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Jim, I live in England. Here, all sorts of people throw queenie fits, starting with the Queen. Portugese waiters do it (and waiters of all nationalities). Mostly actors do it. That is what they are famous for. Probably gay people do it less than the rest of us; they're probably more worked out. You don't like to be baited and neither do I. I have a history of supporting gay causes and issues going back to the 1960s, when to be gay was illegal and the subject was a taboo-covered perversion. So don't try to hang that on me, it is utterly absurd as anyone who knows me, knows. England is not America. Language usage is different. Keep talking economics, it's what you're good at. If I have offended you I am heartily sorry. It gave you an excuse to avoid debate. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jim Devine Sent: 30 June 2000 03:36 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:21003] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] At 01:49 AM 06/30/2000 +0100, you wrote: Yelling at people that they are atavists, apocalyptics etc, doesn't answer any more than Jim Devine throwing queenie fits answers the questions. so Mr. Jones is gay-bashing me? I find that insults are always the last refuge of the fuzzy thinker. In any event, though Jones thinks of this as an insult, I do not. My sister is gay and she is an excellent person. However, I think that gay-bashing does not belong on pen-l. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
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At 06:28 PM 6/29/00 -0500, you wrote: Does doing away with this distinction mean locating hog barns and cattle feed lots in the city? hog barns literally stink to high heaven, as the film "Waking Ned (no relation) Devine" reminds us. But I heard that they were changing the composition of hog slop in order to fix this problem. Is that true? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Louis Proyect wrote: Doug: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. You don't seem to be aware that smaller farms are more productive than large agribusiness type concerns. Where did I endorse large agribusiness? If small farms are more productive, then let's have more of them; I'm all for separating the imperatives of capital from those of real social efficiency and humaneness. But even small farms use modern transportation and machines. Doug
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Small farming is dead. It doesn't exist esp in the US. 'Farmers' are the social equivalent of laundromat-owners, the economically disenfranchised, overmortgaged persons who apply lots of energy and toxic chemicals to things and hope for the best. In the UK, the class of prepacked sandwich-makers is more numerous than the class of farmers. I'm sure it's the same in the US. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: 30 June 2000 17:37 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:21031] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] Louis Proyect wrote: Doug: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. You don't seem to be aware that smaller farms are more productive than large agribusiness type concerns. Where did I endorse large agribusiness? If small farms are more productive, then let's have more of them; I'm all for separating the imperatives of capital from those of real social efficiency and humaneness. But even small farms use modern transportation and machines. Doug
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Perhaps Louis could explain what he means by small farms being more productive. Even if it is true of some small farms producing some items I am not sure what its relevance is to anything. If you can grow 50,000 watermelon on 10 acres but only 90,000 on 20 acres and you have a profit of 20 cents per melon is the farmer supposed to choose to farm 10 acres on the ground that the smaller farm is more productive? I doubt that smaller farms are more productive around here as compared to larger ones but whether they are or are not they often end up being sold to larger farmers because farmers cannot make a living from them. There is a smidgin of truth in Mark's remarks but small farmers certainly are not dead. The term small farm is undefined by Lou. A small farm here would be around a section i.e. a square mile. In the foothills of the Rockies or the Aussie outback that size unit would be a joke. In Japan it would be beyond most farmer's dreams. I can recall Don Wheeler a former economics prof. lecturing in Hungary. When he told them that farmers with a quarter section of land would starve in most areas of Manitoba they were sure he was spouting Commie propaganda. THis was when Hungary was communist. It would be nice to have some statististics. I expect the trend is that larger farms are increeasingly responsible for a larger proportion of total production but that smaller farms may not be decreasing all that quickly in number. Many smaller farms survive by family members having off-farm jobs. In fact some larger farms may crash from cash-flow problems as they over-invest and then have a crop failure with resultant crushing debt loads. I expect that the number of hobby farms may be increasing as well. But where are the data? CHeers, Ken Hanly Mark Jones wrote: Small farming is dead. It doesn't exist esp in the US. 'Farmers' are the social equivalent of laundromat-owners, the economically disenfranchised, overmortgaged persons who apply lots of energy and toxic chemicals to things and hope for the best. In the UK, the class of prepacked sandwich-makers is more numerous than the class of farmers. I'm sure it's the same in the US. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: 30 June 2000 17:37 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:21031] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] Louis Proyect wrote: Doug: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. You don't seem to be aware that smaller farms are more productive than large agribusiness type concerns. Where did I endorse large agribusiness? If small farms are more productive, then let's have more of them; I'm all for separating the imperatives of capital from those of real social efficiency and humaneness. But even small farms use modern transportation and machines. Doug
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Ken, When I was chair of the Manitoba Milk Control Board/ Milk Prices Review Commission we found that medium size producers where by far the most efficient producers -- i.e about 60 milking cows. Large producers were not efficient and small producers were not either although in this case, because they were usually part of mixed farming operations, any standard measure of 'efficiency' is highly suspect. As you know, the same debate is being blown up at the moment about large scale versus small scale pig farming. I would expect that when externalities were included, large scale operations would cease to be economically efficient. Whether the current investigation of this issue under way in Manitoba will look at externalities is problematic. The NDP has developed blinkers as opaque as its neanderthal Conservative predecessors. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba ps. on a totally different strain, my understanding is that airline pilots get a very high return out of owning/using dishwashers. Since they can't fly when they have colds, the decrease in colds due to dishwashers brings an enormous return in terms of decline of lost wages. In my own family, the decline in colds/flus has been incredible -- and we don't pre-wash our dishes. Date sent:Fri, 30 Jun 2000 15:42:29 -0500 From: Ken Hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:21062] Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] Perhaps Louis could explain what he means by small farms being more productive. Even if it is true of some small farms producing some items I am not sure what its relevance is to anything. If you can grow 50,000 watermelon on 10 acres but only 90,000 on 20 acres and you have a profit of 20 cents per melon is the farmer supposed to choose to farm 10 acres on the ground that the smaller farm is more productive? I doubt that smaller farms are more productive around here as compared to larger ones but whether they are or are not they often end up being sold to larger farmers because farmers cannot make a living from them. There is a smidgin of truth in Mark's remarks but small farmers certainly are not dead. The term small farm is undefined by Lou. A small farm here would be around a section i.e. a square mile. In the foothills of the Rockies or the Aussie outback that size unit would be a joke. In Japan it would be beyond most farmer's dreams. I can recall Don Wheeler a former economics prof. lecturing in Hungary. When he told them that farmers with a quarter section of land would starve in most areas of Manitoba they were sure he was spouting Commie propaganda. THis was when Hungary was communist. It would be nice to have some statististics. I expect the trend is that larger farms are increeasingly responsible for a larger proportion of total production but that smaller farms may not be decreasing all that quickly in number. Many smaller farms survive by family members having off-farm jobs. In fact some larger farms may crash from cash-flow problems as they over-invest and then have a crop failure with resultant crushing debt loads. I expect that the number of hobby farms may be increasing as well. But where are the data? CHeers, Ken Hanly Mark Jones wrote: Small farming is dead. It doesn't exist esp in the US. 'Farmers' are the social equivalent of laundromat-owners, the economically disenfranchised, overmortgaged persons who apply lots of energy and toxic chemicals to things and hope for the best. In the UK, the class of prepacked sandwich-makers is more numerous than the class of farmers. I'm sure it's the same in the US. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: 30 June 2000 17:37 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:21031] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] Louis Proyect wrote: Doug: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. You don't seem to be aware that smaller farms are more productive than large agribusiness type concerns. Where did I endorse large agribusiness? If small farms are more productive, then let's have more of them; I'm all for separating the imperatives of capital from those of real social efficiency and humaneness. But even small farms use modern transportation and machines. Doug
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sustainable than the U.S. But is a growth rate of 0 low enough? Could we feed and house 6 billion people if we all spent our time searching for "Jack-in-the-Pulpits or fishing for pickerel"? That kind of rural leisure is available to someone living in a rich country; in a poor country, you'd be more likely tilling the soil or grinding corn from dawn til dusk. These apocalpytic imaginings aren't serious politics, they're just lurid fantasies. Doug My dear chap, I was trying to respond to your question about the existential authenticity of my living on the Upper East Side 3 blocks from Woody Allen, while defending a simple life close to nature. Now you've switched gears in the most underhanded fashion and talk about overpopulation, a legitimate topic of social science rather than pop psychology. I ought to put a hungry wolverine in your knickers. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
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Louis Proyect wrote: You and Doug approach this as if we were talking about life-style. I can understand this. This is generally how people first react to the CM demand, as if they were being asked to give up Starbucks or something. It is not about this primarily. It is about addressing a fundamental problem in agriculture and ecology. The rise of the modern city was facilitated by the removal of the agrarian population. Then, the livestock was separated from the farm where crops were grown. This was made possible by modern transportation systems, sophisticated financing schemes, chemical fertilizer, mechanized plowing and reaping, etc. In the meantime, all of these 'advances' were made possible by the creation of modern urban industrial centers. With every "success" of the capitalist system, there was an environmental penalty. Marx wrote about this, as did Bebel, Bukharin, Kautsky and many other lesser known Marxists. Our problem is that most of the research into these questions is being done by by mainstream greens like Lester Brown's Worldwatch, while the militant opposition comes from fuzzy-minded anarchists or deep ecologists. And where are the self-declared Marxists? Mostly standing around with their thumbs up their asses worrying about whether they'll still be able to enjoy their morning Starbucks. Ok, so now we know there won't be Starbucks after the revolution. Finally a bit of detail. Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. Where are the Marxists? This neo-primitivist vision is quite anti-Marxist, and it's quite reasonable that Marxists are not participating in your vision. It comports perfectly with the politics and preferences of Brown and the fuzzies, though. On this sort of thing I'm with thumb-up-the-ass Ernest Mandel, who had this to say in Late Capitalism: 6. The genuine extension of the needs (living standards) of the wageearner, which represents a raising of his level of culture and civilization. In the end this can be traced back virtually completely to the conquest of longer time for recreation, both quantitatively (a shorter working week, free weekends, paid holidays, earlier pensionable age, and longer education) and qualitatively (the actual extension of cultural needs, to the extent to which they are not trivialized or deprived of their human content by capitalist commercialization). This genuine extension of needs is a corollary of the necessary civilizing function of capital. Any rejection of the so-called 'consumer society' which moves beyond justified condemnation of the commercialization and dehumanization of consumption by capitalism to attack the historical extension of needs and consumption in general (i.e., moves from social criticism to a critique of civilization), turns back the clock from scientific to utopian socialism and from historical materialism to idealism. Marx fully appreciated and stressed the civilizing function of capital, which he saw as the necessary preparation of the material basis for a 'rich individuality'. The following passage from the Grundrisse makes this view very clear: 'Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness, and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one.' For socialists, rejection of capitalist 'consumer society' can therefore never imply rejection of the extension and differentiation of needs as a whole, or any return to the primitive natural state of these needs; their aim is necessarily the development of a 'rich individuality' for the whole of mankind. In this rational Marxist sense, rejection of capitalist 'consumer society' can only mean: rejection of all those forms of consumption and of production which continue to restrict man's development, making it narrow and one-sided. This rational rejection seeks to reverse the relationship between the production of goods and human labour, which is determined by the commodity form under capitalism, so that henceforth the main goal of economic activity is not the maximum production of things and the maximum private profit for each individual unit of production (factory or company), but the optimum self-activity of the individual person. The production of goods must be subordinated to this goal, which means the elimination of forms of production and labour which damage human health and
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At 07:17 PM 6/29/00 -0400, you wrote: Ok, so now we know there won't be Starbucks after the revolution. Finally a bit of detail. no loss! Starbucks burns its beans, producing inferior coffee. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Jim Devine wrote: Ok, so now we know there won't be Starbucks after the revolution. Finally a bit of detail. no loss! Starbucks burns its beans, producing inferior coffee. "I don't like it. It smells burnt." - Jackie Mason
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Jim Devine wrote: no loss! Starbucks burns its beans, producing inferior coffee. http://www.junofish.com/jackie.html A Dissent on Starbucks by Jackie Mason Starbucks is the best example of a phony status symbol that means nothing, but people will still pay 10x as much for because there are French words all over the place. You want coffee in a coffee shop, that's 60 cents. But at Starbucks, Cafe Latte: $3.50. Cafe Cremier: $4.50. Cafe Suisse: $9.50. For each French word, another four dollars. Why does a little cream in coffee make it worth $3.50? Go into any coffee shop; they'll give you all the cream you want until you're blue in the face. Forty million people are walking around in coffee shops with jars of cream: "Here's all the cream you want!" And it's still 60 cents. You know why? Because it's called "coffee." If it's Cafe Latte - $4.50. You want cinnamon in your coffee? Ask for cinnamon in a coffee shop; they'll give you all the cinnamon you want. Do they ask you for more money because it's cinnamon? It's the same price for cinnamon in your coffee as for coffee without cinnamon - 60 cents, that's it. But not in Starbucks. Over there, it's Cinnamonnier - $9.50. You want a refill in a regular coffee shop, they'll give you all the refills you want until you drop dead. You can come in when you're 27 and keep drinking coffee until you're 98. And they'll start begging you: "Here, you want more coffee, you want more, you want more?" Do you know that you can't get a refill at Starbucks? A refill is a dollar fifty. Two refills, $4.50. Three refills, $19.50. So, for four cups of coffee - $350. And it's burnt coffee. It's burnt coffee at Starbucks, let's be honest about it. If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you call a cop. You say, "Oh, it's a blend. It's a blend." It's a special bean from Argentina. " The bean is in your head. And there're no chairs in those Starbucks. Instead, they have these high stools. You ever see these stools? You haven't been on a chair that high since you were two. Seventy-three year old Jews are climbing and climbing to get to the top of the chair. And when they get to the top, they can't even drink the coffee because there's 12 people around one little table, and everybody's saying, "Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me." Then they can't get off the chair. Old Jews are begging Gentiles, "Mister, could you get me off this?" Do you remember what a cafeteria was? In poor neighborhoods all over this country, they went to a cafeteria because there were no waiters and no service. And so poor people could save money on a tip. Cafeterias didn't have regular tables or chairs either. They gave coffee to you in a cardboard cup. So because of that you paid less for the coffee. You got less, so you paid less. It's all the same as Starbucks - no chairs, no service, a cardboard cup for your coffee - except in Starbucks, the less you get, the more it costs. By the time they give you nothing, it's worth four times as much. Am I exaggerating? Did you ever try to buy a cookie in Starbucks? Buy a cookie in a regular coffee shop. You can tear down a building with that cookie. And the whole cookie is 60 cents. At Starbucks, you're going to have to hire a detective to find that cookie, and it's $9.50. And you can't put butter on it because they want extra. Do you know that if you buy a bagel, you pay extra for cream cheese in Starbucks? Cream cheese, another 60 cents. A knife to put it on, 32 cents. If it reaches the bagel, 48 cents. That bagel costs you $312. And they don't give you the butter or the cream cheese. They don't give it to you. They tell you where it is. "Oh, you want butter? It's over there. Cream cheese? Over here. Sugar? Sugar is here." Now you become your own waiter. You walk around with a tray. "I'll take the cookie. Where's the butter? The butter's here. Where's the cream cheese? The cream cheese is there." You walked around for an hour and a half selecting items, and then the guy at the cash register has a glass in front of him that says "Tips." You're waiting on tables for an hour, and you owe him money. Then there's a sign that says please clean it up when you're finished. They don't give you a waiter or a busboy. Now you've become the janitor. Now you have to start cleaning up the place. Old Jews are walking around cleaning up Starbucks. "Oh, he's got dirt too? Wait, I'll clean this up." They clean up the place for an hour and a half. If I said to you, "I have a great idea for a business. I'll open a whole new type of a coffee shop. A whole new type. Instead of 60 cents for coffee I'll charge $2.50, $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50. Not only that, I'll have no tables, no chairs, no water, no busboy, and you'll clean it up for 20 minutes after you're finished." Would you say to me, "That's the greatest idea for a business I ever heard! We can open a chain of these all over the world!" No,
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Does doing away with this distinction mean locating hog barns and cattle feed lots in the city? More flippancy. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
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Doug: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. You don't seem to be aware that smaller farms are more productive than large agribusiness type concerns. Can I refer you to the special MR issue on agriculture from a couple of years ago co-edited by Fred Magdoff and John Foster? I am sure you would find it most edifying. Where are the Marxists? They are over on the Marxism list where they belong. On this sort of thing I'm with thumb-up-the-ass Ernest Mandel, who had this to say in Late Capitalism: Well, at least Ernest was a revolutionary socialist, even if he hadn't give ecology the full attention it deserved. We need more people like him nowadays, if you gather my drift. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
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Doug Henwood wrote: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. No, the revo will not be responsible for the loss of modern transportation and the collapse of the agro-system which is based on using soil to hold down plants while petroleum-derived chemicals are applied, for the purpose of creating what are called 'phantom acres': ie, we use sunlight trapped a long time ago to artifically boost production: "Catton expands on the "ghost acreage" concept raised by Georg Borgstrom, who was talking about food. The term in Borgstrom referred to imports from elsewhere, meaning supplementation of what a region or nation has available internally with the product of some other region's or country's land and sunlight./1/ Catton initially is interested in imports from elsewhen, meaning the use of fossil-fuel energy, or supplmentation with the product of land and sunlight from long ago. He uses "fossil acreage," meaning the "energy we obtain from coal, petroleum, and natural gas...the number of additional acres of farmland that would have been needed to grow organic fuels with equivalent energy content."/2/ Dependence on this fossil acreage yields dependence on "phantom carrying capacity" that evaporates when the fossil fuels become unavailable./3/ A few pages later, he defines phantom carrying capacity as "either the illusory or the extremely precarious capacity of an environment to support a given life form or a given way of living" (Chris Kuykendall) The revo will happen *because capitalism's energetics basis has collapsed*. That is why transport, agrobiz etc will also mutate in forms which will look like a collapse. Of course an enormously wasteful system like the US contains enormous potentials for energy saving and no doubt something approaching normal life could be sustained by using 50% less fossil, and in time much less. There are Marxists who think that's just another profit opportunity and to a degree they are right. But what you have to reckin with is that the history of capitalist accumulation was predicated logically on the existence of fossil fuel and the ability to constantly cheapen this input and to increase energy efficiency. My question is not so much about whethere normal life can be preserved albeit with some very important changes. I just don't see how capitalism can survive or be the agency of those changes, and that is why there will be and already is, a developing crisis. It won't go aware just be pretending it aint there. It is there. I have yet to see you embrace this even as a hypothesis. The collapse of Big Oil will have devastating side-effects including on food production. It will quite inevitably require many more people to go work on the land. You may not like that, but you still have to explain what is the alternative. Yelling at people that they are atavists, apocalyptics etc, doesn't answer any more than Jim Devine throwing queenie fits answers the questions. Whenever I raise the issue I get literally dozens of offlist emails from lurkers on pen-l who want to no more but are not willing to expose themselves to ridicule from the 'orthodox' list-professors. Where are the Marxists? This neo-primitivist vision is quite anti-Marxist, and it's quite reasonable that Marxists are not participating in your vision. It comports perfectly with the politics and preferences of Brown and the fuzzies, though. But no marxists round here are promoting such a vision; it's a phantasm of your own. You're locked in struggle with figments of your own imagining. And how is Mandel present? Try to answer the question: do you think oil is an exhaustible and irreplaceable energy supply, or not? Do you side with Morris Adelman, the guru invoked by your own resident oil expert Greg Nowell, and think that oil is 'Infinite, a renewable resource' ? If you accept that it is running out, what do YOU think we should do? What is YOUR plan, apart from asking me for mine? Mark
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Growth of 0% is fine, but unfoprtunately it's not happening, especially in the US, where the population may rise to 500mn by 2050 and not stop there, either. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 11:32 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20981] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] (fwd) sustainable than the U.S. But is a growth rate of 0 low enough? Could we feed and house 6 billion people if we all spent our time searching for "Jack-in-the-Pulpits or fishing for pickerel"? That kind of rural leisure is available to someone living in a rich country; in a poor country, you'd be more likely tilling the soil or grinding corn from dawn til dusk. These apocalpytic imaginings aren't serious politics, they're just lurid fantasies. Doug My dear chap, I was trying to respond to your question about the existential authenticity of my living on the Upper East Side 3 blocks from Woody Allen, while defending a simple life close to nature. Now you've switched gears in the most underhanded fashion and talk about overpopulation, a legitimate topic of social science rather than pop psychology. I ought to put a hungry wolverine in your knickers. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
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At 01:49 AM 06/30/2000 +0100, you wrote: Yelling at people that they are atavists, apocalyptics etc, doesn't answer any more than Jim Devine throwing queenie fits answers the questions. so Mr. Jones is gay-bashing me? I find that insults are always the last refuge of the fuzzy thinker. In any event, though Jones thinks of this as an insult, I do not. My sister is gay and she is an excellent person. However, I think that gay-bashing does not belong on pen-l. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
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Karl Fred wrote: "Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country." Compared to many other countries, the U.S. has a version of this, only we call it suburban sprawl. It's ugly, and extremely dependent on fossil fuels. How would the post-revolutionary world be different from suburbia? Louis Proyect wrote: The disappearance of fossil-based fuels is a whole other story. My guess is that a radically different kind of life-style will be necessary in the future for the survival of humanity. I don't think that this will be palatable to many of the people who post regularly to PEN-L, who seem rather committed to the urban, consumerist life-style found in the imperialist centers. For those of us who have read and admired William Morris, these alternative prospects might seem more attractive. I think that people will democratically elect a new life-style based on the premise of greatly expanded leisure time, less regimentation, decreased risks to health and closeness to nature. Of course some socialists will continue to see socialism as an extension of capitalist civilization with the working class at the steering wheel instead of the bourgeoisie. But that's been a problem for Marxism since the 19th century. It's weird to hear this coming from someone who lives works on Manhattan Island, but I'll leave that aside for now, along with my suspicion that a lot of this is the fantasy of an exhausted and alienated urbanite. I don't see how you can achieve a William Morris-y arts crafts lifestyle with a global population of 6 billion people. Maybe I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, what is the ideal population, and what will happen to all the surplus billions? Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] (fwd)
I just read that NY City is the largest consumer of pesticides in the state. Now that you have that part of the agricultural system, may the rest won't be too hard. Doug Henwood wrote: It's weird to hear this coming from someone who lives works on Manhattan Island, but I'll leave that aside for now, along with my suspicion that a lot of this is the fantasy of an exhausted and alienated urbanite. I don't see how you can achieve a William Morris-y arts crafts lifestyle with a global population of 6 billion people. Maybe I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, what is the ideal population, and what will happen to all the surplus billions? Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] (fwd)
Doug: Compared to many other countries, the U.S. has a version of this, only we call it suburban sprawl. It's ugly, and extremely dependent on fossil fuels. How would the post-revolutionary world be different from suburbia? The US does not have "a version of this". When you were growing up in NJ, Doug, the meat that was purchased at your supermarket came from a thousand miles away. Meanwhile, the grain used to feed the livestock came from another thousand miles away. This is the problem: separation of farming from urban populations. Suburbia is simply separation of a portion of urban populations to sub-urban populations. It's weird to hear this coming from someone who lives works on Manhattan Island, but I'll leave that aside for now, along with my suspicion that a lot of this is the fantasy of an exhausted and alienated urbanite. Actually, I find NYC utterly repulsive. My happiest days were spent in the countryside. I grew up in a town of 500 and spent lots of time in the woods searching for Jack-in-the-Pulpits or fishing for pickerel. I spent 5 days in Montana in June and after seeing Glacier National Park, I understand better why Indians resisted being assimilated. I don't see how you can achieve a William Morris-y arts crafts lifestyle with a global population of 6 billion people. Maybe I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, what is the ideal population, and what will happen to all the surplus billions? Well, yes, you're wrong. The first thing that happens when people are no longer feel economically vulnerable is that they stop having so many babies. You can read about this in "The Myth of Population Control" by Mahmood Mamdani (MR Press.) Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
