From jannuzi at gmail.com Sat Nov 1 00:24:23 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 15:24:23 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Super-structure reflects infrastructure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >>CB: Nostalgia comes from you , not me.<< Oh yeah like I have nostalgia for getting $2.20 an hour to make Hardees corporate death burgers. I do think you have causes-effects totally ass backwards. Re-think the potential for shifting the 'social means of production'. Or otherwise you sound like a cheerleader for BO's green jobs program while Paulson attempts to recover that lost world that once was safe for bond holders. CJ From jannuzi at gmail.com Sat Nov 1 00:34:36 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 15:34:36 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Caucasians Message-ID: CB>>Caucasian (smile). Stalin was a Real Caucasian. ( Caucasian is left over from 1800's racist "anthro".)<< So are 'negro' and 'mongoloid'. Stalin was a Georgian--a real peach according to some! There is no solid biological basis for the race labels of then or now, for that matter. The genetic differences that cause this or that person to be perceived as belonging to a race are less significant than the genetic differences you find in a given population that is identified as belonging to one race. However, since when does using straight biology ever overcome the social and cultural--and legalistic-- baggage? Especially in a culture where the mere accusation (if by someone influential enough in a community that saw itself as majority white) of 1% 'black' meant black. And passing as white meant no one saw you as (or successfully accused you of being) black. BTW, I wouldn't expect the numbnuts on LBO Talk know anything about the Appalachian peoples they are making judgements about (excluding Thomas Seay). CJ From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Nov 2 10:08:53 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 12:08:53 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Massive Pension Fund Crisis in the US Message-ID: Massive Pension Fund Crisis in the US By Henry C.K. Liu This article appeared in AToL on October 31, 2008 as: Balck Hole Gapes for Pensions More than three years before the current financial crisis, in a series Greenspan, the Wizard of Bubbleland that began on September 14, 2005, I warned: Through mortgage-backed securitization, banks now are mere loan intermediaries that assume no long-term risk on the risky loans they make, which are sold as securitized debt of unbundled levels of risk to institutional investors with varying risk appetite commensurate with their varying need for higher returns. But who are institutional investors? They are mostly pension funds that manage the money the US working public depends on for retirement. In other words, the aggregate retirement assets of the working public are exposed to the risk of the same working public defaulting on their house mortgages. When a homeowner loses his or her home through default of its mortgage, the homeowner will also lose his or her retirement nest egg invested in the securitized mortgage pool, while the banks stay technically solvent. That is the hidden network of linked financial landmines in a housing bubble financed by mortg age-backed securitization to which no one is paying attention. The bursting of the housing bubble will act as a detonator for a massive pension crisis. Now in October 2008, while the US government is busy bailing out wayward banks, public pension funds operated by states and municipalities are facing their worst year of loss in history, exacerbating cumulative funding shortfalls of past decades of credit bubble and putting pressure on distressed state governments to shore them up to avoid pending default. In the nine months to the end of September, the average state and municipal pension fund lost 14.8% of its market value. The loss has deepened as global financial markets fell sharply in October. The loss has more than double previous highest loss for state funds, which registered 7.9% for the full year in 2002. Few market analysts expect equity prices to bottom any time soon, let alone a recovery, and many are resigned to the prospect of years of asset deflation and economic stagnation. California?s Calpers, the biggest public pension fund in the US, in the week ending October 24 reported a loss of 20% of its asset value, or more than $40 billion, in the quarter between July 1 and October 20, 2008. State and local pension funds comprise a patchwork of 2,700 funds that manage $1.4 trillion on behalf of 21 million public employees, including teachers, firefighters, policemen and other municipal workers. About 40% of these funds are under-funded, meaning that they would not be able to pay the future pensions promised to public employees. State governments have raised pension benefits to keep up with inflation, betting on a growing wealth effect from fund investments to meet higher payments. It was part of the flawed rationale that called for the privatization of social security. Just like the social security trust fund, pension funds are money that belongs to the workers who are required to contribute into them out of their payroll deductions and matched by public funds as part of workers? employment benefits. These funds are not charity payments from government employers. They are compulsory savings of public sector workers. Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago, hometown of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, has convened a taskforce to address the shortfalls in Illinois funds. For example, funding for the Police Fund has fallen to less than 50% of requirement. The situation is actually more ominous. The calculation is based on an assumption of annual returns of 8%, but very few funds will reach that level of return in the next few years. Most funds will be lucky to escape further losses in the current market meltdown. The city of Chicago would have to start contributing substantially more to the fund out of its general revenue and from Federal and state subsidy. Public employees are faced with the prospect of being required to contribute more from their payroll deductions. And Chicago is not unique in its public pension problem. Every city and state of the union is in similar difficulty. A vicious downward cycle is emerging as state and local governments face lower tax revenue that put pressure to cut costs. Congress is pushing for a second fiscal stimulus package, in part to alleviate pressures on state pension funding. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, cited money lost from pension funds in her push for an additional $150 billion second stimulus package. The public pension funds themselves have limited options. Many are under pressure to move away from the stock market into less risky investments, but that would mean suffering more capital loss in this market environment and reducing returns in the future. Why hard-working public employees have to pay more to make up the losses in their pension funds managed by irresponsible professionals who were supposed to protect their hard-earned capital when the bankers whose greed were responsible for the financial tsunami that caused the losses are awarded with obscene golden parachutes? Because, according to Republican candidates McCain and Palin, Joe the plumber thinks that forcing rich bankers to pay for the losses they engineered and put on the backs of public workers would be to practice ? socialism?. _http://henryckliu.com/page173.html_ (http://henryckliu.com/page173.html) **************Plan your next getaway with AOL Travel. Check out Today's Hot 5 Travel Deals! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212416248x1200771803/aol?redir=http://travel.aol.com/discount-travel?ncid=emlcntustrav00000001) From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 3 09:19:03 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:19:03 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Dave Moore Message-ID: <490EDE28.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Celebrating a Lifetime of Achievement A Tribute to David William Moore Whereas, David W. Moore has been a fighter for freedom, equality, peace, human rights and economic justice for more than four score years; and Whereas, Citizen Moore from his youth in South Carolina, Ohio and Detroit, through his 95 years to the present has been an icon of the working class rank and file, Black, Brown and White, a leader of the laboring masses who create all the wealth of society, a champion of revolutionary struggle; and Whereas, In the Depression of the 1930?s , Mr. Moore was active in the Unemployed Councils, endured the Ford Hunger March, worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps, ; and Whereas, Brother David W. Moore was a leader in securing representation rights for the UAW-CIO at Ford Motor Company, where Black and White unity was key; Mr. Moore is credited with five other workers who pulled one of a series of switches in the Axel Plant on April 2, 1941, triggering the strike that ended in Ford signing a contract with UAW-CIO on June 30, 1941; and Whereas, David W. Moore advanced organizing efforts at Ford Motor company with the Elder Charles Diggs, Reverend Charles Hill, Pastor of Hartford Avenue Baptist Church, and President of the Detroit NAACP among others and he convinced the leadership of the CIO to bring Paul Robeson to Detroit to speak before Ford workers , which he did three times, including on May 19,1941 when Robeson appeared before upwards of 100,000 workers and union supporters in Cadillac Square on the eve of that signal contract victory at Ford; In later years, David Moore , with Coleman A. Young organized security details for Paul Robeson?s visits to Detroit, and said meetings also include Erma L. Henderson; and Whereas, Brother Moore , in 1941, was elected a District Committeeman in the old Gear and Axle Plant of Ford Rouge by a workforce of 5,600 that was overwhelmingly white in its majority; he was reelected for twelve successive years and for many years was elected to an array of offices in UAW Local 600; he served as a member of the Bargaining Committee and Vice-President of the Gear and Axle Plant; he also served as Bargaining Committeeman and Vice-President of the Dearborn Engine Plant of Local 600 and Whereas, David W. Moore served as Vice-President of the Detroit Chapter of the National Negro Labor Council, along with Coleman A. Young as National Secretary; the National Negro Labor Council , (NNLC), was an organization dedicated to winning first class citizenship for every Black man, woman and child in America in unity with that democratic minded workers of all backgrounds who recognized in the struggle for Negro rights prerequisites of their own aspirations for a full life; Whereas, Brother Moore endured the undemocratic onslaught of McCarthyism and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee; he was targeted with four others at Local 600; barred from running for union office in the very union where he had played such an important role to establish; the National Negro Labor Council was a target of the anti-Red , anti-Communist false accusations ; and Whereas, After 12 years Brother Moore and his four fellow Local 600 officers were reinstated and overwhelmingly reelected. Later he and the Black Caucus at Local 600 decided that he should accept a position as an International representative for the UAW in the grievance procedure; seasoned from the trials and tribulations of the McCarthy Era, armed with his bachelor?s degree in the School of Hard Knocks and his advanced degree from the University Hastings Street, having studied the public use of the courts with Peoples? lawyers Maurice Sugar, George Crockett, Lebron Simmons, Ernie Goodman and Claudia Morcom, he was An extraordinary and exceptionally astute advocate, and highly skilled in negotiatin fourth-stage grievances until his retirement in 1979. and Whereas, In 1979, Citizen Moore helped lead the victorious campaign of Judge George W. Crockett for Congress in Detroit? s 13th District, and served as Director of Congressman Crockett?s Detroit office and ; In 1990 Mayor Coleman A. Young appointed Mr. Moore as the Director of the Senior Citizen Department of the City of Detroit; and Wheras, David William Moore continues to this day his leadership role as organizer, educator and advocate for Black people and all working people, as he asserts , ?Let the powers that be know, Dave Moore is still alive.? THEREFORE BE IT Resolved, That the Detroit City Council salutes and declares David William Moore one of Detroit?s Historic Heroes and Champion Par Excellent; and BE IT FURTHER Resolved, That the Detroit City Council respectfully invites Mr. Moore to attend Council sessions at his convenience to offer advice on matters of economics, jobs, racial equality, and justice as Detroit continues its struggle for peace, jobs, and prosperity for all. Passed by Detroit City Council October 16, 2007 This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 4 07:11:56 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:11:56 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wrecked -Iraq Message-ID: <491011DE.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2008/10/25/wrecked-iraq/#comment-281138 Stan: It?s been a raving success so far? over a million dead, as many wounded, more traumatized, almost 4 million displaced, infrastructure wrecked, and foreign troops occupying the country. Billions a week going down this rathole of a war, more than 4,000 US dead, multiply that for wounded, crazy, disabled? and a heavily-financed neonazi culture of DOD-hired thugs being whelped to come back and live among us. Wow. This is great, eh? By the end of the Vietnam occupation, many many American males ? still seeing everything through their win-or-lose masculinity, and never considering whether the US should cross oceans to dominate other countries that present no threat to the US ? were talking about ?winning? the war. By then, around 3 million Southeast Asians (majority civilian, as if we can delegitimate people who fight foreign invasions) had been killed, with displacement as well as disability and trauma affecting millions more. The question that was raised by these pesky numbers was, ?How many do we have to kill befor we win?? Four million? Ten million? Oh? and the mantra to the very end was that neighboring countries were responsible for the US inability to militarily subject a nation to US domination. Been here, done this. Before Kevin was born. I?m 57, Kevin. I was in the Army most of the time from January 1970 until February 1996. I?ve got a PhD in hearing bullshit stories from the government and its pet ?journalists.? After the war was decisively lost in Vietnam, American masculinity became petulant and bitter. Movies like Dirty Harry and Death Wish became the popular outlet for a national male imaginary with which to redeem that dominator-masculinity. Rambo? a pseudo-tragic figure of frustrated masculinity that was stopped by those ?pussy? politicians from winning his war? and who now persecuted him. So the [fictional] ex-occupier became a victim to stand in for the shattered martial masculinity of a nation?s males? males under assault by rebellious colonies and rebellious women (as feminism gained footholds). The quietude of the older, unquestioned, seemingly axiomatic masculinty passed into male sexual panic, salved by mouthiness, the need to humiliate others, braggadocio, macho-image-management, a more overt and aggressive hatred of all things ?feminine.? At bottom, it was ? and is ? a socially-perilous fear with roots in the fragile dominator-male psyche. What can a man be without enemies? 30 October 2008, 5:29 am This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 4 07:23:00 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:23:00 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Germans return to Marx Message-ID: <49101476.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> [A-List] Germans return to Marx -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: "A List" Subject: [A-List] Germans return to Marx From: "Paul Wright" Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 12:34:24 -0500 Thread-index: Ack9ET+Z+RlZenMFT7G4DJbOWMqzvQ== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Global crisis sends east Germans flocking to Marx By Erik Kirschbaum1 hour, 32 minutes ago Two decades after the Berlin Wall fell, communism's founding father Karl Marx is back in vogue in eastern Germany -- thanks to the global financial crisis. His 1867 critical analysis of capitalism, "Das Kapital," has risen from the publishing graveyard to become an improbable best-seller for academic publisher Karl-Dietz-Verlag. "Everyone thought there would never ever again be any demand for 'Das Kapital'," managing director Joern Schuetrumpf told Reuters after selling 1,500 copies so far this year, triple the number sold in all of 2007 and a 100-fold increase since 1990. "Even bankers and managers are now reading 'Das Kapital' to try to understand what they've been doing to us. Marx is definitely 'in' right now," Schuetrumpf said. The revival of Marx's treatise reflects a broader rejection of capitalism by many in eastern Germany, a communist country until 1989 and now racked by high unemployment and poverty. A month of intense financial turmoil has toppled banks in the United States and forced a series of government bailouts in Germany and elsewhere, reinforcing anti-capitalist sentiment. Chancellor Angela Merkel -- herself an easterner -- unveiled a 500 billion euro financial rescue package this week, a move decried as a reward for irresponsible bankers. A recent survey found 52 percent of eastern Germans believe the free market economy is "unsuitable" and 43 percent said they wanted socialism rather than capitalism, findings confirmed in interviews with dozens of ordinary easterners. "We read about the 'horrors of capitalism' in school. They really got that right. Karl Marx was spot on," said Thomas Pivitt, a 46-year-old IT worker from east Berlin. "I had a pretty good life before the Wall fell," he added. "No one worried about money because money didn't really matter. You had a job even if you didn't want one. The communist idea wasn't all that bad." CAPITALISM EVEN WORSE Unemployment in the former communist east is 14 percent, double western levels, and wages are significantly lower. Millions of jobs were lost after reunification. Many eastern factories were bought by western competitors and shut down. "I thought communism was s but capitalism is even worse," said Hermann Haibel, a 76-year old retired blacksmith, who was strolling near Alexanderplatz in the heart of old East Berlin. "The free market is brutal. The capitalist wants to squeeze out more, more, more," he said. Free market hopes were high in the east when Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised "flourishing landscapes." But while some areas on the outskirts of Berlin, in Leipzig and along the Baltic shore are thriving, much of the rest suffers from depopulation and high unemployment. The opposition Left party, which traces its roots to Erich Honecker's SED party, has capitalized on the frustration and become the east's most popular party with support of 30 percent. "I don't think capitalism is the right system for us," said Monika Weber, a 46-year-old city clerk. "The distribution of wealth is unfair. We're seeing that now. The little people like me are going to have to pay for this financial mess with higher taxes because of greedy bankers." Like many other east Germans, Ralf Wulff said he was delighted about the fall of the Berlin Wall and to see capitalism replace communism. But the euphoria was ephemeral. "It took just a few weeks to realize what the free market economy was all about," said Wulff. "It's rampant materialism and exploitation. Human beings get lost. We didn't have the material comforts but communism still had a lot going for it." But not everyone condemned capitalism. Astrid Gerber was a master tailor in East Berlin before her company was shut down. "It was my dream job," said Gerber, 42. She was unemployed for seven years, then opened up a newsstand but gave it up after her family disintegrated due to her 90-hour work week. "Capitalism has its advantages but so does communism," she said. "I can't say one is better than the other." Paul Wright, Editor Prison Legal News P.O. Box 2420 West Brattleboro, VT 05303 802-257-1342 pwright at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.prisonlegalnews.org Seattle Office: Prison Legal News 2400 NW 80th St. # 148 Seattle, WA 98117 206-246-1022 This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 4 08:02:51 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:02:51 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Organizer Newspaper Message-ID: <49101DCB.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> The Organizer Newspaper P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140. Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217. email: The Organizer at earthlink.net New web site: www.socialistorganizer.org ------------------------------------------------ [LAST MINUTE: Join Cindy Sheehan and special guest Cynthia McKinney tonight, Nov. 4, at Cindy's headquarters in San Francisco (Mission St. & 9th St.) to celebrate Cindy's and Cynthia's campaigns and to prepare for big battles ahead in defense of peace, jobs and justice!] THE ORGANIZER NEWSPAPER RECOMMENDATIONS President & Vice President: Cynthia McKinney & Rosa Clemente (Power to the People!) U.S. Congress (8th District): Cindy Sheehan (a genuine independent in Congress!) California State: 1A - YES - Rail - We need it 2 - YES - Farm animals - health and compassion 3 - NO - Children's hospital flawed bond measure 4 - NO!!!! Anti-choice parental notification 5 - YES - Criminal justice - expands treatment and rights to non-violent drug users 6 - NO!!!! - Criminal injustice - more money to cops and prisons, expands adult prosecution of youth, etc. 7 - NO - Flawed alternative energy proposal 8 - NO!!!! Takes away right to marry for same-sex couples 9 - NO!!!! - Criminal injustice - reduces rights to parole, bail, etc. 10 - NO - Alternative vehicles, flawed bond measure 11 - NO - Redistricting board - board itself isn't bad idea, but it writes two-party system into the law by giving specific seats on the proposed board to Dems, Reps, and third-party/independents (with more to the Republicrats), thus assuming present parties should be recognized as if they were permanent 12 - Lean to YES, if we don't oppose bond measures on principle (veterans housing bonds). Some argue vets shouldn't be privileged over others. Cindy Sheehan says yes on 12. ********* San Francisco: A - YES, if we don't take an absolute position opposing bond measures - SF General Hosptial B - YES - encourages affordable housing C - Undecided D - Leaning to YES (Pier 70 development not opposed by progressives) E - Leaning to NO despite general liberal support because it doesn't seem necessary and may make it slightly harder to recall city officials (changes SF law to match state law on recall petitions) F - Leaning to YES because potential increased voter turnout (even-year elections only) G - YES - expands city retiree benefits to credit unpaid familiy leave as time served H - No - Evaluate electric municipalization. Every leftist and progressive says YES, but it's problem that it takes away the right of voters to vote on bonds related to municipalization. I - Yes - create ratepayer advocate office, why not? J - Yes - create historic preservation commission, why not? K - Decriminalizing prostitution. The left seems divided on this one. We think YES. We can still prosecute human trafficking, violence, and exploitation against sex workers without making their work illegal, and they can more easily come forward to report such matters. Cindy Sheehan agrees. L - NO - funds an already funded and questionable justice center M - YES!!! - tenant protection against landlord harassment N - YES - real estate transfer tax - further taxes the rich while giving breaks to those who make solar and seismic improvements O - No position - changes taxes related to telephone service to match current law elsewhere. These regressive taxes should be abolished altogether, but this doesn't change the tax amount either way. Q - Leaning to YES - payroll taxes - both expands to some businesses and exempts others R - YES - names sewage treatment plant after Bush. Silly, but why not have some fun? S - Leaning to YES - budget set-asides must have designated funding source. Sounds like valid fiscal responsibility to us. T - YES - expands substance-abuse treatment U - YES!! - another statement against Iraq war V - NO!!!! - city support for JROTC This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 5 07:15:52 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:15:52 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] We just made history. Message-ID: <49116449.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Charles -- I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first. We just made history. And I don't want you to forget how we did it. You made history every single day during this campaign -- every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it's time for change. I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign. We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next. But I want to be very clear about one thing... All of this happened because of you. Thank you, Barack This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 5 10:59:15 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:59:15 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Caucasians Message-ID: <491198A4.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> CeJ jannuzi CB>>Caucasian (smile). Stalin was a Real Caucasian. ( Caucasian is left over from 1800's racist "anthro".)<< So are 'negro' and 'mongoloid'. Stalin was a Georgian--a real peach according to some! There is no solid biological basis for the race labels of then or now, for that matter. ^^^^ CB: Correct. Race is not a valid _biological_category. It is a valid historical category. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loring_Brace http://archaeology.about.com/cs/quotes/qt/quote73.htm C. Loring Brace et al on the Chimerical Concept of Race Archaeology Quotations By K. Kris Hirst, About.com Filed In:Archaeologists > Quotations> Archaeologist QuotesThe old fashioned chimerical concept of "race" is hopelessly inadequate to deal with the human biological reality of Egypt, ancient or modern. But neither the use of clines nor clusters alone can present a complete account. An assessment of both is necessary before we can understand the biological nature of the people of the Nile valley. Because the ancient Egyptians lived with this knowledge of themselves, they "did not think in terms of race" (Yurco 1989:24). For our own part, we should recognize how "presumptuous" it is "to assign our own primitive racial labels" (Yurco 1989:58) to them or to anyone else. These not only prevent us from dealing with human biological variation in an adequate fashion; but they also lend themselves to the perpetuation of social injustice. The "race" concept did not exist in Egypt, and it is not mentioned in Herodotus, the Bible, or any of the other writings of classical antiquity. Since it has neither biological nor social justification, we should strive to see that is it eliminated from both public and private usage. Its absence will be missed by no one, and we shall all be better off without it. R.I.P. C. Loring Brace, David P. Tracer, Lucia Allen Yaroch, John Robb, Kari Brandt and A. Russell Nelson. 1993. Clines and clusters versus ^^^ The genetic differences that cause this or that person to be perceived as belonging to a race are less significant than the genetic differences you find in a given population that is identified as belonging to one race. However, since when does using straight biology ever overcome the social and cultural--and legalistic-- baggage? Especially in a culture where the mere accusation (if by someone influential enough in a community that saw itself as majority white) of 1% 'black' meant black. And passing as white meant no one saw you as (or successfully accused you of being) black. BTW, I wouldn't expect the numbnuts on LBO Talk know anything about the Appalachian peoples they are making judgements about (excluding Thomas Seay). CJ This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 5 12:03:01 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:03:01 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] map Message-ID: <4911A796.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 5 12:50:22 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:50:22 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Reflections by comrade Fidel Message-ID: <4911B2AF.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Reflections by comrade Fidel THE NOVEMBER 4TH ELECTIONS Tomorrow will be a significant day. The world public will be following the United States elections there. It is the most powerful nation on Earth. Actually, with less than 5% of the world population it swallows every year great amounts of oil and gas, minerals, raw materials, consumer goods and sophisticated products brought from overseas. Many of these, particularly the fuels and those extracted from mines, are non renewable. It is the largest arms producer and exporter. Its industrial military complex also has an insatiable domestic market. Its naval and air forces are deployed in scores of military basis located in the territory of other nations. The United States strategic warhead-carrying missiles can reach any place in the world with absolute precision. A great number of the cleverest minds in the world are uprooted from their original countries and placed at the service of the system. It is a parasitical and plundering empire. It is a known fact that the black population introduced in the US territory throughout centuries of slavery is the victim of a marked racial discrimination. The Democratic candidate Obama is partly black; the dark skin and features of that race are predominant in him. He was able to study at a higher education center where he graduated with outstanding results. He is surely more clever, better educated and calm than his Republican adversary. I?m analyzing tomorrow?s elections when the world is enduring a serious financial crisis ?the worst since the 1930s? among many others which have seriously affected the economy of many nations in the course of over three fourths of a century. The international media, the political analysts and commentators are using part of their time to discuss the issue. Obama is considered the best political speaker of the United States in the past decades. His compatriot Toni Morrison, a 1993 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, and the first one from her ethnic group born in the United States who has been awarded such prize --an excellent author-- has called him the future President and poet of that nation. I have been watching the struggle between the contenders. The black candidate caused much amazement with his nomination in the face of strong adversaries. He has well articulated ideas which he hammers once and again into the voters? minds. He does not hesitate to claim that more than Republicans or Democrats they are all Americans, the citizens he qualifies as the most productive in the world. He says he will reduce taxes for the middle class, where he includes practically everybody, while he will completely remove them for the poorest and raise them for the wealthiest. The revenues, he claims, will not the used to bailout banks. He insists repeatedly that the ruinous spending on Bush?s war in Iraq will not be paid by the American taxpayers. He will put an end to it and bring the US troops back home. Perhaps he is mindful of the fact that that country had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. However, the blood has been shed of thousands of US troops, injured or killed in battle, and the lives taken of over a million people in that Muslim nation. It was a war of conquest imposed by the empire seeking for oil. In light of the current financial crisis and its consequences, the American people are more concerned over the economy than the war in Iraq. They are anguishing over their jobs, the safety of their bank deposits and their retirement funds, and the fear of loosing the purchasing power of their money and the houses where they live with their families. They wish to have the certainty that whatever the circumstances they will receive adequate medical care and that their children will accede to higher education. Obama is challenging and I think he has taken and will still take great risks in a country where any extremist can legally purchase a sophisticated modern weapon anywhere, as it was the case in the first half of the 18th century in the west of the United States. He supports his system and he will be get support from it. The pressing problems of the world are not really a major source of concern to Obama, much less to the candidate who as a war pilot dropped tens of tons of bombs on Hanoi City, that is, more than 9,375 miles away from Washington, ad this with no remorse. When last Thursday I addressed a letter to Lula, in addition to what I already mentioned in my Reflections of October 31, I literally wrote: ?Racism and discrimination have been present in the American society ever since its birth, over two centuries ago. Latin Americans and blacks have always been discriminated against there. Its citizens have been brought up under consumerism. Humanity is objectively threatened by its mass extermination weapons.? ?The American people are more concerned over the economy that the Iraq war. McCain is an old, bellicose and uneducated man; he is not very smart and he is in poor health.? Finally, I said: ?If my estimates were wrong and racism prevailed: if the Republican candidate won the Presidency, the danger of a war would increase and the peoples? opportunities to progress would be reduced. Nevertheless, we need to fight and to build awareness about this, whoever it is who wins this election.? When these views that I sustain are published tomorrow, nobody will have time to say that I wrote something that could be used by any candidate to advance his campaign. I had to be, and I have been, neutral in this electoral competition. It is not ?interference in the internal affairs of the United States?, as the State Department would put it, as respectful as it is of other countries? sovereignty. Fidel Castro Ruz November 3, 2008 4:10 p.m. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 5 14:46:13 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:46:13 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The ruling class in the United States of America istheentire capitalist class! Message-ID: <4911CDD6.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Les Schaffer speaking of Warren Buffet ... i was in Border's Bookstore last night with an old friend, looking thru the Math and Science sections, finding nothing but Physics for Dummies, Quantum Mechanics Demystified, and so forth. directly behind this row of books was the economics and finance section. i was amazed how many serious, math-based books there were on hedge funds, derivatives, and all that stuff. plus, an entire row on Buffet that rivaled the omnipresent Einstein row over in physics land. Les ^^^^^ CB: On that old epistemological principle that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, Buffet has proved his finance and economics theories pretty well. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 5 14:52:49 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:52:49 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Capital I word cloud Message-ID: <4911CF63.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/manolakos291008.html This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 5 14:58:57 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:58:57 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxist analysis of vote Message-ID: <4911D0D2.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> [Marxism] Why I will vote for Obama Mike Friedman mikedf at amnh.org Tue Nov 4 14:23:40 MST 2008 Previous message: [Marxism] Blog post: "If You Don't Vote, You Can Complain" Next message: [Marxism] Why I will vote for Obama Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why I will vote for Obama I haven?t voted, yet, but when I do, in a short while, it will be for Barack Obama. I?ve read, re-read and re-re-read the recent articles by Matt Gonzalez and Chris Hedges and the open letter to Obama by Ralph Nader. I?m currently reading the Selfa book on the Democrats. They are all on target as far as their analyses of Obama and the current spate of Democrats are concerned. I?d never imagined that I would even consider the option All of these writers, however, have erected a straw man, at least as far as my decision goes. Matt Gonzalez asks: ?At what point will there be intellectual honesty about what is happening? People are voting for Obama because they find him to be an engaging public speaker and like his message, regardless of his history of being a part of the very problem he professes to want to fix. Most people don?t want the actual facts to interfere with the desperate hope that he is everything they want him to be.? Matt could well have been answering Hazel Dukes, the head of the NYC NAACP, who this morning ingenuously or disingenuously announced on WBAI that Obama will provide a humane policy for undocumented immigrants and a path to citizenship. But, he wasn?t on my wavelength. I will vote for Obama for one reason. I believe Joaquin called it "sticking it to the racists." I find that I agree with the main thrust of what Fred, Joaquin and others have been saying. Racism is THE roadblock to the emergence of a working class political consciousness and politique in the U.S. Transcending the question of the class program of the candidates at this moment, is the concrete significance of this election as the opportunity to deliver an historical blow to racism in this country. I have heard no convincing arguments to the contrary. For me, that simple fact alone justifies choosing Obama, all else being equal. However, that simple fact also opens up the possibility of much more, in spite of Obama and his program. As many of us have repeated ad nauseum, both for and against voting for Obama, *as far as policy is concerned*, it really doesn?t matter which of the major candidates is elected. There are many who do indulge in this fantasy, as Matt Gonzalez pointed out. However, the only force capable of imposing the type of social and economic program we see as essential is a broad social movement, based on all of the oppressed and exploited. Even the types of piecemeal reform that would at least ameliorate life for millions of people will not appear on the horizon without movement. Of course, a Nader-Gonzalez, or a McKinney-Clemente electoral victory *would* make a difference, because that would be a direct manifestation of such social movement. But, at that point... In that sense, the bourgeois elections are almost irrelevant. Not totally, because we?ve always seen them as an adjunct to movement building. It seems that some of us, in a strange way, have our own illusions in bourgeois electoralism. Mark Lause wrote, "the ballot is a mandate to rule from the governed to the governing. As I tell my liberal friends, regardless of what progressive notions you have in your mind or your heart when you cast your ballot, it is objectively vote of confidence in his agenda. That's how it's going to be seen and understood socially, and the rest is a matter between you and the Holy Ghost." This is wrong. The part about a "vote of confidence in his agenda" is a meaningless abstraction. While it is true that I've heard Democrats and Republicans say, "well you voted for him..." But, it hardly puts a geas on the "governed" to abide the "governing's" program and decisions. To refrain from organizing and mobilizing against the war in Iraq, global warming, attacks on immigrants, etc. Moreover, how much does such a "mandate" matter, when the Democrats so blithely ignore it whenever they choose? The current Democratic Congress had a "mandate" to end the occupation of Iraq. What happened to that? And now, the fact of an African American presidential candidacy, itself, becomes an adjunct to movement building. And the election of such a candidate *could* be a further adjunct, not depending on his actions, but, broadly, ours. As always, there will be a tug of war: Obama the Democrat trying to use his political capital to further an imperialist agenda; we trying to use the momentum of popular aspirations to broaden and deepen opposition to that agenda. Nothing is set in stone. But, the aspirations that have been awakened, the level of political discussion, the participation, even within the circumscribed scope of U.S. electoral politics: at the risk of hyperbole, the mass political gestalt is almost poised to flow over the dam. Disillusionment with Obama?s performance (or a miraculous change in Obama?s orientation) could tip the balance. Will it be channeled by right-wing populism or by the social transformative agenda of the majority? This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From jannuzi at gmail.com Wed Nov 5 19:48:45 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 11:48:45 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Caucasians Message-ID: >>Correct. Race is not a valid _biological_category. It is a valid historical category.<< Which shows that history is a delusion? Looking at that mail from BO, it seems possible. Guy thinks 'we' (I guess that is the same as McCain's 'my friends') just made history and he hasn't even become president yet. Which brings us back to that observation that history is not made my 'great men'. CJ From jannuzi at gmail.com Wed Nov 5 23:33:12 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 15:33:12 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Something or other analysis of something or other Message-ID: Friedman was quoted as saying, in part >>Racism is THE roadblock to the emergence of a working class political consciousness and politique in the U.S. Transcending the question of the class program of the candidates at this moment, is the concrete significance of this election as the opportunity to deliver an historical blow to racism in this country. I have heard no convincing arguments to the contrary. For me, that simple fact alone justifies choosing Obama, all else being equal. However, that simple fact also opens up the possibility of much more, in spite of Obama and his program.<< Yeah, right, it's all going to fall in place now that we have stuck it to the racists. Can't wait to see the possibility of me saying in two years time, told you so. BTW, my prediction of the popular vote was spot on for the winner (52%), a bit too high for the loser. CJ From Waistline2 at aol.com Thu Nov 6 06:53:00 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 08:53:00 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Caucasians Message-ID: >>Correct. Race is not a valid _biological_category. It is a valid historical category.<< Which shows that history is a delusion? Looking at that mail from BO, it seems possible. Guy thinks 'we' (I guess that is the same as McCain's 'my friends') just made history and he hasn't even become president yet. Which brings us back to that observation that history is not made my 'great men'. CJ << Comment Race is purely political. Consider the following article. "At the center of these old ideas is the political concept of race and how to deal with it. The question of race was the central issue in preventing the American people from achieving their goals in the Revolutionary War. Those goals, enshrined in our documents of the Revolution, were unattainable for the mass of white toilers while a quarter of the working class was in chains. The question of race was central to frustrating the popular aims of the Civil War. Before abandoning the goal of breaking the political back of the planters, the American people first had to abandon the vision, ?And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.? Playing the race card did this. The question of race was also the central issue that prevented the breakout of the union movement in the 1930?s and 40?s. There was no way to advance and secure the unions without organizing the South. The unions could not or would not take this step. The alternative was to create the conditions for the trade unions to become something akin to a labor front and an appendage of the State Department. Revolutionaries and people of good will fought every step of the way, but the lack of understanding of the political rather than biological nature of the race question led to their defeat. As we enter this new epoch of transformation, the race question again presents itself as a changing but central question. This time we dare not fail. Racism in America has been directed against the Irish, the Native Americans, the Latin Americans, and the Asians, among others. Most of all it has centered on the African Americans, because it is a political question. Politics, it has been written, is the art of the class struggle. Nothing could be more artful than to use a myth to convince literally millions of people to do harm to themselves in the interests of the people they are struggling against. Yet this is precisely what has happened in our history. It happened because the American people became convinced that they were dealing with a biological rather than a political question. We emphasize this point because the great economic and political changes taking place are having a profound effect on the politics of race and color. First, let us look at the African-American community. One of the ideological hangovers from the period of segregation is the tendency to see the African Americans as a category rather than a scattered grouping of some 40 million individuals who have different histories, ideals, and goals and who belong to various economic classes. Today there is no such thing as the African-American ?people.? This characterization was correct years ago when the pressure of segregation isolated the African Americans from the rest of society. This isolation allowed for the creation of a common culture, internal class stratification, and a common political agenda full: _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed4art2.html_ (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed4art2.html) **************AOL Search: Your one stop for directions, recipes and all other Holiday needs. Search Now. (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212792382x1200798498/aol?redir=http://searchblog.aol.com/2008/11/04/happy-holidays-from -aol-search/?ncid=emlcntussear00000001) From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Thu Nov 6 06:53:26 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:53:26 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Something or other analysis of something or other In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: That so-called Marxist analysis is complete horseshit, and who cares what Fidel has to say about the election? I have some definite thoughts on the election of Obama, but I've not yet been able to bring myself to write them down. My reaction is, to boil it down to bullet points: (1) I can't believe we have a black president! (2) the ensuing media blitz, on the part of most Democrats and Republicans, is ideological fog, deception and delusion; (3) the essence of the media reaction is: "I can't believe we have a black president!"; (4) one of the biggest lies is: this is a new era for race relations, and King's dream has become a reality; (5) there are a few voices of doubt, and signs that the honeymoon will soon be over, as Obama picks his staff and plots a course; (6) the message of unity and bliss is a media fraud, because 48% of those who voted (and we still don't know how far the Republican drive to rig the election actually progressed) voted for McCain, and the cracker states remain resolutely cracker, and they won't change. (7) the delusional reaction affects all social classes, esp. blacks of all social classes, but the most obnoxious manifestation of it is among the liberal upper middle class, black and white; (8) the racial symbolism, perpetrated by Republicans as well as Democrats, is a cover-up, and the realities of social class and the class structure are completely obscured thereby; (9) this election is an exemplar of what Adorno meant by the culture industry; (10) the gap between appearance and reality means we are still all doomed; (11) the reaction of black talking heads is as disgusting as those of the whites; and the underlying cause is: (12) Obama's victory is really a victory for upward mobility. At 01:33 AM 11/6/2008, CeJ wrote: >Friedman was quoted as saying, in part > > >>Racism is THE roadblock to the emergence of a >working class political consciousness and politique in the U.S. >Transcending the question of the class program of the candidates at >this moment, is the concrete significance of this election as the >opportunity to deliver >an historical blow to racism in this country. I have heard no >convincing arguments to the contrary. For me, that simple fact alone >justifies choosing Obama, all else being equal. However, that simple >fact also opens up the possibility of much more, in spite of Obama and >his program.<< > >Yeah, right, it's all going to fall in place now that we have stuck it >to the racists. Can't wait to see the possibility of me saying in two >years time, told you so. > >BTW, my prediction of the popular vote was spot on for the winner >(52%), a bit too high for the loser. > >CJ From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Thu Nov 6 07:10:01 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:10:01 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Caucasians In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The diffuse nature of what is termed the "black community" could not be more evident. Class differentiation is the most conspicuous factor, and generational differences, but also conspicuously geographical factors: region, and urban vs. suburban and small town and rural, not to mention the disintegrating factors of the society in general and the devastation of inner cities. This also affects the Obama phenomenon, despite the seeming uniformity of black elation. Even before Obama, my experience of the black middle class and even upper middle class in the Washington area revealed the delusional structure of middle class liberals, which itself requires some differentiation, e.g. geographic, and very liberal to conservative. (And conservativism, in the backward South especially, is not at all at odds with racial pride.) Just to give one example, I had a conversation with an upper middle class black woman the day of the election, and she was not only an Obama believer, but she maintained that Obama should bring Republicans into his administration, because no one party should control everything. At this point I lost my temper. At 08:53 AM 11/6/2008, Waistline2 at aol.com wrote: > >>Correct. Race is not a valid > _biological_category. It is a valid historical > category.<< Which shows that history is > a delusion? Looking at that mail from BO, it > seems possible. Guy thinks 'we' (I guess that > is the same as McCain's 'my friends') just made > history and he hasn't even become president > yet. Which brings us back to that > observation that history is not made my 'great > men'. CJ << Comment Race is purely political. > Consider the following article. "At the > center of these old ideas is the political > concept of race and how to deal with it. The > question of race was the central issue in > preventing the American people from achieving > their goals in the Revolutionary War. > Those goals, enshrined in our documents of the > Revolution, were unattainable for the mass of > white toilers while a quarter of the working > class was in chains. The question of race was > central to frustrating the popular aims of the > Civil War. Before abandoning the goal of > breaking the political back of the planters, > the American people first had to abandon the > vision, ???And crown thy good with brotherhood > from sea to shining sea.??? Playing the race > card did this. The question of race was also > the central issue that prevented the > breakout of the union movement in the 1930???s > and 40???s. There was no way to advance and > secure the unions without organizing the South. > The unions could not or would not take this > step. The alternative was to create the > conditions for the trade unions to become > something akin to a labor front and an > appendage of the State Department. > Revolutionaries and people of good will fought > every step of the way, but the lack of > understanding of the political rather than > biological nature of the race question led to > their defeat. As we enter this new epoch of > transformation, the race question > again presents itself as a changing but > central question. This time we dare not fail. > Racism in America has been directed against > the Irish, the Native Americans, the Latin > Americans, and the Asians, among others. Most > of all it has centered on the African > Americans, because it is a political question. > Politics, it has been written, is the art of > the class struggle. Nothing could be > more artful than to use a myth to convince > literally millions of people to do harm > to themselves in the interests of the people > they are struggling against. Yet this is > precisely what has happened in our history. It > happened because the American people became > convinced that they were dealing with a > biological rather than a political question. > We emphasize this point because the great > economic and political changes taking place > are having a profound effect on the politics > of race and color. First, let us look at the > African-American community. One of > the ideological hangovers from the period of > segregation is the tendency to see the African > Americans as a category rather than a scattered > grouping of some 40 million individuals who > have different histories, ideals, and goals and > who belong to various economic classes. Today > there is no such thing as the African-American > ???people.??? This characterization was correct > years ago when the pressure of segregation > isolated the African Americans from the rest of > society. This isolation allowed for the > creation of a common culture, internal > class stratification, and a common political > agenda full: > _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed4art2.html_ > (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed4art2.html) From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 6 07:15:17 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:15:17 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Caucasians In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4912B5A4.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> >>> Ralph Dumain 11/06/2008 9:10 AM >>> The diffuse nature of what is termed the "black community" could not be more evident. Class differentiation is the most conspicuous factor, and generational differences, but also conspicuously geographical factors: region, and urban vs. suburban and small town and rural, not to mention the disintegrating factors of the society in general and the devastation of inner cities. This also affects the Obama phenomenon, despite the seeming uniformity of black elation. Even before Obama, my experience of the black middle class and even upper middle class in the Washington area revealed the delusional structure of middle class liberals, which itself requires some differentiation, e.g. geographic, and very liberal to conservative. (And conservativism, in the backward South especially, is not at all at odds with racial pride.) Just to give one example, I had a conversation with an upper middle class black woman the day of the election, and she was not only an Obama believer, but she maintained that Obama should bring Republicans into his administration, because no one party should control everything. At this point I lost my temper. ^^^^^^ CB: Yes. One party system can work well, as in Cuba and China, today. At 08:53 AM 11/6/2008, Waistline2 at aol.com wrote: > >>Correct. Race is not a valid > _biological_category. It is a valid historical > category.<< Which shows that history is > a delusion? Looking at that mail from BO, it > seems possible. Guy thinks 'we' (I guess that > is the same as McCain's 'my friends') just made > history and he hasn't even become president > yet. Which brings us back to that > observation that history is not made my 'great > men'. CJ << Comment Race is purely political. > Consider the following article. "At the > center of these old ideas is the political > concept of race and how to deal with it. The > question of race was the central issue in > preventing the American people from achieving > their goals in the Revolutionary War. > Those goals, enshrined in our documents of the > Revolution, were unattainable for the mass of > white toilers while a quarter of the working > class was in chains. The question of race was > central to frustrating the popular aims of the > Civil War. Before abandoning the goal of > breaking the political back of the planters, > the American people first had to abandon the > vision, ???And crown thy good with brotherhood > from sea to shining sea.?? Playing the race > card did this. The question of race was also > the central issue that prevented the > breakout of the union movement in the 1930???s > and 40???s. There was no way to advance and > secure the unions without organizing the South. > The unions could not or would not take this > step. The alternative was to create the > conditions for the trade unions to become > something akin to a labor front and an > appendage of the State Department. > Revolutionaries and people of good will fought > every step of the way, but the lack of > understanding of the political rather than > biological nature of the race question led to > their defeat. As we enter this new epoch of > transformation, the race question > again presents itself as a changing but > central question. This time we dare not fail. > Racism in America has been directed against > the Irish, the Native Americans, the Latin > Americans, and the Asians, among others. Most > of all it has centered on the African > Americans, because it is a political question. > Politics, it has been written, is the art of > the class struggle. Nothing could be > more artful than to use a myth to convince > literally millions of people to do harm > to themselves in the interests of the people > they are struggling against. Yet this is > precisely what has happened in our history. It > happened because the American people became > convinced that they were dealing with a > biological rather than a political question. > We emphasize this point because the great > economic and political changes taking place > are having a profound effect on the politics > of race and color. First, let us look at the > African-American community. One of > the ideological hangovers from the period of > segregation is the tendency to see the African > Americans as a category rather than a scattered > grouping of some 40 million individuals who > have different histories, ideals, and goals and > who belong to various economic classes. Today > there is no such thing as the African-American > ???people.?? This characterization was correct > years ago when the pressure of segregation > isolated the African Americans from the rest of > society. This isolation allowed for the > creation of a common culture, internal > class stratification, and a common political > agenda full: > _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed4art2.html_ > (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed4art2.html) _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 6 07:26:43 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:26:43 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Caucasians In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4912B852.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Which shows that history is a delusion? Looking at that mail from BO, it seems possible. Guy thinks 'we' (I guess that is the same as McCain's 'my friends') just made history and he hasn't even become president yet. Which brings us back to that observation that history is not made my 'great men'. CJ << ^^^ CB: That's right. The history was made by the masses, I mean _the_ masses as in We, The People, who voted for a Black President. So, many Whites voting for a Black person for President in the US is arch-historical. You are like Rip Van Winkle sleeping through the Rev. Wake Up, comrade. Rip Van Winkle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_Van_Winkle . Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle, 1869."Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."[1] Contents [hide] 1 Plot summary 2 Characters 3 Literary origins 4 Adaptations 5 Allusions 6 Dictionary Allusions 7 See also 8 References 9 External links 9.1 Sources 9.2 Other [edit] Plot summary The young Rip Van Winkle has another drink.The story of Rip Van Winkle is based on a true story and is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle, a villager of Dutch descent, lives in a nice village at the foot of New York's Kaatskill Mountains. An amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all but his wife. One autumn day he escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the mountains. After encountering strangely dressed men, rumored to be the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew, who are playing nine-pins, and after drinking some of their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes up twenty years later and returns to his village. He finds out that his wife is dead and his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he hails himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has taken place. An old local recognizes him, however, and Rip's now grown daughter eventually puts him up. It is based on a true story. As Rip resumes his habit of idleness in the village, and his tale is solemnly believed by the old Dutch settlers, certain hen-pecked husbands especially wish they shared Rip's luck.Troi oi!!! [edit] Characters Rip Van Winkle - a henpecked husband who loathes 'profitable labor'. Dame Van Winkle - Rip Van Winkle's cantankerous wife. Rip - Rip Van Winkle's son. Judith Gardenier - Rip Van Winkle's daughter. Derrick Van Bummel - the local schoolmaster and later a member of Congress. Nicholas Vedder - landlord of the local inn. Mr. Doolittle - a hotel owner. Wolf -Rip's faithful and equally lazy dog [edit] Literary origins Statue of Rip van Winkle in Irvington, New York, not far from "Sunnyside", the home of Washington Irving.The story is a close adaptation of Peter Klaus the Goatherd by J.C.C. Nachtigal, which is a shorter story set in a German village. The story is also similar to the ancient Jewish story about Honi M'agel who falls asleep after asking a man why he is planting a carob tree which traditionally takes 70 years to mature, making it virtually impossible to ever benefit from the tree's fruit. After this exchange, he falls asleep on the ground and is miraculously covered by a rock and remains out of sight for 70 years. When he awakens, he finds a fully mature tree and that he has a grandson. When nobody believes that he is Honi, he prays to God and God takes him from this world. Note also that the family name of Honi is also a term of geometry ('M'agel' is Hebrew for 'circle maker'), as well as the family name of Rip ('Winkel' is German for 'angle'). The story is also similar to a 3rd century AD Chinese tale of Ranka, as retold in Lionel Giles in A Gallery of Chinese Immortals. In Orkney there is a similar and ancient folklore tale linked to the Burial mound of Salt Knowe adjacent to the Ring of Brodgar. A drunken fiddler on his way home hears music from the mound. He finds a way in and finds the trowes (Trolls) having a party. He stays and plays for two hours, then makes his way home to Stenness, where he discovers fifty years have passed. The Orkney Rangers believe this may be one source for Washington Irving's tale, because his father was an Orcadian from the island of Shapinsay, and would almost certainly have often told his son the tale. And in Ireland there is the story of Niamh and Oisin, which deals with a similar theme. Oisin falls in love with the beautiful Niamh and leaves with her on her snow white horse to Tir Na nOg - the land of the every young. Missing his family and friends he asks to pay them a visit. Niamh lends him her horse warning him never to dismount and he travels back to Ireland. But three hundred years have past. His family and fellow warriors are all dead. Some men are trying to move a boulder. Oisin reaches down to help them. The girth of the horse's saddle snaps and he falls to the ground. Before the watching eyes of the men he becomes a very very old man. Another story was by Diogenes Laertius, an Epicurean philosopher circa early half third century, in his book On the Lives, Opinions, and Sayings of Famous Philosophers. The story is in Chapter ten in his section on the Seven Sages, who were the precursors to the first philosophers. The sage was Epimenides. Apparently Epimenides went to sleep in a cave for fifty-seven years. But unfortunately, "he became old in as many days as he had slept years." Although according to the different sources that Diogenes relates, Epimenides lived to be one hundred and fifty-seven years, two hundred and ninety-nine years, or one hundred and fifty-four years.[2] A similar story is told of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Christian saints who fall asleep in a cave while avoiding Roman persecution, and awake more than a century later to find that Christianity has become the religion of the Empire. [edit] Adaptations The story has been adapted for other media for the last two centuries, from stage plays to an operetta to cartoons to films. Actor Joseph Jefferson was most associated with the character on the 19th century stage and made a series of short films in 1896 recreating scenes from his stage adaptation, and which are collectively in the US National Film Registry. Jefferson's son Thomas followed in his father's footsteps and also played the character in a number of early 20th century films. The story was also loosely adapted for the show "Twilight Zone" in the 1961 episode "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" starring Oscar Beregi. The story also is related to the theme of the Abraham Lincoln quote "I can never tell a lie." The book series Mickey's Young Readers Library featured a version titled Donald's Dream. In this adaptation, Donald constantly procrastinates on completing the chores he has promised to do for his friends (i.e. fixing Scrooge's alarm and Daisy's roof), then has a bad dream where he is shown the consequences of not doing said chores, which prompts into doing the work as promised. A Garfield Sunday strip had Garfield dreaming of himself as Rip Van Garfield, waking up from a 50-year catnap and seeing how much has (and hasn't) changed. This strip was later adaptated into an episode of Garfield and Friends. [edit] Allusions In 1963 Rip Van Winkle played Wide Receiver for the Nittany Lions under head coach Rip Engle. David Bromberg's song "Kaatskill Serenade" tells the story of Rip Van Winkle from the first-person perspective.[3] The chorus is: Where are the men that I used to sport with? What has become of my beautiful town? Wolf, my old friend, you don't even know me. This must be the end; my house has tumbled down. Lionel Richie's "Hello" makes reference to Rip Van Winkle in the opening scene of the video when Laura, a blind subject of Ritchie's affection and student of his, acts out a scene in which she describes the character Tony Billy Boy as "a regular Rip Van Winkle". Billy Boy, just out of prison, had suggested taking Laura on a date to the Brooklyn Paramount, not knowing that in the meantime it had closed, just as Eisenhower was no longer President. He was also mentioned in the Alabama song "Mountain Music" in 1982. The Belle & Sebastian song "I Could Be Dreaming" features band member Isobel Campbell reading a passage from "Rip Van Winkle" towards the end of the song. The Pod, the second album by the band Ween features a song dubbed 'Sketches of Winkle'. American composer Ferde Grof? tells the story of Rip Van Winkle through orchestral music in his Hudson River Suite (1955) ? the third movement is entitled "Rip Van Winkle." Richard Dawkins' book Unweaving the Rainbow has a short reference to Rip Van Winkle: The passengers, Rip van Winkles, wake stumbling into the light. After a million years of sleep, here is a whole new fertile globe, a lush planet of warm pastures, sparkling streams and waterfalls, a world bountiful with creatures, darting through alien green felicity. Our travellers walk entranced, stupefied, unable to believe their unaccustomed senses or their luck. ? [4] Camp Chi, a Jewish summer camp in Lake Delton, Wisconsin, has an ongoing tradition of a version of Rip Van Winkle called Chi Winkle coming out from the woods each year at the session's end to wish the campers goodbye. In the SNES game Super Mario World there is an enemy named Rip Van Fish. As the name implies, it's a fish and it sleeps until Mario or Luigi draws close, at which point it starts chasing him. In the Phish song The Sloth, from The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday, lyricist Trey Anastasio makes a verb of "Rip Van Winkle", meaning "to sleep all day": They call me the sloth (way down in the ghetto) / Italian spaghetti (singing falsetto) / Sleeping all day (Rip Van Winkl'ing) / Spend my nights in bars (glasses tinkling). [edit] Dictionary Allusions To be a Rip van Winkle, is to awake suddenly to profound changes in one's surroundings. This may be due to physical absence or to absence of mind. This term was quoted on January 3, 1992, in the Christian Science Monitor by Laura Van Tuyl like below. American Public Radio (APR) has shifted into "rescue mode" and through an arduous campaign of pilot programs and experiments is hoping to help stave off, if not reverse, the decline in the number of listeners to classical music on the airwaves "I call it the Rip Van Winkle Syndrome, where we're just waking up after a long sleep and realizing that our audiences are going away," says Ruth Dreier, project director of APR's Classical Music Initiative. Someone who has remained oblivious to social and political changes over an extended period can be said to be 'Rip-Van-Winkleish'. Andrew Higgins wrote in The Observer, 1997 A political Rip van Winkle who had never watched television and read neither newspapers nor books until the last years of his term, Kim cannot believe, even less comprehend, this changed world. His only reading material until 1990 had been the Bible. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 6 07:37:53 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:37:53 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Who woulda thunk it References: <49098311.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: <4912BAF0.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Who woulda thunk that the dialectic would be such that it is the American right wing Presidential candidates that reintroduces the term "socialism" into the mass discourse, when "Communism" has long been dead and defeated by America ? And they do so using it to label a potentially very popular program to boot ; at a time when masses have good reason to consider it unfair that the rich got a trillion dollar grant to bail them out for "destroying wealth". When the objective crisis has thrust the class war into everybody's face. " How is this program not Marxist ?" the reporter asked Biden. The bourgeois intelligentsia is talking to the ghost of Marx spontaneously (see below) . Marx is dead, madame. Oh the cunning of history. John Henry ^^^^^^^ Germany Coming soon to German bookstores: a new "Das Kapital" from another Marx. thought Communism was dead. Why all this red-baiting from the bourgeois intelligentisia and politicos ? It's like they have seen a ghost. This priest conducts an argument talking to Marx ? Marx is dead. There is a spectre haunting Europe and America - the spectre of communism. CB >>> "John E. Norem" MUNICH, Germany Coming soon to German bookstores: a new "Das Kapital" from another Marx. The author says readers should not expect a defense of communism from the book. Munich's Roman Catholic Archbishop Reinhard Marx says his work is to some extent "an argument with Marxism." Marx wrote the first chapter of his "Das Kapital: A Plea for Humanity" as a letter to his "dear namesake" - the 19th century ideologist Karl Marx. The archbishop writes that "the consequences of your thinking were in the end disastrous." ^^^^ CB: Speak for yourself, "father". ^^^^ Marx says he intends with the book to highlight the value of Catholic social teaching in a globalized world. ^^^ CB: Must be a short book. ^^^^^ The book was presented Wednesday. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 6 07:30:11 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:30:11 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rip Van Winkle Message-ID: <4912B922.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Ballad for Americanism http://www.bartleby.com/310/2/1.html Washington Irving (1783?1859). Rip Van Winkle & The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917. Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker By Woden, God of Saxons, From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday, Truth is a thing that ever I will keep Unto thylke day in which I creep into My sepulchre?? CARTWRIGHT. 1 [The following Tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and studied it with the zeal of a book-worm. The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely established; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of unquestionable authority. The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work, and now that he is dead and gone, it cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his time might have been better employed in weightier labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his own way; and though it did now and then kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors, and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt the truest deference and affection; yet his errors and follies are remembered ?more in sorrow than in anger,? and it begins to be suspected, that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear by many folks, whose good opinion is well worth having; particularly by certain biscuit-bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their new-year cakes; and have thus given him a chance for immortality, almost equal to the being stamped on a Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne?s Farthing.] 2 WHOEVER has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky, but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory. 3 At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weather-cocks. 4 In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. 5 Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual, with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood. 6 The great error in Rip?s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar?s lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word Rip was ready to attend to anybody?s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible. 7 In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; every thing about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm in the neighborhood. 8 His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother?s heels, equipped in a pair of his father?s cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather. 9 Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house?the only side which, in truth, belongs to a hen-pecked husband. 10 Rip?s sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much hen-pecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master?s going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods?but what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman?s tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broom-stick or ladle, he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation. 11 Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer?s day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman?s money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place. 12 The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sundial. It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation. 13 From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness. 14 Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. ?Poor Wolf,? he would say, ?thy mistress leads thee a dog?s life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!? Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfuly in his master?s face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart. 15 In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands. 16 On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. 17 As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, ?Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!? He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air: ?Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!??at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master?s side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it. 18 On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger?s appearance. He was a short square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion?a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist?several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence; for though the former marvelled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity. 19 On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar style with that of the guide?s. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes: the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat set off with a little red cock?s tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement. 20 What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder. 21 As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game. 22 By degrees Rip?s awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep. 23 On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes?it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. ?Surely,? thought Rip, ?I have not slept here all night.? He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor?the mountain ravine?the wild retreat among the rocks?the woe-begone party at ninepins?the flagon??Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!? thought Rip??what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle!? 24 He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysterers of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen. 25 He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening?s gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. ?These mountain beds do not agree with me,? thought Rip; ?and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.? With some difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path. 26 At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man?s perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward. 27 As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long! 28 He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors?strange faces at the windows?every thing was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains?there ran the silver Hudson at a distance?there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been?Rip was sorely perplexed??That flagon last night,? thought he, ?has addled my poor head sadly!? 29 It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay?the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed??My very dog,? sighed poor Rip, ?has forgotten me!? 30 He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears?he called loudly for his wife and children?the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence. 31 He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village inn?but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, ?the Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.? Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes?all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON. 32 There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens?elections?members of congress?liberty?Bunker?s Hill?heroes of seventy-six?and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. 33 The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired ?on which side he voted?? Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, ?Whether he was Federal or Democrat?? Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, ?what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village????Alas! gentlemen,? cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, ?I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!? 34 Here a general shout burst from the by-standers??A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!? It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern. 35 ?Well?who are they??name them.? 36 Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, ?Where?s Nicholas Vedder?? 37 There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, ?Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the church-yard that used to tell all about him, but that?s rotten and gone too.? 38 ?Where?s Brom Dutcher?? 39 ?Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point?others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony?s Nose. I don?t know?he never came back again.? 40 ?Where?s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?? 41 ?He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in congress.? 42 Rip?s heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war?congress?Stony Point;?he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, ?Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?? 43 ?Oh, Rip Van Winkle!? exclaimed two or three, ?Oh, to be sure! that?s Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.? 44 Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name? 45 ?God knows,? exclaimed he, at his wit?s end; ?I?m not myself?I?m somebody else?that?s me yonder?no?that?s somebody else got into my shoes?I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they?ve changed my gun, and every thing?s changed, and I?m changed, and I can?t tell what?s my name, or who I am!? 46 The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. ?Hush, Rip,? cried she, ?hush, you little fool; the old man won?t hurt you.? The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. ?What is your name, my good woman?? asked he. 47 ?Judith Gardenier.? 48 ?And your father?s name?? 49 ?Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it?s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since?his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl.? 50 Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice: 51 ?Where?s your mother?? 52 ?Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler.? 53 There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. ?I am your father!? cried he??Young Rip Van Winkle once?old Rip Van Winkle now!?Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?? 54 All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, ?Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle?it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor?Why, where have you been these twenty long years?? 55 Rip?s story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks: and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head?upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage. 56 It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder. 57 To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip?s daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip?s son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business. 58 Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. 59 Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times ?before the war.? It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war?that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England?and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was?petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance. 60 He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle?s hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine-pins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle?s flagon. 61 NOTE. The foregoing Tale, one would suspect, had been suggested to Mr. Knickerbocker by a little German superstition about the Emperor Frederick der Rothbart, and the Kyffh?user mountain: the subjoined note, however, which he had appended to the tale, shows that it is an absolute fact, narrated with his usual fidelity: ?The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvellous events and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this, in the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle myself who, when last I saw him, was a very venerable old man, and so perfectly rational and consistent on every other point, that I think no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject taken before a country justice and signed with a cross, in the justice?s own handwriting. The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt. D. K.? 62 POSTSCRIPT. The following are travelling notes from a memorandum-book of Mr. Knickerbocker: The Kaatsberg, or Catskill mountains, have always been a region full of fable. The Indians considered them the abode of spirits, who influenced the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds over the landscape, and sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old squaw spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in the midst of its web; and when these clouds broke, woe betide the valleys! In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill Mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexations upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume the form of a bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase through tangled forests and among ragged rocks; and then spring off with a loud ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice or raging torrent. The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a great rock or cliff on the loneliest part of the mountains, and, from the flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its precincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way, penetrated to the garden rock, where he beheld a number of gourds placed in the crotches of trees. One of these he seized and made off with it, but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a great stream gushed forth, which washed him away and swept him down precipices, where he was dashed to pieces, and the stream made its way to the Hudson, and continues to flow to the present day; being the identical stream known by the name of the Kaaters-kill. 63 CONTENTS ? VOLUME CONTENTS ? BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From farmelantj at juno.com Thu Nov 6 09:17:13 2008 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 16:17:13 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Obama Message-ID: <20081106.111713.5570.0@webmail20.vgs.untd.com> I posted the following earlier this morning on Marxmail: ---------------------- Obama has made no secret of his intention to govern as a centrist in the Bill Clinton mode. He has certainly not hidden from the public his views concerning a whole range of issues both foreign and domestic. Liberals and progressives, it seems to me, have managed to do a bang-up job of deceiving themselves concerning Obama's true political inclinations. It's as if they have bought into the characterizations of Obama that the GOP made during the campaign and put plus signs where the Republicans had placed minu signs: that Obaba is really a "closet" socialist who intends to engage in a massive redistribution of wealth and so forth. So, I expect that after Obama has been in office a while and he has managed to make a few crucial decisions, and perhaps bombed a country or two, that maybe a certain level of disillusionment will begin to set in. The ascension of Obama into the White House merits comparisons with JFK's ascension of forty-eight years ago. Like Obama, JFK's ascension was greeted with very high expectations from his supporters. Eventually, a certain level of disillusionment set in, and of course his assassination would be the most disillusioning event of all. However, at that time there were thriving social movements, most notably the civil rights movement. So when disillusionment set in, for many people that would lead not to a relapse back into apathy but to a radicalization which would drive much of the politics of the 1960s. So, it will be interesting to see how things play this time around. Jim F. _____________________________________________________________ Not making enough money? Click here to get free info on medical jobs http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2121/fc/Ioyw6i3m4c4dFwv9Zc1YhUMuPum0cyUIMtHZhMoBEtnB12Q384GKgJ/?count=1234567890 From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 6 10:51:52 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:51:52 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] From Feral Scholar Message-ID: <4912E868.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> "i happened to be in san diego over the election. wow. talk about a very deep, silent undercurrent, you could feel it ? cut it with a knife. one example: to talk with my father?s gardener/friend/mexican-cannot-vote ? was to reach into the heavens of camaraderie, hope, joy ? like tapping into a spring of spiritual renewal. this chance to feel like an american again, that all the people i know in this country ARE AMERICANs. especially in light of the last eight years of exclusion is overwhelming. i cannot stop crying with joy. right now ? i cannot listen to the lefties that i normally listen to, even amy goodman, chris floyd, world socialist, whatever ? the relentless march of the gloom and doomers ? with their negative face against everything except the ABSOLUTE cause. this is profound ? and i?m gonna be there and work." http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2008/10/31/the-complications-of-conscience-and-elections/#comments This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Thu Nov 6 11:19:12 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:19:12 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] From Feral Scholar In-Reply-To: <4912E868.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> References: <4912E868.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: How much more of this horseshit must I endure? At 12:51 PM 11/6/2008, Charles Brown wrote: >"i happened to be in san diego over the >election. wow. talk about a very deep, silent >undercurrent, you could feel it ? cut it with a >knife. one example: to talk with my father???s >gardener/friend/mexican-cannot-vote ? wass to >reach into the heavens of camaraderie, hope, joy >? like tapping into a spring of spiritual >renewal. this chance to feel like an american >again, that all the people i know in this >country ARE AMERICANs. especially in light of >the last eight years of exclusion is >overwhelming. i cannot stop crying with joy. >right now ? i cannot lissten to the lefties that >i normally listen to, even amy goodman, chris >floyd, world socialist, whatever ? the >rellentless march of the gloom and doomers ? >with their neggative face against everything >except the ABSOLUTE cause. this is profound ? >and i???m gonna be there and work."" >http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2008/10/31/the-complications-of-conscience-and-elections/#comments > From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 6 14:08:56 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:08:56 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] From Feral Scholar Message-ID: <49131698.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Ralph Dumain How much more of this horseshit must I endure? ^^^^ CB: Don't dish it out if you can't take it This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 6 15:03:58 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:03:58 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Something or other analysis of something or other Message-ID: <4913237F.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Ralph Dumain That so-called Marxist analysis is complete horseshit, and who cares what Fidel has to say about the election? ^^^ CB: Silly rabbit, actual Marxists care about what Fidel says about the elections. What socialist revolution have you led ? ^^^ I have some definite thoughts on the election of Obama, but I've not yet been able to bring myself to write them down. ^^^^ CB: You probably think Marxists are more interested in what you have to say than what Fidel has to say hahahahahahahahahahha ! you are funny, Ralph ? ^^^^ My reaction is, to boil it down to bullet points: (1) I can't believe we have a black president! (2) the ensuing media blitz, on the part of most Democrats and Republicans, is ideological fog, deception and delusion; (3) the essence of the media reaction is: "I can't believe we have a black president!"; (4) one of the biggest lies is: this is a new era for race relations, and King's dream has become a reality; (5) there are a few voices of doubt, and signs that the honeymoon will soon be over, as Obama picks his staff and plots a course; (6) the message of unity and bliss is a media fraud, because 48% of those who voted (and we still don't know how far the Republican drive to rig the election actually progressed) voted for McCain, and the cracker states remain resolutely cracker, and they won't change. (7) the delusional reaction affects all social classes, esp. blacks of all social classes, but the most obnoxious manifestation of it is among the liberal upper middle class, black and white; (8) the racial symbolism, perpetrated by Republicans as well as Democrats, is a cover-up, and the realities of social class and the class structure are completely obscured thereby; (9) this election is an exemplar of what Adorno meant by the culture industry; (10) the gap between appearance and reality means we are still all doomed; (11) the reaction of black talking heads is as disgusting as those of the whites; and the underlying cause is: (12) Obama's victory is really a victory for upward mobility. ^^^^ CB: hahahahahahahaha ! That's funny, Ralph I think Fidel has a better take than you do. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From phil at pwalden.fsnet.co.uk Thu Nov 6 15:15:00 2008 From: phil at pwalden.fsnet.co.uk (Phil Walden) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 22:15:00 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] From Feral Scholar In-Reply-To: <49131698.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: <20081106221502.CMNB2093.aamtaout03-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@pwalden> I don't think you are going to be strong enough to cope with the let-down you are going to have, Charles - you need to get out of the CP and get with some people who can think. Try going to some philosophy classes. Do not wear yourself out with fruitless CP activities - you are just being used Charles - build your OWN life instead, Charles. And stop posting to the list for a while - give yourself some time to enjoy your life. Ralph is right and he expresses himself in his usual prickly way - but he cares about you, Charles. All the best, Phil Walden Oxford England (where black people have MUCH lower expectations of Obama) -----Original Message----- From: marxism-thaxis-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-thaxis-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Charles Brown Sent: 06 November 2008 21:09 To: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] From Feral Scholar Ralph Dumain How much more of this horseshit must I endure? ^^^^ CB: Don't dish it out if you can't take it This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 6 15:53:47 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:53:47 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] From Feral Scholar In-Reply-To: <20081106221502.CMNB2093.aamtaout03-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@pwalden> References: <49131698.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> <20081106221502.CMNB2093.aamtaout03-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@pwalden> Message-ID: <49132F2B.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> >>> "Phil Walden" I don't think you are going to be strong enough to cope with the let-down you are going to have, Charles - ^^^ CB: I think you mean, "oh my gosh, what if Obama does well for the working class. I'll have to eat a lot of crow. " I'm trying to think how to respond to all these "predictions" from ultra's that O is going to let "us", me ( ! ) down (smile). Lets see, I don't think you quite have an accurate idea what my emotional attitude is toward the election, nor what my expectations are as to what we will accomplish. Otherwise, you wouldn't be expressing these silly, paternalistic worries about my feelings. I really am laughing at you all and your sour grapes. What a bunch of out of touch sectarians with illusions about the sophistication of your analysis. hahahahh ^^^^ you need to get out of the CP and get with some people who can think. ^^^ What makes you "think" you think that good, or that you should be telling me who knows how to think ? I think really "good", and if you didn't notice that, _your_ thinking is suspect. So... get a clue , Phil. ^^^^^ Try going to some philosophy classes. ^^^ CB: Try reading some Marxism. All evidence is I know Marxism at least as well as you do. Try posting something on philosophy to the list, since you seem to think you know so much about it. ^^^^ ^^^^ Do not wear yourself out with fruitless CP activities - you are just being used Charles - build your OWN life instead, Charles. And stop posting to the list for a while - give yourself some time to enjoy your life. ^^^^ CB: What exactly makes you think I'm not enjoying life ?. My nickname is "Goodtime Charlie" . ^^^^^^^ Ralph is right and he expresses himself in his usual prickly way - but he cares about you, Charles. ^^^^ CB: Awww, isn't that sweet , Phil. I care about you and Ralph, too. Why don't you come to Detroit, so I can pat you on the head and assure you we all aren't all starry eyed and naive. You and Ralph are sleeping through the time of your lives ( See Rip van Winkle) All the best, Phil Walden Oxford England (where black people have MUCH lower expectations of Obama) ^^^^^ CB: I'm thinking you don't really know what Black people's expectations are in the US. ' Keep a stiff upper lip, old chap; and remember pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From jannuzi at gmail.com Thu Nov 6 19:02:37 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 11:02:37 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pres. elect Obama Message-ID: BO is the second coming, the hidden imam and the Jews' first messiah, all wrapped up in one. He's a healer, a uniter, somone who can work across the aisles. He might keep Gates as Sec. of Defense for the first year (at least). And he just appointed a zionazi financier scumfuck, Emanuel (former Clinton lackey and pimp) to be his chief of staff. Moreover, he might bring in Larry Summers, another zionazi financier scumfuck, to be his man on the economy to replace Paulson. This guy isn't like any African-American I've ever known. He doesn't descend (in an historical, cultural, familial sense)from slaves or free blacks or mixed race Appalachians--unless that is hidden on his mother's side of the family). I'm starting to think he might be the anti-christ actually (not really). The proof is in the pudding we eat, and I smell a big hot steaming shit pudding already. CJ From farmelantj at juno.com Thu Nov 6 19:12:34 2008 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 21:12:34 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pres. elect Obama Message-ID: <20081106.211237.2444.0.farmelantj@juno.com> On Fri, 7 Nov 2008 11:02:37 +0900 CeJ writes: > BO is the second coming, the hidden imam and the Jews' first > messiah, > all wrapped up in one. He's a healer, a uniter, somone who can work > across the aisles. > > > This guy isn't like any African-American I've ever known. He > doesn't > descend (in an historical, cultural, familial sense)from slaves or > free blacks or mixed race Appalachians--unless that is hidden on > his > mother's side of the family). I think that is precisely what is unique about Obama. By American norms, he is an African-American, but his life experiences have been vastly different from those of most African-Americans. He is not the descendent of slaves (at least not slaves in the US). He spent most of his youth abroad and so was spared many of the formative and often humiliating experiences that most African-Americans undergo. He is vastly more cosmopolitan than the great majority of Americans of any color. I suspect that an African-American politician whose life experiences were more typical of most African-Americans would not have been able to get to where Obama has gotten, no matter how talented he or she might be. > I'm starting to think he might be the > anti-christ actually (not really). > ____________________________________________________________ Protect our community. Click here to take criminal justice classes and begin a rewarding career. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/Ioyw6i3nNLM2RQS022ZQa3nCGwOJDOUHg3u8sOG4rXHXqUgJmpSCIJ/ From jannuzi at gmail.com Thu Nov 6 20:42:56 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 12:42:56 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pres. elect Obama In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: CB likes wiki cites. One on Rahm Emanuel that I found is very interesting. The discussion page of the people trying to get their version of this guy into a wiki entry. One trick Emanuel seems to have repeated with BO is the fund-raising. He got Clinton a lot of money, and he got BO a lot of money. The guy can be linked to financial houses, pre-Israel terrorist groups (apparently his father was in Irgun), and volunteer 'civilian' service to the IDF during the first Gulf War. Like any US citizen can just go and serve as a 'civilian' in a foreign military. And that was at a time when the big question was whether or not Israel would ignore US wishes and get involved beyond giving support to Poppy Bush's grand war coalition? The man has led an extraordinary life, to say the least. CJ From jannuzi at gmail.com Thu Nov 6 20:44:00 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 12:44:00 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pres. elect Obama In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Forgot the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rahm_Emanuel From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Nov 7 08:17:02 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:17:02 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How EmptyTheir Lives Are References: Message-ID: <4914159F.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> >>> Danielle AM >>> this is pretty funny... > > >All in good fun. > > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 6:29 PM >Subject: Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty >Their Lives Are >To: > > > >< >The Onion. > >The recommended page is: >Obama >Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are > >************************************************************************ >You are receiving this email because your friend at >< > >-- This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Nov 7 13:47:25 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:47:25 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] People For the American Way Message-ID: <4914630D.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> A Message from Norman Lear & Kathryn Kolbert People For the American Way --------------------- November 7, 2008 Dear Charles, Did you read Paul Krugman's column in Monday's New York Times? On the day before the Blue Wave washed over national and state elections across the country, he asked the important question, "What will defeat do to the Republicans?" and provides several reasons why we can expect the Grand Old Party to take a hard turn to the extreme Right. We agree. With the Right in its new role as "the opposition," get ready to see an invigorated right- wing grassroots, media and organizational infrastructure. The Heritage Foundation is already digging in its heels saying they will not let President-Elect Obama bring about the change he's promised. Right-wing blogs, talk radio and television outlets like Fox News will experience a boom, and new personalities will emerge (remember that the Rush Limbaughs of the world became popular during the Clinton years and the power of the progressive netroots is in many ways attributable to backlash against the Bush administration and right-wing government). With the failure of a Republican presidential candidate who tried to distance himself from the current administration, and the popularity of Sarah Palin, who appealed to the far-right base, many will make the case that the best political strategy is a hard-line and unabashed commitment to right-wing ideology. One of the only victory trends enjoyed by the Right on Tuesday was in anti-gay ballot initiatives in Arkansas, Arizona, Florida and, sadly, even California, emboldening the Religious Right to repeat these tactics in state after state. And finally, with President-Elect Obama and the Democratic Senate in a position to undo many of the Right's most cherished gains in its favorite area of focus: the federal courts -- this, perhaps more than anything else, will energize the Religious Right's grassroots. The Right is already planning the revitalization of the conservative movement. They will have the energy. They will have the funding. And with the will to obstruct at every turn the change that we've worked so hard to achieve, the Right is making our case that People For the American Way is more necessary than ever. And we can't see a repeat of the early 90's. What happened was that the organized Left went dormant, became complacent and didn't keep the pressure on the administration and Congress to deliver on their promises to America. The Clinton administration was subject to unrelenting attacks from the Right -- as Obama's surely will be -- but too many progressives thought they could stop fighting once the election was over. Without a strong progressive movement keeping the wind at the Obama administration's back, our constitutional values will not be realized as policy and our electoral gains will be short- lived. And of course, the mandate that Barack Obama has received from voters to appoint judges who adhere to the Constitution's promise of equality and justice for all will need our strongest support. YOU are the progressive grassroots. And you are needed. People For the American Way's ability to get the job done in Washington will depend on our ability to mobilize activists and volunteers across the country for critical fights, like when there is a Supreme Court vacancy, in pushing Congress to pass much-needed election reform legislation or to mobilize opposition to the Right's efforts to destroy the Obama administration and their attacks on equality. We're developing ways for activists like you to stay engaged, spread the progressive message and put your energy behind a progressive agenda for the crucial first year of Obama's presidency. Stay tuned for more on these programs in the days and weeks to come. Together, we will fulfill Tuesday's promise. Together, we will turn hope into a better America for all. Sincerely, Norman Lear & Kathryn Kolbert This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From jannuzi at gmail.com Sat Nov 8 01:29:30 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2008 17:29:30 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pres. elect Obama In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'm not really clear on BO's biography, but it seems to me more than the Indonesian experience (I mean does he speak Bahasa Indonesia or some other form of Malay to show how much he was integrated with the culture there?), the formative experience was being raised by a white grandmother in Hawaii. Imagine being raised by a 'hauli' who thought you were the embarrassing product of your mother's stupidity, while you could go out an interacting with a society where you could call your grandmother that hauli. Hawaii (along with New Mexico) was a non-white numerical majority state from the beginning, and something like 20% of its population identifies as mixed race. This to quite an extent reflects a racial dynamic that goes beyond white and black (being largely Asian and Polynesian mixed race with a large number of Portugese in the mix--and African Americas as well). So the dynamic would have been anglo hauli vs. we, the actual numerical majority. That might well be one reason why BO seems to get the 'new' multiracial America so well, although he also realized he had to make himself look authenticate in the eyes of the people who would vote overwhelmingly for him (black Americans who share his racial features if not his inheritance). Not only is it hard to imagine a black president, it's hard for me to imagine any other black person becoming president right now. Still, that being said, clearly he benefited greatly from all the work Jesse Jackson did to get white liberals and blacks of all classes to work together in the Democratic Party. It really was a matter of the Democratic Party gets its faithful out to vote in large numbers since overall the turnout only more or less matched the last two presidential elections (unless I got erroneous stats from CNN, always a possibility). As for CB and his future disappointment. CB, if you are happy with the current state of things with the Democratic Party, then all I can think to ask is: what the hell could ever disappoint you anyway? I more or less refrained from commenting further on the BO phenomenon (like I said I would) when he was just a presidential candidate, now I'm going to refrain from commenting further on him now that he is president elect. So I won't start up again until he becomes president and suddenly it dawns on people that this guy is no Jesse Jackson, he isn't even a Howard Dean. He is mostly John Kerry without the Nam experience. Still it will most likely be one of the most presidential-elect periods in the history of the country because the ruling class's confidence in itself (and its beliefs like serving their narrow self-interests serves the entire country, the entire country has a mission to think it rules the world, etc.) seems to have collapsed. You would almost think that Bush would turn over the White House today if he could. To conclude, to quite an extent I think you could say BO is the first active actor (i.e., someone paid to act like he is someone his not) to beome president of the US. CJ From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sat Nov 8 13:57:28 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:57:28 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pollitt on Palin Message-ID: <4915B6E8.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Sayonara, Sarah Subject to Debate By Katha Pollitt This article appeared in the November 24, 2008 edition of The Nation. November 6, 2008 And so we bid farewell to Sarah Palin. How I'll miss her daily presence in my life! The mooseburgers, the wolf hunts, the kids named after bays and sports and trees and airplanes and who did not seem to go to school at all, the winks and blinks, the cute Alaska accent, the witch-hunting pastor and those great little flared jackets, especially the gray stripey one. People say she was a dingbat, but that is just sexist: the woman read everything, she said so herself; her knowledge of geography was unreal--she knew just where to find the pro-America part of the country; and don't forget her keen interest in ancient history! Thanks largely to her, Bill Ayers is now the most famous sixtysomething professor in the country--eat your heart out, Ward Churchill! You can snipe all you want, but she was truly God's gift: to Barack Obama, Katie Couric--notice no one's making fun of America's sweetheart now--Tina Fey and columnists all over America. Sayonara, Sarah Sarah Palin She was also a gift to feminism. Seriously. I don't mean she was a feminist--she told Couric she considered herself one, but in a later interview, perhaps after looking up the meaning of the word, coyly wondered why she needed to "label" herself. And I don't mean she had a claim on the votes of feminists or women--why should women who care about equality vote for a woman who wants to take their rights away? Elaine Lafferty, a former editor of Ms., made a splash by revealing in The Daily Beast (Tina Brown's new website, for those of you still following the news on paper) that she has been working as a consultant to Palin. In a short but painful piece of public relations called "Sarah Palin's a Brainiac," Lafferty claimed to find in Palin "a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernible pattern of associative thinking and insight," with a "photographic memory," as smart as legendary Senator Sam Ervin, "a woman who knows exactly who she is." According to Lafferty, all that stuff about library censorship and rape kits was just "nonsense"--and feminists who held Palin's wish to criminalize abortion against her were Beltway feminist-establishment elitists who shop at Whole Foods when they should be voting against Barack Obama to make the Dems stop taking women for granted. So the first way Palin was good for feminism is that she helped us clarify what it isn't: feminism doesn't mean voting for "the woman" just because she's female, and it doesn't mean confusing self-injury with empowerment, like the Ellen Jamesians in The World According to Garp (I'll vote for the forced-childbirth candidate, that'll show Howard Dean!). It isn't just feel-good "you go, girl" appreciation of female moxie, which I cheerfully acknowledge Palin has by the gallon. As I wrote when she was selected, if she were my neighbor I would probably like her--at least until she organized with her fellow Christians to ban abortion at the local hospital, as Palin did in the 1990s. Yes, feminism is about women getting their fair share of power, and that includes the top jobs--but that can't take a back seat to policies that benefit all women: equality on the job and the legal framework that undergirds it, antiviolence, reproductive self-determination, healthcare, education, childcare and so on. Fortunately, women who care about equality get this--dead-enders like the comically clueless Lynn Forester de Rothschild got lots of press, but in the end Obama won the support of the vast majority of women who had supported Hillary Clinton. Second, Palin's presence on the Republican ticket forced family-values conservatives to give public support to working mothers, equal marriages, pregnant teens and their much-maligned parents. Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists--Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly--insisted that a mother of five, including a "special-needs" newborn, could perfectly well manage governing a state (a really big state, as we were frequently reminded), while simultaneously running for veep and, who knows, field-dressing a moose. No one said she belonged at home. No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived. All these things have officially morphed from sins to "challenges," just part of normal family life. No matter how strategic this newfound broadmindedness is, it will not be easy to row away from it. Thanks to Sarah, ladies, we can do just about anything we want as long as we don't have an abortion. Third, while Palin did not win the Hillary vote, the love she got from Republican women, including very conservative, traditional women, shows that what I like to call the feminism of everyday life is taking hold across the spectrum. That old frilly-doormat model of femininity is gone: even women who stay home and attend churches that bar women from the clergy thrill to the idea of women being all that they can be and taking their rightful place in the public realm. Like everyone else, they want respect and power, and now, finally, thanks to the women's movement they despise, they may actually get some. Finally, Palin completed the task Hillary Clinton began: running in different parties across a single political season, they have normalized the idea of a woman in the White House. It is hard even to remember now how iconoclastic Hillary was--how hard it was for her to negotiate femininity and ambition, to be warm but not weak, smart but not cold, attractive but not sexy, dynamic but not threatening. Only a year ago, it was a real question whether men would vote for a woman or, for that matter, whether women would. Palin may have been unfit for high office, but just by running she showed there was more than one mode for a female politician. After almost two years of the whole country watching two very different women in the White House race, it finally seems normal. So thanks, Sarah. And now, please--back to your iceberg. Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week! If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation. About Katha Pollitt Katha Pollitt's writing has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Ms. and the New York Times. She is the author, most recently, of Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories (Random House), now available in paperback, and an earlier volume of personal essays, Virginity or Death! (Random House. Visit her web site at www.kathapollitt.com. more... Katha Pollitt: God's gift to journalism--and to feminism. Culture War: Out of Juice? Presidential Election 2008 Katha Pollitt: The culture wars may fail at the top of the ticket this year, but expect right-wing mayhem further down the ballot. Follow-ups for Sarah Palin Sarah Palin Katha Pollitt: Don't let reproductive rights get lost in the run-up to Election Day. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sat Nov 8 14:33:38 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2008 16:33:38 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] />Did you ever work in the auto industry Message-ID: <4915BF62.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Obama: Automakers are nation's backbone November 8, 2008 Read Comments(11)RecommendPrint this page E-mail this article Share this article: Del.icio.us Facebook Digg Reddit Newsvine Buzz up! Here's what President-elect Barack Obama had to say Friday about the auto industry during his news conference: "The news coming out of the auto industry this week reminds us of the hardship it faces, hardship that goes far beyond individual auto companies to the countless suppliers, small businesses and communities throughout our nation who depend on a vibrant American auto industry. The auto industry is the backbone of American manufacturing and a critical part of our attempt to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I would like to see the administration do everything it can to accelerate the retooling assistance that Congress has already enacted. In addition, I have made it a high priority for my transition team to work on additional policy options to help the auto industry adjust, weather the financial crisis, and succeed in producing fuel-efficient cars here in the United States of America. And I was glad to be joined today by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who obviously has great knowledge and great interest on this issue. I've asked my team to explore what we can do under current law and whether additional legislation will be needed for this purpose." In your voice Read reactions to this story Newest first Oldest first Julll wrote: Replying to saltshaker: Replying to Julll: The title of the article Automakers are nation's backbone must either be a mis-quote, or a joke. The true auto workers who work for the auto makers might make a pimple on a good workers rear end in this country. They have forgotten due to the union contracts what it is to work a full day for a full day's pay. Jobbie Nooner says it all. Did you ever work in the auto industry or are you spreading rumors? 4 days at an auto plant 38 years ago. On the 5th day I submitted a letter stating that due to the drinking, drugs and persons not on the job but on the pay roll I would not be able to continue. As recent as the 4th of July weekend last year the complacency continued. Jobbie Nooner. FACT not FICTION. Come and work high steel with me for a couple of days. I'm not anti UNION just anti UAW. 11/08/2008 4:10:16 p.m. EDT

Replying to saltshaker:

Replying to Julll:

The title of the article Automakers are nation's backbone must either be a mis-quote, or a joke. The true auto workers who work for the auto makers might make a pimple on a good workers rear end in this country. They have forgotten due to the union contracts what it is to work a full day for a full day's pay. Jobbie Nooner says it all.

Did you ever work in the auto industry or are you spreading rumors?


4 days at an auto plant 38 years ago. On the 5th day I submitted a letter stating that due to the drinking, drugs and persons not on the job but on the pay roll I would not be able to continue. As recent as the 4th of July weekend last year the complacency continued. Jobbie Nooner. FACT not FICTION. Come and work high steel with me for a couple of days. I'm not anti UNION just anti UAW. Julll Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse belaen wrote: My wife LOST her job and get another! I do thank God that I still have a job so I can support my family, but this is the most mentally and physically taxing job I have ever had, and the older I get the more I wonder if it's worth it. I haven't had a raise in 7 years, have to pay ten times more when I have to take my kids to the doctor, not to mention that overtime has become a big NO NO for me and my coworkers. But I was willing to accept those CONCESSIONS among many others in order to keep my job. I am more cocerned about my kids well being more than anything else (as I'm sure is the case with anyone with kids), but don't say we are trying to get out of giving up concessions. We already have given up alot. We are just trying to survive, just like you and everyone else. So get off your high horse and quit trashing people whose family you know absolutely nothing about. 11/08/2008 3:26:28 p.m. EDTMy wife LOST her job and get another! I do thank God that I still have a job so I can support my family, but this is the most mentally and physically taxing job I have ever had, and the older I get the more I wonder if it's worth it. I haven't had a raise in 7 years, have to pay ten times more when I have to take my kids to the doctor, not to mention that overtime has become a big NO NO for me and my coworkers. But I was willing to accept those CONCESSIONS among many others in order to keep my job. I am more cocerned about my kids well being more than anything else (as I'm sure is the case with anyone with kids), but don't say we are trying to get out of giving up concessions. We already have given up alot. We are just trying to survive, just like you and everyone else. So get off your high horse and quit trashing people whose family you know absolutely nothing about. belaen Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse belaen wrote: I cannot believe what I am Reading! It is clear to me that the people that are writing about and trashing workers that work at any of the Detroit three have not worked there or do not know anyone that does. Union workers not willing to give concessions so the company can survive????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? I work for Ford Motor Company, and have for ten years! I have a wife and three kids. I used to own a home. USED TO!!!!! I tried to put money away over the years for my kids to go to college. Guess what! It is ALL gone. I spend day in and day out practically destroying my body on the line! Most of you don't know what that's like. Install the same parts on the same cars; car after car after car after car after car after car after car after car after car ..............etc., for 8 hours! Yes, you heard right, a FULL DAYS WORK! I hate my job! I would love to leave and go somewhere else, but I can't! You see, my wife LOST her job and get anot 11/08/2008 3:10:36 p.m. EDTI cannot believe what I am Reading! It is clear to me that the people that are writing about and trashing workers that work at any of the Detroit three have not worked there or do not know anyone that does. Union workers not willing to give concessions so the company can survive?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I work for Ford Motor Company, and have for ten years! I have a wife and three kids. I used to own a home. USED TO!!!!! I tried to put money away over the years for my kids to go to college. Guess what! It is ALL gone. I spend day in and day out practically destroying my body on the line! Most of you don't know what that's like. Install the same parts on the same cars; car after car after car after car after car after car after car after car after car ..............etc., for 8 hours! Yes, you heard right, a FULL DAYS WORK! I hate my job! I would love to leave and go somewhere else, but I can't! You see, my wife LOST her job and get anot belaen Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse saltshaker wrote: Replying to Julll: The title of the article Automakers are nation's backbone must either be a mis-quote, or a joke. The true auto workers who work for the auto makers might make a pimple on a good workers rear end in this country. They have forgotten due to the union contracts what it is to work a full day for a full day's pay. Jobbie Nooner says it all. Did you ever work in the auto industry or are you spreading rumors? 11/08/2008 1:59:26 p.m. EDT

Replying to Julll:

The title of the article Automakers are nation's backbone must either be a mis-quote, or a joke. The true auto workers who work for the auto makers might make a pimple on a good workers rear end in this country. They have forgotten due to the union contracts what it is to work a full day for a full day's pay. Jobbie Nooner says it all.

Did you ever work in the auto industry or are you spreading rumors? saltshaker Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse Julll wrote: The title of the article Automakers are nation's backbone must either be a mis-quote, or a joke. The true auto workers who work for the auto makers might make a pimple on a good workers rear end in this country. They have forgotten due to the union contracts what it is to work a full day for a full day's pay. Jobbie Nooner says it all. 11/08/2008 1:24:39 p.m. EDTThe title of the article Automakers are nation's backbone must either be a mis-quote, or a joke. The true auto workers who work for the auto makers might make a pimple on a good workers rear end in this country. They have forgotten due to the union contracts what it is to work a full day for a full day's pay. Jobbie Nooner says it all. Julll Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse 1 2 3 >> LastFull page view See more comments per page and quote other replies You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login | Register This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sat Nov 8 14:47:06 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2008 16:47:06 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Howard Zinn on Obama win Message-ID: <4915C28A.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Obama's Historic Victory by Howard Zinn http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19384 "Those of us on the Left who have criticized Obama, as I have, for his failure to take bold positions on the war and on the economy, must join the exultation of those Americans, black and white, who shouted and wept Tuesday night as they were informed that Barack Obama had won the presidential election. It is truly a historic moment, that a black man will lead our country. The enthusiasm of the young, black and white, the hopes of their elders, cannot simply be ignored. "There was a similar moment a century and a half ago, in the year 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln had been criticized harshly by the abolitionists, the anti-slavery movement, for his failure to take a clear, bold stand against slavery, for acting as a shrewd politician rather than a moral force. But when he was elected, the abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, who had been an angry critic of Lincoln's cautiousness, recognized the possibility in his election. "Phillips wrote that for the first time in the nation's history "the slave has chosen a President of the United States." Lincoln, he said, was not an abolitionist, but he in some way "consents to represent an antislavery position." Like a pawn on the chessboard, Lincoln had the potential, if the American people acted vigorously, to be moved across the board, converted into a queen, and, as Phillips said, "sweep the board." "Obama, like Lincoln, tends to look first at his political fortunes instead of making his decisions on moral grounds. But, as the first African American in the White House, elected by an enthusiastic citizenry which expects a decisive move towards peace and social justice, he presents a possibility for important change. "Obama becomes president in a situation which cries out for such change. The nation has been engaged in two futile and immoral wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American people have turned decisively against those wars. The economy is shaken by tremendous blows, and is in danger of collapsing, as families lose their homes and working people, including those in the middle class, lose their jobs, So the population is ready for change, indeed, desperate for change, and "change" was the word most used by Obama in his campaign. "What kind of change is needed? First, to announce the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and to renounce the Bush doctrine of preventive war as well as the Carter doctrine of military action to control Mideast oil. He needs to radically change the direction of U.S. foreign policy, declare that the U.S. is a peace loving country which will not intervene militarily in other parts of the world, and start dismantling the military bases we have in over a hundred countries. Also he must begin meeting with Medvedev, the Russian leader, to reach agreement on the dismantling of the nuclear arsenals, in keeping with the Nuclear Anti-Proliferation Treaty. "This turn-around from militarism will free hundreds of billions of dollars. A tax program which will sharply increase taxes on the richest 1% of the nation, and will tax their wealth as well as their income, will yield more hundreds of billions of dollars. "With all that saved money, the government will be able to give free health care to everyone, put millions of people to work (which the so-called free market has not been able to do. In short, emulate the New Deal program, in which millions were given jobs by the government. This is just an outline of a program which could transform the United States and make it a good neighbor to the world." This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From jannuzi at gmail.com Mon Nov 10 01:38:30 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:38:30 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Howard Zinn on Obama win Message-ID: >>"Obama becomes president in a situation which cries out for such change. The nation has been engaged in two futile and immoral wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American people have turned decisively against those wars.<< Which is why our man of the people has Joe Biden, pro-war Demoncrat and co-author of a plan to break up Iraq into three states, as his VP-elect. And why he just appointed Rahm Emanuel, zionist and pro-war Demoncrat, to be chief-of-staff. I'm not sure where the will of the people against the wars comes into play, but the tall one ought to make Rahmbo 'Little Big' Emanuel get down on his knees and apologize to Dr. Dean over their disagreement about a 50 state strategy--Dean was 100% right about contesting all states because more was at stake than just the presidency. You would almost think Emanuel was trying to make sure the Demoncrats only had pro-war people in office and that the Repugs could neutralize the Demoncrats--like he plotted in 2006. Fortunately for the Demoncrat Party optimists, Dean won. There is a guy who has been absolutely vindicated. CJ From jannuzi at gmail.com Mon Nov 10 01:46:40 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:46:40 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pollitt on Palin Message-ID: Word has it that Palin consistently outdrew McCain on the campaign trail (I guess when they ran out of money to pay people to show up at the rallies and what turned up was there because it wanted to be). She did 'energize the base'. McCain failed to convince the Independents and quite a few of the Clinton Democrats (and even Reagan Democrats). Much of that had to do with how the media treated his suspension of campaigning to go to Washington DC when Bush and Paulson were trying to save finance capitalism for the top class of finance capitalists. The media treated it as bizarre--like the way they jumped on Dean's cheerleading after losing in Iowa in the previous election cycle. That was the turning point for McCain. They stuck the fork way in and turned him over. I said before McCain's arrogance would derail him sooner or later. And that was the piece of arrogance that didn't work. CJ From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 10 10:54:56 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:54:56 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Public takeover Message-ID: <49182F22.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Both Wall Street banking monopolies and the automobile monopolies are insolvent. Thus, the biggest companies of the private sector are inefficient. Let us never hear again how private enterprise is more efficient than public enterprise. Let us never hear the term "bureaucrat" confined to the public sector. The worst bureaucratt in existence are the private sector bureaucrats. Reverse privatization ! Publicization now ! This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 10 11:12:46 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:12:46 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Obama and labor References: <3dd87eb30811100958y5a2fc972t92d7861a2f709eb3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49183350.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> *New York Times* *November 9, 2008*** * * *After Push for Obama, Unions Seek New Rules* *By **STEVEN GREENHOUSE* ** WASHINGTON - After making millions of phone calls and knocking on millions of doors to elect Barack Obama, the nation's labor unions have begun a new campaign: to get the new president and Congress to pass legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize. Unions, delighted that they will have a friend in the White House after eight years of fighting President Bush, also plan to push for universal health coverage and a huge stimulus program to create jobs and counter the downturn. "Our major priority in the short and long term," said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, "is to get the economy working for Americans who work." But corporate America has already declared war on labor's push for new legislation that would help unions organize. "This will be Armageddon," said Randel Johnson, vice president for labor policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce. Labor's No. 1 priority is a piece of legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as the card-check bill. The bill would give workers the right to join a union as soon as a majority of employees at a workplace signed cards saying they wanted one. Business groups have attacked the legislation because it would take away employers' right to insist on holding a secret-ballot election to determine whether workers favored unionization. With union membership sliding to 7.5 percent of the private-sector work force, one-third the rate in 1983, unions see enactment of the bill as the single most important step toward reversing their loss of membership and power. Some labor leaders predict that if the bill is passed, unions, which have 16 million members nationwide, would add at least five million workers to their rolls over the next few years. "We really need fundamental change to counterbalance corporate power and reverse the decline of the middle class," said John J. Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s president, "and that's why we support the Employee Free Choice Act." Mr. Sweeney said labor unions were eager for a stimulus program to jump-start the economy and to help those hurt by the downturn. He called for extending unemployment benefits, increasing financing for food stamps, approving a rescue plan for Detroit's automakers and immediately spending more on rebuilding roads, bridges and schools. Thomas J. Donohue, the chamber's president, criticized the card-check bill as "payback" that labor unions were expecting in return for their campaign efforts. Bill Samuel, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s director of government affairs, disagreed, noting that President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph R. BidenJr.had co-sponsored the act as senators. "This is not about payback," Mr. Samuel said. "We're looking to work with the new administration on a shared set of priorities that focus on lifting workers and improving the economy." The A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win, the rival labor federation, campaigned all out for Mr. Obama, with labor leaders saying that unions and their political action committees spent nearly $450 million during the race. Mr. Sweeney said that in the last four days of the campaign, 250,000 volunteers from A.F.L.-C.I.O. unions made 5.5 million phone calls and visited 3.9 million union households. All told, he said, unions reached out to more than 13 million voters in 24 states, with some undecided union members being contacted more than 30 times through phone calls, household visits and workplace conversations. Union leaders say they were pivotal in helping Mr. Obama win several battleground states, including Florida, Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvaniaand Wisconsin. According to a voter poll by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 67 percent of members of A.F.L.-C.I.O. unions voted for Mr. Obama, a Democrat, and 30 percent for his Republican rival, Senator John McCain . One of labor's main goals was to help the Democrats capture 60 Senate seats, with an eye to overcoming a Republican filibuster against the card-check bill, which the House approved last year. In the Senate, there were 51 votes for the bill, but it failed because supporters could not overcome a Republican filibuster. Democrats gained at least six Senate seats on Tuesday, giving their caucus at least 57 seats, but they are likely to fall short of 60. (In three races, the winner has not yet been determined.) Even without 60 seats, many labor leaders want to press ahead with the Employee Free Choice Act. The service employees union has pledged to mobilize tens of thousands of members to urge Mr. Obama and Congress to enact that bill and universal health coverage in the 100 days after Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. "I don't think that just because we have 40 Republican senators or some higher number means we can't get EFCA passed," said Tom Woodruff, director of strategic organizing for Change to Win, a federation of seven unions that quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "There are a number of Republicans who, in order to save our economy, can be brought around to supporting the act." One Republican senator, Arlen Specterof Pennsylvania, has co-sponsored the bill. While the Chamber of Commerce seems ready to cooperate with organized labor to back an economic stimulus package, Mr. Donohue, the chamber's president, said it would be unwise for Mr. Obamato embrace the Employee Free Choice Act when the economy was in such bad shape. He said the bill - along with other labor-backed bills that would raise business costs, including one that would guarantee most workers seven paid sick days a year - would hurt companies when many were struggling. "The president has one barrel of challenges," Mr. Donohue said, "and he should read the doctor's oath to make sure in the first 100 days he does no harm." Chamber officials voiced confidence that they have the backing in the Senate to block the bill, a move that might cause business and labor to negotiate a version with compromises. Among the compromises floated would be keeping the secret ballot vote, but holding the vote just a few days after the union requests an election. Other ideas are to give union organizers access to workplace sites and to limit employers' ability to campaign against the union. But Mr. Stern of the service employees said today's hard times for workers increased the urgency to enact the bill, without compromises. "We have to solve the problems of sliding wages and increased inequality, and you can't compromise on solving those problems," he said. Businesses oppose another provision in the bill: if a newly recognized union and an employer fail to agree on a contract within 120 days, there would be binding arbitration to determine what should be in the contract. "The card-check provisions and the arbitration provisions are a nonstarter with the employer community," said Mr. Johnson of the chamber. "The idea that government arbitrators can set every term is ludicrous and unacceptable." Union officials say they do not dislike the secret ballot, but rather the lengthy, expensive, adversarial campaign before the vote in which companies often fire union supporters and use videos, large meetings and one-on-one sessions to pressure employees to vote against unionizing. "Their focus is maintaining their right to wage an aggressive campaign against the union," said Mr. Samuel of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "That's what we're trying to protect workers from." This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 10 12:11:58 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:11:58 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] did anyone actually get involved with the obama campaign? Message-ID: <4918412F.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> lbo-talk] did anyone actually get involved with the obama campaign? Dorene Mon Nov 10 09:45:51 PST 2008 Hah. BHO, a friend from high school and I all graduated the same year. Friend's parents were country club Republicans. Friend and I both fled the hinterlands for lives in dramatically climes. Friend is now a doctor in LA. Way last spring before Obama was anointed, friend wrote me something or other about what I thought of election. At the time I was not really taking a position about HRC vs BHO: by that time HRC had done a few things to make me cringe and I figured BHO was going to be more important as a symbol than for policies I could get enthused about. I hate loud crowds in small spaces and could not even muster enthusiasm for caucuses. I wrote my friend that I was worried about voter suppression in lots of directions, but also that I did not feel able to comment yet on a few different topics. Anyway, I told friend to pick a race or tow where she thought attention would make a difference and to check out options. So here is her account of taking time off from work to go to FL and work on Get out the Vote. Here is friend's account of her efforts. Full disclosure: I am kind of in awe of her efforts even though now I am going to plug back in on my own account: I showed up at 8 AM on Thursday morning Oct 30 to the volunteer office in a poor Cuban section of Tampa: "Casa Obama"; I started by doing canvassing--a rather textile term for going door-to-door, up and down avenues and ringing doorbells, being barked at by dogs and looking up house numbers on streets. Same as I did in North Las Vegas in early October and September. Yeah, brilliantly organized. Lots of email and conference calls and local cellphone communication. There were 100,000 Obama volunteers in Florida alone. I was given every day, several times a day, lists of names and addresses of "sporadic" Democrat voters--not soldier-voters like me, but folks who by record don't vote every election. Targeted canvassing--so no wasted effort. I was given specialized handouts on policy issues and best of all, specific voter information--where each neighborhood's precinct was, how to vote early, how to vote absentee, how to get a ride to the polls, whether or not parolees could vote, etc. That was probably the single most useful thing I did-- make sure whoever showed up at the door knew exactly where to go to vote. For all the fancy Internet stuff, I think democracy is a hand-made product delivered on foot. I generally did canvassing from 10 AM until after dark--did neighborhoods by flashlight (yes, we did work in pairs), and in the Florida sun, and in the rain. Democrats have a perverse love of 3rd floor walkup apartments, I decided. My particular talent was to sweet-talk the gated apartment managers into letting us riff-raff Democrats into the gated apartment grounds. (I think they just took pity on me; I am really blond and pathetic when I am really tired). I was also sent off to pick up absentee ballots so that they would not get lost in the mail, and to give rides to other volunteers when the work was done. I drove one voter to the polls--the taxi service contracted by the Obama office could not get out to her house in time for the polls on Election Day--she lived 10 miles out of town. My GPS (named Minerva McGonagle after the head of Gryffendor House) was a godsend; I got to all sorts of odd little places only because Minerva found them. I did get into a nasty habit of arguing with her--in her precise British accent she did not always reckon in the construction-caused road changes and once I circled the Tampa airport for 45 minutes, trying to find the right turnoff. There was an amazing amount of paper goods to be handled during an election; flyers, door signs, pamphlets, cards, stickers, banners, yard signs. I made yard signs and stacked pamphlets and sat on the floor with a half-dozen other volunteers and got paper cuts rearranging a mess of door signs--these are election reminders-- to be hung on the door knobs for Monday and Election Day. There were two rooms just for the cases of paper campaign literature. I learned to watch a TV show called Sabado Gigante "(Big Saturday") while doing this sort of stuff--its the Latino television show that is American Idol, Miss America pagent, and Oprah all rolled into one--you don't need to know any Spanish--its mostly about gorgeous women jiggling in bikinis. My Latino fellow volunteers all loudly criticized the show for demeaning women and were glued to the set. It goes on for hours. Its been hugely popular, at least in Florida, for years. I learned to like Cuban food at the neighborhood diner--black beans and yellow rice, tall glasses of cafe con leche with sugar, spiced meats with sliced onions, fried plantains and pressed Cuban ham and cheese sandwiches--sitting at the counter with the local shift workers was a cultural experience in itself. My colleagues at the CARE clinic covered my patients while I was away, and they provided me with a big bag of Tootsie Rolls as I was leaving for Tampa to assuage my chocolate needs. I ended up buying more and munching them in traffic. I did play hooky on Saturday morning, ... but then went back to work in the afternoon. The fifteen or so full-time twentysomething volunteers at my office were wonderful--and they had already done three weeks of intense campaigning by the time I got there--made me feel great for America and I can understand why this Kennedy-like experience is so important to this whole generation. Most had just graduated from high school. I was so proud for them; that they could drink in this experience. I was awash in Obamamania--its when little kids chant his name and hop up and down when I came up to the house--when teenagers on bikes would give me the thumbs up as I walked by--when I laughed out loud at the 14 year old who had shaved his head with the word: "OBAMA"--when people answered the door with "Mom, Obama people are here"--when Latinos of limited English just bust out with every happy English word they knew when I met them while I was wearing the Obama t-shirt and campaign buttons. One little poor roadside hotel had the most welcoming Spanish speaking lady living there--overjoyed to see us with our pamphlets in Spanish and Spanish-language voter instructions. It gave her dignity, I think, to have someone seek her out for her vote. People would stop their cars in the street and beg for an Obama button; I carried extra on my hat to pass out. Guys got up from the bus stop to help me put up Obama signs. It wasn't all grand, of course. Mostly I sweated and got sore feet. Several ugly people in ugly cars yelled the n-word at me. It does say something that the racists were so against Obama; good people are known by those that hate them. So on Election Day I showed up at the volunteer office 5:30 AM.Several of the other full time volunteers had spent the night at the office, making more piles of door signs and getting ready for the day. The lines for voting started at 6 AM, but as the day went on, lines disappeared and it looked like the voting went smoothly. At the polling places Obama volunteers passed out water to people in line, and helped direct traffic to parking spots. Others stayed at the main office and made a million more phone calls to remind people to vote. I was sent out to several polling sites to put up signs, then I came back to do two more cycles of canvassing (as if there were anyone left in Tampa who did NOT know it was Election Day), picked up some last-minute absentee ballots, and drove other volunteers around. After the polls closed there was a party sponsored by the main Obama office for the out-of-state volunteers to watch the results, and I was NOT missing that. It was at the Marriott on Florida street, downtown Tampa--really nice hotel. Appetizers, drinks and two huge TV screens with CNN and NBC on. There were about 300 people with all sort of TV camera crews there, all of us loud and happy and jumpy for the results to start coming in. One guy dressed up as Lincoln--hat and beard included, got on stilts and was strolling around the crowd waving Obama signs. Hysterical. The CNN and NBC commentaries were silly and useless--couldn't hear it anyway with all the crowd, and we all just waited and waited for results. Everything we did had worked. When Pennsylvania and Ohio went blue we cheered like mad--then more states went blue, and finally Virginia and Florida and NBC declared Obama President. Pandamonium! Chants of O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! and Yes We Can!, Yes We Can!, Yes We Can! Most emotional for me were the cheers of "U-S-A!" "U-S-A!" "U-S-A!" It had been a long time since I was proud of my own country. Great to be there, great to have done it, great to be with that crowd at that time and in that place. On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 2:11 AM, boddi satva wrote: > On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 12:38 PM, shag carpet bomb > wrote: > > Out of curiosity, I was hoping folks who actually got involved in the > > campaign could tell me a little more about what they observed. For > instance, > > did anyone actually participate in how the campaign used barcodes to > track > > potential voters. > > When you say the campaign "used barcodes" what do you imagine that means? > > Campaigns - at least smart ones - use barcoded forms to make it easier > for volunteers to enter information. That way they can put the > response info from calling or doorbelling into the computer by swiping > a laser pen over a form and hitting a couple numbers rather than > typing and finding and generally doing things that are time-consuming > and lead to mistakes. Alas, most campaigns get the training to use the > barcodes but end up not doing it. > > Barcodes are just a way to represent a number in a database. They have > nothing to do with SKUs on products or assimilation into The Borg. > > Republicans do use more consumer data in their targeting, mostly > through marketing consultants, as I understand it. Democrats focus > more on voter lists. Both sides are very unsophisticated relative to > private industry. > > What the new system the Dems use allows for is information to be > changed dynamically. During the Kerry campaign, a lot of people got > absolutely inundated with the same calls. This time you may have > noticed a lot less repetition. When you talked to a volunteer on the > phone, your responses actually were recorded in a meaningful way this > time! Wow! > > The biggest change to data this year was a huge expansion in the way > volunteers could be managed with Internet tools. > > The "data mining" that went on is really more data sharing. The fact > that the Democratic party now has a voter list backbone has moved the > world from one of campaigns hording their little spreadsheets of > names to a sharing across campaigns through a central system. > > And it's all done by people a lot like you. > > > Stuff like that -- or not like that also -- would be > > interesting. > > > > thanks! > > > > shag This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 10 13:06:48 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:06:48 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?utf-8?q?It=27s_a_tsunami_but_=2Cthe_economy_is?= =?utf-8?q?n=E2=80=99t_everything?= Message-ID: <49184E0A.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=77&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=&wpage=&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com It?s a tsunami By Grace Lee Boggs Special to The Michigan Citizen I have been searching for an image powerful enough to convey the historic significance of today?s economic meltdown and replace the misleading ?not since the Great Depression of the 1930s? clich?. With the help of Scott Kurashige, I found it on ?Clusterfuck Nation,? the weekly blog of author and social critic James Howard Kunstler. ?We are witnessing the two stages of a tsunami,? writes Kunstler. ?The current disappearance of wealth in the form of debts repudiated, bets welshed on, contracts canceled, and Lehman Brothers-style sob stories played out is like the withdrawal of the sea. ?The poor curious little monkey-humans stand on the beach transfixed by the strangeness of the event as the water recedes and the sea floor is exposed and all kinds of exotic creatures are seen thrashing in the mud, while the skeletons of historic wrecks are exposed to view, and a great stench of organic decay wafts toward the strand. ?Then comes the second stage, the tidal wave itself ? which in this case will be horrific monetary inflation ? roaring back over the mud flats toward the land mass, crashing over the beach, and ripping apart all the hotels and houses and infrastructure there while it drowns the poor curious monkey-humans who were too enthralled by the weird spectacle to make for higher ground. The killer tidal wave washes away all the things they have labored to build for decades, all their poignant little effects and chattels, and the survivors are left keening amidst the wreckage as the sea once again returns to normal in its eternal cradle. ?So, that?s what I think we will get: an interval of deflationary depression followed by a destructive wave of inflation that will wipe out both constructed debt and constructed savings, scraping the financial landscape clean. There?s no question that stage one is underway. But we can be sure the giant wave of money recklessly loaned into existence in just a few weeks time will wash back through the global economy leaving a swath of destruction. ?And then what? The societies of the world will be faced with the task of rebuilding, systems of fruitful activity i.e. rather than the smoke-and-mirrors of Frankenstein-finance con games.? I believe Kunstler is right on. As we approach the second stage of the tsunami, our only salvation lies in ?rebuilding systems of fruitful activity.? Instead of hoping for a FDR to regulate, resurrect or reform capitalism (so that we can continue to struggle against it), we need to seize this opportunity to leave behind our competitive capitalist selves damaged by years of living in a society which values rapid growth of the economy over caring relationships with each other and with the Earth, and begin creating real economies based on ?fruitful activity.? To regain/maintain our humanity, we need to create economies that nurture our productive and better selves, economies based on collective self-reliance, cooperation and looking out for each other. Together, employed and unemployed, we can prevent foreclosures, build our communities and our cities, plant community gardens, host community fairs to feed and clothe ourselves. Together we can slow down global warming by living more simply so others can simply live. This is our time to look in the mirror and recognize we are the ones who have brought on this tsunami because we have been living beyond our means and the Earth?s capacity. In order to ensure our access to more than our fair share of the world?s resources, we maintain nearly 700 military bases in countries all over the world and are now desperately trying to quell popular resistance to our occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the process we have not only killed over 4,000 Americans and countless Iraqis and Afghans, we have also militarized our own hearts and minds. Healing ourselves and our world can begin with our building fruitful local economies that value our relationships with one another over consumer goods. Instead of saving capitalism, we will be saving our selves and our planet. As Will Allen, urban farmer and 2008 winner of the MacArthur award, put it recently, ?We have to go back to when people shared things and started taking care of each other. That?s the only way we will survive.? The economy isn?t everything By Grace Lee Boggs Special to The Michigan Citizen In these times of economic meltdown, when so many of us are losing our homes and our jobs and agonizing about how to pay our bills, the conventional wisdom is to insist that the economy is everything, and that you?re stupid if you don?t agree. That is why I?d like to share the email about the Dow that I received this week from my friend, Rosa Naparstek, who used to live in Detroit and now lives in New York. Rosa is an artist who helps us liberate our imaginations from the dominant culture and get to our human essence. In August she gave a very moving slide show presentation of her artwork at the Boggs Center. She called it ?Childscapes? because it revealed how our inner landscapes form the emotional roots of the world we create personally and politically. In this email about the Dow ,Rosa reminds us that life isn?t only about the economy. We are, first and foremost, human beings who down through the ages have created our way of life according to who and what we are. Until the onset of capitalism only a few centuries ago, our relationships with one another and our communities, not the rapid growth of the economy, were what we valued. The current crisis provides us with the opportunity to reclaim those fundamental human values. ?Last week,? her email begins, ?my sister and I went to Ellis Island , the portal of our entry into the United States in 1951. I remember standing on deck at the railing, holding my father?s hand and cheering at the sight of the statue and land. I knew we had arrived for a new life and home. ?My father was a socialist who brought me up to respect labor and recognize that capitalism was an exploitative form of human relationships. He was a scholar and also by trade an ?upper maker? (the top part of the shoe) who worked at Henry Ford?s cutting upholstery. My mother worked there too, sewing the upholstery. She had been a seamstress. He wanted to teach me how to make shoes so that I could always earn a living. I told him I didn?t need to; that I would go to college and be safe. ?Now, after many professions, I find myself gathering things, the fruit of human labor, to put together in a form that honors the story behind them so that I too can finally say I have made something with my hands. ?We are at an interesting juncture. The sky is falling. Crisis, danger and opportunity are palpable. Evolution takes a long time, but emergent realities can sometimes break through. ?Many celebrated when ?communism? failed in what seemed ?not with a bang, but a whimper.? We won, we won! And now, who will say forthrightly that capitalism, unfettered markets and unaccountable profits, have failed, bringing us down with a global bang? ?As much as I read and have read about economics now and in the past, I feel most of what we say about it is fiction. We do not live the truths in each theory. We live and create from the truth of who and what we are. ?Socialism and communism are spiritual economic systems: to give according to our abilities and receive according to our needs. And, the final stage, the withering away of the state, is the stage when we no longer need external rules or laws because we have become our best and highest selves, and are unafraid to know that we are all one. ?Laissez faire also has its theoretical validity, a belief in personal freedom, which after all is also the highest goal of ?the withering away of the state.? However, personal freedom unmoored from spiritual development can become greed and ruthless disregard of the other and the best in ourselves. ?We can create an economy of caring and sharing and cooperating. The land is still here. The people, hands, minds are still here. It is an affair of the heart, giving and receiving.? This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 10 14:49:03 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:49:03 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Historic November 4 Election:People's Demands for Change Message-ID: <49186600.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> THE ORGANIZER NEWSPAPER P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140 Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217 email: The Organizer at earthlink.net> ------------------------------------------------ [Please Endorse this Statement and Join Us in Promoting it Widely!; Please Excuse Duplicate Postings] Historic November 4 Election: People's Demands for Change Must Now Be Heeded! Hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of people took to the streets spontaneously across the country the night of Nov. 4 to celebrate the election of Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president. This was an historic election, not because electing the nation's first Black president signifies the end of racist oppression in this country, but because millions of Blacks, Latinos, youth, and working people of all backgrounds seized on this election to say: enough is enough, racism and oppression must end now. In the context of the deepening economic crisis, the election also was a cry from working people of all backgrounds: We cannot accept the destruction of our jobs, our homes, our public services and our communities -- this crisis is not of our making and we should not be made to pay for it. The corporate elite who own and control most of the wealth in this country are deeply worried that the powerful tide that lifted Obama to power may be too difficult to contain and to redirect back into safe channels for the ruling rich. They have loudly applauded Barack Obama's call, issued in his acceptance speech, for a "national consensus" between workers and bosses, rich and poor -- but, in their own way, they understand that the workers and all the oppressed nationalities may not be so easily co-opted into accepting "common solutions" with the employers. For the corporate elite "national consensus" means that working class organizations must give up their own specific demands and interests in the name of "national unity" and the "common good." This means bailing out the corporate elite, not addressing the pressing needs of working people and all the oppressed. Today, the country is confronted with a catastrophic situation. Since the beginning of the year, 1.2 million jobs have been lost and millions more are on the chopping block, more than 2 million people have lost their homes to foreclosure, social services are being dismantled left and right, and with the unfolding economic crisis even more severe attacks against working people are in store. In the aftermath of the election, the question of what way forward for working people is posed with great urgency. On Nov. 5, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney issued an important statement that raised the immediate need to promote the specific interests of working people in this situation. After noting that "[t]he election is just Step One in delivering the change we need," Sweeney stated that, "[W]orking people need an economic recovery package that will jump-start the economy and put America back to work. ... We need an immediate investment plan to create jobs by rebuilding our crumbling roads and schools and bridges." Sweeney went on to urge a national healthcare plan for the "nearly 50 million people who have no coverage or for the millions more who lack adequate coverage." He then underscored the federation's most pressing demand: [O]ur top priority is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that will restore workers' freedom to bargain for a better life." On Oct. 3, Democrats and Republicans -- working hand in hand with the Bush administration -- pulled off one of the greatest swindles in U.S. history when they gave away more than $1.3 trillion (including all funding prior to the Oct. 3 bailout plan) to the very Wall Street bankers who had profited from the home-mortgage speculative orgy. To address the AFL-CIO agenda (which in large part is endorsed by the Change to Win trade unions) requires stopping the Wall Street bailout plan in its tracks. Not one more penny should go to the speculators and bankers. Every dollar that goes to a speculator is one dollar less that could go to rebuilding the economy and putting millions of people back to work. Bailing out the speculators, moreover, will not solve the financial crisis. On the contrary, it will only deepen the problem. To meet the needs of the working class also requires opposing the scapegoating of immigrants and other sectors of the working class, and putting an immediate end to the war so that the needs of the people can be met. The time has come to implement an emergency plan to bail out working people -- NOT Wall Street. Here are some proposed demands that could be included in such a plan: 1) Put a halt to the Paulson bailout plan. Not one more penny should be earmarked to bail out Wall Street. It's time to bail out working people. 2) Enact a moratorium on all home foreclosures, utility shut-offs, evictions and rent hikes. 3) Enact the Employee Free Choice Act so that every worker can have union representation. 4) Stop the layoffs in auto and other industries across the country. 5) Stop the ICE raids and deportations. 6) Enact a universal, single-payer healthcare plan. 7) End all funding for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring our troops home now. Redirect all war funding to meet human needs. 8) Enact a massive national reconstruction public works program to rebuild the nation's schools, hospitals and crumbling infrastructure and to put millions of people back to work, with a living wage. Provide all necessary funding for a genuine Reconstruction program in the Gulf Coast. At this historic crossroads facing our country, it is more urgent than ever to forge the broadest unity in action of the labor movement, Black and Latino organizations, antiwar and other social protest movements to secure the emergency measures needed to address the pressing needs of all working people and oppressed nationalities. ****************** This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 10 15:52:21 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:52:21 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Dawn of a new era Message-ID: <491874D7.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> EDITORIAL: Dawn of a new era Author: PWW Editorial Board People's Weekly World Newspaper, 11/06/08 11:29 A seismic shift, a watershed moment, an electoral landslide or the dawn of a new era. No matter what the turn of phrase, Nov. 4, 2008, will go down in the history books as the beginning of the end of the 30-year political reign of the ultra-right and its vicious pro-corporate agenda, and the end of a beginning of new politics in the United States of America. Convinced by the power of one man?s arguments for hope, unity and change, his program and example, a 52 percent majority of voters rejected the old politics of fear, racism and red-baiting and elected Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States. Perhaps it was historically inevitable that this country elected its first African American president. The dynamics of slavery, race and racism, together with the historic role of the African American freedom movement in helping propel the expansion of democracy for all people, have always been a central narrative to the making of America. An accident of history, maybe, is the fact that in 2009 the country will celebrate the bicentennial birthday of another tall, lanky, transformative figure from Illinois: Abraham Lincoln. In this age of 24-hour news cycles and instant information, when a seismic victory happens it?s important to take a breath and reflect even while celebrating. There will be analysis in the coming weeks in our pages and web site. We?ll be taking closer looks at the many different actors, issues and developments. But here is an initial take, a basic framework to ponder and analyze such a momentous moment. This was a victory for the whole U.S. working class. And workers of all job titles, professions, shapes, colors, sizes, hairstyles and languages put their indelible stamp on this victory. This is an important point to ponder, not only for people here in the U.S., but also for our sisters and brothers around the world. The U.S. working class is pushing for a new day ? in which our country can be a good global citizen and not the ?rogue state? the Bush administration has projected. The most organized section of the working class ? the labor movement ? played a stellar role in this election, organizing more than 250,000 labor activists in critical battleground states. But it was its role in challenging and educating union members on racial bias, coupled with a program for economic recovery, that labor proved its invaluable mettle. A powerful coalition of forces, inspired towards a new kind of politics, bubbled up from the ground of discontent sown by the authoritarian, reckless and greed-driven policies of the Bush administration. Union members and retirees of all races and the African American people as a whole joined with the emerging political might of Latinos ? Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans and others ? and with women and young people en masse to successfully challenge the power of the ultra-right. And the seeds of a renewed and strengthened Jewish-Black unity ? historically so key to civil rights progress ? are taking root. Such unity ? as President-elect Obama said ? of ?young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled? is an idea that has been grasped by millions of people and made into a material force shattering the Republicans? ?Southern strategy? and forcing this party of the reactionary right into a meltdown. The election outcome represents a clear mandate for pro-people change on taxes, health care, the war in Iraq, job creation and economic relief, union organizing and the Employee Free Choice Act. Reform and relief are in the air. Their scope and depth will be the arena of struggle. The best thing the coalition that won this victory can do is to stick together and help the new administration carry through on its promises. We suspect an Obama administration will have to govern from the center with progressive and left voices included in the dialogue along with conservatives. The ultra-right and corporate interests will do everything in their power to limit, and even steal, the people?s victory. Jubilation and celebration, yes, along with realization that the hard work is just beginning. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 11 07:54:29 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:54:29 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Hindsight is twenty-twenty Message-ID: <49195658.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Owl of Minerva The owl of Minerva is the owl that accompanies Minerva in Roman myths, seen as a symbol of wisdom. The nineteenth-century idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel famously noted that "the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk" ? meaning that philosophy comes to understand a historical condition just as it passes away. Philosophy cannot be prescriptive because it understands only in hindsight. He had in mind the transition from eighteenth-century feudalism to nineteenth-century commercialism and democracy. ? One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it... When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's gray in gray it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk. ? ?G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (1820), "Preface" This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From Waistline2 at aol.com Tue Nov 11 10:32:21 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:32:21 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Rise of New Parties: Lessons from History Message-ID: The Rise of New Parties: Lessons from History Politics is undergoing major change in this country. The corporatization of government has placed severe limits on what the politicians and the two major corporate parties can do. At the same time, the vast majority of Americans face the destruction of their way of life. Today's two- party system is splitting and polarizing, opening the way for something new. The next stage in the development of the proletarian movement, which may only come together after other attempts at political realignment, will be the development of a working class party that better reflects the interests of those who were once at the heart of the system, but have lost their usefulness to it as technology has replaced them. They are a new class with no ties to capital. Revolutionaries have an important role to play in the fight of the working class for political independence and have no choice but to participate in each stage of the process, remaining clear about what the needs of the time are, and propagandizing based on what is politically driving the process rather than getting lost in its ups and downs. Remaining disengaged to see what happens or until some "perfect" party arises is not a choice for those who want to influence the process. Revolutionary activity in this process needs to be guided by an historical and theoretical framework. This article will examine the objective forces that shape how new political parties develop by looking at another major political shift in the U.S., the period that resulted in development of an entirely new Republican Party just before the Civil War. The period when a developing industrial capital was forced to fight for a free labor system in the U.S. provides lessons for our times that can help guide revolutionaries in the current political situation. Development of the Republican Party There are several lessons for the modern revolutionary from looking at the objective development of new political parties, specifically at the development of the Republican Party before the Civil War. First, political development goes through particular stages that respond to new technological-economic and social change. Second, this process starts with the destruction of the old party system and creation of a new one. Third, although multiple attempts to build a party responsive to a new political period often take place, the party that succeeds reflects an ability to identify the new needs and how to truly meet them. Political development in the half-century between 1800 and 1850 went through major change based on the dramatic changes in the economy, geographic size, and population of the United States. The use of the steam-powered cotton gin led to a gigantic increase in cotton production and the expansion of slavery in the agrarian South, while in the North, the use of steam power in factories - and the development of the steamboat, the steam-powered locomotive, and the steam-powered printing press - transformed the means of production, transportation and communication. full _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v18ed5art4.html_ (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v18ed5art4.html) From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 11 13:25:02 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:25:02 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] so what does Michigan think?? Message-ID: <4919A3D1.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> I'm just curious because I realize that I think differently than other folks but: GM, Ford, Chrysler...bail 'em out? or let 'em go? and why? Carla Carla, "I love (fill in country of our choice) but hate their leaders." Same could be said for the not so big 3. The executives have always been arrogant, greedy, short-sighted, self-important, let-them-eat-cake, they'll buy what we sell them jerks who should finally get what they so desperately deserve. (Of course, they also sold the public what they wanted - by creating and advertising and building it.) The workers, however...not so much. And, from a purely economic, practical point of view, 2 things 1) the government already bailed out Wall St, those despicable rapers and pillagers of everyone's retirements and savings and 2) middle-class workers pay for more goods and services and keep the economy rolling than unemployed people do. Discretionary income aside, middle class working people still pay for fundamentals such as mortgages or rent, utilities, health care, food and gas. And the auto companies can still provide the means to restore a working manufacturing class, but one who builds clean, fuel-efficient vehicles. Emphasis on green - for the products, for the workers, for the economy. So I am for the bailout, with caveats 1) Execs get no golden parachutes and pay is severely restricted 2) Working cash severely restricted 3) Balance of funds targeted specifically for retooling for green vehicles and/or other green energy products http://www.agorafinancial.com/iousa.html Laura This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 11 14:38:07 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:38:07 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Deutsche Bank's 3 possible futures for GM Message-ID: <4919B4F2.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Deutsche Bank's 3 possible futures for GM http://www.freep.com/article/20081111/BUSINESS01/81111002 Deutsche Bank analyst Rod Lache sees three possible outcomes for GM, none of which are good for shareholders. GM gets government loans, but is still forced to rework its debt and union obligations. The company cuts its U.S. brands to three, and needs more money for restructuring in the future. The government oversees GM's restructuring through a Chrysler-like bailout, forcing lenders to take a loss on their debts and taking an ownership stake in the company. GM goes bankrupt, with the government providing the cash necessary to keep GM operating through the bankruptcy. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 12 16:17:45 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:17:45 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Uncritical Exuberance or Reverse Schadenfreude ? Message-ID: <491B1DCF.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Uncritical Exuberance? by Judith Butler ^^^ CB: Does Butler have Reverse Schadenfreude ? Like many other leftists who either didn't support Obama or did so reluctantly, Butler predicts " a 'crash' ? a disappointment of serious proportions" if O doesn't quickly do what she says he should do. The problem is that Butler didn't predict that Obama would win, or help him derive his winning campaign platform. So, why would we turn to her for advice and counsel on how to proceed from here ? Seems that she should be asking Obama what he thinks he should do now. The vast majority who voted for O are probably not thinking about him or the US political situation the way Butler is. Butler also indulges the 10-plus months long left caricature of Obama enthusiasts as irrationally exuberant, substituting the word "uncritical" for "irrational" ( maniacs). This is a mis-characterization of them, and so one might predict that Butler's predictions will not materialize about how most of his militant supporters and just plain voters will turn on him. They will not materialize because she's not really in touch with the thinking and attitudes of most of his supporters in the first place. She's substituting her thinking for theirs. So, we might expect that _she_ might be disappointed, but she's not a very enthusiastic supporter in the first place. Like the spate of other dire predictions now coming from some of the left , we won't know whether they are accurate for many months. So , this and the others are a form of letting off steam . They have a sort of reverse schadenfreude. Instead of joy at the misfortunes of something or someone one doesn't like, it is melancholy at the good fortunes of someone one doesn't like - sour grapes. So, we can dub Butler and the rest the Sour Left. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From ballistanc at yahoo.com Wed Nov 12 19:02:37 2008 From: ballistanc at yahoo.com (john Hoyt) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:02:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] john wants to add you as a friend Message-ID: <20081113020237.3C30F110041@web0.grouply.com> I want to add you as a friend in Grouply so you can see my profile with my pictures, my groups, and my favorite group messages. Here is the link: http://www.grouply.com/register.php?r=1732164&vt=20267002 john ========================== Block Grouply Invites | Mark as SPAM Click here to block all emails from Grouply, 495 Seaport Court, Suite 103, Redwood City, CA 94063. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Wed Nov 12 22:58:05 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:58:05 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Uncritical Exuberance or Reverse Schadenfreude ? In-Reply-To: <491B1DCF.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> References: <491B1DCF.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: What total, utter idiocy. As a philosopher I think Butler is full of crap, but at least she's right about Obama. At 06:17 PM 11/12/2008, Charles Brown wrote: >Uncritical Exuberance? by Judith Butler > >^^^ CB: Does Butler have Reverse Schadenfreude ? >Like many other leftists who either didn't >support Obama or did so reluctantly, Butler >predicts " a 'crash' ? a disappointment of >seerious proportions" if O doesn't quickly do >what she says he should do. The problem is that >Butler didn't predict that Obama would win, or >help him derive his winning campaign >platform. So, why would we turn to her for >advice and counsel on how to proceed from here ? >Seems that she should be asking Obama what he >thinks he should do now. The vast majority who >voted for O are probably not thinking about him >or the US political situation the way Butler >is. Butler also indulges the 10-plus months >long left caricature of Obama enthusiasts as >irrationally exuberant, substituting the word >"uncritical" for "irrational" ( maniacs). This >is a mis-characterization of them, and so one >might predict that Butler's predictions will not >materialize about how most of his militant >supporters and just plain voters will turn on >him. They will not materialize because she's not >really in touch with the thinking and attitudes >of most of his supporters in the first place. >She's substituting her thinking for theirs. So, >we might expect that _she_ might be >disappointed, but she's not a very enthusiastic >supporter in the first place. Like the spate of >other dire predictions now coming from some >of the left , we won't know whether they are >accurate for many months. So , this and the >others are a form of letting off steam . They >have a sort of reverse schadenfreude. Instead of >joy at the misfortunes of something or someone >one doesn't like, it is melancholy at the good >fortunes of someone one doesn't like - sour >grapes. So, we can dub Butler and the rest the Sour Left. From jannuzi at gmail.com Thu Nov 13 02:22:47 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:22:47 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Uncritical Exuberance or Reverse Schadenfreude ? Message-ID: Well cripes I'd bet that little zionazi doggy Emanuel told BO that if he didn't drop his weak anti-Iraq war stance, he would lose. Give Butler a place in the new administration. Shit, Sen. Joe Blubberman will be over there having tea with Michelle every time they need his vote (unless he is out playing golf with Credit Card Joe Biden). CJ From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 13 09:32:24 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:32:24 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Scenario That May Repeat: US, USSR On Brink Of Nuclear War In 1983 Message-ID: <491C104F.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Scenario That May Repeat: US, USSR On Brink Of Nuclear War In 1983 http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/welsh-politics/welsh-politics-news/2008/11/10/how-the-world-came-to-the-verge-of-nuclear-war-91466-22220874/ WalesOnline November 10, 2008 How the World Came to the Verge of Nuclear War Len Scott and Nicholas J Wheeler, Professors of International Politics at Aberystwyth University A quarter of a century ago the world was on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. As two leading Welsh academics describe, the dangers were just as great as the anti-nuclear movement feared. This November marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. It is now clear that the leaders in the Soviet Union feared the United States was about to launch a nuclear attack under the cover of a NATO nuclear exercise codenamed Able Archer 83. At the time US policy-makers were unaware of the Soviet misperception. As Robert Gates, the current US Secretary of Defense has reflected, 'the most terrifying thing about Able Archer is that we may have been at the brink of nuclear war and not even known about it.' Subsequently, and mainly through British intelligence, Washington began to understand what had nearly happened. Some writers attribute Ronald Reagan's subsequent willingness to work with the Soviets to that realisation as much as the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev. The autumn of 1983 was one of the bleakest periods of the Cold War. In March 1983 Ronald Reagan, described the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire', and then announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), to explore the feasibility of defences against ballistic missile attack. SDI had a perplexing effect on the Soviets who behaved as though it was a reality rather than the aspiration of a President unencumbered by understanding of its potentially grave implications for deterrent stability and US relations with both its allies and principal adversary. Moreover, it is now evident that Soviet concerns about the Reagan administration reflected genuine fear of the United States, and were not simply rhetoric or propaganda. It is clear that British intelligence became aware of how the Soviet leadership viewed the prospect of a nuclear attack, through the recruitment of a KGB Colonel, Oleg Gordievsky, who provided evidence of Moscow's concerns. His intelligence on the events of 1983 was subsequently shared with Washington and helped frame US reassessments. However, this understanding did not become fully apparent until after the autumn of 1983. September 1983 may well have been the moment of maximum Soviet-American hostility when in the atmosphere of fear and distrust, a Soviet fighter shot down a South Korean airliner that had inadvertently flown into Soviet air-space killing all 269 people on board. .... Washington's exploitation of the event further fuelled Soviet concerns about US malign intent. It was in this context of heightened fear that the Soviet leadership viewed NATO's behaviour in November of that year. Able Archer 83 was an annual NATO command post exercise designed to test and rehearse nuclear release procedures, but which did not involve alerting or moving nuclear forces themselves. The exercise began on 2 November 1983 and lasted until 11 November. Soviet leaders became seriously concerned that NATO might be using the exercise to mask preparations for a genuine nuclear attack. At one stage the KGB appeared to have concluded that the West was already counting down to nuclear war. Soviet anxieties were exacerbated by their complete misperception [?] that American bases in Western Europe had been placed on alert. Earlier Western accounts suggested that the Soviet reaction had been limited to raising the alert state of interceptor aircraft in East Germany. More recently former Soviet military officials have suggested that preparatory measures went much further: with nuclear armed aircraft placed on cockpit alert, InterContienental Ballistic Missiles moved to a state of combat readiness and SS-20 mobile launchers dispersed around Eastern Europe. .... What is now clear is that many of the arguments of the anti-nuclear movement in Britain and Europe were far more prescient than governments understood at the time. .... There has been recent talk of a new Cold War, exacerbated by Western claims that events in Georgia can only be understood in terms of Russian aggression, together with continuing mistrust over NATO's deliberations about bringing both Ukraine and Georgia under the NATO security umbrella. This suggests that Western and Russian leaders have both much to learn from the events of 1983, and more generally from our growing understanding of the risks of inadvertent nuclear conflict during the Cold War. Deployments of radars and tracking stations in Eastern Europe as part of US National Missile Defence (the son or daughter of SDI) fuel Russian concerns about future American motives and intentions. These moves and counter-moves may generate a new spiral of fear and distrust as the United States and Russia fail to appreciate that what they view as defensive actions might be (mis)interpreted by the other side as offensive. The worry is that through such mutual misunderstandings and misperceptions Moscow and Washington may yet again find themselves at the brink of nuclear war that was reached in 1983. Len Scott and Nicholas J. Wheeler are Professors of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 13 13:40:50 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:40:50 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Down Jones Message-ID: <491C4A89.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> MARKETBEAT WSJ.com?s inside look at the markets Blog Search: < Analyst Box Score: General Motors -- Previous | SEE ALL POSTS FROM THIS BLOG | Next -- Bill Gates and His Footwear > November 13, 2008, 11:34 am The Dow Jones Indigestion Average Posted by David Gaffen If the Dow Jones Industrial Average is meant to serve as a broad snapshot of the economic situation as measured by a group of bellwether stocks, it cannot be accused of falling down on the job. Since its all-time closing high of 14164.53 on October 9, 2007, the index is off by more than 41%, and several components have fallen into the single digits, the latest being Alcoa, which was at $9.86 a share recently. A handful of the names in the 30-stock average are one way or another, on the public dole, having received federal assistance through the Treasury?s $700 billion program. ?It should be called the DJBR - the Dow Jones Bailout Recipient index,? says Barry Ritholtz, Fusion IQ?s CEO and director of equity research. Since hitting that high, nine of the index?s components have shed more than half of their value, and just one stock has gained ground: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., up 16% since then, perhaps the best illustration of the economic backdrop. All of the financial companies in the index, one way or another, are getting money from the federal government. General Electric can be thrown into that group too, and the less said about General Motors right now, the better. The outlook seems to have drastically worsened at Intel in a very quick way, and consumer names, particularly those tied to housing, like Home Depot, remain leaps of faith for investors. But a number of managers said a handful of the stocks in this index suggest strong value at this time. Generally, they gravitate to companies with strong cash flows and high returns on capital. Best and Worst Dow stock performers from 10/9/07 to 11/12/08 Leaders Change Wal-Mart +16.4% McDonald?s -5.9% Johnson & Johnson -12.6% Procter & Gamble -13% Kraft -20.7% Laggards Change GM -92% Citigroup -80% Alcoa -74.4% American Express -67.9% Bank of America -67.7% Larry Coats, principal at Oak Value Capital Management in Durham, N.C., names United Technologies (which he owns) as one of those that meet this criteria, as well as 3M, the diversified consumer stock. ?For the great businesses creating high returns and not handicapped by overlevered balance sheets, there?s a lot of flexibility in an environment like this,? he says. Bob Pavlik, chief investment officer at Oaktree Asset Management, applied similar criteria, pointing to those that are poised to capture ?more market share as we exit out of this downturn.? He owns, among others, UTX, International Business Machines, McDonald?s, and Caterpillar, the last of which he views favorably based on expectations for stimulus in the U.S. and China. The Dow, being a compact index of 30 stocks, is a good way for investors to determine what may or may not be worth buying now - and from there, fan out to related stocks. Ultimately, these stocks won?t continue to get pummeled in this fashion (ok, maybe GM), so Mr. Ritholtz believes ?the thing to do is work your way through this list and say, ?What company am I willing to buy, who is not going away, and who am I willing to buy if it gets somewhat cheaper??? The answer, according to Mr. Pavlik, is somewhat easier: ?The names I own on this list you can sleep well at night with,? he says. Permalink | Trackback URL: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2008/11/13/the-dow-jones-indigestion-average/trackback/ Save & Share: Yahoo! Buzz| Share on Facebook | Del.icio.us | Digg this | Email This | Print Read more: Numbers Game, Market Strategy Comments Report offensive comments to marketbeat at wsj.com Danm good article? Hum? Wal Mart, now ?Who? do you supose said ?Wal-Mart? survies? - About 10 months ago I wrote a blog about a shady little foothills Wa-Mart Store in NC across the street from a empty parking lot that used to house all the Big Maga Cap Mall (High End Super Stores)? now all but one are closed), at the time the Wal-Mart store parking lot was closed because people were parking on the side of the main street drag due to the Wal-Mart parking lot was causing a traffic jam and there was no where to park! So the police were directing traffic across the road into the other Mega Cap shoping mall? (now defunk) I would assume the same is true all across America, now on every Friday night (pay day) as the Avg. Joe and his family struggle to make ends meet? Ya? Think! Comment by "D"... - November 13, 2008 at 11:53 am DG, (*IT?s) awfull quite on on Wall Street today, matter of fact (*IT?s) too, too quite? ?What?s up with that?; could there be another major break (forth coming) in the Governments Intervention (TARP-Trap) in the dam of (Only Fools Rush IN) holding back the flood of ?Broken Life Long Dreams of the US Tax Payers Plight? - The Roof is damn nere ready to come off this pent up fustration of the 66.6% of the US Tax Payer? (Un-employment, Mort-age, Pension, SS, Medi-carless, 401K?s, Homeless, Hud-less, F&F (Empty) Steak House, and all the Non-Transparient Lies, Deceit, and Smoke and Mirrors of Broken Promises by the Government Leadership of Fools in Washington and across this once great country! ?Just? Where is the Law of the Land?? Comment by OMG... Alice... I've Srunk the Children! - November 13, 2008 at 12:07 pm Just a little foot note concerning the never ending saga of greed at our friends over at Ge? (GS, MS, and AIG)? HUM? - But for those concerned about GE?s dividend, TARP relief could be a positive thing. Companies that participate in the TARP plan are not allowed to raise dividends or buy back stock, but they do not have to cut dividends. Neel Kashkari, who is overseeing the TARP plan, said Monday at a conference about the government?s asset relief plan that companies participating in TARP should keep their dividends so that they remain attractive to private investors. AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), both recipients of massive amounts of government money, are still paying shareholder dividends. That seems to be interesting as The US Tax Payer is supplying the money for the ?TARP = Trap? (Ya? Think)! Comment by "D"... does Zero from Zero still = "ZERO"? - November 13, 2008 at 12:18 pm Oh? yea of small stature in the overall ?Big Picture?; open up your minds and follow the ?Yellow Brick Road? to the answer of where the Greed lies here.. is (*IT)the (Small Share holders) (Little People) (Common-Share)stock holders (Volume?) / Mega Insiders of (Peferred-Share) stock holders (Volume?)? hum? People of America? (66.6%) Tax Payers wake the hell up, please take control of you shrinking destiny? time is not on our side and we can not wait till March of 2009 (*IT) will be way to late! The NWO is at your back porch and has a crow bar! Comment by "BINGO"... "Follow the Yellow Brick Road"! - November 13, 2008 at 12:30 pm OZ Comment by Ted Webber - November 13, 2008 at 12:59 pm How economist, market analysts still expect economic recession and housing, stock market rebound with rate cuts, trillion dolar bail out plan instantly, when yu have consumer coonfidence plunged to deep recession low of 38, jobless rate climb to 6.5 % . with contimued housing, stock prices slump into next year. Dow JOnes index is behind the real economy, It top 143000 last year at the peak of subprime crisis, and at 12000 while the economy entering recession , most of the banking, finance, mortgae price plunge 50- 90 % , Dow Jones only down 20 %. Now Dow Jones index start to reflect the real state of the deep recession economy, plunge into 7000- 8000, do not expect year end rally to 10000, ignoring the troubled prolonged deept recession ahead As I warned on this blog repeatly that no industry, no country ( including high tech)can be immuned from this global recession due to burst of super sized global housing price bubble details on www.osawh.com/mortdefa.htm www.osawh.com/macro.html www.osawh.com/SP500.htm Comment by Warren Huang - November 13, 2008 at 1:10 pm As our ?Frear-less Leader? speaks at this very moment in time ?Wrap? Nan-OZ-Seconds around the World from the Harlot of Harlots center in the ?Emerald City? of greed, you had better listen very closely to the sound of the ?Global? crow bar that is sliping out of the side of his mouth! Woe? unto all US Tax Payers, if by chance you miss this sound of flag-erent Global Greed! Comment by "D"... - November 13, 2008 at 2:16 pm Um?I?ve notived that it dips down to around the high 7000?s then theres a rally up. Does anyone think it?ll actually drop and stay below 8000 for more than a couple of hours? Asking out of ignorance because 8000 seems to be the breaking point of some kind. Comment by Supposed to be working - November 13, 2008 at 3:01 pm There is a hedge holding up the chair against the back door handle, but alsa the theif in the night has a crow bar that is growing in leaps and bounds amound the G-20 sold off US Treasury Notes! Comment by "Wake up America... Wake the Heck Up!" ... Dorthy! - November 13, 2008 at 3:20 pm This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From dhenwood at panix.com Thu Nov 13 13:43:24 2008 From: dhenwood at panix.com (Doug Henwood) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:43:24 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Down Jones In-Reply-To: <491C4A89.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> References: <491C4A89.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: On Nov 13, 2008, at 3:40 PM, Charles Brown wrote: > The Dow Jones Indigestion Average Don't worry, Charles. Barry will fix it. Doug From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 13 13:47:08 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:47:08 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Down Jones In-Reply-To: References: <491C4A89.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: <491C4C03.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> > The Dow Jones Indigestion Average Don't worry, Charles. Barry will fix it. Doug ^^^ CB: Do I look worried (smile) ? This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 13 13:48:11 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:48:11 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paulsen shift from buying "toxic assets" to propping up marketfor debt signals deepening crisis. Message-ID: <491C4C43.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Paulsen shift from buying "toxic assets" to propping up marketfor debt signals deepening crisis. Fred Feldman Plus my comments on the decline of the deficit hawks in recent months, as the impact of the deflationary crisis sinks in: Three articles (two submitted in full) with a useful introduction by Prof. Mark Jensen of the Washington State-based Snow-News antiwar discussion list. Note particularly Roubini's prediction that the deflationary character of this crisis indicates that inflation rates in the imperialist countries will drop to under 1 percent despite the near-certainty of substantially-increased government deficits across the board. Note also the Bank of England head's statement that deflation of asset values, not inflation is the main problem stalking the imperialist world today. This does not indicate that a drive for balanced budgets is on the order of the day. This goes against the predictions of those, including leftists, who operate, including from an anticapitalist viewpoint, on the assumption that the deficit hawks are right as far as the interests of capitalism are concerned. There is no certainty at all that expanded government spending, public works program, environmental repair, social services, and so on will point the way out of the crisis, as the new wave of, I suppose, bourgeois deficit doves suggest.(Paul Krugman, whose NY Times columns stress the permissibility of substantial deficits in the recovery effort; the Financial Times' Martin Wolf, who urges running deficits as high as 10 percent of GDP. and a growing number of others). In the Great Depression the definitive resolution of the crisis came with the orgy of destruction of excess capital, products, and in passing, tens of millions of people in World War II. But a World War cannot be sucked out of the capitalists thumbs at any given moment and it is a very frightening prospect even for them. Meanwhile, capitalist markets -- especially in the US, whose market has for decades been the lynch pin of the world capitalist economy -- cry out to be sustained and prolonged inability of the system to feed its own slaves becomes a powerful source of highly destabilizing anticapitalist struggle. They also have an example from the "Third World," the turn towards public works, job programs, social programs, and even instances of bailing out workers rather than bosses in company crises in the heavily market-centered Chinese economy. Of course, this also indicates a different, more favorable political relationship of class forces at this time there than the one we have grown used to in the United States. This challenges the conventional post-80s anti-inflation deficit hawk postures of economists (at least as far as cutting wages, eliminating jobs, and cutting or eliminating huge chunks of the social wage. Nor should we take as given that those who played the deficit hawk role in the 80s and 90s (such as Volcker and Summers) will necessarily perform the same function this time). Dean Tuckerman in "Almost as significant as Obama's victory" and Louis Proyect in Louis Proyect in "Six Questions on the Obama Administration" (http://www.marxmail.org/msg52280.html) provide information indicating that the Obama government will be locked into the absolute need to slash the deficit to pay for the enormous gifts to the bankers. This is possible, but this reasoning sounds too much like making excuses for Obama in advance: he has "no choice" to slash social services to stuff more dollars into the bankers' maws. I simply want to point out that this course is not foreordained, that there are already strong counterforces -- including in the field of ideology -- operating that are likely to grow stronger. And also that the consequences of unleashed deficit hawkery are likely to be ruinous for the system, as well as for tens and even hundreds of millions of human beings and destructive of the political stability of the capitalist system. I know full well that does not mean it will not happen and if Obama takes that course, the guilt will be upon the king. A major factor in favor of such a destructive course is the ingrained contempt for the fighting capacity of working people in this country that has grown up out of decades of political passivity as a class. I'm sure it is hard for the billionaires to believe this nation of suckers could possibly cause them much pain. But I think that might well be a major miscalculation. Fred Feldman [On Sept. 28, a Reuters article (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/7938/) commented that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bill "still sheds little light on precisely how the asset purchases would occur. . . . [U.S.Treasury Secretary] Paulson would be required to publish implementation 'guidelines' for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) within 45 days of its enactment, or two business days after the first asset purchase, whichever is sooner." -- In the event, no assets were purchased at all, half the $700bn voted by Congress was devoted to other purposes, and 45 days later Secretary Paulson had the gall to announce: "Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use Tarp funds," the *Financial Times* reported Wednesday.[1] -- Krishna Guha and Michael Mackenzie called the reversal "stunning" and said it fed "a gathering sense of gloom as investors fled from risk and U.S. equity markets sank to levels approaching their October lows." -- Commentators spoke of "a real credibility problem." -- The *Financial Times*'s Lex column was not impressed.[2] -- " "[A]d hoc policymaking is again the order of the day . . . Fresh half-formed ideas add to the sense of confusion at the top. . . . [P]erplexing is the vague notion that TARP funds should go to buyers in the markets for securitizing credit card, auto, and student debt. There are Fed liquidity facilities in place to ease this market already. . . . The Treasury is trapped in its own vicious circle. . . . [F]lashpoints abound in finance and beyond. The TARP was first sold as a comprehensive approach to market woes. It now looks anything but." -- In a review of the situation Tuesday, NYU economist Nouriel Roubini called the outook "dismal": "Obama will inherit and economic and financial mess worse than anything the U.S. has faced in decades: the most severe recession in 50 years; the worst financial and banking crisis since the Great Depression; a ballooning fiscal deficit that may be as high as a trillion dollar in 2009 and 2010; a huge current account deficit; a financial system that is in a severe crisis and where deleveraging is still occurring at a very rapid pace, thus causing a worsening of the credit crunch; a household sector where millions of households are insolvent, into negative equity territory and on the verge of losing their homes; a serious risk of deflation as the slack in goods, labor, and commodity markets becomes deeper; the risk that we will end in a deflationary liquidity trap as the Fed is fast approaching the zero-bound constraint for the Fed Funds rate; the risk of a severe debt deflation as the real value of nominal liabilities will rise given price deflation while the value of financial assets is still plunging." [3] -- Roubini predicted Secretary Paulson's announcement a day before it happened: "Almost all of the $700 billion in the TARP program will be used to recapitalize U.S. financial institutions (banks, broker dealers, insurance companies, finance companies, etc.) as rising credit losses (close to $2 trillion) will imply that the initial $250 billion allocated to recap these institutions will not be enough; sooner rather than later a TARP 2 will become necessary as the recapitalization needs of U.S. financial institutions will likely be well above $1 trillion." -- "[B]eware of those who tell you that we reached a bottom for risky financial assets," he cautioned. -- http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/8044/ 1. World U.S. DROPS PLAN TO BUY TOXIC ASSETS By Krishna Guha (Washington) and Michael Mackenzie (New York) Financial Times (London) November 12, 2008 (updated Nov. 13) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cdb3ee0-b0ef-11dd-8915-0000779fd18c.html [snip] 2. Lex Finance & governance TARP RECAST Financial Times (London) November 12, 2008 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1/a662168e-b0ea-11dd-8915-0000779fd18c.html Farewell, TARP, we hardly knew ye. The $700bn troubled asset relief program will now not buy up home loans or mortgage-backed paper -- except, perhaps, in a focused fashion. Instead, the authorities are again changing tack, broadening the scope of their hastily constructed capital purchase scheme, targeting consumer credit by the ungumming of securitization markets and aiming to reduce home foreclosures. After a brief period of what looked like focus, ad hoc policymaking is again the order of the day -- with two of the seven TARP policy teams losing their remit. Enabling non-bank financial institutions to apply for an injection of favorably priced funds was probably inevitable. It should at least save time -- and lawyers' fees -- for those insurers, say, or other credit providers previously attempting to squeeze themselves through a loophole. The quid pro quo for taking stakes in non federally regulated companies is tying purchases to private capital investments. Fresh half-formed ideas add to the sense of confusion at the top. Loan modifications, intended to be a second-order benefit from Treasury ownership of assets, are all the rage. Changes to payment plans, though, are better motivated by private sector necessity than federally subsidized mandate. More perplexing is the vague notion that TARP funds should go to buyers in the markets for securitizing credit card, auto, and student debt. There are Fed liquidity facilities in place to ease this market already. Most potential buyers would simply prefer to wait. Non-recourse financing to help leveraged investors, meanwhile, seems an odd priority. The Treasury is trapped in its own vicious circle. Further declines in the prices of mortgage-backed assets, now bereft of their government buyer, will feed back into a banking system already on federal life support. Meanwhile, flashpoints abound in finance and beyond. The TARP was first sold as a comprehensive approach to market woes. It now looks anything but. 3. Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor THE DISMAL OUTLOOK FOR THE U.S. AND GLOBAL ECONOMY AND THE FINANCIAL MARKETS By Nouriel Roubini RGE Monitor November 11, 2008 http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/254354/the_dismal_outlook_for_the_us_ and_global_economy_and_the_financial_markets Here is a below brief summary of many of the points that I have made for the last few months on the outlook for the U.S. and global economy and for financial markets: * The U.S. will experience its most severe recession since WWII, much worse and longer and deeper than even the 1974-75 and 1980-82 recessions. The recession will continue until at least the end of 2009 for a cumulative GDP drop of over 4%; the unemployment rate will likely reach 9%. The U.S. consumer is shopped out, saving less and debt burdened and now faltering: this will be the worst consumer recession in decades. * The prospect of a short and shallow 6-8 months V-shaped recession is out of the window; a U-shaped 18-24 months recession is now a certainty and the probability of a worse multi-year L-shaped recession (as in Japan in the 1990s) is still small but rising. Even if the economy were to exit a recession by the end of 2009 the recovery could be so weak because of the impairment of the financial system and of the credit mechanism (i.e. a growth rate of 1-1.5% for a while well below the potential of 2.5-2.75%) that it may feel like a recession even if the economy is technically out of the recession. * Obama will inherit and economic and financial mess worse than anything the U.S. has faced in decades: the most severe recession in 50 years; the worst financial and banking crisis since the Great Depression; a ballooning fiscal deficit that may be as high as a trillion dollar in 2009 and 2010; a huge current account deficit; a financial system that is in a severe crisis and where deleveraging is still occurring at a very rapid pace, thus causing a worsening of the credit crunch; a household sector where millions of households are insolvent, into negative equity territory and on the verge of losing their homes; a serious risk of deflation as the slack in goods, labor, and commodity markets becomes deeper; the risk that we will end in a deflationary liquidity trap as the Fed is fast approaching the zero-bound constraint for the Fed Funds rate; the risk of a severe debt deflation as the real value of nominal liabilities will rise given price deflation while the value of financial assets is still plunging. * The world economy will experience a severe recession: output will sharply contract in the Eurozone, U.K., and the rest of Europe, in Canada, Japan, and Australia/New Zealand; there is also a risk of a hard landing in emerging market economies. Expect global growth -- at market prices -- to be close to zero in Q3 and negative by Q4. Leaving aside the effects of the fiscal stimulus China could face a hard landing growth rate of 6% in 2009. The global recession will continue through most of 2009. * The advanced economies will face stag-deflation (stagnation/recession and deflation) rather than stagflation as slack in goods markets, slack in labor markets, and slack in commodity markets will lead advanced economies inflation rates to become below 1% by 2009. * Expect a few advanced economies (certainly U.S. and Japan and possibly others) to reach the zero-bound constraint for policy rates by early 2009. With deflation on the horizon a zero-bound on interest rates implies the risk of a liquidity trap where money and bonds become perfectly substitutable, where real interest rates become high and rising thus further pushing down aggregate demand, and where money market funds returns cannot even cover their management costs. Deflation also implies a debt deflation where the real value of nominal debts is rising thus increasing the real burden of such debts. Monetary policy easing will become more aggressive in other advanced economies -- even if the ECB will cut too little too late -- but monetary policy easing will be little effective as it will be pushing on a string given the glut of global aggregate supply relative to demand and given a very severe credit crunch. * For 2009 the consensus estimates for earnings are delusional: current consensus estimates are that S&P 500 earnings per share (EPS) will be $90 in 2009 up 15% from 2008. Such estimates are outright silly and delusional. If EPS fall -- as most likely -- to a level of $60 then with a multiple (P/E ratio) of 12 the S&P500 index could fall to 720, i.e. about 20% below current levels; if the P/E falls to 10 -- as possible in a severe recession, the S&P could be down to 600 or 35% below current levels. And in a very severe recession one cannot exclude that the EPS could fall as low as $50 in 2009 dragging the S&P500 index to as low as 500. So, even based on fundamentals and valuations, there are significant downside risks to U.S. equities (20% to 40%). Similar arguments can be made for global equities: a severe global recession implies further downside risks to global equities of the order of 20-30%. Thus, the recent rally in U.S. and global equities was only a bear market sucker's rally that is already fizzling out buried under a mountain of awful worse than expected macro, earnings and financial news. * Credit losses will be well above $1 trillion and closer to $2 trillion as such losses will spread from sub-prime to near prime and prime mortgages and home equity loans (and the related securitized products); to commercial real estate, to credit cards, auto loans and student loans; to leveraged loans and LBOs, to muni bonds, corporate bonds, industrial and commercial loans, and CDS. These credit losses will lead to a severe credit crunch absent a rapid and aggressive recapitalization of financial institutions. * Almost all of the $700 billion in the TARP program will be used to recapitalize U.S. financial institutions (banks, broker dealers, insurance companies, finance companies, etc.) as rising credit losses (close to $2 trillion) will imply that the initial $250 billion allocated to recap these institutions will not be enough; sooner rather than later a TARP 2 will become necessary as the recapitalization needs of U.S. financial institutions will likely be well above $1 trillion. * Current spreads on speculative grade bonds may widen further as a tsunami of defaults will hit the corporate sector; investment grade bond spreads have widened excessively relative to financial fundamentals but further spread widening is possible driven by market dynamics, deleveraging and the fact that many AAA-rated firms (say GE) are not really AAA and should be downgraded by the rating agencies. * Expect a U.S. fiscal deficit of almost $1 trillion in 2009 and 2010. The outlook for the U.S. current account deficit is mixed: the recession, a rise in private savings and a fall in investment, and a further fall in commodity prices will tend to shrink it, but a stronger dollar, global demand weakness, and a larger U.S. fiscal deficit will tend to worsen it. On net we will observe still large U.S. twin fiscal and current account deficits and less willingness and ability of the rest of the world to finance it unless the interest rate on such debt rises. * In this economic and financial environment it is wise to stay away from most risky assets for the next 12 months: they are downside risks to U.S. and global equities; credit spreads -- especially for speculative grade -- may widen further; commodity prices will fall another 20% from current level; gold will also fall as deflation sets in; the U.S. dollar may weaken further in the next 6 to 12 months as the factors behind the recent rally weather off while medium term bearish fundamentals for the dollar set in again; government bond yields in U.S. and advanced economies may fall further as recession and deflation emerge but, over time, the surge in fiscal deficits in the U.S. and globally will reduce the supply of global savings and lead to higher long term interest rates unless the fall in global real investment outpaces the fall in global savings. Expect further downside risks to emerging markets assets (in particular equities and local and foreign currency debt) especially in economies with significant macro, policy, and financial vulnerabilities. Cash and cash-like instruments (short-term dated government bonds and inflation-indexed bonds that do well both in inflation and deflation times) will dominate most risky assets. * So serious risks and vulnerabilities remain and the downside risks to financial markets (worse than expected macro news, earnings news, and developments in systemically important parts of the global financial system) will dominate over the next few months the positive news (G7 policies to avoid a systemic meltdown, and other policies that -- in due time -- may reduce interbank spreads and credit spreads). So beware of those who tell you that we reached a bottom for risky financial assets. The same optimists told you that we reached a bottom and the worst was behind us after the rescue of the creditors of Bear Stearns in March, after the announcement of the possible bailout of Fannie and Freddie in July, after the actual bailout of Fannie and Freddie in September, after the bailout of AIG in mid September, after the TARP legislation was presented, after the latest G7 and EU action. In each case the optimists argued that the latest crisis and rescue policy response was "THE CATHARTIC" event that signaled the bottom of the crisis and the recovery of markets. They were wrong literally at least six times in a row as the crisis -- as I consistently predicted here over the last year -- became worse and worse. So enough of the excessive optimism that has been proven wrong at least six times in the last eight months alone. * A reality check is needed to assess the proper risks and take the appropriate actions. And reality tells us that we barely literally avoided only a week ago a total systemic financial meltdown; that the policy actions are now finally more aggressive and systematic and more appropriate; that it will take a long while for interbank markets and credit markets to mend; that further important policy actions are needed to avoid the meltdown and an even more severe recession; that central banks instead of being the lenders of last resort will be for now the lenders of first and only resort; that even if we avoid a meltdown we will experience a severe U.S. [and] advanced economy and most likely global recession, the worst in decades; that we are in the middle of a severe global financial and banking crisis, the worst since the Great Depression; and that the flow of macro, earnings and financial news will significantly surprise (as during the last few weeks) on the downside with significant further risks to financial markets. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From jannuzi at gmail.com Fri Nov 14 03:03:37 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:03:37 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paulsen shift from buying "toxic assets" to propping up marketfor debt signals deepening crisis. Message-ID: What the f- is this? A Fred Feldman digest? Fred was one of those marxmal idiots who said Hilary Clinton would join the McCain ticket and we would see a complete change of the two parties. excerpt>>Dean Tuckerman in "Almost as significant as Obama's victory" and Louis Proyect in Louis Proyect in "Six Questions on the Obama Administration" (http://www.marxmail.org/msg52280.html) provide information indicating that the Obama government will be locked into the absolute need to slash the deficit to pay for the enormous gifts to the bankers. This is possible, but this reasoning sounds too much like making excuses for Obama in advance: he has "no choice" to slash social services to stuff more dollars into the bankers' maws. I simply want to point out that this course is not foreordained, that there are already strong counterforces -- including in the field of ideology -- operating that are likely to grow stronger. And also that the consequences of unleashed deficit hawkery are likely to be ruinous for the system, as well as for tens and even hundreds of millions of human beings and destructive of the political stability of the capitalist system.<< Well that was fun. I got news for you, there is not much room to "slash the deficit" unless BO cuts defense and war budgets--and Dept. of Homeland Insecurity. The only way he is going to put things towards balanced is to raise taxes on the rich. But I doubt if this is going to work because (1) try taxing capital gains when there are none and (2) those who do have capital gains are most likely sheltering it in offshore accounts and funds linked to hedge funds and private equity. It's an exhilarating time to be alive. CJ From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Nov 13 14:13:30 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:13:30 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Judith Butler on Obama Message-ID: <491C5232.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Judith Butler on Obama Gary MacLennan "dialectics of disillusionment" ^^^ CB: Sounds sort of like the revolution will be betrayed ...yet one more time ! ( anticipatory) or The Sour Left , "uncritical exuberance" and the Revolution will be betrayed one more time: reverse schadenfreude and the dialectic of disillusionment. (Y'all are such sweeties in trying to protect my heart; how cute , smile) Uncritical Exuberance? by Judith Butler ^^^ CB: Does Butler have Reverse Schadenfreude ? Like many other leftists who either didn't support Obama or did so reluctantly, Butler predicts " a 'crash' - a disappointment of serious proportions" if O doesn't quickly do what she says he should do. The problem is that Butler didn't predict that Obama would win, or help him derive his winning campaign platform. So, why would we turn to her for advice and counsel on how to proceed from here ? Seems that she should be asking Obama what he thinks he should do now. The vast majority who voted for O are probably not thinking about him or the US political situation the way Butler is. Butler also indulges the 10-plus months long left caricature of Obama enthusiasts as irrationally exuberant, substituting the word "uncritical" for "irrational" ( maniacs). This is a mis-characterization of them, and so one might predict that Butler's predictions will not materialize about how most of his militant supporters and just plain voters will turn on him. They will not materialize because she's not really in touch with the thinking and attitudes of most of his supporters in the first place. She's substituting her thinking for theirs. So, we might expect that _she_ might be disappointed, but she's not a very enthusiastic supporter in the first place. Like the spate of other dire predictions now coming from some of the left , we won't know whether they are accurate for many months. So , this and the others are a form of letting off steam . They have a sort of reverse schadenfreude. Instead of joy at the misfortunes of something or someone one doesn't like, it is melancholy at the good fortunes of someone one doesn't like - sour grapes. So, we can dub Butler and the rest the Sour Left. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From ballistanc at yahoo.com Fri Nov 14 16:36:27 2008 From: ballistanc at yahoo.com (juan De La Cruz) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:36:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?iso-8859-1?q?Fw=3A_la_reconciliaci=F3n_democr?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=E1tica?= Message-ID: <882082.30423.qm@web35507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 11/14/08, betancouour romana wrote: From: betancouour romana Subject: la reconciliaci?n democr?tica To: "juan De La Cruz" Date: Friday, November 14, 2008, 6:22 PM La reconciliaci?n democr?ticaEl art?culo que aqu? reproducimos fue publicado en el Peri?dico ??Libertad!? (Publicaci?n del Grupo Anarquista Libertad) No. 40 enero-febrero 2007. Nos parece importante reproducirlo tanto por la importante y profunda cr?tica de fondo y a contracorriente de la democracia (sin comillas), sino porque nos da cuenta de lo que ha ido sucediendo en Argentina y explica la baja del nivel de lucha aut?noma del proletariado. La denuncia de todas las fuerzas y mecanismos que contribuyen en ese proceso de cooptaci?n estatal de las luchas proletarias es una tarea fundamental de los revolucionarios. * * *La democracia imperante es el triunfo de la dictadura. Y habr?a que decir que demo?cracia no necesita de comillas ni de adjetivaciones que remarquen una supuesta false?dad por burguesa, representativa o imperfecta. Ni est? corrompido su ed?nico origen ateniense ni est? traicionada su finalidad social. Esto es verdadera democracia porque, m?s all? de que mute en tiempo o espacio, su car?cter es siempre el mismo: el consen?timiento de la esclavitud, la participaci?n de los oprimidos en la construcci?n de la propia c?rcel. Por supuesto que no es perfecta, como algunos se lamentan; tiene errores, gracias a Dios... La dictadura no es un error de la democracia. Aquella anida enfundada en el cinto de ?sta hasta que los canales del di?logo entre la sociedad y el Estado -es decir, la pol?tica- resultan insuficientes para el mantenimiento del orden. Es entonces cuando es desenvainada de los cuarteles para formatear a la democracia de los escollos de su nor?mal proceso, el consentimiento de la esclavitud. ? El pasado proceso de reorganizaci?n de la democracia, es decir, la dictadura, es decir, el exterminio sistem?tico de los opositores que amenazaron el normal exterminio sistem?tico realizado por la burgues?a, cumpli? sus objetivos. Objetivos que las fuerzas militares hab?an fijado en cumplir hasta en tiempos m?s o menos preestipulados. En Argentina el retorno a la democracia se vio precipitado porque las c?pulas militares se excedieron de su funci?n del exterminio interno para aventurarse en una guerra no pautada: la de Malvinas. A diferencia, en Chile, la recanal?zaci?n democr?tica no fue negociada con la oposici?n permitida sino que fue el resultado de los propios meca?nismos institucionales que la propia c?pula militar hab?a fijado. El triunfo de la democracia -es decir, de la dictadura- consiste en su legitimizaci?n como orden social; afirmaci?n que se sostiene tanto con la acepci?n de utop?a perfectible como con la de mal menor preferible. Pero por sobre todo, la mentalidad que atraviesa las diferentes acepciones y que constituye el pilar de la legitimizaci?n de la democracia es el reclamo de enjuiciamiento a los operadores directos del exterminio. La reconciliaci?n nacional reclamada por los sectores reaccionarios, y repudiada por la izquierda, se est? llevando a cabo, precisamente, al afirmar a la legalidad y al Estado, junto con la polic?a, la c?rcel, los jueces y todas las instituciones represivas, como los garantes del respeto humano. La reconciliaci?n del Estado con la sociedad es el principal resultado de los reclamos y la puesta en marcha de su autodepuraci?n, seg?n las exigencias actuales. Esto no se dio sin contradicciones. Las primeras tentativas, a finales de 1a d?cada de los ?80, no hab?an logrado acumular la suficiente fuerza c?vica y medi?tica y la depuraci?n estatal apenas pudo dar unos pasos. La progresiva p?rdida de la capacidad de resistencia de los sectores actuantes del Proceso gracias al creciente consenso democr?tico que, por un lado, los evidenciaba como ya obsoletos e innece?sarios y, por el otro, por las denuncias de los movimientos de derechos humanos que lograron eco en las capas medias y altas de la sociedad, propici?, en el marco de una corriente internacional que resignifica y potencia el car?cter absoluto de la Ley por sobre las relatividades nacionales, la reubicaci?n de esos elementos usados en los espacios f?sicos del residuo social -las c?rceles-, y como estigma de irracionalidad o de exabrupto estatal dentro del imaginario colectivo. Los muertos y desaparecidos significan lo visible y manifiesto del Proceso mientras que el miedo, calado m?s profunda e invisiblemente en la conciencia colectiva, ha empujado a toda una generaci?n social a refugiarse bajo el manto de los mismos verdu?gos que ayer masacraron ? 30 mil personas. Los centros de detenci?n legales son esgri?midos en respuesta a los que no estuvieron sancionados por la Constituci?n.? La c?rcel, la misma tortura que siglos atr?s era exhibida en forma de suplicio por las calles y hoy solapada con sombra y cemento, es legitimada como la dispensar?a de lo humanamente justo, y el juez y el carcelero pasan a ser los fundamentales garantes de ello. Hoy, los beneficiarios de la dictadura, la burgues?a, -?los responsables intelectuales? ya ?olvidados y perdonados?- son al mismo tiempo quienes reniegan de las t?cticas pasadas empleadas y son los que se deshacen de los perros viejos. Estos andan sueltos, adiestrados y recelosos de sus amos, que no fueron tan leales como ellos mismos... Las fuerzas del orden, cumplida ya su funci?n de instaurar la democracia, son llamadas ahora a reorganizarse acorde a las exigencias de la legalidad. Los elementos regresivos y reticentes son limpiados o encausados desde esa exigencia que es legiti?mada como legalidad protectora y garante de humanidad. Los elementos directamente afectados resisten remarcando la importancia de la funci?n que cumplieron para el mantenimiento de la seguridad estatal. Desechados por el Estado que busca reempla?zarlos por nuevas generaciones seg?n la funcionalidad coyuntural, se mueven por los m?rgenes de la legitimidad que ahora aqu?l redelimita y redefine, apoyado en los movi?mientos que hist?ricamente le reclamaron actualizaci?n. En los casos de Julio L?pez y Luis Gerez -?ste ?ltimo completamente oficializado y oficialista- el gobierno se ha puesto a la cabeza del reclamo de esos movimientos. Como ayer el Estado se apropi? de la vida de miles, como ayer se apropi? de los hijos de los desaparecidos; hoy, la apropiaci?n de los desaparecidos por parte del Estado es reivindicarlos luego de torturarlos, alabarlos luego de arrojarlos desde aviones, rehabi?litarlos luego de la picana, de la capucha... El Poder se erigi? pisoteando los cuerpos y hoy se pretende revestir con la lucha y con lo que una generaci?n de j?venes brind?. Mudos, acallados en las fosas, bajo las aguas, entre el cemento de columnas; el asesino se erige como vocero de sus v?ctimas y se apropia del derecho de venganza, haciendo del sadismo su justicia. Semejante apropiaci?n es solo posible por esta reconciliaci?n social, resultado de una progresiva entrega de ?todo?. A.G. Grupo Anarquista Libertad ? www.geocities.com/grupo_libertad publicaci?n_libertad at yahoo.com.ar From jannuzi at gmail.com Sun Nov 16 02:02:42 2008 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:02:42 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Remembering the slaughter in Indonesia Message-ID: I love it when one of the news services puts out a piece of 'history', taking time out from writing up US propaganda about Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. One wonders if this is a sign that the 'powers that be' hope the new BO presidency will be a time for some 'deStalinization' and glasnost of the US national security rogue state and its allies in the Cold War. Given that most Americans couldn't find Indonesia on a map (let alone know that it is the world's most populous Muslim majority country), most would never notice this article anyway. --------------------- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081115/ap_on_re_as/as_indonesia_cold_war_massacre Indonesians recount role in massacre By ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press Writer Anthony Deutsch, Associated Press Writer ? Sat Nov 15, 1:13 pm ET SURABAYA, Indonesia ? The men bound the thumbs of dozens of suspected communists behind their backs with banana leaves and drove them to a torch-lit jungle clearing. As villagers jeered, the prisoners were killed, one by one. "There was no resistance," remembers Sulchan, then the 21-year-old deputy commander of an Islamic youth militia. "All of them had their throats cut with a long sword." Sulchan was a killer in one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, where up to half a million people were massacred in 1965-66 in a purge of communists backed by the United States government. The bloodbath swept into power the dictator Suharto, who ruled for three decades. Today, Indonesian history books make no mention of any deaths, and government and military officials depict what happened as a necessary national uprising against a communist threat. In a series of interviews with The Associated Press, Sulchan and three other killers said the massacres were in fact a carefully planned and executed state operation and described some of its horrors for the first time. In their rare testimony, all the men spoke of what they did with detachment and often pride, and expressed no regret at what they described as defending their country and religion, Islam. The CIA refuses to talk about the operation even today, citing security reasons. But documents released by the National Security Archives in Washington, D.C., show that the U.S. Embassy passed the names of dozens of Communist Party leaders, and possibly many more, to the Indonesian army, along with some of their locations. Documents also show that officials from the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia passed on information to Washington about the killings of 50 to 100 people every night. The U.S. Embassy declined to comment. Even after Suharto's death in January, many who aided the purge are still in positions of power or influence, including former and current government, military and intelligence leaders, experts say. And the suppression of information about the abuses of the era means there has been no meaningful redress for the families of the dead. "In all the newspapers and magazines published since late 1965, it is extraordinarily rare to find a perpetrator's description of the killings," says John Roosa, a professor at the University of British Colombia who wrote the book "Pretext for Mass Murder." The testimony of the four men gives a glimpse into how the killings unfolded. The frenzy began shortly after Sept. 30, 1965, after an apparent abortive coup in which six right-wing generals were murdered and dumped in a well near the capital, Jakarta. Suharto, an unknown major general at the time, stepped into the power vacuum. He blamed the assassinations on Indonesia's Communist Party and claimed they were targeting Islamic leaders. No conclusive proof of communist involvement in the coup has been produced, but the party was then the largest outside the Soviet Union and China, with some 3 million members. It also had an armed wing and serious financial clout. Its growing ties with China and Russia worried Washington, at a time when the Vietnam War was intensifying and fears of communist takeovers in Southeast Asia were running high. The four men interviewed by the AP, were members of the local Islamic youth militia, Banser, or of anti-communist youth movements in East Java. They were in their 20s at the time, and Sulchan and his superior jointly commanded a 200-member branch of Banser. Sulchan, now a 64-year-old preacher, says the "order to eliminate all communists" came through Islamic clerics with Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama. Sulchan led the first killing in his neighborhood ? that of a schoolteacher, Hamid, said to have had communist ties. We "hit him in the head with a sledgehammer and he died instantly," says Sulchan, a tall, lanky man who wears a wraparound Javanese sarong, his crooked teeth stained by years of smoking sweet clove cigarettes. He points calmly up the street to the spot of the murder, a piece of cracked pavement and an abandoned kiosk overgrown with weeds. On another day, his men decapitated a man named Darmo because they feared he would return to life and take revenge. His head was hung from a banyan tree in the town square and his body dumped on the other side of the river, says Sulchan, sitting on the tiled floor of his mosque. On one night, Sulchan's platoon helped unload 20 to 30 prisoners at the execution site and beat to death a man who tried to escape. The rest were forced to the ground and killed. A man pleaded with his executor to tell his child to study the Quran, Islam's holy book. The executor agreed, then murdered him too. The bodies were dumped in a ditch. Such scenes were repeated across Java, Sumatra and the eastern island of Bali for several months in 1965 and 1966. "I am convinced the actions were justified because communists were the enemy of my religion," says Sulchan. "I thought: This is what people get for not submitting to religion. I felt righteous." Sulchan's superior, Mansur, commanded the Banser militia for two years and describes a highly efficient operation. Mansur, who like many Indonesians goes by one name only, collected the names of suspected communists in the region. Their houses were marked in red on maps, and he ordered his men to round them up. Those who resisted were killed on the spot. Others were taken to detention centers, then trucked to killing fields and shot, stabbed, beheaded and beaten to death, he says. He saw the slaying of hundreds of unarmed detainees in his village, whose remains now lie beneath an unmarked, trash-strewn lot. "We didn't want the country to become a communist state," says Mansur, sitting on a porch bench after returning from Friday afternoon prayers, wearing a tidy Indonesian batik shirt, thin spectacles and an Islamic cap. "I don't have any regrets." A few miles away, businesses and homes said to be communist were plundered and their owners driven away, says Munib Habib, who led an anti-communist student movement. The houses belonged to Indonesian-Chinese, a much-resented minority in Indonesia targeted again in 1998 riots that left hundreds dead. "We were informed by a spy that they were hoarding staple foods. We went to the shops and dragged out the owners," says Habib, now a 64-year-old Muslim cleric and local politician. Satuman, a former member of the youth wing of the National Party who now lives in a simple cement house with his son, says the kidnappings and killings targeted not only known communists, but retired army and navy members, peasants and teachers. He says he saw people taken in trucks from the local prison for mass killings in the evening. About 60 people were shoved to the ground and butchered as they screamed, he says. Then the bodies were dumped in a freshly dug trench, some of the victims apparently still alive. "The soldiers opened fire into the hole," remembers Satuman, 68. The men spoke proudly of saving the nation from a communist takeover targeting Islamic leaders. However, the claim that the massacres were necessary is baseless, Roosa says. "Most of the killings were simple executions of helpless detainees," he says. Even today, a ban on the Communist Party remains in force in Indonesia, and people marked as ex-political prisoners endure lingering mistrust and discrimination. Witnesses to the state-sponsored killings were silenced under the Suharto dictatorship, fearing kidnapping, imprisonment or even death. Suharto commanded widespread respect, with the Indonesian president and tens of thousands of mourners attending his funeral in January. But shortly after, Indonesia's Human Rights Commission launched an inquiry into the abuses of his reign. And the New York-based Human Rights Watch believes the perpetrators should be put on trial to "open up an important chapter of Indonesia's history that remains all but taboo more than 40 years after the fact. "Justice, accountability, and an end to impunity are not just about the past," says Brad Adams, who heads the group's Asian division. Gustaf Dupe, who says he spent four years in jail without trial and was tortured and beaten, leads an association of 6,500 family members pushing for the government to acknowledge its role in the killings and return confiscated property. "Some mass graves have been discovered," says Dupe. "But there is still opposition to digging them up, identifying the bodies and reburying them in a humane and religious way." From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sun Nov 16 12:23:45 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:23:45 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Loren Goldner's Message-ID: <49202CF1.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Loren Goldner 's I've just added a new text to the Break Their Haughty Power web site "Social Reproduction for Beginners: Bringing Reality Back In": http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/socreprod.html as a supplement to "The Biggest October Surprise of All" and "Fictitious Capital for Beginners". Comments and critique appreciated. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 17 13:29:23 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:29:23 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Minsky Moment Message-ID: <49218DD3.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> The Minsky Moment From: Bill Totten by John Cassidy The New Yorker (February 04 2008) Twenty-five years ago, when most economists were extolling the virtues of financial deregulation and innovation, a maverick named Hyman P Minsky maintained a more negative view of Wall Street; in fact, he noted that bankers, traders, and other financiers periodically played the role of arsonists, setting the entire economy ablaze. Wall Street encouraged businesses and individuals to take on too much risk, he believed, generating ruinous boom-and-bust cycles. The only way to break this pattern was for the government to step in and regulate the moneymen. Many of Minsky's colleagues regarded his "financial-instability hypothesis", which he first developed in the nineteen-sixties, as radical, if not crackpot. Today, with the subprime crisis seemingly on the verge of metamorphosing into a recession, references to it have become commonplace on financial Web sites and in the reports of Wall Street analysts. Minsky's hypothesis is well worth revisiting. In trying to revive the economy, President Bush and the House have already agreed on the outlines of a "stimulus package", but the first stage in curing any malady is making a correct diagnosis. Minsky, who died in 1996, at the age of seventy-seven, earned a PhD from Harvard and taught at Brown, Berkeley, and Washington University. He didn't have anything against financial institutions - for many years, he served as a director of the Mark Twain Bank, in St Louis - but he knew more about how they worked than most deskbound economists. There are basically five stages in Minsky's model of the credit cycle: displacement, boom, euphoria, profit taking, and panic. A displacement occurs when investors get excited about something - an invention, such as the Internet, or a war, or an abrupt change of economic policy. The current cycle began in 2003, with the Fed chief Alan Greenspan's decision to reduce short-term interest rates to one per cent, and an unexpected influx of foreign money, particularly Chinese money, into US Treasury bonds. With the cost of borrowing - mortgage rates, in particular - at historic lows, a speculative real-estate boom quickly developed that was much bigger, in terms of over-all valuation, than the previous bubble in technology stocks. As a boom leads to euphoria, Minsky said, banks and other commercial lenders extend credit to ever more dubious borrowers, often creating new financial instruments to do the job. During the nineteen-eighties, junk bonds played that role. More recently, it was the securitization of mortgages, which enabled banks to provide home loans without worrying if they would ever be repaid. (Investors who bought the newfangled securities would be left to deal with any defaults.) Then, at the top of the market (in this case, mid-2006), some smart traders start to cash in their profits. The onset of panic is usually heralded by a dramatic effect: in July, two Bear Stearns hedge funds that had invested heavily in mortgage securities collapsed. Six months and four interest-rate cuts later, Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Fed are struggling to contain the bust. Despite last week's rebound, the outlook remains grim. According to Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, average house prices are falling nationwide at an annual rate of more than ten per cent, something not seen since before the Second World War. This means that American households are getting poorer at a rate of more than two trillion dollars a year. It's hard to say exactly how falling house prices will affect the economy, but recent computer simulations carried out by Frederic Mishkin, a governor at the Fed, suggest that, for every dollar the typical American family's housing wealth drops in a year, that family may cut its spending by up to seven cents. Nationwide, that adds up to roughly a hundred and fifty-five billion dollars, which is bigger than President Bush's stimulus package. And it doesn't take into account plunging stock prices, collapsing confidence, and the belated imposition of tighter lending practices-all of which will further restrict economic activity. In an election year, politicians can't be expected to acknowledge their powerlessness. Nonetheless, it was disheartening to see the Republicans exploiting the current crisis to try to make the President's tax cuts permanent, and the Democrats attempting to pin the economic downturn on the White House. For once, Bush is not to blame. His tax cuts were irresponsible and callously regressive, but they didn't play a significant role in the housing bubble. If anybody is at fault it is Greenspan, who kept interest rates too low for too long and ignored warnings, some from his own colleagues, about what was happening in the mortgage market. But he wasn't the only one. Between 2003 and 2007, most Americans didn't want to hear about the downside of funds that invest in mortgage-backed securities, or of mortgages that allow lenders to make monthly payments so low that their loan balances sometimes increase. They were busy wondering how much their neighbors had made selling their apartment, scouting real-estate Web sites and going to open houses, and calling up Washington Mutual or Countrywide to see if they could get another home-equity loan. That's the nature of speculative manias: eventually, they draw in almost all of us. You might think that the best solution is to prevent manias from developing at all, but that requires vigilance. Since the nineteen-eighties, Congress and the executive branch have been conspiring to weaken federal supervision of Wall Street. Perhaps the most fateful step came when, during the Clinton Administration, Greenspan and Robert Rubin, then the Treasury Secretary, championed the abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which was meant to prevent a recurrence of the rampant speculation that preceded the Depression. The greatest need is for intellectual reappraisal, and a good place to begin is with a statement from a paper co-authored by Minsky that "apt intervention and institutional structures are necessary for market economies to be successful". Rather than waging old debates about tax cuts versus spending increases, policymakers ought to be discussing how to reform the financial system so that it serves the rest of the economy, instead of feeding off it and destabilizing it. Among the problems at hand: how to restructure Wall Street remuneration packages that encourage excessive risk-taking; restrict irresponsible lending without shutting out creditworthy borrowers; help victims of predatory practices without bailing out irresponsible lenders; and hold ratings agencies accountable for their assessments. These are complex issues, with few easy solutions, but that's what makes them interesting. As Minsky believed, "Economies evolve, and so, too, must economic policy". http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/02/04/080204taco_talk_cassidy http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 18 23:31:48 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:31:48 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Eric Foner et al on Lincoln & Obama Message-ID: A conversation about Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln with Jonathan Alter, Eric Foner and Mark Halperin on Monday, November 17, 2008 Charlie Rose http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9589 I have not watched this video on the Internet and caught only a few minutes of this on TV Monday night. From what I heard I was rather disappointed in Foner, possibly America's most distinguished historian, who should have known better than to take seriously a comparison of Obama and Lincoln. What do you make of this? From farmelantj at juno.com Wed Nov 19 05:17:01 2008 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:17:01 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Trotsky biography recommendations Message-ID: <20081119.071701.24911.1@webmail04.vgs.untd.com> An academic friend has asked me for recommendations concerning biographies of Trotsky. He is interested in something that would be in his words, "not quite "pop" but easy enough to read" He wants something that would be not too laden with historical or technical controversy but would still give the reader a good sense of what Trotsky went through and was trying to do. Thank you, Jim Farmelant ____________________________________________________________ Find the right teaching school to meet your educational needs. Click to learn more. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/PnY6rw25lE4rfd8A46RV8YEDQSKEvNZxqaH9Wi1dCWksjRqTsUcBT/ From shmage at pipeline.com Wed Nov 19 07:28:31 2008 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:28:31 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Trotsky biography recommendations In-Reply-To: <20081119.071701.24911.1@webmail04.vgs.untd.com> References: <20081119.071701.24911.1@webmail04.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: <179C17A5-7CBD-455E-85FE-5C8C442E5EB5@pipeline.com> On Nov 19, 2008, at 7:17 AM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote: > > > An academic friend has asked me for recommendations > concerning biographies of Trotsky. > He is interested in something that would > be in his words, "not quite "pop" but easy enough to read" > He wants something that would be not too laden > with historical or technical controversy but would > still give the reader a good sense of what Trotsky > went through and was trying to do The only possible choice is the magnificent autobiography, "My Life." Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 19 07:54:22 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:54:22 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Can the auto industry borrow AIG's lobbyist? Message-ID: <4923E24F.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Can the auto industry borrow AIG's lobbyist? http://www.freep.com/article/20081111/COL10/81112001/1164/COL10 BY ROCHELLE RILEY ? FREE PRESS COLUMNIST ? November 11, 2008 Read Comments(27)Recommend(2)Print this page E-mail this article Share this article: Del.icio.us Facebook WASHINGTON -- No governor could have gotten a tougher crisis to handle than Gov. Jennifer Granholm has. The governors of Louisiana and Florida, where hurricanes have devastated the economy and lives, would disagree. But if the American auto industry fails -- and many people amazingly still don?t believe it?s possible -- IT WOULD BE AN UNNATURAL DISASTER OF DEVASTATING AND INSURMOUNTABLE NATIONAL PROPORTIONS. (Yes, I?m screaming that part.) And the governor can?t seem to convince people of the urgency. So this emergency couldn?t have happened to a nicer governor. And right now, Michigan doesn?t need nice: We need tough. President-elect Barack Obama gets the urgency. He urged President George W. Bush Monday to support immediate emergency aid for the auto industry. Ironically, his request came on the same day that the government announced it would purchase American International Group (AIG) stock to relieve strain on AIG, which has received about $143 billion in aid since September -- without strings attached, without constant begging, without promises. But before it will help the auto industry, the administration wants to demand that failing companies do something they were unable to do when they were healthier. Oh, and the president wants to tie auto aid to a free-trade agreement with Colombia. It isn?t fair. And Michigan needs to borrow AIG's lobbyist, the one who convinced the administration to write near blank checks to the insurance company. Granholm is positioned to help; she?s the only governor on Obama?s economic panel of advisers. And she?s there, a close adviser to Obama affirmed Sunday, because Obama wants her to counsel him on the unique woes of the state with the nation?s highest unemployment rate. ?It was really important to him to have the governor from the state that is the hardest hit by the economy sitting at the table,? Valerie Jarrett, a cochair of his transition team said during an interview. Granholm ?is taking a beating, as is her state, and so it?s so important that he have her counsel and advice.? But a day later, when the governor got her first postelection chance to make a national case for auto aid, it, uh, didn?t go too well. The difference between what she told the ?Today? show?s Matt Lauer and what she should have told Lauer was vast: When Lauer asked why Americans should give money to the auto industry, she reminded him that it was a loan. She should have reminded him that it was a loan, then query why it was easier to throw money at financial and mortgage crises caused by greed. When Lauer asked why America should help an industry that has nearly bankrupted itself because of too-high union costs and unpopular car designs, she said the industry had negotiated a new contract with the United Auto Workers that is full of sacrifice -- and that people just aren?t buying cars. She should have said that there was little public support for the $700-billion congressional bailout bill, but Congress bailed first and made plans to deal later with the greed that led to the sub-prime mortgage disaster. When Lauer asked why Americans should believe the auto industry wouldn?t be back to ask for more money, she said no one wants that. What she should have said was that if the auto industry fails and at least 3 million people lose their jobs, the mortgage and insurance industries will be back again as foreclosures shoot through the roof. Obama is right to ensure that Michigan is a part of every discussion about the nation?s economic crisis. Michigan has not diversified its economy enough to replace the jobs that would be lost by an industry meltdown. And he?s right that the auto industry needs to do what it hasn?t: improve fuel efficiency. But making the auto companies write 100 times on the board ?I will do better? while the classroom is burning down makes no sense. So either the governor needs to ramp up her anger and lobbying skills, or she can counsel Obama while the state's new lobbyist makes America understand that the auto crisis is as real as those in the banking and insurance industries. In your voice Read reactions to this story Newest first Oldest first painfultime wrote: If we had to bailout banks, why did we have to give Paulson a blank 80 bil check? We were doomed from that point. This guy's career was launched in the Nixon admin. But this lead could tell the story. I heard that Bush threatened martial law when he summoned the congress to the white house if they didn't sign off on the bailout. That would have meant that no election could take place. I will check out that lead and get the source. 11/14/2008 5:47:29 p.m. EDTIf we had to bailout banks, why did we have to give Paulson a blank 80 bil check? We were doomed from that point. This guy's career was launched in the Nixon admin. But this lead could tell the story. I heard that Bush threatened martial law when he summoned the congress to the white house if they didn't sign off on the bailout. That would have meant that no election could take place. I will check out that lead and get the source.
painfultime Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse OctopiAlley wrote: Rochelle we've already dealt with Granholm who's been promising with the tax strings attached and despite all the warnings and begging... so far its been a complete failure, but at least she stuck to her ideals... so far Blown Away, 2 million jobs! Don't yell so much, you sound like MC 11/13/2008 3:27:21 p.m. EDTRochelle we've already dealt with Granholm who's been promising with the tax strings attached and despite all the warnings and begging... so far its been a complete failure, but at least she stuck to her ideals... so far Blown Away, 2 million jobs!

Don't yell so much, you sound like MC OctopiAlley Recommend(1) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse OctopiAlley wrote: Replying to browndog2: Replying to oakland: right on and what has always been wrong with our Governor. When it comes to a fight with Bishop, the media, or anybody else, she's a useless milquetoast. compromise and capitualte then stand and die on principle.Governor and a spokesman who can and will fight, and Granholm isn't it. see Bonoir out there then her. Of coarse you would.Any liberal union buttkisser tax raising over regualtion red taped bureaucrat is so much better than a conservative, business friendly republican could ever hope to be. Read Freidman New York Times today. Even liberal partisans can see the writing on the wall. Not Michiganders. Keep doing it the way you've always done it.Stay on the same path you've always been on.Keep electing the same old same old Not as "changey" as advertized, huh? The Idea is for you to Change, Liberals resolve to "die on principle" no matter what the results. 11/13/2008 3:07:33 p.m. EDT

Replying to browndog2:

Replying to oakland:

right on and what has always been wrong with our Governor. When it comes to a fight with Bishop, the media, or anybody else, she's a useless milquetoast. compromise and capitualte then stand and die on principle.Governor and a spokesman who can and will fight, and Granholm isn't it. see Bonoir out there then her.
Of coarse you would.Any liberal union buttkisser tax raising over regualtion red taped bureaucrat is so much better than a conservative, business friendly republican could ever hope to be.
Read Freidman New York Times today. Even liberal partisans can see the writing on the wall. Not Michiganders. Keep doing it the way you've always done it.Stay on the same path you've always been on.Keep electing the same old same old
Not as "changey" as advertized, huh?


The Idea is for you to Change, Liberals resolve to "die on principle" no matter what the results.
OctopiAlley Recommend(1) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse freep.com Staff rriley99 wrote: CDBpic: Your question is: Why should the automakers improve fuel efficiency? The answer is: Because if they did, more people would buy American cars, and selling more cars will increase their bottom line.You can't make a profit, if you don't sell. That's the basic tenet of retail. You may think that the problem is gas; the problem is having to buy so much gas, and more and more Americans are choosing their cars based on budget and environment instead of look and luxury. R 11/13/2008 10:31:34 a.m. EDTCDBpic: Your question is: Why should the automakers improve fuel efficiency? The answer is: Because if they did, more people would buy American cars, and selling more cars will increase their bottom line.You can't make a profit, if you don't sell. That's the basic tenet of retail. You may think that the problem is gas; the problem is having to buy so much gas, and more and more Americans are choosing their cars based on budget and environment instead of look and luxury. R rriley99 Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse buyamerican55 wrote: Paulson is a corrupt crook - something needs to be done to take this guy out of office. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Wed Nov 19 09:47:48 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:47:48 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Manny Fried's "Boilermakers & Martinis" now available on DVD Message-ID: Emanuel Fried: Playwright, Novelist, Actor, Professor, Labor Organizer, Distinguished Citizen of Buffalo, New York "Symbol of the Left who must be broken" ?- FBI "The most dangerous man in Western New York" -? Member of Buffalo Chamber of Commerce, Catholic Priest When I inaugurated the Emanuel Fried Center in June 2003 . . . http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/mfried/home.html . . . there was practically nothing about radical labor organizer, actor, playwright, and writer Manny Fried on the web, and I concluded that a major web presence was needed. Years before I had attended Manny's plays and readings in our common hometown of Buffalo, NY, and I wished to see Manny's reputation extended beyond our local area and selected radical and cultural circles to the larger world. Manny agreed to this project and provided me material for the web site. I've just completed a survey of Manny's presence on the web and the results can be found on my links page: http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/mfried/links.html As you can see, Manny has gained quite a bit of attention in recent years and remains highly active at the age of 95. Judging from this material, one would conclude his considerable reputation remains largely confined to Western New York. Please do what you can to spread the word far and wide. There is much autobiography in Manny's unique labor-oriented work, but his one-man play Boilermakers and Martinis, which premiered in the Road Less Traveled Productions' 2007/08 season, sums up his life experience. His performance is now available on DVD. See my advert: http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/mfried/boilermakers-dvd.html From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 19 14:14:06 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:14:06 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Incidents Message-ID: <49243B4E.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/racial-incidents-and- thre_b_144061.html Racial Incidents and Threats Against Obama Soar: Here Is a Chronicle Since election day, the number of threats against the president- elect, and racial or violent incidents directed at his supporters, have soared. The Secret Service is concerned, calling it the highest number of threats against a President-elect in memory, but the national media until this weekend have largely ignored the disturbing pattern. So a few days ago, over at the Editor & Publisher site, we started chronicling the incidents, which has drawn wide attention (so we will continue, though we hope the problem subsides). Some claim that, given the size of this great country of ours, the incidents don't amount to much or are merely anecdotal. I would argue: The ones we know about may represent only the tip of the iceberg -- the ones that make it into the local press. And, yes, they may die down as the country gets used to the idea of a President Obama. On the other hand: They could soar again as that reality nears. So let me just briefly list the full range of episodes, which doesn't even include several cross burnings on front lawns. These aren't necessarily the worst but they do capture the national flavor/fever. Note that about 2 out of 3 took place in states that Obama won. * In a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner." * In Idaho, the Secret Service is investigating a "public hanging" sign erected by a man upset with the election outcome, the Bonner County Daily Bee reported Thursday. A handmade sign posted on a tree reads "FREE PUBLIC HANGING" written in large letters beneath a noose fashioned from nylon rope. The most prominent name on the sign is "OBAMA," according to the Bee. "That's a political statement. They can call it whatever they want, a threat or whatever," the creator of the sign, Ken Germana, told the Bee. * A popular white supremacist Web sites got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election, compared with 91 new members on Election Day. The site, stormfront.org, was temporarily off-line on Nov. 5 because of the overwhelming amount of activity it received. One poster, identified as Dalderian Germanicus, of North Las Vegas, said, "I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how 'messiahs' come to rest." * From the Orange County (Ca.) Register: "Two gang members pleaded not guilty Thursday to hate crime and attempted robbery charges in connection with the beating of a black man who was trying to buy cigarettes at a Fullerton liquor store." The two men shouted racial and anti-Obama epithets in the attack. * From today's New York Times: "Two white Staten Island men face hate crimes charges after they were arrested on Friday in the beating of a black teenager on the night that Barack Obama was elected president, the police said on Saturday. The teenager, Alie Kamara, 17, was walking home on Pine Place in the Staten Island neighborhood of Stapleton when several men hit him on the head with a baseball bat and yelled 'Obama,' said Aliya Latif, the civil rights director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who was in contact with Alie's family since the attack and spoke to his mother on Saturday after the arrests were announced." * In Mississippi alone, the American Civil Liberties Union has received more than 10 calls since the staff first reported anti-Obama incidents last Friday, according to the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press. * In Midland, Mich., a man dressed in full Ku Klux Klan regalia walked around toting a handgun and waving an American flag. Initially denying it, the man eventually admitted to police that the display was a reaction to the Obama victory. "[The man] had a concealed weapon permit and was walking up and down the sidewalk in front of a vehicle dealership while some motorists shouted obscenities at him and others shouted accolades," police told The Saginaw News. * Parents in Rexburg, Idaho, contacted school officials this week after they learned that 2nd and 3rd graders on a school bus were chanting, "Assasssinate Obama!" * At the University of Texas in Austin, a racist post on Facebook has cost one student his place on the university football team, according to the Houston Chronicle. Buck Burnette, a sophomore offensive lineman for the fourth-ranked Texas Longhorns, was dismissed from the team on Nov. 5 after posting a racist remark about President-elect Obama as his "status" on the social networking Web site. Burnette posted: "All the hunters gather up, we have a [slur] in the White House," the Chronicle reported. * AP reports: "While the world watched a Grant Park celebration heralding the election of the first black U.S. president, some white Chicago police officers committed hate crimes against black residents cheering Barack Obama's victory elsewhere in the city, attorneys alleged Thursday." Lawsuits have been filed. * At Appalachian State University, the administration has expressed disappointment at the numerous times black students have expressed being harassed in residence halls since the election. The Appalachian, a student newspaper serving the university, also reported conversations suggesting Obama may not be alive in 2009 and a t-shirt seen around campus that reads "Obama '08, Biden '09." * Mentioned in the same article, racist comments were discovered at North Carolina State University last week. Spray-painted in university's free expression tunnel after the election were the phrases, "Kill that n..." and "Shoot Obama," the Appalachian reported. The NAACP has called for the expulsion of the four students accused of the graffitti, the Associated Press reported Thursday. * The Associated Press revealed on Wednesday, "Police on eastern Long Island are investigating reports that more than a dozen cars were spray painted with racist graffiti, reportedly including a message targeting President-elect Barack Obama. The graffiti included racist slurs and sexually graphic references. At least one resident in the quiet Mastic neighborhood told Newsday her son's car was scribbled with a message threatening to kill Obama." * Employees at Hampel's Key and Lockshop in Traverse City, Michigan, flew an American flag upside down last Wednesday protesting of the new president-elect, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported. One worker used a racial slur during an interview with the Record-Eagle: "(The inverted flag is) an international signal for distress and we feel our country is in distress because the n----- got in," said Hampel's employee Rod Nyland, who later apologized for the comment, according to the Record-Eagle. * Authorities in Temecula, Calif., found spray-painted graffiti on a city sidewalk containing a swastika and anti-Obama slogan. And from the Los Angeles Times: "Vandals spray-painted swastikas and racial slurs on a house and several cars in Torrance that displayed campaign signs or bumper stickers for President-elect Barack Obama, authorities said Tuesday. The incidents occurred Saturday night in the Hollywood Riviera section of the city, said Sgt. Bernard Anderson. Four separate incidents were reported the next day, he said. No arrests have been made." * And from Maine: "More than 75 people rallied Sunday against an incident last week in which black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island the day after Barack Obama won the presidential election," according to the Bangor Daily News. * Greg Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher and its popular blog. His latest book, on Iraq and the media, is "So Wrong for So Long." His book on the 2008 campaign will be published in January. Email him at: gmitchell at editorandpublisher.com This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 19 15:19:18 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:19:18 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Class and race in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Vote Message-ID: <49244A97.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> [Marxism] Class and race in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Vote (was: RE Completed Election Demographics) Joaquin Bustelo jbustelo at gmail.com Sat Nov 15 17:51:40 MST 2008 Previous message: [Marxism] Completed Election Demographics E-Mail Next message: [Marxism] Class and race in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Vote (was: RE Completed Election Demographics) Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey Thomas Piercy writes: "After the election, I started looking at CNN.com's huge list of statistics, copying ones I thought were interesting. I was probably there for 45 minutes before I had to leave and I'd only gone through about half of them. "The more income a person had, the more likely they were to vote for McCain," except, as Jeffrey noted later in his post, for the very top income demographic, $200K or more, where Obama's support increased somewhat. * * * Before I get to the meat of the matter, some background, because the origins, validity, usefulness or seriousness of these numbers has been called into question. The statistics that have been presented are from the general election national exit poll. They're not just CNN's but are done by the Edison/Mitofsky polling consortium for the "National Election Pool," composed of the major TV networks that do news (CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC [including MSNBC]) and the Associated Press wire service. Other news organizations also subscribe to the poll, I think through AP affiliation. Apparently, all members of the National Election Pool are allowed to call the one and only common exit poll "their own" exit poll. CNN says it's the CNN exit poll and ABC says its the ABC exit poll. But there is one and only one poll. The National exit poll was done at 300 precincts, with an interviewer stopping every nth person as they came out (fifth, seventh, or whatever), asking them to fill out the questionnaire. The number surveyed at each precinct was approximately 50, but the exact figure varied depending on turnout and cooperation rate. I do not know what the cooperation rate was this year; in recent election cycles (2000 and 2004) I believe it averaged just over 50%. In addition, about 2400 phone interviews with absentee/early voters were conducted and integrated into the poll in the right weighted proportion. Those 2400 phone interviews were obtained the same way normal public opinion phone surveys are done, by "random digit dialing." The total sample size of the national poll was almost 18,000. There were also 51 separate and distinct exit polls done in all states and Washington, D.C., with the same basic methodology, except that the number of sample precincts per state varied anywhere from 10 (Utah) to 50 (large "battleground" states like FL, OH, PA). How the number of precincts are assigned to each state is unclear to me, although "battleground" status seems to be a criteria. For example, Virginia had 50 precincts; North Carolina, 45; Georgia had 30, as did California and New York. As in the national poll, where needed state exit polling was supplemented by phone interviews with early/absentee voters using the same questions. These data were then integrated into the overall exit poll in what the polling experts considered to be the right proportion, depending on the proportion of early voters. Oregon was a phone-only poll because all voting is by mail. At a precinct, when someone declines to fill in the questionnaire for the poll, the poll taker takes note of the person's apparent race/ethnicity, age and sex. Exit poll results are "weighted" to take that into account, the overall "weight" of that precinct (obviously, it would be goofy to give the same weight to 50 interviews from a precinct of 300 as 50 interviews from one of 3,000) the actual vote at the polled precinct, and the statewide, regional and/or national projected or actual vote tabulation (depending on the state of the race). One of the uses of the exit poll is to help so-called "decision desks" at the various networks and AP to project who wins each state's electoral votes and a few other important races on election night, but predicting exact percentages of votes in a given state or nationally is not what exit polls are designed for, and in fact, publication or broadcast of the OVERALL exit poll percentages in a race (the so-called "top line") is not allowed, because the design aims not so much at seeing which candidate voters backed, but which voters backed which candidates, and why. Some people say exit polls shouldn't be weighed, or at least that the "raw numbers" should be reported as a check for election fraud. This is not sound. Exit polls aren't truly random samples of the population. They are a sample of precincts, i.e., neighborhoods, anywhere from a 10 to 50 per state. If you want a polling check on how people voted, probably the best instrument would be a phone poll. But even there, you have big problems, especially the low response rate which requires adopting the unproven hypothesis that in THIS election, those who could not be reached and those who refused to cooperate are just like those that you can reach and do cooperate, so that they do not bias the sample. There is no way to prove that, so polls are no substitute for clean, honest, and transparent elections. (It should be noted that, by international standards for free and fair elections, U.S. elections don't even pass the giggle test in every possible way: from the impartiality of top election officials [there is not even a pretense of this], to reasonable access to mass media for all recognized parties [again, not even a pretense] to transparent accounting for each and every vote cast [again, not even a pretense.] Leaving aside, of course, the undemocratic, anti-working-class, racist, winner-take-all by state, electoral college flim-flam.) The weighing of exit poll raw numbers is a GOOD thing from the point of view of the purpose of the poll because the small sample for each precinct and practical difficulties in conducting a poll imply a very large margin of error at that level, and different sizes of precincts and other factors further distort things. The impact of this can be reduced by weighing the precinct, state and regional polls by actual vote counts. One more preliminary matter. Though not usually publicized, exit polls have a claimed margin of error at a confidence level of 95%, depending on the size of the sample and how that sample was put together. For this year's national poll, those percentages are, up to 100, 15%; 100-200, 10%, up to 500, 7%; up to 950, 5%; up to 2350, 4%; up to 5250, 3% and up to 8,000, 2 %. 8,000 or more gives a 1% margin of error. That's worst-case for a 50-50 split. a 95-5 split only has a 6% margin of error even with a sample of 100 or a little less, and only 2% with a sample of only 500+. * * * The overall vote-by-income data that was presented here seems to show a strong correlation between income and vote. Obama, who presented himself as pro-working people, pro-unions, and endorsed as such by the labor movement, moreover, an image re-enforced by the fact he is Black and from a working-class family, as well as by the (admittedly now quite frayed) traditional identification of his party, received the lion's share of the vote of the poor and working people of modest means and 60% of the vote of those earning less than $50K, who represented 40% of the electorate, but only half the vote above that income level. The suggestion is that this represents some degree of class identification or consciousness or instinct --however mistaken on might consider it to be in being focused on Obama-- on the part of a large segment of the voters, using income as a proxy for class. I believe the idea that Obama would be perceived as the more working class or pro-working people candidate is entirely reasonable; other candidates with a more legitimate claim to that distinction were completely ignored by the media, and McCain by contrast re-enforced Obama's "class" image, with everything from losing count of the number of houses he owns to his "economic fundamentals are strong" reaction at the beginning of the financial panic to Palin's $150,000 wardrobe makeover. So the question is, did this matter to people, as might be inferred from vote by class, using income as a proxy for class? I think closer examination of the data --including more detailed breakdowns by race than have been generally available-- show this "class effect" is much more limited than it first appears, and insofar as voting for Obama (however mistaken one might consider such a vote to have been if motivated on this basis) might be taken as an indicator of class consciousness or instinct, what it shows is the ABSENCE of this as a factor among most Anglo (white) working people. Much or most of the differentiation in vote by income was in fact attributable to race/nationality. Obama's most concentrated support came from the Black community, 95% overall. There is no real evidence that the Black vote varied by income AT ALL except perhaps at the very top of the scale, > $200K, where is was 90% for Obama (compared to 95% overall). But the sample of Blacks with such incomes in the national poll is so small (3% of 2300 respondents, perhaps around 70 individuals) that the reason I might believe the poll reflects something real is more because it makes sense to me that a very thin but nevertheless somewhat larger layer of very rich Blacks might be pro-McCain. Statistically the result isn't significant. Add to this that a disproportionate number of those in lower income groups who were Blacks and Latinos. 14% of Blacks were in the less than $15K group, 10% of Latinos, but only 5% of whites. Overall this demographic was 6% of the exit poll. More than half of the Blacks in the national poll (54%) had family incomes of < $50K, and nearly half the Latinos (48%) but only a third of whites (34%) did. Conversely, as you go up the income ladder, you get fewer and fewer Black voters. The result is you'd see a strong correlation between income and vote, simply because of this factor: Blacks, who voted homogeneously regardless of income, are more concentrated in lower income groups. Fortunately, through a friend I was able to see print outs of the white, Black and Latino vote in the national poll, as well as Latino votes in some states. The real question here is white folks, and among them the Obama vote by income nationally was as follows: < $15K 58% $15K-30K 49% $30K-$50K 42% $50K-$75K 41% $75-$100K` 44% $100K-$150K 41% $150K-$200K 44% > $200K 48% Obama gets more support from the poorest whites, the first two categories, a total of 16% of the whites polled -- but even then, far from overwhelming. Beyond that, there is simply no evidence of a "class effect." For what Americans might call "lower middle class" and up, there really isn't any difference. The number bounces around a bit between 41% and 44%, which I believe is "noise" because the sample sizes for each income category are such that EVEN IF exit polls were perfect random surveys (which they are not), the margin of error would be at best +/-3%. So for the bulk of the white respondents, those making between $30K-$200K, 77% of those surveyed, Obama's support averaged 42, and didn't vary significantly. And finally we get to incomes of $200k or more, and Obama's support jumps back up to 48% among white folks. While the 48% who voted for Obama in the top income group isn't strictly speaking statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, it is a big enough sample of such people (around 800), and a big enough difference, that (if we did the math) we could say something like that while not 95% certain this is a good result, it is true at a 90% or some other fairly high level of confidence that more such people voted for Obama than those making between $30K and $200K. A somewhat different pattern of support versus income is presented by Latinos. the more significant findings: The tenth (10%) of poorest Latinos surveyed backed Obama 83-15. That's a small sample, but the figures are so lopsided that the margin of error is small, +/-5%. Looking at a bigger segment, we see the nearly half (48%) of Latinos surveyed making less than $50K were a little less strongly pro-Obama 75-23, but still a crushing 3-1 majority. The third (33%) making $50K-$100K gave Obama a still smaller but nevertheless impressive lead of 19 points, (58-39), as did the fifth (19%) making $100K or more (59-40). There is a weirdness in the more detailed breakdown that I think is a statistical fluke: for Latinos with family income between $150K and $200K, McCain WINS 51%-48%, whereas among those with $200K or more, Obama wipes the floor with McCain 70%-29%. Here is where a having at least a common-sense understanding of statistics is very important. BOTH these samples are 4% of a total national Latino sample of 1350. That works out to VERY small sub-samples of perhaps 54 in each case. With those sample sizes, even the roughly 20-point swing registered is not statistically significant, it is within the margin of error at even a level of confidence much reduced from 95%. For that reason, I don't think I'd even be comfortable saying something like that the exit poll hints that Obama might have had more support among Latinos earning more than $200K than among those earning $150K-$200K. Because if you add those two together you get a 59-40 Obama/McCain split, pretty much the same number as for ALL Latinos making more than $50K. However, looking at the state exit polls for places like Florida, Texas, California, and New Mexico, where there were enough Latinos in the poll for at least partial breakdowns of vote by income among Latinos, my impression is the national figures are a little artificial, in the sense of being a purely mathematical sum of somewhat different patterns, and the evidence from the 4 state polls, limited as it is because they're much smaller, is suggestive of a clear "class effect" in the Latino community even beyond the $50K level. This should hardly be surprising, as a large number of Latinos (albeit not mostly voters) come from countries with strong class consciousness and traditions, and these sorts of ideas, and of self-identification as workers, is therefore much stronger in the Latino community generally than among Anglos, where the dominant ideology has it that everyone, or almost everyone, is "middle class." Complicating things among "Latinos" as a group is the Cuban community, which sociologically and politically is quite distinct from other Latinos. Although only 4% of all Latinos, they're probably at least double that in terms of voters. But when you look at a state with very little Cuban weight in the community, and very large immigrant cultural and social influence, the vote-by-class (income) patterns seems to largely hold true. In California, support among Latinos making less than $50K is 83-12, and then goes down to 69% among 50-100K and, above $100K to some figure in the low 60's (the exact number isn't given, but can be surmised from the fact that among all Latinos making >$50K, Obama's number is 66%, but it is 69% when the cutoff is $100K, meaning those over $100K are significantly lower). In New Mexico (with the largest Latino component of a state exit poll, more than 1000) support among those with income under $15K is 88-11, and $15K-$30K is over 79-21. For the $30k-$50K bracket it drops to 58%, only to bounce back up in the $50K-100K bracket to 64%, and 67% above $100K. Almost certainly, I think, the 58% figure is off, an expected statistical anomaly given that the sample size for that group is less than 200, and the rise to 67% above $100K in income might also be a fluke, but on the high side, since the sample is about 120 people at that income level. And it is important to understand this was a poll in New Mexico of a total of 40 precincts, and close to half were probably close to all-white, so when we're talking about these better-off Latinos, you're talking about three, four or five precincts, neighborhoods, and thus must regard the results as only mildly indicative. * * * Throughout I have counterposed "race/ethnicity/nationality" to "class" to try to separate out what is clearly and solely attributable to "class," using income as a proxy. It should be noted, however, that in a more general political sense, I believe this to be utterly false when it comes to Blacks and (most) Latinos, because their national identities as peoples includes strong undertones or overlays or elements of class. In the case of the Latino community, this could not have been more blatant in the massive immigrant rights demonstrations of a couple of years ago. But I believe it is also true of Blacks generally. Not, of course, of every single individual. But the counterposition is most decidedly true for white/Anglos, where a true manifestation of class instinct begins with rejection of identifying with people like the Clintons and McCains as having the same interests, concerns or needs that you or I have. Nationwide, among whites whose material circumstances make it very hard for those individuals to entertain illusions that they, too, are "middle class," there was a stronger Obama vote. And it should be noted also, that in some states where the Obama campaign especially pressed very hard on issues to appeal to working class voters, like Ohio, there was a differentiation: OH white Obama vote by income < $15K 62% $15K-30K 51% $30K-$50K 47% $50K-$75K 47% $75-$100K` 48% $100K-$150K 41% $150K-$200K 36% > $200K 41% But in other states, like PA, it simply didn't happen: PA white Obama vote by income < $15K -% $15K-30K 50% $30K-$50K 47% $50K-$75K 44% $75-$100K` 53% $100K-$150K 44% $150K-$200K 54% > $200K 55% < $50 K 49% $50K-$100K 47% > $100K 49% To the degree that an Obama vote could be taken as a "class differentiator," the exit poll data, suggests this was truer for Latinos than for any other group. It also appears to have been true only for the lowest socio-economic strata of whites and more broadly in Ohio and a couple of other "battlegrounds" but not generally: on the contrary, the general "lower" to "upper" middle class white vote was surprisingly homogeneous. Blacks, of course, voted almost unanimously for Obama, taking the well-established community tradition of tending strongly towards block voting to an even higher level. Joaquin This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 19 15:21:59 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:21:59 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxist Internet Archives Message-ID: <49244B38.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Marxist Internet Archives Mark Lause Sun Nov 16 04:15:04 MST 2008 Previous message: [Marxism] U.S. study urges Obama to press Israel over nuclear program Next message: [Marxism] Marxist Internet Archives Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The most recent newsletter of the Marxist Internet Archives indicates that this inestimably worthy project is starting to run at a deficit. And, whatever else it does, an incoming Obama administration will probably not provide a bailout...not even if we get Bill Ayers on board for it. They meet these expenses largely through things like selling copies of their collections on DVDs for the princely sum of $30, an almost insignificant sum for what you get. http://www.marxists.org/admin/cd/ It's hard to imagine Marxists involved in a more worthy project. Particularly not when the developments around us are increasingly going to send more and more curious people to the internet looking for what that Marx fellow actually was writing. Surely, those of us who don't have the time right now to contribute more directly to aid in compiling and making this kind of material available should certainly rally to the colors when they need a few dollars. Solidarity! Mark L. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Previous message: [Marxism] U.S. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Nov 21 07:01:35 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:01:35 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] labor and the auto companies Message-ID: <492678EE.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> [Pen-l] labor and the auto companies From: Rudy Fichtenbaum Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:49:37 -0500 User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 (Windows/20080914) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We keep hearing from conservatives and even a number of liberal commentators that the reason the big three auto companies are not competitive is because of high labor costs due to the fact that their workers are unionized. I just looked at Compensation (Payroll plus Benefits) as a percent of the Value of Shipments for Automobile and Light Duty Motor Vehicle Manufacturing in the Annual Survey of Manufacturers. Compensation for all workers, not just production workers is about 7.2% of the Value of Shipments. Of course this includes both transplant as well as the "big three." Assume for a moment that GM, Ford and Chrysler accounted for 50% of auto sales and their labor cost was 50% higher than the transplants. That would imply that Compensation for the big three was about 9% of sales compared to 6% for the transplants. That would make labor costs about 7.5% for the industry average. If that were the case and we cut labor costs at the big three in half that would reduce the cost of producing an automobile by 4.5%. Does anyone seriously believe that this would make the big three competitive? Doesn't this expose the myth that the problems of the big three are due to high labor costs? Am I missing something? Rudy -- Rudy Fichtenbaum Professor of Economics & Chief Negotiator AAUP-WSU Department of Economics Wright State University Dayton, OH 45435 Phone: 937-775-3085 Fax: 937-775-2441 This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Nov 21 10:47:12 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:47:12 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Karl Marx & Abraham Lincoln were Comrades Message-ID: <4926ADCF.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Neo-Confederates think it's bad that Karl Marx & Abraham Lincoln were Comrades ( smile) CB http://www.kelticklankirk.com/karl-marx_abraham-lincoln_comrades.htm This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Nov 21 12:13:38 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:13:38 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Eric Foner et al on Lincoln & Obama Message-ID: <4926C211.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Eric Foner et al on Lincoln & Obama Ralph Dumain rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 18 23:31:48 MST 2008 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Minsky Moment Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Trotsky biography recommendations Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A conversation about Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln with Jonathan Alter, Eric Foner and Mark Halperin on Monday, November 17, 2008 Charlie Rose http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9589 I have not watched this video on the Internet and caught only a few minutes of this on TV Monday night. From what I heard I was rather disappointed in Foner, possibly America's most distinguished historian, who should have known better than to take seriously a comparison of Obama and Lincoln. What do you make of this? ^^^ CB: I'm gonna go with Comrade Foner's( possibly America's most distinguished historian) judgment over yours as to whether a serious comparison of Obama and Lincoln is logical and correct. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Fri Nov 21 13:16:42 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:16:42 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Eric Foner et al on Lincoln & Obama In-Reply-To: <4926C211.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> References: <4926C211.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: Senility + the CPUSA is not a good combination. Obama is basically the Clintons with burnt cork. At 02:13 PM 11/21/2008, Charles Brown wrote: > Eric Foner et al on Lincoln & Obama >Ralph Dumain rdumain at autodidactproject.org >Tue Nov 18 23:31:48 MST 2008 > >Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Minsky Moment >Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Trotsky biography recommendations >Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] > >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >A conversation about Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln >with Jonathan Alter, Eric Foner and Mark Halperin >on Monday, November 17, 2008 >Charlie Rose >http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9589 > >I have not watched this video on the Internet and caught only a few >minutes of this on TV Monday night. From what I heard I was rather >disappointed in Foner, possibly America's most distinguished >historian, who should have known better than to take seriously a >comparison of Obama and Lincoln. What do you make of this? > >^^^ >CB: I'm gonna go with Comrade Foner's( possibly America's most distinguished >historian) judgment over yours as to whether a serious comparison of >Obama and Lincoln is logical and correct. From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Nov 21 13:27:46 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:27:46 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Eric Foner et al on Lincoln & Obama In-Reply-To: References: <4926C211.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: <4926D371.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Senility + the CPUSA is not a good combination. Obama is basically ^^^ CB: Obsessive anti-CPUSAism is really , really stupid and pro-capitalist. ^^^ the Clintons with burnt cork. At 02:13 PM 11/21/2008, Charles Brown wrote: > Eric Foner et al on Lincoln & Obama >Ralph Dumain rdumain at autodidactproject.org >Tue Nov 18 23:31:48 MST 2008 > >Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Minsky Moment >Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Trotsky biography recommendations >Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] > >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >A conversation about Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln >with Jonathan Alter, Eric Foner and Mark Halperin >on Monday, November 17, 2008 >Charlie Rose >http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9589 > >I have not watched this video on the Internet and caught only a few >minutes of this on TV Monday night. From what I heard I was rather >disappointed in Foner, possibly America's most distinguished >historian, who should have known better than to take seriously a >comparison of Obama and Lincoln. What do you make of this? > >^^^ >CB: I'm gonna go with Comrade Foner's( possibly America's most distinguished >historian) judgment over yours as to whether a serious comparison of >Obama and Lincoln is logical and correct. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Nov 21 17:06:48 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:06:48 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Vulgar Keynesian Message-ID: <492706C8.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/04/jamie_galbraith.html April 12, 2007 Jamie Galbraith Speaks for the "Vulgar Keynesians" Here's more on the series of posts on supply-side economics, what we knew in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the gulf between academia and Washington, and other issues. This is Jamie Galbraith from comments with a view from inside "the trenches," a view from a "vulgar Keynesian" who stood "against the Reagan Revolution in the early 1980s": James Galbraith: Bruce Bartlett joined the staff of the Joint Economic Committee in 1981, when I did. I was the executive director in charge of the Democratic staff; Bruce was the deputy director in charge of the Republican staff. We set up the committee (which had ten Democrats and ten Republicans, chaired by my boss, Rep. Henry S. Reuss of Wisconsin) so that both sides could fully make their case to the Congress and public. And we battled merrily for a couple of years, and then in 1983 switched jobs, so that we could continue battling under a Senate Republican chairman. Bruce has been a friend ever since, though neither of us yields an inch, I don't believe, on our economic differences. This little history makes me, I believe, a useful representative of the despised sect of "vulgar Keynesians," "crude Keynesians," "discredited Keynesians" and so forth, not yet heard from in this discussion. I was in fact a product of an eclectic economics training at Harvard (Leontief, notably), a bracing year among the Old Keynesians (Kaldor, Robinson) at Cambridge, and a Ph.D. at Yale,in the environment of Tobin but not under his wing. Paul Krugman and I became friends at Yale, and remain so, though we too have had strong differences over the years. Those of us who were in the trenches, standing against the Reagan Revolution in the early 1980s, saw things differently from either the shock troops of that revolution, such as Bruce, or the academic bystanders, including Paul. I and those around me -- the Democratic staff at the Joint Economic Committee -- were bitterly opposed to Reaganomics, both as economics and politics. Why? First, because as politics Reaganomics was aimed at enriching the rich and destroying the economic life of working Americans and the poor. And this is no joke: it did exactly that. Recession, unemployment, the wanton and irreversible destruction of major industries and the fiscal base of the cities, the destruction of unions: all that happened. The cost of curing inflation in 1981-82 was enormous, far higher than the airy comments made above concede. We crude Keynesians believed then, and I believe now, that the steps taken were brutal and unnecessary, and that with hard policy work the problem could have been managed in ways that were far less costly, but that were rejected on ideological rather than economic grounds. Brad DeLong's summary of Bruce's summary of our vulgar Keynesian policy beliefs is, here, reasonably close to the mark, except in one respect. No one in my circle doubted the capacity of monetary policy to crush the economy if pushed sufficiently far. Rather, we believed (accurately, as events would prove), that monetary policy worked against inflation *only* insofar as it brought on a brutal recession. We did not accept the monetarist/supply-side claim, which was presented at the start of the Reagan administration in official projections, that the trick could be pulled off without a recession. We were, of course, perfectly right about that. Second, as a matter of economics, we thought that the combination of supply-side economics and monetarism was fundamentally incoherent -- and we were well aware that the supply-siders and monetarists disagreed with each other more violently than they disagreed with us. As an anti-monetarist and one of the very few Democrats willing to criticize the sainted Paul Volcker, I found myself in rough alliance with the supply-siders more than once (and I have a few handwritten notes from Jack Kemp in my files somewhere). I ultimately came to see the supply-siders as the most effective practical Keynesians around. They were not only willing to run deficits when the situation required, but able to do so, because they skewed the benefits toward the rich, and thus brought political power into play behind the cause of fiscal expansion. This of course is also what George Bush did in 2001 and in 2003-5. I didn't like the redistributive bias, and for that reason I fought the Reagan tax cuts. But I had no doubt, from 1981 onward, that the tax cuts and military buildup, coupled with a reversal of the tight money policy, would produce a strong recovery in time for Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign. And it's worth noting that Reagan had a Tory Keynesian (Murray Weidenbaum) as his CEA chief, who knew this very well. Jude Wanniski was a hugely influential force in the supply-side camp, and his views were the epitome of the supply-side position in Washington. I thought Jude was a crackpot in economics and economic history (his idea that Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Depression, notably; also his passionate advocacy of the gold standard), but there is no doubt that he played a crucial role. There is no complete or accurate account of supply-siderism without Jude Wanniski; he cannot be airbrushed from history simply because sober academic types now think him inconvenient. Notwithstanding our disagreements, Jude and I also became friends; late in his life he staged a vehement and prescient stand against the Iraq war. Incidentally, it is not correct that we crude and vulgar Keynesians were wedded to high marginal tax rates for their own sake. The Bradley-Kemp tax bill, which had much more Bradley than Kemp in it, was endorsed by the JEC Democrats in 1984, in a report that I wrote. It became law in 1986. We made the argument for that bill, because we did understand the usefulness of a broad-based income tax, and the difference between high marginal rates per se and progressive tax system. We also understood that the previous income tax structure was politically indefensible, and that alternatives such as a VAT, which were serious threats, would be worse. The 1986 tax reform saved the income tax, and laid the groundwork for the 1993 upper-bracket increases, which did quite a bit to restore the overall progressivity of the code, and which laid a template for future tax changes. Turning to the monetarists, it's another forgotten fact that the lead monetarists on Capitol Hill at that time were Democrats. One of them was Bob Weintraub, who worked for Parren Mitchell, chairman of the congressional Black Caucus. Another was Bob Auerbach, a Milton Friedman student. Bob Auerbach and I both worked for Reuss, and we shared an office at the House Banking Committee for three years in the late 1970s. Bob A. abandoned monetarism when it fell apart in the 1980s; he now teaches at the LBJ School, and as a matter of fact, we had dinner together tonight. As for the MIT and other conventional-Keynesian academics, those of us in the trenches found them sometimes helpful but often preoccupied with their models and largely unaware of the political issues within which these economic questions were embedded. For instance, we did not have a lot of use for the theoretical supply-side effects of tax policy on individual behavior that respectable liberal economists were prepared to concede. The fact was, dwelling on those supposed effects simply gave aid and comfort to the Reaganauts; there was no way to make the point in political debate and not give away the store when it came time to write a tax bill. As a technical matter, it also seemed clear that the income effects of these tax changes would dwarf the substitution effects, and the evidence I've encountered since does not incline me to change this view. Among academic economists at that time, Bob Eisner was my hero and closest friend and ally; I think no one would call Bob either crude or vulgar, and that is perhaps why he is seldom mentioned in these discussions. (His daughter, Mary Eccles, was on my staff.) As Brad notes, Rudi Dornbusch was, indeed, a politically- attuned advocate of the effect of monetary policy, and as he did more politics, he became more Keynesian. (Rudi's future wife, Sandra Masur, was also on my staff.) But the idea that monetary policy worked to control inflation expectations directly seemed to us to be a gross overstatement of its powers. Bob Auerbach and I designed the Humphrey-Hawkins hearings beginning in 1975, and wrote those provisions of the HH law in 1978. We did it to extract information from the Federal Reserve and not because we thought that setting monetary targets would have some fundamental effect on the psychology of the nation. And while I'm proud of those hearings, that's because they established the constitutional authority of the Congress over the Federal Reserve, not because they somehow cured inflation expectations, as it seems some magical-thinking economists appear to believe. To Paul, these issues were sufficiently "academic" at the time that he could in good conscience accept a staff position in the Reagan administration (on the CEA under Martin Feldstein, after the first wave of Reaganomics had passed). To him, at the time, it basically wasn't a political assignment, just a chance to see Washington under the redoubtable Feldstein. Perhaps Paul and all the others who lined up in the Reagan camp were right - that these were academic issues to be debated and resolved among people who all shared the same larger objectives for the economy. In some ways, I accept this as a subjective matter. I came to respect the sincerity of Bruce, Jude, Murray and others working in the Reagan administration about their goals. Otherwise, I could hardly think as well of them now, as I do. But to me and those in my camp, at the time, it would have been unthinkable to go over to their side. At the time, I saw the Reagan administration as, objectively, a vicious assault on the economic life of ordinary Americans, brought about by the willful and arbitrary rejection of useful policies that aimed to solve problems without inflicting savage harm on the weakest economic agents. I thought, also, that with honorable exceptions the academic economists on the sidelines were weak and indifferent to that harm. I don't think I was wrong about that. JG Update: Bruce Bartlett, whose column in the NY Times began this discussion, responds to Jamie in comments. Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 12:12 AM in Budget Deficit, Economics, Macroeconomics, Policy, Politics, Taxes Permalink TrackBack (0) Comments (58) TrackBack TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/423467/17652836 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Jamie Galbraith Speaks for the "Vulgar Keynesians": Comments Lafayette says... New thread, re-posted comment: Nothing being recounted in this forum?s debates, somewhat mired in nostalgia, gives a clear indication of what future policy should be, either in terms of taxation policy to correct income inequality or its counterpart, a reformation and expansion of public services that render value (to the lower and middle-classes where it is needed most). This is where America is hurting. Assigning the blame to Reaganites, however meritorious, cannot and therefore will not address that problem/challenge. The Democratic Party platform needs a program for the future that will obtain or approach the significant societal objectives already attained elsewhere, namely: ? Generalized basic health care services the prices (based upon fair costs), mandated by a government administration and not ?what the market will bear? (based upon the process by which hospitals offer non-paid services recuperated on the bills of insured patients), and ? Pervasive skills/competency enhancement that advances the American work population further up the value-added ladder in terms of its abilities, keeping it proactive and not reactive to the advance of global innovations, and, ? A workable solution that offers first-time housing to the lower-classes, with a loan-repayment process that allows the unemployed to suspend loan repayments till another employment is found and, ? A host of other public services (drug abuse, youth obesity, neonatal care, female abuse) that America can well afford in order to bring itself up to a international standard against which it is blatantly deficient. None of the above is rocket-science. None of it is beyond America?s financial means. All of it can be obtained if the political will is there. To do so, an effort must be undertaken to explain convincingly the merit of such societal policies to the American public and how the social investment will better their lives. It must strike resonant chords in Dubuque. Not just ballyhoo, cheers and confetti at a party convention. And, that effort must start NOW - not cooked up hastily six months before the elections by the presidential candidate. Otherwise, the Republicans will cake-walk into the White House - and America will wander in the desert another eight long years. Posted by: Lafayette | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 03:24 AM paine says... nice summary wrong administration the shark got jumped in 78 -79 not 81-82 okay the real blodd ran in 82 but that's because a carter team did such an elitist job on hoi polloi america jimmy's tight as bark on a tree was dead wrong to get what jg here correctly wanted demand management by fiscal budget busting the new democrats started failing us long b4 clinton jimmy was bill's st john the baptist Posted by: paine | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 05:26 AM anne says... Dear Paine, please, a little less cryptic on history so I can better follow the argument. Posted by: anne | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 05:30 AM paine says... thanks for reading it anyway anne simple hicks macro 70's is/lm open system carter was politically resolved to lick the deficit moniker on every dems head back then so when the economy started heading out of control price wise he had only one instrument he'd use monetary policy recall fine tuing had"failed" whatever that was supposed to mean it meant no tax brake for shitty job level amerika to odf set the crdit squeeze PV was only to ready to apply the problem required patience and a 6 year profile and both macro instruments in combination plus some overt fine tuning of debt relief that was politically verboten unless you were a farmer and as i wrote earlier a dollar forex policy the triad needed all avenues working in sync if the plebs were not to bare the hurt of a crunch that was not of their making i say till proven otherwise it was price wage spiraling we had the wage rates were chasing the price increases guys knock that down prove me wrong Posted by: paine | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 05:55 AM paine says... btw to say that would have been politically impossible is merely to say the duopoly party system was broken already back then not in the 90's it broke in '68 and is still broken Posted by: paine | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 05:57 AM ken melvin says... Thanks the both for the terrific post. Posted by: ken melvin | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 06:21 AM Bruce Bartlett says... As always, I find Jamie's observations illuminating. I would just make a couple of points. First, it is unfair to take the actual operations of a government as being a coherent representation of any economic philosophy. If I were to use every action taken by the Roosevelt Administration to refute Keynes, that would be just as unfair as what Jamie has done in using Reagan's actions as the sole basis for judging supply-side economics. Second, I think he conveniently leaves out an important part of the story as far as the JEC was concerned. Before he and I joined the staff, the committee had endorsed a version of supply-side economics. The chairman, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, got every member of the committee to sign a report to that effect in 1980. So Jamie's actions were as much a counterrevolt against the position that had been adopted by the committee's Democrats as it was in opposition to what we on the Republican side were doing. Third, by starting his commentary with 1981, Jamie goes well past the point I was trying to make in my New York Times article. I was writing about what motivated people to even think of supply-side economics in the first place, not about its operational consequences during the Reagan years. My focus was on the 1976-1980 period, when a small handfull of people were trying as best they could to grapple with an economic crisis caused by rising inflation. Just as with Keynesian economics, those who later became advocates for supply-side economics carried the arguments, the policies and the rationale off in a different direction. That was the whole point of my article. What Jamie really shows is that the bastardization of supply-side economics began much earlier than this administration, and he's certainly right about that. Finally, if I were in Jamie's shoes, I would also be trying to make Jude Wanniski the focus of the discussion. Jude was a brilliant man, but also more than a little crazy. A much more important figure and one much more difficult to attack was Norman Ture, which is why people like Jamie tend to ignore him. But Norman was absolutely critical, not just because he was one of the leading tax economists in the U.S., but because his involvement with tax policy went well back into the 1950s. Just as an aside, I would note that Norman had been on the JEC staff in the 1960s, where he functioned as staff economist for Wilbur Mills while he was chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. It was Mills who really got Kennedy to propose a cut in marginal tax rates in 1963, based on Ture's ideas. Since Norman was also deeply involved in the development of the Kemp-Roth bill, he was a bridge to both major tax-cutting episodes. To the curious, I would recommend Julian Zelizer's book, "Taxing America," on both Mills and Ture. Posted by: Bruce Bartlett | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 06:36 AM paine says... BB just proved my point the heart of the policy macro establishment of both parties by 77 (carter year one) had turned from any thought of using raw fiscal keynesianism to manage the macro economy btw love the bentsen moment ( bob rubin in a ten gallon hat) Posted by: paine | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 07:20 AM robertdfeinman says... Let's see if I've gotten this right, politicians don't use economic theories so much as misuse them for their own ends. I think that sounds about right. Politicians even misuse reality for their own ends as our current experiences in Iraq demonstrate. Not only didn't Iraq have WMD's, but the Gulf of Tonkin incident didn't take place, nor did anyone sink the Maine. Politicians lie, so what's new? The problem is that when academic economists get into government they think that presenting their "theories" as the basis for advice is all that is required, but they are playing the wrong game. The economists (social scientists, climate scientists, etc) are just used for window dressing so that already decided on policies can be given a veneer of respectability. Even religious leaders are starting to realize they are being used as props. Skip the academic debates and look at the effect of the policies put in place. Cutting taxes on the rich makes them richer. Raising taxes (or indirect expenses) on the poor makes them poorer. We don't need theories to explain this. The issue is: is this the way we want our society to be structured, and if not, what practical steps can be taken to move in another direction? Posted by: robertdfeinman | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 07:24 AM bakho says... Interesting history lesson. A big part of the backdrop were the oil price shocks of the 1970s. Oil shocks had major effects on the US economy and relocated the equilibrium position beyond the boundaries of traditional monetary and fiscal policy. Double digit interest rates are unusual for the US. If the oil shocks had such a large effect on the economy, what about the response? A history of the late 70s would describe large increases in energy efficiency (including CAFE standards, appliances, buildings, etc) and companies investing in flexible fuel strategies (ability to switch between oil or gas or electric) to the point where oil use had dropped by over 20% from the late 70s to 1985, thus ending the "oil shock". Did we really improve our monetary and fiscal policy during this period? Or was there a frantic reaction as the economy tried to absorb the oil shock followed by a return to normalcy as reliance on oil diminished? The current view (so I was taught) is that monetary policy can be used as a rapid acting tool to smooth an economy but is insufficient to address structural, infrastructure and technological problems in an economy. In this view, the oil shock set off a wave of inflation and other dislocations that made monetary policy relatively ineffective. Monetary policy was beyond the bounds of acting to fine tune the economy and instead became a sledge hammer. Technological adjustments related to decreased oil demand were necessary before the economy could recover to a position where monetary policy was once again effective. However, the oil shock and the technological changes concerned with fuel efficiency and fuel flexibility were occurring simultaneously and makes it difficult to separate effects of economic shock from monetary and fiscal policies. Are the real lessons of the 1970s and 1980s more effective monetary policy? Or are those lessons about dislocations (caused by oil shock effects) and response to those shocks? Another note, that is not discussed is productivity. Why did productivity increases lag so much during this period? Given the effects of productivity on income and economic growth, discussing the economy as if only fiscal and monetary policy matter (or matter most) is incomplete. Was investment in the 70s and early 80s directed more toward energy effiiciency than to productivity increases? Is that one reason why this period had a lag in productivity? Another missing effect is the increase in the workforce participation. The number of workers increased both because of the baby boomers and because of the movement of non-minority women into the labor force. The labor force/population ratio increased from under 60% for most of the 1960s to the mid 60% for much of the 1980s and beyond. Does the availability of workers (unemployment sometimes reaching over 9%) take pressure off industries to improve productivity? The government investment in computing sciences and the internet begins to pay off starting in the 80s and in full force during the 90s. This policy is as important to economic growth as the monetary or fiscal policy, but is not part of this discussion. I understand the roles of monetary and fiscal policy in short term management of an economy. However, claims of large long term effects, especially of monetary policy, struggle for clear evidence. Posted by: bakho | Link to comment | April 12, 2007 at 07:49 AM This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Fri Nov 21 13:54:13 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:54:13 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ishay Landa on Nietzsche again Message-ID: I've commented on Landa's work in the past, specifically on these essays: Landa, Ishay. "Aroma and Shadow: Marx vs. Nietzsche on Religion," Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 18, no. 4, 2005, pp. 461-499. The latest [as of April 2007], and a must-read! Landa, Ishay. "Nietzsche and African American Thought: A Review Essay," Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 19, no. 3, 2006, pp. 366-378. The latest critique of academic charlatanism: Critical Affinities: Nietzsche and African American Thought, edited by Jacqueline Scott & A. Todd Franklin. Landa, Ishay. "Nietzsche, the Chinese Worker's Friend," New Left Review I/236, July-August 1999, pp. 3-23. More generally, see my bibliography: Anti-Nietzsche Bibliography Landa has a recent book out: Landa, Ishay. The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007. Table of contents. Publisher information. For a review, see; Nielsen, Carsten Fogh. Review - The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture, Metapsychology Online Reviews, volume 12, issue 24, June 10, 2008. Also, Landa has an essay in a book in the Open Court Popular Culture series: Landa, Ishay. "Bond as Chivalric, Comic Hero," in James Bond and Philosophy: Questions Are Forever, edited by Jacob M. Held and James B. South (Chicago: Open Court, 2006). (Popular culture and Philosophy; v. 23) Publisher description. Table of contents. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Fri Nov 21 16:10:40 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:10:40 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ishay Landa (2) Message-ID: More works by Ishay Landa: Articles: Landa, Ishay, ?Slaves of the Ring: Tolkien?s Political Unconscious?, Historical Materialism, vol. 10, no. 4, 2002, pp. 113-134. [On J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings".] Reviewed in: Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Istvan. "Lucid Dreams, or Flightless Birds on Rooftops?" [review of: "Symposium: Marxism and Fantasy." China Mi?ville, ed. Historical Materialism. Research in Critical Marxist Theory. Volume 10, Issue 4 (2002): 38-316], Science Fiction Studies, #90 (Volume 30, Part 2), July 2003. http://fs6.depauw.edu:50080/~icronay/lucid.htm 'Mister Bond and Dr. Bean', Iton 77, January 1998, pp. 36-39. "Eyes Wide Shut: Liberalismus, Faschismus und die diskursiven Grenzen der Open Society," Marburger Forum, Jg. 9 (2008), Heft 2. http://www.philosophia-online.de/mafo/heft2008-2/Lan_Eye.htm . . . available also at: http://www.philosophia-online.de/mafo/heft2008-2/Lan_Eye.pdf Conference papers: ??The Happiness of the Cow? from a Socialist Perspective?, at "Moments of Futurity: From Present Conditions to Material(izing) Horizons." The 9th Annual Conference of the Marxist Reading Group, University of Florida, March 29 - 31, 2007. http://www.english.ufl.edu/mrg/2007program.pdf "?James Bond: a Nietzschean for the Cold War,? at "The Cultural Politics of Ian Fleming", Bloomington, University of Indiana, June 1, 2003. December 30, 2001: Presentation and co-organization of ?The first international conference for graduate students of the Center for German Studies,? at BGU. Presentation?s title: ?How to tame a Bulldog: the Sociopolitical Mission of Nietzschean Heroism?. http://www.bgu.ac.il/german/conf9.htm From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sun Nov 23 12:35:39 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:35:39 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Fusion of Peak Oil & Climate Change Message-ID: <49296A3D.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://www.energybulletin.net/node/11549 The Fusion of Peak Oil & Climate Change by James Howard Peak Oil and Climate Change are two historic events for humans and life on earth. The first threatens modern industrial ways of living and the latter threatens the climatic systems that are an integral part of our world and the way we live and survive. A quick recap on both. Peak Oil is the point of historic maximum global oil flow, Climate Change is the alteration of established climate systems due to (in this case, anthropogenic) global warming. The onset of both will affect food & water supplies, mortality rates, conflict, migration and much more. The evidence that climate change is underway and almost past the point of no return is very strong and Peak Oil day by day gathers more credence as many studies point to an imminent peak. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sun Nov 23 12:55:14 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:55:14 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Quality of life under capitalism Message-ID: <49296ED4.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2008/11/19/boundaries-of-executive-power-3-fait-acompli-shakedown/#comment-291461 BuddhalovesPaine: Another thing that is related to this but I am not sure exactly how is, the government of almost every country in the world runs budget deficits almost every year. I have not looked to see exactly how large these deficits are in other countries for at least 5 years but the last time that I looked some countries in western Europe were even more in debt per capita, and as a percentage of GDP, than the US was. (Germany was not as far in debt per capita as the U.S.) So I wonder what is larger the EU Central Banks holdings in Dollars or the dollar value debt of EU countries? The dick, Cheney said that deficits do not matter. Could he actually be right? I saw Zeitgeist part II recently. It said that the value of the dollar has dropped 96% since the Federal Reserve was established 94 years ago. My response to that was big fragging deal! And standards of living have gone up perhaps 95% in the same time period. (OK I made up that 95% number but anyone one can see that 95% of the people alive today are better off than they were in 1913) Anyways the film did not prove to me that the fed is solely responsible for the inflation that has occurred since 1913. Furthermore at an annual average rate of 1% per year (according to Zeitgeist) the hidden tax of inflation is hardly something to get bent out of shape about anyways. Now the interest payments that the US government makes is something that is more troubling. Again I have not looked in to this recently but in the early 90s and I suspect also now interest payments on the debt are a large part of the federal governments expenditures. It is often reported that the US governments budget deficit is financed by foreigners, but if they are financing the US governments budget deficit, who is financing their budget deficits? 20 November 2008, 11:46 am Rev. Jos? M. Tirado: Just a cautious word: to say that ?95% of the people alive today are better off than they were in 1913? is possibly correct on some fronts, dead wrong in others. Since the time period mentioned (the 19teens) probably 700 (a conservative estimate) new chemicals have been put into the food system we partake of daily. A whole slew of cancers that were never seen are now today common. Intestinal disaeses too are increasing with added stresses those people did not endure. ADD and other cognitive disorders potentially linked to cognitive-depressing media and their formats (fast cuts, crammed out of context information, etc.) are on the rise. I regularly speak with people, even via advanced media susch as this, who can?t think well, don?t write well, can barely read, and have a limited understanding of events well within their scope to understand simply because they watch and have been watching 20-40 hours of television weekly for most of their lives. People in 1913 were connected more to their communities, walked more, moved their bodies more, ate less processed foods, breathed cleaner air (on the whole) and didn?t take unnecessarily prescribed drugs for a variety of problems probably best understood as simply growing old, or plain old human suffering. So it depends on what you are comparing. Medical attention is better, yes, lives are longer, yes, and I am glad for the Internet, and other new means of acquiring information. But information, which was a prized commodity throughout most of history, does not make up for Meaning, and Meaning adds a quality to Life these other things we have now do not. And there are other factors we need to look at whenever we compare how things were to the way things are. 20 November 2008, 12:31 pm This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Mon Nov 24 12:00:41 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:00:41 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] For Leninists, electoral actions are generally tactical, not a principled question Message-ID: <492AB38C.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Obama: the American Dream Joaquin Bustelo jbustelo at gmail.com Mon Nov 24 11:02:12 MST 2008 Previous message: [Marxism] Obama: the American Dream Next message: [Marxism] Obama: the American Dream Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Louis writes: "Just go to http://www.marxists.org/admin/search/index.htm and enter "Lenin" in the archive to be searched, and "Cadet" and "bloc" in the 'With all the words' field. You will get 56 hits. Here's some excerpts from the 3 articles right at the top in relevance and allow Lenin to speak for himself." I think Louis does comrades a disservice by the way he is conducting this debate. The ORIGINAL point in dispute is whether and who to vote for is a TACTICAL question, as I maintain, or a question of "principle" where the are "class lines" that must never, ever be crossed, and doing so is like committing a mortal sin in the Catholic Church, except that in the revolutionary movement there's no such thing as the sacrament of confession. OBVIOUSLY tactics are GUIDED by principles, properly understood, and by strategic considerations. Nor are tactical questions unimportant. The road to defeat is paved with well-intentioned tactics. As part of his argument, Louis appealed to authority, saying Lenin never voted for bourgeois parties. I produced carefully researched DIRECT quotations from Lenin showing that this was simply NOT SO. Under certain, limited, specific, secondary or tertiary circumstances in the 1912 elections, Lenin did not object to making blocs AGAINST THE MONARCHISTS with the "liberals" even though the MAIN LINE of the campaign was to present an independent revolutionary-democratic pole led by the Bolsheviks and counterposed to BOTH the out-and-out monarchists AND the moderate "opposition" that wanted to cut a deal for a constitutional monarchy (the Cadets and "Progressists"). ONE of the things to be learned from this is precisely that electoral questions are tactical questions: at the service of an overall strategic approach, yes, but they are detailed, specific, concrete. Thus the Bolshevik Center LIMITED its "no blocs with the cadets" prohibition to the big cities ONLY, where they knew from past experience that all the scare talk about a Black Hundreds victory was a liberal lie to fool the revolutionary democrats. And they designated the campaign in St. Petersburgh the leading nation-wide voice because THERE the election was direct, and thus the clash of the main three trends (monarchists/liberals/revolutionary democrats) more open, uncomplicated by a two-stage election. And because the Bolsheviks had a daily paper, necessary to wage the kind of leading national campaign Lenin and his friends wanted. But when push came to shove, the social democrats DID cut deals with the cadets in some rural areas, reflected in the fact that three of the 14 social democratic deputies in the Duma got there thanks to those blocs. Louis's approach -- the approach all of us who went through the US SWP learned -- would have been to refuse any deals with the Cadets and let them gang up with the monarchists against the revolutionary democrats. Lenin said no, although the main line was for political independence and counterposition against BOTH those trends, the workers party ALSO had to USE the conflict between the cadets and the monarchists. Louis responds with a gusher of quotations to the effect that Lenin really, REALLY hated the Cadets and had nothing but scorn for people who advocated subordinating revolutionary democracy to the Cadets and their ilk. He presents this AS IF he had disproved or unmasked some sort of deception I had perpetrated. And there is a disturbing pattern here. Louis brands me an advocate of voting for lesser evil Democrats because I have advocated voting for ONE person on a Democrat party line (primary actually) Cynthia McKinney against a Democrat/Republican machine cabal financed to a significant degree by enemies of the Palestinian people with the aim of using Georgia's open primaries to galvanize the white republican minority in the north of the county into intervening in the Democrat primary because the pattern had been (it changed this year with Obama) that Black participation in primaries was much, much lower than in the general election. And the effect was to deny the Black majority of DeKalb County, Georgia's 4th CD, the democratic right of having the representative they wanted in Congress. And I noted an additional thing: there is a certain history to denying Black people their democratic right to political representation, which gave the assault on McKinney much greater importance than just the case of Republicans gaming the system against a Democrat. And that in the nature of things, the issue presented in the McKinney cases (for it happened not once but twice) could not have been exclusive or unique to her, and this issue --the democratic right of Black people to political inclusion and representation-- has to be TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT in determining electoral tactics. He uses the same inattentive approach, making and amalgam of the usual lesser-evil suspects with Fred Feldman because of his ANALYSIS of the significance of Obama's victory, EVEN THOUGH Fred urged a vote for McKinney. It is ONE thing to argue that the LOGIC or IMPLICATION of your opponent's position is such and such. It is ANOTHER to simply IMPUTE to those you are debating positions they do not, in fact, hold. And that's been going on for a while now, and continues, with the --frankly-- silly campaign to PROVE Obama is a bourgeois politician AS IF someone here had claimed he was the second coming of Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales. This causes a certain amount of annoyance and irritation, because it shows comrades on the other side of this discussion are approaching matters with all the open-mindedness of a brick wall. They don't even PRETEND to try to show that the IMPLICATION of what we actually do say is such and such -- they simply IMPUTE those positions to us and then deploy their polemical guns against fish in a barrel. Now, back to Louis's "answer" to me, such as it is. I've read most of this material, plus a bunch of other stuff, over the past 2-3 days. And assuming there are some comrades interested in how Lenin approached these issues, what he said, and what he and his friends did as a result, let me provide a guided reading list. One of the most interesting and useful article on the subject in dispute is "The Fourth Duma Election Campaign and the Tasks of the Revolutionary Social-Democrats." That is here: . The concept that Louis seems to be unable to wrap his head around is the same one as in the closely related discussion over "critical support" to social democratic candidates, which is that what is involved in not a Lenin Seal of Approval. Quite the contrary. "The hegemony of the liberals in the Russian emancipation movement has always meant, and will always mean, defeat for this movement. The liberals manoeuvre between the monarchy of the Purishkeviches and the revolution of the workers and peasants, betraying the latter at every serious juncture. The task of the revolution is to use the liberals' fight against the government and to neutralise their vacillations and treachery. "The policy of the liberals is to scare Purishkevich and Romanov a little with the prospect of revolution, in order to share power with them and jointly suppress the revolution. And it is the class position of the bourgeoisie that determines this policy. Hence the Cadets' cheap 'democracy' and their actual fusion with the most moderate 'Progressists' of the type of Yefremov, Lvov, Ryabushinsky and Co. "The tactics of the proletarian Party should be to use the fight between the liberals and the Purishkeviches over the division of power-without in any way allowing 'faith' in the liberals to take hold among the people-in order to develop, intensify and reinforce the revolutionary onslaught of the masses, which overthrows the monarchy and entirely wipes out the Purishkeviches and Romanovs. "At the elections, its tactics should be to unite the democrats against the Rights and against the Cadets by 'using' the liberals' fight against the Rights in cases of a second ballot, in the press and at meetings." This concept -- "'using' the liberals' fight against the Rights" seems to be what Louis has such a hard time understanding. Remember, the question that gave rise to these exchanges IS NOT the overall strategic perspective and tone of the Bolshevik campaign as a whole, but rather whether Lenin ever considered it "permissible" to bloc with or vote for the "liberals" (meaning in this case "moderate" constitutional monarchist parties). For Louis, this was absolutely and utterly excluded as a matter of principle. Well, it was not for Lenin. In reality, Louis has discovered that Lenin rejected and the Mensheviks accepted an overall bloc with the liberals. Lenin said no, in the big cities, the monarchists (the Rights) had no strength and the political significance of such a bloc would be to subordinate the revolutionary elements to the compromising bourgeoisie who merely used the revolutionary democratic elements (working class and peasant based) to scare the monarchy into making more concessions TO THEM, the big bourgeoisie. But for Lenin, this did not exclude punctual, limited tactical agreements and blocs with the liberals AGAINST THE MONARCHISTS, for example in some rural areas. Much of the material I already quoted to this effect is from the article, "The Significance of the St. Petersburg Elections" here: http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/jul/01.htm. Finally, because in most of the country elections to the Duma were indirect, with the people voting for electors and the electors for deputies, in some areas where they were not strong enough to get THEIR OWN deputies directly elected, they made horse-trading deals for deputies with the liberals *against the monarchists,* which is also a form of an electoral bloc. This latter tactic is documented in Lenin's "Report to the International Socialist Bureau, 'Elections to the Fourth Duma,'" which is here: http://marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/11.htm, and where he says, "In the workers' curia, all electors are Social-Democrats. The ultra-reactionary gentry, with a majority in the gubernia electoral assemblies, have been forced to let in the Social-Democrats (in six gubernias, the law stipulates the election of one deputy from the workers; in other gubernias, the Social-Democrats obtain mandates through agreements with the liberals)." How could Lenin possibly justify such a thing? Because the Russian party would get a lot more mileage, including anti-Cadet mileage, by having a stronger fraction in the Duma, and given the way the elections were structured and contests decided, these tactical arrangements were necessary. Joaquin This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 25 09:48:44 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:48:44 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Reports on Hu Jintao's visit to Cuba: Message-ID: <492BE61B.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> reports on Hu Jintao's visit to Cuba: SUN-SENTINEL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/95333 JUVENTUD REBELDE: http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/international/ 2008-11-18/biography-of-chinese-president-hu-jintao/ GRANMA INTERNATIONAL: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/noviembre/mar18/Hu-Jintao.html XINHUA: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/19/content_10378183.htm http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/20/content_10386413.htm ================================================================= Fidel Castro on the 50th Anniversary of the Chinese Revolution: http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-china.html ================================================================= Reflections by comrade Fidel http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/reflexiones.html MEETING HU JINTAO I didn't want to speak much, but he forced me to elaborate. I asked a few questions but I mostly listened to him. He related the exploits of the Chinese people in the past 10 months. The enormous nation with a 1.3 billion population has been hit by heavy and out-of-season snow, and an earthquake which devastated areas three times that of Cuba; in addition to the most serious international economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. I could see in my mind the great efforts of the Chinese people, its workers, its peasants and its manual and intellectual workers; the traditional hard-working spirit and the millennium-old culture of that country that preceded by thousands of years the colonial period imposed by the West, the same West where the current G-7 powers sit today with their force and wealth, playing a hegemonic role in the world economy. What a great challenge for this leader in these times of globalization who in a gesture of goodwill came to visit our blockaded, harassed and threatened homeland! Are we not one a rogue state among 60 or more that can be the target of a pre-emptive attack? That much was said by the insane leader of the empire six years ago, the same man who just five days ago met in Washington with the G20! China is the only member of that group whose State can regulate a high growth rate, at the pace it chooses, no less than 8% in 2009. The idea raised during the last Party Congress was to quadruple the per capita Gross Domestic Product between 2000 and 2020, measured in 2007 present values; that was the year the Congress was held. He spoke to me about that in detail. Thus, in conditions of peace, China will reach by the end of that period the figure of no less than 4 thousand dollars per capita income. I think that it should not be forgotten that China is an emerging nation whose per capita income at the time of the revolutionary victory --with a smaller population? hardly reached $400 per capita, and the country was completely isolated by imperialism. Just compare this with the $20 thousand per capita, or more, that developed capitalist countries such as Japan, the Western European nations, the United States and Canada currently enjoy. The per capita income in some of these exceeds the $40 thousand annually, even if their distribution in society is far from fair. It is only by using $586 billion from its foreign reserves amounting to almost $2 trillions, accumulated through much hard work and sacrifices that this country is facing the present crisis and advancing. Is there any other country as sound as this? The President of China, Secretary General of the Party and Chairman of the Party and Government Central Military Commissions, Hu Jintao, is a leader who's aware of his authority and exercises it to the full. The delegation he headed signed with Cuba twelve draft agreements towards a modest economic development in an area of the planet where the small territory in its entirety can be battered by increasingly intensive hurricanes, an evidence of true climate changes. The area affected by the earthquake in China is hardly 4% of the total area of that great multinational State. Under certain circumstances, the size of an independent country, its geographical location and the size of its population can play a major role. Would a country like the United States, which robs already trained minds everywhere, be in a position to apply an Adjustment Act to the Chinese citizens similar to the one it applies to Cuba? Obviously not. Could it apply it to the entire Latin America? Of course, it couldn't there either. Meanwhile, our marvelous, contaminated and only spaceship continues to circle around its imaginary axis, as one popular Venezuelan program likes to repeat. It's not an everyday occurrence for a small state to have the privilege of receiving a leader of Hu Jintao's stature and prestige. He shall now continue his trip to Lima. There will be another great meeting there. Again, President Bush will attend, this time seven days closer to the end of his mandate. It is said that in Washington, with only 20 leaders of the attending nations, the local security measures and those required by the host to thwart any attempt at physical removal, changed the habits and every day life in that city. How would it be in the great city of Lima? The city will surely be taken over by the security forces. It will be difficult to move around it because the well-trained members of the US supranational bodies will be there, and their interests and plans will only be known many years after the presidential terms of the eventual leaders of the empire are over. I summed up for him some of our country's assessments on the habits of our neighbors to the north, which tries to impose on us its ideas, its mindset and its interests with its fleet full of nuclear weapons and fighter planes; also our views on Venezuela's solidarity with Cuba from the most critical days of the Special Period and the hard blows dealt by the natural disasters. Likewise, that President Chavez, a great admirer of China has been the steadiest advocate of socialism as the only system capable of bringing justice to the peoples of Latin America. In Beijing, they treasure good memories of the Bolivarian leader. President Hu Jintao reaffirmed his wishes to continue developing relations with Cuba, a country for which he feels great respect. The conversation went on for 1 hour and 38 minutes. He was warm, friendly and modest, and his affection was obvious. I found him young, healthy and strong. We wish our distinguished and fraternal friend the best in his endeavors. Thanks for his encouraging visit and the honor of showing an interest in a personal meeting with me! Fidel Castro Ruz November 19, 2008 1:12 p.m. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 25 09:53:42 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:53:42 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Is the auto industry dead ? Message-ID: <492BE745.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> End of the Road: Is the Auto Industry Dead? By Mark Brenner and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes Posted on November 19, 2008, Printed on November 19, 2008 http://www.alternet.org/story/107489/ In the 1980s Chevrolet proclaimed itself the "Heartbeat of America." Today many would say that the American auto industry qualifies for life support. Last November, General Motors (owner of the Chevy brand) announced that it was cutting 25,000 jobs and closing up to 12 factories by 2008. The news came one month after auto parts giant Delphi declared bankruptcy, promising to shutter at least a dozen plants and cut as many as 24,000 jobs in three years time. Ford completed the grim hat trick in January, revealing a plan to cut 30,000 jobs by 2012. Just months before, GM and Ford had convinced Solidarity House, headquarters of the once-mighty United Auto Workers, to make $1 billion in concessions to help pay for retired auto workers' health benefits. Detroit is abuzz over the additional give-backs the Big Three auto makers (GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler) are likely to wrest from the union in next year's contract talks, and the rank-and-file hear no tough talk -- let alone action -- from their leaders. On the face of it, the industry's problems seem almost insurmountable. Collectively, U.S. car makers are billions of dollars in the red and foreign competitors continue to gobble up the Big Three's market share. America's auto giants boost their bottom line only by selling gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, and cars would be moving off the lots even slower were it not for thousands of dollars in incentives used to sweeten each sale. In the face of these pressures, it's no surprise that analysts from the Motor City to Wall Street are convinced that this is the end of an era in the auto industry. There is no alternative, these experts lament. Today's auto workers will have to make do with less or kiss their jobs goodbye. For over a century the auto industry has been an anchor for the U.S. economy and a trendsetter for corporate America. What does the current upheaval mean for workers? Announcing the company's bankruptcy, Delphi's CEO Steve Miller signaled what was at stake: "I want you to view what is happening at Delphi as a flash point, a test case, for all the economic and social trends that are on a collision course in our country and around the globe." The auto industry paid out a living wage for millions of working-class people. Is Detroit about to call an end to that life? What's Good for GM ... Times weren't always so tough in the Motor City. On the heels of World War II America's auto manufacturers were the undisputed titans of industry. Although UAW President Walter Reuther began his tenure with visions of government-provided pensions and health care for all Americans, that drive was blunted when the union achieved, at the bargaining table, a private welfare state for its members at the Big Three. In addition to private insurance and 30-years-and-out retirement benefits, they also received "supplemental unemployment benefits" to cushion the blow when the cyclical nature of the industry brought about layoffs -- a step toward Reuther's social democratic dream of a guaranteed annual wage. Besides their 3 percent annual raises to compensate for productivity improvements, auto workers also received cost-of-living increases, and, as the decades rolled on, tuition and legal services were added as well. Unions in steel and rubber followed suit with similar contracts and, to a lesser extent, other blue-collar workers such as miners, telephone workers, truckers, and electrical workers all attempted to follow the UAW's lead. The pattern of steady wage increases together with health and retirement benefits stretched well beyond heavily unionized industries, setting a higher standard for all the nation's employers, union and non-union alike. Gold-Plated Sweatshops The ratcheting productivity that allowed for these benefits was good for the bottom line but it meant that the factories continued to be, in Reuther's words, "gold-plated sweatshops." The foundry and the assembly line remained an inhuman way to make a living. The common pattern was for workers to sign on, thinking to stay just a few years, but to be seduced by the benefits -- and then say to themselves "it's only 30 years." The mind-numbing drudgery, the high injury rates, the heat and smoke and oil in the air led many workers to hit the bottle -- and, in one famous case, led black Detroit Chrysler worker James Johnson to pick up a gun and shoot two supervisors and a co-worker. A jury, after a plant tour, found that brutal working conditions and Chrysler's shop-floor racism had literally driven Johnson insane. Removed from the daily grind of factory life, however, UAW officials became far more attuned to the gold-plating in the shops than to the sweat. They sought gains they could measure in dollars, and Reuther's belief in the benefits of technology and productivity kept him from protesting either automation or speedup. Officials came to see themselves as partners with management, truly convinced that "what's good for GM is good for America," and for UAW members. This outlook ensured that a host of management initiatives -- and stupidities -- went unchallenged. Early on, the UAW abandoned Reuther's fight for low car prices; later, it joined auto manufacturers in lobbying against higher fuel economy standards. The UAW also embraced its role as guarantor of orderly industrial relations, repudiating the tactics that gave birth to the union in the 1930s. The Path Downwards These years of collaboration and quiescence left the union ill prepared for the crisis that shook the auto industry in 1979. The UAW once again blazed a trail the rest of the labor movement would soon follow-only this time it was the path of concessions and explicit labor-management cooperation. Through postwar recessions and expansions, it had not occurred to American employers that signed contracts could be breached. But when Lee Iacocca's Chrysler Corp. threatened bankruptcy in the fall of 1979, the UAW stepped up to the plate. Chrysler workers and retirees broke the once-sacrosanct pattern contract, taking concessions estimated at $203 million, $2,000 per worker, nonrecoverable. More cuts soon followed; by January 1981 Chrysler workers were collectively a billion dollars behind. The next year, with the economy and the industry in full-blown recession, the union opened pacts at Ford and GM to make cuts there. Describing the new bargaining climate, a steel industry official told the Wall Street Journal, "The whole posture of negotiating is changed. Basically we're asking for something that we're not entitled to." A staffer for the United Food and Commercial Workers noted, "After Chrysler, everything changed." Employers from meatpacking to airlines to education demanded and got wage cuts. In Michigan, the hospital workers union reported that every hospital it bargained with in 1982 used the argument "GM took a wage freeze." Companies used economic hard times to force a redistribution of power in their own favor. Accepting Competition As important as the monetary concessions was an explicit change in union philosophy: acceptance of the notion that it is the union's job to make the employer more "competitive." Workers were to contribute their ideas for boosting productivity, including speedup and job cuts. This "team concept" quickly spread from auto throughout manufacturing and beyond. The flagship team concept plant jointly run by GM and Toyota in Fremont, California, became the most famous factory in America and the site of manager-pilgrims from every walk of life, seeking the secrets of productivity. In essence, the UAW's deal with the auto makers was this: do whatever you need to do to boost profits, as long as you maintain the wages and benefits of (a steadily shrinking number of) workers at the Big Three. That "whatever" included lean production, outsourcing to nonunion parts plants at home and abroad, the sale of GM's and Ford's parts divisions in 1999 and 2000 (lopping off 52,000 workers) and, today, buyouts. There were 466,000 GM hourly workers in 1978 and in 2006, 112,000. Buoyed by the Bubble After a decade-long downturn, the 1990s was like winning the lottery for Detroit's auto makers. Mini-vans, one of the Big Three's only bright spots in the 1980s, continued to register solid sales, hovering at about 8 percent of the total domestic car and truck market. And because their Japanese rivals were slow to introduce their own models, Detroit maintained its dominance, with market share never dipping below 75 percent. But the Big Three's real gold mine was the phenomenal growth of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) during the 1990s, rising from 7 percent of the total car and truck market at the beginning of the decade to roughly 20 percent by the end. And sales really took off in the latter half of the 1990s, when most Americans saw their real wages inch up for the first time in 15 years. Concerns over fuel efficiency also seemed to melt away, with gas prices averaging a little over a dollar a gallon for most of the decade. As with mini-vans, Detroit's foreign rivals lagged behind, leaving the Big Three to dominate the SUV market. Bolstered by strong sales in these new niches, together with skyrocketing stock prices, Detroit's auto giants hoped to reclaim the global dominance that had seemed to slip through their fingers a decade earlier. In addition to expanding their existing global operations, the Big Three also engineered some very high- profile mergers and strategic investments, acquiring the Saab, Fiat, Suzuki, Daewoo, Jaguar, Volvo, and Land Rover brands. Investments, of course, can flow in both directions, and in 1998 Chrysler was acquired by Daimler-Benz. Spin-offs and Restructuring Detroit auto makers were also busy reshaping their domestic operations. They spun off their parts divisions into stand-alone companies and then negotiated steep wage cuts for new-hires there. GM hived off American Axle and Delphi, while Ford created Visteon. Chrysler took outsourcing to a new level by pioneering "modular production" in the U.S. At its Jeep plant in Toledo, body work, chassis and paint -- considered the core of auto assembly--will soon be performed on-site by non-Chrysler workers at lower pay. GM and Ford also paid less and less attention to producing cars, focusing instead on their financial services arms, with General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) and Ford Credit adding more and more heft to each company's bottom line. Indeed, by 2000 both GMAC and Ford Credit accounted for a third of net revenue for their respective companies. Mixed Bag for Workers For America's auto workers, the 1990s were decidedly more mixed. On the one hand, after a decade of bruising concessions and plant closings, everyone was relieved to see the return of both jobs and steady wage increases. On the other hand, much of the new investment coming into the industry was from foreign companies -- Toyota, Mazda, BMW, Nissan, Honda, Mercedes -- who sprinkled factories first on the outer edges of the Midwest auto corridor and then across the right-to-work South. These "transplants" kept their factories non-union, as did the auto parts industry that mushroomed in the 1990s, as the Big Three replaced vertical integration with outsourcing. Union density in auto, which in the dog days of the 1980s declined from 62 percent to 50, fell even faster in the prosperous 1990s, dropping to 37 percent by the year 2000. The UAW proved unwilling or unable to organize these newcomers, and one can only wonder whether things might be different today had the union summoned up some of the spirit, energy, and vision that drew hundreds of thousands of unorganized auto workers into the union in the 1930s. Instead the UAW concentrated on the state of its existing members, securing promises of new investment and job security from the Big Three both in contract talks and through job actions. For example, a 54- day strike at two strategic GM parts plants in 1998 idled most of General Motors' North American operations, and resulted in $200 million in new investment in the two plants. Unfortunately for the UAW, its fight to protect its shrinking store of good jobs was swimming against a much stronger national tide. The 1990s witnessed an explosion in income inequality, in no small part due to skyrocketing CEO pay (71 times workers' average wages in 1989, rising to 300 times by 2000) and a stock market run-up of historic proportions. The longest economic expansion since World War II did surprisingly little for those in the lower rungs of the income distribution, in part because of the declining share of the workforce represented by unions. Adding to the insecurity were large-scale retrenchments by the bulwarks of corporate America, including Xerox, IBM, and ATT. Underappreciated at the time, perhaps the biggest development of the 1990s was the move from defined-benefit pension plans to 401(k)-style defined-contribution plans. This seemed of little consequence when the stock market was posting double-digit gains year-in and year-out, but when the turn of the century recession hit, baby-boomers across the nation saw their retirements vaporize. UAW members at the Big Three were some of the few to retain their original pensions. Downturn These trends collided with a deflating stock market in 2000 to create a squeeze play for the auto industry and its hourly workforce. The recession hit Detroit particularly hard, as rising gas prices turned consumers off the low-mileage SUVs and minivans that had saved Detroit's bacon a decade earlier. In the last five years the Big Three's market share has fallen from 66 percent to 58 percent, and sales would have been even worse without the deep discounts auto makers felt forced to offer. At the same time that the domestic picture soured, many of the Big Three's global acquisitions also unraveled. General Motors, for example, paid a cool $2.4 billion to acquire a 20 percent stake in Fiat in 2000, then ponied up another $2 billion to get itself out of the deal five years later. Ford has injected more than $5 billion into Jaguar and to this day the luxury brand remains stubbornly in the red. Meanwhile the marriage of DaimlerChrysler has hardly been a match made in heaven--the merged company is worth less today in stock market terms than Daimler was on its own before they united. Hemorrhaging money and with no end in sight, last year Detroit's automakers took desperate measures to become smaller but more profitable companies, with Delphi declaring bankruptcy and GM and Ford putting 55,000 jobs on the chopping block. Since that time, they have all been singing the same tune, blaming their troubles on the generous wages, pensions, and healthcare of their unionized workforce. In a move whose irony cannot be lost on executives, Detroit has redirected decades of consumer frustration with American automakers for their lackluster designs and poor quality into widespread resentment of rank-and-file auto workers for their company-paid health care and pensions. The auto makers have tapped into middle America's deep-seated anxiety and insecurity with a not-so-subtle message: "If you don't have a pension or any hint of job security, why should they?" The scale and speed of these changes has left the UAW flat-footed, struggling to get a hearing-much less formulate a strategy-in its fight to save some of the last good manufacturing jobs in America. So Who Cares? Cynics might argue, who cares? The UAW represents fewer than 400,000 auto workers in an industry of more than a million, and the concessions the companies are clamoring for will simply bring their wages and benefits closer to what the market will bear for less-skilled workers anyway. Besides, manufacturing is so 20th century. Aren't we a post-industrial economy with a future in services and high-tech jobs? America can design and engineer stuff and let the rest of the world build it (think X-Boxes and Ipods). This mindset misses most of what's important about the crisis in auto. Downsizing isn't accountants shuffling numbers around on a spreadsheet; the lost jobs are concentrated in specific communities, such as the already devastated Flint, Michigan made famous by Michael Moore in his first film, Roger and Me. Cuts of this magnitude will reverberate throughout the Midwest, leaving a lasting economic and social hangover. And they will not be confined to auto, as other companies follow the Big Three's lead. High tech companies can't fill the void. Google, for example, has just announced plans to open up shop in Michigan. But Google employs less than 6,000 people worldwide, a drop in the bucket compared to the 70,000 jobs this round of auto restructuring will destroy. How could the auto industry right itself without devastating workers and communities? Execs have shown themselves curiously unwilling to campaign for one measure that would save them billions of dollars per year: single-payer health insurance. GM is the largest private purchaser of healthcare in the country, providing coverage to 1.1 million people. Last year the price tag was $5.3 billion, which, as CEO Rick Wagoner is fond of pointing out, is more than GM pays for steel. Half of those covered are retirees, and the company claims to provide healthcare to 1 percent of America's seniors. Legacy Myths The Big Three say that such "legacy costs," which also include pension benefits, are choking their business, obscuring the fact that all three auto makers have pension and retiree health funds flush with cash--healthy for the foreseeable future. If health care is such a heavy burden, why not join the movement for a far cheaper national health care plan? Canada's single-payer system makes it much less expensive to do business there and has spared most Ford and GM plants north of the border from the ax. But despite promises to the UAW to pursue "universal coverage" in exchange for the union's $1 billion in concessions on retiree health care last fall, GM's CEO didn't even mention national health care in testimony before a June Congressional special hearing on the nation's healthcare crisis. Either free-market ideology is trumping good business sense, or paying for benefits is not such a burden after all -- or the employers don't mind having a propaganda hammer to use against the union. When Henry Ford introduced the five-dollar day in 1914 he famously quipped that he wanted to pay his workers enough so that they could afford to buy his cars. Today, a new-hire at Delphi or Visteon now makes $14.50 an hour, a bit more than half his or her counterparts at the Big Three. In 2007, when new agreements are negotiated, the Big Three's new-hires are sure to take a hit. What will America look like if most workers earn Wal-Mart, instead of General Motors, wages? For those without a four year college degree - i.e., about 70 percent of the labor force - average wages (adjusted for inflation) have stagnated or fallen for the last 30 years, hovering under $15 today. Manufacturing jobs paid wages no better than the economy-wide average when Henry Ford was perfecting the assembly line, but by the end of the 20th century they were about 25 percent above average, in no small part due to unions like the UAW. A New Playbook To solve the industry's problems, many analysts have urged Detroit executives to go back to the drawing board and start fresh. This advice applies with even more force to the UAW. Forged in the 1930s' social upheaval, the UAW's pioneers originally saw the union as just one piece of a large-scale social movement to solve the problems of the Great Depression. Today the stakes are higher than they have been in 60 years, but the UAW is still fumbling through its golden-age playbook. The rank-and-file revolt after the Delphi bankruptcy demonstrates that members are willing to fight, but they can't do it alone. Now, more than ever, the UAW needs the audacity and the guts of its founders, who set their sights on more than the survival of their union headquarters. Their fight to build a better world inspired millions. With health care becoming less and less attainable for more and more working people, the fight for national single-payer health care has the potential to galvanize a new workers' movement. Rekindling such a movement may be the only way to ensure that the UAW founders' legacy doesn't evaporate before our eyes. Mark Brenner is the Director of Labor Notes. Jane Slaughter is a Detroit freelance writer and frequent contributor to the Metro Times. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From steiger2001 at centrum.cz Tue Nov 25 10:10:51 2008 From: steiger2001 at centrum.cz (steiger2001 at centrum.cz) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:10:51 +0100 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Reports on Hu Jintao's visit to Cuba: In-Reply-To: <492BE61B.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> References: <492BE61B.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: <200811251810.14700@centrum.cz> It is an irony reading about a meeting of two men both of which claim -- though the Chinese do not do it very poften these days any more -- being Marxists when none of them actually is neither a democrat nor a socialist. They both rule over people who did not elect them and, would they wish to get rid of them, have no other means than a violent revolution Stephen out of former communist Prague ______________________________________________________________ > Od: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us > Komu: , > Datum: 25.11.2008 17:50 > P?edm?t: [Marxism-Thaxis] Reports on Hu Jintao's visit to Cuba: > reports on Hu Jintao's visit to Cuba: SUN-SENTINEL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/95333 JUVENTUD REBELDE: http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/international/ 2008-11-18/biography-of-chinese-president-hu-jintao/ GRANMA INTERNATIONAL: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/noviembre/mar18/Hu-Jintao.html XINHUA: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/19/content_10378183.htm http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/20/content_10386413.htm ================================================================= Fidel Castro on the 50th Anniversary of the Chinese Revolution: http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-china.html ================================================================= Reflections by comrade Fidel http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/reflexiones.html MEETING HU JINTAO I didn't want to speak much, but he forced me to elaborate. I asked a few questions but I mostly listened to him. He related the exploits of the Chinese people in the past 10 months. The enormous nation with a 1.3 billion population has been hit by heavy and out-of-season snow, and an earthquake which devastated areas three times that of Cuba; in addition to the most serious international economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. I could see in my mind the great efforts of the Chinese people, its workers, its peasants and its manual and intellectual workers; the traditional hard-working spirit and the millennium-old culture of that country that preceded by thousands of years the colonial period imposed by the West, the same West where the current G-7 powers sit today with their force and wealth, playing a hegemonic role in the world economy. What a great challenge for this leader in these times of globalization who in a gesture of goodwill came to visit our blockaded, harassed and threatened homeland! Are we not one a rogue state among 60 or more that can be the target of a pre-emptive attack? That much was said by the insane leader of the empire six years ago, the same man who just five days ago met in Washington with the G20! China is the only member of that group whose State can regulate a high growth rate, at the pace it chooses, no less than 8% in 2009. The idea raised during the last Party Congress was to quadruple the per capita Gross Domestic Product between 2000 and 2020, measured in 2007 present values; that was the year the Congress was held. He spoke to me about that in detail. Thus, in conditions of peace, China will reach by the end of that period the figure of no less than 4 thousand dollars per capita income. I think that it should not be forgotten that China is an emerging nation whose per capita income at the time of the revolutionary victory --with a smaller population? hardly reached $400 per capita, and the country was completely isolated by imperialism. Just compare this with the $20 thousand per capita, or more, that developed capitalist countries such as Japan, the Western European nations, the United States and Canada currently enjoy. The per capita income in some of these exceeds the $40 thousand annually, even if their distribution in society is far from fair. It is only by using $586 billion from its foreign reserves amounting to almost $2 trillions, accumulated through much hard work and sacrifices that this country is facing the present crisis and advancing. Is there any other country as sound as this? The President of China, Secretary General of the Party and Chairman of the Party and Government Central Military Commissions, Hu Jintao, is a leader who's aware of his authority and exercises it to the full. The delegation he headed signed with Cuba twelve draft agreements towards a modest economic development in an area of the planet where the small territory in its entirety can be battered by increasingly intensive hurricanes, an evidence of true climate changes. The area affected by the earthquake in China is hardly 4% of the total area of that great multinational State. Under certain circumstances, the size of an independent country, its geographical location and the size of its population can play a major role. Would a country like the United States, which robs already trained minds everywhere, be in a position to apply an Adjustment Act to the Chinese citizens similar to the one it applies to Cuba? Obviously not. Could it apply it to the entire Latin America? Of course, it couldn't there either. Meanwhile, our marvelous, contaminated and only spaceship continues to circle around its imaginary axis, as one popular Venezuelan program likes to repeat. It's not an everyday occurrence for a small state to have the privilege of receiving a leader of Hu Jintao's stature and prestige. He shall now continue his trip to Lima. There will be another great meeting there. Again, President Bush will attend, this time seven days closer to the end of his mandate. It is said that in Washington, with only 20 leaders of the attending nations, the local security measures and those required by the host to thwart any attempt at physical removal, changed the habits and every day life in that city. How would it be in the great city of Lima? The city will surely be taken over by the security forces. It will be difficult to move around it because the well-trained members of the US supranational bodies will be there, and their interests and plans will only be known many years after the presidential terms of the eventual leaders of the empire are over. I summed up for him some of our country's assessments on the habits of our neighbors to the north, which tries to impose on us its ideas, its mindset and its interests with its fleet full of nuclear weapons and fighter planes; also our views on Venezuela's solidarity with Cuba from the most critical days of the Special Period and the hard blows dealt by the natural disasters. Likewise, that President Chavez, a great admirer of China has been the steadiest advocate of socialism as the only system capable of bringing justice to the peoples of Latin America. In Beijing, they treasure good memories of the Bolivarian leader. President Hu Jintao reaffirmed his wishes to continue developing relations with Cuba, a country for which he feels great respect. The conversation went on for 1 hour and 38 minutes. He was warm, friendly and modest, and his affection was obvious. I found him young, healthy and strong. We wish our distinguished and fraternal friend the best in his endeavors. Thanks for his encouraging visit and the honor of showing an interest in a personal meeting with me! Fidel Castro Ruz November 19, 2008 1:12 p.m. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 25 10:54:16 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:54:16 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] After Citi, is Bank of America next? Message-ID: <492BF578.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> After Citi, is Bank of America next? http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE4AN8FN20081124?virtualBrandChannel=10112&sp=true Mon Nov 24, 2008 By Elinor Comlay NEW YORK (Reuters) - A government rescue plan has eased investors' concerns about Citigroup Inc, but mines lurking in the balance sheets of rivals including Bank of America Corp could still tempt short-sellers. Bank of America, the No. 3 U.S. bank by assets, has loaded up on mortgages as the world's largest economy wrestles with the worst housing market since the Great Depression. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank further heightened its exposure to home loans by acquiring Countrywide Financial Corp, the largest U.S. independent mortgage lender and agreeing to buy Merrill Lynch & Co, which owns the world's largest retail brokerage. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE4AN8FN20081124?virtualBrandChannel=10112&sp=true This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Nov 25 11:50:36 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:50:36 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Making the World's Poor Pay:The Economic Crisis and the Global South Message-ID: <492C02AB.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet155.html The B u l l e t Socialist Project ? E-Bulletin No. 155 November 23, 2008 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Making the World's Poor Pay: The Economic Crisis and the Global South Adam Hanieh The current global economic crisis has all the earmarks of an epoch-defining event. Mainstream economists - not usually known for their exaggerated language - now openly employ phrases like 'systemic meltdown' and 'peering into the abyss.' On October 29, for example, Martin Wolf, one of the top financial commentators of the Financial Times, warned that the crisis portends ?mass bankruptcy,? ?soaring unemployment? and a ?catastrophe? that threatens ?the legitimacy of the open market economy itself... the danger remains huge and time is short.? There is little doubt that this crisis is already having a devastating impact on heavily-indebted American households. But one of the striking characteristics of analysis to date - by both the left and the mainstream media - is the almost exclusive focus on the wealthy countries of North America, Europe and East Asia. From foreclosures in California to the bankruptcy of Iceland, the impact of financial collapse is rarely examined beyond the advanced capitalist core. The pattern of capitalist crisis over the last fifty years should alert us to the dangers of this approach. Throughout its history, capitalism has functioned through geographical displacement of crisis - attempting to offload the worst impacts onto those outside the core. This article presents a short survey of what this crisis might mean for the Global South. World trade drops This crisis hits a world economy that - for the first time in history - is truly global. Of course exports and the control of raw materials have always been important to capitalism. But up until the 1970s most capitalist production was organized nationally. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s both production and consumption began to be organized at the international scale. Today, all markets are dominated by a handful of large companies operating internationally through interconnected chains of production, sub-contracting and marketing. Almost every product we consume has involved the labour of thousands of people scattered across the globe - from the production of raw material inputs, research and development (R&D), assembly, transport, marketing, and financing. At one level this interconnectedness of production expresses the fact that human beings have become one social organism. At the same time, it continually runs up against a system organized for the pursuit of individual, private profit. This interconnectedness has taken a very particular form over the last couple of decades. The world market has been structured around the consumption of the American (and, to a lesser extent, European) consumer. Goods produced in low-wage production zones such as China and India - using raw materials mostly sourced from other countries in the South - are exported to the U.S. where they ended up in the ever expanding homes of an overly-indebted consumer. Control of this global chain of production and consumption rests in the hands of large U.S., European and Japanese conglomerates. This structure helped to fracture and roll-back national development projects across the globe. Coupled with the debt crisis of the 1980s, export-oriented models of development were imposed by the International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions on most countries in the South. Many of the elites of these countries bought into this development model as they gained ownership stakes in newly privatized companies and access to markets in the North. The ever-expanding consumption of the U.S. market was predicated on a massive rise in indebtedness. U.S. consumers were encouraged to take on vast levels of debt (through credit cards, mortgages, 'zero-down' financing, etc) in order to maintain the consumption levels that underpinned global demand. The dollars that enabled this growth in debt came from financial instruments that were purchased by Asian central banks and others around the world. These institutions lent dollars back to the U.S. where they were channeled to consumers through banks and other mechanisms. The U.S. real estate market was just one of the financial bubbles that permitted this treadmill of increasing indebtedness to continue. People could continually refinance their mortgages as real estate prices went up. But with the collapse of this bubble global world demand is suddenly drying up. Because of the interconnectedness of world trade, this will have a very severe impact on every country across the globe, particularly in the South. One measure of this is shown by a relatively obscure economic indicator, the Baltic Dry Index (BDI). The BDI measures the cost of long-distance shipping for commodities such as coal, iron ore and steel. From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 26 09:37:33 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:37:33 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] No sure bet $800 billion will unlock credit Message-ID: <492D34FC.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> No sure bet $800 billion will unlock credit http://www.freep.com/article/20081126/COL07/811260401 BY SUSAN TOMPOR FREE PRESS COLUMNIST The federal government pulled more blowtorches from its tool chest Tuesday in a dramatic expansion of its efforts to thaw the credit markets and make car loans, student loans and credit cards more readily available. Two new programs announced by the Bush administration and Federal Reserve will provide $800 billion for the effort, bringing the government's obligations for Wall Street bailouts, loan guarantees and related moves to shore up the banking system to nearly $7 trillion (though it's unlikely that much would actually be spent). Will the new tools work? Who knows? Many details remain sketchy. But some economists see this as another of many steps being taken to deal with the frustrating financial crisis. "I don't know if people will sense if credit will be more available, but it will be more available," said Dana Johnson, senior economist for Dallas-based Comerica Inc. Many consumers and small businesses have found it tough to borrow during the credit crunch that's now more than a year old. A whole wave of financing essentially died this fall. In the past, car loans, mortgages, student loans and other loans ended up packaged into securities on Wall Street. But investors stopped touching all sorts of asset-backed securities. On top of this, the government had to step in Sunday to craft a rescue package for Citigroup Inc., which is dealing with substantial losses in its consumer loan portfolio. After the Citigroup mess, the federal government needed another strategy to reassure investors and depositors. "What they're doing is trying to bolster confidence in financial institutions," said Hugh Johnson, chairman and chief investment officer for Johnson Illington Advisors, a New York money management company. GMAC Financial Services spokeswoman Gina Proia said Tuesday that the latest effort is welcomed. "It's another encouraging step that the Fed and the treasury recognized the constriction in auto finance," she said. Ford Motor Credit also favors the move and looks forward to more details. We do not have many details yet. The Federal Reserve said in its release that: "Terms and conditions are subject to change based on discussions with market participants in the coming weeks." Basically, the federal government said the Federal Reserve Bank of New York would lend up to $200 billion to investors who want to buy securities backed by newly and recently originated consumer and small-business loans. The U.S. Treasury Department -- under the Troubled Assets Relief Program of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 -- will provide $20 billion of credit protection to this effort, according to the Fed. The Federal Reserve Board announced the creation of the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. Initially, the taxpayer risk is expected to be minimal, as this now applies to new loans. But actual risk is unknown because the full details of the program have not been rolled out. The plan is to support various consumer loans. Also Tuesday, the Fed said it would buy as much as $600 billion in debt issued or backed by government-chartered housing finance companies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To try to increase the availability of home loans to borrowers, the Federal Reserve said it would buy up to $100 billion in direct obligations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as from the Federal Home Loan Banks. The Fed also will buy $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities, pools of mortgages that are bundled together and sold to investors. The Fed may hold the Fannie and Freddie debt and securities until they mature or sell them, with plans to be determined, Bloomberg News reported. Lots of money? Sure. We're talking about a half-dozen efforts or more that the Fed is using to address this financial crisis. "The Fed has more than doubled the size of its balance sheet already," Johnson said. The major lending program drew criticism from some who said taxpayers already are on the hook for too much money when it comes to bailing out financial institutions. Others saw merits in the efforts. Bill Hardekopf, chief executive of LowCards.com, said in an e-mail that he would be hopeful that some credit card issuers could stop reducing credit limits on good consumers and start approving more applications from people with average credit. That's the goal of this game, anyway. Sallie Mae, the nation's leading saving- and paying-for-college company, responded in an e-mail saying that the latest move builds on other efforts to prioritize students' access to loans to finance college. Again, that's the goal. Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, said he believes the new program would mainly help larger lenders. He said the effort could prevent the problems with private student loans from getting worse. But he stressed that smaller lenders are unlikely to re-enter the market if they had previously suspended their private student loan programs. My best guess is we're really going to have to wait and see how well this works. And we're going to have to get more details and insight, something lacking on Tuesday. Do we have a credit freeze? Yes. Will these new blowtorches melt the big blocks of ice? We'll see. We'll see. Contact SUSAN TOMPOR at 313-222-8876 or stompor at freepress.com. Business writer Justin Hyde contributed to this report. Additional Facts So what's all the money for? The Federal Reserve said Tuesday that it would buy up to $600 billion in mortgage-related assets, including $100 billion in bonds or other debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, and $500 billion in other mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the government entities, including Ginnie Mae, which oversees Federal Housing Administration mortgages. The Fed also said it would lend up to $200 billion to securities dealers and other financial firms that hold Triple-A rated securities backed by newly and recently originated consumer loans, such as credit cards and auto loans. The program also is to cover loans originated by the government's Small Business Administration. Source: Gannett News Service This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 26 09:58:33 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:58:33 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY Message-ID: <492D39E8.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism A POPULAR OUTLINE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch03.htm III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY ?A steadily increasing proportion of capital in industry,? writes Hilferding, ?ceases to belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the medium of the banks which, in relation to them, represent the owners of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to sink an increasing share of its funds in industry. Thus, to an ever greater degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalist. This bank capital, i.e., capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call ?finance capital?.? ?Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists.?[1] This definition is incomplete insofar as it is silent on one extremely important fact?on the increase of concentration of production and of capital to such an extent that concentration is leading, and has led, to monopoly. But throughout the whole of his work, and particularly in the two chapters preceding the one from which this definition is taken, Hilferding stresses the part played by capitalist monopolies. The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry?such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept. We now have to describe how, under the general conditions of commodity production and private property, the ?business operations? of capitalist monopolies inevitably lead to the domination of a financial oligarchy. It should be noted that German?and not only German?bourgeois scholars, like Riesser, Schulze-Gaevernitz, Liefmann and others, are all apologists of imperialism and of finance capital. Instead of revealing the ?mechanics? of the formation of an oligarchy, its methods, the size of its revenues ?impeccable and peccable?, its connections with parliaments etc., etc., they obscure or gloss over them. They evade these ?vexed questions? by pompous and vague phrases, appeals to the ?sense of responsibility? of bank directors, by praising ?the sense of duty? of Prussian officials, giving serious study to the petty details of absolutely ridiculous parliamentary bills for the ?supervision? and ?regulation? of monopolies, playing spillikins with theories, like, for example, the following ?scholarly? definition, arrived at by Professor Liefmann: ?Commerce is an occupation having for its object the collection, storage and supply of goods.?[2] (The Professor?s bold-face italics.) . . . From this it would follow that commerce existed in the time of primitive man, who knew nothing about exchange, and that it will exist under socialism! But the monstrous facts concerning the monstrous rule of the financial oligarchy are so glaring that in all capitalist countries, in America, France and Germany, a whole literature has sprung up, written from the bourgeois point of view, but which, nevertheless, gives a fairly truthful picture and criticism?petty-bourgeois, naturally?of this oligarchy. Paramount importance attaches to the ?holding system?, already briefly referred to above. The German economist, Heymann, probably the first to call attention to this matter, describes the essence of it in this way: ?The head of the concern controls the principal company (literally: the ?mother company?); the latter reigns over the subsidiary companies (?daughter companies?) which in their turn control still other subsidiaries (?grandchild companies?), etc. In this way, it is possible with a comparatively small capital to dominate immense spheres of production. Indeed, if holding 50 per cent of the capital is always sufficient to control a company, the head of the concern needs only one million to control eight million in the second subsidiaries. And if this ?interlocking? is extended, it is possible with one million to control sixteen million, thirty-two million, etc.?[3] As a matter of fact, experience shows that it is sufficient to own 40 per cent of the shares of a company in order to direct its affairs,[4] since in practice a certain number of small, scattered shareholders find it impossible to attend general meetings, etc. The ?democratisation? of the ownership of shares, from which the bourgeois sophists and opportunist so-called ?Social-Democrats? expect (or say that they expect) the ?democratisation of capital?, the strengthening of the role and significance of small scale production, etc., is, in fact, one of the ways of increasing the power of the financial oligarchy. Incidentally, this is why, in the more advanced, or in the older and more ?experienced? capitalist countries, the law allows the issue of shares of smaller denomination. In Germany, the law does not permit the issue of shares of less than one thousand marks denomination, and the magnates of German finance look with an envious eye at Britain, where the issue of one-pound shares (= 20 marks, about 10 rubles) is permitted Siemens, one of the biggest industrialists and ?financial kings? in Germany, told the Reiclistag on June 7, 1900, that ?the one-pound share is the basis of British imperialism?.[5] This merchant has a much deeper and more ?Marxist? understanding of imperialism than a certain disreputable writer who is held to be one of the founders of Russian Marxism[21] and believes that imperialism is a bad habit of a certain nation.... But the ?holding system? not only serves enormously to increase the power of the monopolists; it also enables them to resort with impunity to all sorts of shady and dirty tricks to cheat the public, because formally the directors of the ?mother company? are not legally responsible for the ?daughter company?, which is supposed to be ?independent?, and through the medium of which they can ?pull off? anything. Here is an example taken from the German review, Die Bank, for May 1914: ?The Spring Steel Company of Kassel was regarded some years ago as being one of the most profitable enterprises in Germany. Through bad management its dividends fell from 15 per cent to nil. It appears that the Board, without consulting the shareholders, had loaned six million marks to one of its ?daughter companies?, the Hassia Company, which had a nominal capital of only some hundreds of thousands of marks. This commitment, amounting to nearly treble the capital of the ?mother company?, was never mentioned in its balance-sheets. This omission was quite legal and could be hushed up for two whole years because it did not violate any point of company law. The chairman of the Supervisory Board, who as the responsible head had signed the false balance-sheets, was, and still is, the president of the Kassel Chamber of Commerce. The shareholders only heard of the loan to the Hassia Company long afterwards, when it had been proved to be a mistake?... (the writer should put this word in inverted commas) ... ?and when Spring Steel shares dropped nearly 100 per cent, because those in the know were getting rid of them.... ?This typical example of balance-sheet jugglery, quite common in joint-stock companies, explains why their Boards of Directors are willing to undertake risky transactions with a far lighter heart than individual businessmen. Modern methods of drawing up balance-sheets not only make it possible to conceal doubtful undertakings from the ordinary shareholder, but also allow the people most concerned to escape the consequence of unsuccessful speculation by selling their shares in time when the individual businessman risks his own skin in everything he does.... ?The balance-sheets of many joint-stock companies put us in mind of the palimpsests of the Middle Ages from which the visible inscription had first to be erased in order to discover beneath it another inscription giving the real meaning of the document. [Palimpsests are parchment documents from which the original inscription has been erased and another inscription imposed.] ?The simplest and, therefore, most common procedure for making balance-sheets indecipherable is to divide a single business into several parts by setting up ?daughter companies??or by annexing them. The advantages of this system for various purposes?legal and illegal?are so evident that big companies which do not employ it are quite the exception.?[6] As an example of a huge monopolist company that extensively employs this system, the author quotes the famous General Electric Company (the A.E.G., to which I shall refer again later on). In 1912, it was calculated that this company held shares in 175 to 200 other companies, dominating them, of course, and thus controlling a total capital of about 1,500 million marks.[7] None of the rules of control, the publication of balance-sheets, the drawing up of balance-sheets according to a definite form, the public auditing of accounts, etc., the things about which well-intentioned professors and officials?that is, those imbued with the good intention of defending and prettyfying capitalism?discourse to the public, are of any avail; for private property is sacred, and no one can be prohibited from buying, selling, exchanging or hypothecating shares, etc. The extent to which this ?holding system? has developed in the big Russian banks may be judged by the figures given by E. Agalid, who for fifteen years was an official of the Russo-Chinese Bank and who, in May 1914, published a book, not altogether correctly entitled Big Banks and the World Market.[8] The author divides the big Russian banks into two main groups: (a) banks that come under the ?holding system?, and (b) ?independent? banks??independence? however, being arbitrarily taken to mean independence of foreign banks. The author divides the first group into three subgroups: (1) German holdings, (2) British holdings, and (3) French holdings, having in view the ?holdings? and domination of the big foreign banks of the particular country mentioned. The author divides the capital of the banks into ?productively? invested capital (industrial and commercial undertakings), and ?speculatively? invested capital (in Stock Exchange and financial operations), assuming, from his petty-bourgeois reformist point of view, that it is possible, under capitalism, to separate the first form of investment from the second and to abolish the second form. Here are the figures he supplies: BANK ASSETS (According to Reports for October-November 1912 000,000 rubles Capital Invested Groups of Russian banks Productively Speculatively Total a 1) Four banks: Siberian Commercial, Russian , International, and Discount Bank.... 413.7 859.1 1,272.8 a 2) Two banks: Commercial and Industrial, and Russo-British 239.3 169.1 408.4 a 3) Five banks: Russian-Asiatic, St. Petersburg Private, Azov-Don, Union Moscow, Russo- French Commercial 711.8 661.2 1,373.0 (11 banks) Total..............a) = 1,364.8 1,689.4 3,054.2 b) Eight banks: Moscow Merchants, Volga-Kama, Junker and Co., St. Petersburg Commercial (formerly Wawelberg), Bank of Moscow (formerly Ryabushinsky), Moscow Discount, Moscow Commercial, Moscow Private....... 504.2 391.1 895.3 (10 banks) Total .......... 1,869.0 2,080.5 3,949.5 According to these figures, of the approximately 4,000 million rubles making up the ?working? capital of the big banks, more than three-fourths, more than 3,000 million, belonged to banks which in reality were only ?daughter companies? of foreign banks, and chiefly of Paris banks (the famous trio: Union Parisienne, Paris et Pays-Bas and Soci?t? G?n?rale), and of Berlin banks (particularly the Deutsche Bank and Disconto-Gesellschaft). Two of the biggest Russian banks, the Russian (Russian Bank for Foreign Trade) and the International (St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank), between 1906 and 1912 increased their capital from 44 to 98 million rubles, and their reserves from 15 million to 39 million ?employing three-fourths German capital?. The first bank belongs to the Berlin Deutsche Bank ?concern? and the second to the Berlin Disconto-Gesellschaft. The worthy Agahd is deeply indignant at the majority of the shares being held by the Berlin banks, so that the Russian shareholders are, therefore, powerless. Naturally, the country which exports capital skims the cream; for example, the Berlin Deutsche Bank, before placing the shares of the Siberian Commercial Bank on the Berlin market, kept them in its portfolio for a whole year, and then sold them at the rate of 193 for 100, that is, at nearly twice their nominal value, ?earning? a profit of nearly six million rubles, which Hilferding calls ?promoter?s profits?. Our author puts the total ?capacity? of the principal St. Petersburg banks at 8,235 million rubles, well over 8,000 million, and the ?holdings?, or rather, the extent to which foreign banks dominated them, he estimates as follows: French banks, 55 per cent; British, 10 per cent; German, 35 per cent. The author calculates that of the total of 8,235 million rubles of functioning capital, 3,687 million rubles, or over 40 per cent, fall to the share of the Produgol and Prodamet syndicates[22] and the syndicates in the oil, metallurgical and cement industries. Thus, owing to the formation of capitalist monopolies, the merging of bank and industrial capital has also made enormous strides in Russia. Finance capital, concentrated in a few hands and exercising a virtual monopoly, exacts enormous and ever-increasing profits from the floating of companies, issue of stock, state loans, etc., strengthens the domination of the financial oligarchy and levies tribute upon the whole of society for the benefit of monopolists. Here is an example, taken from a multitude of others, of the ?business? methods of the American trusts, quoted by Hilferding. In 1887, Havemeyer founded the Sugar Trust by amalgamating fifteen small firms, whose total capital amounted to 6,500,000 dollars. Suitably ?watered?, as the Americans say, the capital of the trust was declared to be 50 million dollars. This ?overcapitalisation? anticipated the monopoly profits, in the same way as the United States Steel Corporation anticipates its monopoly profits in buying up as many iron ore fields as possible. In fact, the Sugar Trust set up monopoly prices, which secured it such profits that it could pay 10 per cent dividend on capital ?watered? sevenfold, or about 70 per cent on the capital actually invested at the time the trust was formed! In 1909, the capital of the Sugar Trust amounted to 90 million dollars. In twenty-two years, it had increased its capital more than tenfold. In France the domination of the ?financial oligarchy? (Against the Financial Oligarchy in France, the title of the well-known book by Lysis, the fifth edition of which was published in 1908) assumed a form that was only slightly different. Four of the most powerful banks enjoy, not a relative, but an ?absolute monopoly? in the issue of bonds. In reality, this is a ?trust of big banks?. And monopoly ensures monopoly profits from bond issues. Usually a borrowing country does not get more than 90 per cent of the sum of the loan, the remaining 10 per cent goes to the banks and other middlemen. The profit made by the banks out of the Russo-Chinese loan of 400 million francs amounted to 8 per cent; out of the Russian (1904) loan of 800 million francs the profit amounted to 10 per cent; and out of the Moroccan (1904) loan of 62,500,000 francs it amounted to 18.75 per cent. Capitalism, which began its development with petty usury capital, is ending its development with gigantic usury capital. ?The French,? says Lysis, ?are the usurers of Europe.? All the conditions of economic life are being profoundly modified by this transformation of capitalism. With a stationary population, and stagnant industry, commerce and shipping, the ?country? can grow rich by usury. ?Fifty persons, representing a capital of eight million francs, can control 2,000 million francs deposited in four banks.? The ?holding system?, with which we are already familiar, leads to the same result. One of the biggest banks, the Soci?t? G?n?rale for instance, issues 64,000 bonds for its ?daughter company?, the Egyptian Sugar Refineries. The bonds are issued at 150 per cent, i.e., the bank gains 50 centimes on the franc. The dividends of the new company were found to be fictitious, the ?public? lost from 90 to 100 million francs. ?One of the directors of the Soci?t? G?n?rale was a member of the board of directors of the Sugar Refineries.? It is not surprising that the author is driven to the conclusion that ?the French Republic is a financial monarchy?; ?it is the complete domination of the financial oligarchy; the latter dominates over the press and the government.?[9] The extraordinarily high rate of profit obtained from the issue of bonds, which is one of the principal functions of finance capital, plays a very important part in the development and consolidation of the financial oligarchy. ?There is not a single business of this type within the country that brings in profits even approximately equal to those obtained from the floatation of foreign loans,? says Die Bank.[10] ?No banking operation brings in profits comparable with those obtained from the issue of securities!? According to the German Economist, the average annual profits made on the issue of industrial stock were as follows: Per Cent 1895.............. 38.6 1896.............. 36.1 1897.............. 66.7 1898.............. 67.7 1899.............. 66.9 1900.............. 55.2 ?In the ten years from 1891 to 1900, more than a thousand million marks were ?earned? by issuing German industrial stock.?[11] During periods of industrial boom, the profits of finance capital are immense, but during periods of depression, small and unsound businesses go out of existence, and the big banks acquire ?holdings? in them by buying them up for a mere song, or participate in profitable schemes for their ?reconstruction? and ?reorganisation?. In the ?reconstruction? of undertakings which have been running at a loss, ?the share capital is written down, that is, profits are distributed on a smaller capital and continue to be calculated on this smaller basis. Or, if the income has fallen to zero, new capital is called in, which, combined with the old and less remunerative capital, will bring in an adequate return.? ?Incidentally,? adds Hilferding, ?all these reorganisations and reconstructions have a twofold significance for the banks: first, as profitable transactions; and secondly, as opportunities for securing control of the companies in difficulties.?[12] Here is an instance. The Union Mining Company of Dortmund was founded in 1872. Share capital was issued to the amount of nearly 40 million marks and the market price of the shares rose to 170 after it had paid a 12 per cent dividend for its first year. Finance capital skimmed the cream and earned a trifle of something like 28 million marks. The principal sponsor of this company was that very big German Disconto-Gesellschaft which so successfully attained a capital of 300 million marks. Later, the dividends of the Union declined to nil; the shareholders had to consent to a ?writing down? of capital, that is, to losing some of it in order not to lose it all. By a series of ?reconstructions?, more than 73 million marks were written off the books of the Union in the course of thirty years. ?At the present time, the original shareholders of the company possess only 5 per cent of the nominal value of their shares?[13] but the banks ?earned something? out of every ?reconstruction?. Speculation in land situated in the suburbs of rapidly growing big towns is a particularly profitable operation for finance capital. The monopoly of the banks merges here with the monopoly of ground-rent and with monopoly of the means of communication, since the rise in the price of land and the possibility of selling it profitably in lots, etc., is mainly dependent on good means of communication with the centre of the town; and these means of communication are in the hands of large companies which are connected with these same banks through the holding system and the distribution of seats on the boards. As a result we get what the German writer, L. Eschwege, a contributor to Die Bank who has made a special study of real estate business and mortgages, etc., calls a ?bog?. Frantic speculation in suburban building lots; collapse of building enterprises like the Berlin firm of Boswau and Knauer, which acquired as much as 100 million marks with the help of the ?sound and solid? Deutsche Bank?the latter, of course, acting through the holding system, i.e., secretly, behind the scenes?and got out of it with a loss of ?only? 12 million marks, then the ruin of small proprietors and of workers who get nothing from the fictitious building firms, fraudulent deals with the ?honest? Berlin police and administration for the purpose of gaining control of the issue of cadastral certificates, building licences, etc., etc.[14] ?American ethics?, which the European professors and well-meaning bourgeois so hypocritically deplore, have, in the age of finance capital, become the ethics of literally every large city in any country. At the beginning of 1914, there was talk in Berlin of the formation of a ?transport trust?, i.e., of establishing ?community of interests? between the three Berlin transport undertakings: the city electric railway, the tramway company and the omnibus company. ?We have been aware,? wrote Die Bank, ?that this plan was contemplated ever since it became known that the majority of the shares in the bus company had been acquired by the other two transport companies.... We may fully believe those who are pursuing this aim when they say that by uniting the transport services, they will secure economies, part of which will in time benefit the public. But the question is complicated by the fact that behind the transport trust that is being formed are the banks, which, if they desire, can subordinate the means of transportation, which they have monopolised, to the interests of their real estate business. To be convinced of the reasonableness of such a conjecture, we need only recall that the interests of the big banks that encouraged the formation of the Electric Railway Company were already involved in it at the time the company was formed. That is to say: the interests of this transport undertaking were interlocked with the real estate interests. The point is that the eastern line of this railway was to run across land which this bank sold at an enormous profit for itself and for several partners in the transactions when it became certain the line was to be laid down.?[15] A monopoly, once it is formed and controls thousands of millions, inevitably penetrates into every sphere of public life, regardless of the form of government and all other ?details?. In German economic literature one usually comes across obsequious praise of the integrity of the Prussian bureaucracy, and allusions to the French Panama scandal[23] and to political corruption in America. But the fact is that even bourgeois literature devoted to German banking matters constantly has to go far beyond the field of purely banking operations; it speaks, for instance, about ?the attraction of the banks? in reference to the increasing frequency with which public officials take employment with the banks, as follows: ?How about the integrity of a state official who in his innermost heart is aspiring to a soft job in the Behrenstrasse??[16] (The Berlin street where the head office of the Deutsche Bank is situated.) In 1909, the publisher of Die Bank, Alfred Lansburgh, wrote an article entitled ?The Economic Significance of Byzantinism?, in which he incidentally referred to Wilhelm II?s tour of Palestine, and to ?the immediate result of this journey, the construction of the Baghdad railway, that fatal ?great product of German enterprise?, which is more responsible for the ?encirclement? than all our political blunders put together?.[17] (By encirclement is meant the policy of Edward VII to isolate Germany and surround her with an imperialist anti-German alliance.) In 1911, Eschwege, the contributor to this same magazine to whom I have already referred, wrote an article entitled ?Plutocracy and Bureaucracy?, in which he exposed, for example, the case of a German official named V?lker, who was a zealous member of the Cartel Committee and who, it turned out some time later, obtained a lucrative post in the biggest cartel, the Steel Syndicate. Similar cases, by no means casual, forced this bourgeois author to admit that ?the economic liberty guaranteed by the German Constitution has become in many departments of economic life, a meaningless phrase? and that under the existing rule of the plutocracy, ?even the widest political liberty cannot save us from being converted into a nation of unfree people?.[18] As for Russia, I shall confine myself to one example. Some years ago, all the newspapers announced that Davydov, the director of the Credit Department of the Treasury, had resigned his post to take employment with a certain big bank at a salary which, according to the contract, would total over one million rubles in the course of several years. The Credit Department is an institution, the function of which is to ?co-ordinate the activities of all the credit institutions of the country? and which grants subsidies to banks in St. Petersburg and Moscow amounting to between 800 and 1,000 million rubles.?[19] It is characteristic of capitalism in general that the ownership of capital is separated from the application of capital to production, that money capital is separated from industrial or productive capital, and that the rentier who lives entirely on income obtained from money capital, is separated from the entrepreneur and from all who are directly concerned in the management of capital. Imperialism, or the domination of finance capital, is that highest stage of capitalism in which this separation reaches vast proportions. The supremacy of finance capital over all other forms of capital means the predominance of the rentier and of the financial oligarchy; it means that a small number of financially ?powerful? states stand out among all the rest. The extent to which this process is going on may be judged from the statistics on emissions, i.e., the issue of all kinds of securities. In the Bulletin of the International Statistical Institute, A. Neymarck[20] has published very comprehensive, complete and comparative figures covering the issue of securities all over the world, which have been repeatedly quoted in part in economic literature. The following are the totals he gives for four decades: TOTAL ISSUES IN FRANCS PER DECADE (000,000,000) 1871-80.............. 76.1 1881-90............. 64.5 1891-1900......... 100.4 1901-10............ 197.8 In the 1870s the total amount of issues for the whole world was high, owing particularly to the loans floated in connection with, the Franco-Prussian War, and the company-promotion boom which set in in Germany after the war. On the whole, the increase was relatively not very rapid during the three last decades of the nineteenth century, and only in the first ten years of the twentieth century is an enormous increase of almost 100 per cent to be observed. Thus the beginning of the twentieth century marks the turning-point, not only in the growth of monopolies (cartels, syndicates, trusts), of which we have already spoken, but also in the growth of finance capital. Neymarck estimates the total amount of issued securities current in the world in 1910 at about 815,000 million francs. Deducting from this sum amounts which might have been duplicated, he reduces the total to 575,000-600,000 million, which is distributed among the various countries as follows (I take 600,000 million): FINANCIAL SECURITIES CURRENT IN 1910 (000,000,000 francs) Great Britain 142 Holland 12.5 United States 132 Belgium 7.5 France 110 Spain 7.5 Germany 95 Switzerland 6.25 Russia 31 Denmark 3.75 Austria-Hungary 24 Sweden, Norway, Rumania, etc. 2.5 Italy 14 Japan 12 From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 26 10:30:54 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:30:54 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wisdom Message-ID: <492D417D.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Enough of 'Barbituate' Left Cynicism, Obama Is a Victory over White Supremacy http://www.alternet.org/election08/108746/?page=2 By Tim Wise, Red Room. Posted November 26, 2008. We don't need the "everything sucks" analysis; Obama has mobilized millions of activists and that energy is looking for an outlet. Tools My political entry into the left (and by this I mean the real left, beyond the Democratic Party) came a little more than twenty years ago in New Orleans, when, as a college student I became involved in the fight against U.S. intervention in Central America. In particular, the groups of which I was a part sought to end military aid to the death squad governments in El Salvador and Guatemala, and to block support for the contra thugs our nation was arming in Nicaragua, who by that time had already killed about 30,000 civilians in their war with the nominally socialist Sandinista government. It was the first place where I came into contact with folks who defined themselves as radicals (I had grown up in Nashville, after all, where at that time, even finding "out" liberals was sometimes a challenge), and where I got to experience all the fascinating permutations of Marxism that the left had to offer. In addition to unaffiliated socialists (which I considered myself to be at the time), there were Trotskyites, old-line Leninists, Maoists, and even some bizarre Stalinists in the bunch. Excluding from consideration those among this number who turned out to be FBI spies, there were still plenty of real and interesting ideologues who had valuable insights to offer, even for those of us who didn't swallow their particular party line. But despite being interesting, these folks also managed, at least for me, to demonstrate one of the key problems with the left in the U.S. Namely, for the sake of ideological purity few within the professional left expressed any joy about life, or any emotion whatsoever that wasn't rooted in negativity. They were like the political equivalent of quaaludes: guaranteed to bring you down from whatever partly optimistic place you might find yourself from time to time. This was never so evident as the day I hopped into a car with one of the Stalinoids (a member of something called the Albanian Liberation League, which viewed the brutal regime of Enver Hoxha as a worker's paradise), and headed downtown for a rally to protest Contra aid. Once in the car, I asked about the music playing from his stereo. What was it? I wanted to know. He quickly explained that it was Albanian folk music, and the only music he listened to. I made some joke about how strange it was to be living in one of the greatest musical towns on Earth and yet to restrict oneself to a single genre of music (especially that favored by Albanian sheepherders), to which my revolutionary friend responded with a grunt and a scowl. Of course, because Comrade Stalin never much liked jazz. The humorlessness of the far left -- to which I remain connected ideologically if not organizationally -- has always struck me as one of its greatest weaknesses. People like to laugh, they like to smile, they like to be joyful, and an awful lot of hardened leftists seem almost utterly incapable of doing any of these things. It's as if they have all taken a pledge that there should be no laughter until the revolution, or some such shit. No positivity, no hope, no happiness so long as people are still poor and exploited and being murdered by cops, and victimized by United States militarism, or performing as wage slaves for global capital, or eating meat, or driving cars. And they wonder why the left is so weak? Now, in the wake of Barack Obama's victory these barbiturate leftists are back in full effect, lecturing the rest of us about how naive we are for having any confidence whatsoever in him, or for voting at all, since "the Democrats and Republicans are all the same," and he supports FISA and the war with Afghanistan, and all kinds of other messed up policies just like many on the right. Those of us who find any significance in the election of a man of color in a nation founded on white supremacy are fools who "drank the kool-aid," unlike they, whose clear-headed radical consciousness leads them to recognize the superior morality of Ralph Nader, or the pure "scientific wisdom of chairman Bob Avakian," or the intellectual profundity of their favorite graffiti bomb: "If voting changed anything it would be illegal." Yeah, and if body piercings and anarchy tats changed anything, they would be too, and then what would some folks do to be "different?" (Note: there is nothing wrong with either type of adornment, but getting either or both doesn't make you a revolutionary, any more than voting, that's all I'm saying). These are people who think being agitators is about pissing people off more than reaching out to them. So they pull out their "Buck Fush" signs at their repetitively irrelevant antiwar demonstrations, or their posters with W sporting a Hitler mustache, because that tends to work so well at convincing folks to oppose the slaughter in Iraq. But effectiveness isn't what matters to them. What matters to them is raging against the machine for the sake of rage itself. Their message is simple: everything sucks, the earth is doomed, all cops are brutal, all soldiers are baby-killers, all people who work for corporations are evil, blah, blah, blah, right on down the line. It's as if much of the left has become co-dependent with despondency, addicted to its own isolation, and enamored of its moral purity and unwillingness to work with mere liberals. In the name of ideological asceticism, they spurn the hard work of movement building and inspiring others to join the struggle, snicker at those foolish enough to not understand or appreciate their superior philosophical constructs, and then act shocked when their movements and groups accomplish exactly nothing. But honestly, who wants to join a movement filled with people who look down on you as a sucker? This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Wed Nov 26 10:55:44 2008 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:55:44 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wisdom In-Reply-To: <492D417D.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> References: <492D417D.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: This is as sectarian, juvenile, and myopic as what it criticizes. To play off of childish sectarianism to sanction blindness about Obama is just disgusting. And to confuse organizing for Obama with organizing an actual movement, how ridiculous. At 12:30 PM 11/26/2008, Charles Brown wrote: >Enough of 'Barbituate' Left Cynicism, Obama Is a Victory over White Supremacy > >http://www.alternet.org/election08/108746/?page=2 >By Tim Wise, Red Room. Posted November 26, 2008. > > > >We don't need the "everything sucks" analysis; Obama has mobilized >millions of activists and that energy is looking for an outlet. Tools > > My political entry into the left (and by this I mean the real > left, beyond the Democratic Party) came a little more than twenty > years ago in New Orleans, when, as a college student I became > involved in the fight against U.S. intervention in Central America. > In particular, the groups of which I was a part sought to end > military aid to the death squad governments in El Salvador and > Guatemala, and to block support for the contra thugs our nation was > arming in Nicaragua, who by that time had already killed about > 30,000 civilians in their war with the nominally socialist > Sandinista government. > >It was the first place where I came into contact with folks who >defined themselves as radicals (I had grown up in Nashville, after >all, where at that time, even finding "out" liberals was sometimes a >challenge), and where I got to experience all the fascinating >permutations of Marxism that the left had to offer. In addition to >unaffiliated socialists (which I considered myself to be at the >time), there were Trotskyites, old-line Leninists, Maoists, and even >some bizarre Stalinists in the bunch. Excluding from consideration >those among this number who turned out to be FBI spies, there were >still plenty of real and interesting ideologues who had valuable >insights to offer, even for those of us who didn't swallow their >particular party line. > >But despite being interesting, these folks also managed, at least >for me, to demonstrate one of the key problems with the left in the >U.S. Namely, for the sake of ideological purity few within the >professional left expressed any joy about life, or any emotion >whatsoever that wasn't rooted in negativity. They were like the >political equivalent of quaaludes: guaranteed to bring you down from >whatever partly optimistic place you might find yourself from time to time. > >This was never so evident as the day I hopped into a car with one of >the Stalinoids (a member of something called the Albanian Liberation >League, which viewed the brutal regime of Enver Hoxha as a worker's >paradise), and headed downtown for a rally to protest Contra aid. >Once in the car, I asked about the music playing from his stereo. >What was it? I wanted to know. He quickly explained that it was >Albanian folk music, and the only music he listened to. I made some >joke about how strange it was to be living in one of the greatest >musical towns on Earth and yet to restrict oneself to a single genre >of music (especially that favored by Albanian sheepherders), to >which my revolutionary friend responded with a grunt and a scowl. Of >course, because Comrade Stalin never much liked jazz. > >The humorlessness of the far left -- to which I remain connected >ideologically if not organizationally -- has always struck me as one >of its greatest weaknesses. People like to laugh, they like to >smile, they like to be joyful, and an awful lot of hardened leftists >seem almost utterly incapable of doing any of these things. It's as >if they have all taken a pledge that there should be no laughter >until the revolution, or some such shit. No positivity, no hope, no >happiness so long as people are still poor and exploited and being >murdered by cops, and victimized by United States militarism, or >performing as wage slaves for global capital, or eating meat, or >driving cars. And they wonder why the left is so weak? > >Now, in the wake of Barack Obama's victory these barbiturate >leftists are back in full effect, lecturing the rest of us about how >naive we are for having any confidence whatsoever in him, or for >voting at all, since "the Democrats and Republicans are all the >same," and he supports FISA and the war with Afghanistan, and all >kinds of other messed up policies just like many on the right. Those >of us who find any significance in the election of a man of color in >a nation founded on white supremacy are fools who "drank the >kool-aid," unlike they, whose clear-headed radical consciousness >leads them to recognize the superior morality of Ralph Nader, or the >pure "scientific wisdom of chairman Bob Avakian," or the >intellectual profundity of their favorite graffiti bomb: "If voting >changed anything it would be illegal." Yeah, and if body piercings >and anarchy tats changed anything, they would be too, and then what >would some folks do to be "different?" (Note: there is nothing wrong >with either type of adornment, but getting either or both doesn't >make you a revolutionary, any more than voting, that's all I'm saying). > >These are people who think being agitators is about pissing people >off more than reaching out to them. So they pull out their "Buck >Fush" signs at their repetitively irrelevant antiwar demonstrations, >or their posters with W sporting a Hitler mustache, because that >tends to work so well at convincing folks to oppose the slaughter in >Iraq. But effectiveness isn't what matters to them. What matters to >them is raging against the machine for the sake of rage itself. >Their message is simple: everything sucks, the earth is doomed, all >cops are brutal, all soldiers are baby-killers, all people who work >for corporations are evil, blah, blah, blah, right on down the line. >It's as if much of the left has become co-dependent with >despondency, addicted to its own isolation, and enamored of its >moral purity and unwillingness to work with mere liberals. In the >name of ideological asceticism, they spurn the hard work of movement >building and inspiring others to join the struggle, snicker at those >foolish enough to not understand or appreciate their superior >philosophical constructs, and then act shocked when their movements >and groups accomplish exactly nothing. But honestly, who wants to >join a movement filled with people who look down on you as a sucker? From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Nov 26 11:56:59 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:56:59 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Buried Mars Glaciers May Be Remnants of Past Ice Age Message-ID: <492D55AB.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Buried Mars Glaciers May Be Remnants of Past Ice Age Anne Minard for National Geographic News November 20, 2008 Low, wide glaciers half a mile thick adorn the middle latitudes of Mars, say scientists who used radar probes to peer into debris-covered formations. The rounded slopes of material skirting steep ridges have cropped up in numerous satellite images over the years, generating controversy over whether they are mostly made of rock or ice. Using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, John Holt of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues found that the landforms appear to be water ice covered by rocky rubble. The ice exists at much lower latitudes than any other known deposits on the Martian surface, and some experts say the trapped water has the potential to support humans in future missions to Mars. "Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that's not in the polar caps," Holt said in a statement. "Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles ? and there are many more." As for the rock-or-ice debate, "I do think it puts to rest the controversy regarding these deposits," Holt added in an email. "But I suppose it's really up to the science community to decide that." Radar Echoes Most known concentrations of Martian ice exist at the poles, where temperatures are low enough to sustain large swaths of water ice. The mysterious aprons of material had therefore puzzled scientists ever since NASA's Viking orbiters revealed them at mid-latitude in both hemispheres in the 1970s. Although they resemble fan-shaped deposits of debris seen elsewhere on Mars, the formations are larger, steeper, and have features that suggest they were formed by an ancient flow of viscous material. One theory contended that the landforms are flows of rocky debris lubricated by a little ice, while others suggested they are lumps of ice covered by just enough debris to prevent sublimation (turning directly from a solid to a gas). To help solve the controversy, Holt's team directed the Mars orbiter to send radar echoes into some of the features in the eastern Hellas region in the planet's southern hemisphere. The radar signal passed through the apron of material and reflected off the deeper surface below without losing much strength?just what's expected to happen in thick ice. What's more, radio waves also passed though the material at a speed that would be expected for travel through ice. Holt and colleagues describe their findings in this week's issue of the journal Science. Ice Age Remnants? Baerbel Lucchitta, a longtime astrogeologist with the U. S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, famously suggested in 2001 that ice?more so than liquid water?formed much of the geology on Mars. Lucchitta, who was not involved with the new study, has long believed the slopes are made of ice. "So I am gratified that the world is coming around to my view," she said. "Yes, I do believe there is evidence for these blankets being mostly water ice, even based on image analysis without fancy modern methods." In past eras Mars's spin axis has tilted so that the mid-latitudes, not the poles, were the coldest parts of the planet, study co-author Holt noted. (Related: "Snowmelt Carved Mars Gullies Later Than Thought" [August 25, 2008].) "This is certainly the most dramatic evidence for that," he said, referring to the newly discovered glaciers. The landforms in both the northern and southern hemispheres lie at about the same latitudes, and scientists speculate that the glaciers could be holdovers from an ice sheet that covered Mars's middle during a past ice age. The rocky debris covering the ice may have preserved the glaciers even though the mid-latitudes are now warmer. Joe Michalski, an astrophysicist at the Universit? Paris-Sud in France, said the new finding is "a very strong piece of support for the existing models of climate change on Mars. "This is a huge amount of ice that's been transported through the atmosphere from the poles," he said. Water Supply Michalski pointed out that more work is needed to determine the thickness of the rocky debris that blankets the mid-latitude glaciers. "It may be thin enough that [the ice] could be accessed for a future mission," he said. Human missions to Mars would likely occur on 20-year timescales, he added, so having water supplies that wouldn't need to be brought from Earth would be a crucial advantage. "If we ever send humans" to Mars, Michalski said, "we want to have resources to extract water ice for various purposes." This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From Waistline2 at aol.com Thu Nov 27 19:35:28 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:35:28 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Crash course on crisis Message-ID: The Nuremberg School of Wertkritik has produced a leaflet on the crisis, now available in English: _http://www.krisis.org/2008/crash-course_ (http://www.krisis.org/2008/crash-course) Crash Course Why the collapsing of the financial bubble is not the fault of greedy bankers and why there can be no going back to a social welfare capitalism A new version of the stab in the back legend of the 1920s and 30s is making the rounds: our economy has supposedly fallen victim to the limitless greed of a handful of bankers and speculators. Gorged on the cheap money of the U.S. Federal Reserve and backed up by irresponsible politicians, these greedy bankers haveso the legend goesbrought the world to the edge of the abyss, while honest people are made to play the fools. Nothing could be more contrary to fact nor, given its demagogic and even anti-Semitic propensity, as dangerously irrational as this notionnow being broadcast across the entire spectrum of public opinion. It stands things on their heads. The cause for the current misery is not to be sought in the huge over-valuation of financial markets; the latter was itself not a cause but an effect, a mechanism aimed at avoiding the real, underlying crisis with which capitalist society has been confronted ever since the 1970s. That was when the post-WWII boom, and the long and self-sustaining period of growth made possible by the generalization of industrial production methods and their expansion into new sectors such as auto-making, came to an end. Mass production of commodities in the 1950s and 1960s required additional masses of labor-powerlabor-power thereby in a position to attract the flow of wages and means of subsistence that in turn enabled it to go on mass-producing such commodities. Since then, however, widespread rationalization of the core, world market-oriented sectors of production has displaced ever greater quantities of labor-power through processes of automation, thus destroying the basis for this Fordist mechanism and with it the precondition for any renewed tendency towards prosperity in the real economy. Capitalist crisis in its classical form gives way to an even more fundamental crisis in which the viability of labor itself comes to the fore. De-valorized labor power superfluous human beings? The real insanity of the capitalist mode of production is expressed in the contradiction between the enormous advance in productivity brought about by the microelectronic revolution and the fact that that advance has not even come close to guaranteeing the possibility of a good life for all. On the contrary: work itself has been intensified, its tempo accelerated and the pressure to produce ramped up even more. Across the world, more and more people must sell their labor-power under the worst possible conditions because, as measured against the standard set by the current level of productivity worldwide, that labor-power is increasingly de-valorized. But it is also a contradiction of capitalism that, in the process of becoming too productive, it wrenches its own foundations out from under its feet. For a society that rests on the exploitation of human labor-power collides with its own structural limits as it renders this labor-power, to an ever-greater degree, superfluous. For over thirty years, the dynamic of the world economy has only been sustained thanks to the inflation of a speculative and credit bubble what Marx termed fictional capital. Capital is diverted into the financial markets because the real economy no longer offers adequate investment possibilities. States go into debt to maintain their budgets and more and more people finance their own consumption, directly or indirectly, at the credit pump. In this way finance turned into the basic industry of the world market and the motor of capitalist growth. The real economy now so suddenly prized is not forced into submission by finance. On the contrary: it could only flourish as the latters appendage. The Chinese economic miracle and Germanys so-called world-class export economy would never have been possible except for the gigantic, global recycling of debt that has been going on for more than twenty years, with the USA at the center of it all. Crisis management and stagflation Such methods of postponing an eventual collapse have now reached their limit. There is no reason to be overjoyed about this. The effects will be dramatic in the extreme. For the combined potential for economic crisis and de-valorization that has been building up over the last thirty years is now exploding violently into the here and now. Politics in the accepted sense may be able to influence the tempo and the trajectory of this process. But it is inherently incapable of stopping what has, in truth, become unstoppable. Either the rescue packages themselves, already topping the trillions, will go up in smoke, and the crisis will break through into the real economy with catastrophic results. Or they will catch hold of the runaway train one more time with the result being an exorbitant increase in national debt, followed by another, still more gigantic collapse in the near future. The return of stagflationgalloping inflation combined with a simultaneous recession is already looming, and at much higher levels than in the 1970s. The last decades have already seen massive downward pressure on wages, a descent into ever more precarious working conditions and the privatization of large parts of the public sector. The present crisis means that, to a degree previously undreamt of, ever-greater numbers of human beings will simply be declared superfluous. The much-invoked new role of the state has not the slightest chance of recreating a 1960s style social welfare capitalism, with full employment and a rising standard of living. What it portends, rather, is the organization and administering of racist and nationalist policies of social exclusion. The return of regulation and state capitalism is at this point conceivable only as an authoritarian and repressive form of crisis management. The world is too wealthy for capitalism The present financial crisis marks a turning point in the epoch of fictional capital and with it a new stage in the underlying crisis of capitalism already discernable in the 1970s. This is not just the crisis of a specifically Anglo-Saxon system of neoliberalism, as is widely affirmed amidst the current emotional outburst of European anti-Americanisman outburst in which, however faint as yet, the echoes of anti-Semitism are unmistakable. What is clearly apparent now, rather, is that the world is and has long been too rich in relation to the stinginess of the capitalist mode of productionand that society will break apart, unravel and sink into a morass of poverty, violence and irrationalism if we do not succeed in overcoming that mode of production. It is not the speculators and the financial markets that are the problem, but the utter absurdity of a society that produces wealth only as a waste product of the valorization of capital, whether as a real or a fictional process. The return to a seemingly stable capitalism, kept standing by the onslaught of massive armies of labor, is neither possible nor anything worth striving for. Whatever sacrifices now being demanded of us in order to perpetuate the (self)destructive dynamic of this senseless mode of production and the capitalist way of life count only as an obscene mockery of the good and decent existence long since within reach in a society beyond commodity production, beyond money and beyond the state. With the present crisis the question of the system itself is finally being posed. It is time that we answered it. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) **************Life should be easier. So should your homepage. Try the NEW AOL.com. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000002) From Waistline2 at aol.com Thu Nov 27 20:04:45 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:04:45 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] auto notes and the crisis Message-ID: In a message dated 11/21/2008 9:52:44 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _pwright at prisonlegalnews.org_ (mailto:pwright at prisonlegalnews.org) writes: >>> Doesn't the use of robotics and non human labor significantly cut the value put into cars? On the auto bailout. At this point, what percentage of the Big 3's work force is actually in the US rather than outside the US? They long ago exported the bulk of their manufacturing jobs. <<< Comment Value is the amount of socially necessary labor contained in commodities. The use of advanced robotics today no longer grows the working class as productive laborers, as was the case in the first part of the past century. Specifically during the period of the rise and ascendency of Ford ism and the epochal shift of the American population from agriculture to industry. Today, the value content is being pushed towards zero rather than away from zero in the relative and absolute sense. This process is not taking place in an even manner world wide. For instance, a section of Chinese labor makes $3.00 an hour for "parts work" once paid well over $15.00 an hour here in the states. Today the American auto industry is facing an immediate market contraction of perhaps 5 million units. This overcapacity takes place within the permanent crisis of overproduction which is call the business cycle in bourgeois economy. Driving the crisis of overcapacity is the revolution in the productive forces or technological innovation. One way or another the industry is going to have to retool for new products and another wave of new technology and new method will be implemented as the basis for the restoration of profitability. I do not know what percentage of the "Big 3" workforce, making products exclusively for the US market is. It is my understanding that General Motors produces one million vehicles for the market in China using 100% Chinese workers, rather than exports from America. Bottom line: rationalization of production, specifically today's application of advanced robotics is producing a qualitatively different impact, in a different economic, political and social environment than the rationalization of production between say 1908 and 1915 when Ford more than less perfected the assembly line approach. Most certainly rationalization of production today takes place in a very different environment than that of which Karl Marx wrote about in Capital. For instance there was no electrical grid powering industry when Marx wrote Capital and the electro mechanical process was very feeble and basically non-existent. On another side note we are moving away from rather than into the industrial epoch based on the primacy of the electro mechanical process. The electro mechanical industrial character of the proletariat and working class as a whole is under change. Consequently, the trade union movement that arose on the basis of the electro mechanical process is under decay and transition. Consider the following: "The United Auto Workers union reported its membership dropped below a half-million people for the first time since World War II. In U.S. Labor Department filings, the UAW said it closed 2007 with 464,910 members, a decline of 14.7 percent or 73,500 members from the previous year and more than two-thirds below its peak of 1.5 million members in 1979. It marks the union's low-water mark of membership since 1941. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and their suppliers, notably bankrupt Delphi Corp., have eliminated more than 100,000 jobs in the past year. At the same time, the union has made no headway in organizing the increasing number of plants operated by the Japanese, Koreans and Europeans in the U.S. More evidence of the union?s diminished power came during last year?s national contract talks with the Big Three, when the union accepted the two-tier pay structure it had long fought against." _http://www.autoobserver.com/2008/03/uaw-membership-falls-to-new-low-american- axle-strike-goes-on.html_ (http://www.autoobserver.com/2008/03/uaw-membership-falls-to-new-low-american-axle-strike-goes-on.html) The sad state of the UAW is there for all to see, with the union - as it exists, basically having outlived its purpose. Really. *************************** >> What no one says in this whole discussion is that if the Big 3 go under,Americans are not going to stop buying cars. Rather they will simply buy cars from other vendors like Toyota, Honda, etc. As someone who long ago stopped buying US cars, my problem with them is the poor quality and workmanship and crappy design. A Toyota with 100k miles on it is still good for at least another 100k miles with no problem. I don't know too many people who can get 100k problem free miles out of a US car these days. And I have relatives in the US automotive industry too. <<<<<<<<< Paul Wright, Editor Prison Legal News P.O. Box 2420 West Brattleboro, VT 05303 802-257-1342 Comment Although I am very aware of the history of relative poor quality of American produced vehicles, verses American produced vehicles of say Toyota, Nissan or Benz or even the Korean producers, the demise of one or all of the Big Three would be an economic disaster for a huge section of the working class in America. Much of this disaster has to do with pension funds, health care and the fact that industrial America of the past century evolved as a society - (economic units), based on the rising curve of automotive production and all its interconnected and interrelated industries. I am not sure if it is even possible for all Three of the "Big Three" to go out of business. As of today auto sales for October 2008 as compared with last year are off by 45% for GM, 30 % for For, 23% of Toyota, 37.1% for Chrysler, 34 % for Nissan and 25% for Honda. The whole industry is depressed, not simply the traditional American manufacturers. Total new car and truck sales were 838,156 for October, an annualized rate of 10.56 million, the worst since the depths of the 1982 recession. In other words a "hot annual market" is between 15 and 17 million new vehicles. I of course remember the 1982 recession and the past 26 years of changes in the auto industry. Check out this report about China dated Novemebr 9, 2008 China Daily. The government of China is considering policies to boost auto sales, including consumption-tax breaks and subsidies to automakers that develop vehicles powered by alternative energies, according to Chen Jianguo, deputy head of the industrial coordination department of the National Development and Reform Commission. Chinese automakers are facing their toughest challenge in three years as demand is falling and profitability is plunging amid rising costs. The country?s auto sales fell in August and September as a 64 percent stock-market slump and the economic slowdown curbed demand. The government held a meeting in Beijing on Saturday of more than 10 automakers to gather industry suggestions, Chen said. ?It is possible the government may announce policies&rdquio; to help revive the industry, he added. The government is also urging automakers to take advantage of a reshuffle in the global automobile industry and speed up development of vehicles using alternative energies, Chen said. China?s government will help automakers with technology and financial support to make progress in the area of electric cars, Chen added. _http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?query=auto+sales+for+2008&page=2&nt=SG2&s _it=keyword_rollover&s_cs=-5434169314329256593&encquery=4f0c97e2d83cb912f6ae26 e1d127e41c69515523a1eb7b19&ie=UTF-8&invocationType=keyword_rollover_ (http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?query=auto+sales+for+2008&page=2&nt=SG2&s_it=keywo rd_rollover&s_cs=-5434169314329256593&encquery=4f0c97e2d83cb912f6ae26e1d127e41 c69515523a1eb7b19&ie=UTF-8&invocationType=keyword_rollover) more later. Waistline **************Life should be easier. So should your homepage. Try the NEW AOL.com. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000002) From Waistline2 at aol.com Sat Nov 29 09:20:28 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:20:28 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] auto notes and the crisis (2) Message-ID: Today new labor-replacing technology, in the form of robots and computers, is destroying the industrial economy as it existed in the past century and the society built around it. Workers throughout the state of Michigan, this country, and the world are being discarded from the capitalist system and left with little to no means to survive. This new class of the poor that is in formation has the potential, if conscious of its historic mission, to lead society toward a whole new world, one where the abundance that the new technology makes it possible for distribution of socially necessary means of life based on need. The post-World War II years saw a boom in the auto, appliance, and furniture industries which grew along with the housing boom which had been made possible by the G.I. Bill. With every cyclical crisis of overproduction (business cycle) in the 1960s and 1970s, new labor-saving devices were introduced incrementally (quantitatively) into production. Electronic production with robots and computers was made possible by the semiconductor and microchip that began to be introduced into production after World War II. This began altering the relationship between blue and white collar workers in the workforce. The blue collar portion of auto peaked in the mid and late 1950s. The 1980s marked a rapid increase in the use of labor-saving devices, with devastating social effects. One of the first concessions - (give backs from the proletarian masses), resulting from this period was that welfare recipients in the 1980s did not receive an annual increase in their welfare grants. There were massive plant closures across Michigan. Housing, neighborhoods, hospitals, clinics, and local grocery stores were destroyed. There was a wholesale rise of homelessness, and a flight of employees from the state of Michigan further lowering the standard of living of the remaining workers. As the crisis deepened in the 1990s, due to more automation and the use of robotics, and as a globalize labor market developed, it became clear that the government would not provide social programs for workers when the capitalists no longer needed them. The government of Michigan responded to the growing poverty with the elimination of the General Assistance program, throwing thousands of people into the streets, and closing mental health facilities and other state-sponsored services. This destroyed entire cities. The welfare reform program of Michigan acted as a model for passing the national welfare reform program under President Bill Clinton. This signaled the beginning of the end of government responsibility to the poor. The Michigan program laid the foundation for eliminating safety net programs (such as the ineffective ?Work First? program). The average person on the program was forced deeper into poverty. The majority of the recipients became part of the permanent army of the unemployed. They ended up without medical care and with their utilities shut off. They were afraid to go into the welfare department to request emergency help because their children could be taken by Protective Services. As the number of people thrown off welfare increased, more and more children joined the foster care and adoption rolls. The beat goes on. Since the year 2000, the state of Michigan has lost 313,600 more jobs, of which 234,400 were in manufacturing, an employment drop of 26 percent (against 18 percent nationally). The state will lose thousands more in 2005 and 2006. Michigan still remains the leading auto-producing state, building 2.5 million automobiles last year, but with only a fraction of the work force of previous years. Unemployment in Michigan is the highest in the nation. The state is over $1 billion in debt. Its revenue sharing from the federal government has been reduced from 27 percent in 1980 to six percent in 2005. Schools are closing and programs are being slashed at universities. When the means of production change, so go the social programs and the infrastructure that rest on that production and protect it. Destruction of Michigan cities The electronic revolution is destroying Michigan cities. For example, a once-thriving industrial city ? Benton Harbor ? now has an unemployment rate of 70 percent. With a population of 12,000, it is 92 percent black, separated by a river from the wealthy St. Joseph, a city that is 90 percent white (and has an unemployment rate of two percent). More people are in jail per capita in Benton Harbor than anywhere else in the world, and they are mainly young. Benton Harbor is like so many cities in America?s Rust Belt that are being devastated economically and socially as labor-replacing technology and globalization force companies to leave to chase cheaper labor. No matter what color you are, no job is safe today. Ruled by the Whirlpool Corporation, Benton Harbor sits on prime lakefront property. Whirlpool and real estate developers are implementing a $500 million investment project which aims to take over Benton Harbor, displacing the residents in much the same way that the poor are being abandoned in New Orleans and elsewhere. The community has struggled courageously, trying to unseat Whirlpool?s people on the City Council. Leaders who fight for justice have been viciously attacked by the state. In Flint, the steady attack by General Motors and Delphi on jobs has reached crisis proportions. In the late 1970s, GM employed 80,000 workers in Flint. In 1998, this number shrunk to 27,000. Today, GM employs 14,500 with 3,100 workers at Delphi. Fifteen short years later, the Flint workers were the highest paid in the nation. Today, household income in Flint is below the national average. Now, as a result of the changes in the economy, GM and Delphi are putting the squeeze on a shrinking work force, asking for unprecedented cuts in wages and benefits. ?We?re building a high-quality product, and they?re telling us we?re worthless,? declared one worker. The corporations are telling American workers to settle for a steadily declining living standard or a life in the streets. In reality, these formerly secure workers are heading that way anyway. Delphi workers in China work for $3 an hour. Delphi has filed for bankruptcy while demanding unprecedented wage and benefit cuts from the United Auto Workers. Even before it filed for bankruptcy, retirees from Delphi were horrified to receive notices in the mail that Delphi pension funds were not solvent and their pensions may be radically reduced. Active workers were asked to give up as much as 63 percent of their pay (down to accepting wages of $10 per hour), along with long standing benefits, such as health care and vacation days. At a recent UAW meeting of Delphi workers, a shocked, angry and confused membership was told that their union would stand tall. However, the union leadership offered no specifics on how they would deal with the situation. Since then, many employees at a Delphi facility have been crowding into the plant hospital with elevated blood pressure from the stress. If trying to deal with Hurricane Delphi wasn?t enough, GM and UAW just announced an agreement on how to cut health care costs 25% for active employees, a sizable blow to retiree health benefits (something UAW President Gettlefinger promised he would not touch). It?s a bitter pill that some UAW members must now swallow ? in the new global economy, battles cannot be won at the bargaining table. More and more, the workers are standing alone against a government that cares only about accommodating the national and international needs of global capitalism. The shameful reduction of the safety net continues. What is new is that today more and more formerly secure workers are being thrown into the social revolution. Though unaware of the cause of the problem or the solution, a growing class of destitute workers is forming that has nowhere to turn. There is no way to go back to what once was, only forward. But this requires that the people become conscious of the entire process and their role in making the political changes that are possible today. Changes in the State The state of Michigan is changing to adjust to the needs of global capital and private property. Its response to the economic and social crisis is to offer tax breaks to corporations that promise jobs they cannot deliver, to privatize more services, and to impose new laws such as Public Act 72, the Local Physical Responsibility Law of 1990. This Public Act 72 allows the state Treasury Department to take over any governmental unit within the state, whether it is a county, city, village, town, or even a school district when such an entity is declared insolvent by state overseers. Under this act, the governor can send in an emergency financial manager to seize control of the affairs of the entity being seized. The appointed emergency financial manager is responsible only to the governor. Three Michigan cities ? Hamtramck, Flint, and Highland Park ? have been taken over. Between July 1, 2001 and June 30, 2002, although the economy was changing, and a new class of destitute people was emerging, the Detroit City Council continued to grant the Detroit Board of Water Commission a price increase for water. That same year, some 40,000 Detroit residents had their water shut off. In Highland Park, Michigan, one-half of the population of some 16,000 people had their water turned off. Because of these actions on the part of the state, an organized fight was launched, headed by the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. This gave rise to the formation of new organizations such as the Highland Park Human Rights Coalition. Actions were called against the utility companies and hundreds of people responded. The demand from the masses was ?No shut-offs!? and for the Detroit City Council to turn the water back on and ?Stop the shut-offs.? In Detroit, the struggle grew into a grassroots campaign to elect Maureen D. Taylor to the Detroit City Council. This campaign gained many victories: the Call ?Em Out and the No Vote/No Takeover organizations, the Detroit Metropolitan AFL-CIO and many other organizations and churches endorsed the campaign. The struggle around health care has escalated. Given that the lack of health insurance has reached crisis proportions, the Michigan United Methodist Conference passed a resolution to support ?universal health care with a single payee.? Lessons for revolutionaries We as revolutionaries have gained knowledge in the above struggles. We proceed from the understanding that America is heading toward a class confrontation. In that light, the first lesson is that the strength of the grassroots campaign was that it based its program on the needs of those who have the least, and it began to educate and draw workers into the political struggle against their class enemy. The grassroots campaign was then able, through legal pursuits, to expose the election fraud of the Detroit City Clerk. The City Clerk has now been voted out and faces prosecution and an FBI investigation. Although Maureen Taylor was not even on the ballot in November, over 8,000 people voted for her as a write-in candidate. The second lesson is that such successes would not have been possible in past periods. Raising the issue of water and utilities as human rights has pushed revolutionaries into the base of the developing class and allowed us to offer a vision of a new society, one in which the abundance of water, utilities, and other necessities of life are distributed on the basis of need rather than for profit. The third lesson is that, for the process to reach fruition, in a new society, a great deal of education has to take place from within the developing struggle. An economy based on competition and private property created the situation. Revolutionaries guided by a vision of a new, cooperative society must be bold in advancing the strategic goals of the new class toward a new world where people?s needs are met. We must move to the level of pursuing political tactics that can unite the class in a struggle for political power, which is the only way this crisis can be resolved. Today it is possible to create a cooperative society based on public ownership of the giant corporations, but revolutionaries must bring this vision to the people. original article full: _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/rc.html_ (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/rc.html) **************Life should be easier. So should your homepage. Try the NEW AOL.com. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000002) From Waistline2 at aol.com Sat Nov 29 09:37:52 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:37:52 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY Message-ID: In a message dated 11/26/2008 11:59:06 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us writes: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism A POPULAR OUTLINE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch03.htm III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY "The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry?such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept. ....... It is characteristic of capitalism in general that the ownership of capital is separated from the application of capital to production, that money capital is separated from industrial or productive capital, and that the rentier who lives entirely on income obtained from money capital, is separated from the entrepreneur and from all who are directly concerned in the management of capital. Imperialism, or the domination of finance capital, is that highest stage of capitalism in which this separation reaches vast proportions. The supremacy of finance capital over all other forms of capital means the predominance of the rentier and of the financial oligarchy; it means that a small number of financially ?powerful? states stand out among all the rest. The extent to which this process is going on may be judged from the statistics on emissions, i.e., the issue of all kinds of securities." Comment "Just as the stage of monopoly capitalism and imperialism arose out of the quantitative stages of development of classic capitalism, speculative capital has emerged from finance capital as the dominant form of capital in the era of globalization. Classic finance capital, as described by Lenin, is the merger of bank capital and industrial capital under the control of the banks. This bank capital is lent to business owners and corporations for investment in production of commodities. Thus, finance capital is an essential part of the circuit of capital. Speculation is the act of trading financial instruments (such as foreign currencies, stocks, bonds, and various financial derivatives) with the goal of making money. The amounts involved are staggering. Over $25 trillion in currency moves through the world financial markets daily. Unlike finance capital, speculative capital is removed from the circuit of productive capital and does not create surplus value, but only ?re-distributes? it. Speculative capital is not reinvested in hiring more workers, expanding plants and equipment, purchasing raw materials or new technology. Instead, these vast amounts are diverted into speculation where investors gamble on changes in the prices of financial instruments. ?Speculative capital is the culmination of the process of the formation of a general rate of profit, the overall system of capital that Marx talked about, where all capitalists partake in the exploitation of labor even if they do not directly produce use values. Speculative capital cannot exist independent of productive capital, but rides on the shoulders of productive capital, overseeing and controlling it.? (Jim Davis, http://networksdialectics.blogspot.com/2006/06/speculative-capital-as-dominant-sector.html; See also, Jim Davis ? Speculative Capital? www.gocatgo.com/jdav.html). The dynamic of speculative capital is that it requires more and more money to satisfy its demands. By massive injections of liquidity into the U.S. banking system, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and a loyal servant of the global capitalist class, was key in feeding the stock market and housing bubbles that have kept speculative capital expanding. ?Greenspan presided over the greatest expansion of speculative finance in history? Henry C.K. Lieu, chairman of a New York private investment group, wrote in a series of articles for Asia Times, ?including a trillion-dollar hedge-fund industry, bloated Wall Street firm balance sheets approaching $2 trillion, a $3.3 trillion repurchase agreement market, and a global derivatives market with notational values surpassing an unfathomable$220trillion.? (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/bubbleland.html Pensions further feed the frenzy. At the end of 2003, retirement savings represented assets of over $10 trillion, nearly half of which was held in stocks. These savings are by far the most important source of money on Wall Street. Speculative capital is stealing pensions from workers throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S. ?[F]aced with a choice between living up to their pension promises or reporting higher net earnings, companies simply decided not to live up to their employee agreements.? (Michael Hudson, Harper?s, April, 2005). The proposed privatization of Social Security will destroy a secure source of income for older Americans while providing $1.8 trillion to buoy up the stock market bubble. The failure to pay pensions, and the aggressive attack on Social Security constitute a massive redistribution of wealth from working people to the capitalist class to continue its orgy of speculation." full: http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed5art2.html **************Life should be easier. So should your homepage. Try the NEW AOL.com. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000002) From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sat Nov 29 12:25:25 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:25:25 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] IV. EXPORT OF CAPITAL Message-ID: <493150D7.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> IV. EXPORT OF CAPITAL Typical of the old capitalism, when free competition held undivided sway, was the export of goods. Typical of the latest stage of capitalism, when monopolies rule, is the export of capital. Capitalism is commodity production at its highest stage of development, when labour-power itself becomes a commodity. The growth of internal exchange, and, particularly, of international exchange, is a characteristic feature of capitalism. The uneven and spasmodic development of individual enterprises, individual branches of industry and individual countries is inevitable under the capitalist system. England became a capitalist country before any other, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, having adopted free trade, claimed to be the ?workshop of the world?, the supplier of manufactured goods to all countries, which in exchange were to keep her provided with raw materials. But in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this monopoly was already undermined; for other countries, sheltering themselves with ?protective? tariffs, developed into independent capitalist states. On the threshold of the twentieth century we see the formation of a new type of monopoly: firstly, monopolist associations of capitalists in all capitalistically developed countries; secondly, the monopolist position of a few very rich countries, in which the accumulation of capital has reached gigantic proportions. An enormous ?surplus of capital? has arisen in the advanced countries. It goes without saying that if capitalism could develop agriculture, which today is everywhere lagging terribly behind industry, if it could raise the living standards of the masses, who in spite of the amazing technical progress are everywhere still half-starved and poverty-stricken, there could be no question of a surplus of capital. This ?argument? is very often advanced by the petty-bourgeois critics of capitalism. But if capitalism did these things it would not be capitalism; for both uneven development and a semi-starvation level of existence of the masses are fundamental and inevitable conditions and constitute premises of this mode of production. As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilised not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap. The export of capital is made possible by a number of backward countries having already been drawn into world capitalist intercourse; main railways have either been or are being built in those countries, elementary conditions for industrial development have been created, etc. The need to export capital arises from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become ?overripe? and (owing to the backward state of agriculture and the poverty of the masses) capital cannot find a field for ?profitable? investment. Here are approximate figures showing the amount of capital invested abroad by the three principal countries[1]: CAPITAL INVESTED ABROAD (000,000,000 francs) Year Great Britain France Germany 1862..... 3.6 ? ? 1872..... 15.0 10 (1869) ? 1882..... 22.0 15(1880) ? 1893..... 42.0 20(1890) ? 1902..... 62.0 27-37 12.5 1914..... 75-100.0 00 44.0 This table shows that the export of capital reached enormous dimensions only at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before the war the capital invested abroad by the three principal countries amounted to between 175,000 million and 200,000 million francs. At the modest rate of 5 per cent, the income from this sum should reach from 8,000 to 10,000 million francs a year?a sound basis for the imperialist oppression and exploitation of most of the countries and nations of the world, for the capitalist parasitism of a handful of wealthy states! How is this capital invested abroad distributed among the various countries? Where is it invested? Only an approximate answer can be given to these questions, but it is one sufficient to throw light on certain general relations and connections of modern imperialism. DISTRIBUTION (APPROXIMATE) OF FOREIGN CAPITAL IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE GLOBE (circa 1910) Great Britain France Germany Total (000,000,000 marks) Europe.......... 4 23 18 45 America.......... 37 4 10 51 Asia, Africa, and Australia...... 29 8 7 44 Total........ 70 35 35 140 The principal spheres of investment of British capital are the British colonies, which are very large also in America (for example, Canada), not to mention Asia, etc. In this case, enormous exports of capital are bound up most closely with vast colonies, of tile importance of which for imperialism I shall speak later. In the case of France the situation is different. French capital exports are invested mainly in Europe, primarily in Russia (at least ten thousand million francs). This is mainly loan capital, government loans, and not capital invested in industrial undertakings. Unlike British colonial imperialism, French imperialism might be termed usury imperialism. In the case of Germany, we have a third type; colonies are inconsiderable, and German capital invested abroad is divided most evenly between Europe and America. The export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported. While, therefore, the export of capital may tend to a certain extent to arrest development in the capital-exporting countries, it can only do so by expanding and deepening the further development of capitalism throughout the world. The capital-exporting countries are nearly always able to obtain certain ?advantages?, the character of which throws light on the peculiarity of the epoch of finance capital and monopoly. The following passage, for instance, appeared in the Berlin review, Die Bank, for October 1913: ?A comedy worthy of the pen of Aristophanes is lately being played on the international capital market. Numerous foreign countries, from Spain to the Balkan states, from Russia to Argentina, Brazil and China, are openly or secretly coming into the big money market with demands, sometimes very persistent, for loans. The money markets are not very bright at the moment and the political outlook is not promising. But not a single money market dares to refuse a loan for fear that its neighbour may forestall it, consent to grant a loan and so secure some reciprocal service. In these international transactions the creditor nearly always manages to secure some extra benefit: a favourable clause in a commercial treaty, a coating station, a contract to construct a harbour, a fat concession, or an order for guns.?[2] Finance capital has created the epoch of monopolies, and monopolies introduce everywhere monopolist principles: the utilisation of ?connections? for profitable transactions takes the place of competition on the open market. The most usual thing is to stipulate that part of the loan granted shall be spent on purchases in the creditor country, particularly on orders for war materials, or for ships, etc. In the course of the last two decades (1890-1910), France has very often resorted to this method. The export of capital thus becomes a means of encouraging the export of commodities. In this connection, transactions between particularly big firms assume a form which, as Schilder[3] ?mildly? puts it, ?borders on corruption?. Krupp in Germany, Schneider in France, Armstrong in Britain are instances of firms which have close connections with powerful banks and governments and which cannot easily be ?ignored? when a loan is being arranged. France, when granting loans to Russia, ?squeezed? her in the commercial treaty of September 16, 1905, stipulating for certain concessions to run till 1917. She did the same in the commercial treaty with Japan of August 19, 1911. The tariff war between Austria and Serbia, which lasted, with a seven months? interval, from 1906 to 1911, was partly caused by Austria and France competing to supply Serbia with war materials. In January 1912, Paul Deschanel stated in the Chamber of Deputies that from 1908 to 1911 French firms had supplied war materials to Serbia to the value of 45 million francs. A report from the Austro-Hungarian Consul at San-Paulo (Brazil) states: ?The Brazilian railways are being built chiefly by French, Belgian, British and German capital. In the financial operations connected with the construction of these railways the countries involved stipulate for orders for the necessary railway materials.? Thus finance capital, literally, one might say, spreads its net over all countries of the world. An important role in this is played by banks founded in the colonies and by their branches. German imperialists look with envy at the ?old? colonial countries which have been particularly ?successful? in providing for themselves in this respect. In 1904, Great Britain had 50 colonial banks with 2,279 branches (in 1910 there were 72 banks with 5,449 branches), France had 20 with 136 branches; Holland, 16 with 68 branches; and Germany had ?only? 13 with 70 branches.[4] The American capitalists, in their turn, are jealous of the English and German: ?In South America,? they complained in 1915, ?five German banks have forty branches and five British banks have seventy branches.... Britain and Germany have invested in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay in the last twenty-five years approximately four thousand million dollars, and as a result together enjoy 46 per cent of the total trade of these three countries.?[5] The capital-exporting countries have divided the world among themselves in the figurative sense of the term. But finance capital has led to the actual division of the world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes [1] Hobson, Imperialism, London, 1902, p. 58; Riesser, op. cit., S. 395 und 404; P. Arndt in Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Bd. 7, 1916, S. 35; Neymarck in Bulletin; Hilferding, Finance Capital, p. 492; Lloyd George, Speech in the House of Commons, May 4, 1915. reported in the Daily Telegraph, May 5, 1915; B. Harms, Probleme der Weltwirtschaft , Jena, 1912, S. 235 et seq.; Dr. Siegmund Schilder, Entwicklungstendenzen der Weltwirtschaft, Berlin, 1912, Band 1, S. 150; George Paish, ?Great Britain?s Capital Investments, etc.?, in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. LXXIV, 1910-11, P. 167 et seq.; Georges Diouritch, L?Expansion des banques allemandes a l??tranger, ses rapports avec le d?veloppement ?conomique de l?Allemagne, Paris, 1909, p. 84. ?Lenin [2] Die Bank, 1913, 2, S. 1024-25. ?Lenin [3] Schilder, op. cit., S. 346, 350, 371. ?Lenin [4] Riesser, op. cit., 4th ed., S. 375; Diouritch, p. 283. ?Lenin [5] The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. LIX, May 1915, p. 301. In the same volume on p. 3.31, we read that the well-known statistician Paish, in the last issue of the financial magazine The Statist, estimated the amount of capital exported by Britain, Germany, France, Belgium and Holland at $40,000 million, i.e., 200,000 million francs. ?Lenin III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY | V. DIVISION OF THE WORLD AMONG CAPITALIST ASSOCIATIONS This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From Waistline2 at aol.com Sat Nov 29 09:31:56 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:31:56 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY Message-ID: In a message dated 11/26/2008 11:59:06 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us writes: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism A POPULAR OUTLINE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- _http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch03.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch03.htm) III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY "The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry?such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept. ....... It is characteristic of capitalism in general that the ownership of capital is separated from the application of capital to production, that money capital is separated from industrial or productive capital, and that the rentier who lives entirely on income obtained from money capital, is separated from the entrepreneur and from all who are directly concerned in the management of capital. Imperialism, or the domination of finance capital, is that highest stage of capitalism in which this separation reaches vast proportions. The supremacy of finance capital over all other forms of capital means the predominance of the rentier and of the financial oligarchy; it means that a small number of financially ?powerful? states stand out among all the rest. The extent to which this process is going on may be judged from the statistics on emissions, i.e., the issue of all kinds of securities." Comment "Just as the stage of monopoly capitalism and imperialism arose out of the quantitative stages of development of classic capitalism, speculative capital has emerged from finance capital as the dominant form of capital in the era of globalization. Classic finance capital, as described by Lenin, is the merger of bank capital and industrial capital under the control of the banks. This bank capital is lent to business owners and corporations for investment in production of commodities. Thus, finance capital is an essential part of the circuit of capital. Speculation is the act of trading financial instruments (such as foreign currencies, stocks, bonds, and various financial derivatives) with the goal of making money. The amounts involved are staggering. Over $25 trillion in currency moves through the world financial markets daily. Unlike finance capital, speculative capital is removed from the circuit of productive capital and does not create surplus value, but only ?re-distributes? it. Speculative capital is not reinvested in hiring more workers, expanding plants and equipment, purchasing raw materials or new technology. Instead, these vast amounts are diverted into speculation where investors gamble on changes in the prices of financial instruments. ?Speculative capital is the culmination of the process of the formation of a general rate of profit, the overall system of capital that Marx talked about, where all capitalists partake in the exploitation of labor even if they do not directly produce use values. Speculative capital cannot exist independent of productive capital, but rides on the shoulders of productive capital, overseeing and controlling it.? (Jim Davis, _http://networksdialectics.blogspot.com/2006/06/speculative-capital-as-dominant-sector.html_ (http://networksdialectics.blogspot.com/2006/06/speculative-capital-as-dominant-sector.html) ; See also, Jim Davis ?Speculative Capital? _www.gocatgo.com/jdav.html_ (http://www.gocatgo.com/jdav.html) ). The dynamic of speculative capital is that it requires more and more money to satisfy its demands. By massive injections of liquidity into the U.S. banking system, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and a loyal servant of the global capitalist class, was key in feeding the stock market and housing bubbles that have kept speculative capital expanding. ?Greenspan presided over the greatest expansion of speculative finance in history? Henry C.K. Lieu, chairman of a New York private investment group, wrote in a series of articles for Asia Times, ?including a trillion-dollar hedge-fund industry, bloated Wall Street firm balance sheets approaching $2 trillion, a $3.3 trillion repurchase agreement market, and a global derivatives market with notational values surpassing an unfathomable$220trillion.? (_http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/bubbleland.html_ (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/bubbleland.html) Pensions further feed the frenzy. At the end of 2003, retirement savings represented assets of over $10 trillion, nearly half of which was held in stocks. These savings are by far the most important source of money on Wall Street. Speculative capital is stealing pensions from workers throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S. ?[F]aced with a choice between living up to their pension promises or reporting higher net earnings, companies simply decided not to live up to their employee agreements.? (Michael Hudson, Harper?s, April, 2005). The proposed privatization of Social Security will destroy a secure source of income for older Americans while providing $1.8 trillion to buoy up the stock market bubble. The failure to pay pensions, and the aggressive attack on Social Security constitute a massive redistribution of wealth from working people to the capitalist class to continue its orgy of speculation." full: _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed5art2.html_ (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/v16ed5art2.html) **************Life should be easier. So should your homepage. Try the NEW AOL.com. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000002) From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sat Nov 29 12:49:46 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:49:46 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Assault on Mumbai Message-ID: <4931568C.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> The Assault on Mumbai -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: "A-List" Subject: [A-List] The Assault on Mumbai From: "Tony B." Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:47:13 -0500 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In fact, the situation in India is far more grim than Ali, here, points out. ..As just one dimension of the problem - more than 1000 Indians a month kill themselves due to the debts incurred from having been induced/coerced to use 'terminator' GM seeds [article to follow]. See Arundhtai Roy's essays to get a better feel for the real scope of India's woes. Tony India's Leaders Need to Look Closer to Home The Assault on Mumbai By TARIQ ALI The terrorist assault on Mumbai's five-star hotels was well planned, but did not require a great deal of logistic intelligence: all the targets were soft. The aim was to create mayhem by shining the spotlight on India and its problems and in that the terrorists were successful. The identity of the black-hooded group remains a mystery. The Deccan Mujahedeen, which claimed the outrage in an e-mail press release, is certainly a new name probably chosen for this single act. But speculation is rife. A senior Indian naval officer has claimed that the attackers (who arrived in a ship, the M V Alpha) were linked to Somali pirates, implying that this was a revenge attack for the Indian Navy's successful if bloody action against pirates in the Arabian Gulf that led to heavy casualties some weeks ago. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects. But this is a meditated edifice of official India's political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the country's political physicians need to heal themselves. \ Al Qaeda, as the CIA recently made clear, is a group on the decline. It has never come close to repeating anything vaguely resembling the hits of 9/11. Its principal leader Osama bin Laden may well be dead (he certainly did not make his trademark video intervention in this year's Presidential election in the United States) and his deputy has fallen back on threats and bravado. What of Pakistan? The country's military is heavily involved in actions on its Northwest frontier where the spillage from the Afghan war has destabilized the region. The politicians currently in power are making repeated overtures to India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, not usually shy of claiming its hits, has strongly denied any involvement with the Mumbai attacks. Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses. Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised. Indian intelligence outfits are well aware of all this and they should not encourage the fantasies of their political leaders. Its best to come out and accept that there are severe problems inside the country. A billion Indians: 80 percent Hindus and 14 percent Muslims. A very large minority that cannot be ethnically cleansed without provoking a wider conflict. None of this justifies terrorism, but it should, at the very least, force India's rulers to direct their gaze on their own country and the conditions that prevail. Economic disparities are profound. The absurd notion that the trickle-down effects of global capitalism would solve most problems can now be seen for what it always was: a fig leaf to conceal new modes of exploitation. Tariq Ali's latest book, 'The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power' is published by Scribner. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Sat Nov 29 12:50:36 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:50:36 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India's Muslims in Crisis Message-ID: <493156BF.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: A-List , Rad-Green Subject: [A-List] Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India's Muslims in Crisis From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:46:32 -0500 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008 Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India's Muslims in Crisis By Aryn Baker The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in Mumbai's Oberoi Trident hotel where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one. The roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country's largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, which make up 13.4% of the population, and India's Hindu population, which hovers around 80%, are striking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking Muslim Indians have shorter life spans, worse health, lower literacy levels, and lower-paying jobs. Add to that toxic brew the lingering resentment over 2002's anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat. The riots, instigated by Hindu nationalists, killed some 2000 people, most of them Muslim. To this day, few of the perpetrators have been convicted. See pictures of the terrorist shootings in Mumbai. The huge gap between Muslims and Hindus will continue to haunt India's, and neighboring Pakistan's, progress towards peace and prosperity. But before inter-communal relations can improve there is an even bigger problem that must first be worked out: the schism in subcontinental Islam, and the religion's place and role in modern India and Pakistan. It is a crisis 150 years in the making. The Beginning of the Problem On the afternoon of March 29, 1857, Mangal Pandey, a handsome, mustachioed soldier in the East India Company's native regiment, attacked his British lieutenant. His hanging a week later sparked a subcontinental revolt known to Indians as the first war of independence and to the British as the Sepoy Mutiny. Retribution was swift, and though Pandey was a Hindu, it was the subcontinent's Muslims, whose Mughal King nominally held power in Delhi, who bore the brunt of British rage. The remnants of the Mughal Empire were dismantled, and five hundred years of Muslim supremacy on the subcontinent was brought to a halt. Muslim society in India collapsed. The British imposed English as the official language. The impact was cataclysmic. Muslims went from near 100% literacy to 20% within a half-century. The country's educated Muslim ?lite was effectively blocked from administrative jobs in the government. Between 1858 and 1878, only 57 out of 3,100 graduates of Calcutta University - then the center of South Asian education - were Muslim. While discrimination by both Hindus and the British played a role, it was as if the whole of Muslim society had retreated to lick its collective wounds. >From this period of introspection two rival movements emerged to foster an Islamic ascendancy. Revivalist groups blamed the collapse of their empire on a society that had strayed too far from the teachings of the Koran. They promoted a return to a more pure form of Islam, modeled on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Others embraced the modern ways of their new rulers, seeking Muslim advancement through the pursuit of Western sciences, culture and law. From these movements two great Islamic institutions were born: Darul Uloom Deoband in northern India, rivaled only by al-Azhar University in Cairo for its teaching of Islam, and Aligarh Muslim University, a secular institution that promoted Muslim culture, philosophy and languages, but left religion to the mosque. These two schools embody the fundamental split that continues to divide Islam in the subcontinent today. "You could say that Deoband and Aligarh are husband and wife, born from the same historical events," says Adil Siddiqui, information coordinator for Deoband. "But they live at daggers drawn." The campus at Deoband is only a three-hour drive from New Delhi through the modern megasuburb of Noida. Strip malls and monster shopping complexes have consumed many of the mango groves that once framed the road to Deoband, but the contemporary world stops at the gate. The courtyards are packed with bearded young men wearing long, collared shirts and white caps. The air thrums with the voices of hundreds of students reciting the Koran from open-door classrooms. See TIME's Pictures of the Week. Founded in 1866, the Deoband School quickly set itself apart from other traditional madrasahs, which were usually based in the home of the village mosque's prayer leader. Deoband's founders, a group of Muslim scholars from New Delhi, instituted a regimented system of classrooms, coursework, texts and exams. Instruction is in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, and the curriculum closely follows the teachings of the 18th century Indian Islamic scholar Mullah Nizamuddin Sehalvi. Graduates go on to study at Cairo's al-Azhar and Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, or found their own Deobandi institutions. Today, more than 9,000 Deobandi madrasahs are scattered throughout India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, most infamously the Dara-ul-Uloom Haqaniya Akora Khattak, near Peshawar, where Mullah Mohammed Omar, and several other leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban first tasted a life lived in accordance with Shari'a. Siddiqui visibly stiffens when those names are brought up. They have become synonymous with Islamic radicalism, and Siddiqui is careful to disassociate his institution from those that carry on its traditions, without actually condemning their actions. "Our books are being taught there," he says. "They have the same system and rules. But if someone is following the path of terrorism, it is because of local compulsions and local politics." Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, founder of the Anglo-Mohammedan Oriental College at Aligarh in 1877, studied under the same teachers as the founders of Deoband. But he believed that the downfall of India's Muslims was due to their unwillingness to embrace modern ways. He decoupled religion from education, and in his school sought to emulate the culture and training of India's new colonial masters. Islamic culture was part of the curriculum, but so were the latest advances in sciences, medicine and Western philosophy. The medium was English, the better to prepare students for civil-service jobs. He called his school the Oxford of the East. In architecture alone, the campus lives up to that name. A euphoric blend of clock towers, crenellated battlements, Mughal arches, domes and the staid red brick of Victorian institutions that only India's enthusiastic embrace of all things European could produce, the central campus of Aligarh today is haven to a diverse crowd of male, female, Hindu and Muslim students. Its law and medicine schools are among the top-ranked in India, but so are its arts faculty and Quranic Studies Centre. "With all this diversity, language, culture, secularism was the only way to go forward as a nation," says Aligarh's vice-chancellor, P.K. Abdul Azis. "It was the new religion." This fracture in religious doctrine - whether Islam should embrace the modern or revert to its fundamental origins - between two schools less than a day's donkey ride apart when they were founded, was barely remarked upon at the time. But over the course of the next 100 years, that tiny crack would split Islam into two warring ideologies with repercussions that reverberate around the world to this day. Before the split manifested into crisis, however, the founders of both the Deoband and Aligarh universities shared the common goal of an independent India. Pedagogical leanings were overlooked as students and staff of both institutions joined with Hindus across the subcontinent to remove the yoke of colonial rule in the early decades of the 20th century. Two Faiths, Two Nations But nationalistic trends were pulling at the fragile alliance, and India began to splinter along ethnic and religious lines. Following World War I, a populist Muslim poet-philosopher by the name of Muhammad Iqbal framed the Islamic zeitgeist when he questioned the position of minority Muslims in a future, independent India. The solution, Iqbal proposed, was an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern India, a separate country where Muslims would rule themselves. The idea of Pakistan was born. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Savile Row-suited lawyer who midwifed Pakistan into existence on Aug. 14, 1947, was notoriously ambiguous about how he envisioned the country once it became an independent state. Both he and Iqbal, who were friends until the poet's death in 1938, had repeatedly stated their dream for a "modern, moderate and very enlightened Pakistan," says Sharifuddin Pirzada, Jinnah's personal secretary. Jinnah's own wish was that the Pakistani people, as members of a new, modern and democratic nation, would decide the country's direction. But rarely in Pakistan's history have its people lived Jinnah's vision for a modern Muslim democracy. Only three times in its 62-year history has Pakistan seen a peaceful, democratic transition of power. With four disparate provinces, over a dozen languages and dialects, and powerful neighbors, leaders - be they Presidents, Prime Ministers or army chiefs - have been forced to knit the nation together with the only thing Pakistanis have in common: religion. Following the 1971 civil war, when East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, broke away, the populist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto embarked on a Muslim identity program to prevent the country from fracturing further. General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq continued the Islamization campaign when he overthrew Bhutto in 1977, hoping to garner favor with the religious parties, the only constituency available to a military dictator. He instituted Shari'a courts, made blasphemy illegal, and established laws that punished fornicators with lashes and held that rape victims could be convicted of adultery. When the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan in December 1979, Pakistan was already poised for its own Islamic revolution. Almost overnight, thousands of refugees poured over the border into Pakistan. Camps mushroomed, and so did madrasahs. Ostensibly created to educate the refugees, they provided the ideal recruiting ground for a new breed of soldier: mujahedin, or holy warriors, trained to vanquish the infidel invaders in America's proxy war with the Soviet Union. Thousands of Pakistanis joined fellow Muslims from across the world to fight the Soviets. As far away as Karachi, high-school kids started wearing "jihadi jackets," the pocketed vests popular with the mujahedin. Says Hamid Gul, then head of the Pakistan intelligence agency charged with arming and training the mujahedin: "In the 1980s, the world watched the people of Afghanistan stand up to tyranny, oppression and slavery. The spirit of jihad was rekindled, and it gave a new vision to the youth of Pakistan." But jihad, as it is described in the Koran, does not end merely with political gain. It ends in a perfect Islamic state. The West's, and Pakistan's, cynical resurrection of something so profoundly powerful and complex unleashed a force whose roots can be found in al-Qaeda's rage, the Taliban's dream of an Islamic utopia in Afghanistan, and in the dozens of radical Islamic groups rapidly replicating themselves in India and around the world today. "The promise of jihad was never fulfilled," says Gul. "Is it any wonder the fighting continues to this day?" Religion may have been used to unite Pakistan, but it is also tearing it apart. India Today In India, Islam is, in contrast, the other - purged by the British, denigrated by the Hindu right, mistrusted by the majority, marginalized by society. India has nearly as many Muslims as all of Pakistan, but in a nation of more than a billion, they are still a minority, with all the burdens that minorities anywhere carry. Government surveys show that Muslims live shorter, poorer and unhealthier lives than Hindus and are often excluded from the better jobs. To be sure, there are Muslim success stories in the booming economy. Azim Premji, the founder of the outsourcing giant Wipro, is one of the richest individuals in India. But, for many Muslims, the inequality of the boom has reinforced their exclusion. Kashmir, a Muslim-dominated state whose fate had been left undecided in the chaos that led up to partition, remains a suppurating wound in India's Muslim psyche. As the cause of three wars between India and Pakistan - one of which nearly went nuclear in 1999 - Kashmir has become a symbol of profound injustice to Indian Muslims who believe that their government cares little for Kashmir's claim of independence, which is based upon a 1948 U.N. resolution promising a plebiscite to determine the Kashmiri people's future. That frustration has spilled into the rest of India in the form of several devastating terrorist attacks that have made Indian Muslims both perpetrators and victims. A mounting sense of persecution, fueled by the government's seeming reluctance to address the brutal anti-Muslim riots that killed more than 2,000 in the state of Gujarat in 2002, has aided the cause of homegrown militant groups. They include the banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which was accused of detonating nine bombs in Bombay during the course of 2003, killing close to 80. The 2006 terrorist attacks on the Bombay commuter rail system that killed 183 people were also blamed on SIMI, as well as the pro-Kashmir Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Those incidents exposed the all-too-common Hindu belief that Muslims aren't really Indian. "LeT, SIMI, it doesn't matter who was behind these attacks. They are all children of [Pervez] Musharraf," sneered Manish Shah, a Mumbai resident who lost his best friend in the explosions, referring to the then president of Pakistan. In India, unlike Pakistan, Islam does not unify, but divide. Still, many South Asian Muslims insist Islam is the one and only force that can bring the subcontinent together and return it to preeminence as a single whole. "We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of India, and in 1857 the British took that away from us," says Tarik Jan, a gentle-mannered scholar at Islamabad's Institute of Policy Studies. "In 1947 they should have given that back to the Muslims." Jan is no militant, but he pines for the golden era of the Mughal period in the 1700s, and has a fervent desire to see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited under Islamic rule. That sense of injustice is at the root of Muslim identity today. It has permeated every aspect of society, and forms the basis of rising Islamic radicalism on the subcontinent. "People are hungry for justice," says Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of the new book Descent Into Chaos. "It is perceived to be the fundamental promise of the Koran." These twin phenomena - the longing many Muslims have to see their religion restored as the subcontinent's core, and the marks of both piety and extremism Islam bears - reflect the lack of strong political and civic institutions in the region for people to have faith in. If the subcontinent's governments can't provide those institutions, then terrorists such as the Trident's mysterious caller, will continue asking questions. And providing their own answers. With reporting by Jyoti Thottam / Mumbai and Ershad Mahmud / Islamabad This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Nov 30 12:16:34 2008 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:16:34 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] auto sales: worse in 25 years Message-ID: Auto sales worst in 25 years GM sales plunge 45% and sales for its U.S. and Asian rivals also tumble as industry records lowest sales pace since 1983. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Tight credit and worried consumers resulted in the weakest pace of U.S. auto sales in 25 years. Although gas prices fell significantly during the course of the month, they weren't enough to lure buyers back to dealer showrooms. Mark LaNeve, the General Motors vice president in charge of sales in North America, said that when adjusted for population growth, October represents the worst month for U.S. auto sales overall since the end of World War II. According to preliminary figures from industry sales tracker Autodata, the seasonally-adjusted annual sales rate plunged to 10.6 million, the worst reading since February 1983. By way of comparison, this figure was 16 million a year ago and 12.5 million in September this year. "Unless you had to purchase a vehicle, it was wait and see for most consumers," said David Lucas, vice president of Autodata. "People are holding onto their money because they're unsure what the future holds." But the CEO of auto industry sales tracker Edmunds.com said there is some hope that October may be as bad as it gets. "The data suggests that the market hit bottom between Sept. 15 and Oct 15," said Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl. "We can anticipate more fluctuations through the election and the holidays, but it is reasonable to assume that there is some degree of pent-up demand building." General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) is reported the larger drops among major automakers. Its U.S. sales plunged 45% in the month, worse than the forecast of a 41% drop from Edmunds.com. Unlike some of its rivals, its sales even fell from what were weak levels in September. "We are obviously disappointed in our results, which reflect a difficult comparison with a strong year-ago October performance," said LaNeve. "More importantly, it also reflects an unprecedented credit crunch that is dramatically impacting the entire U.S. economy," he added. It was the lowest sales total at GM since December 1970, a month that followed a strike that shut production at the nation's largest automaker. But double-digit declines in sales were the norm, not the exception, across the industry. Ford (F, Fortune 500) sales were down 30% from a year earlier, including the company's Volvo unit in the sales total. _http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/03/news/companies/auto_sales/index.htm?postversi on=2008110317_ (http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/03/news/companies/auto_sales/index.htm?postversion=2008110317) **************Life should be easier. So should your homepage. Try the NEW AOL.com. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000002)