Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Anthony D'Costa wrote: But what he said was that Chandra Babu Naidu the laptop toting chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, who was recently ousted in the elections, transferred massive water to the urban, high tech driven city, at the expense of the rural folks. This story hasn't been reported in the media AFAIK. It's possible I missed it. But how exactly he did this? The water table is drastically falling in the southern region and virtually all major southern cities (Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai) are all facing massive water supply problems. For all the headlines over (unfortunate) suicides in Andhra Pradesh, the state with a very high level of suicides rate is Kerala. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
It's very simple, provide uninterrupted water to businesses and the rich enclaves in the high tech cities. Some gallon figure was mentioned per resident. This is not an overnight development, although it appears that way. Newspapers may not have necessarily made the connection between IT development and water shortage in rural areas. But we know water, power, better roads are pretty mundane stuff when promoting business. xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor Comparative International Development South Asian and International Studies Programs University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, [iso-8859-1] Ulhas Joglekar wrote: Anthony D'Costa wrote: But what he said was that Chandra Babu Naidu the laptop toting chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, who was recently ousted in the elections, transferred massive water to the urban, high tech driven city, at the expense of the rural folks. This story hasn't been reported in the media AFAIK. It's possible I missed it. But how exactly he did this? The water table is drastically falling in the southern region and virtually all major southern cities (Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai) are all facing massive water supply problems. For all the headlines over (unfortunate) suicides in Andhra Pradesh, the state with a very high level of suicides rate is Kerala. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Yesterday my school buddy returned after having spent 2 months in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh. He is an IT guy so he attributed the suicides partly to water shortage, consistent with limited monsoon rain in the region. But what he said was that Chandra Babu Naidu the laptop toting chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, who was recently ousted in the elections, transferred massive water to the urban, high tech driven city, at the expense of the rural folks. The water table is drastically falling in the southern region and virtually all major southern cities (Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai) are all facing massive water supply problems. cheers, anthony xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx On Sat, 24 Jul 2004, [iso-8859-1] Ulhas Joglekar wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: Yes, but why are they localized in only 1 state? Aren't these problems more widespread? I have not studied the pattern of rainfall region by region. Distribution of monsoon varies from region to region and within each region its timing during June-September monsoon period. Some regions also get rains in winter, others have irrigation based on snow fed rivers. Without that sort of study (which I have not done), it's hard to explain why, e.g. we don't hear about suicides by Karnataka farmers _on the same scale_ as those in Andhra Pradesh? Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Seth Sandronsky wrote: Peasant Suicides in India is a chapter in Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity by Robert Pollin that details the ruinous outcomes of IMF policies on Indian farmers. India doesn't owe any money to the IMF. How IMF policies are ruining Indian farmers? As for farmers' suicides, they are largely in Andhra Pradesh, not elsewhere in India. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Why are they localized? Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ulhas Joglekar Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2004 10:31 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic Seth Sandronsky wrote: Peasant Suicides in India is a chapter in Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity by Robert Pollin that details the ruinous outcomes of IMF policies on Indian farmers. India doesn't owe any money to the IMF. How IMF policies are ruining Indian farmers? As for farmers' suicides, they are largely in Andhra Pradesh, not elsewhere in India. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
didn't Bob write of the effects of neo-liberal policies in India, rather than neo-lib policies pushed by the IMF? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine From: PEN-L list on behalf of Ulhas Joglekar Sent: Sat 7/24/2004 10:30 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic Seth Sandronsky wrote: Peasant Suicides in India is a chapter in Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity by Robert Pollin that details the ruinous outcomes of IMF policies on Indian farmers. India doesn't owe any money to the IMF. How IMF policies are ruining Indian farmers? As for farmers' suicides, they are largely in Andhra Pradesh, not elsewhere in India. Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
From: http://www.epw.org.in EPW Commentary July 10, 2004 Is Rural Economy Breaking Down? Farmers' Suicides in Andhra Pradesh Farmers' suicides represent only the tip of the iceberg. To attribute the rural crisis entirely to poverty and drought would be an oversimplification of the situation and the several ways in which village economy is under stress today. Hastily announced relief packages do not address this complex situation. E A S Sarma Andhra Pradesh, applauded by every visiting dignitary for its reformist and hi-tech approach to governance, has been in the news, but this time for a different reason. Heavy debt and acute poverty have forced many a farmer in the state to take the extreme step of committing suicide. In his first visit outside Delhi as prime minister, Manmohan Singh met some of the affected families and consoled them with a great deal of compassion and kindness.
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Perelman, Michael wrote: Farmers' suicides: Why are they localized? Failure of monsoons, farmers' indebtness, shift to the cash crops etc. are among the principal factors. See interview of CPIM Secretary, B.V. Raghavalu for Andhra Pradesh (Pop. about 80 million)for details in Fronline, 19 June-2 July 2004: (i)Interview: CPIM Secretary for Andhra Pradesh, B.V.Raghavalu http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2113/stories/20040702006201900.htm (ii)Other Frontline articles on farmers' suicides in Andhra Pradesh http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2113/fl211300.htm Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Yes, but why are they localized in only 1 state? Aren't these problems more widespread? On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 08:20:40PM +0100, Ulhas Joglekar wrote: Perelman, Michael wrote: Farmers' suicides: Why are they localized? Failure of monsoons, farmers' indebtness, shift to the cash crops etc. are among the principal factors. See interview of CPIM Secretary, B.V. Raghavalu for Andhra Pradesh (Pop. about 80 million)for details in Fronline, 19 June-2 July 2004: (i)Interview: CPIM Secretary for Andhra Pradesh, B.V.Raghavalu http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2113/stories/20040702006201900.htm (ii)Other Frontline articles on farmers' suicides in Andhra Pradesh http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2113/fl211300.htm Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Michael Perelman wrote: Yes, but why are they localized in only 1 state? Aren't these problems more widespread? I have not studied the pattern of rainfall region by region. Distribution of monsoon varies from region to region and within each region its timing during June-September monsoon period. Some regions also get rains in winter, others have irrigation based on snow fed rivers. Without that sort of study (which I have not done), it's hard to explain why, e.g. we don't hear about suicides by Karnataka farmers _on the same scale_ as those in Andhra Pradesh? Ulhas Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
Ulhas and Jim, My bad. I should have written neoliberal, not IMF, policies in India. Seth Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic by Ulhas Joglekar 24 July 2004 Seth Sandronsky wrote: Peasant Suicides in India is a chapter in Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity by Robert Pollin that details the ruinous outcomes of IMF policies on Indian farmers. India doesn't owe any money to the IMF. How IMF policies are ruining Indian farmers? As for farmers' suicides, they are largely in Andhra Pradesh, not elsewhere in India. Ulhas _ Overwhelmed by debt? Find out how to Dig Yourself Out of Debt from MSN Money. http://special.msn.com/money/0407debt.armx
Re: Putin - Texas and the national factor- last post on this subject
Melvin: What of the question of Appalachia! The right of nations to self determination can be tricky if the dominate political group that advocates such right makes an assessment that ones group is not a nation. Exactly what is a national minority? What is a minority? What is an autonomous region within a multinational state structure? Better yet, what where these political and economic units and categories to the Soviet State and their ruling party? Me: The situation is particularly complicated in a state like the USSR and Russian Federation, neither of which were/are nation-states. (None of the ex-Soviet republics are nation-states, which maybe the exceptions of the Baltic States, Belarus and Ukraine.) Russia is probably the most multiethnic and multicultural country in the world, and ethnic minorites are not localized in particular areas. Let's look at Tatarstan: Some Tatar ultranationalists want Tatarstan to secede from Russia and bacome Tatarstan for the Tatars. Well, for one thing, that would be a little hard to pull of in practical terms, since Tatarstan is physically inside Russia. For another, Tatars are only about 51% of the population of Tatarstan. What do you want, mass ethnic cleansing? In Bashkortostan, the Bashkirs are a minority (coming in third after Russians and Tatars), even though they are enormously overrepresented in the elite. Anyway, in the case of Chechnya, national self-determination is not the issue. The issue is comparable to what you would if, to use your example, the Nation of Islam took control of Mississippi, and then started to attack neighboring states. (PS. to a certain other person: I'm not reading your posts. You've lost. Face it.) Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
Re: Putin - Texas and the national factor- last post on this subject
In a message dated 6/25/2004 8:40:18 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The situation is particularly complicated in a state like the USSR and Russian Federation, neither of which were/are nation-states. (None of the ex-Soviet republics are nation-states, which maybe the exceptions of the Baltic States, Belarus and Ukraine.) Russia is probably the most multiethnic and multicultural country in the world, and ethnic minorites are not localized in particular areas. Let's look at Tatarstan: Some Tatar ultranationalists want Tatarstan to secede from Russia and bacome Tatarstan for the Tatars. Well, for one thing, that would be a little hard to pull of in practical terms, since Tatarstan is physically inside Russia. For another, Tatars are only about 51% of the population of Tatarstan. What do you want, mass ethnic cleansing? In Bashkortostan, the Bashkirs are a minority (coming in third after Russians and Tatars), even though they are enormously overrepresented in the elite. Anyway, in the case of Chechnya, national self-determination is not the issue. The issue is comparable to what you would if, to use your example, the Nation of Islam took control of Mississippi, and then started to attack neighboring states. Reply I had an intuitive instinct about the break up and evolution of the state that was the USSR and the various nationality groups within it, that is not in fact intuitive at all. I have a vision informed by history and in this case the history of the evolution of what can be called the Russian State. Pen-L is anchored on a center of gravity that is Marxism with ultra heavy emphasis on economic gravity as opposed to political ideology. Chechnya, as an economic unit is very different from an ideological concept of Chechnya, as a distinct historically evolved specific people, who during the transition from agricultural relations to industrial relations were defeated in their striving to constitute a distinct national state riveted to the economic formations we identity with the modern world market as class relations. Chechnya, is identified as an autonomous region under the Soviet system and not a national state formation with clear and distinct modern classes, independent of Russian economic development at the turn of the past century. The good thing is we get to see exactly what is what in the formerSoviet Union and ascertain the striving of political groups based on their economic striving in the world of today. Free Chechnya . . . fine and from whom? Hey . . . Free Detroit . . . and Los Angeles from the new tapingof another LAPD beating of a citizen. There is a point at which it makes no sense to respond to ideologists. WHJy on earth would revoutionaries and progressive in AMerican be more upset about what is happening in Chechnya, than what is happening in . . . name your country. I'm through . . . Can you ding a song for me blue? Melvin P.
Re: Putin - Texas and the national factor- last post on this subject
In a message dated 6/24/2004 7:57:32 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From what I have been able to find, the Bolsheviks did not consider Chechnyans as a national minority with a right of succession. --- Reply I read the material suggested at http://www.chechnyafree.ru/index.php?lng=engsection=historyengrow=6#gak_3and found it very enlightening and interesting to say the least. The field of politics that has been called the "national question" is very difficult and generally involved the issue of a lesser economically developed people drawn into or forcibly annexed by a dominating state. All state structures are made up of and madereal by real people. Thus the dominating state is the dominating people or peoples. The only reason the national question is a question is because someone else is debating your fate and future if you happen to be the sucker on theshort end of the stick. Let's talk about the national factor and overthrow Leninism . . . again. I am for discarding the slogan "right of nations to self determination" and replacing it with something more accurate to today. Exactly what I do not know! What if you are not a so-called nation and getting the crap kicked out of you? In the case of the Indian people in America we all know their plight and the wars of genocide against them. In the case of the African American we all know about slavery and segregation on one level or another. In the case of Mexico and the Mexican nationals and Chicano's we have an awareness of the theftof half of Mexico/s territory on one level or another. Puerto-Rico and the Philippines need not be examined but pointed out. There are of course many other oppressed peoples within the filed of the multinational state that is the United States of North America. What of the question of Appalachia! The right of nations to self determination can be tricky if the dominate political group that advocates such right makes an assessment that ones group is not a nation. Exactly what is a national minority? What is a minority? What is an autonomous region within a multinational state structure? Better yet, what where these political and economic units and categories to the Soviet State and their ruling party? What did these categories mean to the people ruled by the Soviet State? On Pen-L I am willing to bet you cannot get three people who agree as to the political and economic meaning of the concept "national minority." There is a political and economic logic behind oppression and subjugation of less economically developed and militarily protected peoples. Slavery in America was an economic category of the highest importance. On Pen-L I am willing to bet you cannot geta dozenpeople who agree as to whether or not the African American people are a historically evolved people with a distinct culture that in history set them apart from say the Anglo-American people of the Northern portion of the American Union. My point is simple: anyone that believes there is a simple answer to the "national factor" is following and fooling themselves. Self determination for nation's up to and including the formation of an independent state . . . what if you ain't a nation and this formula is only applicable within the context of the struggle against capital . . . foreign and domestic, during a historically specific time frame? I am just saying that 1900s Russia is a hell of a lot different from 2004 America or 2004 Russia. Why drive your grandfathers Oldsmobile when you can get some new more green friendly ride? One can of course really examine the internal dynamics of the "Black power" movement of the late 1960s up to the mid 1980s and come to some conclusions. This period of reformulation of the national factor needs to be looked at. Lets take an example closer to home than the blacks in America, because the moment one says "black" everything gets screwy. Take Texas . . . the Lone Star State. The Lone Star State . . OK . . . meaning one star on the freaking flag. I currently live in Texas - recently, but this is not the first time I have been to Texas. My travel to Texas dates back to 1982. There are current s in Texas pushing for secession since the Alamos.In the latest edition of Texas Monthly there is a lead article basically called "Why They Hate US " and what is meant is not Americansbeing hated; but why the rest of America and the world hate "us" in Texas. Is not Texas basically larger than Germany? All the secessionists minded in Texas most certainly want to leave the American Union. Some gravitate back to Mexico and others gravitate toward absolute independence from everyone with the Mexicans on the bottom of the social order. Somebody got to mow the grass is the thinking of the latter trend. Is Texas a nation? Are the Mexicans in Texas national minorities or is the question a tad bit more complex and requires thinking
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it's unclear that the economy can sustain positive real short-term interest rates. I was thinking of Jim's assertion that there are speculative bubbles in some real estate markets, and my suggestion that the same might be true in some commodity markets. A speculative bubble exists whenever a market is dominated by investors (noise traders in the economics literature) with short time horizons who have taken highly leveraged long positions. Real positive short-term interest rates would force noise traders to unwind their positions. The Fed's task, when it decides to raise interest rates, will be to goad noise traders into unwinding their long positions gradually, as opposed to the more likely panicked stampede for the exits. An apt metaphor is trying to let some air out of a balloon without either popping or deflating it. Edwin (Tom) Dickens
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Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 09:09:37 -0500 From: dmschanoes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --=_NextPart_000_0043_01C41EDB.8C4AF410 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit First a little point for point - Original Message - From: soula avramidis To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 6:19 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right That oil is a finite resource is not a question; I hope. because if we were to argue it is not, then that is a doosy per se. so what is the problem here, that oil will peak in 2006, 2010, or 2015 etc. is Hubbert's an imprecise forecast method. this is just like saying the bubble will burst but I do not know when give or take five years. dms: Or it's like predicting that the stock market is going to fall, or that it's going to rain. Make the prediction every day and eventually, maybe, you'll be right, but only half as right as a stopped clock which is right twice a day, with exactly the same lack of meaning. The point is not the predictive accuracy for yes, oil is indeed finite. The point is whether or not the current actions of the bourgeois order, of capital, are determined by the finite capacity of a natural resource, or by those contradictions inherent to a system where the means of production are organized as a property form requiring the aggrandizement of wage labor. In simpler language-- is the determinant of the current situation based on the falling rate of profit in the oil industry based on the growth of constant capital, or is the determinant some quickly approaching depletion of the natural supply? ___ so what next, that production will peak and that bringing in new capacity to past levels will cost more per unit of output. and that oil price and control is relevant since oil is a principal commodity in all production. it is precisely the point at which cheap oil production evaporates when alternative energy sources are too costly to smooth the transition from one mode of energy dependency to another in the process if you like of capital accumulation. it is not like as if we were going to wake up tomorrow and find that oil is gone. it is like when it becomes more expensive to draw oil out of the ground, going for control of high reserves of cheaply mined Arab oil (1 dollar per barrel) makes for a hell business, both in itself and insofar as you strangle others with it. that is why Iraq and the gulf where cost of production is cheap is the big prize for US bourgeoisie dms: There have been three OPEC price spikes since 1973. None of them had anything to do with increased costs of production. In fact, the latest one 1999 was in fact triggered by overproduction, itself a result of the declining cost of production below the 1949 post WW2 low. You can look it up. Further, the historic trend for finding and lifting costs for US petroleum majors has been downward since 1973, with an upturn around 1996-97 as more US effort went into deepwater drilling. The recent trend has resumed its downward costs. You are right. We sure aren't going to wake up and find the oil gone. And the bourgeoisie and the markets do NOT react to predicted 30 year scarcities. Capital does not allow that. It's all about fear and greed for capital, today's fear and greed, today's cash. Markets have no memory and less imagination. If it were otherwise, there would never be overproduction, or bubbles, or the repitition of the same old same old scams. __ . that is why Mark Jones was not only right.. his little peace on the castration of Japanese capital was one good piece of Leninist analysis, but he like I fall into the trap of becoming natural scientist when we are not. the point is not about natural science however, it is about the process during decline. dms: Don't know if I read that piece, but yes OPEC 1 in particular sure smacked the Japanese around, and OPEC 2 had some impact, but moreso in the 1986 price break, leading to the Plaza Accords, and the gutting of the USSR __ And now for the another, perhaps, bigger issue: The scarcity argument, and Mark Jones' argument was/is NOT about cost--the depletionist argument, which Jones embraced, is about an absolute zero of petroleum/hydrocarbon availability. That supposed Marxists can endorse this assertion without considering its meaning for all of Marx's work and critique, including that most important critique, the necessity of proletarian revolution, is mind-boggling. The depletionist argument is that the end is near, repenting won't help, and the future looks a lot like George Miller's Mad Max series
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My nephew asks: Do you know of any good articles or web sites that comprehensively discuss the Romanian transition and expelling of Ceaucescu? I answer, No, but I know lots of smarties on PEN-L who surely will. If I remember, Ceaucescu was shot, not expelled, for starters... Bill
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Gassler Robert wrote: The problem is that concepts like heteroskedasticity refer to samples and how well they reflect the total population. Here we have the total population of US presidential elections, so we do not need statistical inference. Actually we do need statistical inference. We do not have the total population. In the context of this discussion, the total population is the voters in recent U.S. electoral history *and* in the coming elections. So these voters include people who voted, people who may vote in November (including those who will actually vote), *and* people who *might have* voted (had some chance of voting) in previous elections but who actually didn't vote. That would be the total population and we don't have it. David was using samples of this population (the voting frequencies in previous elections) to draw inferences about the likely behavior of voters in 2004. Every time there's a presidential election (or every time there's a poll) the random variable (voting choice of an individual voter) takes one and one value only. It's like drawing a sample from the population. The voting results in previous elections are samples of this population. The tricky part in David's exercise is that he was implicitly assuming that the probability distribution of voting behavior was stationary or -- more generally, if you forgive me for using this term -- ergodic, which is not. Stationarity means that some characteristics of the probability distribution remain fixed. (What Sabri would call homoskedasticity or same-variance is a strict case of variance-covariance-stationarity... ooph!) In plain words, we don't have one and the same bucket with marbles of different colors from which we draw samples every time there's a presidential election. No. The bucket changes, the marbles change, the colors change -- many things change in ways that we cannot easily pin down. Julio _ Charla con tus amigos en línea mediante MSN Messenger: http://messenger.latino.msn.com/
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: Subject: Re: Re: value and gender
The relationship between nutrition and health is not a middle class or bourgeois prejudice. It is a fact. Agreed, but we were talking about cheap food. Not all cheap food is healthy, to be sure, but a lot of cheap food is healthier or has the same nutritive content as more expensive food. The bourgeois view of nutrition means that in the world today, the problem of overeating resulting in obesity and ill-health, is approximately as big as the problem of starvation and malnutrition. J.
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Louis Proyect wrote: Well, who else is supposed to criticize the Democrats? Salon.com? The Nation Magazine? Bill Moyers? [clip] I think that the point of Counterpunch (and PEN-L) is to address the necessity of transforming the system. We are facing a downward spiral in bourgeois politics that has been going on for decades. Richard Nixon's domestic policies were far more liberal than either Clinton's or Dean's. Yeah, everybody should slap the Democrats when they're screwing things up in the relevant issue of the day. How's Krugman doing? Learn from him -- he's trying to drive a wedge between the army (and their families) and the administration. That's trying to get the biggest bang for your buck. To draw the proper economic and political lessons from the Clinton years is an important strategic task. But it's not the burning issue of the day. You can seriously do it now without shooting yourself in the foot. How about picking on Greenspan? He's the one who gave a free pass to the tax cuts for the rich. So, what's Counterpunch? I suppose the name says it all -- it's definitely not the Journal of Recent Economic History. Only children and junkies need not care about context. As for PEN-L, I don't know, but it seems to me like a group of professional conspirators bent on taking over the galaxy -- just look at the e-mail address of their leader: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Weird... Julio _ Las mejores tiendas, los precios mas bajos y las mejores ofertas en MSN Latino. http://latino.msn.com/compras
Re: Subject: California Dreaming
Hi Michael, Two of the state's big daily papers, the LA Times and The Sacramento Bee, editorialized against Prop. 54 and the recall. I do not remember what stance the SF Chronicle took on each. Seth Sandronsky Date:Wed, 8 Oct 2003 08:04:42 -0700 From:Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: California Dreaming It's too early to tell if the recall will turn out badly. For example, Proposition 54 -- the racial ignorance proposition -- failed because it Bustamante got millions of dollars for his campaign, which the courts ruled to be illegal. He turned the money over to the anti-proposition 54 campaign, which probably turned the tide. California's budget last year avoided most of the pain by passing most of the budget cuts on to the following year. The hard cuts come next year. Schwarzenegger will have trouble pleasing many people with his choices, possibly discrediting Republicans even more. The negative side of the campaign is too obvious to mention. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 _ Get a FREE computer virus scan online from McAfee. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: Subject: California Dreaming
I would be surprised if the Chron. did not do the same. On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 03:50:32PM +, Seth Sandronsky wrote: Hi Michael, Two of the state's big daily papers, the LA Times and The Sacramento Bee, editorialized against Prop. 54 and the recall. I do not remember what stance the SF Chronicle took on each. Seth Sandronsky Date:Wed, 8 Oct 2003 08:04:42 -0700 From:Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: California Dreaming It's too early to tell if the recall will turn out badly. For example, Proposition 54 -- the racial ignorance proposition -- failed because it Bustamante got millions of dollars for his campaign, which the courts ruled to be illegal. He turned the money over to the anti-proposition 54 campaign, which probably turned the tide. California's budget last year avoided most of the pain by passing most of the budget cuts on to the following year. The hard cuts come next year. Schwarzenegger will have trouble pleasing many people with his choices, possibly discrediting Republicans even more. The negative side of the campaign is too obvious to mention. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 _ Get a FREE computer virus scan online from McAfee. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Subject: Re: Bush failing?
10/3/03 Hi Jim, Below is an item from the 10/2/03 edition of the Financial Times that relates to your query: The parallels between the furore now engulfing the presidency of George W. Bush, and the David Kelly affair that has soured the reputation of Tony Blair, the British prime minister, are uncanny. The cast of characters includes a journalist who has recalibrated his account of events since it became the talk of the capital, and a handful of senior government officials leaking information from behind the cloak of anonymity. Seth Date:Thu, 2 Oct 2003 09:11:37 -0700 From:Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Bush failing? Has anyone linked the outing of the Ambassador's wife as a CIA = operative with the outing of Dr. Kelly by 10 Downing Street? Similarly = disgusting tactics in one campaign? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine COMMENT ANALYSIS: The investigation into how the name of a CIA operative became public poses a risk to George W.Bush's reputation, writeJames Hard By Edward Alden, James Harding and Deborah McGregor Financial Times; Oct 02, 2003 After a media report alleges the government has exaggerated its case for war in Iraq, the identity of an intelligence officer is exposed. Initially, the incident garners little attention. But over time, a scandal brews: the integrity of national leadership is called into question. Only a full investigation into the inner workings of government, some say, will answer the allegations of abuse of power. The parallels between the furore now engulfing the presidency of George W. Bush, and the David Kelly affair that has soured the reputation of Tony Blair, the British prime minister, are uncanny. The cast of characters includes a journalist who has recalibrated his account of events since it became the talk of the capital, and a handful of senior government officials leaking information from behind the cloak of anonymity. In contrast to the Kelly affair, of course, the naming of Valerie Plame, a covert operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, has not, as far as we know, resulted in the loss of life. But the investigation into whether her name was leaked to the press by a senior administration official marks a serious assault on the stature of Mr Bush, a president who has traded heavily on his image of probity and good character. Instead, the investigation into allegations of politically motivated and vengeful use of classified information to smear an opponent of the president depicts the Bush White House as a partisan, arrogant and mean political machine. It comes amid rising anxiety over the human and financial cost of the Iraq occupation, Mr Bush's slide in the opinion polls, and the hopes of Democrats that a president who since September 11th 2001 has had an aura of invincibility could yet be humbled by defeat. And of course the disclosure of the identity of a CIA operative is more than just a breach of bureaucratic convention; it is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. There are still more unanswered than answered questions, says Charles Jones, professor emeritus in political science at the University of Wisconsin. What is clear is that the justice department believes there is enough evidence to pursue a criminal investigation. That is very serious business. The basic facts of the case have played out in the press. In a New York Times op-ed in July, Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador in Gabon, claimed that Mr Bush had asserted falsely in January's State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from Africa in order to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. Mr Wilson had been sent at the request of the CIA to Africa - specifically Niger - to investigate claims of an Iraq-Niger link in February 2002, and found nothing to them. The White House then admitted that the 16 words uttered by the president in January asserting a connection between Baghdad and Niger was based on bogus information. Robert Novak, a Republican-leaning syndicated columnist, then put pen to paper in mid-July seeking to explain why Mr Wilson, who served both Republican and Democrat presidents as a diplomat but was known for his personal opposition to the Iraq war, had been sent on behalf of the CIA to Niger. Mr Novak's explanation was that Ms Plame, Mr Wilson's wife and an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction, had had the idea: Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate the Italian report [which originally made the claim], he wrote. The purposes of administration officials in outing Ms Plame seemed unclear. One former senior administration official who has worked at the nexus of White House operations and the CIA says the account was given to Mr Novak to diminish the importance of Mr Wilson's mission: They wanted to belittle it, by saying he was on a bit of a lark. It was not tasked in a formal way
Re: Subject: California expanded rewrite
With a $38 billion state deficit, California is labeled the nation's basket case. The election to recall the governor will be held October 7, with over 240 candidates running for governor. This election will determine if Bush and his gang will gain control of the state. The people of California face a serious challenge from the forces of evil and greed. The national media portrays the California election as a circus with more than 240 "clowns" vying for office, but this is inaccurate. The recall and its opening of the political process to any and everyone reveals deep discontent by every sector of society - as California, and indicates that masses of citizens are politically fragmented and willing to act outside the so-called two party framework. California's crisis is the worst of nearly all the states and recently shifted from the fifth to the seventh largest "economy" in the world. In their commentaries on the situation, few have had the courage to go into the morality behind the political decisions that laid the foundation for the crisis. Every political decision flows from moral consideration of what is right and wrong. Inevitably, people are ennobled by their decisions, or these decisions come back to haunt them. California's, and much of the nation's economic and social crisis is rooted in the people's moral response to the 1965-Watts uprising. The week-long uprising of the socially and economically oppressed people of Watts captured the nation, and indeed the world. The Watts uprising was a continuation of and social response to the mechanization of agriculture, the intense pressure to desegregate American society and the ever present need of the ruling class to maintain the unity of the property relations and expansion of the industrial system. The battle for Albany, Georgia and two years later the battle for Birmingham Alabama witnessed the outbreak of street fighting and uprisings in 1963 and indicated new social forces were making their appearance. The moral response to the cries for justice, the jailing of thousands for seeking basic human rights, the booming of churches and the murder of children shifted the consciousness of our country. In a real sense the uprising in Watts was the historic consequence and moral imperative of those seeking justice and the right to escape the design of poverty and social degradation. The process of realigning the political system, that is to reform the system is itself a political crisis and had lead to the break away of the "Dixie Rats" or rather Dixiecrats in 1948, and the defection of Southern democrats to the Republican Party after 1964. After the Watts uprising was crushed, the national and local press went into a campaign to create and organize a "white backlash." The reactionary gang around Ronald Reagan understood this was their opportunity if they could undo the moral sense that society is ultimately responsible for the well being of all its citizens. To accomplish this, the Reagan gang relied on the history of racism in the nation. Los Angeles is a southern city, and it was the logical place to begin this campaign. As the media fired up the "white backlash," Reagan began his campaign by making the most selfish, anti social attitudes appear normal. In 1966, he was elected Governor of California. Reagan tried to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, and again in 1976 and finally succeeded in 1980 and went on to be elected President in 1980 and 1984. It is said that Reagan gave America a new moral sense, a new vision and brought back to our country a sense of "class and pride." This is true and we can review how he brought back "class and pride." The need was to undo the deep moral outrage over the war in Vietnam and massive student unrest and social protest that had been ignited by the Civil Rights Movement and a series of events traceable to Montgomery, Alabama and the bus boycott of 1956. What did Reagan do and how did he subdue the deep moral stirrings of the American people? His point of departure was the propagandistic creation of the "Black Welfare Queen" with three shopping carts of hams and filet minion paid for by the property taxes of hard working undernourished white men. The next step was mobilization for the antisocial Proposition 13. This proposition would freeze property taxes where they were when the property was purchased. Much of the state government's income came from the rapidly rising assessed value of California property. Rolling back and freezing this income meant an immediate and continuing slashing of social services. The political goal of the proposition was to shift the social struggle from class to color. This proposition appealed to the meanest and most racist aspects of Americans' political personality, frankly stating, "I'm for me and the hell with you!" Economically, this resulted in a rupture of the "normal" circulation of money. There was an immediate growth of poverty and a
Re: Subject: Re: Re: property rights
Right. jksSeth Sandronsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Whites have no color, right?Seth SandronskyDate: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 21:23:13 -0700From: andie nachgeborenen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Subject: Re: property rights--0-579270827-1056255793=:66129Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-asciiThe, uh, colored element isn't supposed to own property, is it?Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:very interesting, butthissort of crap did not interest the right wingwhen Blacks were moved out.--Michael PerelmanEconomics DepartmentCalifornia State UniversityChico, CA 95929Tel. 530-898-5321E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]_Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
US uses stick to avoid being subject to ICC
1) US plays aid card to fix war crimes exemption 2) War crime vote fuels US anger at Europe 3) State Department Reeker: ICC Article 98 Agreements - 1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,975416,00.html US plays aid card to fix war crimes exemption Ian Traynor in Zagreb Thursday June 12, 2003 The Guardian (London) The US is turning up the heat on the countries of the Balkans and eastern Europe to secure war crimes immunity deals for Americans and exemptions from the year-old international criminal court. In an exercise in brute diplomacy which is causing more acute friction with the European Union following the rows over Iraq, the US administration is threatening to cut off tens of millions of dollars in aid to the countries of the Balkans unless they reach bilateral agreements with the US on the ICC by the end of this month. The American campaign, which is having mixed results, is creating bitterness and cynicism in the countries being intimidated, particularly in the successor states of former Yugoslavia which perpetrated and suffered the worst war crimes seen in Europe since the Nazis. They are all under intense international pressure, not least from the Americans, to cooperate with the war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in the Hague. Blatant hypocrisy, said Human Rights Watch in New York on Tuesday of the US policy towards former Yugoslavia. Threatened with the loss of $73m (£44m) in US aid, Bosnia signed the exemption deal last week just as Slovenia rejected American pressure and cut off negotiations. Of all the peoples of former Yugoslavia, the Bosnians suffered the most grievously in the wars of the 1990s, from the siege of Sarajevo to the slaughter of Srebrenica. The Bosnians signed reluctantly, feeling they had no choice. Former Yugoslavia is particularly central to the US campaign to exempt Americans from the scope of the ICC because there are US troops in Bosnia and Kosovo. Washington is vehemently opposed to the permanent international criminal court, arguing that US soldiers, officials and citizens will be targeted for political reasons, an argument dismissed by the court's supporters, who point out that safeguards have been built into the rules governing the court's operations. Under President Bill Clinton, Washington signed the treaty establishing the court. But the US did not ratify the treaty and Mr Bush rescinded Mr Clinton's signature. While the Slovenes have said no to the Americans, probably forfeiting $4m in US aid, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia are now being pressed to join the 39 other countries worldwide with which Washington has sealed bilateral pacts granting Americans immunity from war crimes. While the United States rightly insists that the former Yugoslav republics must fully cooperate with the [Hague tribunal], it is turning the screws on the very same states not to cooperate with the ICC, said Human Rights Watch. Croatia is sitting on the fence, refusing to accept what the prime minister, Ivica Racan, dubbed an ultimatum, but still hoping to reach a compromise with the US. The American ambassador in Zagreb published a letter in the Zagreb press last week warning that Croatia would lose $19m in US military aid if it did not capitulate by July 1. In Serbia, too, where the issue of war crimes is explo sive, the US pressure is being attacked as a ruthless display of double standards. The EU has sent letters to all the countries in the region advising them to resist the US demands and indicating that surrender will harm their ambitions of joining the EU. Regional leaders are waiting to see what kind of offers or promises this month's EU summit in Greece makes to the region before deciding on their stance towards the ICC. One idea being floated is that the EU could make up the lost US aid money in return for Balkan refusal to toe the American line. Although the eight east European countries joining the EU next year are expected to follow the Brussels policy and reject the US demands, the Poles in particular are also being pressed to reach an immunity deal with Washington. Sources in Warsaw say that the US state department has made several requests in recent weeks for a deal by July 1. Poland is the biggest American ally in the region but has not yielded to the US requests. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,974891,00.html War crime vote fuels US anger at Europe Gary Younge in New York and Ian Black in Brussels Wednesday June 11, 2003 The Guardian (London) The US has bitterly attacked European leaders for trying to stop the UN security council voting tomorrow to renew America's exemption from prosecution by the new war crimes tribunal. The Bush administration has accused the EU of actively undermining American efforts to protect its peacekeepers from prosecution by the international criminal court, which was set up to try cases of
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We hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created unequal, and that the capitalist class is endowed with ceratin natural rights; that among these rights are the right to hoard, exploit, and market life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, air, water, food, clothing, shelter, and employment The Independent 23 March 2003 Activists rage against global 'water wars' By Peter Popham in Rome Campaigners met in Florence this weekend to condemn the notion that water is a resource to be bought, sold and monopolised by wealthy nations and corporations. Disgusted with a World Water Forum in Kyoto that they say is one more celebration of market forces, capital and private investment, 1,000 campaigners and activists streamed into Florence to flesh out their vision of water as the basic common good. They have descended on the medieval castle in the city centre taken over last November by tens of thousands of participants at the European Social Forum. The organisers say the forum showed that, despite efforts over the past decade to discredit and marginalise alternative movements, their voices are part of a credible process. Florence is a symbolic setting for the inauguration of the People's World Water Forum. Exactly 500 years ago, during a war between Florence and Pisa, Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci planned to divert the River Arno from Pisa, hastening that city's defeat. That was an early water war. But speakers at the forum voiced their fear that the world is now heading for an endless succession of such wars to control access to blue gold. They believe that participants at the official Water Forum in Kyoto, also taking place this week, are committed to the control of water by governments and corporations - at the permanent expense of the Third World poor. One speaker at the forum, Riccardo Petrella, a professor of political economy at Leuven University in Belgium, defined water as the basic element of solidarity. Sharing water is not something you do for others to make yourself feel good - it's something that shows you have things in common with that person. You don't assert that solidarity until you see yourself as part of the same biological and territorial unit. The oppositional, bipolar perspective of the Cold War, he said, has been replaced by a growing sense of the inevitability of war. They say that water will be the next object of conquest by the year 2020, when the world's population reaches eight billion, he said. But water is not 'blue gold'. Water is just water, the greatest common good. We don't have to believe in the World Bank's scheme of permanent belligerency. The forum's goal is to implant the notion of a right to water for all - a global good - as a principle recognised universally, and to fight against all forms of privatisation and merchandisation of water. They want to see the setting up of a World Water Authority with judicial, legislative and sanction powers - not the purely technocratic approach of the disputes settlement body of the World Trade Organisation. The forum's goals were unwittingly endorsed by research published this week showing that tap water in Italy's major cities is as good or better than the mineral water on which millions of euros are spent every year.
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Hey Tom I'm teaching Mike Lebowitz's old Marxist economics course at SFU this semester. Any chance you would enjoy coming to talk to 40 economics students about the world-historic issue of shorter work time on a Tuesday or Thursday between 1.30 and 3.30? I can't really offer any benefit other than as much beer as you can drink in one sitting and vague notions of karma. Bill
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from single payer quote of the day... Health Affairs November/December 2002 How And Why The Health Insurance System Will Collapse By Humphrey Taylor, Chairman of the Harris Poll Abstract The advocates of defined-contribution health plans extol the virtues of consumer-driven health care, consumer choice, and empowered consumers as solutions to the problems--particularly the rapidly growing costs--of employer-sponsored health benefits. This paper argues that the widespread use of defined contribution plans, with more consumer choice and more knowledgeable consumers, will lead to the erosion of the social contract on which health insurance must be based, with healthier employees subsidizing the care of older and sicker ones, and a death spiral of adverse selection. If unchecked by government intervention, these trends will lead to the collapse of employer-sponsored health insurance. http://www.healthaffairs.org/1130_abstract_c.php?ID=http://www.healthaffairs .org/Library/v21n6/s28.pdf
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We presented to the public the new market segment included by SA Supply. Tattoo Flash of several artists' drawings, all numbered and with certificate of authenticity. Commercial drawings with guaranteed quality. Satisfied customer and profit certain. PRICES OF COLOR SETS Option 1 - 11 Sheets A3 - US$ 100,00 Option 2 - 11 Sheets A3 + 11 Sheets A4 - US$ 150,00 - plus S/H PRICES OF BW SETS Kanjis - Names in Korean - Black Henna - US$ 30,00 - plus S/H PAYMENT OPTIONS BANK TRANSFER - WESTERN UNION VISA CREDIT CARD http://www.satattoo.com/menu/botoes/produtos/catalogodesenhosenglish.htm
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This is about Roberto Rodrigues, future Minister for Agriculture. The Minister for Development is Luiz Fernando Furlan, currently president of Brazilian agribusiness titan Sadia; foreign minister is Celso Amorim. All of them are conservative economic nationalists, most of them arent even PT; the only sort of leftwinger in the government is the minister of the environment, Marina Silva This guys defends the right of property owners to take up arms against the MST. Thiago Oppermann Portuguese original at: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ ult96u43530.shtml Lulas Minister was Secretary under Fleury and is Opposed to MST Farm Occupations Sílvia Freire Folha Online Agronomist Roberto Rodriges ,50, was nominated today for the Ministry of Agriculture by president-elect Luiz Inácio da Silva, and arrives at the top echelon of the new government bringing with him the experience of having been secretary for Agriculture and Supply in the State of São Paulo between 1993 and 1994, during the governorship o Luiz Antonio Fleury Filho (ex-PMDB, now PTB [ie. Ex-centrist, now rightwing of the centre-left *sigh*]) Rodrigues is an agricultural engeneer with qualifications in rural administration obtained at the UNAERP in Ribeirão Preto, and professor in the Department of Rural Economy in the UNESP, in Joboticabal, where he currently leaves. The future minister is also an agriculturalist in the municipalities of Jaboticabal and Guariba, in São Paulo and in Balsas in the state of Maranhão. Since 1999, Rodrigues has presided over the ABAG (Brasilian Association of Agribusinesses), and entity which represents 45 large businesses and cooperatives in the agricultural sectors, including Monsanto, the fertiliser and biotech enterprise; banks and agricultural cooperatives. Rodrigues represents the private sector in the Foreign Trade Business Council, and between 1992 and 1993, was the sectors representatie in the National Monetary Council. In an article published by the magazine Agroanalysis, of the FGV (http:// www.abagbrasil.com.br/) in march, Rodrigues criticised the farm occupations under the respectable, but debatable flag of agrarian reform and argued a defense of the property-ownders who end up arming themselves to defend themselves. In the text, Rodrigues criticises the workers rights legislation which construes rural employers as debtors, as victims of specialist lawyers. In another article, published in august in the same magazine, the future minister defended the association of government and private enterprise to increase the competitiveness of Brazilian products in the international arena, so as to increase exports. In this text, Rodrigues says that the federal government has been timid in its actions in the funding, logistical and in international negotiations and criticises the Government for having refused to presen the WTO with a document composed by the Ministry of Agriculture about losses caused by American protectionism. Rodrigues was one of the organises of the first national congress of rural economy, which for 18 years has defined the trajectories for development of agrobusiness in Brazil. This year he organized the first Brazilian Congress of Agribusiness, which will discussed policies to increase the competitiveness of the country internernally and externally. - This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au
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Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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SIGNOFF PEN-L
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Where I wrote There's no reason to think that Marx understands a bourgeois system of ethics to embrace the notion that every commodity sells at its [labor] value, and some significant reasons to believe to the contrary. First, Marx associates the former primarily with *formal* (as opposed to quantitative) equality in the exchange relationship (and the bourgeoise political economist par excellence, Adam Smith, did not insist that commodities should exchange at their [labor] values); Jim responds what Smith thought is indeed a non sequitur, since Marx was dealing with mid-19th century bourgeois thought (especially Ricardo, with Lockean moral overtones, as when the businessman asserts that his property arose from his own labor). Marx himself cited obscure thinkers such as Mercier de la Riviere who represented the crude political economy of his time... Uh, Jim, Mercier de la Riviere published the work cited by Marx in 1767, 9 years before Smith published the Wealth of Nations. And the other contemporary economists Marx cited in his Ch. 5 discussion are Condillac (1776) and Le Trosne (1777). You were saying...? Anyway, my basic point still holds--there is no evident basis for believing that Marx associated any ethical connotations, bourgeoise or otherwise, with the condition that commodities exchange at their respective values. Later, where I wrote In KI, Chapter 5, Marx advances arguments *justifying* his subsequent assumption that commodities exchange at their respective values. He doesn't actually invoke this assumption analytically until the beginning of KI, Ch. 6, [i.e., immediately after the quote above.] that is, *after* he's justified this stipulation. The passage that Jim quotes here is the conclusion of the argument intended to justify this assumption, not the assumption itself. Jim responds I don't think that Marx presents his ideas that way, like some sort of deductive process. As I've said before and for brevity's sake will not repeat at length, that part of CAPITAL should best be seen as written like a mystery. I won't dispute that this part of CAPITAL reads like a mystery to you, Jim. But the fact remains that Marx *is* making a deductive argument here, and he advertises it as such. He isn't simply asserting that surplus value *can* be explained on the basis that commodities exchange at their values, as you suggest; he's insisting that the explanation *must* be made on this basis. This reading is nicely corroborated in the sentence just before the passage you cite from Chapter 5: The transformation of money into capital *has to be developed* on the basis of the immanent laws of the exchange of commodities, in such a way that the starting-point is the exchange of equivalents. [I, 268-9, emphasis added] The claim is reiterated in the final footnote of the chapter, where Marx says If prices actually differ from values, we *must* first reduce the former to the latter, i.e., disregard this situation as an accidental one in order to observe the phenomenon of the formation of capital on the basis of the exchange of commodities in its purity... [emphasis added] Now, clearly Marx isn't saying this assumption has to be made, must be imposed, to satisfy the demands of etiquette, or on ethical grounds, or because somebody will break your legs if you don't; Marx is saying that this conclusion is *logically* entailed by the argument he develops in the chapter. And as I pointed out, this argument is logically invalid. Gil And for what it's worth, as he painstakingly spells out in the final footnote of Chapter 5, Marx justifies this assumption on the basis that price-value disparities are incidental to the existence of surplus value. The warrant he gives for this conclusion, developed at length in the body of Chapter 5, is that price-value disparities are not of themselves *sufficient* to account for the existence of surplus value. I'm quite familiar with that quotation. He doesn't see value/price deviations as contradicting his theory of exploitation. Instead, he ignores them as part of his mode of presentation. One could, with exactly parallel logic, conclude that the presence of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere is incidental to the existence of human life on the planet, since it is not of itself sufficient to account for the existence of human life... no, that's a false analogy, since in CAPITAL volume I, Marx shows that exploitation can exist _despite_ an assumed price/value equality. No-one has shown that life on earth can exist despite a hypothesized lack of oxygen. JD
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BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, MAY 13, 2002: A sharp decline in food prices out-weighed the increase in gasoline and tobacco prices, causing the producer price index to drop 0.2 percent in April, compared with a 1.0 percent increase in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The prices of consumer foods dropped 3.2 percent in April, compared with a 0.6 percent increase in March, BLS said. The so-called core rate of wholesale inflation -- finished goods minus food and energy -- increased 0.1 percent in April. Over the year, the core PPI has risen 0.4 percent (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). Wholesale prices fell 0.2 percent in April, led by the biggest drop in food costs in nearly 3 decades. The decline in the producer price index was a big turnaround from the sharp 1 percent increase registered in March, the Labor Department reported. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the core rate of wholesale inflation rose 0.1 percent for the second straight month (The Washington Post, May 11, page E2). Producer prices fell unexpectedly in April as food costs showed the biggest decline in almost 3 decades and sluggish demand made it harder for companies to charge more, the government reported today. The Producer Price Index, which measures prices paid to factories, farmers, and other suppliers of goods and materials, dropped 0.2 percent after gaining 1 percent in March, the Labor Department said. Excluding food and energy, the index rose 0.1 percent, the 11th consecutive reading of that size or smaller (Bloomberg News, The New York Times, May 11, page B2). April's unexpected decline in U.S. wholesale prices, which includes the biggest drop in food prices in 28 years, suggests inflation is abating even as the economy rebounds. The Labor Department said Friday the producer price index for finished goods fell 0.2 percent, the first decline in 4 months. The drop largely reflected a 3.2 percent fall in food prices and a slowdown in the growth of energy prices: When food and energy items are excluded, the core index rose 0.1 percent, the same rate as in March. Excluding a 3.9 percent increase in tobacco prices, core prices declined 0.1 percent; according to Morgan Stanley (The Wall Street Journal, page A6). Writing on trade unions Mary Ellen Slayter (The Washington Post Career Track feature, page E4) says Although a 1999 survey by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. found that young adults (18 to 34) are twice as likely to think positively about unions than negatively, many young workers don't quite understand how unions work. In her article, she quotes Bureau of Labor Statistics' data, saying ...union members made 15 percent more than nonunion workers in 2001, according to the U.S. Labor Department. On average, union workers made $718 a week in 2001; nonunion workers made $575. One commonly cited complaint (about union membership) is the cost of dues. Most unions set dues as a percentage of pay. Those who make more, pay more, says Slayter. Another common objection is that unions aren't suitable for professionals or intellectual workers, that they are only appropriate for factory workers. White-collar workers generally believe they should negotiate individually based on their talent and skills, not based on where they fall under the union contract. This is one reason why there are fewer union workers today than 10 years ago. In a service economy, individual talents, which are often hard to judge objectively, allow some to advance in their careers faster than others. In 2001, 13.5 percent of wage and salary workers were union members, unchanged from 2000, according to the U.S. Labor Department. This is a significant decline from the high of 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year such statistics were reported. Maintaining a gradual rate of improvement, hiring plans for most industries are stronger for the third quarter than they have been in more than a year, the latest Manpower, Inc. survey shows. It was the second consecutive quarter in which job prospects improved. In its second-quarter survey, Manpower projected a turnaround as many industries pulled out of recession. Manpower's survey of nearly 16,000 firms showed that 27 percent plan to add employees in the third quarter, up by 6 percentage points from the second-quarter reading of 21 percent. Only 8 percent of employers said they plan layoffs for the third quarter, down from 10 percent reporting such plans for the second quarter. Manufacturing employment gains projected by the latest survey are especially encouraging, given the long-running downturn in that sector, Manpower Chairman Jeffrey Joerres said (Daily Labor Report, page A-9; Melissa McCord, Associated Press, http://www.nypost.com/apstories/business/V4788.htm). DUE OUT TOMORROW: College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2001 High School Graduates application/ms-tnef
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diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labor of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not reestablish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labor, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialized production, into socialized property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people. [2] So he modified his crisis expectation into expectation of growing social movement which of course include people's will to resist, survive, and destroy. In other hand, Lenin expected revolution from economic and political crisis. So he insisted let imperial war into civil war. Once he could gain political power-Soviet— he failed social revolution, which require to abolish money. As this historical result, Stalin completes his crisis theory. So It is not surprising that most Marxists believe in crisis theory. But in current global critical practice, its theory will decline. REPLY Melvin P. Men make their own history and this most certainly includes men as willful beings subject to accidental phenomenon, laws of chance and Synchronicity, the cultural heritage that shapes the ideas and assertion of will. Chance and the accidental can be studied as occurring under definite conditions of social life. In my estimate, this reply was not historically ordained or set into motion thousands of years ago waiting for fulfillment. People dream and their individual and collective dreams shape and give force to our social reality. Dream are not determined or rather originate in the mold of production, neither are expectations, although mode of production can give a certain symbolic representation - form to dreams and proscribe the framework of limitation for the realization of expectation. Dreams and expectations predate society and mode of production as such, yet they currently occur under specific conditions and much of these specific conditions are the product of dreams and expectations materialized. In retrospect, the expectations of Marx and Engels concerning the prospect of social revolution reveal themselves to be the willful and wishful thinking of young men who had a powerful dream - vision, of the future rooted in their particular conceptions of the possible. It is precisely the possible that engages the individual and collective mind. Nevertheless, on the basis or rather within the context of European development and intellectual tradition Marx and Engels articulated a vision of a future embracing their understanding of mans developmental processes. The framework of their collective thinking states: that production and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of every social order; that in every society that has appeared in history, the distribution of wealth and with it the division of society into classes or estates are dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. According, the ultimate causes of all social change and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in their growing insight into eternal truths and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. (Anti-Duhring, Theoretical) It has often happened that the words ultimate causes are elevated or misunderstood and the mode of production of material life is treated as a mechanical relationship instead of an interactive relation wherein living
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This is too much, but for a suggestion from a reader in Honolulu's Honolulu Advertiser: Then again, it beats 'retaliate with the military' ideas that have been floated thus far... Fighting terrorism with our checkbooks The nation sat riveted to the television on Sept. 11 as news of terrorist attacks reached homes, offices and schools nationwide. Rage, sadness, fear and helplessness ensued. What could we do? Desperately call friends and family members in New York and D.C.? Sit and watch the television coverage? Send a check to the Red Cross? I say, go shopping. It's obvious that the terrorists were intent on disrupting the biggest, most powerful economy on Earth. Perhaps the terrorists thought they could strike a fatal blow to an economy already injured by the dot-com crash, the layoffs, the so-called downturn. Fatalistic economists say the attacks could push the United States into an official recession. And because our economy is so powerful, we could take the rest of the world down the tubes with us. The only thing that had been keeping us in the black, they tell us, was consumer confidence. We can't afford to have our confidence shaken. The world can't afford it. Citizens were the victims in this act of war, and citizens must be the soldiers fighting back ... with our credit cards and checkbooks. Keep the economy alive. It's the patriotic thing to do. Monique Cole Stephen Philion Lecturer/PhD Candidate Department of Sociology 2424 Maile Way Social Sciences Bldg. # 247 Honolulu, HI 96822
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from the Boston Globe Train stopped in Providence Man arrested not connected to attacks, authorities say PROVIDENCE, R.I. - A man allegedly carrying a knife aboard an Amtrak train was arrested Wednesday, but authorities said he had no apparent connection to this week's terrorist attacks. Train No. 173 heading from Boston to Washington, D.C., was stopped by local authorities in Providence, its passengers were ordered off, and city police arrested the unidentified man. Police said three other men were released after questioning. A man with a long beard was taken in handcuffs from the train station at about 3:20 p.m. The man, who was wearing a green turban, green shirt and dark pants, was put into a Providence police cruiser. In Washington later, FBI Director Robert Mueller said individuals had been detained and questioned but there had been no arrests by investigators probing the terror attacks. Col. Richard Sullivan, the police chief, said Providence police were contacted by Boston police, who said there were some people on board the train they considered suspicious. Providence Mayor Vincent Cianci Jr. said police told him they were looking for as many as four suspects who eluded authorities in Boston. Two of the hijacked planes that crashed Tuesday took off from Boston. I don't know if any of these people have anything to do with the events that happened yesterday, Cianci said. The train was due in Washington at 8:50 p.m. After being stopped for about 90 minutes, it resumed service. Ê Ê Stephen Philion Lecturer/PhD Candidate Department of Sociology 2424 Maile Way Social Sciences Bldg. # 247 Honolulu, HI 96822
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ravi wrote: set pen-l mail postpone terribly sorry about that (and for this email also). that was supposed to go to the list processor, not the list. to not entirely waste this message, here's an interesting piece of news regarding EU investigation of microsoft. --ravi http://news.lycos.com/news/story.asp?section=MyLycospitem=BUSINESS%2DTECH%2DMICROSOFT%2DEU%2DDCrev=20010830pub_tag=REUTG EU Probes Microsoft Use of Media Player by David Lawsky Thursday, August 30, 2001 12:46 a.m. EDT [Reuters] BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission is investigating whether Microsoft Corp is trying to damage rivals by embedding its proprietary audio/video software, Media Player, into its Windows operating system, it said on Thursday. The Commission, announcing an expansion of an earlier investigation into Microsoft, said Media Player cannot be readily removed by computer makers or consumers. It said that places at a disadvantage rivals in the market for watching video and listening to audio over the Web like Real Network's RealPlayer or Apple's QuickTime. The Commission said it is also investigating whether one version of the firm's operating system, Windows 2000, is designed to work better with its own servers than those of rivals. The Commission said it was combining the newer case, in which it issued a formal Statement of Objections, with a similar case covering Windows 98. For now, however, the Commission said it was stopping short of expanding its investigation to cover a new Windows version, XP. A number of firms say that Windows XP excludes them in the same way -- or worse -- than earlier systems did. At this stage the Commission is not conducting an investigation into Windows XP, Commission spokeswoman Amelia Torres said in response to a question at the Commission's daily briefing. No interim measures would be taken against the company while the probe went on. The company expressed confidence it would be cleared by the Commission of any wrongdoing. We are confident that once it has completed its investigation, the European Commission will be assured that we run our business in full compliance with EU law, said Jean Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Microsoft stock was down nearly $3 in morning trading to $57.26 in a weak market. Competition Commissioner Mario Monti said the investigation was necessary to create a fair marketplace in an arena vital to computing and communications. Server networks lie at the heart of the future of the Web and every effort must be made to prevent their monopolization through illegal practices, Monti said in a statement. The Commission also wants to see undistorted competition in the market for media players, he said. Spokeswoman Torres said the Commission's case was unrelated to actions in the United States, where an appeals court ruled unanimously that Microsoft illegally abused its monopoly power. The appeals court threw out a plan to break up the company in part because a lower court judge made procedural errors. Next month in Washington a new judge will consider what actions should be taken to remedy the firm's illegal practices. SERVER COMPETITION Microsoft is competitive but not dominant in the market for inexpensive servers. Servers are computers that help run PC networks, storing files, printing documents, operating Web sites and providing Web access. A large number of servers use one of the Unix family of operating systems, such as Linux, but experts say Microsoft's share has grown steadily, from about half the market to nearly 60 percent. Microsoft designed its systems to work well with Microsoft server software but the Commission said it has withheld necessary information from rivals. It said those who want to use rivals' products must still buy Microsoft servers. If customers choose not to use an all-inclusive Microsoft scenario for PCs and servers, but decide to use competing server products they are forced to bear a double cost, the Commission said. The company's strategy may artificially drive customers toward Microsoft server products, reducing choice to the detriment of the final customer, the Commission said. Media Player is software that permits the viewing of moving pictures or listening to audio, without waiting for it to download first. The Commission said Microsoft is depriving PC manufacturers and final users of a free choice over which products they want to have on their PCs, especially as there are no ready technical means to remove or uninstall the Media Player. John Frank, an associate general counsel with Microsoft in Paris, said his firm's Media Player uses a format that is far more open than our competitors due to our broad licensing. He said it was helpful for programmers to have Media Player built into the system.
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Anti-racism Conference Expected to Reach Agreement on Slavery Compensation: Official Xinhua News Agency 2001-08-14 Sipho Pityana, director-general of the South African Foreign Affairs Department, said on Tuesday he was certain the World Conference Against Racism would find an agreement on the issue of apology and compensation for slavery and colonialism. The divide between the different parties has been narrowed substantially, he told reporters in Pretoria, briefing them on the outcome of the third preparatory committee meeting recently held in Geneva, Switzerland. If we had more time in Geneva, we would probably have agreed on more issues. On one of the most difficult issues, that of the reparation and compensation for slavery, we came very close to an agreement, he said. The United States earlier threatened it would not attend the conference if the issue of reparation for slavery and that of equating Zionism with racism were put on the agenda. On the latter issue the preparatory committee had agreed to abide by a decision of the United Nations not to equate Zionism with racism, Pityana said. However, the conference still had to find a way to reflect on the situation in the Middle East in a way acceptable to all parties concerned, he added. According to the director-general, as far as he knew, the U.S. government was sending a delegation of about 50 people to the Durban conference, which will be held from August 31 to September 7. The preparatory committee invited and encouraged all countries to take part in the conference, but did not try to persuade anyoneto do so, Pityana said. Those gathering in Durban had different views which they could express there. If all agreed, there would be no need for such a conference, he explained. At the Geneva meeting, 60 of the 131 paragraphs of the declaration and 85 of the 106 paragraphs of the program of action for the conference were adopted. The rest remained to be resolved,according to Pityana. But Pityana said the groundwork done so far had laid a good basis to reach agreement at the conference. We are looking forward to a successful conference, he said. The two issues dogging the process were that of the Middle Eastand of slavery and colonialism. Pityana said there was a reluctance from former colonial powersto extend an apology for slavery and colonialism on the grounds ofthe legal implications, as well as implications for compensation and reparation. In a so-called non-paper -- a document which could be withdrawnif agreement is not reached on it -- the African countries excluded demands for individual compensation, but elaborated on trans- national compensation. The African non-paper played a central role in bringing partiestogether, Pityana said. The African bloc, he said, wanted an acknowledgment that slavery, slave trade and colonialism played an important part in laying the foundation for the kinds of racial discrimination stillseen today. Colonialism, which was often down-played, involved the take-over of countries, dispossessing and displacing people and their regimes, segregating communities and creating inequality among them, he said. The legacy of this persists, Pityana noted, adding that colonialism was also the take-over of resources which contributed to the enrichment of the developed North. It is not just about aid; but about altering the structural relations between Africa and the developed world, he said. As it now stood, the former colonial powers were willing to express themselves in language of regret and remorse, in what cameclose to an apology, the South African official said, adding the debate is whether that constitutes sufficient apology. That debatewill continue in Durban. Another debate is on whether slavery, slave trade and colonialism can be regarded as crimes against humanity. Some hold the view that at the time these actions were committed, they were not regarded as such, but now they are. I am certain we will reach agreement on all of these issues, Pityana said.
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I am still cut off from my normal access to e-mail. I was thinking this morning about what would happen in the power of the US relative to the IMF and World Bank were reduced by 99%. What would a structural adjustment plan for the US look like? Also, I thought that one good thing about the US abrogating treaties was that it would make retreat from WTO, NAFTA, etc. easier. Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
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Mark: Did you read them? I don't imagine any of us have read them yet. Just going by your publicists' synopsis. Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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so if Zhirinovsky says it's bad, it must be good? I can think of worse rules of thumb. But what I find so interesting here is how the Mark of fiction and the Mark of social analysis so closely follow each there. Why it is almost down right lit-crit pomo, to invoke a much overused stereotype. It makes you wonder: is the Mark of fiction really the Mark of social analysis, or is the Mark of social analysis really the Mark of fiction? Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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Leo, what on earth are you trying to say? I has thought that the parallels between the oil/energy crises of your novels and the imminent energy crisis you have been predicting here were pretty obvious. Seems like fiction and social analysis seem to seamlessly fade into each other... Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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John Landon wrote: [...] I have made no inductive leap, because I have read old Popper and don't use historical law theory, or predictions of the future. Therefore the status of these intervals is analogous to, say, the economic cycle. We look backward, measure economic facts, and see a periodicity in them. [] Every time you assume that a periodic occurrence observed in past events will continue in the future, you've made an inductive leap. In fact, maybe it's not a leap. Maybe it's just a step. I prefer to say leap, however. [...] Take a long close look at Classical antiquity ca. -600 plus and minus, by my method. It will surprise you. Really surprise you. Darwin-style thinking is so far off it isn't funny. [...] What _is_ your method? I'm begging you. Please explain it. I don't understand it. What is Darwin-style thinking? I honestly don't know what you mean. [...] the current Darwin regime is nosediving. What is the Darwin regime? Is that the same as Darwin-style thinking? By nosediving, are you suggesting that the theory of evolution is dropping in popular acceptance? Or that the theory of evolution is in a Kuhnian crisis? Thanks. Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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--- Forwarded message follows --- From: Paul Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date sent: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 22:44:09 -0500 Subject:(Fwd) Fwd: No Subject Priority: norma Bush should pull troops from Balkans By Marjorie Cohn Despite President George W, BushÄôs rhetoric about withdrawing our forces from the Balkans, we can expect a strong U.S presence there. Why? ItÄôs all about the transportation of massive oil resources from the Caspian Sea through the Balkans, maintaining U.S. hegemony in the region. Although NATO ostensibly bombed Yugoslavia to stop ethnic cleansing, the bombing was actually part of a strategic containment, to keep the region safe for the Trans-Balkan oil pipeline that will transport Caspian Sea oil through Macedonia and Albania. The pipeline is slated to carry 750,000 barrels a day, worth about $600 million at the current prices. Cooperation of the Albanians with the pipeline project was likely contingent on the U.S. helping them wrest control of Kosovo from the Serbs. The U.S. seeks to contain Macedonia as well supporting both sides in the conflagration there. Military Professional Resources International, a mercenary company on contract to the Pentagon, has trained both the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Macedonian army. MPRI also supplied and trained the Croatian army in 1994 and 1995 before the Croatians cleansed more than 100,000 Serbs from Krajina region. The bombing was not aimed at ethnic cleansing. It was part of U.S-run NATOÄôs eastward expansion as a counterweight to Russia, which wants the Caspian oil pipeline to run through its territory. NATO, created during the Cold War to protect Western Europe from the Soviets, should have disbanded after the breakup of the USSR. But a 1992 draft of the PentagonÄôs Defense Planning Guidance continued U.S. leadership in NATO by Äúdiscouraging the advanced industrialized nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.Äù Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said, if we decide to expand NATO, Äú we should not fear that Russia will object; we will do it because it is in our national interestÄù. Bush is walking a delicate tightrope. He calls for Europe to do the grunt work in the Balkans, but also wants to prevent European Union to become more powerful than the U.S.-led NATO. A U.S. Army officer stationed in Bosnia, speaking anonymously to The Los Angeles Times, observed dryly, Äú The only thing the Europeans need us Americans is the leadershipÄù. The United States has invested too much into the region to pull out. After the NATO bombing campaign, The United States spent $36.6 million to build Camp Bondsteel in southern Kosovo. The largest military base constructed since the Vietnam, Bondsteel was built by the Brown Root Division of Halliburton, the world biggest oil service corporation, which was run by Richard Cheney before he was tapped for vice president. NATOÄôs bombs, never sanctioned by the United Nations, were not ÄúhumanitarianÄù intervention. The alleged mass graves were never found by the FBI, and the 10,000 to 11,000 bodies NATO touted turned out to number about 2,000 to 3,000 mostly ion KLA strongholds. Even the Marine Corps Gazette concluded after the bombing That the Äúresulting deaths of thousands of Serbian soldiers, civilians and Kosovar Albanians can hardly be viewed as humanitarianism.Äù It is the purview of the United Nations, not the United States, to authorize humanitarian intervention. If the United States really wanted to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Yugoslavia, it would encourage the International Monetary Fund to forgive $14 billion in loans from prior regimes, finance reparations to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by its bombs, and remove U.S. troops from the region. Marjorie Cohn is the associate professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. _ Dr. Jovan Jovanovich, Professor of Physics (retired and adjunct) Office: Physics Department, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Man., Canada R3T 2N2 Phone: (204) 474-6201 Fax: (204) 474-7622 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home: 66 Fordham Bay, Winnipeg, Man., Canada R3T 3B7 Phone/Fax: (204) 269-2255 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ --- End of forwarded message --- --- End of forwarded message ---
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Is this Aristotle or Proyect? Worms and spiders are insects? Computer science - A Biology - F Within insects, you have worms, spiders, moths, etc.
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Below is a review I just published in the Jan 2001 BLS' "Monthly Labor Review." Gene Coyle Work-time reduction Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet. By Anders Hayden. New York, St. Martins Press, 2000, 234 pp. $65, cloth; $22.50, paper. Canadian author Anders Hayden adds a powerful new dimension to the array of arguments for reducing hours of work. Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet stands out for that reason from the recent stream of books advocating cutting the hours of work. Hayden shares the concerns of many writersjob creation, improved quality of life for the employed, balancing work and family, and equity between North and Southbut adds a compelling environmental basis for cutting working time. It is among the very best books on the subject of working time. Many recent books have offered work-time reduction as a single solution for multiple problems. Unemployment, declining quality of life, and stress on the family and individuals have each been the focus of books advocating cutting hours of work. Haydens is a more encompassing vision, taking in all these issues and more, and his voice adds a rich new dimension to the symphony. The book focuses on the role of reducing time in achieving ecologically sustainable development, addressing at the same time equity between the North and the South. Hayden demonstrates a wide-ranging command of the multiple issues that reduction of working time can address, and adds a mastery of the literature. Hayden begins by recalling that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have had two motives for a reduction in working time, getting more hours away from work, and creating more jobs through a better distribution of the available work. These remain every bit as pertinent, he says, but this focus is on the ecological gains to be achieved by work-time reduction. The stress that consumption in the North puts on the earths ecology is the main concern of the book, and Hayden develops a powerful thesis to address it. Acknowledging a rift in the environmental community about how to deal with ecological problems, Hayden draws a distinction between two camps"sufficiency" and "efficiency." The latter group, he argues, believes that environmental impacts can be reduced by better use of inputs, so that material sacrifice is unnecessary, and unlimited economic growth is possible. In contrast, the "sufficiency" camp of the green movement, to which Hayden clearly belongs, believes that reducing inputs per unit of goods and services, while good in itself, must ultimately fail to save the earth. He asserts that "although the ecological crisis does clearly call for a more efficient use of non-human nature, this response has serious limitations. Growth in GNP without input growth is little more than a theoretical possibility at present, and in any case zero input growth is not enough. Significant reductions in input in the North are necessary." The author argues that achieving that end can come through reductions in working time. Make no mistake, this book is about work-time reduction, though sparing the earth is a main goal. The headings of the remaining chapters make the books scope clear: "Working Less, Consuming Less, and Living More"; "Work-time Reduction and an Expansionary Vision"; "Why Its So Hard to Work Less"; "Work-time Policy and Practice, North and South"; "Europes New Movement for Work-time Reduction"; and "With or without Loss of Pay? With or without Revolution?" It is outside the scope of the book to provide a history of the struggle for the shorter work dayfor that, in the United States, see Roediger and Foners Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (pp. 44?49.) But Hayden does trace some important voices who have spoken out for work-time reduction over the past two centuries. This enriches his argument and provides a brief background for the reader new to the issue of work-time reduction. For readers more conversant with the issue, the long chapter on steps taken by European countries for reducing hours of work will be very useful, as it goes into great detail on what is happening now outside the United States. France, where a series of laws over the past 10 years have made real changes in work time, gets 11 pages of reporting. Germany, where changes have come more through collective bargaining, also gets full coverage, as do the Netherlands, Denmark, and other European countries. In short, Sharing the Work is engaging reading for both specialists and neophytes. And as concern with global warming takes its place on the international agenda, Haydens book provides an input to the discussion from a di
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With your growing CV, you should apply for the City College job! David From: Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Pen-L Pen-l [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:8912] No subject was specified. Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:30:08 -0800 Below is a review I just published in the Jan 2001 BLS' "Monthly Labor Review." Gene Coyle Work-time reduction Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet. By Anders Hayden. New York, St. MartinÕs Press, 2000, 234 pp. $65, cloth; $22.50, paper. Canadian author Anders Hayden adds a powerful new dimension to the array of arguments for reducing hours of work. Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet stands out for that reason from the recent stream of books advocating cutting the hours of work. Hayden shares the concerns of many writersÑjob creation, improved quality of life for the employed, balancing work and family, and equity between North and SouthÑbut adds a compelling environmental basis for cutting working time. It is among the very best books on the subject of working time. Many recent books have offered work-time reduction as a single solution for multiple problems. Unemployment, declining quality of life, and stress on the family and individuals have each been the focus of books advocating cutting hours of work. HaydenÕs is a more encompassing vision, taking in all these issues and more, and his voice adds a rich new dimension to the symphony. The book focuses on the role of reducing time in achieving ecologically sustainable development, addressing at the same time equity between the North and the South. Hayden demonstrates a wide-ranging command of the multiple issues that reduction of working time can address, and adds a mastery of the literature. Hayden begins by recalling that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have had two motives for a reduction in working time, getting more hours away from work, and creating more jobs through a better distribution of the available work. These remain every bit as pertinent, he says, but this focus is on the ecological gains to be achieved by work-time reduction. The stress that consumption in the North puts on the earthÕs ecology is the main concern of the book, and Hayden develops a powerful thesis to address it. Acknowledging a rift in the environmental community about how to deal with ecological problems, Hayden draws a distinction between two campsÑ"sufficiency" and "efficiency." The latter group, he argues, believes that environmental impacts can be reduced by better use of inputs, so that material sacrifice is unnecessary, and unlimited economic growth is possible. In contrast, the "sufficiency" camp of the green movement, to which Hayden clearly belongs, believes that reducing inputs per unit of goods and services, while good in itself, must ultimately fail to save the earth. He asserts that "although the ecological crisis does clearly call for a more efficient use of non-human nature, this response has serious limitations. Growth in GNP without input growth is little more than a theoretical possibility at present, and in any case zero input growth is not enough. Significant reductions in input in the North are necessary." The author argues that achieving that end can come through reductions in working time. Make no mistake, this book is about work-time reduction, though sparing the earth is a main goal. The headings of the remaining chapters make the bookÕs scope clear: "Working Less, Consuming Less, and Living More"; "Work-time Reduction and an Expansionary Vision"; "Why ItÕs So Hard to Work Less"; "Work-time Policy and Practice, North and South"; "EuropeÕs New Movement for Work-time Reduction"; and "With or without Loss of Pay? With or without Revolution?" It is outside the scope of the book to provide a history of the struggle for the shorter work dayÑfor that, in the United States, see Roediger and FonerÕs Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (pp. 44?49.) But Hayden does trace some important voices who have spoken out for work-time reduction over the past two centuries. This enriches his argument and provides a brief background for the reader new to the issue of work-time reduction. For readers more conversant with the issue, the long chapter on steps taken by European countries for reducing hours of work will be very useful, as it goes into great detail on what is happening now outside the United States. France, where a series of laws over the past 10 years have made real changes in work time, gets 11 pages of reporting. Germany, where changes have come more through collective bargaining, also gets full coverage, as do the Netherlands, De
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I wrote: One of the reason why economics is bombarded by so much worthless research is because people do it simply to climb up the academic ladder rather than because they're genuinely interested in it. Saith Ian: Isn't it more accurate to say that economists "bombard" one another with useless theory driven facts because they [male bashing alert] enjoy setting up arguments in order to try and win them? The term academic ladder says it all. Productive dialogue/multilogue is rare, esp. in the US 'cause the king of the hill model of communication is so internalized. In my experience, most female academics have totally been acculturated. Maybe as the female/male ratio rises, the nature of academia will change, but I haven't seen that yet. Maybe I'm excessively pessimistic. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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One of the reason why economics is bombarded by so much worthless research is because people do it simply to climb up the academic ladder rather than because they're genuinely interested in it. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine * Isn't it more accurate to say that economists "bombard" one another with useless theory driven facts because they [male bashing alert] enjoy setting up arguments in order to try and win them? The term academic ladder says it all. Productive dialogue/multilogue is rare, esp. in the US 'cause the king of the hill model of communication is so internalized. As for interdisciplinary dialogue...political ecology for 100 please, Alex. Ian
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i'll be back armed with the collective wisdom of Friedman and LaRouche to roll back the Red Tide at PEN-L. norm -Original Message- From: Rob Schaap [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, December 11, 2000 12:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:6010] Re: still trying to unsub Whatever made you think we'd let a sleeper within the trenches and fortifications of the bourgeoisie, the very seat of the state apparatus, leave us, comrade Mikalac? To quote a great revolutionary anthem: you can check out any time you like but you can never leave. MWAUHAHAHA! Love and reeducation, Comrade Commissar Rob. still getting PEN-L posts. moderator or poster: please tell me how to unsub. also, how to sub again next year. have a nice holiday season. thx, norm
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thx, charles, for the lenin comments on Marx. i've printed and collected a bunch of poster comments like yours, printed a bunch of essays from louis's marxmail last night and ordered about 20 books on the subject via the internet. also, i started to read about marxism in some philosophy books that i have at home over the last weekend. my intent is to put all other reading aside for the time being and concentrate on my "unfinished business" of understanding the marxist and socialist positions in depth. i'll be taking my mass of reading material with me over a 10 day Xmas vacation when i can develop a large part of my time to this subject. when i sub back onto pen-l on 1/2, (i'm unsubbing on 12/22) be prepared for lots of questions! norm -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 2:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:5267] RE: Re: Marxism-Socialism-Capitalism reading list (rev A) (historical laws? you gotta show me!) [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/01/00 01:51PM norm: "no, but " we're reasoning by analogy here and therefore we have to be careful. when i compare two supposedly identical, controlled scientific or social scientific experiments that test a single and simple hypothesis, it is easy for me to see whether or not the analogy between the two tests is valid and therefore that they can be declared "identical" for supplying evidence for a hypothesis. in contrast, there are few historical analogies that i would accept as analogous enough to submit as sufficidnt evidence for testing a hypothesis about forecasting human behavior. i'd have to be shown the specific ones before giving my opinion, of course. your extract of Marxian "dialectic" does not do that, but i recognize that it is out of context and i have the further disadvantage of being unfamiliar with the terminology as described below. maybe on further study i'll change my mind. hence, my "short" reading list. CB: Here's a reply from Karl M. to the epistemological issues you raise. Interestingly, with historical science, abstraction must substitute for artificial experimentation. But ultimately, Marx is famous for demanding that practice must be the test of theory ( will get the theses on Feuerbach for you). Karl Marx Capital Volume One 1867 PREFACE TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION -clip- Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. [1] The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the pr! oduct of labour or value-form of the commodity is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy. ( my comments should not really be surprising. think of all the spilled ink over various "justifications" for social forecasting that failed. why? because the analogies weren't worth much. another problem with "interpreting" historical events is that, unlike a controlled scientific experiment, historical events have multiple causes. that is what makes reading polemical writers (e.g., Chomsky) so frustrating for me. in the case of Chomsky, whose 5 books i have i'm now re-reading for closer scrutiny, his facts are impeccable, but he chooses the causes among a multitude of causes for historical events that suit his conclusions. same with Howard Zinn in his People's History, IMO. that's standard practice for ideologues, of course, but it's unsat for me in arriving at my beliefs. CB: When you say "too abstract for me", do you mean you don't use abstractions or the terminology is unfamiliar to you ? --- norm: i mean the ter
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/04/00 07:52AM thx, charles, for the lenin comments on Marx. i've printed and collected a bunch of poster comments like yours, printed a bunch of essays from louis's marxmail last night and ordered about 20 books on the subject via the internet. also, i started to read about marxism in some philosophy books that i have at home over the last weekend. my intent is to put all other reading aside for the time being and concentrate on my "unfinished business" of understanding the marxist and socialist positions in depth. i'll be taking my mass of reading material with me over a 10 day Xmas vacation when i can develop a large part of my time to this subject. when i sub back onto pen-l on 1/2, (i'm unsubbing on 12/22) be prepared for lots of questions! norm ((( CB: Nice going , Norm. Did anyone mention _Value, Price and Profit_ yet ? It was explicitly a popular lecture by Karl Marx on the fundamental's of his approach to political economy.
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BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2000: A new study of Internet use by job seekers shows that in 1998, about 15 percent of all unemployed people actively looking for new jobs turned to various World Wide Web sites in conducting their search. About 7 percent of employed persons had used the Internet to look for a new job in 1998, a higher proportion than shown in earlier studies of traditional job-search methods, according to economists Peter Kuhn and Mikal Skuterud in an article published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The economists find little impact so far of increasing use of the Internet on public employment agencies (Daily Labor Report, page A-3. Text of the article, "Job Search Methods: Internet vs. Traditional", from the October 2000 issue of BLS's "Monthly Labor Review" is on page E-1. Kuhn is described as professor of economics, Department of Economics, University of California at Santa Barbara. Skuterud is described as a graduate student, Department of Economics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). Employees can look forward to about as much paid time off this Christmas and New Year's season as last, according to the Bureau of National Affairs' latest annual survey of year-end holiday plans. Almost half of the responding employers (49 percent) will grant 3 or more paid days off for the holiday season this year, little changed from 50 percent in 1999-2000, when the national holidays fell on Saturdays, and slightly more than the 47 percent of employers in 1995-96, when Christmas and New Year's landed on Mondays. Employers' holiday scheduling continues to be slightly more conservative than a decade ago, when, in 1989-90, a year when the national holidays also fell on Monday, 6 out of 10 firms gave workers at least 3 paid days (Daily Labor Report, page B-1). "While doing research on teenagers a few years ago, I left a question on an Internet message board, asking young people who work about their on-the-job experiences. The replies were overwhelmingly positive," writes Thomas Hine, author of "The rise and Fall of the American Teenager" recently published by HarperPerennial, in The Washington Post (November 26, page B5). But the arrangement has less appealing and sometimes serious consequences, which even the most enthusiastic student workers and their parents should consider, Hine continues. These young people come largely from families with middle class incomes or better, in which parents make few demands on their children's earnings. But these high school students are putting in long part-time hours and constitute a distinct American working class, one that receives low wages and few benefits. According to a 1999 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly a quarter of 14-year-olds and 38 percent of 15-year-olds have regular scheduled employment (as opposed to casual baby-sitting or yard work) during the school year. By the time they are seniors, another BLS study found, 73 percent of young people work at least part of the school year. A few of these young people, the ones who get featured in news stories, are making good money in challenging high-tech and Internet jobs. But the great majority are working for low wages, doing just about what you would expect. The top three jobs for boys, according to BLS, are cook, janitor and food preparers. For girls, they are cashier, waitress, and office clerk. These jobs may help teens understand the value of work, but they have little intellectual content, with electronic cash registers and scanners, even cashiers hardly have to deal with numbers. The average employed American high school student works 17 hours at week during the academic year. (Partly because of the proximity of jobs, the students who work the most tend to come from higher-income areas). During the holiday season, many young people find themselves under pressure from their supervisors to work extra hours. And since school vacations don't start until the shopping season is nearly over, many students will be juggling final exams, term papers, and a heavier work schedule. As the ranks of the rich grow, the business of "wealth management" is reaping huge rewards, with fat fees and loyal customers, says The Washington Post (November 26, page H1). The nation's 18.4 million affluent households -- defined as those with an annual income of $100,000 or with a net work of at least $500,000, not including primary residence -- control 80 percent, or $14.6 trillion of the estimated $18.1 trillion in investable assets in the country, according to the Spectrem Group, a research and consulting firm specializing in affluent markets. Millionaires, a subset of the affluent group, have more than doubled in the United States since 1994, to more than 7 million households, according to Spectrem. And "pentamillionaires," the name bankers give to those with net worth of at least $5 million,
Re: On the subject of Cuba...
Anthony, I believe one of the biggest shortagers is of Tylenol (or its generic alternative.) We are also going to Cuba shortly, strictly for a holiday, but are taking soap, childrens paper, crayons, pencils and such as well as medications. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Date sent: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 20:37:17 -0800 (PST) From: "Anthony D'Costa" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:4590] On the subject of Cuba... Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] One of my colleagues sent this to campus line... xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of Washington Campus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx I'm travelling to Cuba as a member of a People to People Medical Initiative, leaving the U.S. on December 2nd. Over the counter medications are in short supply there, so I will be carrying some with me. If anyone would like to contribute sealed, over the counter meds (aspirin, ibuprophin, baby and children's vitamins, adult vitamins, etc.) please let me know, and I'll arrange to collect them. Thanks!
On the subject of Cuba...
One of my colleagues sent this to campus line... xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx I'm travelling to Cuba as a member of a People to People Medical Initiative, leaving the U.S. on December 2nd. Over the counter medications are in short supply there, so I will be carrying some with me. If anyone would like to contribute sealed, over the counter meds (aspirin, ibuprophin, baby and children's vitamins, adult vitamins, etc.) please let me know, and I'll arrange to collect them. Thanks!
Re: Re: The Subject is Capital
A quick rant, Reverend Tom ... by way of testimony from the congregation. As Charlie Andrews so pungently summarises the whole sad business, "By living his life the worker produces his capacity to work." The raison d'etre of the dispossessed is to produce commodities - 'his' being is not an end in itself (which means the order's apologists do not have Kant's categorical imperative available to them when they spout that freedom-lovin' moralism in their defence) but a means to the end of accumulation. The one thing - the ONE thing - that accumulation cannot proffer the worker is the only thing a life needs to be itself: the possession of time. John Stuart Mill had an inkling of this when he wrote that line Marx liked enough to use: "It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." It ain't the time you take to make something; it's the socially necessary time - the time a competing owner of plant would need to pay for to have the thing made. As Marx avers here (chapter 15), technology cannot give us time because, under capitalism, its raison d'etre is to produce surplus value. So technology appears on the scene as a thing made of death, purchased with death to bring death. And if ever the 'behind-our-backness' of that which drives us needs verification, it's in the dominant discourse of our time. As we all demonstrably have ever less of the very thing that defines life itself, we have convinced ourselves we are wealthier than any generation in human history. So whatever 'wealth' is, it is not life. The dead things which comprise 'wealth' are, each and every one, physical manifestations of living denied. Ergo, the opportunity cost of capitalism is life. Ergo, capitalism is murder. The traditional left has sought to affirm labour. The point is to abolish it. Neat thesis, Reverend Tom!'The standpoint of the old leftism is the distribution of death and dead things; the standpoint of the new is the freedom to live human lives', eh? Signing up for a spot on the choir, Rob.
Re: Re: Re: The Subject is Capital
Being tone deaf, I'd like to stand with the choir and lip-synch. Gene Coyle Rob Schaap wrote: A quick rant, Reverend Tom ... by way of testimony from the congregation. As Charlie Andrews so pungently summarises the whole sad business, "By living his life the worker produces his capacity to work." The raison d'etre of the dispossessed is to produce commodities - 'his' being is not an end in itself (which means the order's apologists do not have Kant's categorical imperative available to them when they spout that freedom-lovin' moralism in their defence) but a means to the end of accumulation. The one thing - the ONE thing - that accumulation cannot proffer the worker is the only thing a life needs to be itself: the possession of time. John Stuart Mill had an inkling of this when he wrote that line Marx liked enough to use: "It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." It ain't the time you take to make something; it's the socially necessary time - the time a competing owner of plant would need to pay for to have the thing made. As Marx avers here (chapter 15), technology cannot give us time because, under capitalism, its raison d'etre is to produce surplus value. So technology appears on the scene as a thing made of death, purchased with death to bring death. And if ever the 'behind-our-backness' of that which drives us needs verification, it's in the dominant discourse of our time. As we all demonstrably have ever less of the very thing that defines life itself, we have convinced ourselves we are wealthier than any generation in human history. So whatever 'wealth' is, it is not life. The dead things which comprise 'wealth' are, each and every one, physical manifestations of living denied. Ergo, the opportunity cost of capitalism is life. Ergo, capitalism is murder. The traditional left has sought to affirm labour. The point is to abolish it. Neat thesis, Reverend Tom!'The standpoint of the old leftism is the distribution of death and dead things; the standpoint of the new is the freedom to live human lives', eh? Signing up for a spot on the choir, Rob.
Re: Re: The Subject is Capital
At 06:21 06-11-00, you wrote: I've been floundering around for twenty years or so trying to work out a program -- not a vision, not a theoretical critique but a program. Of course a program needs to be grounded theoretically (here) and it needs to project a vision of where its going (there). One of the things that has encouraged me in this undertaking is that I often encounter expressions of sheer incomprehension (from knowledgeable people) just at the moments when I feel I have achieved greatest lucidity. That suggests to me that the behind our backedness of it all is itself systemic, not arbitrary. Tom, I'd like to hear just how you consider systemic in this case to be non-arbitrary. Since it ain't necessarily so. cheers, Joanna
Re: The Subject is Capital
Hey, Tom - I've read this one! Won't pretend I'm across all of it, but I certainly felt breathlessly close to something big while I had my beak buried in it. So what are we talking about? That we should disagree with Panglosses and those who belabour us with all that a priori difference stuff? That there is an historical subject, and that it's the mediating structure by which 'abstract labour' (the category that makes capitalism capitalism, and has us regulated and driven from 'behind our backs') messes with every bit of real stuff we do? I know I'm gonna want to talk about this, Tom. Coz it's the sort of stuff about which I want to find out what I think. But I'm not exactly sure where we're starting here ... critiquing shonky ahistorical conceptions of the 'labour' category and their sadly go-nowhere implications, or fashioning a convincing bit of theoretical room for fundamental social change? You go first, and I'll try to be useful! All the best, Rob. Two great quotes from Time, Labor and Social Domination (p. 80). I would be more than happy to discuss, if anyone else is interested: ". . . those positions that assert the existence of a totality only to affirm it, on the one hand, and those that recognize that the realization of a social totality would be inimical to emancipation and therefore deny its very existence, on the other are antinomically related. Both sorts of positions are one-sided, for both posit, in opposed ways, a transhistorical identity between what is and what should be." "In Hegel, totality unfolds as the realization of the Subject; in traditional Marxism, this becomes the realization of the proletariat as the concrete Subject. In Marx's critique, totality is grounded as historically specific, and unfolds in a manner that points to the possibility of its abolition." Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
The Subject is Capital
Two great quotes from Time, Labor and Social Domination (p. 80). I would be more than happy to discuss, if anyone else is interested: ". . . those positions that assert the existence of a totality only to affirm it, on the one hand, and those that recognize that the realization of a social totality would be inimical to emancipation and therefore deny its very existence, on the other are antinomically related. Both sorts of positions are one-sided, for both posit, in opposed ways, a transhistorical identity between what is and what should be." "In Hegel, totality unfolds as the realization of the Subject; in traditional Marxism, this becomes the realization of the proletariat as the concrete Subject. In Marx's critique, totality is grounded as historically specific, and unfolds in a manner that points to the possibility of its abolition." Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: The Subject is Capital
Timework Web wrote: Two great quotes from Time, Labor and Social Domination (p. 80). I would be more than happy to discuss, if anyone else is interested: Plunge ahead see what happens. Carrol
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I am not sure when Michael Hoover and I discovered that we shared a passion for Hong Kong cinema but it probably dates back to the time of the wild and woolly days on the original Marxism list when I announced in the middle of a fight with some sectarians that I had perfected the drunken Tai-Chi Marxist style of polemics, inspired by the great Jackie Chan movie. Shortly thereafter Michael informed me that he had begun work on what would turn out to be the definitive study of Hong Kong cinema. Written with Lisa Stokes, who teaches with Michael at Seminole Community College in Orblando, Florida, "City on Fire" is sensitive to both the esthetic and socio-political side of what appeared to be a cult phenomenon. Their exploration of the genre is a virtual guidebook for how Marxists can shed light on popular culture. Indeed, the book convinces you that this is not a cult phenomenon at all, but one of the more important contributions to film art in the 20th century that deserves to stand side by side with Italian neorealism or American silent movie comedies of the Chaplin era. A Hong Kong movie festival in NYC last weekend prompted me to give Michael a call and share impressions. It was the first time I had spoken to him since his trip to NYC last year promoting "City on Fire". To make sure he wouldn't prejudice me against any of the films I would be seeing, he told me that he would reserve judgement until I spoke to him on Sunday after the festival was finished. As it turned out--not surprisingly--we were both big fans of the films I was to see. Before giving you a brief overview of what I saw, it would be useful to give you a flavor of the Hoover-Stokes oeuvre, which mixes together in bravura fashion insights into the art-form with knowing references to the Marxist classics: "Chang Chehs One Armed Swordsman (1967) is generally acknowledged as the movie that launched the 1970s martial arts phenomenon. While the films title announces that this is a swordplay movie nothing new in itself the heros disability (his sins jealous daughter has chopped off his right arm) produces a different type of character. Forced to undergo a strict and tough rehabilitative training program, the protagonist (Jimmy Wang-Yu) becomes a lean mean fighting machine with a blade. Notably brutal for its time, Changs picture ushered in an era of the self-reliant individualist that, according to Sek Kei, simultaneously destroyed the image of the weak Chinese male by featuring beefcake heroes in adventure and violence. Within a few years, flying fu swordplay flicks gave way to kung fu movies. The transfiguration of the martial hero from a mythic character endowed with magical powers to a mortal fighter engaged in personal hand-to-hand combat was consonant with the post-World War II generations economic materialism as well as with its growing suspicion of traditional values. Both more individualistic and competitive, the 1970s variant expressed capitalist modernity, what Engels called 'a battle of life and death ... fought not between the different classes of society only, but also between the individual members of these classes. Each is in the way of the other, and each seeks to crowd out all who are in his way, and to put himself in their place.'" The film festival was organized by something called Subway Cinema, a collective of New Yorkers who sought to maintain a venue for Hong Kong movies after the closing of the legendary Music Palace in Chinatown. Because of the emergence of home videos and changing immigration patterns, the theater could no longer stay in business. This was the only theater in NYC in which smoking was tolerated and where soy milk and dried squid could be purchased at the concession stand. The movie industry in Hong Kong seemed to be on the downward spiral as well. When Michael and Lisa spoke to an audience last year at the Anthology of Film Archives, where the festival was being held, they worried about the viability of the industry in face of the Asian financial crisis. As it turns out, the evidence of the films shown at the festival last weekend points to the artistic health of the industry, even if belt-tightening might result in fewer films being produced. All of the films being shown dated from 1997 and later. They were all produced by Milkyway Studios, which operates within the stylistic parameters of the genre while pushing it to the limit. 1. EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED Directed by Patrick Yau, this film is a cops-and-robbers yarn set on the streets of Hong Kong. There are two gangs being pursued. One from Hong Kong and the other just arrived from the mainland and regarded as harmless amateurs by comparison. There is a memorable scene in which the top cop gets a confession out of one of the mainland criminals by softening him up with a hot meal (he hasn't eaten in over a day.) He has been driven to crime by economic necessity. No longer able to farm, nor support his wife and 8 children, he
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From a Marxist piont of view, Steven Rosenthal comrade responds to defenders of over-population thesis, one them being, I may include, _Bartlett._.. Mine - I agree with most of what Andy and Mine have said during the debate about population. The problems of the world today are due to capitalism, not to overpopulation. During the past week, the New York Times ran several stories that substantiate this point. First, U.S. president Clinton has been unable to get European government leaders to agree with any of the military or economic proposals he brought with him on his current trip. The Europeans want the U.S. to discontinue its $5 billion a year tax subsidy to exporting US corporations. The Europeans don't want the U.S. to break the anti-missile treaty by embarking on a missile shield for protection against "rogue states." The U.S. wants Europeans (especially Germany) to increase military spending but only within a NATO framework led by the U.S., while Europeans want to take steps toward building a more independent military force. These developments illustrate the continued development of inter-imperialist rivalry. Second, the World Bank released a report acknowledging the immense decline in living standards in sub-Saharan Africa during the last decades of the 20th century. They noted that, even if some progress is made in checking the AIDS epidemic in Africa, which accounts for some 70% of all AIDS cases worldwide, the epidemic will reduce life expectancy by 20 years. The World Bank acknowledged that its policies and those of the IMF have contributed to some extent to the worsening conditions. Nothing more profoundly illustrates the devastating effect of racism in the world capitalist system. Imperialist exploitation of Africa, with the collusion of local capitalist elites in African countries, is destroying more lives in Africa today than during the height of the slave trade. A note of clarification here: I'm not suggesting that the AIDS virus was created by imperialists to inflict genocide on Africans. It is possible that the AIDS virus crossed over into the human population during imperialist experimental programs in sub-Saharan Africa during the early or middle part of the 20th century. What is more important, however, is that the epidemic has been shaped by contemporary imperialism and capitalism in Africa. Migrant labor, prostitution and sex slavery, wars and the creation of large populations of refugees, the decline of already small health budgets at the insistence of IMF structural adjustment plans--these are factors that have concentrated the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Third, UNICEF reported in "Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls" that up to half of the female population of the world comes under attack at some point in their lives from men. The report estimated that there are more females than males infected with AIDS in Africa. What connects these three developments? First, global capitalism is the most racist and sexist system the world has ever known. Despite all the hype about the efforts capitalist countries have made during the past century to reduce racism and sexism and to end colonialism, capitalism is worse than ever today. This is proof that the system cannot be reformed, which means that its central problems cannot be ameliorated. Second, as inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens--as illustrated by the first point--imperialists are driven to intensify racist and sexist super-exploitation of the working class. This deepening crisis demands the growth of revolutionary organization of the working class as the only solution. Third, leading biological determinists--including many proponents of the overpopulation thesis--have promoted the ideological argument that male domination of women, racism, nationalism, and wars are naturally evolved genetic traits of human nature. This ideology represents an attempt to portray inter-imperialist conflict, racism, and sexism as natural, rather than as part of capitalism in crisis and decay. Steve Rosenthal -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
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Apologies for cross posting. Fu'ad, this article provides a partial response to your question about the social status of Arab women and the recent economic restructuring in the Middle East.. Mine Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481 http://www.allnewspapers.com/middeast/ Women's work By Fatemah Farag It is 7.00am in front of a ready-made garments factory in Shubra Al-Kheima. Droves of young women, clutching little money purses tightly in their hands are making their way through the factory gates to begin a long day's work. "We must be at our machines at 7:30am and work goes on to seven or eight at night. Each one of us is responsible for a specific section in the garment, such as a hem or a button, and I usually process 700 to 800 pieces per day and make between one to two piastres a piece," explained 23-year-old Fatheya. Fatheya is part of a new generation of women workers who have found job opportunities in the new private sector textile factories. "It is good to have the opportunity to make some money, but I hope that once I am married my husband will make enough money to keep me at home. My back hurts all the time from bending over the machine for such long hours," she said. According to the most recent Human Development Report issued by the UN, in 1998/1999, women constituted 15 per cent of the labour force. This indicates a decline from figures published by the Central Authority for Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) in 1996, which show that, between 1984 and 1994, women represented 22 per cent of the labour force. Further, according to the 1996 Labour Sample Survey, issued by CAPMAS, the highest unemployment rates are among women. The survey documented that between 1988 and 1995, for every five unemployed men, there were 20 unemployed women. "The highest unemployment rates are among women despite the government's policy to encourage women's work. The general environment is against her working and reflects a very different attitude from that of the sixties, when women were very much encouraged to become prominent players in development," said Aisha Abdel-Hadi, member of the executive council of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) for women's affairs. The context of this change in attitude is provided by Fardos El-Bahnasi, social researcher and director of the Women's Development and Empowerment Association in the working class district of Manshiet Nasser. "When women were encouraged to work in the sixties, social services to help her out in her role within the family were not provided. The result was that women took on a double burden. This has not been a positive experience and young girls who have seen their mothers carry this burden will feel that the better option is to choose only one of these roles," explained El-Bahnasi. Add this to working conditions such as those described by Fatheya and the attitude cannot be expected to be very positive. But, of course, what drives people into the job market is not so much prevalent attitudes as material need. According to official statistics, the largest percentage of women's work is in the informal agricultural sector, while 32 per cent is in the government, with the private sector accounting for only 16 per cent. "Much of women's work is unpaid, such as when she works in agricultural fields for the family. It is also difficult to determine the exact number of women actually working outside the home," explained Samia Assal of the Union for Agricultural Workers. El-Bahnasi adds that even in the formal sectors, since employers do not always register the total number of workers to evade social security payments, the figures available are bound to be inconclusive. "Still, we can see that there are factories, such as those for ready-made garments, which employ women almost exclusively. These are the women who are driven onto the job market as a result of extreme poverty," said El-Bahnasi. Abdel-Hadi completes the description of the vicious circle faced by female labourers, "With high unemployment in women's ranks and because of their need, there is bound to be violation of the law which stipulates equal wages, social and health insurance for both genders." The women interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly on their way to work in Shubra Al-Kheima had not heard of legal protection, or even the GFTU, for that matter. "In the security room, there is a framed copy of the Ministerial Regulation for Women's Work. It has nothing to do with our lives," one said. El-Bahnasi points out that women are treated as inferior on the job because they are, for the most part, unskilled labour and also because their work is considered only a supplement to family income. "This last point is of particular importance since official statistics show that one
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Interested listers might check out below website for documentary entitled "Roll on Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Bonneville Power Administration." Film explores great piece of musical, political, economic history. My friends Denise Mathews and Bill Black were involved in the project. Denise was co-producer/director on the film and Bill designed the website. http://libweb.uoregon.edu/med_svc/wguthrie/index.html Michael Hoover
Subject: WTO RULING HURTS CANADA'S GENERIC DRUG MANUFACTURERS- Ottawa
Subject: WTO RULING HURTS CANADA'S GENERIC DRUG MANUFACTURERS - Ottawa Citizen The Ottawa Citizen Saturday March 4, 2000 WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION PATENT RULING HURTS CANADA'S GENERIC DRUG MANUFACTURERS By James Baxter Canadian generic drug manufacturers were handed a setback by the World Trade Organization yesterday after Canada's patent regime was found to violate global trade rules. The WTO issued a confidential interim report to Canadian trade officials stating that Canada's patent laws do not respect its international obligations under the international agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property, known as the TRIPS Agreement. The WTO will issue a formal report in mid-April. While the ruling affects about 100,000 patents on a variety of products, it is widely considered that it will have its greatest effect on the pharmaceutical businesses. Generic drug manufacturers, which make and sell versions of well- known drugs once the patents have expired, have been eagerly awaiting expiries on a host of drugs patented in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The WTO ruling could delay the availability of rights on some popular drugs by up to three years. Under TRIPS, which came into effect in January 1995, Canada agreed to an international standard on patents being for 20 years from the date the patent was filed. Prior to 1989, Canada's patent laws granted 17 years of patent protection. The U.S. protested that by not accepting the international standard on pre-1989 patents, Canada was in a position to claim a patent had expired in Canada when it was still in effect in other countries. Canadian officials had countered that, as patents can take up to five years from the time they are filed to the time they are ultimately awarded, there was not a substantive difference between the old laws and Canada's obligations under TRIPS. The WTO disagreed and will formally tell Canada to bring its patents into line with international standards when it issues its ruling publicly in April. Canada will then have 60 days to appeal, which trade experts in Ottawa say is likely. International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew refused comment, except to say that Canada is reviewing the interim report and preparing its comments for the panel.
(no subject)
Michael Perelman wrote, Didn't Churchill and Roosevelt refer to him as Uncle Joe? As I recall the inventor of the condom left his estate to the Bolsheviks. His family appealed and his estate went to his three daughters. In order to reclaim their rightful wealth, the Bolsheviks dispatch their three months eligible bachelors to court the young women. Stalin was one of the three. And the punch line is . . . ? Tom Walker
Re: (no subject)
I think that none of the three bachelors succeeded in their quest. Timework Web wrote: Michael Perelman wrote, Didn't Churchill and Roosevelt refer to him as Uncle Joe? As I recall the inventor of the condom left his estate to the Bolsheviks. His family appealed and his estate went to his three daughters. In order to reclaim their rightful wealth, the Bolsheviks dispatch their three months eligible bachelors to court the young women. Stalin was one of the three. And the punch line is . . . ? Tom Walker -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:12783] (no subject)
More poop on the tax cuts the Repugs have folded into the minimum wage bill. http://www.cbpp.org/10-19-99tax.htm mbs
[PEN-L:10150] (no subject)
Michael Perelman has asked me to introduce my web site and post new additions. About five years ago I while teaching the history of economic thought at McMaster, posted a number of readings for my students. With the encouragement of Michael and Tony Brewer, I made the text available to everyone. Subsequently that grew into a large collection of texts. (Now over 200 titles) The goal was to accumulate material of interest to those studying the history of economic thought. This is defined very broadly. About one year ago I was burnt out and stop posting new material. Now rested and ready to get back at it I have posted four new titles. I can continue to announce new postings to pen-l if there is sufficient interest. And of course if any one would like to contribute a text please let me know. I have added the following books to the History of Economics Archive at McMaster. I have not made the connections to the page yet, but these URLs do work. John Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/acton/FrenchRevolution.pdf Harold Laski, Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/laski/Sovereignty.pdf Catharine Macauley, Observations on the Reflections of Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/macauleycath/Observations.pdf John Figgis, Political Thought From Gerson to Grotius http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/figgis/PoliticalTheory.pdf Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:9234] Re: Kant's Immortal Soul, or, the Sublime Subject
I can't always keep up with your hopscotch, but your misreading of
Kant's politics really needs to be answered. You are leaving aside
the distinction Kant makes between the 'metaphysics of right', which
is about the purely rational principles of the ideal state, and the problem
of the practical realization of this ideal state. Kant was certainly
no radical out of touch with the world, expecting a
complete, sudden remaking of existing states through the
extermination of one's opponents, but understood
that the actualization of freedom and reason in the world would have
to be accomplished under real social conditions, conditions which
always call for pragmatic compromises. Only through reform, he argue,
could an actual state be pushed toward the ideal state. So, while he rejects
the use of revolutionary violence, on the grounds that it would simply
bring back the lawless 'state of nature', he does not oppose
reform. I also think that Kant's political philosophy does not
preclude armed resistence to a really oppressive state. Moreover,
his argument against revolutionary violence is not an argument
against civil disobedience, which, even if he did not write about,
can be fitted into his political philosophy, as John Rawls has done.
ricardo
In the case of Kant, faith in the immortality of soul is linked to his
anti-hedonist anti-revolutionary doctrine (with regard to both 'internal'
freedom 'external' right). Respect for the Law ("Do Your Duty!) at all
costs, even at the cost of having to silently endure a tyranny. Kant was
honest enough to admit that his doctrine comes with such high costs.
Kant wrote in "On the Common Saying: 'This May be True in Theory, but it
does not Apply in Practice'": "It thus follows [from the theory of the
original contract] that all resistance against the supreme legislative
power, all incitement of the subjects to violent expressions of discontent,
all defiance which breaks out into rebellion, is the greatest and most
punishable crime in a commonwealth, for it destroys its very foundations.
This prohibition is *absolute*. And even if the power of the state or its
agent, the head of state, has violated the original contract by authorizing
the government to act tyrannically, and has thereby, in the eyes of the
subject, forfeited the right to legislate, the subject is still not
entitled to offer counter-resistance. The reason for this is that the
people, under an existing civil constitution, has no longer any right to
judge how the constitution should be administered Nor can a right of
necessity...be invoked here as means of removing the barriers which
restrict the power of the people; for it is monstrous to suppose that we
can have a right to do wrong in the direst (physical) distress." Kant goes
on to condemn the "errors" of elevating the Happiness of the People over
the Principle of Right and thus of advocating the overthrow of the existing
state. For Kant, "It is obvious...that the principle of happiness...has ill
effects in political right just as in morality[for] the people are
unwilling to give up their universal human desire to seek happiness in
their own way, and thus become rebels."
What would better sustain the subject's unconditional obedience to the law,
*even in the face of material deprivation, physical distress, and political
oppression*, than the intimations of his soul's divinity and immortality?
Kant wrote [in the same article]: "Admittedly, it [the principle of
happiness] does not contradict the experience which the *history* of maxims
derived from various principles provides. Such experience, alas, proves
that most of them are based on selfishness. But it does contradict our
(necessarily inward) experience that no idea can so greatly elevate the
human mind and inspire it with such enthusiasm as that of a pure moral
conviction, respecting duty above all else, struggling with countless evils
of existence and even with their most seductive temptations, and yet
overcoming them--for we may rightly assume that man can do so. The fact
that man is aware that he can do this just because he ought discloses
within him an ample store of divine capabilities and inspire him, so to
speak, with a holy awe at the greatness and sublimity of his true
vocation." Ah, the flesh is weak, but the spirit is willing!
In other words, Kant does not "hold sacred" the "inviolability of human
being as such." What is sacred for Kant is the Law (moral and political).
Kant wrote: "[The] preservation of the state from evil is an absolute duty,
while the preservation of the individual is merely a relative duty (i.e. it
applies only if he is not guilty of a crime against the state)." For Kant,
what is worthy of dignity is not the mind and body of an empirical,
actually existing, and historically constituted individual; hi
[PEN-L:9218] Re: Kant's Immortal Soul, or, the Sublime Subject of Ideology
James Farmelant wrote: I am not sure that it is accurate to describe Kant as having been anti-revolutionary. He was a discreet supporter of the French Revolution, and even wrote an essay *Eternal Peace* in which he argued that the establishment of republican regimes was to be welcomed as a means for making world peace possible. I think it is more accurate to say that what Kant suuported was a bourgeois revolution and he realized that even a bourgeois republic would be experienced by many people as oppressive. Hence the need for maintaining religious beliefs like belief in the existence of God and of personal immortality and of free will. As a conservatively liberal theorist, Kant in his political philosophy was uncompromisingly hostile to rebellions--even civil disobedience--against the State; and yet, his belief in (or desire to vindicate) the idea of mankind's historical progress also led him to approve of the results of the victorious bourgeois revolutions. How did Kant reconcile these contradictory sympathies? 1 Kant's relation to the actual bourgeois revolutions was one of *spectatorship*. Both his moral and political philosophy militated against revolutionary activities, especially the fact that revolutionary violence *must dissolve* what he called "the state of right." And yet, when he gazed from afar upon the achievements of revolutions in England and France, he saw progress in Enlightenment, which he really longed for. According to Hans Reiss, Kant unconvincingly argued that the French Revolution "was not in fact a revolution at all in the legal sense; for the king had surrendered his sovereign power to the Third Estate." A dubious contention, which probably didn't persuade many besides Kant himself. 2 While Kant's legal doctrine cannot possibly incorporate the right to rebel, even against tyranny, it can accommodate a *victorious* revolution that results in the establishment of "the state of right" again. Kant wrote: "*if a revolution has succeeded and a new constitution has been established*, the unlawfulness of its origin and success cannot free the subjects from the obligation to accommodate themselves as good citizens to the new order of things, and they cannot refuse to obey in an honest way the authority now in power" (emphasis mine). However, no sympathy from Kant for either would-be or failed rebels: "The least attempt to do so [rebel] is *high treason*..., and a traitor of this kind, as one who has tried to destroy his *fatherland*..., may be punished with nothing less than death." 3 Metaphysically speaking, revolutionary violence, in the eyes of Kant, represents the Absolute Evil, for it signifies not an unprincipled deviation from the law (as in ordinary crimes), but a deliberate and principled rejection of "the authority of the law itself." And that is the Ultimate Evil that threatens to unravel one of the foundations of Kant's moral philosophy (which relies upon the idea that a rational man cannot will that a conscious + systematic defiance of the law [as in the revolutionary overthrow of the state]--in other words, the Absolute Evil--should become a universal principle. (This is most clearly expressed in one of Kant's footnotes to _The Metaphysics of Morals_ where he ponders on the "horror" of the formal execution of a dethroned monarch.) 4 In the shorter articles in which Kant wrote of his hope for historical progress in international rights, he ended up employing the idea of paradoxical utility of selfish even evil actions (in contradiction to his vigorous opposition to utilitarianism elsewhere). In "Perpetual Peace," Kant wrote: "it [the barbaric freedom of the state in the constant state of war] checks the full development of the natural tendencies in its [humanity's] progress; but, on the other hand, *by these very evils and their consequences*, it compels our species at last to discover some law of counterbalance to the principle of antagonism between nations..." (emphasis mine). Here, victorious revolutions can find their place among those evils favored by the cunning of nature. Yoshie
[PEN-L:9175] Kant's Immortal Soul, or, the Sublime Subject of Ideology
Sam wrote:
Kant's ethics make extraordinary demands on
people. Kant's "kingdom of ends" is a utopia.
Which is the reason why Kant had to believe in the immortality of soul.
Another remainder of Christianity in Kant.
Yoshie
It is beyond me that, after the experiences of the past,
some in the left continue to hold on to this naive idea that they
can root out all past religious history as "retrogressive". Religion will
always be with us, because religion is not about some supernatural
entity, but about what we hold to be sacred, of which the
inviolabilty of the human being is such. And Christianity, in its own
imaginary way, took a major step in this direction in its
claim that *each* human being has an immortal soul, equal in the light
of eternity.
In the case of Kant, faith in the immortality of soul is linked to his
anti-hedonist anti-revolutionary doctrine (with regard to both 'internal'
freedom 'external' right). Respect for the Law ("Do Your Duty!) at all
costs, even at the cost of having to silently endure a tyranny. Kant was
honest enough to admit that his doctrine comes with such high costs.
Kant wrote in "On the Common Saying: 'This May be True in Theory, but it
does not Apply in Practice'": "It thus follows [from the theory of the
original contract] that all resistance against the supreme legislative
power, all incitement of the subjects to violent expressions of discontent,
all defiance which breaks out into rebellion, is the greatest and most
punishable crime in a commonwealth, for it destroys its very foundations.
This prohibition is *absolute*. And even if the power of the state or its
agent, the head of state, has violated the original contract by authorizing
the government to act tyrannically, and has thereby, in the eyes of the
subject, forfeited the right to legislate, the subject is still not
entitled to offer counter-resistance. The reason for this is that the
people, under an existing civil constitution, has no longer any right to
judge how the constitution should be administered Nor can a right of
necessity...be invoked here as means of removing the barriers which
restrict the power of the people; for it is monstrous to suppose that we
can have a right to do wrong in the direst (physical) distress." Kant goes
on to condemn the "errors" of elevating the Happiness of the People over
the Principle of Right and thus of advocating the overthrow of the existing
state. For Kant, "It is obvious...that the principle of happiness...has ill
effects in political right just as in morality[for] the people are
unwilling to give up their universal human desire to seek happiness in
their own way, and thus become rebels."
What would better sustain the subject's unconditional obedience to the law,
*even in the face of material deprivation, physical distress, and political
oppression*, than the intimations of his soul's divinity and immortality?
Kant wrote [in the same article]: "Admittedly, it [the principle of
happiness] does not contradict the experience which the *history* of maxims
derived from various principles provides. Such experience, alas, proves
that most of them are based on selfishness. But it does contradict our
(necessarily inward) experience that no idea can so greatly elevate the
human mind and inspire it with such enthusiasm as that of a pure moral
conviction, respecting duty above all else, struggling with countless evils
of existence and even with their most seductive temptations, and yet
overcoming them--for we may rightly assume that man can do so. The fact
that man is aware that he can do this just because he ought discloses
within him an ample store of divine capabilities and inspire him, so to
speak, with a holy awe at the greatness and sublimity of his true
vocation." Ah, the flesh is weak, but the spirit is willing!
In other words, Kant does not "hold sacred" the "inviolability of human
being as such." What is sacred for Kant is the Law (moral and political).
Kant wrote: "[The] preservation of the state from evil is an absolute duty,
while the preservation of the individual is merely a relative duty (i.e. it
applies only if he is not guilty of a crime against the state)." For Kant,
what is worthy of dignity is not the mind and body of an empirical,
actually existing, and historically constituted individual; his body and
welfare may be readily sacrificed for the sake of duty, for what is worth
respect is not the totality of an individual, but only his sublime ability
to do his moral and political duty. Kant's immortal soul is the Sublime
Subject of Ideology, whose spirit triumphs even or especially at the moment
his body is flayed alive.
Yoshie
No Subject
rev pen-l
[PEN-L:7883] (no subject)
Thursday June 10 7:05 AM ET U.S. Marines Face Anti-NATO Protest In Greece By Karolos Grohmann EVZONI, Greece (Reuters) - A huge banner saying ``U.S. killers go home'' greeted U.S. marines heading for Kosovo when they landed in Greece Thursday, but there were no other anti-American incidents as they traveled across the country. Greece is a member of NATO but it is also a traditional friend of the fellow-Christian Orthodox Serbs and has contributed no troops or aircraft to NATO's Yugoslav campaign, which has been highly unpopular among the Greeks. ``The first thing we saw on the beach was a giant banner which had 'U.S. killers go home' written on it,'' a marine told Reuters as members of the 2,200-man force entered Macedonia at this frontier post after travelling through Greece. ``We are a peacekeeping force. There is a misunderstanding here,'' the marine said. Previous protests blocked the passage of U.S. troops heading through Greece for neighboring Macedonia for a time. Greece this week blocked the disembarkation of the 2,200 marines for several days, saying they could only cross its territory when it was certain they would enter Kosovo as peacekeepers only. The government in Athens has been particularly wary of letting the U.S. troops through this week, seeking to win favor with voters before European Parliament elections Sunday. The marines had been kept waiting since last Sunday aboard three U.S. ships off the port of Thessaloniki. Before they landed on Litohoro beach near Thessaloniki, the main transit point for NATO troops and supplies into Macedonia, hundreds of Greek riot police pushed about 500 demonstrators back from the beach. The protesters, mostly from the Greek Communist Party, chanted slogans like ``Yankees go home'' and ``American murderers'' as they were pushed back. The marines traveled some 175 miles across northern Greece to the Macedonian frontier to join the NATO-led force of some 50,000 troops preparing to enter Kosovo. There were no more protesters at the Greek-Macedonian border and the marines' progress through Greece appeared to have gone without a hitch. Reporters at the border saw two convoys cross with marines in buses and at least 12 of the amphibious assault craft they had earlier used to land at Litohoro beach near the port city of Thessaloniki. ``These marines will be among the first to enter Kosovo,'' a NATO official told Reuters as the first members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Force waded up the beach at Litohoro. Earlier Stories U.S. Marines Land In Greece On Way To Kosovo (June 10) Yugoslavs Sign Kosovo Pull-Out Terms (June 9) Bombing Set To Stop As Kosovo Peace Signed (June 9) Yugoslavia To Start Pullout In Hours -- Minister (June 9) Serbs To Start Kosovo Pullout Thursday-Yugo Formin (June 9)
[PEN-L:6797] (no subject)
x-rich From New Scientist, 15 May 1999 Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 20:39:41 -0700 To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Camp Responsible Tech [EMAIL PROTECTED] (by way of Michael Eisenscher [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Subject: New Scientist: The chips are down Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable =A9 Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 1999 centersmaller =20 /smallercolorparam,,/parambiggerbiggerbiggerThe chips are down /bigger/bigger/bigger/colorsmaller colorparam,,/paramRob Edwards /color/smaller/centersmaller /smallerbiggerbiggerZACHARY RUFFING/bigger was born almost blind. The bones in his head and shoulders are deformed and he has difficulty using his mouth, but according to his lawyer, Amanda Hawes, he's bright. "He wants to be an astronomer," she says.=20 Thirteen-year-old Zachary and his parents are trying to pin the blame on one of the world's most powerful corporations. When he was conceived and born in 1985 both his parents worked at an IBM semiconductor plant in East Fishkill, New York, where they claim they were exposed to a variety of solvents and other toxic chemicals. Along with 140 other workers and children, they are now suing Big Blue for compensation. Their case, the first of its kind, will come to court this October.=20 Across the Atlantic in Scotland, Grace Morrison, aged 57, blames another American company, National Semiconductor, for the cancers that killed her sister and her friend--and nearly killed her. She is leading a group of 70 women who say they were exposed to chemicals at the company's plant in Greenock. The women are launching a legal battle in Scotland for compensation. "The manufacture of semiconductors is a dirty, dangerous business," Morrison says.=20 boldBirth defects=20 /bold Both IBM and National Semiconductor deny responsibility for birth defects and cancers amongst workers and their children--and it will be hard to prove them wrong. But there is mounting evidence that women in the chip-making industry do suffer an increased risk of spontaneous abortion and that exposure to solvents may cause congenital deformities.=20 The increasing use of computers over the past few decades has fuelled an explosive growth in the microelectronics industry. From its origins in California's Silicon Valley, it has spread throughout Europe and Asia, and now employs more than a million people worldwide. There are 900 chip-making plants and a further 100 planned, supplying a worldwide market worth more than $150 billion a year. "Because of its growth and size," says Douglas Andrey of the US's Semiconductor Industry Association, "the chip industry is the pivotal driver of the world economy."=20 The semiconductor industry may also be a world leader in another way, according to Joseph LaDou, director of the International Center for Occupational Medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. "What was once thought to be the first 'clean' industry is actually one of the most chemical-intensive industries ever conceived," he says. In the process of making, etching and doping silicon chips, workers can be exposed to hundreds of chemicals, including solvents, LaDou says.=20 Campaigners fear that as the industry expands rapidly in the Far East--where safety standards are generally slacker--birth defects will be the unfortunate growth industry following right behind. Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a campaign group in California, says: "The dirtier and more labour-intensive processes are increasingly being shuffled to underdeveloped countries throughout the global South, creating a whole system of environmental and economic injustice." LaDou points out that many of the chemicals present in the factories, such as arsenic and benzene, are known carcinogens.=20 In a semiconductor plant, much of the work takes place in "clean rooms" in which everyone has to wear head-to-toe bunny suits. Unfortunately, this environment is designed to protect sensitive chips, not the health of employees. The air in such rooms is usually recirculated through filters to remove dust, but not replenished with clean air from outside, says LaDou. Toxic fumes are simply recycled. He thinks this may explain why US Department of Labor statistics show that rates of occupational illness in American semiconductor plants caused by "caustic, noxious and allergenic substances" are three times as high as in other manufacturing industries.=20 The most recent study to raise doubts about the safety of semiconductor workers is one of the most dramatic. In Canada, doctors at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto reported in March this year that 13 out of 125 pregnant women exposed to workplace solvents gave birth to children with major congenital malformations, such as spina bifida or deafness. This compares to only one out of 125 women
[PEN-L:6555] (no subject)
Hi. The Journal of Economic Perspectives (from the American Economic Association) is considering a symposium on topic in econometrics. Part of my job is to get input from a subset of *non--econometricians* on topics that they might actively choose to read about if published in the JEP. That is, this is not intended to be interesting to *econometricians* -- it is intended to be interesting and accessible to JEP readers (a tiny subset of which are econometricians). I would welcome any suggestions at [EMAIL PROTECTED] John DiNardo
[PEN-L:6536] (no subject)
China Protesters Attack US Embassy ..c The Associated Press By JOHN LEICESTER BEIJING (AP) -- More than a thousand demonstrators attacked the U.S. Embassy in Beijing with rocks, smashed up embassy cars and scuffled with hundreds of police officers today in a protest over the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. Police pushed back demonstrators who tried to ram a van and hurl a burning American flag through the embassy gate. Protesters used pieces of concrete that had been left in piles by workers rebuilding sidewalks to break many of the windows in embassy buildings spread over one block. A group of protesters tried to set a car on fire and started shoving police who stopped them. Several cars were smashed with chunks of concrete. AP-NY-05-08-99 0917EDT Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.
[PEN-L:6326] (no subject)
[PEN-L:4610] Re: (no subject)
Nathan, you have to send the request to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:4599] Re: (no subject)
Thanks. I continue to find the near silence in the media about this "stealth" vote rather amazing. It appears that there were three Dems voting no, Bingaman, Feingold, and Hollings, of whom only Feingold can be said to be at all on the left. Of course one could get cynical and say that it was an appeal to the non-trivial Serb vote in Milwaukee, but then Feingold was the only Dem in the Senate to oppose Byrd's "end the impeachment" motion. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, March 25, 1999 9:03 PM Subject: (no subject) Barkley Rosser wrote There was a vote about this in the US Senate, approving it by 58-41. Somehow in the midst of all its stories the W. Post failed to say who voted how, although obviously this was not party line. I gather most (if not all) of the 41 were Republicans. But, is there anybody out there who knows what the actual lineup was? Here is the vote from the Senate webstite: *** (Rollcall Vote No. 57 Leg.) March 23, 1999, 7:55 PM BILL NO.: S.CON.RES.21 TITLE: S.Con.Res. 21 REQUIRED FOR MAJORITY: 1/2 RESULT: Concurrent Resolution Agreed to YEAS---58 Abraham HagelMikulski AkakaHarkin Moynihan Baucus HatchMurray Bayh Inouye Reed BidenJeffords Reid BoxerJohnson Robb Breaux Kennedy Rockefeller BryanKerrey Roth Byrd KerrySarbanes Chafee Kohl Schumer Cleland Landrieu Shelby Conrad Lautenberg Smith Gordon H Daschle LeahySnowe DeWine LevinSpecter Dodd LiebermanTorricelli Dorgan Lincoln Warner Durbin LugarWellstone Edwards Mack Wyden FeinsteinMcCain Graham McConnell NAYS---41 Allard Enzi Kyl Ashcroft Feingold Lott Bennett Fitzgerald Murkowski Bingaman FristNickles Bond Gorton Roberts BrownbackGrammSantorum Bunning GramsSessions BurnsGrassley Smith Bob Campbell GreggStevens Collins HelmsThomas CoverdellHollings Thompson CraigHutchinson Thurmond CrapoHutchisonVoinovich Domenici Inhofe NOT VOTING---1 Cochran *** K. Mickey
[PEN-L:4311] Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Japan stares down UncleSam's 'BigThree' [fwd]
Summers, whose credibility has been irrevocably tarnished internationally by his inept handling of the global financial crisis in the past two years, gave another admonishing speech in Japan last Friday, February 26, 1999, warning Japan not to depend on a weak yen to boost its economy, using worn-out slogans such as: "the exchange rate cannot be a substitute for policy." Its an amazing posture after Rubin/Summers turned down a Japanese/EU joint proposal for a 3 currency stabilization regime last month at the G7 meeting in Bonn. Being a bit humbled by his own dismal record of first diagnosing the Asian crisis as merely transient, then IMF off-the-shelve conditionalities as the only cure, and finally non-intervention of free financial markets as a inviolable guiding principle, Summers declared vaguely this time the Krugman cure: "What I think is crucial is the recognition that the goal of price stabily include the responsibility to avoid deflation." He and Rubins declared only last month that while free markets are not perfect, all other forms intervention alternatives are worse. Now, he went to Japan and again asked the Japanese to intervene in their economy with interventionist monetary policies. Yukihiko Ikeda, a senior member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, reported told the press: "Mr. Summers says, do this, do that. But we will continue with steps already in the works." Japanese officials are generally of the opinion that reflationary policies would further weaken the yen, due to pressure on the value of the yen from any increased supply. It may lead to further currency devaluations in other parts of Asia. The BOJ, Japan's central bank, thinks Summers is offering snake oil cures in the notion of fighting deflation with easing money supply. Meanwhile, the prime minister of Malaysia is publicly urging Japan to dump its US Treasry holding to show Asia's displeasure on US nationalistic globaliztion policies. Henry C.K. Liu "JAPAN AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY" DEPUTY TREASURY SECRETARY LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS NATIONAL PRESS CLUB TOKYO, JAPAN Just a few months ago we faced what some called the most serious global financial crisis in 50 years. Today I would like to discuss where we are in working through that crisis -- both in terms of sustaining global demand and in terms of building an international financial system that can prevent and better contain future crises. I. The Global Economic Situation This has been quite a remarkable period in the global economy. Six months ago, in the wake of the Russian financial crisis, signs of significant strain in United States and global financial markets, and evident concerns about global growth -- the G7 warned that the balance of risks in the global economy had shifted, and emphasized their commitment to promote sustainable global growth. As Secretary Rubin and I discussed with our G7 colleagues in Bonn last weekend, since then there has been some important progress made. But very large challenges remain. Two stand out. First, there is too little growth in the global economy. The risks around the world are still very much tilted toward lack of growth, spare capacity, and slowdown -- rather than toward economic overheating. Concerns are about excess supply not excess demand. And in many places worries about rising prices have given way to concern about falling prices. Growth in Europe has weakened, and is expected to average at best 2 percent this year. While prospects for Japan also look worse than they did a few months ago, with most forecasters now expecting another year of negative growth in 1999, and IMF and private forecasts projecting a decline in prices. Second, there is too little balance in growth. Growth in the United States has been very strong, but -- at 4 percent -- very likely above long run trend sustainable rates and is giving rise to very substantial imbalances. Private sector forecasts are suggesting that the United States current account deficit rose by more than $80 billion, to $235 billion in 1998, while Japan and Europe are expected to have had current account surpluses of $95-115 billion. United States imports from emerging Asia, for example, rose by close to $12 billion last year, as compared with a nearly $20 billion decline in Japanese imports from these countries. The United States accounted for more than two-thirds of growth last year in the major industrial economies and one third of global growth. On current forecasts it will account for a similar share this year. With growth in the world increasingly dependent on the United States, and growth in the United States increasingly dependent on the American consumer, it is crucial -- both because of the slowdown directly and because of the consequences of imbalanced growth -- that we see a strengthening of global growth as an imperative for policy. And appropriate domestic policies aimed at promoting sound and sustainable growth at home can also help
