Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Rob Schaap]

Mark Jones wrote:
 
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> > Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at
> > a prediction -- e.g., "will energy be available at current > > requirement 
>projections at environmental costs most people can > > stand and at market prices 
>compatible with those particular> > requirements within a capitalist context?"
> 
> Yoshie, please don't put words in my mouth. I haven't said this or
> anything like this.

Mea culpa, Mark.  Er, so what have you been saying?

Cheers,
Rob.

Re: Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Jim Devine]

At 02:58 PM 6/25/01 -0400, you wrote:

>>At Foundry on April 14, Nader spoke out, rightly, for vaccination, but 
>>attacked Viagra and Prozac, apparently seen as only life-style 
>>frivolities. From the audience, Joanne Landy (a Nader supporter) cried 
>>out -- as is her custom in such situations, particularly in large domed 
>>spaces -- "Whatsamatta with Viagra!!?"

and Whatsamatta with Prozac?

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Doug Henwood]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

>>
>
>I have yet to browse through the entire issue, but are you pointing 
>to the following?

Yes, sorry, wrong link. It should have been 
.

Lemisch wrote in an earlier NP piece 
:

>At Foundry on April 14, Nader spoke out, rightly, for vaccination, 
>but attacked Viagra and Prozac, apparently seen as only life-style 
>frivolities. From the audience, Joanne Landy (a Nader supporter) 
>cried out -- as is her custom in such situations, particularly in 
>large domed spaces -- "Whatsamatta with Viagra!!?" The gentle sound 
>wafted toward the dome of the beautiful church; two days later, at 
>the Ellipse, Nader delivered the same speech, but without the 
>offending passages. But they are likely to come back. There is, with 
>Nader, a strong ascetic streak which is very much in the American 
>grain, but also very much out of touch with the cultural revolution 
>wrought by the sixties. Even Oprah knows better than Ralph Nader. 
>(As Landy points out, half seriously, a Nader presidency could leave 
>us depressed, in our mud huts, suffering from erectile dysfunction 
>-- and possibly without any tv to watch.)

There's a way in which a certain kind of environmentalism seems like 
depressive misanthropy made into a political program.

Doug

RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Mark Jones]

Yoshie Furuhashi
> Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at a
> prediction -- e.g., "will energy be available at current requirement
> projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at
> market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a
> capitalist context?"

Yoshie, please don't put words in my mouth. I haven't said this or anything
like this.

Mark Jones

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

Yoshie:
>Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at a 
>prediction -- e.g., "will energy be available at current requirement 
>projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at 
>market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a 
>capitalist context?"  That's a perspective of a political spectator. 

No more so than Marx reading and writing about the soil fertility crisis of
the 19th century. His answer to this was not activism in the narrow sense
but a "maximalist" call in the Communist Manifesto for the reconcilement of
city and countryside. 

>The idea is, instead, to think like a political organizer & ask, "how 
>can we *make* environmental regulations, clean-ups, & thus production 
>& distribution costs of industrial inputs like energy -- as well as 
>the value of labor power -- impossibly costly to capitalists & *push* 
>the system into a crisis & *turn* it into our political advantage?"

No, this is inadequate. The questions we are dealing with exist on an
overarching basis and have little to do with organizing people. For that
matter, you can a completely wrong analysis of the overarching
questions--as David Harvey does--but have the right response on activism,
which he does. In reality, Marxism has failed to keep pace with ecological
questions since the 1920s when early attempts at such an understanding in
the USSR were short circuited during the mad rush to industrialize in the
face of the fascist menace. That being said, some of the outstanding
Marxist ecologists of the 20th century made their mark during this period.

There are important theoretical questions that have to be sorted out. Not
only do you have David Harvey's peculiar take on the question--stating
blandly that there is nothing you can do to destroy the planet through
pollution, etc.--but you also have Jim O'Connor's "second contradiction"
thesis which has been attacked by Burkett and Foster. Although I tend to
agree with these two, I think that much of their analysis revolves around a
scholastic defense of the proposition that Marx was an ecological thinker.
While this is true, it is inadequate to the challenge facing us. In general
the most probing analyses of the environmental crisis comes from
organizations like the Worldwatch Institute. Because of theoretical
failings and institutional weakness, our movement has not been able to
offer a counter-analysis to Worldwatch. This would require scientists with
a leftwing orientation to tackle questions like fossil fuels, water
utilization, industrial farming, environmentally linked illnesses such as
cancer and asthma, deforestation, species disappearance, etc. Not only must
these questions be addressed, they must be related to each other in a
comprehensive materialist fashion. Marxists are not just activists. They
are scientists. While economists obviously have a duty to understand the
financial/economic crisis of the last few years as evidenced by Brenner's
NLR article and all the various responses to it, our movement also needs
people like Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin to write articles in the
popular and specialized press about the mounting ecological crisis.
Ultimately this form of high-level analysis will be linked to activism, but
only in the manner that Marx's writings on the operations of the capitalist
economy became linked eventually to the formation of the First Communist
International.


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Doug Henwood]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

>>I am pretty sure that we can, but it will require *radical* adjustments
>>including:
>>
>>1. overcoming the city-countryside split as called for in the Communist
>>Manifesto.
>>2. elimination of the automobile and jet plane except for extraordinary
>>reasons.
>>3. promotion of bicycles and trains and other forms of environmentally wise
>>transportation.
>>4. drastic reduction in meat eating.
>>5. sharp cutback in fashion, luxury goods like Rolex watches, Mount Blanc
>>pens, overseas vacations, fancy restaurants and delicatessens--ie.
>>everything that goes into a "yuppie" lifestyle. In exchange for a reduction
>>in these kinds of dubious "goodies" we achieve more free time and a sense
>>of relief that we are not fucking over the rest of the world.
>>6. in general, less is more as Mies van der Rohe put it.
>
>1-6 won't solve the problem, though, if fossil fuels & clean water 
>are soon running out & there is no practical alternative energy 
>source, as Mark says.  How do you make bicycles & run trains without 
>fuels?

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Rob Schaap]

> Lastly, what happened to the energy question?  Are fossil fuels soon
> running out?  Are alternative energy sources viable given a chance?
> :-)

The energy question always runs up against a wall of ignorance, I reckon.  As
the question is actually (as Mark never tires of telling us) more like: 'is
energy available at current requirement projections at environmental costs
most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular
requirements within a capitalist context', it is rather a difficult nut to
crack - lots of room for error and all that.  That we're going to need the
contribution of fossil fuels to humanity's energy budget to go down
significantly over the next twenty years seems obvious to me.  I predict the
comeback of nuclear reactors, myself, but that probably won't get any of us to
or from our designated production and consumption zones from and to our
designated dormitory zones.  In that crucial respect, a sudden surge in prices
or the intensity of urban inversion blankets (I was on the apex of Sydney
Harbour Bridge a few months ago, and glamorous Sydney, only a mile away, was
quite invisible in its turd-like shroud - quite scary to drive into, even for
an industrial-strength smoker like me) could be hard to handle, short of a
retreat to government transport systems.  Talk of alternatives should
encompass something affordable to put under my bonnet (hood) that takes less
energy to make and less energy to run.  Coz, like most outside the US, I shall
go through life without ever being able to afford to replace the old steed
(who drinks and smokes more than I do) with something new.  Haven't heard
anything convincing in that line yet.

Cheers,
Rob.

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Michael Perelman]

Again, this discussion is fraught with too many accusations of and
attributions to others on the list.  Please cool it.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

>Lou, if I could do it with a wave of my hand, I would wipe MacDonalds
>off the face of the earth. The institution of fast food is undoubtedly
>vicious. But attacking _people_ rather than the institutions that
>exploit them is just politically stupid. I don't really remember very
>well the specific thread -- but I have very consistently on LBO attacked
>generic attacks on people.

This is not about attacking "people". It is about educating yourself and
educating others on the nature of ecological imperialism. In the entire
discussion about Macdonalds french fries on Doug's list which seemed to
have gone on longer than the thread on Andrew Sullivan's sex life,
nobody--including you and Yoshie--ever seemed interested in where the stuff
came from. It appeared to be a debate with two contrary but inadequate
positions. People who read Utne Reader, wore Birkenstocks and took
vacations in Costa Rica versus people who concluded from an undialectical
reading of Karl Marx that the inexorable process of capitalist
industrialization paves the way for socialism. In fact the inexorable
process of capitalist industrialization paves the way to ruin and nothing
else.

"All criticism of small-scale landownership is ultimately reducible to
criticism of private property as a barrier and obstacle to agriculture. So
too is all counter-criticism of large landed property. Secondary political
considerations are of course left aside here in both cases. It is simply
that this barrier and obstacle which all private property in land places to
agricultural production and the rational treatment, maintenance and
improvement of the land itself, develops in various forms, and in
quarreling over these specific forms of the evil its ultimate root is
forgotten. 

"Small-scale landownership presupposes that the overwhelming majority of
the population is agricultural and that isolated labour predominates over
social; wealth and the development of reproduction, therefore, both in its
material and intellectual aspects, is ruled out under these circumstances,
and with this also the conditions for a rational agriculture. On the other
hand, large landed property reduces the agricultural population to an ever
decreasing minimum and confronts it with an every growing industrial
population crammed together in large towns; in this way it produces
conditions that provoke an irreparable rift in the interdependent process
of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life
itself. The result of this is a squandering of the vitality of the soil,
which is carried by trade far beyond the bounds of a single country. 

"If small-scale landownership creates a class of barbarians standing half
outside society, combining all the crudity of primitive social forms with
all the torments and misery of civilized countries, large landed property
undermines labor-power in the final sphere to which its indigenous energy
flees, and where it is stored up as a reserve fund for renewing the vital
power of the nation, on the land itself. Large-scale industry and
industrially pursued large-scale agriculture have the same effect. If they
are originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and
ruins labour-power and thus the natural power of man, whereas the latter
does the same to the natural power of the soil, they link up in the later
course of development, since the industrial system applied to agriculture
also enervates the workers there, while industry and trade for their part
provide agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil."

V. 3 of Capital, "The Transformation of Surplus Profit into Ground-Rent"


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

>By John's criteria, only the rich who can afford _not_ to eat fast 
>food, shop at Wal-Mart, etc. can live morally correct lives.  What 
>the masses buy is cheap mass products of sweatshop labor; what the 
>truly rich buy, in contrast, is expensive products of relatively 
>well-paid artisanal labor.  Haute couture & formal dining at 
>fashionable restaurants (or better yet, _your own personal cook_, 
>well compensated year-around to provide meals _at home_, to your 
>taste & convenience) are good examples of the latter.  Morally 
>correct consumption is a luxury that only those who don't & can't 
>count their own money can afford.
>
>Yoshie
>
>   *
>
>If you agree more with John Thornton than me, that's fine, but I 
>think that berating people who patronize fast food joints & shop at 
>WalMart & the like, in the absence of requests to boycott them from 
>workers who either work for them or produce inputs for their goods, 
>is counter-productive.

Your problem is that you failed to provide a counter-analysis to John
Thornton and other middle-class greens on Doug's list. This is not about
Utne Reader type folks wearing Birkenstocks and taking vacations in Costa
Rica. It is about ecological imperialism, which never seemed to have
entered your calculation or Carrol's. No Marxist would call for a boycott
of Kmart or Macdonalds or any other corporation benefitting from the rape
of third world countries. On the other hand, it is necessary to educate
working people about the class questions involved with making cheap
commodities available. Like this:

As stupid, irrational and self-destructive a system capitalism is, it
reached new depths when it fostered the development of cattle- ranching in
Central America in the early 1970s. 

The growth of McDonald's, Burger King and other fast food outlets had
created an insatiable demand for beef. These types of restaurants had no
need for the choice, fat-stuffed grain-fed beef that were found in super
markets. They could get by on the sort of tougher, lower- grade beef that
was typical of cattle that subsisted on grass alone, since the meat would
be ground up anyhow. The free-range "criollo" cattle of Central America
made a perfect fit for this expanding market. 

Historically, the cattle industry in Central America was a very low- tech
operation. Cowboys would drive a herd to a major city where
slaughter-houses could be found. The cattle would be cut up and sent out to
public markets, often in the open air and unrefrigerated, where a customer
would select a piece of meat off of the carcass. However, to satisfy the
external market, a more modern mode of production had to be adopted.
Firstly, roads needed to be created to transport the cattle by truck from
the countryside. Secondly, packing houses had to be created near ports to
prepare the beef for export. Foreign investors made road- building
possible, just the way that British capital made railroads possible in the
US for identical reasons. The "Alliance for Progress" aided in the creation
of such infrastructure as well. 

The packing-houses themselves were built by local capitalists with some
assistance from the outside. It was these middle-men, who stood between
rancher and importer, that cashed in on the beef bonanza. The Somoza family
were movers and shakers in the packing-house industry. As monopolists, they
could paid the rancher meager prices and sell the processed beef at a
premium price since demand for beef was at an all-time high. 

In addition, the Somoza family used its profits and loans from foreign
investors to buy up huge swaths of land in Nicaragua to create cattle
ranches. They had already acquired 51 ranches before the beef-export boom,
but by 1979, after two decades of export-led growth, their holdings and
those of their cronies had expanded to more than 2 million acres, more than
half of which was in the best grazing sectors. It was these properties and
the packing-houses that became nationalized immediately after the FSLN
triumph. 

The gains of Somoza and other oligarchic families in Central America took
place at the expense of campesino and small rancher alike. While the plight
of the campesino is more familiar, the small rancher suffered as well.
Before the export boom started, about 1/4 of all cattle were held by
ranchers with properties less than 25 acres. After a decade of export-led
growth, small proprietors had lost 20 percent of their previous cattle
holdings and owned only 1/8th of the cattle in the region. 

(It should be mentioned, by the way, that this decade of export-led growth
was statistically the sharpest increase in GDP in Central America since
WWII. Yet this growth created the objective conditions for socialist
revolution. "Growth" in itself is a meaningless term. It may satisfy the
prejudices of libertarians, but it has nothing to do with human needs or
social justice.) 

Nicaragua was notable in that the exploitation was home

RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Mark Jones]

Yoshie:

> Is it possible to provide all human beings with food, clean
> water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicine, education,
> transportation, etc. that are necessary to meet historically
> developed minimum needs (setting aside other needs & desires for the
> time being) under socialism?
>Or is it impossible since we are
> running out of fossil fuels & clean water soon & the population is
> exploding, as Mark says?

Please stop attributing to me views I don't hold, it makes discussion
pointless. Oil, gas and water will never run out. The issue is their
economic availability to capitalism--and the price the rest of us pays.

We discussed population before, and you said the same kinds of things then.
I have one exchange dating from May 1998, when oil was about $10 a barrel
and some people were busy discussing folies du jour like Tulip-o-mania,
Zizek and Butler, and Greenspan's damascene conversion on the New Economy.
Seems like a different era, hey?

-

Subject: Marx on surplus population

Sender: Mark Jones

Date: 17.05.98

Recipient: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> The limits and scarcities that marxists should be primarily concerned
about
> are artificial--not natural--ones.

Why?

> This is not to say that nature places no
> constraint upon social activities, be they labor or anything else. It
does,
> in that the social world is embedded in the natural world. However,
> marxism, both in theory and practice, primarily addresses itself to what
is
> _social_, both in terms of constraints _and_ possibilities.

If this was so, would Marx ever have talked about modes of production,
machinery, agriculture, desertification etc?

> Marxists should
> pay attention to the natural world, but we are _not_ naturalists.

Meaningless.

> Let's think about the politics of food, for instance. Is it because we do
> not produce enough food that there are millions of the working class
people
> who suffer from hunger and malnutrition now? No, it's not, even though the
> ruling class and their media want us to believe that. As of now, we have
> enough food production capacity to feed people all over the world
> comfortably, don't we?

So you think the problem is merely one of distribution? Redistributional
social
justice politics, has nothing to do with Marxism. Environmental justice
politics also has nothing in common with Marxism.

> It is because of social relations of capitalism--the
> contradiction between labor and capital--that masses of people are hungry,
> and how to rid ourselves of those social relations that exploit and
oppress
> people because of their class, gender, race, nationality, and so on is the
> main object and objective of marxist theory and practice.

People are not exploited 'because of their race, class' etc. Just as you
reduce
Marxist politics to a politics of social justice, so you reduce Marxist
economics to a branch of sociology + pursuit of bourgeois right. All 'civil
rights' (from which discourses of social justice derive) depend on bourgeois
right, ie, the primacy and sanctity of property relations: but property
relations, for Marxism, are merely a mystification. They are forms of
production relations, not the presuppositions of production (and therefore
the
material basis of exploitation is not jurisprudential, but rooted in
production). Marxist analysis of the capitalist mode of production is not a
theory of exploitation. Marx specifically criticised such notions. It is a
theory and narrative of value production, and the forms value assumes in the
circuits of capital. This is not an optional extra to a notion of
exploitation;
it is the core of the theory. That is why it is not struggles around
distribution but struggles around production which matter, because
production
is the centre of gravity of capitalism.Specifically, Marxism asserts that
the
production of capital is constrained by its material basis (extent and
limits).
The reason there is hunger in the world is because the rate of accumulation
is
historically too low to prevent the formation of surplus population, and the
reason for that is because the rate of increase of social productivity is
too
low to generate enough capital to give the whole population First World
living
standards.

When Marx wrote of the production of surplus population, he called it 'the
absolute general law of capitalist accumulation'. (Cap I p798, Penguin ed).
It
is impossible to develop Marxism while abandoning core concepts like this.
Who
is defining the political and theoretical terrain? Racists who fear
immigration,
or their liberal opponents who manage to neuter theory in the name of
an apologetic 'political correctness'?

This 'absolute general law' is today central to understanding the
conjuncture,
more even than in Marx's day, and far from avoiding the issue, we need to
relentlessly pursue it: ' The production of a relative surplus population,
or the setting free of workers, therefore proceeds more rapidly than
the techn

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Ken Hanly]

- Original Message -
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 7:26 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:13914] Re: Current implications for South Africa


> >  >).  What's
> >>fundamentally preventing us from providing people with means to meet
> >>their basic needs -- capitalism & imperialism or natural constraints?
> >
> >Imperialism, but ecological imperialism to be more exact.
> >
> >>If the former, socialism is the answer.  If the latter, socialism is
> >>not only not the answer but may exacerbate the environmental problem,
> >>in that under capitalism the poor can be simply priced out of the
> >>market (as they have been) but under socialism all are entitled to
> >>the satisfaction of basic needs (at the very least), the fulfillment
> >>of which may make more demands upon natural resources (at least in
> >>the short term) than today, even if global socialism eliminates such
> >>sources of waste as production of weapons.
> >
> >Look, Yoshie. If we are serious about these questions, the first thing we
> >have to stop doing is bullshiting about fast food being a "gain" for the
> >working class. I know it is very groovily "transgressive" to talk up
> >MacDonalds in leftwing circles, but it goes against the grain of what
Marx
> >took seriously. This issue is not about morality but political economy.
> >Socialists have to explain to working people that their lifestyle is not
> >only *unhealthy* in the terms that Ralph Nader talked about, but that it
> >rests on fucking over peasants in places like Honduras and Nicaragua
where
> >fast food beef comes from. When all the water and all the soil has been
> >exhausted in places like these, DelMonte and MacDonalds and Swift will go
> >somewhere else and do the same thing until the planet looks like Haiti.
> >
> >Louis Proyect
>
> Let's forget about fast food as it is merely red herring in this
> thread.  Is it possible to provide all human beings with food, clean
> water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicine, education,
> transportation, etc. that are necessary to meet historically
> developed minimum needs (setting aside other needs & desires for the
> time being) under socialism?  Or is it impossible since we are
> running out of fossil fuels & clean water soon & the population is
> exploding, as Mark says?
>
> Yoshie
>

Re: Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Carrol Cox]

Louis Proyect wrote:
> 
> Yoshie:
> >Let's forget about fast food as it is merely red herring in this
> >thread.
> 
> Then why the heck did you and Carrol tell practically argue that opposition
> to MacDonalds is anti-working class? Surely you are aware that I read
> lbo-talk just as Doug reads the Marxism list archives. I found your
> performance around this question deeply troubling.

Lou, if I could do it with a wave of my hand, I would wipe MacDonalds
off the face of the earth. The institution of fast food is undoubtedly
vicious. But attacking _people_ rather than the institutions that
exploit them is just politically stupid. I don't really remember very
well the specific thread -- but I have very consistently on LBO attacked
generic attacks on people.

Your misunderstanding here is characteristic, I think, of the way in
which a focus on truth in the abstract can divorce people from political
reality. It leads to Plato's solution: Philosopher Kings.

Carrol

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

Yoshie:
>Let's forget about fast food as it is merely red herring in this 
>thread.  

Then why the heck did you and Carrol tell practically argue that opposition
to MacDonalds is anti-working class? Surely you are aware that I read
lbo-talk just as Doug reads the Marxism list archives. I found your
performance around this question deeply troubling.

>Is it possible to provide all human beings with food, clean 
>water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicine, education, 
>transportation, etc. that are necessary to meet historically 
>developed minimum needs (setting aside other needs & desires for the 
>time being) under socialism? 

I am pretty sure that we can, but it will require *radical* adjustments
including:

1. overcoming the city-countryside split as called for in the Communist
Manifesto.
2. elimination of the automobile and jet plane except for extraordinary
reasons.
3. promotion of bicycles and trains and other forms of environmentally wise
transportation.
4. drastic reduction in meat eating.
5. sharp cutback in fashion, luxury goods like Rolex watches, Mount Blanc
pens, overseas vacations, fancy restaurants and delicatessens--ie.
everything that goes into a "yuppie" lifestyle. In exchange for a reduction
in these kinds of dubious "goodies" we achieve more free time and a sense
of relief that we are not fucking over the rest of the world.
6. in general, less is more as Mies van der Rohe put it.

> Or is it impossible since we are 
>running out of fossil fuels & clean water soon & the population is 
>exploding, as Mark says?

Depends on what you mean by "impossible". Sometimes I get the impression
that your vision of socialism has much more in common with Jim Heartfield's
than my own. We have to smash any such illusion that the lifestyle of a
British or US yuppie is a model for the rest of the world, let alone
ourselves.


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

>).  What's 
>fundamentally preventing us from providing people with means to meet 
>their basic needs -- capitalism & imperialism or natural constraints?

Imperialism, but ecological imperialism to be more exact.
 
>If the former, socialism is the answer.  If the latter, socialism is 
>not only not the answer but may exacerbate the environmental problem, 
>in that under capitalism the poor can be simply priced out of the 
>market (as they have been) but under socialism all are entitled to 
>the satisfaction of basic needs (at the very least), the fulfillment 
>of which may make more demands upon natural resources (at least in 
>the short term) than today, even if global socialism eliminates such 
>sources of waste as production of weapons.

Look, Yoshie. If we are serious about these questions, the first thing we
have to stop doing is bullshiting about fast food being a "gain" for the
working class. I know it is very groovily "transgressive" to talk up
MacDonalds in leftwing circles, but it goes against the grain of what Marx
took seriously. This issue is not about morality but political economy.
Socialists have to explain to working people that their lifestyle is not
only *unhealthy* in the terms that Ralph Nader talked about, but that it
rests on fucking over peasants in places like Honduras and Nicaragua where
fast food beef comes from. When all the water and all the soil has been
exhausted in places like these, DelMonte and MacDonalds and Swift will go
somewhere else and do the same thing until the planet looks like Haiti. 


 

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Carrol Cox]

Mark Jones wrote:
> 
> > 
> And yes, the answer to this is revolutionary communism, and what we need for
> that is first off, for starters, to get our heads out of the sand and *look
> at* the world as it really as and not as we would wish it to be. 


I agree. I also think that your description of the present world is
probably more accurate than (say) Doug's. I also think that politically
that description is worthless -- that focusing on it will not bring us
one step closer to _doing_ anything about it. On the contrary,
emphasizing it will interfere with doing anything about it.

Even when it is obvious to everyone that you are correct, when the bulk
of the population of the "first world" is directly experiencing what you
describe, energy will _still_ not be an issue around which mass
mobilization will be possible. You have your head in the sands in
respect to social-political reality.

Disaster on the whole does not contribute to popular anti-capitalist
mobilization.

Carrol

Re: Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Louis Proyect]

Carrol Cox:
>My understanding of capitalism is that it _must_ grow, regardless of
>consequences, and that it simply is not worth considering possibilities
>for constraining growth under capitalism, however desirable or even
>absolutely necessary that may be.

Right now I am reading "The Last Ranch" by the late Sam Bingham, which
deals with the disastrous ecological effects of cattle ranching in
Colorado, including desertification. This is the reality that Marxists have
to identify to the masses. Saying that MacDonalds fast food is some kind of
"conquest" of the working class because it makes meat cheap and eliminates
the need to prepare meals is just the kind of thing that we have no
business saying. The fact that so many young people associate Marxism with
this kind of vulgar "modernization" explains why the anti-globalization
protesters often call themselves anarchists. While anarchism attracts the
young, we are ending up with a movement that revolves around bizarre sects
or annual conferences attracting the enlarged prostate brigade. At the last
Socialist Scholars Conference, the last I'll ever go to, young people got
up during the discussion period of a talk given by Bogdan Denitch on the
"future of the left" and told him that he was completely out of touch.
Denitch's social democratic business-as-usual left-Gompers trade unionism
is based on the notion that working people in the USA should have a bigger
slice of the pie, the rest of the world be damned. As long as Marxism is
perceived in this manner, we are in bad shape. As Marxists, our message is
not just about "more". It is about equity. Most people in the imperialist
countries have to understand that the life-style we "enjoy" is
unsustainable. In exchange for a more modest life-style, we will live in
world that enjoys peace and respect for the individual. If people in the
imperialist countries can not rally to this message, then they (we) deserve
the fate that awaits us: war, urban violence, cancer epidemics, drug
addiction, alcoholism, FOX TV, and prozac.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Carrol Cox]

Mark Jones wrote:
> 
> > 
> It would be more useful to address the issue I am raising, rather than going
> into denial,

Mark, If I were chained to a tree, it would do me no good to give my
attention to the fact that a flood was approaching. My main concern
would be to unchain myself, and then and only then would it be
worthwhile to consider whether or not a flood was approaching.

My understanding of capitalism is that it _must_ grow, regardless of
consequences, and that it simply is not worth considering possibilities
for constraining growth under capitalism, however desirable or even
absolutely necessary that may be.

Capitalism's only redeeming feature is that it offers the possibility
(however remote) -- not certainty, not even probability, simply the
_possibility_ -- of socialism. And socialism, and only socialism, would
create the _possibility_ -- not certainty, not even probability -- of
addressing, _in practice_, the issues you raise.

Until you can link those issues to concrete possibilities of political
organization for socialism, addressing those issues constitutes a naive
utopianism, a refusal to face the very facts that you wish us to
address. To focus on them now would be as absurd as it would have been
in (say) 1750, to devote all physical research to the development of
petrochemicals. You want to deflect us from doing anything about the
concerns that you incessantly raise. YOu want us, instead, to wring our
hands and scream.

Carrol

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

> Date:  Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:52:05 +0100
> From:  Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> But fundamentally the enemy is not a policy: it is the blind workings of 
> global finance capital. That is why we need regulation not de-regulation. 
> This may not come through the reform of Bretton Woods organisations, but it 
> needs to come from somewhere, of a global economy that is a highly complex 
> social structure, but is privately owned by finance capital.

Chris, the only vague sense I have that "regulation" may be on 
the agenda of international elites is the UN Financing for 
Development conference which Ernesto Zedillo is chairing early next 
year in Mexico, and whose main economic advisor is John Williamson, 
who came up with the term Washington Consensus. So there's absolutely 
no hope there at all.

Or am I missing something? Even the new Giddens/Hutton book with 
chapters by Soros and Volcker can't come up with anything really 
convincing, that is going to be on the real world agenda.

We've got quite good progressive momentum, by the way, behind the 
argument -- made by Keynes forcefully in that 1933 Yale Review 
article -- that aside from trade finance, we must stick as much as 
possible to local sources of development finance. No need, we want to 
posit very strongly, for a WB or IMF given the havoc that they've 
caused, the need for Third World debt repudiation (paid for in part 
by drawing down BWI capital), their refusal to truly reform, and the 
hard/soft currency translation problem. (If you want I'll send you 
the paper offlist.)

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

> Date:  Fri, 22 Jun 2001 17:11:38 -0400
> From:  Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >>  The expansion of mass consumption & regional linkages (in opposition
> >>  to elite consumption & subordination to financial centers) under the
> >>  Bond program (if ever implemented -- but who bells the cat?) can
> >>  presumably overcome the tendency to overaccumulation inherent in
> >>  capitalism in a fashion unlike neoliberalism, while creating the
> >>  politico-economic foundation for a future socialist transformation
> >>  (should an opportunity ever arise).

Actually I wouldn't be so confident. The early 1990s "Growth Through 
Redistribution" argument (e.g. of Lawrence Harris when he was still a 
marxist and Ben Fine) was very compelling but still didn't come to 
grips with either the need for a major insurgency to dramatically 
shift power relations, or the quarter-century context of overcapacity 
in luxury goods and heavy industries (e.g. excess electricity 
generation capacity I already mentioned) that still bugger this 
economy, even 12 years after neoliberal restructuring began. A decade 
ago I was sceptical of the GTR approach, which in any case morphed 
into a neolib-friendly "post-Fordist" strategy of "progressive 
competitiveness" (a miserable, job-killing failure brought to us by 
the ex-syndicalist trade/industry minister, Alec Erwin, who was 
also recently president of Unctad). Here's the relevant caveat:

Could the Growth Through Redistribution strategy work? The answer
has much to do with the *expectations* of ANC members and
supporters. Business and many liberal whites fear that poor and
working people's expectations will be out of all proportion to
the resources available. In the Zimbabwean experience, civil
society was so poorly organised that expectations and popular
demands were not taken seriously by the government after
liberation. The lack of grassroots pressure permitted economic
power to remain in the hands of a few whites, international
financiers, and a small but important black bureaucratic class...
Some members of Cosatu's Economic Trends group refer to Growth
Through Redistribution as a "second best" scenario: if socialism
is not on the agenda, it is at least a useful task for
"ex-Marxist" economists to set out how capitalism can achieve
growth and at the same time provide for more basic human needs
than before. But this pessimism is unwarranted if a different
understanding of the crisis--that is of overaccumulation--is
built into the analysis of how to restructure the economy. Such
an analysis can be empowering, not disempowering, if it rests on
real struggles of activists and a sense of the chaos that the
crisis has produced within the commanding heights... No matter how
progressive their goals and policy statements, ANC and Cosatu
economists have basically accepted the constraints of the
overaccumulation crisis as inevitable, and have tried to
construct an alternative economic strategy *around them.*.. In
these respects, a reformist post-apartheid economic programme
will leave many people from all walks of life severely
disappointed. At core, ANC and Cosatu post-apartheid economic
policy has failed to identify how the overaccumulation crisis
creates new possibilities, especially for disciplining the power
of high finance. (from Commanding Heights and Community Control,
Johannesburg, Ravan, 1991, pp.67-68.)

> My post concerns what I take to be the Bond program for the 
> periphery, so I don't take credit for it.

Hey comrade Yoshie, I like what you wrote below much better. Can I 
call this the Bond Programme? :-)

> Date:  Fri, 22 Jun 2001 18:25:46 -0400
> From:  Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Since the neoliberal solution included debt deflation & 
> deindustrialization in the South & the East, naturally we want to
> reverse them, thereby stopping massive capital outflows from the
> South & the East to the North which has helped the ruling class.  

Ok I'll give a taste of the ongoing Zimbabwe debate on how to take 
forward Mugabe's $5 billion foreign-debt payment-standstill, towards 
repudiation, in the next post...

> In the North as well, the working class need to learn to demand more of
> all goods: higher wages, more free time, more social programs, more
> environmental cleanups, etc.  The job of the working class, in the
> North or South or East, in short is to demand more, not because
> doing so is a viable long-term goal under capitalism, but precisely
> because it isn't.  The more the working class organize themselves to
> make demands energetically, the more likely capitalism enters into
> another serious crisis -- in other words, the working class, by
> organized demands, must create a crisis & turn it into its favor (=
> an opportunity to fight for socialism from the position of
> strength).

Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Patrick Bond]

> From:  "Mark Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date:  Fri, 22 Jun 2001 18:28:35 +0100
> Do you even acknowledge as a problem, the global endemic energy
> scarcity which has seen per capita energy consumption stagnant since 1973
> and which is a very real problem precisely in those newly neoliberalised
> zones (S America, E Europe, S Africa) which now suffer chronic energy
> shortages (gasoline famines, brownouts etc) and which cannot hope to find
> the capital to invest in new infrastructure? 

Minor correction from sooty Jo'burg, comrade, where there's still 
a quarter excess electricity generating capacity, even on a cold 
winter day like today...

(Sunday Independent, 27 July 1999)
Power to the powerful:
Ideology of apartheid energy still distorts electricity sector

by Patrick Bond

South Africa's surreal energy problems reflect the
kinds of contradictions you would expect during a
transition from apartheid economic history to a
contemporary electricity pricing system all too often
based on (`neoliberal') market-policy for households,
complicated by massive subsidies for big
corporations, in one of the world's most unequal
societies.
  There are at least three world-class development
disasters here: our economy's skewed over-reliance on
(and oversupply of) pollution-causing, coal-generated
electricity; the lack of equitable access amongst
households along class/race lines (with serious
adverse gender implications); and periodic township
rioting associated with power cuts resulting from
nonpayment.
  Plenty of other challenges for a revitalised
energy policy could be mentioned. But assuming
Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka wants justice to be
done during the ANC's second term (and is less
distracted by shady Liberian consultants or
groundless attacks on the auditor general than her
predecessor), merely addressing electricity
distribution would require a serious challenge to
corporate power and neoliberal ideology. Instead of
praising the filthy rich (who can forget?), the
minister would have to subsidise filthy impoverished
townships currently suffocating under winter coal
fumes.
  An outstanding recent book, The Political Economy
of South Africa by Ben Fine and Zav Rustomjee, puts
this sector into economic perspective. Here we locate
electricity at the heart of the economy's `Minerals-
Energy Complex,' a `system of accumulation' unique to
this country. Mining, petro-chemicals, metals and
related activities which historically accounted for
around a quarter of economic activity typically
consumed 40 percent of all electricity.
  Thus Eskom was centrally responsible for South
Africa's economic growth, but, Fine and Rustomjee
show, at the same time fostered a debilitating
dependence on the (declining) mining industry.
Economists refer to this as a `Dutch disease,' in
memory of the damage done to Holland's economic
balance by its cheap North Sea oil.
  South African electricity consumption (per
capita) soared to a level similar to Britain, even
though black--`African'--South Africans were denied
domestic electricity for decades. To accomplish this
feat, Eskom had to generate emissions of greenhouse
gasses twice as high per capita as the rest of the
world, alongside enormous surface water pollution,
bucketing acid rain and dreadfully low safety/health
standards for coal miners.
  To what end? Today, most low-income South
Africans still rely for a large part of their
lighting, cooking and heating energy needs upon
paraffin (with its burn-related health risks), coal
(with high levels of domestic and township-wide air
pollution) and wood (with dire consequences for
deforestation). Women, traditionally responsible for
managing the home, are more affected by the high cost
of electricity and spend far more time and energy
searching for alternative energy.
  Ecologically-sensitive energy sources--such as
solar, wind and tidal--have barely begun to be
explored, while the few hydropower plants (especially
in neighbouring Mozambique) are based on
controversial large dams that, experts argue, do more
harm than developmental good.
  Some inherited electricity dilemmas stem from a
racist, irrational and socially-unjust history.
Conventional wisdom even before 1948, we must never
forget, was that `temporary sojourners' were in
cities merely to work; they would not consume much--
certainly not household appliances--since their wages
were pitiably low. As Jubilee 2000 South Africa
observes with justifiable bitterness, more than half
of the World Bank's $200+ million in apartheid
credits from 1951-66 were for Eskom's expansion,
including coal-powered stations. But none of the
benefits found their way to the homes of the majority
of citizens. Even by 1994, fewer than four in ten
African households had electricity.
  Meanwhile, corporate South Africa suffered the
opposite problem--an embarrassment of energy riches--
especially when terribly po

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Michael Perelman]

Yoshie is absolutely correct.  Marx accurately argued that capitalism would fail
when people rejected it because it cannot adjust to allow society to meet its
potential.  The passages that Mark (not Marx) quoted from the Grundrisse are
among my favorites, because they make the case that capitalism just does not work
very well once the system has gone beyond the point where the mere saving of
labor time is no longer very important for progress.  The real limit (getting
back to Doug and ingenuity) is the inability of capitalism to tap the ingenuity
of the mass of people, relying instead on a handful of "scientists."  He saw a
world in which all workers would be scientists of a sort.

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

>
> None of the above -- the tendency to overaccumulation inherent in
> capitalism, supply bottlenecks created by neoliberalism, ecological
> strains on the conditions of accumulation, etc. -- in itself is a
> _terminal_ risk for capitalism, nor will be the combination of any or
> all of the above, I think.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Mark Jones]

Doug Henwood wrote:

>
> In my role as PEN-L's Dr Pangloss, may I point out one thing you
> didn't include - human ingenuity,

This sounds more Julian Simon than Dr Pangloss, and as for what Marx wrote
in Grundrisse, he also said therein:

''To the degree that labour-time -- the mere quantity of
labour -- is posited by capital as the sole determinant element, to that
degree does direct labour and its quantity disappear as the
determinant principle of production -- of the creation of use-values
-- and is reduced both quantitatively, to a smaller proportion, and
qualitatively, as an, of course, indispensable but subordinate
moment, compared to the general scientific labour, technological
application of natural sciences, on one side, and to the general
productive force arising from social combination in total production
on the other side -- a combination which appears as a natural fruit
of social labour (although it is a historical product). Capitalism thus
works towards its own dissolution as the force dominating
production".
(Grundrisse, p.700)

And:

"On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of science and
nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order
to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour
time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time
as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created,
and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already
created value as value. Forces of production and social relations -
two different sides of the development of the social individual -
appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to
produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the
material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high."
(Grundrisse p 703-706)

Mark Jones

Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Doug Henwood]

Michael Perelman wrote:

>I don't know what the biggest risk is for capitalism: Third World upheavals,
>financial implosion, global warming, overcapacity, or resource constraints.  I
>think it would be very useful to think about how these various 
>forces relate to
>each other.  For example, could resource constraints and 
>overcapacity cancel one
>another out?

In my role as PEN-L's Dr Pangloss, may I point out one thing you 
didn't include - human ingenuity, and its specifically capitalist 
form of innovation in pursuit of profit. You list every problem and 
treat each as a potentially fatal constraint. As the Old Man put it 
in the Grundrisse:

"Those economists who, like Ricardo, conceived production as directly 
identical with the self-realization of capital -- and hence were 
heedless of the barriers to consumption or of the existing barriers 
of circulation itself, to the extent that it must represent 
counter-values at all points, having in view only the development of 
the forces of production and the, growth of the industrial population 
-- supply without regard to demand -- have therefore grasped the 
positive essence of capital more correctly and deeply than those who, 
like Sismondi, emphasized the barriers of consumption and of the 
available circle of counter-values, although the latter has better 
grasped the limited nature of production based on capital, its 
negative one-sidedness. The former more its universal tendency, the 
latter its particular restrictedness."

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Mark Jones]

Doug Henwood earlier wrote [PEN-L:13799]:
>
>it's more of a 19th century slowdown than a post-WW II one,
> with a financial hangover from the burst Nasdaq/tech bubble, and a
> real sector one from overinvestment in gadgets. It's probably going
> to take some time to work through it.

Maybe Doug is right, and there is nothing wrong with the 'energy
fundamentals' and the present 'slowdown' is similar to what happened in the
19th century. I don't believe this; some people are clearly in denial here.
But Doug is right that there is a parallel with the 19th century.

As Alan Freeman puts it:

>>(e) History has seen two quite distinct patterns of recovery from
generalised crisis. The industrial revolution, and the post-war boom,
yielded high global profit rates under a single hegemonic power (the UK in
1845, the US in 1945) which fuelled a general expansion even of its rivals,
yielding rising (if unequal) prosperity, relative peace, and political
stability. 1890-1914 was different. The profit rate did not recover to
previous levels, there was no clear hegemon,  growing misery and barbarity
over the immiserated parts of the world, and intense great power rivalry
leading to the wars and revolutions that bestrode the twentieth century.
I will argue that the evidence suggests the only possible basis of a new
wave of economic expansion is a recovery of this second type, more
comparable with 1890-1914 than 1945-1965. I call this a return to ‘classical
imperialism’.<<
[from HAS THE EMPIRE STRUCK BACK? ‘NEW PARADIGM’ GLOBALISATION OR RETURN TO
CLASSICAL IMPERIALISM?]

Elsewhere, Freeman has argued that:

>> General crisis is not final breakdown. Capitalism can recover from it and
has done so. But the recovery requires an external, political intervention –
in the cases so far seen (the industrial revolution itself, 1848-1872,
1893-1914, and 1947-62), a complete re-organisation of the world’s markets
and territories through extended war and barbarity to provide privileged
spheres of operation for rival great capitals. So-called ‘globalisation’ is
not an automatic process but the outcome of a conscious political attempt to
recreate these conditions for recovery. The Reagan-Thatcher restructuring of
1980 led to the dissolution of the USSR, the formation of the WTO, and the
opening of world financial markets to US capital, opening a period whose
closest historical analogy is 1893-1914, best described as ‘classical
imperialism’. Unlike the 1945 re-organisation, this liberal imperialist
re-organisation is unstable because there is no sufficiently productive
hegemon; the advance of each great power is bought at the expense of the
others. It leads to competition between the great powers which grows without
limit, and it is by no means guaranteed that it can unleash a new expansion.
This competition is, however, not the cause of the crisis but an effect of
it.
The growing polarisation of nations is likewise intrinsic to the capitalist
market and, unlike general crisis, continues without limit. This, too, is a
product of the market. It cannot be explained by specific cultural or
historical conditions such as late or insufficient integration into the
capitalist market; to the contrary, it only ever slowed down when nations
partially withdrew from the world market in capital, and has accelerated
more rapidly than ever now that the market has reached is greatest ever
extent.
The partial restoration of US profitability is not the result of a
fundamental revival of the productive dominance which the US enjoyed in
1945, and far less the onset of a ‘New Paradigm’ wave of expansion, as
Greenspan maintains; it has been achieved by directly appropriating the
surplus value of the third world, and of the USA’s rivals, to finance US
debt and compensate for its own competitive failure. << [from CRISIS AND THE
POVERTY OF NATIONS]

On the whole, whether or not you believe in Freeman's version of value
theory, there is no doubt that the 19th century ended up in 1914.


Mark Jones

Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Doug Henwood]

Mark Jones wrote:

>  The truth is that if Pat Bond is unrealistic,
>your scheme is much more so, since it  requires not only the willing consent
>of the global elites to their own elimination, but also the presence three
>additional planet earths plus zero population growth on this one.

So the 6 billion people of the earth - what's going to happen to 
them? Should they consent to dying off in vast numbers?

Doug