Re: Re: Re: : liberalism
Michael Perelman wrote: Is this discussion or the elitism thread going anywhere? Not really, but does any thread ever go anywhere? Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: : liberalism
Michael Perelman wrote: Is this discussion or the elitism thread going anywhere? Not really, but does any thread ever go anywhere? Doug I know this is an onerous burden to place on pen-l'ers, but you should search for ways to impart some kind of concrete information whenever you post. In much of the discussion here, we get conclusions without the supporting facts. This has been true of the Vandana Shiva thread as well as the liberalism/expertise thread. Unfortunately, in the latter case the rules of participation would almost exclude facts, etc. because the context is preeminently philosophical. When the discussion revolves around the individual versus society, etc., you are entering the vaporous realm of political philosophy. I would as soon argue against liberalism as I would against freedom or reason. On the other hand, when it comes to agriculture, I can demonstrate how the Green Revolution undermines the long-term goal of food production through the use of relevant facts on soil fertility, etc.
liberalism
Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: Is this discussion or the elitism thread going anywhere? Not really, but does any thread ever go anywhere? It's the journey, dudes, not the destination. Right now, I think liberalism'd be a lovely idea. I'm sure we'd've got there years ago if the plutocrats hadn't hit on the idea of pinching the term for their preferred option - but then imperialist-mercantilist-socialism-for-the-rich-capitalism-for-the-poor-socially-reactionary-polity-dissolving-militarist-corporatism is a tad unwieldy, I guess. Don't some recent thought-pieces coming outa the states sound a bit like people are starting to wonder where the 'democratic' bit of 'democratic capitalism' has gone (a Benjamin Barber the other day, and, if memory serves, even Tom Friedman a little while back)? Not very good articles (neither identifies a tension between the forces and the relations, for instance, but then this ain't Fantasy Island), but symptomatic of anything out there in popular sentiment, d'ya think? And ain't Latin America looking a treat just now? This is the first time in twenty years I haven't really badly wanted to go there (mebbe that's just coz I'm not in Africa). And how long before we find out what sorta smelly junk bonds those big investment banks are hiding under the ledger books? And is there a single Dow member trading anywhere near what 'value' used to mean yet? How goes the current account? How travels that latter-day saviour, the consoomer? Plenty to thread aimlessly about in the months to come, methinks. Cheers, Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : liberalism
Lou expressed my thought better than I did. I would only add that in these debates nobody seems to learn anything from anybody else -- at least, you can pretty well predict what the few participants in such debates will write. On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 10:25:32AM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: In much of the discussion here, we get conclusions without the supporting facts. This has been true of the Vandana Shiva thread as well as the liberalism/expertise thread. Unfortunately, in the latter case the rules of participation would almost exclude facts, etc. because the context is preeminently philosophical. When the discussion revolves around the individual versus society, etc., you are entering the vaporous realm of political philosophy. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
: liberalism
Well pardon me for being a political philosopher. Personally, I learn a lot about possible misunderstanduings, objections, responses, at least from a certain viewpoint. I also find internet discussion groups a poor venue for fact intensive empirical research, but what do I know. I do wish Michael, that you would stop announcing that you find my contributions uninteresting and trying to stop lively discussions in which I participate. Who asked you? If you are not interested, don't participate. i don't horn into threads that bore me and shout, this is borting, will you all please shut up. Why do you? Is it something about me that sets you off? jks From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:28998] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : liberalism Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 08:14:48 -0700 Lou expressed my thought better than I did. I would only add that in these debates nobody seems to learn anything from anybody else -- at least, you can pretty well predict what the few participants in such debates will write. On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 10:25:32AM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: In much of the discussion here, we get conclusions without the supporting facts. This has been true of the Vandana Shiva thread as well as the liberalism/expertise thread. Unfortunately, in the latter case the rules of participation would almost exclude facts, etc. because the context is preeminently philosophical. When the discussion revolves around the individual versus society, etc., you are entering the vaporous realm of political philosophy. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
re: liberalism
Rob Schaap wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: Is this discussion or the elitism thread going anywhere? Not really, but does any thread ever go anywhere? It's the journey, dudes, not the destination. How about, Is this discussion becoming or going? Tom Walker 604 254 0470
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : liberalism
Michael writes: I would only add that in these debates nobody seems to learn anything from anybody else -- at least, you can pretty well predict what the few participants in such debates will write. To be sure, most postings in most PEN-L debates appear as predictable rehearsals of existing positions. But for what it's worth, that doesn't mean that no learning is going on, despite the occasionally frustrating lack of anything that looks like progress or meetings of minds. Among the things I've gotten from past PEN-L debates in which I've participated are: finding out the range of possible arguments against a given position (and possible responses); references to relevant literature (particularly useful); and offline correspondences that often *do* end up going somewhere. On the first point, for those who enter given debates seriously and in good faith, positions and counterpositions can be developed much more rapidly than via the traditional route of published exchanges in journals. I think that's been a real contribution of this medium, despite its drawbacks. Gil
RE: Re: Re: Re: : liberalism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:28995] Re: Re: Re: : liberalism the best any thread on pen-l (and lbo-talk?) seems to be able to do is to clarify differences. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2002 7:17 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:28995] Re: Re: Re: : liberalism Michael Perelman wrote: Is this discussion or the elitism thread going anywhere? Not really, but does any thread ever go anywhere? Doug
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: : liberalism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:28996] Re: Re: Re: Re: : liberalism Louis writes: I know this is an onerous burden to place on pen-l'ers, but you should search for ways to impart some kind of concrete information whenever you post. That's good, but I like a weaker standard, since not all discussions are about issues where there is new empirical information that can be presented. I don't think we want to limit the scope of the discussion the way that's implied by Louis' criterion. My weaker standard is that whenever an abstraction is applied some effort should be made to present a concrete example or exemplar to illustrate or explain the meaning of that abstraction. Rather than simply talking about democracy, for example, it's good to keep in mind what that means in practice in a specific place and time, if only to understand the contrast between the theoretical concept and the reality. Maybe we can talk about _hypothetical_ examples, but still that's better than simply throwing abstract words around such as democracy without an effort to concretize them. That is, we should try to avoid rhetorical and totally abstract assertions, such as freedom is good. This is useless, especially since one can define both terms so that the statement is always true. There's a stronger standard, which I doubt that we can live up to but is still good to keep in mind: on some theoretical difference, what are the implications for political practice or economic policy. (The latter is not something I see as very useful, but the best policy is often a useful thing to understand precisely because the government doesn't pursue it.) There are all sorts of issues -- such as that chestnut the class nature of the old USSR -- where certain ranges of opinion imply no differences in terms of practice. Within one of those ranges, we can avoid needless argument by realizing that potential practical unity. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : liberalism
I would disagree. It seems to me that maillists are primarily conversational, and attempts to make them replace printed journals are mostly wishful thinking. I my only rarely either read or write posts much longer than 4 or 5 screens. Moreover, issues that really do depend on large amounts of empirical data simply do not belong on e-mail lists. The information given is _always_ highly selective, and hence rarely contributes to the argument. In the few cases when it appears that information offered is really crucial to the argument, it is necessary to consider more sources in any case before trusting the data. An endless rain of information (_highly selective and hard to judge_) on most ecological questions is simply pointless -- all of it is almost always obviously true-- and also obviously irrelevant to anything until one can place it in a political context. I think someone should do a dissertation on empirical arguments on maillists. Such a study would show, I believe, that in nearly all cases _everyone_ involved was (mostly unintentionally) cheating. That is, the evidence offered always fits into a strictly linear line of thought. Let's see if I can explain this. Someone argues: A causes B. Then gives endless evidence to support that proposition. But that evidence turns out to be irrelevant, because while it is perfectly true that A causes B and B is a desirable end, it is also possibly or probably true, that A ALSO causes C, D, E, F. That F in turn causes B, but only under circustances where it also causes G, which is destructive of B. And this means that anyone who continues to heap up evidence for the proposition that A causes B becomes obscurantist, however good his/her intentions may be. Moreover, there is usually at least two persons in the discussion who suffer seriously from the fetishism of facts -- i.e., who believe that facts explain themselves (and of course the explanation the facts give of themselves is always the explanation that the fetishist has actually assumed from the beginning). Such fetishists will see any attempt to point out other factors involved, or any attempt to challenge the obvious point of the facts, is deliberately changing the subject. And when there are two of them with opposing understandings of the issue, they will go on endlessly adding fact to fact with not the slightest awareness that it is not facts but clarification of the multiple issues involved that needs to be pursued. And maillists _may_ clarify issues (both for the writers and for the large number of lurkers on every list). Clarification is _not_ of course a conclusion -- why should it be? And moreover, sometimes it is in the late stages of a discussion that seems merely to go round and round that questions that have been implicit or blurred become explicit. The best any mail list can do is to clarify issues, open up new questions, and provide a forum for trying out ideas. Serious polemics or information belong in printed journals. I learn quite a bit on the run from pen-l because I have no formal training in econ. How important that is I do not know. Carrol Michael Perelman wrote: Lou expressed my thought better than I did. I would only add that in these debates nobody seems to learn anything from anybody else -- at least, you can pretty well predict what the few participants in such debates will write. On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 10:25:32AM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: In much of the discussion here, we get conclusions without the supporting facts. This has been true of the Vandana Shiva thread as well as the liberalism/expertise thread. Unfortunately, in the latter case the rules of participation would almost exclude facts, etc. because the context is preeminently philosophical. When the discussion revolves around the individual versus society, etc., you are entering the vaporous realm of political philosophy. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: The last of liberalism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:28981] The last of liberalism This is my last post on this thread -- and my last of the day. Work calls. (I have also cut the message down to one part, the one in which Justin makes a false accusation. I am sorry that it's so abstract.) I wrote: I don't identify democracy with majority rule. You forgot minority rights. Unlike classical liberalism (Locke, _et al_) I don't see rights as being natural. Rather, I know that people value them and will choose to allow them, if given a democratic chance. Justin accuses:You normally do forget minority rights, such as when I mention the tyranny of the majority, you start accusing me of being antidemocratic. If people will value and choose rights, they don't need to be legally protected. I am not so optimistic as you. That's why I support constitutional democracy, which insulates rights from majoritarian prejudices. 1. It should be mentioned that minority property rights claiming the means of production gives the minority (the capitalists) power over the majority. I think that this tyranny of the minority is much worse than any tyranny of the majority. 2. Unlike most advocates of socialism from above (Stalinists, social democrats, etc.) I think that people can learn from their mistakes and educate themselves in other ways, so that democracy is a _process_. Most of the examples of the tyranny of the majority that elitist theorists point to are examples where democracy was temporary and new, where people didn't get a chance to figure out how to run things (expecially since they were being attacked from the outside, by those defending privilege); these folks also forget all of the abuses associated with minority rule.[*] Most elitist theorists, however, don't need examples, since they're simply defending their own minority rights and privileges. Frankly, I think that the left would get much further if we explicitly embraced democratic sovereignty rather than saying that a new stratum of experts would do a better job. I also would like to know what Justin's alternative to the principle of democratic sovereignty. Is it the Platonic principle that the enlightened Guardians should rule? 3. I don't know where Justin gets the false impression that I'm against constitutional democracy (a phrase that is new to this thread and was never discussed, even by implication) from. It seems to me that people who are organizing things collectively _want_ a constitution (rules of the game). For example, when I've been on juries, the _first_ thing the jurors did was to decide on (informal) rules. To repeat myself, there's no _a priori_ conflict between majority rule and minority rights, since almost all people want some insulation from the domination of the majority. This formulation (with not only rule but rights) implies the need for rules of the game, i.e., a constitution. So democracy _implies_ a constitution of some sort. Perhaps Justin is confusing constitutional democracy with the actually-existing constitutional republic in the US, but I can't read his mind. 4. I must admit that democracy is often not a pretty process (though it's hard to find examples in the actually-existing US except on the micro-level). But democracy is the only legitimate way to deal with political issues (i.e., with collective decision-making). Dictatorship, rule by minorities, etc. will not do, while the idea that automatic market-like processes will replace democracy is silly. (People might decide that markets would be appropriate to making some decisions, but the basic principle of democratic sovereignty should apply.) [*] One example: the theorists of the tyranny of the majority often point to the Great Terror during the 1789 French Revolution. But they forget that the minority (capitalist) ruled government imposed many more deaths in the suppression of the Paris Commune. JD
RE: liberalism
the best any thread on pen-l (and lbo-talk?) seems to be able to do is to clarify differences. Jim Devine 'perceptual fault lines' run through apparently stable communities that appear to have agreed on basic institutions and structures and on general governing rules. Consent comes apart in battles of description. Consent comes apart over whose stories to tell. [Kim Scheppele in Another Look at the Problem of Rent Seeking by Steven Medema, JEI Vol xxv # 4] History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything...Nothing was more completely ruined by the last war than the pretension to foresight. But it was not from any lack of knowledge of history, surely?...The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. [Paul Valery]
Re: Re: liberalism
Justin Schwartz wrote: As I said before, almost everyone here--you too--favors univ. suffrage --- Yes extensive civil rights and liberties Yes representative govt - NO This form of democracy has never produced democracy -- and it never will. It's replacement will have to be worked out in practice -- not from a blueprint I or anyone else can provide at this time. Representative Government can only be a dictatorship of the Capitalist Class. As I said, almost everyone. jks _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
RE: Re: Re: liberalism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:28943] Re: Re: liberalism Justin Schwartz wrote: As I said before, almost everyone here--you too--favors univ. suffrage --- Yes [Carrol's response] extensive civil rights and liberties Yes [ditto] representative govt - NO [ditto] Carrol continues: This form of democracy has never produced democracy -- and it never will. It's replacement will have to be worked out in practice -- not from a blueprint I or anyone else can provide at this time. Representative Government can only be a dictatorship of the Capitalist Class. As I said, almost everyone. jks so you're not going to respond to Carrol's critique? it has been one thread of the Marxian tradition for a long time (though not part of the Stalinist or social-democratic traditions and the like) to want to get rid of representative government, to replace it with more profound democracy. What is your response, Justin? JD
RE: Re: Re: liberalism
As I said, almost everyone. jks Almost everyone is right; as far as I can tell, yer man Posner is not in favour of representative government or of extensive civil rights and liberties in as much as these can't be derived from property rights. What's your argument against his utopia of a small system of autarchic medieval Icelandic households living without any laws and arbitrating their disputes privately? I only ask because this particular version of libertarian society seems quite close to the aspirations of some of the Left. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication may contain confidential or privileged information and is for the attention of the named recipient only. It should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. (c) 2002 Cazenove Service Company or affiliates. Cazenove Co. Ltd and Cazenove Fund Management Limited provide independent advice and are regulated by the Financial Services Authority and members of the London Stock Exchange. Cazenove Fund Management Jersey is a branch of Cazenove Fund Management Limited and is regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission. Cazenove Investment Fund Management Limited, regulated by the Financial Services Authority and a member of IMA, promotes only its own products and services. ___
Re: RE: Re: Re: liberalism
As I said, almost everyone. jks Almost everyone is right; as far as I can tell, yer man Posner is not in favour of representative government or of extensive civil rights and liberties in as much as these can't be derived from property rights. That's unfair to Posner. His notion of what a desirable set of rights would be is less expansive than ours, but P is well within the range of responsible non-authoritarian conservatism that counts as supporters of a variant of liberalism. He has a new book on democracy in manuscript that he gave me. Some of hsi views are set forth in his book on Bush v. Gore, if you want to see what they are. What's your argument against his utopia of a small system of autarchic medieval Icelandic households living without any laws and arbitrating their disputes privately? Just because he discusses this, reviewing Miller's book, doesn't mean it's his utopia. In fact he notes that the system fell apartw ith increasing inequality of the sort that he favors. I only ask because this particular version of libertarian society seems quite close to the aspirations of some of the Left. Yes. jks _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
liberalism
representative govt - NO [ditto] Carrol continues: This form of democracy has never produced democracy -- and it never will. It's replacement will have to be worked out in practice -- not from a blueprint I or anyone else can provide at this time. Representative Government can only be a dictatorship of the Capitalist Class. As I said, almost everyone. jks so you're not going to respond to Carrol's critique? it has been one thread of the Marxian tradition for a long time (though not part of the Stalinist or social-democratic traditions and the like) to want to get rid of representative government, to replace it with more profound democracy. What is your response, Justin? JD I have already responded noless dogmatically. I see no reason why representative govt is incompatible with public ownership of productive assets, workers' control of production, or even central planning. I can't even see the argument that it is not. Why the associated producers cannot elect representatives to administer the public property is hard grasp. Please explain, those who think this is a serious point. Btw, theargument for represenattive ratherthan direct democarcy is that with a large state that has a lot to administer, and a big population, and a lot of rather technical rules and regulations to made and enforced, it is utterly impracticable to carry this out in a ny other way than a representative one. If the worry is that the representatives will become a special class arrogating privileges to themselves in an unjustified manner, that is a problem. The solution is of course elections--democracy's natural term limits. jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: liberalism
Justin Schwartz wrote: I have already responded noless dogmatically. No Sir, I am not dogmatic, I am deliberate. Samuel Johnson :-) Carrol
Re: liberalism
It is interesting to look at the Jugoslav experience with representative vs direct democracy to show some light on this question. Direct democracy was just not feasible at the commune, republic or national level so the delegate system was used with elections conducted using constitutencies from work communities, local communities and political communities (at the local and republic level, there were three houses, at the national level two). Furthermore, more than one delegate was elected for each office so that individuals could specialize. i.e. when issues of education were to be discussed, the delegate who had a special interest in education would attend; when health was discussed, a different delegate might represent the community. Obviously, this was an attempt to get as close to direct democracy as possible at these levels. In the last stage of socialist self-management, at the enterprise level, the firms were broken up into BOALs (Basic Organizations of Associated Labour) approximating the departmental organization where the works council represented direct democracy. Support staff (e.g. clerical workers) formed work communities which were organized like the BOALS but negotiated with the BOALS to sell their collective administrative services to them. They also were organized with works councils. Social service agencies (schools, health organizations, etc.) had works councils composed both of workers and consumers to practice direct democracy. Unfortunately, the system had a surfeit of democracy and the workers, in many cases, petitioned to do away with the Boals and work communities in favour of enterprise works councils based on the delegate system. The direct democracy system just proved too onerous and ineffective a system of management. In fact, it was so cumbersome that it allowed the communist party, which had no official capacity, to gain control of the of both the political and the management system. In short, the scope for direct democracy in a complex industrial society is, I suggest, more limited than some on this list would suggest. Paul Phillips, Economics University of Manitoba On 31 Jul 02, at 16:32, Justin Schwartz wrote: I have already responded noless dogmatically. I see no reason why representative govt is incompatible with public ownership of productive assets, workers' control of production, or even central planning. I can't even see the argument that it is not. Why the associated producers cannot elect representatives to administer the public property is hard grasp. Please explain, those who think this is a serious point. Btw, theargument for represenattive ratherthan direct democarcy is that with a large state that has a lot to administer, and a big population, and a lot of rather technical rules and regulations to made and enforced, it is utterly impracticable to carry this out in a ny other way than a representative one. If the worry is that the representatives will become a special class arrogating privileges to themselves in an unjustified manner, that is a problem. The solution is of course elections--democracy's natural term limits. jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
RE: liberalism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:28928] liberalism Justin:These (Manchester and New Deal liberalisms) are economic liberalisms. I'm a political liberal, like Mill and Rawls. me:please explain. Justin:OK. Manchester liberalism is what we now call libertarianism, favoring a nightwatchman state and unfettered free markets with private property. New Deal liberalism saved capitalism by creating an admistrative state, lots of regulation, and social supports for the less well off under capitalism. It's important to remember that the New Deal also had lots of support for businesses, too. (The NIRA was basically a pro-business plan which luckily had a pro-labor element.) Also, World War II helped save capitalism in the US, since the New Deal didn't pursue the Keynesian part of the New Deal liberal program except in a half-hearted way until the war. Of course, the anti-democratic Smith Act and the like also helped save capitalism. Further, the progressive -- or better, the democratic -- aspects of New Deal liberalism did NOT arise from liberalism as much as from mass struggles (the Veterans' march on Washington, the CIO sit-downs, etc., etc.) and elite fears of revolution or uncomfortable reforms (fascism, communism). When pressure from below weakened (in the 1940s, especially in the 1950s), the New Deal liberals shifted to the right, abandoning progressive New Dealism. Political liberalism [on the other hand] is neutral on the best economic form. Its key idea is that freedom is a good, as is self-government. Freedom is good? what kind of freedom? this word has many meanings and uses (and abuses). Usually, our fearless leaders use the word to refer to _laissez-faire_ (freedom for the wealth-owners). How did Mill use this word? did he include freedom from hunger as part of freedom? freedom from capitalist exploitation? If so, he went beyond the negative definition of freedom that characterizes actually-existing liberalism, except at the edges. from a different message I sent recently: I notice that often the _ambiguous_ nature of mental concepts ... can be quite important to society's _unity_. At a fourth of July celebration I went to recently, people on the stand (and tapes of Dubya) could speak of freedom and people of all walks of life could nod and say yup even though a worker's definition of freedom may be quite different from that of the capitalist. Self-government? this means profound democracy to me, where we go beyond parliamentary democracy and the like to make sure that the majority really rules. That would also go beyond standard liberalism. or do you mean _individual_ self-government? Accordingly it favors a limited representative government with elected officials chosen by univeresal suffrage and hedged in by extensive civil and political liberties. again, it's unclear what the content of these are. The official line in the US is that we have these already, but that depends on the definition of the key terms. Its classic statement is Mill's On Liberty, a defense of people's rights to live without oppressive social legislation or social pressure that disfavors experiments in living (in Mill's case, living openly with his girlfiend, lover, and collaborator Harriet Taylor), imposes orthodox beliefs such as a state religion or adherence to some required secular doctrine, and the like. so he would oppose the IMF, which uses its financial power to push the secular religion of _laissez-faire_? What about the socio-economic forces that prevent experiments in living? One reason why people can't set up worker-owned factories is that they lack the financial resources. They often end up dependent on one or two people for money -- and thus end up emulating capitalism -- or fall apart. Political liberalism takes no position on the so-called economic liberties defended so aggressively by the Manchesterians; Mill was a market socialist, personally. Was his market socialism similar to yours? I've noticed that many people equate socialism with a bigger role for government, so that it's quite possible that Mill would currently be termed a New Deal Liberal or some such even though at the time it was called socialism. (I'm no expert on Mill, as should be obvious. I also don't think quoting authorities is a useful intellectual activity if one can present the argument oneself.) ... I wrote: In any event, the distinction between political and economic is bogus and seems inappropriate to a political economy discussion list. JKS:It's not that there's no distinction, just that it's rough and ready and context specific. Here it signifies the neutrality of liberal governmental forms among different (socialist and nonsocialist) economic arrangements. The neutrality of governmental forms? having Congresscritters on the take to big corporations (raking in the campaign contributions) is something that will persist when socialism comes? We'll still be ruled by creeps like Gray Davis (the California governor)? As I
RE: Re: liberalism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:28960] Re: liberalism I don't know of anyone in favor of _direct_ democracy. I thought people were arguing for delegatory democracy, in which delegates can be recalled easily, fewer government officials are immune to democratic control, and there are clear limits on the income of the officials. Also, the problem of the BOALs seems to have been with excessive decentralization (going too far in the liberal direction) rather than with excessive democracy (which would emphasize individual and group responsibility to the democratically-organized whole). I like the reference to real-world events. That's good for getting away from excessive abstraction. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Paul Phillips [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 11:15 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:28960] Re: liberalism It is interesting to look at the Jugoslav experience with representative vs direct democracy to show some light on this question. Direct democracy was just not feasible at the commune, republic or national level so the delegate system was used with elections conducted using constitutencies from work communities, local communities and political communities (at the local and republic level, there were three houses, at the national level two). Furthermore, more than one delegate was elected for each office so that individuals could specialize. i.e. when issues of education were to be discussed, the delegate who had a special interest in education would attend; when health was discussed, a different delegate might represent the community. Obviously, this was an attempt to get as close to direct democracy as possible at these levels. In the last stage of socialist self-management, at the enterprise level, the firms were broken up into BOALs (Basic Organizations of Associated Labour) approximating the departmental organization where the works council represented direct democracy. Support staff (e.g. clerical workers) formed work communities which were organized like the BOALS but negotiated with the BOALS to sell their collective administrative services to them. They also were organized with works councils. Social service agencies (schools, health organizations, etc.) had works councils composed both of workers and consumers to practice direct democracy. Unfortunately, the system had a surfeit of democracy and the workers, in many cases, petitioned to do away with the Boals and work communities in favour of enterprise works councils based on the delegate system. The direct democracy system just proved too onerous and ineffective a system of management. In fact, it was so cumbersome that it allowed the communist party, which had no official capacity, to gain control of the of both the political and the management system. In short, the scope for direct democracy in a complex industrial society is, I suggest, more limited than some on this list would suggest. Paul Phillips, Economics University of Manitoba On 31 Jul 02, at 16:32, Justin Schwartz wrote: I have already responded noless dogmatically. I see no reason why representative govt is incompatible with public ownership of productive assets, workers' control of production, or even central planning. I can't even see the argument that it is not. Why the associated producers cannot elect representatives to administer the public property is hard grasp. Please explain, those who think this is a serious point. Btw, theargument for represenattive ratherthan direct democarcy is that with a large state that has a lot to administer, and a big population, and a lot of rather technical rules and regulations to made and enforced, it is utterly impracticable to carry this out in a ny other way than a representative one. If the worry is that the representatives will become a special class arrogating privileges to themselves in an unjustified manner, that is a problem. The solution is of course elections--democracy's natural term limits. jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: RE: liberalism
Devine, James wrote: Self-government? this means profound democracy to me I like the term profound democracy better than direct democracy, which (both in its positive and its negative aspects) is tied to specific social structures of the past. For that reason also it contributes to an artificial binary, direct democracy vs representative democracy, and implies that the future will merely be a reshuffling of elements already existing in past or present. The Soviets caught everyone by surprise -- and of course since then that surprise has been reduced to blandness by forcing them (at their various stages of growth and decline) into the straitjacket of direct versus representative. The living thing was clearly neither; they were only embryonic of a form that failed to mature. And we will not know until their equivalent again catches us by surprise in some future period what if anything they were embryonic of. We need to continue to criticize _what is_, and be aware that only as that criticism turns into practice under given (and now unknown) conditions will we have more than an inkling of what might be the positive results of that criticism. Carrol
: liberalism
We need to continue to criticize _what is_, and be aware that only as that criticism turns into practice under given (and now unknown) conditions will we have more than an inkling of what might be the positive results of that criticism. Let us criticize by all means, and experiment, and learn. In an off-list discussion Jim D accused me of being vague and ambiguous about liberal democracy, which I am not, but my conception is very minimal, and compatible with many implementations. Including a workers' council or soviet realization--in my view a form of representative govt. It involves representatives, doesn't it? jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: : liberalism
Justin Schwartz wrote: Let us criticize by all means, and experiment, and learn. In an off-list discussion Jim D accused me of being vague and ambiguous about liberal democracy, which I am not, but my conception is very minimal, and compatible with many implementations. Including a workers' council or soviet realization--in my view a form of representative govt. It involves representatives, doesn't it? Again I'm mystified. For a guy who frequently reminds us that you were trained in analytical philiosophy, you throw around concepts like intelligence, markets, liberal, and democracy rather recklessly, devoid of any definition or context. Of what use is a concept that includes the soviets of the revolutionary period and the U.S. Senate today under the same classification? Doug
Re: RE: liberalism
It's important to remember that the New Deal also had lots of support for businesses, too. Like I said, it saved c pitalism. Further, the progressive -- or better, the democratic -- aspects of New Deal liberalism did NOT arise from liberalism as much as from mass struggles (the Veterans' march on Washington, the CIO sit-downs, etc., etc.) and elite fears of revolution or uncomfortable reforms (fascism, communism). When pressure from below weakened (in the 1940s, especially in the 1950s), the New Deal liberals shifted to the right, abandoning progressive New Dealism. How tediously undialectical of you. Everything liberal or involved with liberalism is Bad. Political liberalism [on the other hand] is neutral on the best economic form. Its key idea is that freedom is a good, as is self-government. Freedom is good? what kind of freedom? this word has many meanings and uses (and abuses). Other thgings being equal, freedom is good. I follow theusual tripartite account, negativefreedom (from from interference), positive freedom (freedom to X based on access to resources and skills), and Marxian/Hegelian real freedom (obedience to the law one gives to oneself, disalienation) The matter is complex,and I refer you tomy papers on exploitationw here the issuesa re discussed in detail. You, Jim, have these. How did Mill use this word? Mostly in terms of negative freedom, but he was thinking of the freedom to engage in different forms of life andsay what you think, not tomake mucho pounds and pence. did he include freedom from hunger as part of freedom? freedom from capitalist exploitation? Sort of, not somuch in On Liberty. Hedidn't use the category exploitation, but herecognizedits content. Self-government? this means profound democracy to me, where we go beyond parliamentary democracy and the like to make sure that the majority really rules. That would also go beyond standard liberalism. or do you mean _individual_ self-government? Both. I don't know how you go beyound parlaimentary democarcy to ensure that the majoritry really rules. PD may not be sufficient for popular rule (n.b. unlike you I do NOT identify populat rule or democracyw ith majority rule), but it surely necessary for it. Accordingly it favors a limited representative government with elected officials chosen by univeresal suffrage and hedged in by extensive civil and political liberties. again, it's unclear what the content of these are. The official line in the US is that we have these already, but that depends on the definition of the key terms. We do have them in substantial part. These are precious victories. so he would oppose the IMF, which uses its financial power to push the secular religion of _laissez-faire_? Dunno. What about the socio-economic forces that prevent experiments in living? One reason why people can't set up worker-owned factories is that they lack the financial resources. They often end up dependent on one or two people for money -- and thus end up emulating capitalism -- or fall apart. I have a draft paper on Where Did Mill Go Wrong? About why cooperative ventures are not more prevelant.Mill expected taht theywould tend to crwod out capitalist firms. Was his market socialism similar to yours? Somewhat. He's a bit fuzzy on on the public ownership side. I've noticed that many people equate socialism with a bigger role for government, so that it's quite possible that Mill would currently be termed a New Deal Liberal or some such even though at the time it was called socialism. No. Mill wanted worker ownership and control of production. (I'm no expert on Mill, as should be obvious. I also don't think quoting authorities is a useful intellectual activity if one can present the argument oneself.) I never think for myself, personally.My mind is merely a collection of quottations. I forget who said this. The neutrality of governmental forms? having Congresscritters on the take to big corporations (raking in the campaign contributions) is something that will persist when socialism comes? We'll still be ruled by creeps like Gray Davis (the California governor)? There won't be big private corps. Probably socialist politicians will still be creeps. Sorry. As I said before, almost everyone here--you too--favors representative govt, univ. suffrage, extensive civil rights and liberties. In that sense we are all liberals. if you define your terms vaguely, any statement is true. You still have not said what is vague about my definition. BTW, I think that one thing we should do is to choose a definition of liberalism and stick to it (at least for this thread, since there are no true definitions). I have. I've used to for years. I follow the historian of political thought, George Sabine, who defines liberalism in utilitarianism, individualism, and the independence of private enterprise from political control, and consequently for freedom in exercising rights
Re: Re: : liberalism
Of what use is a concept that includes the soviets of the revolutionary period and the U.S. Senate today under the same classification? Doug Well, they have this in common: they are both government institutions staffed by representatives who are elected by the people they are supposed to represent. You may think this is trivial, but the ptrinciple that govt officials ought to be accountable in this way was won in the course of 800 years of bloody struggle. It doesn't strike me as negligible. jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
RE: Re: RE: liberalism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:28970] Re: RE: liberalism I wrote: It's important to remember that the New Deal also had lots of support for businesses, too. Justin: Like I said, it saved c pitalism. there's a difference: individual businesses often care about nothing but their own profit. It's only crises that encourage a more class-conscious approach. Further, the progressive -- or better, the democratic -- aspects of New Deal liberalism did NOT arise from liberalism as much as from mass struggles (the Veterans' march on Washington, the CIO sit-downs, etc., etc.) and elite fears of revolution or uncomfortable reforms (fascism, communism). When pressure from below weakened (in the 1940s, especially in the 1950s), the New Deal liberals shifted to the right, abandoning progressive New Dealism. Justin:How tediously undialectical of you. Everything liberal or involved with liberalism is Bad. This seems to be a willful misunderstanding of what I said. Liberalism is clearly an improvement over feudal conservatism or clerical fascism or nazism (to name a few), so it's clearly not all Bad. (Not being religious, I don't capitalize the word bad.) Justin had written:Political liberalism [on the other hand] is neutral on the best economic form. Its key idea is that freedom is a good, as is self-government. me:Freedom is good? what kind of freedom? this word has many meanings and uses (and abuses). Justin: Other thgings being equal, freedom is good. what if the increased freedom of the working class reduces the freedom of the capitalists? I follow theusual tripartite account, negative freedom (from from interference), positive freedom (freedom to X based on access to resources and skills), and Marxian/Hegelian real freedom (obedience to the law one gives to oneself, disalienation). The matter is complex,and I refer you tomy papers on exploitation... but if freedom includes the Marxian real freedom, that goes against liberalism. How did Mill use this word? Mostly in terms of negative freedom, but he was thinking of the freedom to engage in different forms of life andsay what you think, not tomake mucho pounds and pence. I don't see how a predominantly negative definition of freedom matches with an advocacy of market socialism. If Mill wanted to have workers controlling production, as you indicate below, how is he going to keep the capitalists from controlling production? it sounds as if their freedom will have to be violated. did he include freedom from hunger as part of freedom? freedom from capitalist exploitation? Sort of, not somuch in On Liberty. He didn't use the category exploitation, but he recognized its content. [edited for readability] If he acknowledged the role of capitalist exploitation of labor, then he wasn't a liberal. Self-government? this means profound democracy to me, where we go beyond parliamentary democracy and the like to make sure that the majority really rules. That would also go beyond standard liberalism. or do you mean _individual_ self-government? Both. I don't know how you go beyound parlaimentary democarcy to ensure that the majoritry really rules. PD [parliamentary democracy?] may not be sufficient for popular rule (n.b. unlike you I do NOT identify populat rule or democracy with majority rule), but it surely necessary for it. I don't identify democracy with majority rule. You forgot minority rights. Unlike classical liberalism (Locke, _et al_) I don't see rights as being natural. Rather, I know that people value them and will choose to allow them, if given a democratic chance. Marx's discussion of the Commune suggests some ways to make sure that the legislature is under popular control: limits on the incomes of the delegates, easy recall, subjection of more officials -- including administrators -- to democratic control. Accordingly it favors a limited representative government with elected officials chosen by univeresal suffrage and hedged in by extensive civil and political liberties. again, it's unclear what the content of these are. The official line in the US is that we have these already, but that depends on the definition of the key terms. We do have them in substantial part. These are precious victories. if you say so. They were victories _against_ liberalism in many cases. What about the socio-economic forces that prevent experiments in living? One reason why people can't set up worker-owned factories is that they lack the financial resources. They often end up dependent on one or two people for money -- and thus end up emulating capitalism -- or fall apart. ... About why cooperative ventures are not more prevelant. Mill expected taht theywould tend to crwod out capitalist firms. that hasn't worked out at all. That has a lot to do with the political power of the capitalists, the financial power of banking capitalists, and technical economies of scale, along with other advantages of large-scale companies (political clout, the ability
Re: Re: : liberalism
Is this discussion or the elitism thread going anywhere? On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 05:25:03PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: Justin Schwartz wrote: Let us criticize by all means, and experiment, and learn. In an off-list discussion Jim D accused me of being vague and ambiguous about liberal democracy, which I am not, but my conception is very minimal, and compatible with many implementations. Including a workers' council or soviet realization--in my view a form of representative govt. It involves representatives, doesn't it? Again I'm mystified. For a guy who frequently reminds us that you were trained in analytical philiosophy, you throw around concepts like intelligence, markets, liberal, and democracy rather recklessly, devoid of any definition or context. Of what use is a concept that includes the soviets of the revolutionary period and the U.S. Senate today under the same classification? Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The last of liberalism
My last word on this. It's obvious that Michael is predisposed to find nothing I say interesting, and to let you know that you shouldn't either. Justin: Other things being equal, freedom is good. what if the increased freedom of the working class reduces the freedom of the capitalists? Any decrease of freedom is a loss. Sometimes we have to decrease some freedoms to enhance others. My freedom to punch you out, for example. I follow theusual tripartite account, negative freedom (from from interference), positive freedom (freedom to X based on access to resources and skills), and Marxian/Hegelian real freedom (obedience to the law one gives to oneself, disalienation). The matter is complex,and I refer you tomy papers on exploitation... but if freedom includes the Marxian real freedom, that goes against liberalism. Sez who? Not Mill, and if he's not a liberal, no one is. If [Mill] acknowledged the role of capitalist exploitation of labor, then he wasn't a liberal. OK, I'm not a liberal either, because I acknowledge the existence of capitalist exploitation. I don't identify democracy with majority rule. You forgot minority rights. Unlike classical liberalism (Locke, _et al_) I don't see rights as being natural. Rather, I know that people value them and will choose to allow them, if given a democratic chance. You normally do forget minority rights, such as when I mention the tyranny of the majority, you start accusing me of being antidemocratic. If people will value and choose rights, they don't need to be legally protected. I am not so optimistic as you. That's why I support constitutional democracy, which insulates rights from majoritarian prejudices. I've heard that fuzzy was [Mill's] real middle name. You should be so fuzzy. No. Mill wanted worker ownership and control of production. _all_ of production? Yes. Probably socialist politicians will still be creeps. Sorry. that's why mechanisms have to be developed to get us beyond the weak kind of democracy that's called representative democracy, e.g., greater ability to recall the bums. That's still representative democracy. Personally I think that easy recalls are a bad idea. I'd argue against them. But if the people wanted that form of representative govt, it would be no worse than some. As I said before, almost everyone here--you too--favors representative govt, univ. suffrage, extensive civil rights and liberties. In that sense we are all liberals. if you define your terms vaguely, any statement is true. You still have not said what is vague about my definition. the individual terms seem to be infinitely elastic, so you can see them as applying under capitalism and with socialism, with no substantial change. Begs the question. I define them minimally, so I can see them applying under capitalism and socialism with no substantial change. You have not yourself indicated any substantial changes. Lower salaries and easier recalls do not strike me as substantial changes. BTW, I think that one thing we should do is to choose a definition of liberalism and stick to it (at least for this thread, since there are no true definitions). I have. I've used to for years. It differs from the usual. Actually, it does not. I am in fact an exoert on thsi; I was a professional political philosopher for years and have published and read extensively in the field, and my definition is absolutely 100% standard. Terms are contested, and othere definitions are possible. But my usage squares with Mill's and Rawls', to start with, and they basically define the range of liberalism. No more from me. I have nothing interesting to say, Just ask Michael. jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
liberalism
Justin:These (Manchester and New Deal liberalisms) are economic liberalisms. I'm a political liberal, like Mill and Rawls. please explain. OK. Manchester liberalism is what we now call libertarianism, favoring a nightwatchman state and unfettered free markets with private property. New Deal liberalism saved capitalism by creating an admistrative state, lots of regulation, and social supports for the less well off under capitalism. Political liberalism is neutral on the best economic form. Its key idea is that freedom is a good, as is self-government. Accordingly it favors a limited representative government with elected officials chosen by univeresal suffrage and hedged in by extensive civil and political liberties. Its classic statement is Mill's On Liberty, a defense of people's rights to live without oppressive social legislation or social pressure that disfavors experiments in living (in Mill's case, living openly with his girlfiend, lover, and collaborator Harriet Taylor), imposes orthodox beliefs such as a state religion or adherence to some required secular doctrine, and the like. Political liberalism takes no position on the so-called economic liberties defended so aggressively by the Manchesterians; Mill was a market socialist, personally. John Rawls' revival of political liberalism makes equal extensive freedom the first of the primary social goods; he mixes this with New Dealism by restricting inequality of opportunity and ealth to that which would benefit the least well off. He thinks that leaves the choice between property owning democracy (petty commodity production) and market socialism open. In any event, the distinction between political and economic is bogus and seems inappropriate to a political economy discussion list. It's not that there's no distinction, just that it's rough and ready and context specific. Here it signifies the neutrality of liberal governmental forms among different (socialist and nonsocialist) economic arrangements. As I said before, almost everyone here--you too--favors representative govt, univ. suffrage, extensive civil rights and liberties. In that sense we are all liberals. jks jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
liberalism
At 08:55 PM 07/30/2002 +, you wrote: What part do you reject, Doug? Representative govt? Univeral suffrage? Extensive civil and political liberties? In fact you reject none of it. You are a bourg lib too, as are probably 95% of the people on this list. Explain the bourgeois part. Thanks, Joanna Part of it is epater les socialistes, but in fact the bourgeoisie invented liberalism, and its only historical form has been liberal democratic capitalism, unless you count the few months of the Paris Commune (which wasn't socialist econonomically speaking), or maybe Sandinista Nicaragua (same, economically). As a socialist, I agree with Schumpeter that there is no in-principle reason why socialism cannot be liberal democratic. If there were, I wouldn't be a socialist. jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: liberalism
Justin Schwartz wrote: As I said before, almost everyone here--you too--favors univ. suffrage --- Yes extensive civil rights and liberties Yes representative govt - NO This form of democracy has never produced democracy -- and it never will. It's replacement will have to be worked out in practice -- not from a blueprint I or anyone else can provide at this time. Representative Government can only be a dictatorship of the Capitalist Class. Carrol In that sense we are all liberals. jks jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Martin J. Sklar on Progressivism and Corporate Liberalism
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~shgape/sklar2.html
From Populism to Economic Liberalism: The Iranian Predicament
Sohrab Behdad (Economics, Denison University), From Populism to Economic Liberalism: The Iranian Predicament, http://www.denison.edu/~behdad/Populism.pdf. Sohrab Behdad, Khatami and His 'Reformist' Economic (Non-)Agenda, 21 May 2001, http://www.merip.org/pins/pin57.html. -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
neo-liberalism in Ghana (ho hum?)
[another pen-l perennial that people are bored with?] Cash and carry misery in Ghana Britain is backing reforms which are deepening Africa's poverty John Kampfner Friday February 8, 2002 The Guardian Tony Blair is not planning to meet Mary Agyekum while in Ghana. Perhaps he should. Mary breaks stones for a living. Her children help her out. If she's lucky, she gets 20,000 cedis a week, about £2. But the Agyekum family used to live well. They owned a farm in the village of Atuabo, in the west of Ghana. One day a mining company forced them off their land. Gold is the biggest export earner. For decades the mining firms have had a free rein. The Ghanaian government, urged on by the IMF and the World Bank, gives mining firms tax holidays of up to 10 years and keeps environmental and other regulation to a minimum. Two thirds of the land in the west of Ghana is under concession. Everywhere you go, you see huge cavities in the ground, discarded pits where thriving villages once stood. The Agyekums are forced to make trade-offs. Each morning begins with a trip to the public toilet. Mary has to pay to be let in. She begs the woman to allow her to take her children in for free. Later they walk to the nearest borehole, where they pay for a bucket of water. This is what the World Bank calls full cost recovery. It is an integral part of the World Bank's poverty reduction strategy - the centrepiece of the economic reform and debt relief programme that the British government is pushing so hard. The strategy is fundamentally flawed. Economists call Ghana a cash and carry society. Nothing comes for free. You pay for medical care, schooling, drinking water - and to go to the toilet. The trouble is that most people, especially in rural areas, can't pay. The first sub-Saharan country to gain independence, Ghana used to be called the model pupil. But after two decades of structural adjustment, the poor are poorer and the government more dependent than ever on outside help. Now the Ghana model is being exported across the developing world. But if the neo-liberal experiment has failed Ghana, what chances anywhere else? Privatisation of the urban water supply, one of the conditions for further World Bank loans, is proceeding apace. The contracts provide rich pickings for competing consortia, mainly British and French. Activists who oppose the water sell-off are denounced as subversives by the Ghanaian government. In villages, water supply will remain in government hands, but only because it is not profitable enough to be sold. So, to balance the books, the state is making villages pay for the upkeep of the boreholes and water pumps. The villages can't afford it. The issue is not whether Blair should be in Africa rather than at home , whether we should feel guilty or whether he's right to want to help. Who wouldn't if they saw the state of most of the continent? It's whether World Bank and IMF policies, being pushed hard by the British government, are right. Call them monetarism with a human face: the old IMF dogmas with spin. The scar of debt has been worsened by private partnerships between weak, sometimes corrupt, African governments and powerful, sometimes corrupt, international corporations. Wherever I travelled on a recent visit to Ghana, I saw these policies depriving people of their livelihoods, and then making them pay for essentials. Privately, even the practitioners admit things have gone wrong, and that trouble is brewing. Instead of helping indigenous industry, these countries are being forced to import artificially cheap goods, and are not allowed to help themselves. In the village of Kpembe, the chief invited us for lunch. We ate chicken feet, soup and American rice. And yet the Katanga valley, just a couple of miles away, was until recently Ghana's rice bowl. It now lies fallow. Ghana used to be self sufficient in rice. The World Bank and IMF decreed subsidies had to stop, that poor countries should concentrate their efforts only on what they can export. And yet the US rice industry receives tens of millions of dollars in support. The double standards apply to water. No state help in Ghana, but subsidy aplenty in countries like the US. In the hospital in the town of Tarkwa patients have to pay all the costs of surgery - gloves, drugs, blood, anaesthetics, gauze, even cotton wool. Betty Krampa, a 20-year-old who has just given birth, is ready to leave. But she can't until she's paid for her treatment. Her parents are dead. Her husband is out of work. User fees have to be collected to keep the hospital going - in an area where multinational mining companies are making millions. If Blair really wants to remove the scar of Africa from the conscience of the world, he should use his influence to force a rethink in economic programmes which, however well-intentioned, are deepening the misery of the most vulnerable people in the world. · John Kampfner was in Ghana to make a film on the impact of IMF/World
New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism
Martin Brown wrote When I was in London recently I saw a play called Feel Good, a ruthless satire of Blair's Labor Party. Have you seen it?. Any thoughts. = MK: Unfortunately no. I'd appreciate your review of it. = If a similar play about the Clinton Administration had appeared on Broadway it would not have been obvious if it had been written by an lefty-ADA democrat or a member of Hillary's right wing conspiracy. = MK: It's easier to distinguish ADA analogues like Roy Hattersley and the right wing conspirators of the UK Conservative Party, if only because the punk Thatcherites there are so obviously out of touch with reality. Nevertheless your raising of ADA is instructive, in that, like Hattersley, they look pretty left relative to what passes for the centre today. But ADA began life as a ferociously anti-communist organisation that tried to reconcile its cuddly socioeconomic policies with its full support of the national security state and engagement in McCarthyite red-baiting and blacklisting. More than a few veterans of the Wallace campaign could relate stories of ADA activities during that period and after. The contemporaneous publication of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s The Vital Center gives the ideological flavour that most informed ADA. Of course there were others but his was the most influential. Michael Lind is the most representative of that tendency today, even feeling the need to bash Wallace still, in his co-authored intro to a Schlesinger celebration he and John Patrick Diggins edited for Princeton UP a few years back. ADA and Hattersley are marginal precisely because of the success of their policies, but neither can bring themselves to admit it, at least yet. Thanks to the ADA's rampant anti-communism a door was opened for the conservative resurgence of the 1960s and the Reagan ascendancy, and the subsequent rise of the DLC, purveyors of the new realism (as opposed to the cold war realism of ADA c.1948). The DLC is New ADA, pandering to today's vital center (significantly to the right of the old) while Old ADA proffers its comparatively more attractive policies in relative oblivion, rather like Hattersley today. Just as both tried to reconcile the irreconcilable -- capitalism with a human socioeconomic face and capitalism with a ruthless political edge -- so the DLC represents the continuation of that process with consequently diminishing returns for the former as yet more ground is ceded to the right. Pretty much sums up the Third Way worldwide. Michael K.
New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism
Penners A few weeks ago Tony Blair presidentially appointed the chairman of the Labour Party without acknowledging that the post already existed, and has done for decades. The chair of the party an elected post. But such is Mr Tony's adherence to the norms of democracy that he saw fit to override legal protocol and impose his own appointee. The person he chose, Charles Clarke, was, only a while ago, being written off by such insightful commentators as Andrew Roth as too associated with the failed regime of Neil Kinnock, whose close adviser he was. In an earlier post Clarke was identified as having been a key figure in the Labour leadership's efforts to discredit the miners' strike of 1984/5 and having had earlier experience in CIA-backed ICFTU trade unionism. That his association with the electorally failed regime of Kinnock would have put an end to his political career is a measure of the inanity that passes for political journalism in Britain, where there is barely any acknowledgement of the largely obvious: the vast majority of the Blair entourage are the beneficiaries of the Kinnock ascendancy. Kinnock himself is now ensconced as the vice president of the European Commission, succeeding Leon Brittan in the mission to tailor that august institution to suit British sensibilities, in line with the British state's overall determination to integrate further in the European Union (see earlier posts by Mark Jones). The role of Kinnock and Brittan in this requires a separate post that may, or may not, materialise. Whatever, Kinnock has hardly failed and has been well-rewarded by his backers in the permanent government with his current appointment. Meanwhile Kinnock's erstwhile deputy, Roy Hattersley, continues to display a quality that is both endearing and infuriating: political naivete. In the article below, in which he complains of Clarke's appointment (whilst making sure not to bad-mouth Clarke himself), he says: When I was a member of Labour's national executive, Tony Benn would make long speeches about the plot to transfer all power from party members to the parliamentary leadership. Neil Kinnock and I shook our heads in bewilderment and mumbled about the need for Tony to lie down in a darkened room. I now realise that, far from being demented, he was prescient. Nice one, Roy. Now, prescience would imply there being some element of continuity in the Kinnock reforms and the present Blair autocracy. But that is not a road Roy is either willing or able to travel down, at least yet. The truth of the matter is that New Labour is the ultimate triumph of the liberal wing of the CIA and US National Security State. Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Michael Foot represented an interregnum which allowed the dangerous emergence of the New Left within the Labour Party, and which had to be beaten down and out with the full force of the British secret state, itself assisted by its US allies (hence the disowning of the miners' strike, support for repressive Thatcherite employment legislation, the surrender of the BBC and the assiduous courting of business interests). While the out-and-out reactionaries like James Angleton believed any kind of socialism equated to Soviet communism, the liberals used the language of social democracy (via the Socialist International, the ICFTU, etc.) and nurtured relationships with certain amenable social democrats (Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Stewart, Denis Healey, David Owen, Shirley Williams, George Robertson, Peter Mandelson, to name but a few) via such tailor made outfits as the British American Project for a Successor Generation in order to accomplish exactly what Blair is achieving now. There is a lot of detail behind all this that requires deeper explanation, but the essence is just that. As for Mark's points re the split between the US and the UK, it is quite possible that slavish adherence to US dictates appeals less than a leadership role (there could be no other for Great Britain, after all) in a European counterweight to US hegemony. Fanciful it might be, a long term ambition it would certainly have to be. Nevertheless, it would be a strategically logical maneuver for a third-rate imperialist power desperately punching above its weight. The Conservatives' attachment to empire (preserved by the punk Thatcherite tendency) is wholly anachronistic, as it was in 1945. But it was why the liberal wing of the US national security state preferred to do business with the Gaitskellites, who could be relied upon not to do anything foolish re Cold War strategy, but who also knew their place in the new international order dominated by the US. Once the labour movement was destroyed, including especially the trade union bastions of Communist Party influence in Britain, the right wing of the Labour Party could be entrusted with the rudder of state, subject, of course, to the imprimatur of the permanent government. Blair mistook his Clarke for a chair The PM flouted party rules by handing
RE: New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism
When I was in London recently I saw a play called Feel Good, a ruthless satire of Blair's Labor Party. Have you seen it?. Any thoughts. If a similar play about the Clinton Administration had appeared on Broadway it would not have been obvious if it had been written by an lefty-ADA democrat or a member of Hillary's right wing conspiracy. -Original Message- From: Michael Keaney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 9:16 AM To: PEN-L (E-mail) Subject: [PEN-L:15927] New Labour and the triumph of Cold War liberalism Penners A few weeks ago Tony Blair presidentially appointed the chairman of the Labour Party without acknowledging that the post already existed, and has done for decades. The chair of the party an elected post. But such is Mr Tony's adherence to the norms of democracy that he saw fit to override legal protocol and impose his own appointee. The person he chose, Charles Clarke, was, only a while ago, being written off by such insightful commentators as Andrew Roth as too associated with the failed regime of Neil Kinnock, whose close adviser he was. In an earlier post Clarke was identified as having been a key figure in the Labour leadership's efforts to discredit the miners' strike of 1984/5 and having had earlier experience in CIA-backed ICFTU trade unionism. That his association with the electorally failed regime of Kinnock would have put an end to his political career is a measure of the inanity that passes for political journalism in Britain, where there is barely any acknowledgement of the largely obvious: the vast majority of the Blair entourage are the beneficiaries of the Kinnock ascendancy. Kinnock himself is now ensconced as the vice president of the European Commission, succeeding Leon Brittan in the mission to tailor that august institution to suit British sensibilities, in line with the British state's overall determination to integrate further in the European Union (see earlier posts by Mark Jones). The role of Kinnock and Brittan in this requires a separate post that may, or may not, materialise. Whatever, Kinnock has hardly failed and has been well-rewarded by his backers in the permanent government with his current appointment. Meanwhile Kinnock's erstwhile deputy, Roy Hattersley, continues to display a quality that is both endearing and infuriating: political naivete. In the article below, in which he complains of Clarke's appointment (whilst making sure not to bad-mouth Clarke himself), he says: When I was a member of Labour's national executive, Tony Benn would make long speeches about the plot to transfer all power from party members to the parliamentary leadership. Neil Kinnock and I shook our heads in bewilderment and mumbled about the need for Tony to lie down in a darkened room. I now realise that, far from being demented, he was prescient. Nice one, Roy. Now, prescience would imply there being some element of continuity in the Kinnock reforms and the present Blair autocracy. But that is not a road Roy is either willing or able to travel down, at least yet. The truth of the matter is that New Labour is the ultimate triumph of the liberal wing of the CIA and US National Security State. Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Michael Foot represented an interregnum which allowed the dangerous emergence of the New Left within the Labour Party, and which had to be beaten down and out with the full force of the British secret state, itself assisted by its US allies (hence the disowning of the miners' strike, support for repressive Thatcherite employment legislation, the surrender of the BBC and the assiduous courting of business interests). While the out-and-out reactionaries like James Angleton believed any kind of socialism equated to Soviet communism, the liberals used the language of social democracy (via the Socialist International, the ICFTU, etc.) and nurtured relationships with certain amenable social democrats (Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Stewart, Denis Healey, David Owen, Shirley Williams, George Robertson, Peter Mandelson, to name but a few) via such tailor made outfits as the British American Project for a Successor Generation in order to accomplish exactly what Blair is achieving now. There is a lot of detail behind all this that requires deeper explanation, but the essence is just that. As for Mark's points re the split between the US and the UK, it is quite possible that slavish adherence to US dictates appeals less than a leadership role (there could be no other for Great Britain, after all) in a European counterweight to US hegemony. Fanciful it might be, a long term ambition it would certainly have to be. Nevertheless, it would be a strategically logical maneuver for a third-rate imperialist power desperately punching above its weight. The Conservatives' attachment to empire (preserved by the punk Thatcherite tendency) is wholly anachronistic, as it was in 1945. But it was why the liberal wing of the US national security state
Berezhovsky backs liberalism
The relationship between the economic base and the superstructure, between money and politics, is as transparent in Russia as anywhere in the world. Follow the money, could well be a marxist principle. Boris Berezhovsky, in prudent self-imposed exile, says he is 100% prepared to finance a new political party to oppose Putin, his former creature. Berezhovsky ... has sought in recent months to reinvent himself as a democratic activist ... Previously known more as a Kremlin insider than a defender of human rights, Mr. Berezovsky has opened a $25 million foundation that is bankrolling everything from an electronic archive of Stalin's victims to the museum that honors the late dissident Andrei Sakharov. Last month, he offered his television network as a refuge for protesting journalists who quit NTV rather than submit to a takeover by a state-controlled energy company. (International Herald Tribune IHT) BB: 'Putin is really destroying what we created in the last ten years.' The new party will be dedicated to 'liberalism'. Chris Burford London
Socialist resistance to neo-liberalism
Many on this list would be sympathetic to regimes resisting neo-liberal interference by the US, Britain, and other western imperialist governments. Charles makes a good point that historically there will be many imperfect forms of socialism, and need to be. The positive news this week that the US Congress is to start lifting its economic blockade against Cuba (food and medicine's only) after 38 years is a time to note the persistence and shrewdness of the Cuban regime in resisting these pressures for so long. That included handling internal contradictions well, and actively seeking support from many other countries in the world, and even the papacy. Similarly not everything that the Socialist Party of Serbia did, was bad, but it may be more constructive to debate in the months ahead what steps were progressive in this project and what ultimately were at the very least unproductive. For example perhaps the privatisation of 200 companies in 1996 to associates of the SPS was not a progressive compromise with market forces. Resisting neo-liberalism is enormously difficult. But lessons could be learned. Chris Burford London
Questioning free-market liberalism
The Nation Magazine, May 8, 2000 FREE-MARKET LIBERALISM IS NOW PROCLAIMED A UNIVERSAL MODEL FOR SUCCESS, BUT THIS BELIEF IS BASED ON A PARTIAL AND LIMITED WORLDVIEW. The American Ascendancy: Imposing a New World Order by BRUCE CUMINGS The turn of the millennium provided yet another occasion to celebrate a triumphant American Century. And given the unipolar pre-eminence and comprehensive economic advantage that the United States enjoys today, only a spoilsport can complain. Unemployment and inflation are both at thirty-year lows. The stock market remains strong, though volatile, and the monster federal budget deficit of a decade ago miraculously metamorphoses into a surplus that may soon reach more than $1 trillion. Meanwhile, President William Jefferson Clinton, not long after a humiliating impeachment, was rated in 1999 as the best of all postwar Presidents in conducting foreign policy (a dizzying ascent from eighth place in 1994), according to a nationwide poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. This surprising result might also, of course, bespeak inattention: When asked to name the two or three most important foreign policy issues facing the United States, fully 21 percent of the public couldn't think of one (they answered "don't know"), and a mere 7 percent thought foreign policy issues were important to the nation. But who cares, when all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds? If this intoxicating optimism is commonplace today, it would have seemed demented just a few short years ago: Back then, the scholars and popular pundits who are supposed to know the occult science of international affairs were full of dread about American decline and Japanese and German advance. The American Century looked like an unaccountably short one. Today it is disconcerting to recall the towering influence of work by "declinists" like Paul Kennedy (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) and Clyde Prestowitz (Trading Places); it is positively embarrassing to read recent accounts like Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of the World Order and Donald White's The American Century, which still seem to assume an America on the road to ruin. Prestowitz thought Japan was ahead of the United States in nearly every important industry and argued that Japan was verging on hegemonic predominance in the world economy. Now it is difficult to find any American who takes Japan seriously--in 1990, 63 percent of foreign policy elites fretted about competition from Japan; that fell to 21 percent in 1994 and a mere 14 percent in 1998. Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man had a different point to make: The end of the cold war marked the real millennial transition, leaving just one system standing--ours. Few could have imagined Fukuyama doing this through a reprise of the thought of Hegel--and perhaps least of all the great philosopher himself, who would roll over in his grave to see his dialectic grinding to a halt in the Valhalla of George Bush and Bill Clinton's philistine United States. But Fukuyama's argument had an unquestionable ingenuity, taking the thinker perhaps most alien to the pragmatic and unphilosophical American soul, Hegel, and using his thought to proclaim something quintessentially American: that the pot of gold at the end of History's rainbow is free-market liberalism. History just happened to culminate in the reigning orthodoxy of our era, the neoliberalism of Thatcher and Reagan. The United States has such a comprehensive advantage in the world that it could occupy itself for a full year with the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a year punctuated by the disastrous collapse of several of the world's important economies (South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Russia) and followed by a new war, and nothing happened except that the American economic lead lengthened. The stock market continued to go up in spite of the global financial crisis, which included a very expensive implosion of the Russian economy in August 1998; the market expanded all through the war in Kosovo. (More recently it appeared that the bull market might be coming to an end.) Economic growth in the last quarters of both 1998 and 1999 was so robust (6.1 and 6.9 percent, respectively) that in GNP terms it created a Spain overnight. This isn't to say that US diplomacy is winning friends and influencing people the world over, but so what? Former UN chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali put his finger on the deepest truth: "Like in Roman times," he said, the Americans "have no diplomacy; you don't need diplomacy if you are so powerful." Let me try to isolate four elements that I think account for the American ascendancy today, each of which has little to do with preponderant military strength (even though the United States has that, too): mass consumption and mass culture, the advantages of a continent, an unappreciated aspect of American technological prowes
[PEN-L:12761] Note on Neo-Liberalism
Beginning in the 1970's and continuing today, Latin American countries have undertaken reforms and restructuring in the mining sectors of their economies. This process is part of a wholesale restructuring of the Latin American economies, which in turn, is part of a continuing global restructuring process. There are several reasons why these changes have taken place. The standard explanation is that the previous economic "model" in Latin America, often referred to as import-substitution or macroeconomic populism, failed or simply exhausted its potential, leaving Latin America mired in debt,stagnation and various other economic maladies. In contrast to the orthodox explanation, I shall argue that the neo-liberal restructuring was a response or counter-offensive by the dominant classes to the growing power of the working class through the 1970's. The working class in Latin America, as elsewhere, had gotten too powerful and needed to be weakened in order to continually increase capital accumulation. The dominant classes have, so far, been all too successful in this endeavor. Beginning in the 1970's and continuing today, Latin American countries have undertaken reforms and restructuring in the mining sectors of their economies or have no minimum wage, no welfare benefits, no unions, no legal protection, and no security. The labor market has also changed socio-demographically as internal migration increases with unemployment. People thrown out of their regular jobs must migrate to where they can find work if they cannot find work in their current place of residence. This is evident in the huge sprawling shantytowns of Bolivian cities , the depletion of the population in the mining centers and the increase in population in the coca producing areas. The economic restructuring ,sometimes called neo-liberalism, consists of trade liberalization( i.e. the reduction or elimination of import and foreign investment controls), privatization of state enterprises, deregulation( elimination of price controls and subsidies.) The purpose of these reforms was to control inflation, meet debt servicing requirements, and open the economy up to international investment and market forces. As concerns the mining sector, privatization is the most important of these reforms. Privatization is often undertaken simultaneously with other reforms( e.g.. legal) to maximize the desired effect. Most mines in Latin America were nationalized in the post-world war two period through to the mid-1970's. The reasons for the nationalizations are numerous yet outside the scope of this essay. Privatization contains a strong political-ideological dimension alongside the pure economic motives. Partisans and advocates of privatization usually hold that private enterprise is a priori superior to public or state enterprise. Private firms are everywhere and always more efficient, productive, profitable and hence more competitive than are public firms. Thus, making as many public firms private, as possible, will enhance the general efficiency and competitiveness of the economy as a whole. Increased profitability means greater capital accumulation and a greater surplus to reinvest into the economy. Advocates of privatization often overlook the fact that public firms are created and exist for different reasons than do private firms. Judging public firms by the same standards one would judge private firms( i.e. profitability) is therefore irrelevant. In the last twenty years, privatization in Latin America has taken place during or as a result of economic crisis. The most acute of these crisis' has come to be known as the debt crisis which started in 1982 when Mexico announced it no longer had the foreign exchange necessary to pay the service on its foreign debt. The international banks and lending agencies, including most prominently the IMF demanded privatization as a means of procuring the necessary funds to help the debt service. It should also be noted that privatization takes place in the extremely corrupt atmosphere of Latin American politics. The process of privatization has oftentimes been simply a means by which certain families and their friends enrich themselves through pilfering publicly owned wealth. Moreover, privatization's are done to gain favor with national or international elites, to gain political influence, as political pay offs etc. The effect of privatization has often been to strengthen the position of the socio-economic elite.State owned companies are often sold at below their real value. To my mind, the most important cause ( and effect) of privatization has been to strengthen the position of the dominant classes vis-Ã -vis the working classes. Privatizations are associated with mass layoffs and a corresponding boost in the unemployment rate. Bolivia began its structural adjustment program or "New Economic Policy" in 1985/6 which included the closing of all state-ow
[PEN-L:7795] FW: Liberalism: Classical or Neo, Same Shit
-Original Message- From: Craven, Jim Sent: Monday, June 07, 1999 1:15 PM To: Craven, Jim Subject: Liberalism: Classical or Neo, Same Shit From "Year 501: The Conquest Continues" by Noam Chomsky, South End Press, Boston, 1993 "Adam Smith may have eloquently enumerated the beneficial impact on the people of England of 'the wretched spirit of monopoly' in his bitter condemnations of the East Indian Company. But his theoretical analysis was not the cause of the decline. The 'honorable company' fell victim to the confidence of British industrialists, particularly the textile manufacturers who had been protected from the 'unfair' competition of Indian textiles, but call for deregulation once they convinced themselves that they could win a 'fair competition', having undermined their rivals in the colonies by recourse to state power and violence, and used their new wealth and power for mechanization and improved supply of cotton. In contemporary terms, once they had established a 'level playing field' to their incontestable advantage, nothing seemed more high-minded than an 'open world' with no irrational and arbitrary interference with the honest entrepreneur, seeking the welfare of all. Those who expect to win the game can be counted on to laud the rules of 'free competition'--which however, they never fail to bend to their interests. To mention only the most obvious lapse, the apostles of economic liberalism have never contemplated permitting the 'free circulation of labor...from place to place,' one of the foundations of freedom of trade, as Adam Smith stressed." (pp 10-11) 'A significant fact which stands out is that those parts of India which have been the longest under British rule are the poorest today', Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: 'Indeed some kind of chart might be drawn up to indicate the close connection between length of British rule and progressive growth of poverty.' In the mid-18th century, India was developed by comparative standards, not only in textiles. 'The ship building industry was flourishing and one of the flagships of a British admiral during the Napoleonic Wars had been built by an Indian firm in India.' Not only textiles, but other well-established industries such as 'ship building, metal working, glass, paper and many crafts,' declined under British rule, as India's development was arrested and the growth of new industry blocked, and India became 'an agricultural colony of industrial England.' While Europe urbanized, India 'became progressively ruralized', with a rapid increase in the proportion of the population dependent on agriculture... (p 14) Indigenuous Peoples know about "Liberalism"--classical, neo and hybrid--very well: "Hugo Grotius, a leading 17th century humanist and the founder of modern international law, determined that the 'most just war is against savage beasts, the next against men who are like beasts.' George Washington wrote in 1783 that 'the gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey tho' they differ in shape.' What is called in official PC rhetoric 'a pragmatist', Washington regarded purchase of Indian lands (typically through fraud or threat) as a more cost-effective tactic than violence. Thomas Jefferson predicted to John Adams that the 'backward' tribes at the borders 'will relapse into barbarism and misery, lose numbers by war and want, and we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forests into the Stony mountains..." (p22) And from Thomas Jefferson, the patron saint of Libertarians, classical liberals and even neo-liberals, summing up the ugly essence and modus operandi behind the myriad masks of liberalism: "...but this letter being unofficial and private, I may with safety give you a more extensive view of our policy respecting the Indians, that you may better comprehend the parts dealt to you in detail through the official channel, and observing the system of which they make a part, conduct yourself in unison with it in cases where you are obliged to act without instruction...When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and influencial individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they becomne willing to lop them off by cessation of lands...In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will i
[PEN-L:4198] New book on decline of liberalism in the USA
NY Times Book Review, March 7, 1999 Without a Cause An attorney bemoans the decline of liberal political passions in America. By ROBERT B. REICH Today's young adults are the first generation born this century to have missed the passion of American liberalism. Previous generations witnessed the crusading muckrakers and suffragettes, the zeal of the New Dealers and of the labor leaders Sidney Hillman and John L. Lewis, the vigor of John and Robert Kennedy, the righteousness of Martin Luther King Jr. and the freedom riders, the ardor and agony of the Vietnam War protesters and the fervor of the women's rights movement. There were excesses and hypocrisies all along the way, but also a thundering insistence on broader democracy and a more inclusive prosperity. Now, at the century's end, most liberals would be content to save Social Security, not exactly an issue that gets the blood flowing. In this era of the most conservative Democratic President of the century, political passions seem the exclusive province of the right, those who want to slash taxes and end affirmative action and abortions. What happened? Thomas Geoghegan, a crafty writer who moonlights as a Chicago attorney, blames the hollowing of America's great Northern cities, which were once incubators of progressive politics, and the withering of the Federal Government, which once gave such a politics a national scope. In Geoghegan's view, the states have quietly sucked the energy out of both and substituted lowest-common-denominator governments more responsive to the rich and the wacky than to the blue collars and the underdogs. Geoghegan does not actually make this argument in ''The Secret Lives of Citizens.'' Instead, he circles it like a dog chasing a scent. His is a whimsical, personal journey that never quite gets anywhere but stops at a lot of interesting and oddball spots along the way. The trail begins and ends in Chicago. The city is shrinking, surrounded by ever-expanding suburbs run by faux governments (DuPage County to the west, transportation authorities, mosquito abatement districts, the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission) that meet secretly in hotel conference rooms to decide things like where to locate new runways and tollways. Once seething with ethnic ward politics, Chicago has become dull and soulless, Geoghegan says, filling up with young corporate achievers who don't even know where the wards are. What's worse, power has tilted toward the Sunbelt states. New baseball teams don't even bear the names of cities anymore -- they're Texas Rangers, Arizona Diamondbacks and Florida Marlins. The original sin, according to Geoghegan, was Franklin Roosevelt's failure to apply the New Deal to the South. The ploy enabled Roosevelt to get legislation through Congress, but it proved a long-term curse. The South had no labor unions or wage bargaining. ''It was as if a hole had been punched in the bottom of the New Deal. The wages, the jobs could leak slowly into the South. . . . Drip, drip, at first. Then gushing, in a flood.'' After revenue sharing became the core of Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, the Sunbelt got the infrastructure it needed to attract Northern industry. As competition intensified, the South's population and share of the gross national product exploded. And places like Chicago began emptying out. Devolution to the states is all the rage now in Washington, whose officials seem oblivious of the states' tradition of corruption and ineptitude. Geoghegan remarks that United States attorneys could exist simply to prosecute state governments. After all, the savings-and-loan scandal happened after the states took on responsibility to regulate the companies. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is busy reviving the ghost of John C. Calhoun, who once claimed that states could nullify laws of Congress. But if the Calhounists were correct, Geoghegan asks, how could we have ever abolished slavery? It's not just Roosevelt who's under attack now; it's Lincoln. The progressive writer Herbert Croly had warned early on: if the states got stronger and Washington weaker, all the old evils would return -- inequality, stagnant wages and big business running the country. What's a citizen to do? It's the serious question that lies at the heart of the book, but Geoghegan answers it ironically. Democratic Presidents used to give Americans things to do, he writes. Roosevelt told us to join a union, Kennedy asked us to join the Peace Corps, Johnson to go to the inner city and teach children. But Carter didn't say. And although Clinton urged us to volunteer, he was evasive. ''Volunteer for what?'' Geoghegan asks. ''Join a militia in rural Michigan?'' National Democrats haven't a clue what to do, other than raise campaign money. You can't even find out at a place like Harvard's Kennedy School, where it's ''all microeconomics. Cost benefit. Deregulation. Getting prices right -- which usually implies, I have found, getting wages wrong
Economic liberalism in contradiction
The world scale of the market for software, the specific properties
of immaterial commodities, and especially the legal or
technological control of "standards" (particularly as regards the
functional interfaces of software and the ways in which information
is represented) are leading ineluctably to a concentration of
monopoly power. Not only are client companies put into a state of
dependency, but they also no longer have alternatives.
Since the suppliers have few competitors, they are even less
motivated to satisfy their clients' specific needs. It is possible
for a whole sector of technology to fall under the control of a
single firm (or a small number of firms). Users in the fields of
education and research are particularly concerned at this
single-sourcing of available technology, and the resulting control
of the flows of information which are so vital to researchers.
The ecology of ideas and technologies obeys the same laws as that
of living beings. Single evolutionary solutions present a number of
dangers. To have a small number of producing companies
correspondingly diminishes the quantity, and especially the
variety, of research and, therefore, also diminishes technological
progress. The competitive element of technological evolution, which
is essential in order to avoid technological dead ends, is either
weakened or disappears. The absence of diversity makes the fabric
of technology more vulnerable to attack, with the threat of
computer viruses being only one danger among many.
A recurrent theme of liberal thinking is that there is no
alternative to the market economy. In the case of software, nothing
could be further from the truth. Another path is already being
traced. One can understand the big firms being nervous about recent
developments, but it is hard to explain the almost total media
black-out, since this is an economic phenomenon which is as massive
as it is new.
This search for a different way of doing things was undertaken in
the early 1980s by Richard Stallman, at that time a researcher at
the Massachusetts Institute of Techology (MIT), and was
subsequently embodied in the creation of the Free Software
Foundation (5) and a number of associated companies. The initial
intention was to create free software ("freeware") which, like
ideas, would be available to all, in line with the philosophy of
Pasteur, Jefferson et al. In order to avoid people laying economic
claim to this free software, Stallman turned the notion of
copyright on its head by popularising a new kind of licence, known
as the "general public licence", which protects a given piece of
software from technical or legal attempts to restrict its
utilisation, diffusion and modification (6).
In tandem with the spread of such licences, there has been a
sizeable and varied production of free software. The necessary
specifications and background information have been made available,
so that people can adapt or improve the software as they see fit,
and redistribute it, with or without payment, and without any
control over this redistribution by third parties. True to the
tenets of economic liberalism, this free competition has had an
extremely positive effect on the quantity and quality of the
software being produced. But the influence of the money economy is
much reduced.
The most visible product of this freeware culture is an operating
system - the software necessary to the functioning of every
computer, providing a basic set of operative functions (file
handling, posting, text capture, connection to networks etc.) -
known as Linux. This was developed initially in 1991 on the basis
of work done by a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds. Since then it
has grown, benefiting from cutting-edge contributions from a
supportive army of experts worldwide, linked via the Internet. The
development of Linux has been self-organising, like a huge
enterprise without walls, without shareholders, without wages,
without advertising and without revenue. To date the number of
Linux installations is estimated at between five and six million,
with increasing evidence of applications in industry, too. The
system's market share compares favourably with Apple's, but its
growth rate is higher.
Various studies have shown that this software is in all respects
competitive with commercial products. This is also confirmed by the
extent of its penetration and infiltration in economic activity.
The most significant example is undoubtedly the Internet, which
would disappear entirely if this software were eliminated (7).
Technolog
Re: social liberalism
Max, I had not realized that "Old Democrats" were calling "New Democrats" "social liberals." I think your point about the racial question falling between the cracks is of some interest. At least with respect to established African-American groups there seems to be a tendency to line up with the "Old Democrats," more protectionist, more focused on economic issues, less interest in environmental issues, at least until recently, some tendency to "conservatism" on some "social" issues, etc. OTOH, a strong focus on race per se rather than worker identity becomes de facto another brand of "identity politics." Barkley Rosser On Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:10:04 + maxsaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Whatever liberalism came out of FDR's time has now split between a quasi-social democratic view which is oriented to labor and living standard issues on one side, and a more middle-class focus on 'the poor,' ecology, reproductive rights, civil liberties, and at its worst, 'identity politics'. Race gets lost somewhere between the two. To confuse things even more, the latter is often called social liberalism by partisans of the former. Partisans of the latter, in contrast, think of partisans of the former as either labor hacks or unrealistically radical. The poster-boy for social liberalism in this way of thinking is Robert Rubin--favors taxation of the rich, but using the money for deficit reduction; favors free trade; favors social spending to programs narrowly targeted to the poor (sic). Robert Reich is mostly the other kind, though he founders on the rock of free trade and, to some extent, privatization. An article by EPI denizens Ruy Texeira and David Kusnets referred to the labor-oriented type as "worker liberalism," though I favor the more bombastic terminology, "proletarian liberalism." PL is a logical reaction to the failure of PS, but I fear it doesn't go far enough in reckoning with the culture and values of the working class. For that, we need to reinvent American populism. From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" [EMAIL PROTECTED] This message is going to several lists simultaneously. Some time ago on several lists there was a discussion regarding how it came to be that in the US "liberal" came to mean someone who favored government intervention in the economy, in contrast to "classical liberalism" and how the word "liberal" is viewed in most non-English speaking societies, and even in Britain to some degree. Without doubt it had come to mean this in the US by the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a view that might be called "social liberalism." About a month ago there was an essay in _The Economist_ by Harvard's Samuel Beer on the roots of "New Labour" that argued that the key turning point was the British Liberal Party Convention of 1906. Prior to then British liberalism had been "Gladstonian," that is "classical." Lloyd George dominated the 1906 convention, which was in part responding to the formal founding of the British Labour Party that year, and supported a variety of proposals including a minimum wage, protection of union funds, eight-hour working day for miners, health and unemployment insurance, and old age pensions, among other familiar items. He also supported removing the veto of the House of Lords that was implemented in 1911. Keynes was a supporter of Lloyd George and along with Beveridge became an acolyte of this new "social liberalism" that would eventually spread into the US, especially after WW I, such views prior to then being labeled "progressive." That Hayek and Keynes debated over a variety of issues in the 1930s thus can be seen as a debate between these two kinds of "liberalism." Barkley Rosser James Madison University -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED] == Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions here do not necessarily represent the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. === -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: social liberalism
Whatever liberalism came out of FDR's time has now split between a quasi-social democratic view which is oriented to labor and living standard issues on one side, and a more middle-class focus on 'the poor,' ecology, reproductive rights, civil liberties, and at its worst, 'identity politics'. Race gets lost somewhere between the two. To confuse things even more, the latter is often called social liberalism by partisans of the former. Partisans of the latter, in contrast, think of partisans of the former as either labor hacks or unrealistically radical. The poster-boy for social liberalism in this way of thinking is Robert Rubin--favors taxation of the rich, but using the money for deficit reduction; favors free trade; favors social spending to programs narrowly targeted to the poor (sic). Robert Reich is mostly the other kind, though he founders on the rock of free trade and, to some extent, privatization. An article by EPI denizens Ruy Texeira and David Kusnets referred to the labor-oriented type as "worker liberalism," though I favor the more bombastic terminology, "proletarian liberalism." PL is a logical reaction to the failure of PS, but I fear it doesn't go far enough in reckoning with the culture and values of the working class. For that, we need to reinvent American populism. From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" [EMAIL PROTECTED] This message is going to several lists simultaneously. Some time ago on several lists there was a discussion regarding how it came to be that in the US "liberal" came to mean someone who favored government intervention in the economy, in contrast to "classical liberalism" and how the word "liberal" is viewed in most non-English speaking societies, and even in Britain to some degree. Without doubt it had come to mean this in the US by the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a view that might be called "social liberalism." About a month ago there was an essay in _The Economist_ by Harvard's Samuel Beer on the roots of "New Labour" that argued that the key turning point was the British Liberal Party Convention of 1906. Prior to then British liberalism had been "Gladstonian," that is "classical." Lloyd George dominated the 1906 convention, which was in part responding to the formal founding of the British Labour Party that year, and supported a variety of proposals including a minimum wage, protection of union funds, eight-hour working day for miners, health and unemployment insurance, and old age pensions, among other familiar items. He also supported removing the veto of the House of Lords that was implemented in 1911. Keynes was a supporter of Lloyd George and along with Beveridge became an acolyte of this new "social liberalism" that would eventually spread into the US, especially after WW I, such views prior to then being labeled "progressive." That Hayek and Keynes debated over a variety of issues in the 1930s thus can be seen as a debate between these two kinds of "liberalism." Barkley Rosser James Madison University -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED] == Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions here do not necessarily represent the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===
social liberalism
This message is going to several lists simultaneously. Some time ago on several lists there was a discussion regarding how it came to be that in the US "liberal" came to mean someone who favored government intervention in the economy, in contrast to "classical liberalism" and how the word "liberal" is viewed in most non-English speaking societies, and even in Britain to some degree. Without doubt it had come to mean this in the US by the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a view that might be called "social liberalism." About a month ago there was an essay in _The Economist_ by Harvard's Samuel Beer on the roots of "New Labour" that argued that the key turning point was the British Liberal Party Convention of 1906. Prior to then British liberalism had been "Gladstonian," that is "classical." Lloyd George dominated the 1906 convention, which was in part responding to the formal founding of the British Labour Party that year, and supported a variety of proposals including a minimum wage, protection of union funds, eight-hour working day for miners, health and unemployment insurance, and old age pensions, among other familiar items. He also supported removing the veto of the House of Lords that was implemented in 1911. Keynes was a supporter of Lloyd George and along with Beveridge became an acolyte of this new "social liberalism" that would eventually spread into the US, especially after WW I, such views prior to then being labeled "progressive." That Hayek and Keynes debated over a variety of issues in the 1930s thus can be seen as a debate between these two kinds of "liberalism." Barkley Rosser James Madison University -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11304] Liberalism Off The Record: More Evidence Of The Deep Crisis Of The Bourgeoisie In Finding A Credible Standard-Bearer (Canada)
This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more info. --75BA3FF15BB1 At the signing ceremony for Ukraine s admission into the aggressive U.S.-led NATO military alliance, Prime Minister Jean Chretien is reported to have made "unguarded comments" while chatting with Belgian President Jean-Luc Dehaene in front of a microphone he thought was turned off. The comments highlight the deep crisis of the Canadian bourgeoisie in producing statesmen and stateswomen with any credibility. In public, Chretien has said that the expansion of NATO is a matter of security and "peace in Europe." In private he said that the position of the U.S., which stands at the head of the NATO expansion, has nothing to do with security. "I know the reasons, it's not the reasons of state. It's for political reasons, short-term political reasons, to win the next elections." He did not comment as to who is going to benefit from the NATO expansion, but it is well-known that the military-industrial complex in all the NATO countries will hand over lots of money for election campaigns, not only in the United States, but in Canada as well. Over $30 billion worth of armaments is at stake. In terms of U.S-Canada relations, and particularly the use of Canadian troops to do the dirty work for the U.S., Chretien said: "(Clinton) goes to Haiti with soldiers. The next year, Congress doesn t allow him to go back. So he phones me. Okay, I send my soldiers, and then afterwards, I ask for something else in exchange." On the Helm-Burton legislation, Chretien boasted he was the first to oppose it and added, "I like to stand up to the Americans. It's popular. But you have to be very careful because they're our friends." According to reports, Chretien said that American politicians "sell their votes." He said Clinton won support for NATO by promising to build bridges. He said that if politicians did the same thing in Canada or in Belgium they "would be in prison." It would be laughable, were it not such a serious matter, that in the same breath that Chretien admits he sent Canadian troops to Haiti "in exchange for something else," he is castigating the U.S. politicians for their deal-making. The criticism of the parliamentary "opposition" has further revealed the deep crisis of the bourgeoisie, as the only concern they raised was how Chretien's comments may damage relations with the U.S. imperialists. What is revealed by Chretien's comments is the utterly unprincipled and double-faced nature of the bourgeois ruling circles. They reveal the "sell-your-mother-for-a-dime" pragmatism which can justify anything, and do anything to advance the interests of imperialism at the cost of the rights and freedoms and lives of the people of Canada and of other countries, all the while claiming to stand for all the best in the world. The opposition could not complain of such things because they too have the sole interest of advancing the aims of the most economically powerful, at home and abroad. While Chretien has shrugged off the issue, his comments are now going to haunt and stymie the Liberals, particularly in their foreign policy affairs, which they try to present as being based on the highest and most lofty "Canadian values." CPC(M-L) Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED] --75BA3FF15BB1--
[PEN-L:9616] Re: German liberalism
Rieter and Smolz. 1993. "The Idea of German Ordoliberalism " European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 1: 1. Other sources on the subject take note that part of the German context was a much more paternalistic corporate system. In this sense, we can compare them with the U.S. Welfare Capitalists of the 1920s. Back to Weinstein ... -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9591] Re: German liberalism
Tavis Barr wrote: One could, indeed, do a Foucauldian analysis of the discourse of the market and talk about how neoclassical notions of freedom -- the ability of individuals to buy and sell at prices they desire -- were created by those with property and defined explicitly so that the dscourse of property would not be questioned. That would be a very interesting thing to do, and very Foucauldian in spirit (and why is it Foucauldian and not Foucaultian?). But he didn't do it, did he? I wish someone would - hey Tavis! Why don't you? Given that Foucault was a Marxist earlier in his life, it would be amazing if he did not see this. Yes, but didn't he leave the CP in the early 50s and turn against Marxism? What about passages like these: "But the alternatives offered by Ricardo's 'pessimism' and Marx's revolutionary promise are probably of little importance. Such a system of options represents nothing more than the two possible ways of examining the relations of anthropology and History as they are established by economics through the notions of scarcity and labour Marxism introduced no real discontinuity; it found its place without difficulty as a full, quiet, comfortable, and goodness knows, satisfying form (for its time), within an epistemological arrangement that welcomed it gladly (since it was this arrangement that was in fact making room for it) and that it, in return, had no intention of disturbing and, above all, no power to modify, even one jot, since it rested entirely upon it Their controversies [between bourgeois revolutionary economics] may have stirred up a few waves and caused a few surface ripples; but they are no more than storms in children's paddling pool." [The Order of Things, pp. 261-262] "Rather than searching in those texts [Marx Lenin] for a condemnation of the Gulag, it is a matter of asking what in those texts made the Gulag possible, what might even now continue to justify it, and what makes it intolerable truth still accepted today [We must give] up the politics of inverted commas, whether damning or ironic, round Soviet socialism in order to protect the good, true socialism - with no inverted commas - which alone can provide a legitimate standpoint for a politically valid critique of the Gulag. Actually the only socialism which deserves these scornful scare-quotes is the one which leads the dreamy life of ideality in our heads." [Power/Knowledge, pp. 135-136] There's a lot that's right in the second quote - we should ask if anything in ML "made the Gulag possible," though I suspect F's implied answer to the question is "lots," and mine would be "maybe a bit." But it would only be fair to ask what in Nietzsche, one of F's favorites (and whom he uses to displace Marx on the page following the quote from The Order of Things), made Auschwitz possible. That first quote seems quite loony to me, and worthy of a lesser figure like Baudrillard, who argued in The Mirror of Production the Marx wasn't as radical as he seemed, because he still argued on the terrain of production and political economy rather than symbol formation and analysis. Do you know what Miller was referring to? Here's what James Miller says, on pp. 310-312 of The Passion of Michel Foucault (and I know lots of people hate this book, dismissing it as gossipy trash; I liked it a lot): "On January 10, 1979, Foucault began his annual series of lectures at the College de France. Ignoring current events, as he normally did, he took up again the theme of 'governmentality.' But once more, his political reflections veered off in a surprising direction. Despite his own 'wishful participation' in the revolution in Iran [he was a great enthusiast for Khomeni], he advised his students to look elsewhere for ways to think about 'the will not to be governed.' He asked them to read with special care the collected works of Ludwig von Mises and Frederick hayek - distinguished Austrian economists, strident yet prescient critics of Marxism, apostles of a libertarian strand of modern social thought rooted in a defense of the free market as a citadel of individual libertyand a bulwark against the power of the state. [footnote: anonymous interview, 22 March 1990; cf. 'Une esthetique de l'existence, Le Monde Aujourd'hui 15-16 July 1994, p. xi, English translation in MF, Politics, Philosophy, Culture, p. 50]. In his public lectures, Foucault at the same time turned his own attention to modern liberalism, analyzing its character with unprecedented sympathy. As he afterwards summed up the gist of these lectures, liberalism had to be understood as a novel 'principle and method for rationalizing the exercise of government.' Its novelty, according to Foucault, lay in its break with the rival modern principle of 'raison e'Etat,' which he ad analyzed the previous year. According to the Machiavellian principle of "raison e'Etat" the state constituted an end
[PEN-L:9596] Foucault and liberalism
I would suggest that a national element in Foucault's late turn to Austrian style liberalism is the nature of the French state and society. It has long been dirigiste and etatiste in comparison to most other societies and still is, with one of the strongest ongoing systems of indicative planning around. Hayek even identified Saint-Simon as the ultimate father of rational constructivist planning and social engineering, of which Hayek disapproved. Indeed, there is a direct line from Saint-Simon to the modern plannificateurs of the French economy, a trend deeply connected to the rationalist Cartesian tradition, as well as the policy tradition handed down from Colbert under Louis XIV. Thus, there has been a countertendency of French liberals to tend to go whole hog in reaction to all of this. Laissez-faire is a French term (as is bureau), and in Jean-Baptiste Say one has a real poster boy of pure classical liberalism with a libertarian bent. Barkley Rosser -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9570] German liberalism
In "The Birth of Biopolitics," one of the course descriptions collected in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth [The Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol. 1] just out from the New Press, Foucault wrote: "...German liberalism of the second postwar period was defined, programmed, and even to a certain extent put into practice by men who, starting in the years 1928-1950, had belonged to the Freiburg school...and who had later expressed themselves in the journal Ordo. At the intersection of neo-Kantian philosophy, Husserl's phenemonology, and Weber's sociology, on certain points close to the Viennese economists, concerned about the historical correlation between economic processes and practical structures, men like Eucken, W. Roepke, Franz Bohm, and Von Rustow had conducted their critique on three different political fronts: Soviet socialism, National Socialism, and interventionist policies inspired by Keynes. But they addressed what they considered as a single adversary: a type of eocnomic government systematically ignorant of the market metchanisms that were the only thing capable of price-forming regulation. Ordo-liberalism, working on th basic themes of the liberal technology of government, tried to define what a market economy could be, organized (but not planned or directed) within an institutional and juridical framework that, on the on hand, would offer the guarantees and limitations of law, and, on the other, would make sure that the freedom of economic processes did not cause any social distortion." This was the topic of the first part of Foucault's course that year; the second was "what is called 'American neoliberalism': that liberalism which is generally associate with the Chicago school and which also developed in reaction against the 'excessive government' exhibited in its eyes, starting with Simon, by the New Deal, war-planning, and the great economic and social programs generally supported by postwar Democratic administrations." Does anyone know about the Ordo school Foucault spoke of? Two footnotes: (1) "biopolitics" is Foucault's term for the "endeavor, began in the eighteenth century, to rationalize the problems prsented to governmental practice by the phenomena characteristic of a group of living human beings constituted as a population: health, sanitation, birthrate, longevity, race..." (2) In his book on Foucault, James Miller says that Foucault developed, late in his life, a serious sympathy in Austrian economics and English liberalism as limits to state power, and strategies for maximizing the play of individual "will" (spectres of Nietzsche). Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9573] Austrians and the left (was: German liberalism)
In her book "Arguments for a New Left" Hilary Wainright had what I thought was an interesting take on this issue. HW argued that while there was something to the Austrian critique of socialism and government action, namely that even if nominally democratic government action was limited by the limited ability of government to match the knowledge of individuals, still this problem is and could be addressed by social movements which also produce knowledge. HW gives some examples from Euro left social movements. Shades of cybernetics and anarcho-syndicalism... 1) German liberalism by Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:48:44 -0500 From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: German liberalism Message-ID: l03102801af812aef59f1@[166.84.250.86] (2) In his book on Foucault, James Miller says that Foucault developed, late in his life, a serious sympathy in Austrian economics and English liberalism as limits to state power, and strategies for maximizing the play of individual "will" (spectres of Nietzsche). Doug ___ Robert Naiman 1821 W. Cullerton Chicago Il 60608-2716 (h) 312-421-1776 (here there is voice mail) Urban Planning and Policy (M/C 348) 1007 W. Harrison Room 1180 Chicago, Il 60607-7137 (o) 312-996-2126 (here there is voice mail also) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://icarus.uic.edu/~rnaima1/
[PEN-L:9574] Re: German liberalism
I don't know anything about the Austrian School bit. Sympathy for English liberalism would indeed be surprising, since it goes against the grain of everything Foucault had written. As you know, he spends a lot of time both in Discipline and Punish and in the History of Sexuality V1 describing the way enlightenment thought was used to codify inappropriate behavior and create acceptable boundaries of social discourse and acceptable notions of freedom -- in effect, taking away freedom in the name of liberty -- that would continue current relations of power. Foucault never held the state as a center of power above, say, psychoanalytic terminology; while, in Discipline and Punish, he is talking about the way state power is used to imprison people, he does not view the state as using behavioral psychology any more than behavioral psychology using the state. One could, indeed, do a Foucauldian analysis of the discourse of the market and talk about how neoclassical notions of freedom -- the ability of individuals to buy and sell at prices they desire -- were created by those with property and defined explicitly so that the dscourse of property would not be questioned. Given that Foucault was a Marxist earlier in his life, it would be amazing if he did not see this. Do you know what Miller was referring to? Curious, Tavis On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Doug Henwood wrote: Two footnotes: (2) In his book on Foucault, James Miller says that Foucault developed, late in his life, a serious sympathy in Austrian economics and English liberalism as limits to state power, and strategies for maximizing the play of individual "will" (spectres of Nietzsche).
[PEN-L:9580] Re: Austrians and the left (was: German liberalism)
For a good critique of Hillary Wainwright, see John Bellamy Foster's "Market Fetishism and the Attack on Social Reason: A comment on Hayek, Polanyi and Wainwright" in the Dec. 95 "Capitalism, Nature and Socialism". Foster states that Wainwright concedes too much to Hayek and that Polanyi is good antidote to the creeping Hayekianism that has infected the socialist movement. The principal thesis of Polanyi's "The Great Transformation" is that a self-regulating market "could not exist for any length of time without annhilating the human and natural substance of society." Sounds about right to me. Louis Proyect On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Robert R Naiman wrote: In her book "Arguments for a New Left" Hilary Wainright had what I thought was an interesting take on this issue. HW argued that while there was something to the Austrian critique of socialism and government action, namely that even if nominally democratic government action was limited by the limited ability of government to match the knowledge of individuals, still this problem is and could be addressed by social movements which also produce knowledge. HW gives some examples from Euro left social movements. Shades of cybernetics and anarcho-syndicalism... 1) German liberalism by Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:48:44 -0500 From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: German liberalism Message-ID: l03102801af812aef59f1@[166.84.250.86] (2) In his book on Foucault, James Miller says that Foucault developed, late in his life, a serious sympathy in Austrian economics and English liberalism as limits to state power, and strategies for maximizing the play of individual "will" (spectres of Nietzsche). Doug ___ Robert Naiman 1821 W. Cullerton Chicago Il 60608-2716 (h) 312-421-1776 (here there is voice mail) Urban Planning and Policy (M/C 348) 1007 W. Harrison Room 1180 Chicago, Il 60607-7137 (o) 312-996-2126 (here there is voice mail also) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://icarus.uic.edu/~rnaima1/
[PEN-L:9575] Re: German liberalism
A curious tidbit on this is that although the Ordo-Liberals were not Austrians, despite their support of market capitalism and opposition to central planning, Hayek ended his career at Freiburg. BTW, in my earlier message on all this I misspelled the German for "social market economy." It's sozialmarktwirtschaft. Barkley Rosser On Mon, 21 Apr 1997 12:39:23 -0700 (PDT) Tavis Barr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't know anything about the Austrian School bit. Sympathy for English liberalism would indeed be surprising, since it goes against the grain of everything Foucault had written. As you know, he spends a lot of time both in Discipline and Punish and in the History of Sexuality V1 describing the way enlightenment thought was used to codify inappropriate behavior and create acceptable boundaries of social discourse and acceptable notions of freedom -- in effect, taking away freedom in the name of liberty -- that would continue current relations of power. Foucault never held the state as a center of power above, say, psychoanalytic terminology; while, in Discipline and Punish, he is talking about the way state power is used to imprison people, he does not view the state as using behavioral psychology any more than behavioral psychology using the state. One could, indeed, do a Foucauldian analysis of the discourse of the market and talk about how neoclassical notions of freedom -- the ability of individuals to buy and sell at prices they desire -- were created by those with property and defined explicitly so that the dscourse of property would not be questioned. Given that Foucault was a Marxist earlier in his life, it would be amazing if he did not see this. Do you know what Miller was referring to? Curious, Tavis On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Doug Henwood wrote: Two footnotes: (2) In his book on Foucault, James Miller says that Foucault developed, late in his life, a serious sympathy in Austrian economics and English liberalism as limits to state power, and strategies for maximizing the play of individual "will" (spectres of Nietzsche). -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9571] Re: German liberalism
Foucault is right. This was the dominant school of postwar German economic thought. It was indeed based in Freiburg, and its chief policymaking follower was Ludwig Ehard, put into place by the Americans as the organizer of the Deutches Wirtschaftswunder (German Economic Miracle) in 1948, that is to set up the institutional structures of the postwar West German economy. A well-known label for that system, invented by Eucken, I believe, is sozialmarktwirtshcaft, the "social market economy." Of course this reflected many earlier tendencies, given that social security was invented by Bismarck, but it more strongly emphasized a reliance on free markets outside of social policy, and had a strong anti-cartel thrust which was identified with the Nazis, although the basic system of financial control of corporations by banks (Hilferding's finanzkapital) was not effectively challenged and remains largely in place today. Barkley Rosser On Mon, 21 Apr 1997 06:56:13 -0700 (PDT) Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In "The Birth of Biopolitics," one of the course descriptions collected in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth [The Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol. 1] just out from the New Press, Foucault wrote: "...German liberalism of the second postwar period was defined, programmed, and even to a certain extent put into practice by men who, starting in the years 1928-1950, had belonged to the Freiburg school...and who had later expressed themselves in the journal Ordo. At the intersection of neo-Kantian philosophy, Husserl's phenemonology, and Weber's sociology, on certain points close to the Viennese economists, concerned about the historical correlation between economic processes and practical structures, men like Eucken, W. Roepke, Franz Bohm, and Von Rustow had conducted their critique on three different political fronts: Soviet socialism, National Socialism, and interventionist policies inspired by Keynes. But they addressed what they considered as a single adversary: a type of eocnomic government systematically ignorant of the market metchanisms that were the only thing capable of price-forming regulation. Ordo-liberalism, working on th basic themes of the liberal technology of government, tried to define what a market economy could be, organized (but not planned or directed) within an institutional and juridical framework that, on the on hand, would offer the guarantees and limitations of law, and, on the other, would make sure that the freedom of economic processes did not cause any social distortion." This was the topic of the first part of Foucault's course that year; the second was "what is called 'American neoliberalism': that liberalism which is generally associate with the Chicago school and which also developed in reaction against the 'excessive government' exhibited in its eyes, starting with Simon, by the New Deal, war-planning, and the great economic and social programs generally supported by postwar Democratic administrations." Does anyone know about the Ordo school Foucault spoke of? Two footnotes: (1) "biopolitics" is Foucault's term for the "endeavor, began in the eighteenth century, to rationalize the problems prsented to governmental practice by the phenomena characteristic of a group of living human beings constituted as a population: health, sanitation, birthrate, longevity, race..." (2) In his book on Foucault, James Miller says that Foucault developed, late in his life, a serious sympathy in Austrian economics and English liberalism as limits to state power, and strategies for maximizing the play of individual "will" (spectres of Nietzsche). Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9564] Primer on Neo-Liberalism (fwd)
Came through a while back... -- Forwarded message -- Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 15:22:04 -0800 From: D Shniad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Multiple recipients of list LABOR-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Primer on Neo-Liberalism 29 August 1996 WHAT IS "NEO-LIBERALISM"? A brief definition for activists by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia "Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. "Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Right wing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism. "Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an English economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished. Economic liberalism prevailed in the United States through the 1800s and early 1900s. Then the Great Depression of the 1930s led an economist named John Maynard Keynes to a theory that challenged liberalism as the best policy for capitalists. He said, in essence, that full employment is necessary for capitalism to grow and it can be achieved only if governments and central banks intervene to increase employment. These ideas had much influence on President Roosevelt's New Deal -- which did improve life for many people. The belief that government should advance the common good became widely accepted. But the capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That's what makes it "neo" or new. Now, with the rapid globalization of the capitalist economy, we are seeing neo-liberalism on a global scale. A memorable definition of this process came from Subcomandante Marcos at the Zapatista-sponsored Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neo-liberalismo (Inter-continental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism) of August 1996 in Chiapas when he said: "what the Right offers is to turn the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there " and he might have added, children, immigrants, workers or even a whole country like Mexico." The main points of neo-liberalism include: 1) THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much. 2) CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business. 3) DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits, including protecting the environment and safety on the job. 4) PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay
[PEN-L:9565] Re: Primer on Neo-Liberalism (fwd)
On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Chris Johnston wrote: Came through a while back... -- Forwarded message -- Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 15:22:04 -0800 From: D Shniad [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip 29 August 1996 WHAT IS "NEO-LIBERALISM"? A brief definition for activists by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia yes, I remembered that message as well (and even looked at it recently after Michael asked his question). Yet Michael's original question didn't concern the definition of neo-liberalism. Rather it concerned the historical origin of the expression "neo-liberalism" -- and that topic was not discussed in the Martinez/Garcia article. Jerry
[PEN-L:9522] Re: neo-liberalism question
People have adopted the term neoliberal because they're unwilling to or afraid of talking about capitalism. I first became aware of this when I was interviewing Mark Ritchie on my radio show. He said, "...neoliberalism - we used to call it capitalism" (The fact that he said this is one of many reasons Mark is an admirable guy.) I interrupted him, saying it was OK to talk about capitalism on my show, but he was obviously out of practice. These days, only George Soros is allowed to criticize capitalism; you can't read it in In These Times, where proprietor Jimmy Weinstein dismisses any anticapitalist writing as "infantile," "insane," and worst of all, "Trotskyist." Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9524] neo-liberalism
I always thought that the word "neo-liberalism" was a (perhaps unconscious) effort to deal with the conflicting meanings of the word "liberalism": "liberalism" means "classical liberalism" (laissez-faire) in Europe and most other places, while in the U.S.A., it means "welfare statism." So neo-liberalism is a revival of the classical tradition Europe (like neo-classicism?) and a "new thing" in the US. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
[PEN-L:9527] Re: neo-liberalism question
Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:9522] Re: neo-liberalism question People have adopted the term neoliberal because they're unwilling to or afraid of talking about capitalism. . . . Gee, I thought I was just being hip to the international scene by using the term. On the real side, I propose that 'neoliberalism' is a special case of capitalism characterized by withering barriers to international trade, falling labor standards, tight money, deficit mania, and intense political pressure on social insurance systems. The sad state of under-developed countries might be included in the list, but I couldn't say whether that situation is much worse than it's ever been. Key causal factors include the disappearance of socialism as a competitor system, increased mobility of capital, and the aging of the population in industrial nations. Since I think neoliberal policies are subject to political reversal by a mobilized, non-revolutionary working class, N-L would not be synonymous with capitalism from my standpoint. As far as Comrade Weinstein is concerned, I wouldn't call it insane to criticize capitalism (or to call it 'wacky'), but I do think the usefulness of the excerise is limited. But then, maybe my definition stems from neoliberalism. In any case, I'm proud of myself for being concise and for not being John Roemer. MBS === Max B. SawickyEconomic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax)Washington, DC 20036 Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===
[PEN-L:9528] Re: neo-liberalism
One thing to keep in mind is that the differences between conservatism and liberalism at different times and places in history had a deep class basis. In Central America, liberalism in the 1890s meant free trade, an end to clerical ownership of land, and other reforms that were associated with the policies of classical liberalism in England. (Ricardo, Mill et al). In places like Costa Rica and Nicaragua, clashes between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party often broke out into open civil war. Big landowners allied with the Catholic clergy were allied with the first party, while small and medium sized ranchers and coffee producers were allied with the latter. What also happened is that the working-class and the rural poor often threw their lot in with one or the other faction. Sandino's guerrillas fought on behalf of the Liberal cause, even though Sandino himself was an anarchist revolutionary. The civil war in Costa Rica in the 1940s found the Communist Party allied with one bourgeois party and the Socialist Party with the other. Liberalism and conservatism were real differences that could mean financial ruin for one section of the bourgeoisie or another depending on who took power. The reasons these terms are problematic today is that there is not much of a class distinction attached to them. In the United States, there is no section of the bourgeoisie that is genuinely conservative or liberal since there are very few underlying class differences that separate them. That is why Clinton can cause such consternation among his friends at places like the Nation Magazine. They do not understand that there is no class difference between Clinton and Dole. With respect to the term neoliberalism, it probably makes sense to understand it as being roughly synonomous with classical liberalism of the 19th century. Being pro-NAFTA, GATT while being libertarian on social issues such as abortion rights is very much the stuff of 19th century liberalism. Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:9517] Re: neo-liberalism question -Reply
From South Africa, same answer as Colin's in reference to etymology. On David's query... How is this paen to market solutions different from what we have been referring to as the 'conservative' laissez-faire perspective? To crudely personify, I think the key difference, at least in the context of lots of economic and social policy debate in the Jo'burg-Pretoria-CapeTown wonk nexus, boils down to the world view of (a) Wasp White English-speaking Capital (culturally conservative and economically laissez-faire) versus that of (b) Yuppie Non-racial New-class technocrat (culturally liberal and liberated, but economically laissez-faire, in a semi-coherent neo-lib blend). But it's not so much versus, as generally in harmony. The versus comes in the form of the (c) residual `verkrampte' Afrikaans-speaking technocrat (culturally reactionary and economically Keynesian) and (d) the Left non-racial soc-dem/populist/socialist technocrats. Current balance of forces in SA policy debates is probably 80% power to the (a-b) alliance, with some rough measure of 15% disruptive (but very rarely proactive) capacity in (d) and maybe 5% sabotage capacity from (c). Each ideological bloc has an equivalent social force, with varying degrees of access to the political system. But the devil is in the policy details, and with help from roving bands of World Bank consultants and the like, and a healthy home-grown compradorist neo-lib cottage industry, most debates are being resolved in favour of those invoking market signals, fiscal constraint, private sector `participation' etc etc. Not to put too much stress on particularity of place though. This also seems like a rough approximation of the global balance of forces.
[PEN-L:9513] Re: neo-liberalism question
What is the origin of the word, "neo-liberalism"? Does it refer to a ressurection of classical liberalism (a la Adam Smith) or a revision of modern liberalism (a la Keynes)? The former; I've always assumed the word came from the Latin American debates, in which it's widely used. After independence "liberals" in the region were free-traders and the term stuck around, giving rise to "neoliberal" to denote post-ISI advocacy of free trade. But maybe there are alternative etymologies. Best, Colin Danby
[PEN-L:9514] Re: neo-liberalism question
I've had the same question as Michael. Although I've seen "neoliberal" used in the context of World Bank/IMF policies and Latin American discussions, "neoliberal" has also been used in the U.S. context, e.g., in an article on privatization in the latest Dollars and Sense. How is this paen to market solutions different from what we have been referring to as the 'conservative' laissez-faire perspective? David Landes
[PEN-L:9497] neo-liberalism question and world bank question
What is the origin of the word, "neo-liberalism"? Does it refer to a ressurection of classical liberalism (a la Adam Smith) or a revision of modern liberalism (a la Keynes)? I have heard that the head of the World Bank said that his goal was to change from a world of poor people with no jobs to a world with poor people who work. Is that true? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:7791] Primer on Neo-Liberalism
29 August 1996 WHAT IS "NEO-LIBERALISM"? A brief definition for activists by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia "Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. "Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Right wing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism. "Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an English economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished. Economic liberalism prevailed in the United States through the 1800s and early 1900s. Then the Great Depression of the 1930s led an economist named John Maynard Keynes to a theory that challenged liberalism as the best policy for capitalists. He said, in essence, that full employment is necessary for capitalism to grow and it can be achieved only if governments and central banks intervene to increase employment. These ideas had much influence on President Roosevelt's New Deal -- which did improve life for many people. The belief that government should advance the common good became widely accepted. But the capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That's what makes it "neo" or new. Now, with the rapid globalization of the capitalist economy, we are seeing neo-liberalism on a global scale. A memorable definition of this process came from Subcomandante Marcos at the Zapatista-sponsored Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neo-liberalismo (Inter-continental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism) of August 1996 in Chiapas when he said: "what the Right offers is to turn the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there " and he might have added, children, immigrants, workers or even a whole country like Mexico." The main points of neo-liberalism include: 1) THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much. 2) CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business. 3) DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits, including protecting the environment and safety on the job. 4) PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs. 5) ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY" and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by thems
[PEN-L:6427] Re: classical liberalism and natural property rights
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, Greg, are you saying that John Locke, who many see as the founder of classical liberalism and was clearly an important intellectual predecessor of Adam Smith, didn't posit in the "state of nature" the existence of a generally-accepted morality, in which "all men may be restrained from invading others' rights" (SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, ch. 2), including private property rights (ch. 5)? or are you saying that he was a handler or a hack? or is it that the "state of nature" wasn't natural? An innocent question: does the 'institutionalist' view (your view?) preclude the idea that there is some kind of lawfulness about the way the economy evolves which is presumably susceptible to some kind of theoretical explanation, including a possibility of predicting developments by virtue of such a theory(ies)? M.S., Seeker of Truth Max B. Sawicky 202-775-8810 (voice) Economic Policy Institute 202-775-0819 (fax) 1660 L Street, NW [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 Washington, DC 20036
[PEN-L:6416] classical liberalism and natural property rights
Greg Ransom writes that: The notion that classical liberals see property ownership as 'natural' is largely bunk -- and casting the issue in these terms is a form of spin of the sort you get from political handlers and hacks. So, Greg, are you saying that John Locke, who many see as the founder of classical liberalism and was clearly an important intellectual predecessor of Adam Smith, didn't posit in the "state of nature" the existence of a generally-accepted morality, in which "all men may be restrained from invading others' rights" (SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, ch. 2), including private property rights (ch. 5)? or are you saying that he was a handler or a hack? or is it that the "state of nature" wasn't natural? I am sure that if faced with a logical or empirical argument (of which there are many), the followers of Locke would admit that private property rights are not "natural" (thus requiring the power of the state to impose) or that Locke's "state of nature" is an imaginary normative situation, one that could never exist. But the vision of private property rights as "natural" keeps on coming up in the classical liberal tradition and not just in political speeches. Smith talks about the realm of "natural liberty," while Alfred Marshall asserted that the alleged tendency for nature to make no leaps (which seems to have been rejected by science since then) was somehow relevant to the economy. Further, the vision of natural magnitudes standing behind some of the most important elements of the economic system has a long history from Smith (natural prices), to Knut Wicksell (the natural interest rate), to Roy Harrod (natural growth rate), to Edmund Phelps and Milton Friedman (natural unemployment rate). The mainstream of economics -- a major standard-bearer for classical liberalism -- actively eschews institutionalism, arguing instead that the world we live in is simply the effect of natural variables, i.e., technology (which simply reveals the natural laws of physics, etc.) and preferences (reflecting human nature). Though it's intellectually indefensible and thus would not be defended at length by professors, the content of the classical liberal rhetoric is that capitalism is "natural" and that non-capitalist systems are unnatural acts. Of course, the military and the CIA are then mobilized to prove by force of arms (to those who deign to disagree) that capitalism is indeed natural, as with Nicaragua. Then, the IMF and the World Bank move in to deny desperately-needed credit to those who deny the faith that capitalism is natural, as has happened in hundreds of countries. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 74267,[EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
[PEN-L:2711] Call for meetings to combat neo-liberalism
8 La Jornada, January 30, 1996 THE EZLN CALLS FOR INTERCONTINENTAL GATHERING AGAINST NEO-LIBERALISM First Declaration of La Realidad Against Neoliberalism and For Humanity "I have arrived, I am here present, I the singer. Enjoy in good time, come here to present yourselves those who have a hurting heart. I raise my song". Nahuatl Poetry. To the people of the world: Brothers and Sisters: During the last years, the power of money has presented a new mask over its criminal face. Disregarding borders, with no importance given to races or colors, the power of money humiliates dignities, insults honesties and assassinates hopes. Re-named as "neoliberalism", the historic crime in the concentration of privileges, wealth and impunities, democratizes misery and hopelessness. A new world war is waged, but now against the entire humanity. As in all world wars, what is being sought is a new distribution of the world. By the name of "globalization" they call this modern war which assassinates and forgets. The new distribution of the world consists in concentrating power in power and misery in misery. The new distribution of the world excludes "minorities". The indigenous, youth, women, homosexuals, lesbians, people of color, immigrants, workers, peasants; the majority who make up the world basements are presented, for power, as disposable. The new distribution of the world excludes the majorities. The modern army of financial capital and corrupt governments advance conquering in the only way it is capable of: destroying. The new distribution of the world destroys humanity. The new distribution of the world only has one place for money and its servants. Men, women and machines become equal in servitude and in being disposable. The lie governs and it multiplies itself in means and methods. A new lie is sold to us as history. The lie about the defeat of hope, the lie about the defeat of dignity, the lie about the defeat of humanity. The mirror of power offers us an equilibrium in the balance scale: the lie about the victory of cynicism, the lie about the victory of servitude, the lie about the victory of neoliberalism. Instead of humanity, it offers us stock market value indexes, instead of dignity it offers us globalization of misery, instead of hope it offers us an emptiness, instead of life it offers us the international of terror. Against the international of terror representing neoliberalism, we must raise the international of hope. Hope, above borders, languages, colors, cultures, sexes, strategies, and thoughts, of all those who prefer humanity alive. The international of hope. Not the bureaucracy of hope, not the opposite image and, thus, the same as that which annihilates us. Not the power with a new sign or new clothing. A breath like this, the breath of dignity. A flower yes, the flower of hope. A song yes, the song of life. Dignity is that nation without nationality, that rainbow that is also a bridge, that murmur of the heart no matter what blood lives it, that rebel irreverence that mocks borders, customs and wars. Hope is that rejection of conformity and defeat. Life is what they owe us: the right to govern and to govern ourselves, to think and act with a freedom that is not exercised over the slavery of others, the right to give and receive what is just. For all this, along with those who, beyond borders, races and colors, share the song of life, the struggle against death, the flower of hope and the breath of dignity . . . The Zapatista Army of National Liberation Speaks . . . To all who struggle for human values of democracy, liberty and justice. To all who force themselves to resist the world crime known as "Neoliberalism" and aim for humanity and hope to be better, be synonymous of future. To all individuals, groups, collectives, movements, social, civic and political organizations, neighborhood associations, cooperatives, all the lefts known and to be known; non-governmental organizations, groups in solidarity with struggles of the world people, bands, tribes, intellectuals, indigenous people, students, musicians, workers, artists, teachers, peasants, cultural groups, youth movements, alternative communication media, ecologists, tenants, lesbians, homosexuals, feminists, pacifists. To all human beings without a home, without land, without work, without food, without health, without education, without freedom, without justice, without independence, without democracy, without peace, without tomorrow. To all who, with no matter to colors, race or borders, make of hope a weapon and a shield. And calls together to the First Intercontinental Gathering for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism. To be celebrated between the months of April and August of 1996 in the five continents, according the following program of activities: First: Continental preparation assemblies in
[PEN-L:638] Work in Haiti against neo-liberalism
Please pass this on, comrades. I told the Haitians that PEN-L and the CPE are the best places to spread the word on these job openings and popular education training consultancies. Thanks! ***Job openings for progressive economists/financial analysts*** 1) Economic Advocacy Director with mass-based popular movement contesting neoliberal economic policies. The "Platform for Popular Demands" is closely related to the Lavalas movement which supports President Aristide, and is attempting to prevent privatization, export-led growth and other facets of the World Bank/US AID program which Haiti is being forced to follow. Language skills (Creole and French) can be acquired in Haiti. (Funding available for at least two years.) 2) Banking director. Help set up a community-based bank aimed at financing cooperatives in Haiti, in conjunction with the leading forces of the democratic movement. Work would entail establishing a banking branch office structure across Haiti, retail savings and lending products and means of making international transactions from Haitians living in the U.S. Language skills (Creole and French) can be acquired in Haiti. Location: Southern Haiti. Salary: volunteer/raise own funds. Both positions to begin a.s.a.p. ***Ongoing popular economics training*** In addition, there is an urgent need for political economists to conduct one- to three-day long training sessions with grassroots forces from the democratic movement, regarding neoliberalism and progressive alternatives. (Sessions should cover topics such as: What is the neoliberal plan, what consequences for ordinary Haitians - especially women, what margins for maneuver and options for fighting components of neoliberalism, what experiences from other countries are helpful, etc.) Trainers should be capable of conducting basic popular education and should rapidly familiarize themselves with Haitian economy; knowledge of Creole or French is not necessary. There are requests for such trainers for December 9-10, 10-12 and 16-17, and on an ongoing basis depending upon when trainers are available. Transport, lodging and board can be arranged on a case-by-case basis. If anyone has interest or knows anyone appropriate, please be in touch with me ***before November 1*** at [EMAIL PROTECTED], or phone 1-410-614-2279. Ciao! Patrick Bond Johns Hopkins University
Liberalism
I am a teaching fellow this year, and for our meeting next week we are reading an article by Clark Kerr, "Knowledge Ethics and the New Academic Culture" (_Change_ Jan/Feb, 1994: 9-15). I remember Clark as Chancellor at UC Berkeley and one of the guys we demonized in the sixties. Well Clark's still at it. On p. 13 he says: There are those who totally reject scholarship as being at the center of the academic enterprise. A Harvard professor, for example, has written that the "primary function of Marxists in the university" is to "take part in what is, in fact, a class struggle"; and thus our "chief task must be to disrupt production" The quotations are from Richard Lewontin, "Marxists and the University", _New Political Science_ Vol. 1, Nos. 2-3, Fall-Winter 1979-80: 256-30. I suspect old Clark takes this quotation out of context, perhaps one that sees the university as the site of ideological struggle between progressive and reactionary scholarship. Unfortunately, our library does not have the article so I can't look it up. Can someone out there help me out? BTW, Clark is curiously silent on universities that have business schools, law schools, job placement offices, departments of government, etc. I guess these are not forms of class struggle for scholars like Clark. Marsh Feldman Community Planning Phone: 401/792-2248 204 Rodman Hall FAX: 401/792-4395 University of Rhode Island Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Kingston, RI 02881-0815
