Bush's Iraq policy, is it ever possible to drive an actual automobile without a steering wheel? Friedman is perhaps the only writer in history whose meaning needs, literally, to be extracted by the Jaws of Life. Which brings us to Iraq, the postwar phase. Friedman has resurrected the wheel. And his agonizing attempts to find a new way to explain our efforts there are themselves a metaphor. His horrific literary convulsions in recent weeks really symbolize America's tortured journey back to an image of itself as the good guy. It is a road, as Friedman might say, that is pockmarked with hidden icebergs. Last week, Friedman wrote a column whose very title explains the core of his thinking. This time last year, Friedman told us we were all in the backseat of that proverbial Iraq-policy car whose steering wheel had been removed. In last week's Iraqis at the Wheel, he attempts to explain how that car, not yet at rest, must be refitted with the steering wheel and handed over to a licensed Iraqi driver: I repeat, yet again, Lawrence Summers dictum: In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car. Too many Iraqis still feel that they are renting their country, first from Saddam and now from us, so they aren't really washing yet. We cannot just toss the keys to anyone, as France suggests. But we can insist-much more vigorously-that they begin the constitutional process that will produce a legitimate body of Iraqis to accept the keys and eventually drive off on their own. I have a parenthetical observation about the Summers quote. Friedman uses it a lot. In fact, he has used it four times in the last year. Once, he even referred to it as one of his two favorite sayings. (The other was a Native American saying, which he called an American Indian saying, to the effect that If we don't turn around now, we may just get where we're going.) My observation is that it says an awful lot about you if one of your two favorite sayings is a quote by Lawrence Summers about a rental car. I mean, humankind has produced quite a lot of literature in the past 5000 years or so. Tacitus? Coleridge? Gandhi? The course of true love never did run smooth? No. Instead: No one has ever washed a rental car. Only an American could describe another person's country as a car. In this one passage, the entire idiocy of the American worldview is laid bare. It is as though we had been invaded and occupied by the Chinese and forced to listen as commentators in Beijing debated our worthiness to assume control of our pagoda. I would not want to be a Chinese person walking the streets of Dallas in that set of circumstances. Why the elaborate car metaphor? Easy: We need a new
Re: Western rationality
Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point I think Pascal's assertion has more to do with the limitations of reason than with the powers or nature of the more ambiguous coeur. In other words, it's difficult to say whether by heart Pascal means heart/feeling or heart/love. I see raisons used metaphorically with respect to the heart -- which is to say that reason is incapable of comprehending these reasons; therefore it can neither admit them or not admit them; they are outside of its domain. Reason/thought operates in the realm of the past, thought never being able to reach out of the realm of memory, since it _is_ memory in combination with some operational rules: the equal, the more, the less. It is, as ravi argues, basically nothing more than a calculating state machine. Thus reason literally, by definition, cannot know (connaitre = to know) the reasons of the heart. Thought can only know the new in terms of the old and therefore can never know the new. The new (which love does comprehend) can only come into being, can only be apprehended when thought stops. What is then comprehended cannot be rendered either through reason or through language. Wittgenstein too admitted to this limitation. If you observe, what makes us stale in our relationships is thinking, thinking, thinking, calculating, judging, weighing, adjusting ourselves; and the one thing which frees us from that is love, which is not a process of thought. You cannot think about love. You can think about the person whom you love, but you cannot think about love... We do not know what love is: we know pleasure; we know the lust, the pleasure that is derived from that and the fleeting happiness which is shrouded off with thought, with sorrow. We do not know what to love means. Love is not a memory; love is not a word; love is not the continuity of a thing that has give you pleasure... We know only the love of the brain; thought has produced it, and a product of thought is still thought, it is not love. Whether Pascal was awake to all this I cannot say; his silly wager and calculating way of getting to God would argue against his being awake to anything much. Joanna
Re: Western rationality
Agreedand great quote: To be Greek, one must have no clothes. To be Medieval, one must have no body. To be Modern, one must have no soul (Oscar Wilde) Joanna Shane Mage wrote: Originally Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point - i.e. the heart has its reasons of which reason doesn't see the relevance or in which reason sees no point This is not a correct translation. The construction *ne...point* means not at all, thus much stronger than *ne...pas*, meaning not. Pascal is saying the heart has its reasons [ie., the Roman Catholic Faith] that are completely unknown to our rational faculties. accordingly, it is quite wrong to read him as saying ...the rational intellect can understand the reasons of the heart (affective impulses, inclinations, emotions welling up naturally in the body) but does not admit them as a real factor in argumentation or rational inference since our rational faculties can never understand what is completely unknown to them. Shane Mage To be Greek, one must have no clothes. To be Medieval, one must have no body. To be Modern, one must have no soul (Oscar Wilde)
Advertising
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: There is no good reason to ban advertising, only advertising which does not provide useful and accurate information about the product. If I am overposting, I am sorry. Jurriaan Sometimes you shock me. There are many, many good reasons to get rid of advertising. Off the top of my head: 1. Advertising suggests that we are missing something, that we are incomplete, and that we can only be completed through consumption. 2. Advertising intrudes upon the public space. 3. Advertising (the sort that is beamed on the telly, interrupting something every ten minutes) is not only a violation of the viewer's integrity and the integrity of the show/movie/etc being interrupted, but it is an implicit attack on the very notion of integrity. 4. Advertising is the modern celebration of the seven deadly sins. I mean that quite literally: watch ANY advertisement and ask yourself what is the underlying theme here: lust? gluttony? sloth? envy? wrath? greed? pride? Joanna
Re: Advertising
No, I'm arguing, that advertising isn't netural; I'm arguing that its rhetoric has an implicit message, that this implicit message is a form of brainwashing, and that a free society should not promote brainwashing. My point about the seven deadlies is not an assertion to be taken on faith, but an experiment I'm urging everyone to try. What I'm saying is that advertising is about a lot more than the particular product being peddled; it's about fortifying thought's deadly requirement that pleasure be permanently and safely extended. I dont' want ANY messages, healthy or not, being broadcast about. I was never exposed to any form of advertisement until I emigrated to Paris in 63...and then to the US in 64. My immediate reaction to it was that I felt manipulated and insulted. I still feel that way. Joanna andie nachgeborenen wrote: In other words, Joannah, advertising contains content you disapprove of. Now, seems to me we have a pretty good rule in this country about regulation of speech based on content, namely, we don't do it if the speech is not incitrement to immanent unlawful activity, obscene, or a solicitaion to a crime. You sound pretty dour and puritanical there, Seven Deadly Sins, and all that. Presumably you want only Healthy Messages broadcast about . . . jks Sometimes you shock me. There are many, many good reasons to get rid of advertising. Off the top of my head: 1. Advertising suggests that we are missing something, that we are incomplete, and that we can only be completed through consumption. 2. Advertising intrudes upon the public space. 3. Advertising (the sort that is beamed on the telly, interrupting something every ten minutes) is not only a violation of the viewer's integrity and the integrity of the show/movie/etc being interrupted, but it is an implicit attack on the very notion of integrity. 4. Advertising is the modern celebration of the seven deadly sins. I mean that quite literally: watch ANY advertisement and ask yourself what is the underlying theme here: lust? gluttony? sloth? envy? wrath? greed? pride? Joanna __ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
The next survivor series
Apparently, this is making the rounds. I got it from my little sister. (Diane Monaco are you there?) THE NEXT SURVIVOR SERIES Six married men will be dropped on an island for six weeks with 1 car and 4 kids each. Each kid plays two sports and either takes music or dance class. There is no access to fast food. Each man must take care of his 4 kids, keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, complete science projects, cook, do laundry, etc. The men only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done. There is only one TV and there is no remote. The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, which they must apply themselves, either while driving or while making four lunches. They must attend weekly PTA meetings, clean up after their sick children at 3:00 a.m. Make an Indian hut model with six toothpicks, a tortilla and one marker And get a 4-year old to eat a serving of peas. The kids vote them off the island, based on performance. The last man wins only if he has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment's notice. IF the last man does win, he can play the game for the next twenty years...eventually earning the right to be called mother. _ I could do without the last paragraph. Also, where's the realism? Why doesn't the mom-guy also have a full time job? Joanna
Re: The next survivor series
Perhaps the single state of some women is the expression of this revolt...or at least revulsion. It's also hard to revolt when you have to take care of the kids. I have the luxury of an income that enables me to support my kids; many women do not have that luxury. But, yes, women and nature are the invisibles that make everything work. Joanna Sabri Oncu wrote: I could do without the last paragraph. Also, where's the realism? Why doesn't the mom-guy also have a full time job? Joanna This is why I respect my spouse so much. Not that I watch tv and all but most of the time I get lost in my books and she does the work. Marx was right: females are the proletarians of the humankind. What surprises me is that they are not revolting! If I were among them, we would have revolted by now... Sabri
Rich Colleges Receiving Richest Share of U.S. Aid
November 9, 2003 By GREG WINTER The federal government typically gives the wealthiest private universities significantly more financial aid money than schools with much greater shares of poor students. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/education/09AID.html?ex=1069369809ei=1en=d3fc415b596e1d74 - Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here: http://www.nytimes.com/ads/nytcirc/index.html HOW TO ADVERTISE - For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
Re: Western rationality
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: However, once it is admitted that human beings are part of the material world and connected with it all the time through conscious practical activity, most philosophical problems about our ability to know the world disappear and become practical, experiential questions. But if the same dualism persists all the same, it is purely for social-structural reasons, because in a competitive, class-divided market society, one isn't really able to fully reconcile the individual reality with social reality, even when we conscientiously try with the best means of communication at our disposal. That was beautifully and clearly said... Joanna
Re: Western rationality
Sabri Oncu wrote: Back to work, that is, homework and I tell you, you don't want to do this at my age. Yeah, work is bad enoughbut at least there, I can slog through it while repeating to myself: I get paid $$/hour to do this; I get paid $$/hour to do this; Hard to do that in school. By the end of my grad school career (at U.C. Berkeley), I got so tired of the crap that I actually got a Fail in a Theory of Composition class (Incomplete lapsed to a Fail) because of getting into a fight with the venerable professor. I was pissed and I simply no longer gave a damn. Joanna
Re: the socialism of risks/costs
I think Gore Vidal summed it up best when he said What we have in this country is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Joanna Eubulides wrote: [New York Times] November 10, 2003 When Subsidies to Lure Business Don't Pan Out By LOUIS UCHITELLE INDIANAPOLIS - A huge, light-gray building, trimmed jauntily in blue, rises from the rolling, grassy fields on the far side of the runways at Indianapolis International Airport. From the approach road, the building seems active. But the parking lots are empty and, inside, the 12 elaborately equipped hangar bays are silent and dark. It is as if the owner of a lavishly furnished mansion had suddenly walked away, leaving everything in place.
No Turkish troops
Also on Friday, Turkey decided not to deploy 10,000 troops to its southern neighbor. Washington had been pressuring Turkey for months to send what would have been the first contingent of troops from a Muslim country, but the move faced strong resistance from the Iraqi Governing Council. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul agreed in a phone conversation Thursday night that the offer of Turkish troops would be withdrawn. Obviously, we would have preferred if this all worked out very nicely to everybody's satisfaction, but let's remember that the goal is stability in Iraq, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. Iraqis were worried that Turkey wanted to dominate oil-rich northern Iraq and that the presence of Turkish troops would cause friction with Iraq's Kurdish minority. A 15-year insurgency by Kurdish rebels in Turkey ended in 1999, but the rebels still have bases in northern Iraq and the potential to resume fighting. The Kurds intensely lobbied the Governing Council to reject any Turkish deployment. (SF Chronicle)
Re: Quick overview statistics for Holland
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: 1. More managers While the employed labour force grew in the last nine years by 20% in the Netherlands, Dutch CBS statistics show the number of operatives classified as managers increased by 75% during the same time to 177,000 managers in total, or an average of one manager per 40 workers approximately (including a lot in the public or semi-private sector) This is interesting. Does it mean -- that it's another way to get a raise? -- that more managers were needed to manage off-shore work? -- that the institutions/business are getting ossified? -- other? Joanna
Re: One sentence posts to PEN-L
...and I have to admit, I'm irritated by this desire to control discourse before you hear what someone has to say. There's something light-hearted about brief interchanges -- I don't mind them. Joanna Devine, James wrote: it's the quality of sentences that counts, not the quantity. -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri 11/7/2003 10:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: [PEN-L] One sentence posts to PEN-L I don't want to single anybody out, but there have been a whole slew of one sentence posts to PEN-L for what seems like weeks now. I understand that most fulltime professors look at listservs as a break from more serious work like writing articles that they can read to each other at annual conferences, but for the rest of us there is little to be learned from a single sentence. On some listservs with scholarly pretensions, like those at H-Humanities, moderators won't even allow such posts to reach the list.
Re: They decapitate babies don't they?
Yes -- a magnificent play -- The Duchess of Malfi -- Joanna Carrol Cox wrote: andie nachgeborenen wrote: But that was in another country, and, besides, the wench is dead. If we're poaching on non-Shakespearean territory, I prefer I am the Duchess of Malfi still!* and Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle, She died young. Carrol I.e., You can kill me, and I can't stop you, but you can't make me not be me.
Re: cronysm? What cronyism?
His screed has the virtue of being so unbelievable(who hasn't heard of the $5,000 toilet seats)...that it's well, unbelievable. Joanna Max B. Sawicky wrote: I want the drugs this guy is using. - Original Message - From: Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 9:33 PM Subject: cronysm? What cronyism? washingtonpost.com No 'Cronyism' in Iraq By Steven Kelman Thursday, November 6, 2003; Page A33 There has been a series of allegations and innuendos recently to the effect that government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan are being awarded in an atmosphere redolent with the stench of political favoritism and cronyism, to use the description in a report put out by the Center for Public Integrity on campaign contributions by companies doing work in those two countries. One would be hard-pressed to discover anyone with a working knowledge of how federal contracts are awarded -- whether a career civil servant working on procurement or an independent academic expert -- who doesn't regard these allegations as being somewhere between highly improbable and utterly absurd. The premise of the accusations is completely contrary to the way government contracting works, both in theory and in practice. Most contract award decisions are made by career civil servants, with no involvement by political appointees or elected officials. In some agencies, the source selection official (final decision-maker) on large contracts may be a political appointee, but such decisions are preceded by such a torrent of evaluation and other backup material prepared by career civil servants that it would be difficult to change a decision from the one indicated by the career employees' evaluation. Having served as a senior procurement policymaker in the Clinton administration, I found these charges (for which no direct evidence has been provided) implausible. To assure myself I wasn't being naive, I asked two colleagues, each with 25 years-plus experience as career civil servants in contracting (and both now out of government), whether they ever ran into situations where a political appointee tried to get work awarded to a political supporter or crony. Never did any senior official put pressure on me to give a contract to a particular firm, answered one. The other said: This did happen to me once in the early '70s. The net effect, as could be expected, was that this 'friend' lost any chance of winning fair and square. In other words, the system recoiled and prevented this firm from even being considered. Certainly government sometimes makes poor contracting decisions, but they're generally because of sloppiness or other human failings, not political interference. Many people are also under the impression that contractors take the government to the cleaners. In fact, government keeps a watchful eye on contractor profits -- and government work has low profit margins compared with the commercial work the same companies perform. Look at the annual reports of information technology companies with extensive government and nongovernment business, such as EDS Corp. or Computer Sciences Corp. You will see that margins for their government customers are regularly below those for commercial ones. As for the much-maligned Halliburton, a few days ago the company disclosed, as part of its third-quarter earnings report, operating income from its Iraq contracts of $34 million on revenue of $900 million -- a return on sales of 3.7 percent, hardly the stuff of plunder. It is legitimate to ask why these contractors gave money to political campaigns if not to influence contract awards. First, of course, companies have interests in numerous political battles whose outcomes are determined by elected officials, battles involving tax, trade and regulatory and economic policy -- and having nothing to do with contract awards. Even if General Electric (the largest contributor on the Center for Public Integrity's list) had no government contracts -- and in fact, government work is only a small fraction of GE's business -- it would have ample reason to influence congressional or presidential decisions. Second, though campaign contributions have no effect on decisions about who gets a contract, decisions about whether to appropriate money to one project as opposed to another are made by elected officials and influenced by political appointees, and these can affect the prospects of companies that already hold contracts or are well-positioned to win them, in areas that the appropriations fund. So contractors working for the U.S. Education Department's direct-loan program for college students indeed lobby against the program's being eliminated, and contractors working on the Joint Strike Fighter lobby to seek more funds for that plane. The whiff of scandal manufactured around contracting for Iraq obviously has been part of the political battle against the administration's policies there (by the way, I count
Re: Guardian: Resurrecting Draft Boards?
Devine, James wrote: I say: draft all those who support the war! Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Waaay too logical... Joanna
Re: More on anti-corruption
Jurriaan Bendien wrote We only make progress if we extract the hidden logic behind the metaphors that paralyse our thinking. Yes. True. Interestingly enough, the following was posted to LBO a few days ago. I knew Lakoff at UC Berkeley when his star was rising. He was doing interesting work and so was his ex wife, Robin Lakoff. There's a lot to work through in his observations and suggestions, and I would be interested in a discussion if anyone cares to respond. I'm in deadline mode at work right now, which is why I haven't forwarded this sooner. But, hell, there's always the very late evening hours... Joanna __ Message: 3 From: alex lantsberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LBO [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 13:14:39 -0800 Subject: [lbo-talk] Lakoff on language and politics Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 27 October 2003 BERKELEY With Republicans controlling the Senate, the House, and the White House and enjoying a large margin of victory for California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's clear that the Democratic Party is in crisis. George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive science, thinks he knows why. Conservatives have spent decades defining their ideas, carefully choosing the language with which to present them, and building an infrastructure to communicate them, says Lakoff. The work has paid off: by dictating the terms of national debate, conservatives have put progressives firmly on the defensive. In 2000 Lakoff and seven other faculty members from Berkeley and UC Davis joined together to found the Rockridge Institute, one of the only progressive think tanks in existence in the U.S. The institute offers its expertise and research on a nonpartisan basis to help progressives understand how best to get their messages across. The Richard Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the College of Letters Science, Lakoff is the author of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, first published in 1997 and reissued in 2002, as well as several other books on how language affects our lives. He is taking a sabbatical this year to write three books ? none about politics ? and to work on several Rockridge Institute research projects. In a long conversation over coffee at the Free Speech Movement Café, he told the NewsCenter's Bonnie Azab Powell why the Democrats just don't get it, why Schwarzenegger won the recall election, and why conservatives will continue to define the issues up for debate for the foreseeable future. Why was the Rockridge Institute created, and how do you define its purpose? I got tired of cursing the newspaper every morning. I got tired of seeing what was going wrong and not being able to do anything about it. The background for Rockridge is that conservatives, especially conservative think tanks, have framed virtually every issue from their perspective. They have put a huge amount of money into creating the language for their worldview and getting it out there. Progressives have done virtually nothing. Even the new Center for American Progress, the think tank that John Podesta [former chief of staff for the Clinton administration] is setting up, is not dedicated to this at all. I asked Podesta who was going to do the Center's framing. He got a blank look, thought for a second and then said, You! Which meant they haven't thought about it at all. And that's the problem. Liberals don't get it. They don't understand what it is they have to be doing. Rockridge's job is to reframe public debate, to create balance from a progressive perspective. It's one thing to analyze language and thought, it's another thing to create it. That's what we're about. It's a matter of asking 'What are the central ideas of progressive thought from a moral perspective?' How does language influence the terms of political debate? Language always comes with what is called framing. Every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like revolt, that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which would be considered a good thing. That's a frame. 'Conservatives understand what unites them, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.' -George Lakoff If you then add the word voter in front of revolt, you get a metaphorical meaning saying that the voters are the oppressed people, the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up when you see a headline like voter revolt ? something that most people read and never notice. But these things can be affected by reporters and very often, by the
Re: New rules - reply to Ian
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: The theorem is that we all have something to sell, just like prostitutes, and the whole way to expand the market is to focus on those things you've got that you can sell. Something tells me it's a bit worse for the consolidated account than for the prostitute. The prostitute still represents a kind of natural economy: presumably her customer looks to her for the satisfaction of a natural sexual need. In the context of the market, we must ready ourselves to satisfy needs that the market itself has created and which may have no natural foundation at all. Joanna
Re: General Strike In Israel
Good. Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: 11:24 am PST, 2 November 2003 Israeli motorists are waiting in long lines at petrol stations as trade unions halted fuel supplies ahead of a general strike aimed at paralysing the whole economy. Israel's cabinet approved the issuing of emergency back-to-work orders to keep essential services running should last-minute negotiations with the main trade union fail. The union, Histadrut, called the strike in protest over pension reform and government plans for layoffs. A spokesman says the general strike will start later today and there will be no public transport, airports will be shut, and there will be stoppages in the supply of electricity and water. Source: http://www.7am.com/cgi-bin/wires02.cgi?1000_2003110201.htm
Re: The concept of corruption
Corruption is defined as the abuse of public power for private gain. === This is way too thin a definition of corruption. It concedes too much to methodological individualism. Ian The definition seems pretty good to me. What's methodological individualism? Joanna Alexander Sack, the author and legal scholar of the doctrine of odious debts, included in his definition of odious debts, loans incurred by members of the government or by persons or groups associated with the government to serve interests manifestly personal -- interests that are unrelated to the interests of the State. Source: http://www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=subcontentAreaID=163
Re: The concept of corruption
well, ok. but I still don't get how the definition earns this critique. Joanna andie nachgeborenen wrote: There are at least two distinct senses of the term methodological individualism: (1) All social phenomena can be explained in terms of individual persons and their states without reference to social facts or states (the nonreductive sense), and (2) All social phenomena can be explained _only_ in terms of individual persons and their states without reference to social facts or states (the reductive sense), i.e., there are no explanatory social facts or properties. The first view is probabaly false and probaly incoherent because the mental states of individuals are social states at least in part. But it's a harmless view if it is taken to say there is also social analysis. The second view is not only false and meaningless, but pernicious, and incompatible with historical materialism. I wrote a paper on this a decade ago, Metaphysical Individualism and Functional Explanation, Phil Science (1993). jks --- Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 5:31 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The concept of corruption Corruption is defined as the abuse of public power for private gain. snip The definition seems pretty good to me. What's methodological individualism? Joanna == It makes all politics and commerce corrupt by definition. It also ignores the problematzing of the public-private distinction. Who gets to decide what 'abuse of power' means? http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Scie/ScieFran.htm Ian __ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/
Re: Reflections on Vietnam War statistics
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: In the American involvement in the Vietnam war from 1964-1975, it is generally accepted that of the American military personnel deployed, about 58,200 died, another 153,000 casualties were hospitalized with injuries, and of those, about 100,000 were permanently disabled or disfigured. The number of survivors physically disabled was enormously higher than in the second world war and in the war against Korea. One piece of info about American casualties that's not often reported is that after the war ended as many former soldiers committed suicide as were killed in battle. Joanna
Re: A new start: the meaning of weapons of mass destruction, and an Al Jazeera poll result
If this is not genocide, I don't know what is. Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: (this article describes how the forces of imperialism literally poison people to death, which over time may make official war casualty rates look like chickenfeed - and I am not talking tobacco. The poisoning would also affect American and British soldiers stationed in Iraq - JB). (...) American forces admit to using over 300 tonnes of depleted uranium weapons in 1991. The actual figure is closer to 800. This has caused a health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people. As if that was not enough, America went on and used 200 tonnes more in Baghdad alone this April. I don't know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me years to document that. Hardan is particularly angry because he says there is no need for this type of weapon - US conventional weapons are quite capable of destroying tanks and buildings. In Basra, it took us two years to obtain conclusive proof of what DU does, but we now know what to look for and the results are terrifying. Leukaemia has already become the most common type of cancer in Iraq among all age groups, but is most prevalent in the under-15s. [In Basra, the overall incidence rate of all cancerous malignancies for persons below 15 years of age only was about 4 per 100, 000 children in 1990, about 7 per 100, 000 children in 1997 about 10 per 100, 000 children in 1999 - JB]. It has increased way above the percentage of population growth in every single province of Iraq without exception. Women as young as 35 are developing breast cancer. Sterility amongst men has increased ten-fold. But by far the most devastating effect is on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds of preserved foetuses - barely human in appearance. (...) Not only are there 200 tonnes of uranium lying around in Baghdad, the containers which carried the ammunition were discarded. For months afterwards, many used them to carry water - others used them to sell milk publicly. After his experience in Basra, Hardan says that within the next two years he expects to see significant rises in congenital cataracts, anopthalmia, microphthalmia, corneal opacities and coloboma of the iris - and that's just in people's eyes. Add this to foetal deformities, sterility in both sexes, an increase in miscarriages and premature births, congenital malformations, additional abnormal organs, hydrocephaly, anencephaly and delayed growth. I had hoped the lessons of using DU would have been learnt - especially as it is affecting American and British troops stationed in Iraq as we speak, they are not immune to its effects either. If the experience of Basra is played out in the rest of the country, Iraq is looking at an increase of over 300% in all types of cancer over the next decade. (...) I'm fed up of delegations coming and weeping as I show them children dying before their eyes. I want action and not emotion. The crime has been committed and documented - but we must act now to save our children's future. Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E8C356F9-E89F-4CD3-88B5-BBBDF9E085C1. htm PS - my first sister died of leukemia in 1964, when I was 5 years old, and it wasn't a funny joke to me. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has conducted a poll (to which 17399 responses were received) as follows: Is the war on terror a showdown between the West and Islam? (48% yes, 43% no, 8% unsure) Will anti-Iraq occupation sentiment in the US increase, as occupation gets more costly? (84% yes, 12% no, 4% unsure) Should the US prevent other countries from pursuing nuclear technology? (37% yes, 55% no, 8% unsure) Are Bin Laden and al-Qaida now a 'spent force'? (31% yes, 52% no, 17% unsure) Should the US withdraw from Iraq and let the UN take the lead role? (72% yes, 24% no, 4% unsure)
Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice of targets
Wait a sec Justin. If you're making big bucks defending tabbacco, well that's understandable. Big tabbacco makes big bucks that they use to pay you. But if some guy is making big bucks from poor black people who think that he will defend them in discrimination/criminal suits and then spending all that money on raising more money and on whatever heaps of money will buy HIM, then, it's a ripoff--yes? Joanna andie nachgeborenen wrote: How terrible, Dees makes soo much money, how dare he. People who work for good causesa re supposed to be POOR. You wanna guess how much Tigar makes? Or Kunstler made? I bet it wasa lot more than Dees. Hey, Louis, I'm a corporate lawyer at a big law firm; I make my living in part defending tobacco companies, and I make a lot of money too -- not as much as Dees, but I'm getting there, if I stay here, I will someday. I must be a real scumbag. And the SPLC is puting its money into propaganda, and worse, ut's not even Marxist propaganda. If =It were reprinting the marxist classics in overpriced editions, like Pathfinder Books, everything would be fine. Whatta crick. --- Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I invite pen-l'ers to look at the IRS forms for SPLC that are online at: http://www.splcenter.org/pdf/static/SPLC_IRS_990_2001.pdf It has total assets of $134 million! Dees makes $258,000 per year. The 3 people in charge of fundraising make a total of $300,000 per year. This is a big-time operation. Meanwhile, the main expense item is publications, which amounted to $5,246,665. It is likely that the brunt of this went to tolerance.org that disseminated questionnaires on campus that measured intolerance with an eye to making people more tolerant. (Arrggghh!) Here is a snippet: Who do you prefer? (Please note: Black refers to a persons primarily of African descent and White refers to persons primarily of European descent.) /_/ I prefer Black people over White people /_/ I have no preference /_/ I prefer White people over Black people Somebody is obviously getting ripped off. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org __ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/
Re: PK on GDP surge - what could a socialist say ?
Here's what I'm curious about: I buy a house for 300,000. Within five years, the house is valued at 500,000 (not unusual in the Bay area); now I re-finance. Is my collateral based on the portion of the 300,000 I have paid off? Or is it based on the revised market value of the house? Joanna Doug Henwood wrote: Jurriaan Bendien wrote: This is very a similar story to New Zealand and many other developed capitalist countries. No wonder that we are dealing with jobless growth !! But a socialist would need to ask: who is actually doing the spending ? Which social classes are buying houses and durables ? How can you say that tax breaks accounted for growth, when we are talking about a consumer boom mainly fueled by loaned money and refinancing ? I haven't done a disaggregate analysis of the US GDP data, and anyway the quarterly figures usually don't provide that anyway. But even without seeing the data, clearly you cannot borrow or refinance without having some kind of collateral or asset already, and therefore the people spending must be in a position to spend, i.e. they must have property already, i.e. it must be a propertied class who is doing the spending. A major prop to consumption in the U.S. over the last 2-3 years has been home equity withdrawals - borrowing against the appreciated value of owner-occupied housing. Since 68% of U.S. households own their dwellings, your definition of propertied would have to be rather broad. Doug
Re: PK on GDP surge - what could a socialist say ?
That's what I suspected...but, just to make sure, doesn't this mean that folks are borrowing against inflated values? Now I totally understand that it's only inflated if the bubble bursts; but, let's suppose, housing prices drop 20%? And there are additional job losses...say in hi-tech...and people can't pay the mortgage... Who gets left holding the bag? Will it be like the S L crisis all over again? Joanna Devine, James wrote: it's based on the expected future market value of the house, which is mostly based on its current market value. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: joanna bujes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 12:42 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] PK on GDP surge - what could a socialist say ? Here's what I'm curious about: I buy a house for 300,000. Within five years, the house is valued at 500,000 (not unusual in the Bay area); now I re-finance. Is my collateral based on the portion of the 300,000 I have paid off? Or is it based on the revised market value of the house? Joanna
Re: PK on GDP surge - what could a socialist say ?
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Presumably, they would do that only if for example they were sure that they had job security, or if they gained a rise in pay, and so on. And that cuts out a lot of people already, because we know there is a lot of job insecurity. No. It's not a rational thing. Until very lately, people who had hi-tech jobs thought that a job and at least a 5% raise a year was theirs for the asking, forever. Now, they're finding out otherwise. But it doesn't really matter because once you get used to a certain lifestyle you feel like a failure if you don't keep it upso you refinance. And, let's face it, life in the U.S. is mostly about consumption. So people consume. My ex-sister in law, whom I weaned off heroin seven years ago is a truck-driver, plagued by stints on disablity, but she's on her second mortgage, and every time I go and visit, she's got a bigger TV and more crap. It was all captured perfectly in a New Yorker cartoon a couple of weeks ago: wife and husband are sitting in the living room; their tv takes up an entire wall. They are sitting in front of it, and one says to the other So, dear, what shall we do tonight? I think we're headed for real trouble, but Doug thinks I'm being a lefty doomsayer and that capital is a lot more robust than we suspect. We'll see. Joanna
Re: PK on GDP surge - what could a socialist say ?
No, in fact, rental prices in the Bay area are dropping. To get an apt in the building in which I live, you practically had to inherit it. For the last nine months we've had three vacancies, and they're not renting because the prices are too high. Joanna Doug Henwood wrote: Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Same in Holland, same in Australasia, same in many European countries. In the 1990s you had the hot air bubble and now they're breeding. But now you have to explain why people would do that, under what conditions they would borrow against inflated property values. Presumably, they would do that only if for example they were sure that they had job security, or if they gained a rise in pay, and so on. They're doing it because they feel secure in their jobs and certain that house prices will continue to rise. Since, as the late credit market pundit Ed Hart used to say, housing inflation is the American national religion, they've got history and public policy on their side. I don't have the stats at hand, but truly huge numbers of people have refinanced. If you want to investigate further, Freddie Mac has stats on refinancing. I said previously that GDP includes the rental value of owner occupied housing. This is to be precise the IMPUTED rental value of owner occupied housing, strictly speaking a fictitious entry (because no production is involved here) which would of course boost the GDP figure if you have a housing boom, in addition to the increased turnover in the construction industry and its suppliers as shown by the input-output tables. An odd feature of the U.S. housing boom is that the rental index hasn't gone up all that much - $46b gain between 2000 and 2001 (latest available). The annual GDP tables have data on imputations - specifically 8.21, at http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableViewFixed.asp?SelectedTable=185FirstYear=1996LastYear=2001Freq=Year. Doug
iraq joke
Mildly funny. J. Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny Subject: Iraq perspective Up in Heaven, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great and Napoleon are looking down on events in Iraq. Alexander says, Wow, if I had just one of Bush's armored divisions, I would definitely have conquered India. Frederick the Great states, Surely if I only had a few squadrons of Bush's air force I would have won the Seven Years War decisively in a matter of weeks. There is a long pause as three continue to watch events. Then Napoleon speaks, And if I only had that Fox News, no one would have ever known that I lost the Russia campaign.
Re: Power Point
Oh, definitely, the Tufte book is a technical writer's visual bible!!! An exceptional book. Joanna Eugene Coyle wrote: For a funny put-down of Power Point lectures, look at www.edwardtufte.com. Tufte, at Yale I think, is the graphics/statistics whiz who has produced some beautiful books, one of which is The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Gene Coyle
Re: gift idea
Awright, awrightbut you have to sign it when you come to SF. Joanna Doug Henwood wrote: Devine, James wrote: for the Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Saturnalia season, here's a gift idea: http://www.talkingpresidents.com/products-af-coulter.shtml And don't forget http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D1565847709/leftbusinessobseA/. Order your copy today! Doug
Priceless...
A Small Country with a Moustache: Why Amnon Dankner Sacked his Satire Columnist? The following piece was published last week in Israeli daily Ma'ariv's chain of local magazines. Within 48 hours, Ma'ariv's editor in chief fired its author, columnist Yehuda Nuriel. The item, part of Nuriel's weekly column Midbar Yehuda (The Yehuda Desert), was titled A brave and moving response to the refusenik pilots. A must read... Yehuda Nuriel 10 Oct. 2003 Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live. What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence of our people, the sustenance of our children and the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator. The world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free. Our nation wants peace because of its fundamental convictions. We want peace also owing to the realization of the simple primitive fact that no war would be likely essentially to alter the distress in our region. The principal effect of every war is to destroy the flower of a nation. We need peace and desires peace! The war against our enemies cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and will have to be Related: * The original Hebrew Version http://www.kedma.co.il/opinion/opinionfile/NurielYeoda121003.htm (from Kedma, Ma'ariv has removed the article from its own archive) * Forum discussion http://e.walla.co.il/ts.cgi?tsscript=item.talkbackid=450214max=0path=214 on Walla (also in Hebrew) * Ma'ariv http://images.maariv.co.il/ daily newspaper * Journalists' Weakness http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=350207sw=%F0%E5%F8%E9%E0%EC, from Haaretz (Hebrew only) conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. Man has become great through struggle. Whatever goal, man has reached is due to his originality plus his brutality. If you do not fight, life will never be won. The man who has no sense of history is like a man who has no ears or eyes. It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn appeals to God, nor by hopes in any United Nations, but only by the force of arms. A single blow must destroy the enemy, without regard of losses. A gigantic all-destroying blow. Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong. There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Homeland. Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction. One of the worst symptoms of decay was the increasing cowardice in the face of responsibility, as well as the resultant self-hatred in all things. In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when one law rules the world. Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism. Pacifism as the idea of the State, international law instead of power - all are means to unman the people. They hold India up to us as a model and what is called 'passive resistance.' True, they want to make an India of us, a folk of dreams which turns away its face from realities, in order that they can oppress it for all eternity. What food did our press dish out to the people before the violent events? Was it not the worst poison that can even be imagined? Wasn't the worst kind of pacifism injected into the heart of our people at a time when the rest of the world was preparing to throttle us, slowly but surely? Even in peacetime didn't the press inspire the minds of the people with doubt in the right of their own state? Was it not the press which knew how to make the absurdity of 'democracy?' A concerted and all-embracing attack must be made on unemployment in order that the working class may be saved from ruin. Within four years unemployment must be finally overcome. At the same time the conditions necessary for a revival in trade and commerce are provided. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea. The required message does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way. This is the very first condition which has to be fulfilled in every kind of public relations: a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with. The best means of defense is attack. Ours is not a warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war, but does not fear it. It loves peace but also loves its honor and freedom. We will never allow anyone to divide this
Re: Itel vs. California
Bill Lear wrote In other words, Intel demands that it be able to suckle at the teat of the nanny state. Exactly, and one can't help but notice that capital is headed straight for those countries who, as a result of evil socialist and state-funded educational development, have a highly educated working class. It's not just the low wages; after all, those are available in Africa and South America too. Joanna
Re: 200,000 jobs
I don't believe it. Will we need 2,000,000 more prison guards over the next year? He also predicted higher interest rates... Higher interest rates I could believe; it might cost Bush the election, but he can be sacrificed; there are many who are not happy with his, uh, destabilizing moves. High rates AND more jobs? When hell freezes over? Joanna Michael Perelman wrote: Snow(job?) is predicting job growth of 200,000 per month. Does anybody believe this prediction? What sort of jobs would be produced? In what country? Outsourcing seems rampant. Manufacturing is in decline. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Please support grocery workers' strike (and locked-out status)
So does this mean boycott Safeway too? Joanna Devine, James wrote: Friends: The baggers, deli clerks, cashiers, and other employees at Vons/Pavillion (owned by Safeway), Ralphs (owned by Kroger), and Albertsons are on strike, as of Saturday night, and would appreciate your not crossing their picket line. [Two of the companies locked out their employees in solidarity with Ralphs. --JD] Their union, the United Food Commercial Workers, has created a website with information about the strike, as well as a list of alternative supermarkets in each city. http://www.saveourhealthcare.org. Please inform your relatives, friends and neighborhoods who live in California about this strike. The UFCW represents 70,000 Vons/Pavillons, Ralphs, and Albertsons workers in Southern California. The three chains -- all large national corporations with growing profits that control 60% of the market in the LA area alone -- have demanded that workers take a 50% cut in the health insurance and retirement benefits as well as an increase is subscription drug costs. Additionally, the companies want to initiate a two-tier wage system where new hires would be doing the same work as current employees but at much lower pay. Think how you'd feel if your employer tried to cut your benefits in half! Not suprisingly, more than 95% of UFCW workers voted to reject the companies' demand and go on strike. These workers are simply trying to make ends make and the chains are pushing them to the wall. The companies misleadingly claim that they cannot afford decent labor costs and still compete with non-union companies like Wal-Mart. Historically, enlightened corporate leaders have understood that a high-road economy -- one that promotes improving workers' skills, providing good wages and benefits, and better productivity -- strengthens the overall social and economic health of the nation. Henry Ford, while no friend of unions, knew that his workers had to make enough money to buy the cars he was producing. Companies like Wal-Mart, which is attempting to make inroads in the Los Angeles area, symbolize the low-road corporate strategy. (See the recent Business Week cover story, Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?-- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_40/b3852001_mz001.htm) They rely on mostly part-time workers, pay low wages without benefits, resist unions, and out-source much of their production (of clothes and toys) to sweatshops in Asia and Latin America. If Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons succeed at mimicking the Wal-Mart approach, it will pull down America's middle class standard-of-living. It will also be a signal to other companies, whether unionized or not, that it's time to go to war - or in the euphemistic corporate language, make efficiency gains - at the expense of working families. So while this strike is specifically about the workers at these chain supermarket stories, it also has much larger implications. Thanks for expressing your solidarity with the UFCW members by boycotting Vons/Pavillion, Ralphs, and Alberton's during the strike. [and lock-out] Peter Dreier Occidental College (forwarded by Jim Devine)
Onion on Calif Elections
See http://www.theonion.com/3940/wdyt.html Joanna
Re: China: property
He looked from pig to man, and man to pig (quoting from memory) Joanna Eubulides wrote: Chinese Leaders Endorse Property Rights In Break From Founding Ideals, Party Also Decides to Allow Large Land Holdings
Re: Cancun
Focus on food, education, health, housing first. When that is dealt with, proceed at a very deliberate pace, with ample time for review and evaluation, with an ecologically responsible industrialization policy. Prepare to be invaded for terrorizing the capitalists. Joanna Doug Henwood wrote: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? Try to restrain the forces of capitalist and/or technological development in an effort to preserve existing arrangements? Doug
Re: Cancun
Yes, I left the ask the people stuff off my post, because people in the third world have a skewed image of what industralization and modernity imply. What they're exposed to in the media is the magic outcome of that process...without understanding what that process implies. So, health, education, and a full stomach first; then a clear understanding of what different degrees of industrialization bring with it...then a democratic decision about what to do next...then, more democratic decisions about whether it's worth it. Joanna Doug Henwood wrote: Devine, James wrote: Doug asks: I'm curious what PEN-Lers think a socialist or other variety of progressive government should do in a mostly poor, rural, peasant society. Promote education and industrialization? Wouldn't that undermine the economic and social bases of existing life? as Bill says, consult the people. Well of course. But if we're seriously worried about mass poverty in the Third World - the 2 billion living on $2/day by the World Bank definition count - then that means raising productivity and incomes. Raising productivity and incomes means education, technological development, and the disturbance of existing social structures. Saying consult the people can be a way of dodging the difficulties of that. Doug
Re: Social transformation of the Cuban peasantry
I read an excellent book on the development of Cuba's medical care programmes. It was written by an academic from the mid-west, who was obviously not a socialist. And yet he was impressed and his account was one of the most amazing accounts of what intelligence, good will, and a humane project could achieve:remarkable results in one generation; astonishing results in two generations...all on a shoestring. Joanna Louis Proyect wrote: Cuba is a model for such a process. After the revolution took power, it prioritized rural development. To this day Havana remains neglected. Large-scale farming enterprises were the beneficiaries of clinics, day-care centers, schools, sports and cultural programs. It is also important to consider that most of the rural population was of African descent. As the children of the original population became educated, they began to move to the cities on their own accord and usually because there was some skilled job that had opened up for them. As mechanization was introduced into the sugar and tobacco fields, it freed up additional labor. None of this was done coercively. It is a model of socialist transformation and a painful reminder of how bad Stalin fucked things up. For all of the hatred poured on this despot from Western liberals, we should never forget that he was simply imitating Great Britain and US primitive accumulation. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: question about Iraq
This is fucking priceless: (sorry Yoshie -- polite speech eludes me more and more) Economists, while acknowledging the need for protecting consumers during the transition, say that a market economy would provide food much more cheaply and efficiently than the current government-run system. But the American and Iraqi officials in charge of the program know that economists' arguments are not going to assuage the fears of citizens who have forgotten how the market works. So, if I go to the pickup point and get free food, this is inefficient. But if I got to the pickup point and get money and then take the money to the market and get what I need, then that's efficient. Joanna
Baghdad hotel bombed
From http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ Joanna Baghdad Hotel... Baghdad Hotel was bombed today on Al-Sa adun street, which is a mercantile area in Baghdad. Al-Sa adun area is one of the oldest areas in Baghdad. The street is lined with pharmacies, optometrists, photographers, old hotels, doctors, labs, restaurants, etc. The Baghdad Hotel is known to be home the CIA and some prominent members from the Governing Council. No one is sure about the number of casualties yet- some say its in the range of 15 dead, and 40 wounded while other reports say 8 dead and 40 wounded. There were other bombings in Baghdad- one in Salhiya, one in Karrada (near the two-storey bridge). - posted by river @ 1:47 AM http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#10659988634190897 Palms and Punishment... Everyone has been wondering about the trees being cut down in Dhuluaya area http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=452375. Dhuluaya is an area near Sammara, north of Baghdad. It s an area popular for its wonderful date palms, citrus trees and grape vines. The majority of the people who live in the area are simple landowners who have been making a living off of the orchards they ve been cultivating for decades. Orchards in many areas in Iraq- especially central Iraq- are almost like oases in the desert. From kilometers away, you can see the vivid green of proud date palms shimmering through the waves of heat and smoke, reaching for a sky rarely overcast. Just seeing the orchards brings a sort of peace. There are over 500 different kinds of palm trees in Iraq. They vary in type from short, stocky trees with a shock of haphazard, green fronds to long, slim trees with a collection of leaves that seem almost symmetrical in their perfection. A palm tree is known as a nakhla and never fails to bring a sense of satisfaction and admiration. They are the pride and joy of Iraqi farmers and landowners. A garden isn t complete if there isn t a palm tree gracing it. We locate houses by giving the area, the street and then, Well, it s the fourth- no, wait the fifth house on the left or was it the right? Oh never mind- it s the house on the street with the tallest palm tree. The palm trees, besides being lovely, are highly useful. In the winter months, they act as resorts for the exotic birds that flock to Iraq. We often see various species of birds roosting between the leaves, picking on the sweet dates and taunting the small boys below who can t reach the nests. In the summer months, the female palms provide hundreds of dates for immediate consumption, storage, or processing. In Iraq, there are over 300 different types of dates- each with its own name, texture and flavor. Some are dark brown, and soft, while others are bright yellow, crunchy and have a certain tang that is particular to dates. It s very difficult to hate dates- if you don t like one type, you are bound to like another. Dates are also used to produce dibiss , a dark, smooth, date syrup. This dibiss is eaten in some areas with rice, and in others it is used as a syrup with bread and butter. Often it is used as a main source of sugar in Iraqi sweets. Iraqi khal or vinegar is also produced from dates it is dark and tangy and mixed with olive oil, makes the perfect seasoning to a fresh cucumber and tomato salad. Iraqi areg , a drink with very high alcoholic content, is often made with dates. In the summer, families trade baskets and trays of dates- allowing neighbors and friends to sample the fruit growing on their palms with the enthusiasm of proud parents showing off a child s latest accomplishment... Every bit of a palm is an investment. The fronds and leaves are dried and used to make beautiful, pale-yellow baskets, brooms, mats, bags, hats, wall hangings and even used for roofing. The fronds are often composed of thick, heavy wood at their ends and are used to make lovely, seemingly-delicate furniture- similar to the bamboo chairs and tables of the Far East. The low-quality dates and the date pits are used as animal feed for cows and sheep. Some of the date pits are the source of a sort of date oil that can be used for cooking. The palm itself, should it be cut down, is used as firewood, or for building. My favorite use for date pits is beads. Each pit is smoothed and polished by hand, pierced in its center and made into necklaces, belts and rosaries. The finished product is rough, yet graceful, and wholly unique. Palm trees are often planted alongside citrus trees in orchards for more than just decoration or economy. Palm trees tower above all other trees and provide shade for citrus trees, which whither under the Iraqi sun. Depending on the type, it takes some palm trees an average of 5 10 years to reach their final height (some never actually stop growing), and it takes an average of 5 -7 years for most palms to bear fruit. The death of a palm tree is taken very seriously.
Re: The frontier of modern imperialism: primitive accumulation in Iraq, at the taxpayers expense
Well, that's about as succinct a presentation of the problem as I've seen so far. What have we got? A recipie for war-lord imperalism: 1. Destroy/ravage/immiserate/traumatize a country through bombing, economic sancations, and chemical warfareto soften it up and make it a reconstruction candidate and helpless to resist that reconstruction. 2. Reconstruct and liberate the country and pay for it by appropriating all the wealth and natural resources of the country, which you then sell off to those who are willing to bet that Iraq can be reconstructed into a vast labor camp ...with lots of oil. 3. Lather, rinse and repeat in any country that has desired resources or desperate labor pool. 4. Laugh all the way to the bank. Reasons for optimisim include: 1. That the arrogance of the Bush junta will prevent their reaching an understanding with potential looting associates. 2. That the Iraqi people will resort to a scorched earth policy and guerrilla warfare to prevent this from happening. (See War and Peace.) 3. 1 2. 4. That this development does not indicate a triumphant capitalism, but a capitalism in its death throes. An empire that is morally, socially, and economically bankrupt. Empires do die because something in human nature either revolts or cannot thrive in this kind of environment. We, on the left, are not supposed to use Hitler analogies lightly and I do not think I do so. But in essence, war-lord capitalism reminds me a lot of Hitler's idea of turning Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union into a vast labor camp. Or, if you prefer a more poetic metaphor, the situation with Iraq is like a man raping a woman and then asking her to pay for her rehabilitation so that she can continue to be serially raped. De Sade created similar scenarios in Justine and the 120 Days of Sodom... Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: (Thanks to Richard H. for making me aware of this important article, which every socialist should read; I have excerpted the important bits and slightly edited it - JB) This coming October 23 to 24, the United States will be sitting down with rich creditor countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) during an international donors' conference on Iraq in Madrid. The IMF, the World Bank and the UN have estimated that Iraq will need US$36 billion for reconstruction within the next four years, in addition to $19 billion for other nonmilitary needs calculated by the American occupation regime. [note this is in addition to expenditure of the US armed forces on the war - JB]. With few options left, the US will be passing the hat. This meeting could be a turning point in the occupation because whether the hat goes back to the US full or not will determine whether the US can afford to stay. The decision of donor countries to cough up cash will depend, in turn, on whether this continues to be a unilateral or multilateral economic takeover of an occupied country. (...) A few weeks after President George W Bush announced the end of major hostilities in Iraq, the US managed to pass UN Resolution 1483, which created the so-called UN Development Fund. Under this fund, all of Iraq's past and future oil revenues, as well as all the assets of the former Iraqi government located anywhere in the world, would be placed under the direct control of the US, as overseen by the IMF and the World Bank - two institutions in which the US has considerable voting power. The resolution passed the UN Security Council, because the US assured Russia, France and China that all contracts entered into by their firms under the UN Oil-for-Food program during the sanctions regime would be honored by the occupation authority and any subsequent interim government. The development fund is intended to finance the rehabilitation of all that's been damaged by the war. The choice of corporations to undertake this reconstruction, however, has so far been a question reserved exclusively for the US. And since most contracts are negotiated on a cost-plus basis, the price of the reconstruction is all up to the chosen contractor. In other words, what will be paid to Kellogg, Brown and Root to repair Iraq's oil fields and machinery, for example, will be financed out of Iraqi oil revenues at a price determined by Kellogg, Brown and Root itself. (...) the fund will be used for lending money to US companies wishing to do business in Iraq. Few risk-averse private banks will willingly give money to any investor applying for a loan to open business in war-torn Iraq. But with the development fund, there'd be lots of money for the daring, adventurous, or simply bargain-hunting types. And in Iraq, there'd be lots of bargains around. The US handpicked Iraq Governing Council's (GC) Finance Minister, Kamel al-Kelani, announced on September 21 that all of Iraq's assets and state-owned corporations, except the oil industry, will be sold off. As sweeteners, the buyers will be entitled to 100 percent ownership of their purchase, full
Re: The frontier of modern imperialism: primitive accumulation in Iraq, at the taxpayers expense
Yes, the Life is Beautiful argument. (That Italian movie where a clownish man acts out in order to convince his son that a concentration camp is not a concentration camp. I couldn't force myself to see it, but apparently that was the plot)...or perhaps Schindler's List, where the essential argument is you can have benign capitalism (Schindler) or psychotic capitalism...there is no alternative. Still, can this lead to a vital society? History argues otherwise. The message being disseminated in the U.S. is that all the manufacturing jobs can go abroad because then Americans will simply be the managers of world wealth and world labor, what it takes to enforce that is a different story--whether it is through military means or religious brainwashing. I mean it might work, but not for very long. Perhaps, for once, I'm being an optimist. Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Empires do die because something in human nature either revolts or cannot thrive in this kind of environment. I agree totally with your sentiments, but you may not be correct on this point. Suppose that instead of getting people to revolt, you get them to mutate in some way, let's think of a biophysical mutation (or, in religious terms, a rapture) which causes people to see the world in a different way, and so that they see the trading process in a different way, so that terms of exchange can be transformed, so that cultures change, and so that social institutions change, and consequently so that different values are placed on assets and liabilties. Couldn't the empire continue in that case, for example, take the case of New Zealand, if you only BELIEVE ? Jurriaan
Putin rattling their chains...
Putin: Why Not Price Oil in Euros? By Catherine Belton Staff Writer President Vladimir Putin said Thursday Russia could switch its trade in oil from dollars to euros, a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for the global balance of power -- potentially hurting the U.S. dollar and economy and providing a massive boost to the euro zone. http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/10/10/001.html
Re: Fw: UN expert exposes starvation policy
Hey Jim, Thanks for the post. I am no longer capable of rational speech on this subject. Joanna
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
No, I mean hackers. Obviously it's not a monolithic set of attitudes beliefs. There are obviously pockets of leftie hackers and geeks. But I still stand by my claim that the dominant ideology is right libertarian. I'm thinking of the Slashdot crowd, Eric Raymond and his hangers-on, and the like. Obvious counterpoints include Richard Stallman, the IMC hacker crowd, many anarchist groups who actively use Web tech, and so on. I have been working in computing (Tandem/Apple/Sun) for 20 years, and I would say that though there are a lot of libertarians, they seem to me to be pretty even split between the right and the left. There are also a fair amount of socialists. Then I would say that the current and continuing outsourcing of techhies to India and China is likely to polarize this group even further. (I thought HTTP was big because it could get you through fire walls, but ravi, please correct me if I'm wrong. Oh, and that IP over XML was hillarious.) Joanna
Re: Allen Barra defends Limbaugh's football comments
Uh, he's still alive? I quote him all the time :) (mostly to myself.) Joanna Michael Hoover wrote: has yogi berra had anything to say on matter...
Yogi
* This is like deja vu all over again. * You can observe a lot just by watching. * He must have made that before he died. -- Referring to a Steve McQueen movie. * I want to thank you for making this day necessary. -- On Yogi Berra Appreciation Day in St. Louis in 1947. * I'd find the fellow who lost it, and, if he was poor, I'd return it. -- When asked what he would do if he found a million dollars. * Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time? * You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. * I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early. * If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else. * If you can't imitate him, don't copy him. * You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six. * Baseball is 90% mental -- the other half is physical. * It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much. * Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hitting. * A nickel isn't worth a dime today. * Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded. * It gets late early out there. -- Referring to the bad sun conditions in left field at the stadium. * Glen Cove. -- Referring to Glenn Close on a movie review television show. * Once, Yogi's wife Carmen asked, Yogi, you are from St. Louis, we live in New Jersey, and you played ball in New York. If you go before I do, where would you like me to have you buried? Yogi replied, Surprise me. * Do you mean now? -- When asked for the time. * I take a two hour nap, from one o'clock to four. * If you come to a fork in the road, take it. * You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and if that isn't enough in the second half you give what's left. * 90% of the putts that are short don't go in. * I made a wrong mistake. * Texas has a lot of electrical votes. -- During an election campaign, after George Bush stated that Texas was important to the election. * Thanks, you don't look so hot yourself. -- After being told he looked cool. * I always thought that record would stand until it was broken. * Yeah, but we're making great time! -- In reply to Hey Yogi, I think we're lost. * If the fans don't come out to the ball park, you can't stop them. * Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel. * It's never happened in the World Series competition, and it still hasn't. * How long have you known me, Jack? And you still don't know how to spell my name. -- Upon receiving a check from Jack Buck made out to bearer. * I'd say he's done more than that. -- When asked if first baseman Don Mattingly had exceeded expectations for the current season. * The other teams could make trouble for us if they win. * He can run anytime he wants. I'm giving him the red light. -- On the acquisition of fleet Ricky Henderson. * I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself? * It ain't the heat; it's the humility. * The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase. * You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours. * I didn't really say everything I said.
Re: internet infrastructure investment data
Web Services seems to be just another mechanism for decoupling that allows independent change of implementation, and (supposedly) some sort of dynamic lookup of implementation. You might look at Creating the Computer: Government, Industry, and High Technology by Kenneth Flamm, and also his Targeting the Computer: Government Support and International Competition. However, these precede the Internet revolution by a few years. Well, as it turns out, this is what I've been documenting and studying for the last six years-- because I have to write programming books, that teach engineers how to use the various standard API's that define these web services. Broadly, the point of having de-coupled, componentized, services is to make it easier to program distributed applications. The demand for componentized applications that could be deployed on any platform and operating system was more customer-driven than engineering-driven. Engineers didn't mind writing huge, monolithic applications that did not have to bridge heterogenous environments. But, of course, if you wanted to redeploy such applications into a different environment, you'd have to rewrite them. Expensive. So the notion of transparent communications accross the net and of write once, run anywhere applications became very important. Computing, in general, cries out of standards and openness; capitalism depends upon private property, of which intellectual property is a part. So the development of computing is always pulled into these completely contradictory directions. I'm not clear about how much technical background you have and so I don't know what needs to be explained. Try me at home, at 510 451-3109 if you run into troublesome stuff. Joanna
Re: Allen Barra defends Limbaugh's football comments
Racial stereotypes and how these connect with sports are hillarious. The last time I watched football was during my first marriage (25 years ago). This was partly to keep hubby company and partly because he liked sex at half-time, but not much at any other time. Back then, there were no black quarterbacksbecause blacks weren't smart enough to be quarterbacks. Apparently that has changed, though obviously racial stereotypes persist. I'm not a sports watcher...other than gymnastics. Generally, I prefer to do than to watch. But it has been great to see the Venus sisters on the tennis courts and Tiger on the golf course. Joanna Michael Perelman wrote: I don't have a source. The Celtics and the 76ers were originally Jewish teams, that eventually took on some Irish and Black players. Even after the Jewish influence on the court subsided, the coaches were still Jewish. Red Auerbach, Red Holtzman, Dolf Shays. When I was young, the head of the NBA was a friend of my grandma's. He was a short, dumpy guy that ran an ice business, was asked to run the Whaler's hockey team, did a good job, became head of the NHL. The NBA asked him to run the league as a side line. I used to go to Knicks games when I went to NY, and side on the side lines with the press. I still remember Sweetwater Clifton coming out of the shower. I never saw anyone so big. I guess now he may have been 6'4, but I was very young at the time. On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 09:00:08AM -0700, Martin Hart-Landsberg wrote: Michael, I would love to learn more about the notion that basketball was a jewish sport. Any reading recommendations? Marty --On Monday, October 06, 2003 8:39 AM -0700 Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As for basketball, the NBA evolved out of traveling Jewish teams. In the 20's, basketball was supposed to be a naturally Jewish sport because it put a premium on sneakiness and stealth. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Giant Poster of Mao Wins Power in China
Oh, God, can't stop laughing http://www.theonion.com/3938/history.html Joanna
Re: Positive psychology and emotional management in the USA
Yup, yup. You're right. God, my mind is goinggoing... Thanks, Joanna Michael Pollak wrote: On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, Joanna Bujes wrote: Lessing wrote a most wonderful treatise about this: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. I think you actually mean Friedrich Schiller, no? Michael
Re: American eugenics and Nazism
But you could well imagine that the bourgeois would like to impose private property relations on this activity, such that beautiful, intelligent, healthy babies are only for the propertied classes, and the proles can spurt uglies. This is why beautiful women should never marry for money :) Joanna
Re: Positive psychology and emotional management in the USA
Very true. Which makes me wonder about the left propensity for gloom. The only radicals that speak of hope these days are the Zapatistas. Wonder why? Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Positive emotions don't necessarily narrow people toward a specific action, like negative emotions do. Positive emotions seem to broaden people's repertoires of things they like to pursue. They broaden ways of thinking beyond our regular baseline, and they accumulate. And that broadening allows people to discover and learn new things. (...) When we are given permission to focus on emotions, a new dimension of the human landscape just pops out. If you pay attention to and track emotions, especially positive emotions, I think that you capture a lot more information that will help you make decisions. - Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D, research psychologist, University of Michigan Source: http://gmj.gallup.com/content/default.asp?ci=1177
Re: Positive psychology and emotional management in the USA
Maybe what the left needs is the sociological equivalent of Depakote, a mood-stabilizer, or Prozac... I think it's called art :) Music, dance, theater. Lessing wrote a most wonderful treatise about this: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. It's a bit thick with eighteenth century abstract verbiage, but underneath it all, there's a marvellous argument about how to sow the seeds of revolutionary thought and feeling. Joanna
Re: Idiocy of rural life?
Thanks Louis. I am familiar with Draper's work on Israel/Palestine, which I thought was excellent. I did not know about his work on the manifesto. Marx was a great scholar. I have personally found that close aquaintance with the classical period and languages to be an extraordinary help in unravelling the vagaries of western thought. I studied Latin and Greek in graduate school and it was an enormous help in cutting through its obfuscation in subsequent western imperialist identifications and tendentious misinterpretations of classical culture. A training in the classics is no longer part of a scholar's education. More's the pity I think. It leads to the laughable idiocy (and here i mean the word in its modern sense) of deconstructionist analysis/charlatanism. In fact, deconstructionist analysis offers itself as a substitute for classical training; in my opinion, it is a completely inadequate substitute. Joanna Louis Proyect wrote: From MR notes from the editor: Given the concern with changing conditions in rural society in much of this issue (as represented by the work of Amin and William Hinton) we thought that readers would be interested in the origin of a misunderstanding that surrounds Marx's thoughts on rural life. One often hears the criticism that Marxism was from the beginning an extreme modernizing philosophy that looked with complete disdain on rural existence. Did not Marx himself in The Communist Manifesto, it is frequently asked, refer to the idiocy of rural life? Here a misconception has arisen through the mistranslation of a single word in the authorized English translation of the Manifesto. This issue is addressed in Hal Draper's definitive, though little known work, The Adventures of the Communist Manifesto (Berkeley: Center for Socialist History, 1998)an expanded version of his earlier work, The Annotated Communist Manifesto. Draper's Adventures includes a new English translation of the Manifesto, together with paragraph-by-paragraph annotations, and the most detailed history currently available of the various editions of the Manifesto in major European languages. In Draper's translation the phrase the idiocy of rural life in paragraph 28 of the Manifesto is replaced with the isolation of rural life. His explanation for this correction is worth quoting at length: IDIOCY OF RURAL LIFE. This oft-quoted A.ET. [authorized English translation] expression is a mistranslation. The German word Idiotismus did not, and does not, mean idiocy (Idiotie); it usually means idiom, like its French cognate idiotisme. But here [in paragraph 28 of The Communist Manifesto] it means neither. In the nineteenth century, German still retained the original Greek meaning of forms based on the word idiotes: a private person, withdrawn from public (communal) concerns, apolitical in the original sense of isolation from the larger community. In the Manifesto, it was being used by a scholar who had recently written his doctoral dissertation on Greek philosophy and liked to read Aeschylus in the original. (For a more detailed account of the philological background and evidence, see [Hal Draper], KMTR [Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1978] 2:344f.) What the rural population had to be saved from, then, was the privatized apartness of a life-style isolated from the larger society: the classic stasis of peasant life. To inject the English idiocy into this thought is to muddle everything. The original Greek meaning (which in the 19th century was still alive in German alongside the idiom meaning) had been lost in English centuries ago. Moore [the translator of the authorized English translation] was probably not aware of this problem; Engels had probably known it forty years before. He was certainly familiar with the thought behind it: in his Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), he had written about the rural weavers as a class which had remained sunk in apathetic indifference to the universal interests of mankind. (MECW [Marx and Engels, Collected Works] 4:309.) In 1873 he made exactly the Manifesto's point without using the word idiocy: the abolition of the town-country antithesis will be able to deliver the rural population from the isolation and stupor in which it has vegetated almost unchanged for thousands of years (Housing Question, Pt. III, Chapter 3). Marx's criticism of the isolation of rural life then had to do with the antithesis of town and country under capitalism as expressed throughout his work. See also John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press), pp. 137-38. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Allen Barra defends Limbaugh's football comments
Carrol Cox wrote: This wanders far from the original focus of this thread, but is perhaps distantly related. I listened on the radio to the Ali-Liston fight in which Ali won the title. Afterwards the reporters were trying to interview Ali, and this led to the greatest radio episode ever. Ali refused to answer any questions until all the assembled reporters chanted in unison: You're the Greatest. I never have liked sports reporters. Hearing them grovel to Ali was a thing of beauty. Your prejudices are not unwarranted. When tennis was very, very hot, I had a friend who edited a tennis magazine. He paid me to cover a tournament in SF, which I dutifully did. I have to say, that I have never encountered a more sorry bunch of slobs in my entire life than the journalists covering that tournament. Basically, what they did was grab all the free food and then they went and sat in the press room and watched football. Once in a while, they'd check in to see what was happening on the tennis court. Ugh. Joanna
Re: Positive psychology and emotional management in the USA
True, very true, but what is this in reply to? Joanna Brian McKenna wrote: doris lessing is always hot. . .
Re: Positive psychology and emotional management in the USA
Thanks Brian. You're very kind to say so and I can't tell you how happy it makes me that my writing has an effect on someone. I think of myself as a sellout, since I abandoned academia and started to make my living writing computer manuals. But, hey, I'm a single mom with two kids to supportone in college. The way I keep my sanity is through dance: belly dance, jazz, and tango. I'm also a film nut...or movie nut...whichever you like. I haven't listened to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young for a long time. When I was younger, I liked them a lot. I liked the ever-popular Hey people what's that sound...everybody look what's coming round... and also another song, Four and twenty years ago I came into this life. The son of a man and a woman who lived in strife. He was tired of being poor ...and he wasn't into selling door to door... the rest escapes me, but it was a haunting song. Here I am reciting it thirty years later. Best, Joanna Brian McKenna wrote: Joanna, you had mentioned the great writer's advice to leftists (and all sorts really). . .go to the arts for sustenance. . .music, dance, theater and so on. . .in my 40 plus years (25 as a marxist) I've turned to a tapestry of tonics to retain my mental health. . .but lately few seem to work better than listening to Crosby, Stills Nash and Young. . .pushing 60 and still gret medicine men. . . I just love Looking Forward CD (David Crosby' Dream for Him) and Crosby's Nighttime for the Generals. . .Neil is a god in everything he does, of course. . .lately he's doing theater on stage. . .and Graham's Songs for Survivers is outstanding. . . bless em all. . . Lessing was on Moyers a few months back and sounded very pessimistic about social transcendence. . .one has to listen to all that insight. . . but hey, I'm still convinced it's either socialismor barbarism. . .and doing my bit to agitate/educate. . .uncovering the truth, then spreading it far and wide. . .admiring those like you, Mr. Perlman and Doug Henwood who do it so well. . . Brian McKenna
immigration question...urgent
OK. My parents emigrated to the USA. I was born in Romania and came with them. My sister was born in the USA. Are my parents first generation immigrants? or 0th generation? Is my sister first generation or second generation? You get the drift? How exactly do you define first, second, nth generation of immigrants? It's urgent cause my sister is taking a state test tomorrow and it might come up. Thanks, Joanna
Ponzi economy
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/daily/2003/0912a.htm Ponzi Economy by Kurt Richebacher Contributor, The Daily Reckoning September 12, 2003 The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS Bullish sentiment is riding at 1987 levels; tech stocks are leading the way in the reflation rally. What can we say, dear reader, but ooh la la...look out below! Hope and hype are again triumphing over reality. The primary preoccupation in economics worldwide is the U.S. economy's recovery, presently hyping the markets. We note three different views. First, a cocksure bullish consensus; second, doubtful voices, among them the Federal Reserve, stressing the lack of conclusive evidence; and third, a few lonely voices, ours among them, who flatly repudiate the possibility of a full-scale, self-sustaining economic recovery in the United States. We see years of Japanese-style sluggish growth for America, if not worse. Yet, the latest American Association of Individual Investors poll showed 71.4% bulls and a miniscule 8.6% bears. The gap between the two is the highest since August 1987, just weeks before the crash. Merrill Lynch surveys show institutional investors more fully invested than at any time in the past two years, and heavily overweight high tech. The case of the bullish community rests crucially on the assumption that the U.S. economy is basically in excellent shape. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, and with him the large bullish community, have actually never seen anything seriously wrong with it. In their view, its failure to return to normal economic growth is mainly due to a series of exogenous shocks inflicted one after the other on the economy: the stock market crash, the September 11 terrorist attack, the corporate governance scandals and the Iraq war. Rather, they consider it a sign of health that the economy has not weakened more in the face of this unusual sequence of shocks. Yet compared to the extraordinary exuberance prevailing in the markets, the Fed has been remarkably hesitant in declaring the economy's impending recovery. In his testimony to Congress, Greenspan acknowledged that the economy is not yet showing convincing signs of a sustained pickup in growth. In the same vein, Richmond Fed President Alfred Broaddus said a bit later in an interview, We still don't have a critical mass of hard evidence that the economy is accelerating, defining hard evidence as increases in employment, production and capital spending. Now to our own opinion: after careful analysis both of recent economic data and also of basic micro- and macroeconomic conditions for the resumption of strong economic growth, we have come to two conclusions: * First, the U.S. economy neither improved nor accelerated in the second quarter. The reported GDP growth of 2.4% is grossly misleading. From the perspective of quality, it has distinctly deteriorated. * Second, as we shall explain in detail, the crucial macro- and microeconomic conditions for a self-sustaining and self-reinforcing economic recovery remain flatly missing. Necessary economic and financial adjustments of past economic and financial excesses implicitly involve pain. But pain is not accepted in the United States. In essence, policymakers are trying to cure past borrowing excesses by more of the same and new excesses. Trying to assess the U.S. economy's prospects, the first thing to realize is that past cyclical experience offers no guidance to the present downturn because it has completely different causes and also a completely different pattern. All past recessions had their main cause in monetary tightening. As soon as the Federal Reserve loosened its shackles, the economy promptly took off again, propelled by pent-up demand. For the first time in history, the U.S. economy went into recession against the backdrop of most rampant money and credit growth. Manifestly, the forces depressing the economy this time are radically different from past experience. The typical, major imbalance in post-war business cycles has usually been in inventories. To correct it, retailers and manufacturers temporarily sold from stock, depressing production. Once the stocks were down to desired levels, production came into its right again. At the heart of the regular V-shaped business cycles was the inventory cycle. In contrast, the present downturn has its brunt in the combination of a profit and capital-spending crisis. At the same time, there has accumulated an array of economic and financial dislocations that tend to depress the economy in many ways, such as extremely poor profits, badly ravaged balance sheets, a variety of asset bubbles in different stages of development, excessive leverage in the whole financial system and shrinking cash flow. There is nothing normal anymore in the U.S. economy and its financial system. For the old economists, investment in tangible assets - factories, commercial buildings and machinery - was paramount in creating both economic growth and wealth. It creates demand,
Re: Ponzi economy
It can produce wealth, but mostly what it produces, having no choice in the matter, is crap. The tragedy of it is that they then trade their lives in for a load of crap. Joanna Mike Ballard wrote: Still, the fact is that the working class in the USA (if employed) can produce a hell of lot more wealth than ever could before. The capitalist class just has to find places to unload it. One of those places is, of course, the credit cards which the working class possess. Mike B) --- joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/daily/2003/0912a.htm = * --why do you slack your fighting-fury now? It's hard for me, strong as I am, single-handed to breach the wall and cut a path to the ships--come, shoulder-to-shoulder! The more we've got, the better the work will go! One of Sarpedon's speeches in THE ILIAD--The Trojans storm the rampart http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Re: The Natasha trade: a note on the political economy of prostitution
Jurriaan writes: Prostitution is, according to my analysis, the future for many people on the earth under capitalism, other things remaining equal, because the more sexuality becomes integrated into the accumulation process, and the more people must rely on individual resources which they do not really have (for example, through debt) the more those people who fall out of the boat in this sense are forced into prostitution. And in this way, capitalism begins to sort out what love really is, in a negative, reified way. Which is what capitalism does: it creates hell on earth for masses of people, but simultaneously develops the productive forces to such an extent, that we can at least see what heaven on earth would look like. Not the future, the present. I think this is what Marx had in mind when he wrote Money is the pimp between man and the object of his desire. All human activity under capitalism is alienated: we prostitute our intelligence, our labor, our bodies, and some, our sexuality. Whether capitalism furnishes a negative definition of love is debatable. It may be that some will react to the present order by understanding that the only thing you can exchange love for...is love; some may even realize that love cannot be bartered for anything...even love; but the great majority seem to have reached a very different conclusion: everything is for sale; you are what you buy. I think it is this specter that haunts global consciousness -- that to be able to buy nothing is to be nothing. And thus, in our effort to exist on a social level (when that society is a capitalist one), in accepting the terms of a capitalist existence as essential to human identity, we come to fear the demise of capitalism as a loss of our most essential selves. Joanna
Re: Can computers help reverse falling employment?
Interesting article ravi...illustrating the contradictory forces involved in the development of technology under capitalism. There is one the one hand computing, which per-se calls out for standardization, raising accessibility to information, globalizing the exchange of ideas and technologies, and in effect raising the quality of information and skills. There is on the other hand capitalism, which in its privatizing drive, needlessly complicates the evolution of computing, moves the rate of exploitation several notches up, restricts acces to information, and concentrates control into fewer and fewer hands. A few days ago half the people I work with (at Sun) were laid off. This had nothing to do with the quality of their work and everything to do with the way in which the technology and evolution of computing is being completely distorted by an economic system whose aims are completely counter to democratization and the freeing of information flows. Computing could certainly reverse falling employment. And/Or it could cut our need to work in half. Computing under capitalism will never do either. Joanna
Re: Dysentery
You've lost me Louis, are you arguing for the necessity of torture? Joanna Louis Proyect wrote: Sanford Levinson, The Debate on Torture: War Against Virtual States: I would adopt some version of the view articulated by Michael Walzer in his essay The Problem of Dirty Hands, (War and Moral Responsibility, op. cit.) where he explicitly endorses the necessity of having political leaders who are willing, in dire circumstances, to engage in horrendous actions, including torture. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/ === Woody Allen, Annie Hall: ALVY (Taking Robin's hand) I'm so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for Dysentery. ROBIN Commentary. ALVY Oh, really, I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysentery. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Dysentery
Anything to save those SUV's. Joanna Louis Proyect wrote: You've lost me Louis, are you arguing for the necessity of torture? Joanna No, Dissent Magazine is. Sanford Levinson basically wrote a defense of Alan Dershowitz there using formulations that were a bit less crude. If you watch Dershowitz's debate with Norman Finkelstein, you'll see a bit of casuistry around the acceptability of soft torture like keeping depriving people of sleep, etc. This is the sinkhole of social democracy and liberalism that some on the left are trying to accomodate themselves to. I am afraid that American fascism will not come in jackboots but in Birkenstocks. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Can computers help reverse falling employment?
Work is fine. So is play. So is life. Work can be an addiction like any other. The notion that doing nothing is morally suspect should be subject to very close scrutiny. Joanna Bill Lear wrote: On Tuesday, September 30, 2003 at 12:37:16 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes: Of course, if computers are productive enough, we could reduce the workday to 2 or 3 hours per day. Only a capitalist vision would look for ways to make work. Or, would a different vision look for creative and uplifting work to round out the rest of the day? Bill
Re: Can computers help reverse falling employment?
Mike wrote: Wage-slavery is one thing, work is another. Absolutely. But ending wage-slavery is only the beginning! (And what a beginning!) The next step is to restore our capacity for living, which has been grossly distorted by the ideology of work as a means of self-justification. Joanna
Suicide as entrtainment...
It looks like capitalism can make money on anything--in this sensation-hungry, soul-dead age. What next? The staging of public executions to fill the states' empty coffers? Joanna _ Band promises concert suicide From correspondents in Tampa, Florida October 1, 2003 A FLORIDA-BASED rock band that has promised that an unidentified terminally ill person will suicide on stage during an October concert is fighting a legal battle to have the show go on. Yesterday the St Petersburg City Council passed an emergency ordinance that makes suicide for commercial or entertainment purposes illegal, as a way of countering the rock band Hell on Earth's promise to show an onstage suicide during an October 4, 2003 concert in the city. Precisely where the concert will be is uncertain. The State Theatre in St Petersburg was the scheduled venue for the concert, but the theatre has cancelled the performance. The band has until Thursday to have a hearing before Pasco-Pinellas Counties Circuit Judge John Lenderman to explain why they should be allowed to proceed with the concert and the scheduled suicide.
Re: The relationship between capital accumulation, economic growth, and equilibrium
I would be interested in seeing the ideas/assertions in this piece being applied to the process of globalization (privatization of international commons) and the controversy about whether 1) it is necessary and why 2) it does (not) result in any gain for the working class. Joanna Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Rakesh, you wrote: Marx's reproduction schema do not show even the possibility of capitalism as an intrinsically stable dynamical system. How could they? They assume a constant OCC, fixed values, annual turnover, exchange at value (rather than price of production)? They are too far removed from the reality of an actual capitalist system to lay bare its laws of motion. Correct. I think that above all, Marx wanted to show in the second volume how it is possible for Capital to dominate the entire economic life of an economic community, and internalise more and more of the conditions for its own economic reproduction (cf. Roman Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx's Capital). In other words, how the relationships, which he had analysed at the level of the enterprise and the labour process in the first volume, asserted themselves at the level of social production as a whole, the interactions between enterprises. The subtitle of the second volume is, in fact called the process of the circulation of capital and not, for example, the process whereby Capital finds its equilibrium or the process by which Capital ensures economic growth. Marx is not trying to find the necessary conditions for total supply and total demand to balance, he is rather seeking to specify the necessary conditions for the accumulation of Capital, when the circulation of money and commodities (commercial trade) invade an entire economic community, rather than exist merely at the boundaries of an economic community, as happened for most of the economic history of trade. Precisely because any economic community is faced with the necessity of producing specific types of use-values (in the first instance, means of production and means of consumption), Marx is investigating how Capital modifies and regulates that process. A good discussion of the reproduction schemes is also provided by Edward Chilcote, see www.gre.ac.uk/~fa03/iwgvt/files/97Chilcote.rtf+Chilcote+reproduction+schemes hl=nlie=UTF-8 I think that the best way to understand the connection between economic growth and capital accumulation in Marx's theory is to say that economic growth IS CONDITIONAL on capital accumulation, capital accumulation is the sine qua non, the necessary condition. This formula, or something like this, I think is apposite, because it shows that economic growth and capital accumulation are not at all the same thing, they are different things. You can have relatively slow growth in real production, and relatively fast capital accumulation, precisely because the capitalist mode of production is a contradictory unity of the production process and the circulation process, as Marx himself says repeatedly. With the aid of credit and monetary manipulations, and given a high productive capacity (such that a smaller proportion of the workforce produces a larger physical output), circulation processes can become semi-autonomous from production processes. The implication of this is as follows: Marx describes the basic forms of capital as production capital, money capital and commodity capital, but it may be that an increasing proportion of capital is tied up in money capital and commodity capital, and Marx says, that this is ultimately purely a question of relative profitability and profit expectations. Rosa Luxemburg said quite correctly that under capitalism, simple economic reproduction is conditional on expanded reproduction, and that the implication of this is, that capitalism requires a continual expansion of the market, and it is in this expansion of the market that she sees the root cause of imperialism. But this side-steps the question: market for what, exactly ? A market for money capital, commodity capital, or production capital ? In fact, this issue is crucial to understanding what has happened in the world economy, where the volume of annual world trade exceeds the volume of new valued added, and a gigantic mass of capital is tied up in monetary speculation. When Harrod and Domar tried to derive the conditions for a steady economic growth path in the 1950s and 1960s, they do not really understand this, because growth in real output and capital accumulation are really separate questions, yet bourgeois economics is unable to treat them as separate questions, because it fails to understand, or hides, the social framework within which these social processes occur. The objective of the owner of capital is not to raise output as such, but to raise output to make more money, and if he cannot make more money from that, he does not raise output, but he takes his money somewhere else, where he can make more money. This insight enables us to specify another observation: the
Re: Red Yuppie Rising
But in the last ten, twenty years young, highly educated professional people went into those places, who did not simply preach to people about what to do, but who introduced experience and professionalism. And fun, because intelligent people don't feel like getting beaten up all day long by the boss. The hierarchical enterprise has definitely become untrendy. In Silicon Valley, they don't wear suits anymore. I've worked in Sillicon Valley for the last twenty years. What this guy is saying is totally and completely WRONG. SV is every bit as hierarchical as any other capitalist enterprise I have ever worked for. Yeah, okay, there is a certain form of hierarchy, but it is based purely on real leadership, and not on arbitrary power structures. Unfortunately, if you look at Shell Corporation or the ABN Amro, they still stick to the old formalistic style. But in those small fast companies that sort of thing is long gone, a thing of the past. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Hi tech companies DO depend upon a very small core of very bright, capable, and sometimes enthusiastic technical people, but these people, for the most part are simply bid to implement the ideas and programmes of the marketing/sales folks. For example, at the last small/great company I worked for the best paid engineer made $150,000/year. The best paid salesman made $2,000,000/year. Nuff said? They are fantastic companies to work for, because it is actually pleasant to work for them. We are talking about people who originate from ordinary backgrounds, and who assume their own responsibilities. When I see how well many young companies function, then I have the nerve to say well that is the socialist ideal. The best hi tech company (Forte) I every worked for WAS definitely fun. The company actually made a practical/useful product and the folks I worked with were intelligent and fun to spend time with. We had a weekly bridge game, I read through Thucydides' Peloponnesian War with one of the engineers and, all in all, the atmosphere was relaxed/collegial and very, very unhierarchical. That's one company in 20 years. The other companies were from helland double hell. Forte itself was ultimately bought out and its employees were slowly let go by the new/big company who did not have clue one about the quality of these people's work. In general, I would say that the hi-tech world is the most exploitative of all the capitalist domains in which I have worked. Joanna
