From dogangoecmen at aol.com Sun Nov 1 16:18:50 2009 From: dogangoecmen at aol.com (=?utf-8?Q?DG=C3=B6=C3=A7men?=) Date: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:18:50 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Classical Political Economy, Ethics, Metaphysics and Knowledge-Based Economy Message-ID: <8CC2960CE1E44FD-2AF0-5B2A@webmail-d036.sysops.aol.com> The term Knowledge Economy (KE) or Knowledge Based Economy (KBE) is used in a loose way to refer to the researches, developments and economic activities in Information and Communication Technology. In recent years many other terms have been invented and many others will follow to describe similar developments in other areas of production and consumption. In short, the technological developments centred around information and communication technology towards the end of the 20th century have transformed already significantly the social landscape and reshaped the material basis of society, as Manuel Castells points out. Read more: http://dogangocmen.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/knowledge-based-economy.pdf D.G??men http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/ From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 2 05:52:26 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 07:52:26 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Sponsored Links Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911020452y361ab9e4k59208efd319d0740@mail.gmail.com> Sponsored Links at G-mail Capitalism For Kids Fun Kids' Book About Capitalism! Save 30% And Get Free Shipping www.Bungles.net Socialism Do You Describe President Obama as a Socialist? Tell Us Now. www.Newsmax.com Dont tread on Me Flags $9 Are we headed towards Socialism? Stop Socialism Now-Make a statement www.UsaFlagShop.com More about... Capitalism Versus Socialism ? American Socialism ? Socialist Government ? Mechanics Tools ? About these links From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 2 05:54:11 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 07:54:11 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Link Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911020454i593f7449p9b83b31d9bec7e19@mail.gmail.com> http://news1.newsmax.com/obama_socialist2/?PROMO_CODE=8234-1&gclid=CJmH39Ot7J0CFQEhDQodtHBkQA Is President Obama a Socialist? Vote in This Urgent Poll Scroll down to vote. Newsmax.com, one of America's leading online news services, is conducting an urgent national online poll about President Barack Obama and his new administration. Newsmax readers like you are recognized as some of America's most influential opinion leaders. Make your voice heard today ? before CNN, ABC News, Fox News, CBS, MSNBC and other left-leaning media put their liberal spin on this major news event. Newsmax will provide the results of this poll to major media outlets. Additionally, Newsmax's results will be shared with popular radio talk-show hosts across America. Don't remain silent while the mainstream media pushes its liberal agenda. Vote now in this important Newsmax Poll! 1) What is your opinion of Barack Obama? Favorable Unfavorable 2) Do you believe Barack Obama is a socialist? Yes, he's a socialist. No, he's not a socialist. 3) Do you believe Republicans are right in describing President Obama as a socialist? Agree Disagree 4) Do you support President Obama's economic policies? Yes No 5) Do you agree with President Obama's plans to radically change our health care system? Yes No 6) Do you believe Obama's economic policies are helping or hurting the economy? Helping Hurting Neither ? keeping things the same 7) Who did you vote for in 2008? McCain Obama Other * Required *E-mail Address: *Postal Code: * Please Note: Votes with invalid email addresses cannot be counted. In appreciation of casting my vote, Newsmax will keep me automatically updated on poll results and other breaking news with FREE daily email alerts. I can unsubscribe any time. I'll also receive details of the exclusive Emergency Radio offer that thousands of Newsmax readers have already taken advantage of. Please click only once. From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 2 05:59:17 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 07:59:17 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Capitalism for kids link Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911020459oe237c84m32873830da8ba1ed@mail.gmail.com> This children's book will have your child laughing and learning about what's really 'fair'!" "Third and Fourth graders love this book!" http://bungles.net/default.aspx Bungles Loses His Marbles By Sean Nelson -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bungles the bunny loves chocolate chip cookies...and he?s not the only one! Everybody wants to try one of his cookies and for an even trade, they can! Peabody the poor turtle, however, has nothing to trade. One donkey thinks he knows what is best for everyone and it won?t be long before Bungles loses his marbles. Soon Bungles the bunny and Peabody the poor turtle are going to know what fairness is all about... Along with a tap-dancing bug and a pair of lemmings, Bungles the bunny is about to begin one crazy adventure! Follow Bungles the bunny and his friends as they experience the negative effects of liberalism and the positive effects of conservatism. While everybody trades for things they want some have more success than others. The meaning of fairness must be decided especially with the Hat of Power being used to help or hinder everyone. Product Details: Reading Level: Ages 6-12 Paperback: 36 pages Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing, LLC (March 21, 2008) ISBN-10: 159858605X ISBN-13: 978-1598586053 Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.1 inches Shipping Weight: 3.8 ounces From rasherrs at eircom.net Mon Nov 2 08:37:17 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 15:37:17 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Do the Irish working class have the leadership they deserve? Message-ID: <25160A0DB259475D95F88DC2134BB843@paddyhacket> There is a big problem facing the Irish working class.It is an ideological and cultural problem.The consciousness and culture of the working class is persistently bourgeois. It sees the capitalist system as the natural society. Consequently it sees all economic and social problems as solvable within the framework of capitalism.It has been under the illusion that it can have an indefinite affluent existence under capitalism.It cannot see that most of the problems that beset the working class are a product of the inherent limits of capitalism. It thinks problems can be solved outside of the need to engage in class struggle.Indeed much of the class don't even see themselves as forming part of a class. This is why it supports bourgeois parties such as the Fianna Fail party, the Fine Gael party and the Labour Party and their satellites such as the Green Party and others.The political and social consciousness of the Irish working class is effectively bourgeois. Irish capitalism has a bourgeois working class. This is why too the Irish,dare I say, proletariat have a trade union leadership that collaborates with the government and the state in general. Indeed the Irish state is a neo-corporate state in which the labour organisations are integrated into the state. Given the way in which developments are proceeding there is no need for fascism. The growing authoritarian neo-corporate Irish state fortified by the EU does the job well enough for capitalism. No need for fascism. The Cowan government has successfully made cut backs in the living standards of the working class on an unprecedented scale. Yet there has been little resistance from the workers. A few squeaks here and there --nothing significant. About a year later the "organised working class" looks like its going to mount mass pressure on the government.And even this was of a rather limited character.The demands,being made by the leadership of the planned protests and strikes, had a distinctly reformist ring to them. It must be remembered too that much of the working class is not even "organised" in unions.This appalling is a product of disillusionment with these bureaucratised labour organisations that,much of the time, collaborate with whatever government happens to be in power. It is also a result of the lack of political class consciousness of much of the working class.This is partly a result of the relatively generous welfare benefits and assistance that has been provided by the state.It is intended as a sop that keeps the class quiescent.Many working class families contain one or two young adults that are availing of these hand-outs by the state. Many of them have been obtaining handouts through fraud that render many of them relatively comfortable.But then you have others who have worked hard and obtain few,if any,of these handouts. Clearly they cannot feel much class solidarity for the scammers (lumpen elements) who have little or no interest in working class politics. Many workers see the Fianna Fail government as incompetent and unscrupless.But Brian Cowan has been showing quite some leadership. He has succeeded in pushing through massive cuts in the living standards of the working class and only meeting with very marginal resistance. Generally speaking "moaning" on the Joe Duffy show is about as far as the resistance has gone. The Joe Duffy show is the modern substitute for popular resistance.Indeed the Cowan government succeeded in demobilising mass protests that were to be mounted over six months ago. He is trying it again by engaging in current talks with the trade union leadership. Don't they just luv when Brian calls them in to talk with him. How they suck up to him. In short there is really nothing positive that can be said about the working class in the Irish Republic. It is bourgeois,egoistic and even reactionary.It has little interest in subversive politics and never really questions anything.It is not even religious. It is in many ways just nothing.It exists, in a sense, from the shoulders down.Formal education is just seen as a matter of getting a good job. It is because of the impoverished character of the Irish working class that the radical left in Ireland is correspondingly so weak and impovershied. It is almost all cut from the same cloth --little diversity. Paddy Hackett Related Link: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.com From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 2 10:03:45 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 12:03:45 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] US Israel policy Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911020903s48b1c943gb4ae196910f8a0d2@mail.gmail.com> (1) Is the End Near for the Right-Wing's Vice Grip on U.S. Israeli Policy? (2) Pro-Israel Group's Money Trail Veers Hard Right Is the End Near for the Right-Wing's Vice Grip on U.S. Israeli Policy? Obama's national security adviser will keynote the inaugural conference of the moderate advocacy group J- Street, an alternative to Washington's hawkish Israel lobby. By Joshua Holland AlterNet Posted October 26, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/story/143503/is_the_end_near_for_the_right-wing%27s_vice_grip_on_u.s._israeli_policy?page=entire This week, retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Jones, Barack Obama's national security adviser, will keynote the inaugural J Street Conference, billed as a gathering of "progressive pro-Israel, pro-peace" activists. The event marks the emergence of the moderate Jewish advocacy group that aspires to be a counterweight to the voices of the traditionally hawkish "pro-Israel" lobby in Washington. The White House's decision last week to send Jones to address the event was a small move that might have a significant impact on the overheated politics of the Middle East. In the months before, a full-throated "swift boat" campaign had been launched against J Street in an attempt to vilify and delegitimize the group as belonging to the fringe, despite its advocacy of a moderate, or at most slightly left-of center, approach to U.S. policy in the Middle East. The conservative media offered a steady drumbeat of dubious charges, and a campaign had been under way to warn members of Congress away from the event. And it appeared to be having some impact as several members of Congress pulled out of the conference in the weeks leading up to the event (a total of 10 reportedly dropped out, according to reports, but not all in response to outside pressure). It was an attempt to nip J Street in the bud and preserve the hegemony established lobbying groups like American Israel Public Affairs Committee have long enjoyed in the halls of Congress. At stake was not only the definition of what it means to be "pro-Israel" -- long synonymous with supporting the more hawkish end of Israel's political spectrum (despite American Jews' general tendency to lean left) -- but also, and more importantly, the ability of established lobbying groups to claim to speak for the American Jewish community as a whole. It was a closely watched Washington fight, and when the White House announced that the head of Obama's National Security Council would headline the event, it sent a powerful message, legitimizing the 2-year-old group as a voice in U.S. foreign policy debates and providing cover for wavering lawmakers under pressure to skip the conference. It signaled, to the media and other interested observers, that the J Street conference is decidedly within the mainstream. It was also another small shot at the hawkish Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- a public rebuke of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren's high- profile decision to boycott the conference a week earlier -- a decision that may have been prompted by pressure from AIPAC (Israel said it had concerns for some of the group's positions but would send an "observer"). Indeed, the Washington Post framed the entire controversy surrounding the conference as a proxy war in a larger conflict between the White House and the Israeli government under right-wing Netanyahu. In sending Jones, not only did the Obama administration help J Street take the old-school "Israel lobby's" best punches and come through standing on its feet, it did itself a service in the process. Obama has long been dogged by warnings that he risks losing support among American Jews for a range of policies -- from attempts to reach out to the Islamic world, to negotiating with Iran and, perhaps most significantly, for confronting the Israeli government on the expansion of Israeli settlements. His administration is leaning on a new generation of moderate-to-progressive Jewish activists, represented most visibly at the moment by J Street, to provide political cover for him in turn. What Does It Mean To Be Pro-Israel? The spate of attacks hurled at J Street were intended to paint the group as "anti-Israel," outside the mainstream and unrepresentative of the views of the Jewish community. As such, its critics claim, J Street has no right to a seat at the table on the "pro-Israel" side of any discussion of U.S. policy. But a series of polls of American Jews commissioned by the group suggest the opposite is true, that J Street's moderate view of the Israel-Palestine conflict better reflects the views of most American Jews than those of more hawkish "pro-Israel" groups. According to the study [doc.] conducted in March, while "support for Israel is strong and stable among American Jews," they tend to take "very sophisticated and nuanced positions when it comes to American policy toward the Middle East" -- positions that are anything but the Israel-right-or-wrong narrative advanced by the established right-leaning groups of the "Israel lobby." For example, almost 9 of 10 American Jews surveyed said the administration should put pressure on both sides to achieve a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. And while it's official Israeli (and U.S.) policy not to negotiate with any Palestinian entity that includes members of Hamas, 7 out of 10 American Jews would be in favor of Israel cutting a deal with a unity government that included the organization. Six of 10 oppose the expansion of Israeli settlements, "56 percent believe that military action that kills Palestinian civilians -- even if it targets terrorists -- actually creates more terrorism instead of preventing terrorism," and while a majority supported Israel's "right" to launch last year's attack on the Gaza Strip, 60 percent of respondents said the campaign had either done nothing to enhance Israel's security or had in fact made the country less safe. Withering Fire The great danger J Street represents to the long- established groups of the "Israel lobby" is that it has the potential to shift the terms of the debate in Washington -- redefining the boundaries of "mainstream" discourse on the Middle East conflict. "A more open discourse would reveal how the policies advocated by the traditional lobbying groups have damaged U.S. Interests and unintentionally harmed Israel as well," Harvard's Steven Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby, said in an email-exchange. "And that is not something that AIPAC and the other hard-line groups want to have exposed." The reaction to J Street's emergence on the scene has been fierce. In an e-mail to supporters, J Street Campaign Director Isaac Luria wrote: "The Weekly Standard magazine -- dubbed the "neocon bible" by the Economist -- launched an attack on our conference and the whole pro-Israel, pro-peace movement." Weekly Standard Editor Michael Goldfarb -- a man who has suggested that killing innocent women and children is an effective tool in the "war on terror" -- launched a campaign urging readers to call members of Congress and, in Luria's words, "frighten them away from associating with J Street." Commentary's Noah Pollack called J Street an "anti- Israel group" that is "simply contemptible," James Kirchick of the New Republic, in the midst of an ongoing public crusade against the group, sneered that "far from representing the 'silent majority' of American Jews," J Street is "run by politically marginal amateurs." And a slick-looking Web site, JStreet Jive.com, popped up to "track Israel's Jewish defamers." Luria calls the attacks "classic swiftboating," and on examination, the charges against J Street appear to fit that description. One of J Street's most vocal critics has been Lenny Ben-David -- whom MJ Rosenberg, an Israel policy analyst and former congressional aide, described as "the quarterback of the smear campaign against J Street." Rosenberg, who has firsthand knowledge of Ben-David's political tactics, called him "a feckless character, if there ever was one": I knew him during his AIPAC days (he worked there for 25 years before being handed his gold watch and shown the door). At AIPAC, Lenny was in charge of the AIPAC version of oppo research. Lenny compiled files on everyone who criticized Israeli policies in any way and used the material he gathered to destroy careers. Lenny loved his files. He loved sending college kids out to gather negative information about journalists, politicians, rabbis, whatever. . Lenny now lives in Israel in the Efrat settlement. He's been on the payroll of the governments of Turkey, Georgia, oil companies, whoever will pay. He also was a Netanyahu aide. He remains close to AIPAC and to Netanyahu. Ben-David is organizing a phone and e-mail campaign around an "open letter" to J Street's leaders published by the conservative Pajamas Media. It's a classic of its genre, painting the group as marginal with a thin soup of guilt-by-association. Daniel Levy, a co-founder of J Street and now an adviser to the group, works at the (decidedly centrist) New America Foundation, which gets some funding from George Soros. That, according to Ben-David, ties J Street to a favorite right-wing bogeyman. Another charge: J Street's director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, used to work for Fenton Communications, a PR firm that (after his departure) committed the crime of running "an international public-opinion awareness campaign that advocates for the accountability of those who participated in attacks against schools in Gaza." At worst, Ben-David's indictment of the group veers from plain vanilla McCarthyism to a much uglier Islamophobia. He argues that the fact that some of the organization's supporters are members of the Muslim community is alone enough to discredit it. Ben-David paints a sinister picture, for example, of "the case of Rebecca Abou-Chedid," who made a donation to J Street. Ben-David accuses Abou-Chedid not only of the crime of having previously served as political director at the Arab American Institute but also currently being director of outreach at the New America Foundation's Middle East Task Force. Journalist Spencer Ackerman responded to the smear with a personal view: You will notice that nowhere in Lenny Ben-David's post is there any accusation that Rebecca has taken any sort of objectionable stand or made any sort of objectionable point. And that's because it is impossible to do so. I would wager that every journalist in Washington who writes on Middle East peace issues has had some interaction with Rebecca, as has every Hill staffer and innumerable current and former administration officials. Every single one of us will attest that Rebecca is incapable of ill will toward the Jewish people or toward Israel. Her entire professional life is devoted to peace, reconciliation and two states. I have repeatedly marveled at how good-natured she can be. In a sense, the heat of the attacks on the young organization reveal what's at stake: the ability of what Rosenberg calls "the status-quo lobby" to portray itself as the only "pro-Israel" perspective in Washington. Steven Walt said, "because their own case is so weak, the hard-liners have little choice but to smear" those who advocate a more moderate approach. Shifting Window of Acceptable Discourse While J Street has plenty of progressive allies, it has established itself in Washington by being almost self- consciously centrist. When asked by the Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg where he sees the group in relation to America's Jewish community, Ben-Ami said: "I believe that we are at the center. The Marty Peretzes and the Michael Goldfarbs and the Lenny Ben-Davids are on the right, to the far right, and there are people to our left, and we are in the middle trying to put forward a thoughtful, moderate, mainstream point of view about how to save Israel as a Jewish home." That kind of "triangulation" -- in Goldberg's words -- represents a trade-off: J Street will disappoint those who expected it to be a vocally progressive counterweight to the right-leaning advocacy groups. For better or worse -- and that's certainly the subject of some debate among various activists -- J Street's leaders clearly believe that mainstream credibility is crucial for the group's success. So when the Goldstone Commission released a blistering report that found widespread violations of the rule of law during Israel's invasion of Gaza last year, J Street didn't join the hawkish voices accusing Goldstone of acting out of anti-Semitism or hatred of Israel (he's a Jewish Zionist who "loves Israel"), singling out Israel while ignoring other countries' crimes (he was the chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunals in Rwanda and Yugoslavia) or ignoring the Palestinians' human rights' violations (his report found crimes on both sides). But J Street did reject the report's core recommendations and took a jab at the oft-maligned U.N. Human Rights Council, even as it urged Israel to "establish an independent state commission of inquiry" into the Goldstone Commission's findings (something Tel Aviv has refused to do). And while J Street endorses sanctions against Iran -- what it calls a "thoughtful and nuanced approach" -- its position is less than black-and-white; it has opposed sanctions bills before Congress in the past. According to a statement, the group's "first choice" is to resolve the tensions between the U.S and Iran "through diplomatic means." The great potential of J Street is not that it might radically shift U.S. policy in the Middle East, but rather that its existence has the potential to shift the "Overton window," a term coined by Joe Overton at the Merrimac Center for Public Policy to describe the range of approaches to an issue that the public finds acceptable to consider -- which proposals appear to be "fringe" and which fall within the mainstream. J Street offers cover to those who would deviate from the hawkish orthodoxy established by the "status-quo lobby" -- one can oppose a sanctions bill that's too deep or accept the legitimacy of a human-rights report that finds Israel at fault without being reviled for being "anti-Israel." That alone might prove a crucial first step toward a more balanced view of the Middle East conflict to emerge within the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Pro-Israel Group's Money Trail Veers Hard Right By Eli Clifton IPS October 21, 2009 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48946 WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (IPS) - StandWithUs - an "organization that ensures that Israel's side of the story is told" - has become increasingly aggressive in challenging the "pro-Israel" credentials of moderate Jewish-American groups, going so far as to suggest that receiving money from Arab donors and supporters of Human Rights Watch undermines a group's commitment to Israel and peace. J Street - the "Pro-Israel and Pro-Peace" advocacy group - faced criticism last week for accepting contributions from donors who have been critical of Israeli government actions. But an IPS investigation into the tax records of the donors to StandWithUs, which professes to be ideologically neutral, found a web of funders who support organisations that have been accused of anti- Muslim propaganda and encouraging a militant Israeli and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Some of these organisations have tied the origins of Palestinian nationalism to Nazi ideology, and suggested that a vast Muslim conspiracy - in a similar vein to the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion - is mobilising to undermine the U.S. constitution and impose Sharia law. StandWithUs, known in its tax filings as the "Israel Emergency Alliance", unleashed a flurry of faxes to 160 lawmakers on Oct. 16 expressing concern over their plans to attend the J Street conference, "Driving Change, Securing Peace", in Washington from Oct. 25-28. The faxes warned lawmakers that while "J Street claims to be 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-peace' and to represent mainstream Jewish opinion, we are troubled because their positions seem to undermine Israel and its search for peace with security. Their views may also contribute to anti-Israel biases and misinformation." Five members of Congress dropped out of the conference. J Street characterised the campaign as the work of "neoconservatives and their Swift Boat tactics" led by the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine. MJ Rosenberg, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a research centre that monitors "conservative misinformation" in the media, told IPS, "These are essentially opponents of the peace process who believe the only way to support Israel is to oppose a diplomatic solution to the conflict." The biggest donors to StandWithUs since 2005, according to a search of publicly available tax returns, were foundations controlled by Susan Wexner, who has contributed over 850,000 dollars to the group. Wexner's family founded The Limited, which currently operates such well-known brands as Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, C. O. Bigelow, The White Barn Candle Company, and La Senza. Wexner also made contributions to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). MEMRI describes itself as "bridging the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu-Pashtu media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East". Critics say the group is a propaganda outlet, and accuse it of mistranslation and overstating the prevalence of anti-Semitism in Middle East media. "My problem with MEMRI is that it poses as a research institute when it's basically a propaganda operation," wrote the Middle East editor for The Guardian, Brian Whittaker, in an email debate with MEMRI President Yigal Carmon. "As with all propaganda, that involves a certain amount of dishonesty and deception. The items you translate are chosen largely to suit your political agenda. They are unrepresentative and give an unfair picture of the Arab media as a whole." The executive director of StandWithUs, Roz Rothstein, responded to IPS, "MEMRI is used by every news publication on the planet. People don't look at MEMRI as right-wing. It's just verbatim Arabic translation. They've never been cited for inaccurate translation." In 2007, CNN correspondent Atika Shubert and Arabic translators accused MEMRI of mistranslating portions of a Palestinian children's television programme. "Media watchdog MEMRI translates one caller as saying - quote - 'We will annihilate the Jews,"' said Shubert. "But, according to several Arabic speakers used by CNN, the caller actually says 'The Jews are killing us."' CAMERA, another media watchdog group, has caught criticism for denying reliable reports of settlement expansions, leading the executive director of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Donald Wagner, to describe CAMERA as "a well-known source of extremist pro-Israel propaganda that is routinely challenged by Israeli and international human rights and peace organizations for its consistent misrepresentation of the facts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a policy institute "founded shortly after 9/11 by a group of visionary philanthropists and policymakers to support the defense of democratic societies under assault by terrorism and militant Islamism", according to its website. However, the group has frequently been cited for pushing a hawkish U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and Iran, and the Christian Science Monitor called it one of the "top neocon think tanks". Larry and Andrew Hochberg contributed over 400,000 dollars to StandWithUs since 2005 and also contributed to FDD and Honest Reporting, another watchdog group that monitors the media and "exposes cases of bias" against Israel. Much like MEMRI, Honest Reporting has come under attack for taking words and phrases out of context and for producing the documentary "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West". Twenty-eight million copies of the film were distributed by direct mail and newspaper inserts before the U.S. presidential election last November. Regarding the film, Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic wrote that it "takes a serious issue, and a serious threat - that of Islamism - and makes it into a cartoon. Its central argument is that the 'Islamofascism' of today is not only the equivalent of Nazism, but worse than Nazism. This is quite a thing for a Jewish organization to argue." According to Rothstein, "Obsession is the story of radical Islam." "Radical Islam has impacted the Middle East greatly," she said. "All this stuff comes from a very fundamentalist religious position and looking at it does not make you right- or left-wing." Sandra and Lawrence Post contributed just under 70,000 dollars to StandWithUs since 2005 and contributed to MEMRI and Christians United For Israel (CUFI), a U.S. "pro-Israel" Christian organisation founded and chaired by controversial pastor John Hagee. Neoconservatives and other members of the far-right came into direct conflict with J Street in May 2008 when J Street issued a statement calling on Republican presidential candidate John McCain to "renounce John Hagee once and for all". Many Jews took offence with Hagee's characterisation of Hitler as doing God's work by helping to bring Jews to Israel to fulfil Biblical prophesy, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) found itself in the difficult position of fighting to keep its pro- Israel credentials while not severing its valuable ties to the Christian-Zionist movement and the Christian Right. Asked if the philanthropy of their donors reflected a right-wing political leaning by StandWithUs, Rothstein rejected the idea. "I don't think it's fair since our tent is pretty broad," she said. "Some people call us 'left of centre', others call us 'right of centre' and some call us 'centre"'. "We see it as our job to help people understand that the founding document of Hamas calls for the elimination of Israel," Rothstein added. "If J Street is interested in negotiating with Hamas - who are absolute fundamentalists and violent - it's like a phony dream to want to sit down with someone who is intending to kill you." Defenders of J Street see StandWithUs and their supporters very differently. "They're attacking J Street because J Street supports [U.S. President Barack] Obama's goal of re-starting negotiations," said Rosenberg. "In the old days, if any president put pressure on Israel, the Jewish community would rise up against him. But the community strongly supports this president and these guys are pushing back on Netanyahu's behalf." From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 2 10:10:36 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 12:10:36 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Honduras Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911020910w57c9626dkcfa6ac482b4aaf78@mail.gmail.com> 1 Ousted Honduran Leader: Pact Will Restore Me 2 Statement of Honduran National Front of Resistance Ousted Honduran Leader: Pact Will Restore Me By JUAN ZAMORANO, Associated Press Writer October 30, 2009 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091030/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_coup TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Deposed President Manuel Zelaya and his opponents have agreed to a U.S.-brokered deal that he said will return him to power four months after a coup shook faith in Latin America's young democracies. The power-sharing agreement reached late Thursday calls for Congress to decide whether to reinstate the leftist Zelaya. While the legislature backed his June 28 ouster, congressional leaders have since said they won't stand in the way of an agreement that ends Honduras' diplomatic isolation and legitimizes presidential elections planned for Nov. 29. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said Friday that the two sides finally made concessions after realizing the international community wouldn't recognize the elections or restore aid without a compromise. "There was no more space for them to dither," he said. Shannon cautioned that "there are a variety of moving parts to this agremeent" and said he would stay in Honduras while the two sides negotiate the details. Under the plan, a government of national unity would take office to oversee the elections and the transition to the next president, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 27. Neither Zelaya nor interim President Roberto Micheletti is running. Most polls show lawmaker Porfirio Lobo of the National Party leading Elvin Santos of the Liberal Party to which both Zelaya and Micheletti belong. "We are willing to be cooperative in Congress with the agreement of the negotiators," Lobo said Friday. "The best decision for Honduras will be taken." The plan does not include a deadline for congress to act, but Zelaya told The Associated Press that he expects a decision in "more or less a week." Meanwhile, he said, he will remain at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he took refuge after slipping back into the country Sept. 21 from his forced exile. "I'm not going anywhere," he said Friday. Soldiers still surrounded the embassy and floodlights still interrupted sleep, but it has been several days since troops have crowed and meowed in the wee hours to keep those inside awake. Backers hugged Zelaya after hearing the news and one asked him to autograph a white cowboy hat resembling the one the deposed leader always wears. The hat already bore Shannon's signature. The breakthrough was a major foreign-policy victory for Obama. Speaking to reporters in Islamabad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called it "an historic agreement," saying: "This is a big step forward for the inter-American system." Zelaya was ousted after ignoring orders from the Supreme Court to abandon a referendum aimed at rewriting the constitution. Opponents said his secret plan was to lift a constitutional ban on presidential re-election; Zelaya denies that. During his three years in office, Zelaya had alienated Honduras' elite by forming an increasingly strong alliance with Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chavez. The new agreement would create a power-sharing government and bind both sides to recognize the presidential elections, as well as putting the armed forces under the command of electoral officials to ensure that the vote is legitimate. It also creates a truth commission and rejects amnesty for political crimes. Micheletti called the pact a "significant concession" on his part. ___ Associated Press Writer Martha Mendoza contributed to this report from Mexico City . === Honduran National Front of Resistance to the Coup celebrates restoration of Zelaya! Vows continued struggle for a just society! Comuniqu?? No. 32 http://www.nicanet.org/?p=854#more-854 The National Front of Resistance to the Coup d'Et??t, facing the imminent signing of a negotiated agreement between the commission representing the legitimate President Manuel Zelaya Rosales and the representatives of the de facto regime, communicates the following to the Honduran people and the international community: 1. We celebrate the upcoming restoration of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales as a popular victory over the narrow interests of the coup oligarchy. This victory has been obtained through four months of struggle and sacrifice by the people who, in spite of the savage repression unleashed by the repressive forces of the state in the hands of the dominant class, have been able to resist and grow in their levels of consciousness and organization and turn themselves into an irrepressible social force. 2. The signing on the part of the dictatorship of the document which mandates "returning the holder of executive power to its pre June 28 state," represents the explicit acceptance that in Honduras there was a coup d'??tat that should be dismantled in order to return to institutional order and guarantee a democratic framework in which the people can exercise their right to transform society. 3. We demand that the accords signed at the negotiating table be processed in an expedited fashion by the National Congress. We alert all our comrades at the national level so that they can join the actions to pressure for the immediate compliance with the contents of the final document from the negotiating table. 4. We reiterate that a National Constituent Assembly is an unrenounceable aspiration of the Honduran people and a non-negotiable right for which we will continue struggling in the streets, until we achieve the re- founding of our society to convert it into one that is just, egalitarian and truly democratic. /Translation by the Nicaragua Network/ From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 2 10:30:13 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 12:30:13 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Generals' Revolt Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911020930l3f1fa8d3ka6fe7365d1795b6d@mail.gmail.com> The Generals' Revolt As Obama rethinks America's failed strategy in Afghanistan, he faces two insurgencies: the Taliban and the Pentagon ROBERT DREYFUSS Posted Oct 28, 2009 1:51 PM Rollingstone.com http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30493567/the_generals_revolt In early October, as President Obama huddled with top administration officials in the White House situation room to rethink America's failing strategy in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and top military brass were trying to make the president an offer he couldn't refuse. They wanted the president to escalate the war - go all in by committing 40,000 more troops and another trillion dollars to a Vietnam-like quagmire - or face a full-scale mutiny by his generals. Obama knew that if he rebuffed the military's pressure, several senior officers - including Gen. David Petraeus, the ambitious head of U.S. Central Command, who is rumored to be eyeing a presidential bid of his own in 2012 - could break ranks and join forces with hawks in the Republican Party. GOP leaders and conservative media outlets wasted no time in warning Obama that if he refused to back the troop escalation being demanded by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander overseeing the eight-year-old war, he'd be putting U.S. soldiers' lives at risk and inviting Al Qaeda to launch new assaults on the homeland. The president, it seems, is battling two insurgencies: one in Afghanistan and one cooked up by his own generals. "I don't understand why the military is putting so much pressure on the White House now over Afghanistan," says a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. "Unless it has something to do with the presidential ambitions of a certain Centcom commander." The military's campaign to force Obama's hand started in earnest in September, when the Commander's Initial Assessment of the war - a highly classified report prepared by McChrystal - was leaked to The Washington Post. According to insiders, the leak was coordinated by someone close to Petraeus, McChrystal's boss and ally. Speculation has centered on Gen. Jack Keane, a retired Army vice chief of staff and Petraeus confidant, who helped convince George W. Bush to get behind the "surge" in Iraq. In the report, McChrystal paints a dire picture of the American effort in Afghanistan, concluding that a massive increase in troop levels is the only way to prevent a humiliating failure. On Capitol Hill, hawkish GOP congressmen seized the opening to turn up the heat on Obama by demanding that he allow McChrystal and Petraeus to come to Washington to testify at high-profile hearings to ask for more troops. "It is time to listen to our commanders on the ground, not the ever-changing political winds whispering defeat in Washington," declared Sen. Kit Bond, a Republican from Missouri. Attempting to usurp Obama's authority as commander in chief, Sen. John McCain introduced an amendment to compel the two generals to come before Congress, but the measure was voted down by the Democratic majority. As the pressure from the military and the right built, McChrystal went on 60 Minutes to complain that he had only talked to Obama once since his appointment in June. Then, upping the ante, the general flew to London for a speech, where he was asked if de-escalating the war, along the lines reportedly suggested by Vice President Joe Biden, might work. "The short answer is: no," said McChrystal, dismissing the idea as "shortsighted." His comment - which bluntly defied the American tradition that a military officer's job is to carry out policy, not make it - shocked political observers in Washington and reportedly angered the White House. "Petraeus and McChrystal have put Obama in a trick bag," says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "We had this happen one time before, with Douglas MacArthur" - the right-wing general who was fired after he defied President Truman over the Korean War in 1951. It isn't clear how far McChrystal and his boss, Petraeus, are willing to go. There have been rumors around the Pentagon that McChrystal might quit if Obama doesn't give him what he wants - a move that would fuel Republican criticism of Obama. "He'll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far," a senior U.S. military officer in Kabul told reporters. For his part, Obama moved quickly to handle the insurrection. One day after McChrystal's defiant London speech, the president unexpectedly summoned the general to a one-on-one meeting aboard an idling Air Force One in Copenhagen. No details of the discussion were released, but two days later Jim Jones, the retired Marine general who now serves as Obama's national- security adviser, publicly rebuked McChrystal, declaring that it is "better for military advice to come up through the chain of command." The struggle between the White House and the Pentagon is an important test of whether the president can take command in a political storm that could tear his administration apart. Obama himself is partly to blame for the position he finds himself in. During the presidential campaign last year, Obama praised the Afghan conflict as "the right war," in contrast to the bungled and unnecessary invasion of Iraq. Once in office, he ordered 21,000 additional troops to Kabul, painting the war as vital to America's national security. "If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban or allows Al Qaeda to go unchallenged," the president declared, "that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." He also fired the commanding general in Afghanistan, David McKiernan, and replaced him with McChrystal, a close Petraeus ally and an advocate of the doctrine of counterinsurgency. When it comes to COIN, as it's known in military jargon, Petraeus literally wrote the book: the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which has become the bible for proponents of COIN. In its essence, counterinsurgency demands an extremely troop-intensive, village-by-village effort to win hearts and minds among the population of an occupied country, supported by a lethal killing machine and an expensive "clear, hold and build" program to eliminate the enemy from an area and consolidate those gains. Within the military, COIN has developed a cult following. "It has become almost a religion for some people," says Paul Pillar, a former top intelligence official with wide expertise in terrorism and the Middle East. Supporters of Petraeus and McChrystal acknowledge that applying COIN to Afghanistan means a heavy U.S. commitment to war, in both blood and treasure. Even if Obama dispatches 40,000 additional troops, on top of the 68,000 Americans already committed, we won't even know if it's working for at least a year. "That is something that will certainly take 12 to 18 months to assess," said Kim Kagan, the president of the Institute for the Study of War, who helped write McChrystal's request for more troops. Bruce Riedel, a COIN advocate and veteran CIA officer who led Obama's review of the war last March, is even more blunt. "Anyone who thinks that in 12 to 18 months we're going to be anywhere close to victory," he said, "is living in a fantasyland." In addition, the doctrine of counterinsurgency virtually assures long-running military campaigns in other hot spots, even as we're engaged in combat and rebuilding operations in Afghanistan. "We're going to be involved in this type of activity in a number of countries for the next 15 to 20 years," said Lt. Gen. David Barno, a COIN advocate who served as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. So far, though, COIN hasn't exactly delivered on its promises. Despite the addition of 21,000 troops in March, the Taliban have continued to make gains across Afghanistan, establishing control or significantly disrupting at least 40 percent of the country. According to McChrystal's own report, Taliban leaders "appoint shadow governors for most provinces," set up courts, levy taxes, conscript fighters and boast about providing "security against a corrupt government." What's more, U.S. casualties have skyrocketed: In the four months since McChrystal took over, 165 Americans have died in Afghanistan - nearly one-fifth of those killed during the entire war. By late summer, some in the Obama administration began to have doubts about the efficacy of McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy - doubts that greatly increased in the wake of Afghanistan's disastrous presidential election in August. Hamid Karzai, Washington's hand-picked president, was accused of widespread fraud, including ballot-box stuffing and "ghost" polling stations. Without a credible Afghan government, COIN can't succeed, since its core idea is to build support for the Afghan government. Even before the election fiasco, Obama had sent Jones, his national-security adviser, to Kabul to deliver a message to his military commander: The White House wouldn't look favorably on sending more soldiers to Afghanistan. If the Pentagon asked for more troops, Jones told McChrystal's top generals, the president would have "a Whisky Tango Foxtrot moment" - that is, What the fuck? According to The Washington Post, which reported the encounter, the generals present "seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get." Not long after the Afghan elections, Obama began a top- to-bottom strategy review of the war. Among those who started to question the basic assumptions of McChrystal and his COIN allies were Jones, many of his colleagues on the National Security Council, and Vice President Biden. By contrast, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remained remarkably quiet during the assessment, seeming to defer to the White House when it came to challenging the Pentagon brass. The issue has presented the most difficult political decision of Obama's presidency thus far. The White House knew that if Obama were to "fully resource" the military campaign, he would be going to war without his own political base, which has turned strongly against the Afghan war. For the first time since 2001, according to polls, a majority of Americans believe that the war in Afghanistan is "not worth fighting." Fifty-seven percent of independents and nearly three-quarters of Democrats oppose the war - and overall, only 26 percent of Americans support the idea of adding more troops. Indeed, if Obama were to escalate the war, his only allies would be the Pentagon, Congressional Republicans, an ultraconservative think tank called the Foreign Policy Initiative, whose supporters include Karl Rove, Sarah Palin and a passel of neoconservatives and former aides to George W. Bush. On the other hand, rejecting McChrystal's demands for more troops would make Obama vulnerable to GOP accusations that he was embracing defeat, and give congressional Republicans another angle of attack during midterm elections next year. Even worse, the administration has to take into account the possibility of a terrorist attack, which would allow the GOP to put the blame on the White House. "All it would take is one terrorist attack, vaguely linked to Afghanistan, for the military and his opponents to pounce all over him," says Pillar. Within the administration, Biden has emerged as the leading opponent of McChrystal's approach to never- ending war. "He's proposing that we stop doing large- scale counterinsurgency, that we rely on drones, U.S. Special Forces and other tools to combat Al Qaeda," says Stephen Biddle, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who served on McChrystal's advisory team. Biden's view, which has support among a significant number of officials and analysts in and out of government, is that rather than trying to defeat the Taliban, the United States ought to focus on targeting Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups that want to strike at American targets. That Biden took the lead, says one former national- security official, may be a sign that he has the president's support. "Biden is playing a very inside game," says the official. "He's in every meeting." In early October, the vice president held a private session to discuss war strategy with two members of the administration who are considered among the more hawkish members of Obama's team: Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the State Department's special adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition, Biden and Obama, both former senators, are said to be relying on the counsel of a pair of relatively dovish former colleagues, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has recently made comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Also weighing in, apparently to advise against sending more troops, has been Colin Powell, who met quietly with Obama in mid-September. Supporters of Biden's view argue that adding more troops would actually make the problem worse, not better, because the Taliban draw support from the fiercely nationalist Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who will mobilize to resist a long-term occupation. "The real fact is, the more people we put in, the more opposition there will be," says Selig Harrison, a longtime observer of Afghanistan at the Center for International Policy, a think tank formed in the wake of the Vietnam War by former diplomats and peace activists. The only exit strategy that might work, say Harrison and others, is dramatically reducing the U.S. military role in Afghanistan, shifting the focus from the Taliban to Al Qaeda, and stepping up political and diplomatic efforts. Such an initiative would also require an intensive push to secure support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - which maintain links to the Taliban - as well as Iran, Russia, India and China. "There's only one mission there that we can accomplish," says Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA's anti-Osama bin Laden unit for years. "To go into Afghanistan, kill Al Qaeda, do as much damage to the Taliban as possible and leave." Opponents of that approach insist that it would allow Al Qaeda to re-establish a safe haven in Afghanistan and resume plotting attacks. But many terrorism experts point out that Al Qaeda doesn't need Afghanistan as a base of operations, since it can plan actions from Pakistan or, for that matter, from a mosque in London or Hamburg. "We deal with Al Qaeda in every country in the world without invading the country," says Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat who serves on both the Senate foreign-relations and intelligence committees. "We deal with them in Indonesia, the Philippines, Yemen, Somalia, in European countries, in our own country, with various means that range from law enforcement to military action to other kinds of actions." Feingold, who has proposed setting a flexible timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, says that the administration must listen to advisers like Biden who favor shifting course in Afghanistan. "If they do not, if they refuse to, then we in Congress have to start proposing our own timetables, just as we did when we were stonewalled by the Bush administration," Feingold says. "I'm prepared to take whatever steps I need to, in consultation with other members of Congress, to make those proposals if necessary." Other Democrats have also expressed doubts about appropriating more money for the conflict. Monthly spending on the war is rising rapidly - from $2 billion in October 2008 to $6.7 billion in June 2009 - and Obama has requested a total of $65 billion for 2010, even without another troop surge. "I don't think there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in Congress," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has declared his preference for sending trainers to Afghanistan to build that country's armed forces, instead of U.S. combat troops. And Rep. Jim McGovern recently got 138 votes for an amendment that would have required the administration to declare its exit strategy. "The further we get sucked into this war, the harder it will be to get out of it," McGovern says. "What the hell is the objective? Tell me how this has a happy ending. Tell me how we win this. How do we measure success?" Given the political pressure from both sides, Obama appears to favor sidestepping the issue. At a meeting with congressional leaders from both parties at the White House on October 6th, the president said he won't significantly reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan, as many Democrats had hoped - but he also seemed unlikely to endorse the major troop buildup proposed by McChrystal. While that approach may quell the Pentagon's insurrection for now, it only prolongs the conflict in Afghanistan, postponing what many see as an inevitable withdrawal. Wilkerson, the former aide to Colin Powell, hopes Obama will follow the example of President Kennedy, who faced down his generals during the Cuban Missile Crisis. "It's going to take John Kennedy-type courage to turn to his Curtis LeMay and say, 'No, we're not going to bomb Cuba,'" Wilkerson says. "It took a lot of courage on Kennedy's part to defy the Pentagon, defy the military - and do the right thing." [From Issue 1090 - October 29, 2009] From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 2 11:27:40 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 13:27:40 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] REUTERS: WHO chief says Fidel Castro "looks wonderful" Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911021027u69d0ddeco2f56fcd8a34f9cd9@mail.gmail.com> REUTERS: WHO chief says Fidel Castro "looks wonderful" Posted by: "Walter Lippmann" walterlx at earthlink.net walterlx Wed Oct 28, 2009 3:53 pm (PDT) WHO chief says Fidel Castro "looks wonderful" Wed Oct 28, 2009 2:49pm EDT * WHO chief says Fidel Castro looks strong, "wonderful" * Praises Cuban health system * Says WHO has helped 121 countries get H1N1 medicine By Jeff Franks HAVANA, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro "looks wonderful," World Health Organization director general Margaret Chan said on Wednesday, after meeting the 83-year-old who resigned the presidency last year due to ailing health. Chan, speaking at the end of her first visit to Cuba, said she met with Castro for more two hours on Tuesday during which he displayed a "truly impressive" knowledge of healthcare issues and looked to be in good condition. "I'm a doctor, I understand the importance of confidentiality, but I have to say he looks wonderful," Chan told a press conference in Havana. When their talk was over, "I was humbled. He walked me out of the house -- that's quite a distance, so pretty strong," she said of his condition. Castro has not been seen in public except for videos and photos since July 2006 when he underwent intestinal surgery. In February 2008, after taking power in a 1959 revolution and holding it for 49 years, he quit the presidency, citing age and health issues, and was succeeded by younger brother Raul Castro, 78. Fidel Castro still meets with visiting dignitaries and writes columns, usually about international affairs, for Cuban media. In a 24-minute video shown on Cuban television in August, he looked fit as he spoke with a group of Venezuelan law students, but rumors still pop up occasionally that he is at death's door. Chan said she toured Cuban medical facilities and came away impressed with the communist-led island's health system, which provides free care to all Cubans. Citing its strong health indicators on such things as life expectancy and infant mortality, she said, "In a country of this level of economic development, to be able to achieve those very good health indices is not easy." Cuba, she said, "has the right vision and the right direction. Health is a state policy and health is seen as a right of the people." Cuba's health system is widely praised for its preventative measures and basic care, but also suffers from problems such as shortages of medicine and equipment and badly maintained facilities. The government blames the U.S. trade embargo against the island for many of the system's deficiencies. Chan said the World Health Organization has helped 121 countries, including Cuba, stockpile doses of the medicine Tamiflu to treat H1N1 flu, which has killed nearly 5,000 people globally since appearing earlier this year. She said the organization is working to procure H1N1 vaccines for developing countries and so far "we have pledges from the vaccine manufacturers and development partners to a total of 200 million doses." She said the vaccines would become available over the next year and be distributed to "about 100 countries," likely including Cuba. (Reporting by Jeff Franks; Editing by Tom Brown and Vicki Allen) From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 3 06:35:28 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:35:28 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] latest Soviet philosophy books online Message-ID: . . . from the defunct Progress Publishers, that is. I limit myself to books of philosophical interest. Bogomolov, A. S. History of Ancient Philosophy: Greece and Rome; translated by Vladimir Stankevich. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985. 349 pp. (Guides to the Social Sciences) See also: Nersesyants, V.S. [Vladik Sumbatovich] Political thought of ancient Greece; translated from the Russian by Vladimir Stankevich. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986. Omelyanovsky, M. E. [Omel'ianovs'kyi, M. E. (Mykhailo Erazmovych)]. Dialectics in modern physics. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979. These books can be found on the extensive online repository of Soviet books: http://leninist.biz/ This project, the creation of the intrepid Robert Cymbala, may not be able to go any further due to lack of financial support. From farmelantj at juno.com Tue Nov 3 07:25:43 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 14:25:43 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] latest Soviet philosophy books online Message-ID: <20091103.092543.26804.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> That reminds me of the days of Imported Publications, Inc. of Chicago, who were the official distributors in the US for Progress Publishers and MIR as well as other eastern European publishing houses. That company seems to have disappeared with the Soviet Union. In addition to works of philosophical interest, they also had classical Russian literature and lots of science and mathematics books which were available for a fraction of the price for comparable works from US or UK publishers. Also, if you were interested in that sort of thing, you could get the collected speeches of various top Soviet leaders. Jim F. ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Ralph Dumain To: "marxist philosophy" Cc: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] latest Soviet philosophy books online Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:35:28 -0500 . . . from the defunct Progress Publishers, that is. I limit myself to books of philosophical interest. Bogomolov, A. S. History of Ancient Philosophy: Greece and Rome; translated by Vladimir Stankevich. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985. 349 pp. (Guides to the Social Sciences) See also: Nersesyants, V.S. [Vladik Sumbatovich] Political thought of ancient Greece; translated from the Russian by Vladimir Stankevich. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986. Omelyanovsky, M. E. [Omel'ianovs'kyi, M. E. (Mykhailo Erazmovych)]. Dialectics in modern physics. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979. These books can be found on the extensive online repository of Soviet books: http://leninist.biz/ This project, the creation of the intrepid Robert Cymbala, may not be able to go any further due to lack of financial support. _______________________________________________ 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 ____________________________________________________________ Medical Insurance Quotes Compare medical insurance companies and save money now. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=91LhSxcTLTyfn7MILNN-vQAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAAPBMGj8AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAiWIAAAAAA= From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 3 07:54:15 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:54:15 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] latest Soviet philosophy books online In-Reply-To: <20091103.092543.26804.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> References: <20091103.092543.26804.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: The best source for Russian books was the Victor Kamkin bookstore, which I used to frequent in Rockville, MD. There was a major crisis when the store was shut down some years ago, but much of the inventory was salvaged and moved elsewhere. Now it looks like everything has been destroyed: http://uncivilsociety.org/2008/05/400000-books-destroyed-at-vict.html At 09:25 AM 11/3/2009, farmelantj at juno.com wrote: >That reminds me of the days of Imported Publications, Inc. >of Chicago, who were the official distributors >in the US for Progress Publishers and MIR as >well as other eastern European publishing houses. >That company seems to have disappeared with >the Soviet Union. > >In addition to works of philosophical interest, >they also had classical Russian literature >and lots of science and mathematics books which >were available for a fraction of the price for >comparable works from US or UK publishers. >Also, if you were interested in that sort of >thing, you could get the collected speeches >of various top Soviet leaders. > >Jim F. > >---------- Original Message ---------- >From: Ralph Dumain >To: "marxist philosophy" >Cc: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu >Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] latest Soviet philosophy books online >Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:35:28 -0500 > >. . . from the defunct Progress Publishers, that is. I limit myself >to books of philosophical interest. > >Bogomolov, A. S. History of >Ancient Philosophy: Greece and Rome; translated by Vladimir Stankevich. >Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985. 349 pp. (Guides to the Social Sciences) > > See also: > > Nersesyants, V.S. [Vladik Sumbatovich] >Political thought of ancient Greece; > translated from the Russian by Vladimir Stankevich. >Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986. > > >Omelyanovsky, M. E. [Omel'ianovs'kyi, M. E. (Mykhailo Erazmovych)]. >Dialectics in modern >physics. >Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979. > >These books can be found on the extensive online repository of Soviet books: > >http://leninist.biz/ > >This project, the creation of the intrepid Robert Cymbala, may not be >able to go any further due to lack of financial support. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 3 08:16:14 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:16:14 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet inventory at Wonder Books Message-ID: Some of the Soviet inventory mentioned with regard to Kamkin Books can be found at: Wonder Books http://www.wonderbk.com/ A good percentage of these books are ridiculously expensive. Here are some bargains of possible interest, though: Standard Domestic Shipping $3.99 - each additional ships free. Generalisation and Cognition By Dmitry Gorsky Moscow: Progress Publishers (Paperback - 1987) ISBN: Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $5.10) Psychology (Student's library) By A. V. Petrovsky Progress Publishers (Paperback - 1989) ISBN: 501001100X Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $5.59) Lenin on Literature and Art By V.I. Lenin Progress Publishers (HardCover - 1905) ISBN: B000K1WHT6 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $6.00) History and politics: American historiography on Soviet society (Theories and critical studies) By B. I Marushkin Progress Publishers (Unknown - 1975) ISBN: B0006CQVK0 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $7.60) Russia and the West: 19th century (Man through the ages) By Natalia Mikhailovna Pirumova Progress Publishers (Paperback - 1990) ISBN: 5010020114 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $5.40) Selected writings and letters (The Library of Russian and Soviet literary journalism) By Boris Leonidovich Pasternak Progress Publishers (Paperback - 1990) ISBN: 5010019752 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $2.39) Marx the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte By Karl; Preface By F. Engel Marx Progress Publishers (Paperback - 1905) ISBN: B000I1S4SQ Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $5.60) Social Partnership Or Class Struggle? Theory, Legislation, Practice By V. Usenin Progress Publishers (HardCover - 1973) ISBN: 0714705640 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $11.70) [] SOCIAL SCIENCE MARXIST-LENINIST THEORY By Progress Publishers Moscow (HardCover - 1977) ISBN: Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $8.44) The problem of India, By R. Palme Dutt Progress Books (Unknown - 1943) ISBN: Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $3.19) The Scientific Management of Society By V. G. Afanasyev Progress Publishers (HardCover - 1905) ISBN: 0714704040 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $4.00) From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 3 08:36:14 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:36:14 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet inventory at Wonder Books (2) Message-ID: The first list I sent was of Progress Publishers books. But there are other Soviet imprints as well. Raduga Books: http://www.wonderbk.com/productcart/pc/advSearch_h_fulltext.asp?idSupplier=10&bookType=products&title=&keyWord=&Description=&authors=&priceUntil=999999999&Submit.y=16&Publisher=raduga&order=0&Submit.x=86&ISBN=&dj_condition=0&bookCondition=0&customfield=0&bindingCondition=0&priceFrom=0&resultCnt=20&Submit=Search& Searching for USSR as publisher yields meager results: http://www.wonderbk.com/productcart/pc/advSearch_h_fulltext.asp?idSupplier=10&bookType=products&title=&keyWord=&Description=&authors=&priceUntil=999999999&Submit.y=15&Publisher=USSR&order=0&Submit.x=61&ISBN=&dj_condition=0&bookCondition=0&customfield=0&bindingCondition=0&priceFrom=0&resultCnt=20&Submit=Search& The Novosti imprint yields some interesting results: http://www.wonderbk.com/productcart/pc/advSearch_h_fulltext.asp?idSupplier=10&bookType=products&title=&keyWord=&Description=&authors=&priceUntil=999999999&Submit.y=15&Publisher=novosti&order=0&Submit.x=69&ISBN=&dj_condition=0&bookCondition=0&customfield=0&bindingCondition=0&priceFrom=0&resultCnt=20&Submit=Search& On the national question and proletarian internationalism By Vladimir Ilich Lenin Novosti Press Agency (Unknown - 1969) ISBN: Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $7.96) William Du Bois;: Scholar, humanitarian, freedom fighter Novosti Press (Paperback - 1971) ISBN: Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $5.20) There is also the "Foreign Languages Publishing House: Given typographical errors, you should search the publisher field for "foreign languages", "foreign language", or just "foreign", You will also see some publications from China. If you want to read Khrushchev or other dreadful old stuff, you can find it here. Here are a few samples: Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism: Manual By c dutt Foreign Language Pub. House (HardCover - 1931) ISBN: Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $9.14) Lenin on War & Peace Three Articles By V I Lenin FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS (Paperback - ) ISBN: Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $3.20) From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 3 08:40:31 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:40:31 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet inventory at Wonder Books (3) Message-ID: Here are some first-class bargains: Lenin and the Russian Revolution (Pelican books) By Christopher Hill Penguin (Non-Classics) (Paperback - 1978) ISBN: 0140212973 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $1.99) [] Science and philosophy in the Soviet Union By Loren R Graham Knopf (Unknown - 1972) ISBN: 039444387X Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $7.70) [] Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union By Loren R. Graham (HardCover - 1987) ISBN: 023106442X Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $3.85) The Eternal in Russian Philosophy By Boris P. Vysheslavtsev Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (Paperback - 2001) ISBN: 0802849520 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $3.20) [] The Opened Curtain: A U.S.-Soviet Philosophy Summit By Westview Pr (Short Disc) (Paperback - 1991) ISBN: 0813312345 Buy Wonder Copy(Found 1 as low as $5.14) The books by Graham are must-haves. This last one is new to me, and of the most interest, after Graham. From farmelantj at juno.com Tue Nov 3 10:29:24 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 17:29:24 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Claude Levi-Strauss, RIP Message-ID: <20091103.122924.28946.0@webmail08.vgs.untd.com> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/11/03/world/AP-EU-Obit-France-Levi-Strauss.html?_r=1 ____________________________________________________________ Criminal Justice Degrees Start your criminal justice career. Earn your degree 100% online! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=tVgbzMaiQX6Jfgiuj6Vz0QAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAAMUgID8AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQKAAAAAA= From farmelantj at juno.com Tue Nov 3 11:42:28 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 18:42:28 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] [Marxism] Claude Levi-Strauss, RIP Message-ID: <20091103.134228.13485.0@webmail21.vgs.untd.com> Claude L?vi-Strauss, Anthropologist, Dies at 100 By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN Published: November 3, 2009 Claude L?vi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who transformed Western understanding of what was once called ?primitive man,? died overnight between Saturday and Sunday. He was 100. [...] Mr. L?vi-Strauss?s ?structural? approach, seeking universals about the human mind, cut against that notion of anthropology. He did not try to determine the various purposes served by a society?s practices and rituals. He was never interested in the kind of fieldwork that anthropologists of a later generation, like Clifford Geertz, took on, closely observing and analyzing a society as if from the inside. (He began ?Tristes Tropiques? with the statement ?I hate traveling and explorers.?) [...] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/europe/04levistrauss.html?partner=rss&emc=rss ____________________________________________________________ Online Medical Insurance Get free online medical insurance quotes and save more money today. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=8hMfeVkNrUgHuPhGATIe8QAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAAPBMGj8AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAiWIQAAAAA= From cb31450 at gmail.com Wed Nov 4 08:35:54 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 10:35:54 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] latest Soviet philosophy books online In-Reply-To: References: <20091103.092543.26804.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911040735r1db5f9deo6315576edead67a2@mail.gmail.com> International Publishers and the various Communist Party USA bookstores around the US had tons of these, of course. I think the bookstore in Chicago may still be open. I'm sure the inventory of some of the other books stores have been preserved. On 11/3/09, Ralph Dumain wrote: > The best source for Russian books was the Victor Kamkin bookstore, > which I used to frequent in Rockville, MD. There was a major crisis > when the store was shut down some years ago, but much of the > inventory was salvaged and moved elsewhere. Now it looks like > everything has been destroyed: > > http://uncivilsociety.org/2008/05/400000-books-destroyed-at-vict.html > > At 09:25 AM 11/3/2009, farmelantj at juno.com wrote: > > >That reminds me of the days of Imported Publications, Inc. > >of Chicago, who were the official distributors > >in the US for Progress Publishers and MIR as > >well as other eastern European publishing houses. > >That company seems to have disappeared with > >the Soviet Union. > > > >In addition to works of philosophical interest, > >they also had classical Russian literature > >and lots of science and mathematics books which > >were available for a fraction of the price for > >comparable works from US or UK publishers. > >Also, if you were interested in that sort of > >thing, you could get the collected speeches > >of various top Soviet leaders. > > > >Jim F. > > > >---------- Original Message ---------- > >From: Ralph Dumain > >To: "marxist philosophy" > >Cc: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > >Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] latest Soviet philosophy books online > >Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:35:28 -0500 > > > >. . . from the defunct Progress Publishers, that is. I limit myself > >to books of philosophical interest. > > > >Bogomolov, A. S. History of > >Ancient Philosophy: Greece and Rome; translated by Vladimir Stankevich. > >Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985. 349 pp. (Guides to the Social Sciences) > > > > See also: > > > > Nersesyants, V.S. [Vladik Sumbatovich] > >Political thought of ancient Greece; > > translated from the Russian by Vladimir Stankevich. > >Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986. > > > > > >Omelyanovsky, M. E. [Omel'ianovs'kyi, M. E. (Mykhailo Erazmovych)]. > >Dialectics in modern > >physics. > >Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979. > > > >These books can be found on the extensive online repository of Soviet books: > > > >http://leninist.biz/ > > > >This project, the creation of the intrepid Robert Cymbala, may not be > >able to go any further due to lack of financial support. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 cb31450 at gmail.com Wed Nov 4 08:59:31 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 10:59:31 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] On Heidegger Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911040759w4fa27ddv2a566a426426ed47@mail.gmail.com> By James Heartfield, Marxism-Thaxis alum. CB ^^^^^^ [lbo-talk] do people sill read post-structuralism James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk Tue Nov 3 22:32:17 HST 2009 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Doss: 'Just about every European philosopher post-1930 has been influenced by Heidegger in one way or another, because anybody trained in the history of philosophy can read him and see that he was fucking brilliant. Not being influenced by Heidegger is like being in the Solar System and not being affected by the gravitational pull of the sun.' We get it Chris, you have a hard-on for the Nazi in the lederhosen, chopping logs in the cabin in the woods. To me, it was like learning to speak Chinese, and never going to China. He was an influence, a negative one. His dismantling of the rationalist tradition was a dead-end whose only virtue was to create a private language so that initiates could recognise one another - rather like the fans of Tolkein or World of Warfare. Speaking Heideggerian reminded me most of Edwin Abbott's fable Flatland, set in a world of two dimensions. The hero, finding himself incapable of explaining what objects with mass are, spots a sphere passing through flatland, and calls to his hosts, look, a sphere! They look at him quizzically and explain that they just saw a small point expand into a large circle and then shrink down again to a point. You can argue that there is no relation between Heidegger's politics and his philosophy, but there is, as he himself insisted. The anti-rational project was coterminus with fascism. Destruction of ontology = book burning; Being-towards-death = Nazi death cult; authenticity = German romanticisim; 'The They' = the working class; their 'endless chatter' = democracy. The turning point in his argument is the claim that the They can never be anything like a collective subject - namely a refutation of popular democracy, which he was attacking in Georg Lukacs, his rival in 1923 for the man with the answer to the question of the age, 'alienation'. Heidegger's answer was a descent into stupidity, Lukacs' was socialism. I prefer the latter. Heidegger's gravitational pull was indeed great, as great as the gravitational pull of atavistic stupidity and violence was in the 1920s and 30s. Few people escaped its influence, more's the pity. It has taken us a long time to awaken from that nightmare, it was shameful of the disoriented leftists of the 1970s to revive that reactionary project. Having invested the effort of learning Heideggerian, it is understandable that you do not want to abandon your investment. But it isn't doing you any good. It is just a daft hobby, like stamp-collecting. Like the Who sang, 'many, many times before, Messiah's pointed to the door, but no-one's had the guts to leave the temple..' From cb31450 at gmail.com Wed Nov 4 09:38:20 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 11:38:20 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] latest Soviet philosophy books online In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911040838w2c845570l2385d6212af865e1@mail.gmail.com> F Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy (1982), The ^^^^^^^ CB: I have this. It is a philosophy book with pictures and charts ! ^^^^^ On 11/3/09, Ralph Dumain wrote: > . . . from the defunct Progress Publishers, that is. I limit myself > to books of philosophical interest. > > Bogomolov, A. S. History of > Ancient Philosophy: Greece and Rome; translated by Vladimir Stankevich. > Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985. 349 pp. (Guides to the Social Sciences) > > See also: > > Nersesyants, V.S. [Vladik Sumbatovich] > Political thought of ancient Greece; > translated from the Russian by Vladimir Stankevich. > Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986. > > > Omelyanovsky, M. E. [Omel'ianovs'kyi, M. E. (Mykhailo Erazmovych)]. > Dialectics in modern > physics. > Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979. > > These books can be found on the extensive online repository of Soviet books: > > http://leninist.biz/ > > This project, the creation of the intrepid Robert Cymbala, may not be > able to go any further due to lack of financial support. > _______________________________________________ > 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 cb31450 at gmail.com Wed Nov 4 12:00:15 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 14:00:15 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] How Detroit, the Motor City, turned into a ghost town Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911041100p6d081e88n68d6937f87fbc5b6@mail.gmail.com> How Detroit, the Motor City, turned into a ghost town Wall Street is celebrating a recovery in the US economy, but the future looks increasingly bleak in America's industrial heartland by Paul Harris in Detroit The Observer (UK) - November 01, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/01/detroit-michigan-economy-recession-unemployment Try telling Brother Jerry Smith that the recession in America has ended. As scores of people queued up last week at the soup kitchen which the Capuchin friar helps run in Detroit, the celebrations on Wall Street in New York seemed from another world. The hungry and needy come from miles around to get a free healthy meal. Though the East Detroit neighbourhood the soup kitchen serves has had it tough for decades, the recession has seen almost any hope for anyone getting a job evaporate. Neither is there any sign that jobs might come back soon. "Some in the past have had jobs here, but now there is nothing available to people. Nothing at all," Brother Jerry said as he sat behind a desk with a computer but dressed in the simple brown friar's robes of his order. Outside his office the hungry, the homeless and the poor crowded around tables. Many were by themselves, but some were families with young children. None had jobs. Indeed, the soup kitchen itself is now starting to dip into its savings to cope with a drying up of desperately needed donations. This is an area where times are so tough that the soup kitchen is a major employer for the neighbourhood, keeping its own staff out of poverty. But now Brother Jerry fears he may also have to start laying people off. Officially, America is on the up. The economy grew by 3.5% in the past quarter. On Wall Street, stocks are rising again. The banks - rescued wholesale by taxpayers' money last year - are posting billions of dollars of profits. Thousands of bankers and financiers are wetting their lips at the prospect of enormous bonuses, often matching or exceeding those of pre-crash times. The financial sector is lobbying successfully to fight government attempts to regulate it. The wealthy are beginning to snap up property again, pushing prices up. In New York's fashionable West Village a senior banker recently splurged $10m on a single apartment, sending shivers of delight through the city's property brokers. But for tens of millions of Americans such things seem irrelevant. Across the country lay-offs are continuing. Indeed, jobless rates are expected to rise for the rest of 2009 and perhaps beyond. Unemployment in America stands at 9.8%. But that headline figure, massaged by bureaucrats, does not include many categories of the jobless. Another, broader official measure, which includes those such as the long-term jobless who have given up job-seeking and workers who can only find piecemeal part-time work, tells another story. That figure stands at 17%. Added to that shocking statistic are the millions of Americans who remain at risk of foreclosure. In many parts of the country repossessions are still rising or spreading to areas that have escaped so far. In the months to come, no matter what happens on the booming stock market, hundreds of thousands of Americans are likely to lose their homes. For them the recession is far from over. It rages on like a forest fire, burning through jobs, savings and homes. It will serve to exacerbate a long-term trend towards deepening inequality in America. Real wages in the US stagnated in the 1970s and have barely risen since, despite rising living costs. The gap between the average American worker and high-paid chief executives has widened and widened. The richest 1% of Americans have more financial wealth than the bottom 95%. It seems the American hope of a steady job, producing rising income and a home in the suburbs, has evaporated for many. A generation of aspiring middle-class homeowners have been wiped out by the recession. "Poor people just don't have the political clout to lobby and get what they need in the way Wall Street does," said Brother Jerry. There is little doubt that Detroit is ground zero for the parts of America that are still suffering. The city that was once one of the wealthiest in America is a decrepit, often surreal landscape of urban decline. It was once one of the greatest cities in the world. The birthplace of the American car industry, it boasted factories that at one time produced cars shipped over the globe. Its downtown was studded with architectural gems, and by the 1950s it boasted the highest median income and highest rate of home ownership of any major American city. Culturally it gave birth to Motown Records, named in homage to Detroit's status as "Motor City". Decades of white flight, coupled with the collapse of its manufacturing base, especially in its world-famous auto industry, have brought the city to its knees. Half a century ago it was still dubbed the "arsenal of democracy" and boasted almost two million citizens, making it the fourth-largest in America. Now that number has shrunk to 900,000. Its once proud suburbsnow contain row after row of burnt-out houses. Empty factories and apartment buildings haunt the landscape, stripped bare by scavengers. Now almost a third of Detroit - covering a swath of land the size of San Francisco - has been abandoned. Tall grasses, shrubs and urban farms have sprung up in what were once stalwart working-class suburbs. Even downtown, one ruined skyscraper sprouts a pair of trees growing from the rubble. The city has a shocking jobless rate of 29%. The average house price in Detroit is only $7,500, with many homes available for only a few hundred dollars. Not that anyone is buying. At a recent auction of 9,000 confiscated city houses, only a fifth found buyers. The city has become such a byword for decline that Time magazine recently bought a house and set up a reporting team there to cover the city's struggles for a year. There has been no shortage of grim news for Time's new "Assignment Detroit" bureau to get their teeth into. Recently a semi-riot broke out when the city government offered help in paying utility bills. Need was so great that thousands of people turned up for a few application forms. In the end police had to control the crowd, which included the sick and the elderly, some in wheelchairs. At the same time national headlines were created after bodies began piling up at the city's mortuary. Family members, suffering under the recession, could no longer afford to pay for funerals. Incredibly, despite such need, things are getting worse as the impact of the recession has bitten deeply into the city's already catastrophic finances. Detroit is now $300m in debt and is cutting many of its beleaguered services, such as transport and street lighting. As the number of bus routes shrivels and street lights are cut off, it is the poorest who suffer. People like TJ Taylor. He is disabled and cannot work. He relies on public transport. It has been cut, so now he must walk. But the lights are literally going out in some places, making already dangerous streets even more threatening. "I just avoid those areas that are not lit. I pity for the poor people who live in them," he said. The brutal truth, some experts say, is that Detroit is being left behind - and it is not alone. In cities across America a collapsed manufacturing base has been further damaged by the recession and has led to conditions of dire unemployment and the creation of an underclass. Richard Feldman, a former Detroit car- worker and union official turned social activist, sees disaster across the country. Sitting in a downtown Detroit bar, he lists a grim roll call of cities across America where decline is hitting hard and where the official end of the recession will make little difference. Names such as Flint, Youngstown, Buffalo, Binghamton, Newton. Feldman sees a relentless decline for working- class Americans all the way from Iowa to New York. He sees the impact in his own family, as his retired parents-in-law have difficulties with their gutted pension fund and his disabled son stares at cuts to his benefits. The economic changes going on, he believes, are a profound de-industrialisation with which America is failing to come to terms. "We are going to have to face the end of the industrial age," he said. "This didn't just happen last October either. It's been happening here in Detroit since the 1980s. Detroit just got it first, but it could happen anywhere now." The busy highway of Eight Mile Road marks the border between the city of Detroit and its suburbs. On one side stretches the city proper with its mainly black population; on the other stretches the progressively more wealthy and more white suburbs of Oakland County. But this recession has reached out to those suburbs, too. Repossessions have spread like a rash down the streets of Oakland's communities. Joblessness has climbed, spurred by yet another round of mass lay-offs in the auto industry. Feldman recently took a tour down Eight Mile Road and was shocked by what he saw: "I went door-to-door north and south of Eight Mile and I could not tell the difference any more. I did not believe it until I saw it." Professor Robin Boyle, an urban planning expert at Detroit's Wayne State University, believes the real impact of the recession will continue to be felt in those suburbs for years to come. For decades they stood as a bulwark against the poverty of the city, ringing it like a doughnut of prosperity, with decrepit inner Detroit as the hole at its centre. Now home losses and job cuts are hitting the middle classes hard. "Recovery is going to take a generation," he said. "The doughnut itself is sick now. But what do you think that means for the poor people who live in the hole?" That picture is borne out by the recent actions of Gleaners Community Food Bank. The venerable Detroit institution has long sent out parcels of food, clothing and furniture all over the city. But now it is doing so to the suburbs as well, sometimes to people who only a year or so ago had been donors to the charity but now face food shortage themselves. Gleaners has delivered a staggering 14,000 tonnes of food in the past 12 months alone. Standing in a huge warehouse full of pallets of potatoes, cereals, tinned fruit and other vitals, Gleaners' president, DeWayne Wells, summed up the situation bluntly: "People who used to support this programme now need it themselves. The recession hit them so quickly they just became overwhelmed." In Detroit many people see the only signs of recovery as coming from themselves. As city government retreats and as cuts bite deep, some of those left in the city have not waited for help. Take the case of Mark Covington. He was born and raised in Detroit and still lives only a few yards from the house where he grew up in one of the city's toughest neighbourhoods. Laid off from his job as an environmental engineer, Covington found himself with nothing to do. So he set about cleaning up his long-suffering Georgia Street neighbourhood. He cleared the rubble where a bakery had once stood and planted a garden. He grew broccoli, strawberries, garlic and other vegetables. Soon he had planted two other gardens on other ruined lots. He invited his neighbours to pick the crops for free, to help put food on their plates. Friends then built an outdoor screen of white-painted boards to show local children a movie each Saturday night and keep them off the streets. He helped organise local patrols so that abandoned homes would not be burnt down. He did all this for free. All the while he still looked desperately for a job and found nothing. Yet Georgia Street improved. Local youths, practised in vandalism and the destruction of abandoned buildings, have not touched his gardens. People flock to the movie nights, harvest dinners and street parties Covington holds. Inspired, he scraped together enough cash to buy a derelict shop and an abandoned house opposite his first garden. He wants to reopen the shop and turn the house into a community centre for children. To do it, he needs a grant. Or a cheap bank loan. Or a job. But for people like Covington the grants have dried up, the banks are not lending, and no one is hiring. There is no help for him. It is hard not to compare Covington's struggle for cash to the vast bailout of America's financial industry. "We just can't get a loan to help us out. The banks are not lending," he said. On an unseasonal warm day last week, he stood in his urban garden, tending his crops, and gazed wistfully at the abandoned buildings that he now owns but cannot yet turn into something good for his neighbourhood. He does not seem bitter. But he does wonder why it seems so easy in modern America for those who already have a lot to get much more, while those who have least are forgotten. "It makes me wonder how they do it. And where is that money coming from?" he asked. From cb31450 at gmail.com Wed Nov 4 13:09:37 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:09:37 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Berlin wall had to fall, but today's world is no Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911041209x4f809969xb49a93c47f8e8e23@mail.gmail.com> The Berlin wall had to fall, but today's world is no fairer Twenty years after that shameful symbol of division was torn down, ultra-liberal capitalism needs its own perestroika by Mikhail Gorbachev The Guardian (U.K.) October 30, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/30/1989-capitalism-in-crisis-perestroika Twenty years have passed since the fall of the Berlin wall, one of the shameful symbols of the cold war and the dangerous division of the world into opposing blocks and spheres of influence. Today we can revisit the events of those times and take stock of them in a less emotional and more rational way. The first optimistic observation to be made is that the announced "end of history" has not come about, though many claimed it had. But neither has the world that many politicians of my generation trusted and sincerely believed in: one in which, with the end of the cold war, humankind could finally forget the absurdity of the arms race, dangerous regional conflicts, and sterile ideological disputes, and enter a golden century of collective security, the rational use of material resources, the end of poverty and inequality, and restored harmony with nature. Another important consequence of the end of the cold war is the realisation of one of the central postulates of New Thinking: the interdependence of extremely important elements that go to the very heart of the existence and development of humankind. This involves not only processes and events occurring on different continents but also the organic linkage between changes in the economic, technological, social, demographic and cultural conditions that determine the daily existence of billions of people on our planet. In effect, humankind has started to transform itself into a single civilisation. At the same time, the disappearance of the iron curtain and barriers and borders, unexpected by many, made possible connections between countries that until recently had different political systems, as well as different civilisations, cultures and traditions. Naturally, we politicians from the last century can be proud of the fact that we avoided the danger of a thermonuclear war. However, for many millions of people around the globe, the world has not become a safer place. Quite to the contrary, innumerable local conflicts and ethnic and religious wars have appeared like a curse on the new map of world politics, creating large numbers of victims. Clear proof of the irrational behaviour and irresponsibility of the new generation of politicians is the fact that defence spending by numerous countries, large and small alike, is now greater than during the cold war, and strong-arm tactics are once again the standard way of dealing with conflicts and are a common feature of international relations. Alas, over the last few decades, the world has not become a fairer place: disparities between the rich and the poor either remained or increased, not only between the north and the developing south but also within developed countries themselves. The social problems in Russia, as in other post-communist countries, are proof that simply abandoning the flawed model of a centralised economy and bureaucratic planning is not enough, and guarantees neither a country's global competitiveness nor respect for the principles of social justice or a dignified standard of living for the population. New challenges can be added to those of the past. One of these is terrorism. In a context in which world war is no longer an instrument of deterrence between the most powerful nations, terrorism has become the "poor man's atomic bomb", not only figuratively but perhaps literally as well. The uncontrolled proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the competition between the erstwhile adversaries of the cold war to reach new technological levels in arms production, and the presence of the new pretenders to an influential role in a multipolar world all increase the sensation of chaos in global politics. The crisis of ideologies that is threatening to turn into a crisis of ideals, values and morals marks yet another loss of social reference points, and strengthens the atmosphere of political pessimism and nihilism. The real achievement we can celebrate is the fact that the 20th century marked the end of totalitarian ideologies, in particular those that were based on utopian beliefs. Yet new ideologies are quickly replacing the old ones, both in the east and the west. Many now forget that the fall of the Berlin wall was not the cause of global changes but to a great extent the consequence of deep, popular reform movements that started in the east, and the Soviet Union in particular. After decades of the Bolshevik experiment and the realisation that this had led Soviet society down a historical blind alley, a strong impulse for democratic reform evolved in the form of Soviet perestroika, which was also available to the countries of eastern Europe. But it was soon very clear that western capitalism, too, deprived of its old adversary and imagining itself the undisputed victor and incarnation of global progress, is at risk of leading western society and the rest of the world down another historical blind alley. Today's global economic crisis was needed to reveal the organic defects of the present model of western development that was imposed on the rest of the world as the only one possible; it also revealed that not only bureaucratic socialism but also ultra-liberal capitalism are in need of profound democratic reform ???? their own kind of perestroika. Today, as we sit among the ruins of the old order, we can think of ourselves as active participants in the process of creating a new world. Many truths and postulates once considered indisputable, in both the east and the west, have ceased to be so, including the blind faith in the all-powerful market and, above all, its democratic nature. There was an ingrained belief that the western model of democracy could be spread mechanically to other societies with different historical experience and cultural traditions. In the present situation, even a concept like social progress, which seems to be shared by everyone, needs to be defined, and examined, more precisely. [Mikhail Gorbachev was the last president of the Soviet Union; he was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1990] From cb31450 at gmail.com Thu Nov 5 09:04:03 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 11:04:03 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Beck witch hunt for socialists, communists, Marxists Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911050804u2b5c2924ha2d073fb5edb44e7@mail.gmail.com> Beck witch hunt for socialists, communists, Marxists moves on to SEIU's Stern November 03, 2009 5:41 pm ET http://mediamatters.org/print/research/200911030041 SUMMARY: Continuing his pattern, Glenn Beck suggested during the November 3 edition of his radio program that SEIU's Andy Stern is a communist, socialist, and Marxist because he said in an interview that "workers of the world unite, it's not just a slogan anymore. It's the way we're going to have to do our work." However, when asked in a separate interview why he uses the slogan, Stern replied that it's "good news" that "communism's dead"; further, numerous conservatives, including Newt Gingrich and John McCain, have approvingly cited quotes or tactics from communist and socialist dictators -- yet those conservatives have seemed to escape Beck's witch hunt. Beck: "That is communist, Marxist, propaganda ... we don't want to become a socialist nation" Beck suggests SEIU's Stern is a communist, socialist, Marxist. On his November 3 radio program, Beck played a clip of SEIU president Andy Stern stating on the June 15, 2007, edition of PBS' Bill Moyers Journal that SEIU has "offices now in Australia and in Switzerland and London, in South America and Africa. We've been working with unions around the world. And what we're working towards is building a global organization. Because comp-- you know, workers of the world unite, it's not just a slogan anymore. It's the way we're going to have to do our work." Based on Stern's quotation of "workers of the world unite," Beck suggested that Stern is a communist, Marxist and socialist. From cb31450 at gmail.com Fri Nov 6 06:29:57 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 08:29:57 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Obama, the Karzai Brothers & the Ghost of Najibullah Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911060529o2e689bb1hf3327c52ccfa4c77@mail.gmail.com> Obama, the Karzai Brothers & the Ghost of Najibullah Left Margin By Carl Bloice BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board It???s said that you can buy photos of Najibullah on the streets of Kabul these days and even cassettes of speeches he made in the 1980s when he was president of Afghanistan. Najibullah???s name evokes controversy. Always cited are the condemnation by some Afghans for his ties to the Soviet Union and his previous role as chief of the country???s internal security apparatus. However, it is impossible not to acknowledge the country social gains made during his time in leadership. As soon as his government was overthrown the victors wiped out land reform programs, instituted Sharia or Islamic religious law, cut women off from education, athletics and the professions and banned things like movies, television, videos, dancing, kite flying, and beard trimming. Quiet as it???s kept, for many in the Afghan capital, the Najibullah years were a time of great promise. But also of great danger. Outside forces were plotting and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was spurring reactionary groups - trained and equipped by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others - to overthrow the Afghan government. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, in the words of former CIA analyst Ray McGoverrn, ???thought it a good idea to mousetrap the Soviets into their own Vietnam debacle by baiting them into invading Afghanistan in 1979, the war which was the precursor to the great-power Afghan quagmire three decades later.?? In 1979, Soviet troops entered the country to defend the Afghan government and remained there nine years. The effort was pre-doomed; the USSR leadership had ignored warnings, coming from even its own military strategists, that history had shown the fiercely independent and resourceful Afghan would never be subdued by the military might of foreign forces. On March 10, 1992, the New York Times reported that with the Soviet troops having left the country, ???Afghanistan???s President made an impassioned appeal to the United States today to help his country become a bulwark against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia.?? In an interview with correspondent Edward A. Gargan, Najibullah ???also pleaded for immediate economic and humanitarian assistance from Washington,?? which long backed the Afghan fundamentalist guerrillas fighting his Government. He also promised that he would release four Afghans who worked in the United States Embassy and were convicted of espionage in 1983. ???The Afghan President???s praise for the United States and his attempt to enlist Washington in common cause against fundamentalism marked the sharpest departure yet from the open hostility that has characterized relations between Kabul and Washington since Afghanistan???s leftist coup of 1978,?? wrote Gargan. ???We have a common task, Afghanistan, the United States of America, and the civilized world, to launch a joint struggle against fundamentalism,?? Najibullah told the Times, and ???described what he thought would happen to his country if Islamic extremists took power in Kabul.?? ???If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many more years,?? Najibullah said. ???Afghanistan will turn into a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism.?? Well, all that has come to pass. I was in Kabul February 15, 1989 when the final withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan took place; they had been in the country since December 1979. Most of the other reporters traveled to Jalalabad for the start of the final retreat, moving with the departing forces back to Kabul on their way out of the country. I remained in the capital and on that day a few of us were taken by our guides from the government to a shop that had been demolished by a bomb attack the previous day. It wasn???t a big terrorist attack but the message was clear: this is what is in store for Kabul now. That, too, came to pass. Gargan attributed Najibullah???s appeal to Washington to his having been ???Abandoned by his former benefactors in Moscow and cast somewhat adrift in the new politics of the region.?? That???s one way of putting it, but he really had no other choice. The USSR couldn???t restrain the Taliban and the various mujahedeen factions and besides it was in the midst of a political upheaval that would about two years hence bring down the ruling Communist Party. Najibullah had expressed support for a United Nations plan to summon ??? in Gargan???s words ???a wide spectrum of Afghans - including the Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas - to a gathering that would lead to a political accord to end Afghanistan???s years of civil conflict.?? There is no question that he persistently pursued a campaign for national reconciliation and reached out repeatedly to tribal and religious leaders across the country and the region. On the eve of the final stage of the Soviet withdrawal, Najibullah repeated his call for compromise and national unity before a large audience of notables and foreigners. But the Mujahedeen ???freedom fighters?? (as they were then called by the U.S. media and politicians at the time) and their benefactors in the region and Washington weren???t interested. The Times noted that the State Department refused to even comment on the Gargan interview. And so the attacks continued. Najibullah and his Watan (Homeland) Party remained in office until April 1992 when a major warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum decided to switch sides and the government ??? affected by severe economic difficulties (made worse by punitive sanctions undertaken by the Russian Government of Boris Yeltsin) ??? fell to the combined forces of mujahedeen and various tribal groups (???warlords?? ). But that hardly ended the country???s travails. The victorious groups soon began to fight each other over the spoils. The greatest damage to the country???s infrastructure and the city of Kabul came not from the Soviet invasion but from the internecine rocket attacks following the government???s ouster. In 1994, the recently organized Taliban made its appearance on the scene. Last week???s attack by the Taliban on targets in Kabul carried with them a grave symbolism. After Najibullah???s overthrow his family was able to flee the country but he refused to leave, choosing instead to take refuge in the United Nations compound where he remained for four years. In September 1996 the Taliban took control of Kabul from the Mujahedeen and began to bombard the UN facility. Najibullah was taken from the compound along with his brother, his secretary and his bodyguards. They were all hanged. The bloody body of the deposed president was hung from a lamp post, his severed private parts stuck in his mouth. One Afghan writer suggested Najibullah deserved his fate having been na??ve enough to think the Taliban would recognize the UN center as out of bounds. Last week???s attack lay to rest that notion once again. And so it came to pass that from that time forward to the Al Qaeda attack on the United States September 11, 2001 and beyond, Afghanistan has been and continues to be ???a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs?? and ???a center for terrorism.?? Over the years, the Left in that part of the world (and a lot of other places) has made a many mistakes that contributed to the advance of rightwing reactionary movements and forces. However, the biggest culprits have been the U.S. and its Western allies. In their zeal to crush communist, socialist and left movements and parties and a desire to control petroleum resources, they have anointed and fostered the fundamentalists over the secular and democratic, and taken advantage of religious, ethnic and sectarian divisions, stirring pots where they could find them from Central Europe to Iraq. Oh, and that narcotics thing. What short memories we sometime have. Yes, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency sometime cavorts with drug dealers. It did it in the war in South East Asia a few decades ago. Remember the Golden Triangle? ???If it sounds a lot like Vietnam when Vietnam started to really come apart, it is ??? President Diem???s grotesquely corrupt brother was a CIA source and a noxious agent of influence,?? writes Robert Baer, a former Middle East CIA field office, in Time magazine. ???We came into Afghanistan in October 2001 with the same willful blindness. The CIA knew that its ally, the Tajik Northern Alliance, was a paid-up proxy of Iran, just as it was fully aware that another ally, Uzbek General Dostum, was one of Afghanistan???s great butchers (though Dostum has always denied the widespread allegations of his brutality). When it came to finding crucial partners on the ground, there were simply no alternatives.?? According to Time, ???From December 2001 through 2002, according to a former Drug Enforcement Administration official speaking on condition of anonymity, ???the CIA and the military turned a blind eye to drug traffickers if they thought they could help them against Taliban and al-Qaeda.????? ???We had no problem dealing with Afghan Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists, drug dealers and thugs when the Carter and Reagan White Houses waged a proxy war against the Soviet Union in the ???80s,?? writes Baer. ???The CIA and the White House turned a blind eye to our proxies??? faults because the fundamentalists were the best fighters and happy to take down our Cold War enemy. ???The claim that Ahmed Wali Karzai has been on the payroll of the CIA for the past eight years, as reported in today???s New York Times, won???t come as a surprise to most Afghans, who have long considered his brother, Afghan president Hamid Karzai, to be an American puppet,?? wrote Aryn Baker in Time on October 28. ???The revamped allegations that Karzai fr??re is deeply involved in Afghanistan???s annual $4-billion drug industry isn???t much of a shocker either - on the streets of Kabul and Kandahar the name ???Wali??? has long been synonymous with someone who can get away with a crime because he has friends in the right places. Diplomats, counter-narcotics officials and commanders from the International Security Assistance Force, NATO???s military wing in Afghanistan, have all privately (and not so privately) expressed frustration with President Karzai for not reining in his brother. In fact, the people most likely to be shocked by the revelations are Americans back at home, who are already wondering why we should be sending more soldiers and money to a country whose leadership has rarely proved an adequate partner.?? As it turns out there are more than two Karzai brothers. Citing recent study published by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, investigative reporter Gareth Porter Writes: ???The report suggests that the U.S. and NATO contingents are spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on contracts with Afghan security providers, most of which are local power brokers guilty of human rights abuses.?? ???In addition to Ahmed Wali Karzai, it names Hashmat Karzai, another brother of President Karzai, and Hamid Wardak, the son of Defence Minister Rahim Wardak, as powerful figures who control private security firms that have gotten security contracts without registering with the government.?? The allegation of drug dealing and CIA payoff to Ahmed Wali Karzai?? throws into sharp relief the most crucial question the administration now faces in Afghanistan,?? wrote Mark Sappenfield in the Christian Science Monitor last Wednesday. ???Should America continue its policy of working with warlords and disreputable power-brokers in an attempt to use their influence to advance US interests? Or should it instead focus on protecting the Afghan people ??? in many cases from the very warlords the US has supported in the past??? I was sitting around the other day with a group of people whose views, one might say, ranged from center to left. On Afghanistan they appeared to be of the unanimous opinion that U.S. policy had to make a sharp departure from the past. The best option for the Obama Administration is neither ???counterinsurgency?? nor ???counterterrorism.?? Nor is total disengagement desired, they agreed. The answer lies in development. A ???Marshall Plan?? sized program to tackle poverty and illiteracy in the region could improve the situation. Military escalation will only make matters worse. Of course, launching such en effort would require an end to the fighting and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops.. A path to that would likely lay in a proposal widely broached in Europe and hardly mentioned in this country for an international conference involving; first and foremost, all Afghanistan???s neighboring states and each of the warring parties in the country with the aim of arriving at a security agreement. It might come through the United Nations like the plan that Najibullah was entertaining back in 1998 ??? long before September 11. Only this way can the conditions arise for the Afghan people to decide their own destiny free of dictates and intrigues from abroad. In any case, the proper path for the U.S. must not involve continuing to bed down with the feudal warlords and the likes of the Karzai brothers. That puts us on the wrong side of history and decency. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. From cb31450 at gmail.com Fri Nov 6 13:33:03 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 15:33:03 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] post-Fordism and geographical scattering of the points of production Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911061233wc74a9bdne9792d5d2554fb38@mail.gmail.com> On the other hand, given that GM and Chrysler have just gone bankrupt, maybe the auto companies were not able to scatter the points of production and still maintain profits in the long run. Charles From ballistanc at yahoo.com Fri Nov 6 16:35:40 2009 From: ballistanc at yahoo.com (juan De La Cruz) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 15:35:40 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fw: Contra la burguesia Message-ID: <454581.58768.qm@web35506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Lucha contra la Burgues?a El capital mundial vuelve ha imponernos las medidas de austeridad a trav?s del Fondo Monertario Internacional (FMI). La mayor?a de las estructuras burguesas han declarado que apoyan el acuerdo... Aun as?, otras instituciones a la izquierda del capital consideran correctamente que el mismo tendr? consecuencias inmediatas negativas sobre las condiciones de vida de la masa proletaria y est?n llamando a protestas contra el acuerdo. Este llamado nuevo a la protesta que est?n haciendo las estructuras a la izquierda del capital est? enmarcado en las luchas reformistas por evitar la destrucci?n de esta sociedad y su Estado capitalista y mantenernos en la polarizaci?n burguesa al servicio de una de las facciones de la burgues?a, como lo est?n haciendo en otras partes de la regi?n Latinoamericana. ? No repitamos los mismos errores de abril de 1984 ! Por eso advertimos que nuestra intervenci?n en la escena pol?tica tiene que diferenciarse de esas estructuras que tienen la esperanza de "sanear, revigorizar el movimiento actual que esta podrido hasta sus propios fundamentos". Tomemos las calles conscientes de que la econom?a nacional y el aparato militar tienen que ser destruidos para abrir paso a la socializaci?n de la econom?a y la posibilidad de iniciar una tentativa de revoluci?n mundial. Limitar nuestras luchas a un barrio o sector no contribuye a expresarnos como clase revolucionaria, desde el punto de vista hist?rico. En ese sentido recomendamos no levantar ninguna demanda sino coordinar un levantamiento r?pido y violento contra la burgues?a. Extendamos nuestras protestas al nivel nacional hasta derrocar el poder de la burgues?a que se expresa a trav?s de su estructura econ?mica y aparato militar. Hay que atacar y destruir todo lo que nos destruye. Debemos expresarnos en esta oportunidad como clase revolucionaria hasta imponer la dictadura de nuestras necesidades. ? Contra la reforma constitucional ! ? Esta sociedad es un fracaso ! ? La economia est? en crisis, que reviente ! ? Con un ataque r?pido y violento ! N?cleo Comunista ? From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Nov 8 11:47:25 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 13:47:25 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Thw working class - employed, is female Message-ID: The working class is officially female, although the proletariat was female perhaps two decades ago. WL. (Nov. 5) -- The United States may have officially entered the age of woman. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this fall, for the first time in U.S. history, women have surpassed men and now make up more than 50 percent of the nation's workforce. In 1967, by comparison, they accounted for just one-third of all workers. Signs of the changing landscape in gender relations are just about everywhere you look: ? Double the number of single women are now purchasing homes in America than there are single men. ? Four out of every 10 women are are now their family's primary breadwinner, a sharp increase from past decades. ? The New Hampshire State Legislature is now made up of a majority of women, a first for a legislative body in the U.S., and the number of women in government continues to edge up nationwide. ? Women now account for 30 percent of math Ph.D.s, up from just 5 percent in the 1960s. ? On average, women read nine books every year. Men only read four, and women account for 80 percent of the U.S. fiction market. ? The World Bank recently estimated that the global earning power of women will reach an estimated $18 trillion by the year 2014, up $5 trillion today. "Women really have become the dominant gender," said Guy Garcia, author of "The Decline of Men." "What concerns me is that guys are rapidly falling behind. Women are becoming better educated than men, earning more than men, and, generally speaking, not needing men at all. Meanwhile, as a group, men are losing their way." _http://www.sphere.com/2009/11/06/women-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s/?icid= main|htmlws-bv-n|dl2|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sphere.com%2F2009%2F11%2F06%2Fwo men-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s%2F_ (http://www.sphere.com/2009/11/06/women-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s/?icid=main|htmlws-bv-n|dl2|link3|http://www. sphere.com/2009/11/06/women-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s/) From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 9 06:27:23 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:27:23 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] ATHEISTS, Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911090527p3b018fd1jba745ed2eb1192eb@mail.gmail.com> ATHEISTS, IT'S TIME TO STAND UP TO JESUS By Russell Blackford, Udo Schuklenk, Comment Is Free Civility has its uses, but atheists should not be afraid to mock faith to undermine religious power. http://www.alternet.org/story/143820/atheists%2C_it%27s_time_to_stand_up_to_jesus From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 9 06:31:37 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:31:37 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Comrade Dave Moore Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911090531uf73009ahffce07aa77499cc6@mail.gmail.com> In Memory of Extraordinary Freedom Fighter David William Moore Whereas, David W. Moore, Dave , was 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 and, throughout his 97 years, was an icon of the working class rank and file, 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, the Ford Hunger March, worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps, ; and Whereas, Brother Dave 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 Axle Plant on April 2, 1941, triggering the strike that ended in Ford signing a contract with UAW-CIO on June 30, 1941; and Whereas, Dave 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, Dave Moore , with the Honorable Coleman A. Young organized security details for Paul Robeson?s visits to Detroit, and said meetings also included the Honorable 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, Dave Moore served as Vice-President of the Detroit Chapter of the National Negro Labor Council, along with the Honorable 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 African American 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, the Honorable George Crockett, Lebron Simmons, Ernie Goodman and the Honorable Claudia Morcom, he was An extraordinary and exceptionally astute advocate, and highly skilled in negotiating fourth-stage grievances until his retirement in 1979. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Detroit City Council and the National Lawyers Guild and Whereas, In 1979, Dave 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; he was a friend of the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. and of Congressman John Conyers, Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus THEREFORE BE IT Resolved, That the Detroit City Council salute and honor the Great Dave Moore , and deeply mourn his passing. We will as Mr. Moore always said ?Carry On ? the struggle - From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 9 06:33:11 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:33:11 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Thw working class - employed, is female In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911090533gc92e065w3261a7f9ed01e5c0@mail.gmail.com> Women have a longer life expectancy than men , too. (smile) CB On 11/8/09, Waistline2 at aol.com wrote: > The working class is officially female, although the proletariat was female > perhaps two decades ago. > > WL. > > > > (Nov. 5) -- The United States may have officially entered the age of woman. > > According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this fall, for the first time > in U.S. history, women have surpassed men and now make up more than 50 > percent of the nation's workforce. In 1967, by comparison, they accounted for > just one-third of all workers. > > Signs of the changing landscape in gender relations are just about > everywhere you look: > > ? Double the number of single women are now purchasing homes in America > than there are single men. > ? Four out of every 10 women are are now their family's primary > breadwinner, a sharp increase from past decades. > ? The New Hampshire State Legislature is now made up of a majority of > women, a first for a legislative body in the U.S., and the number of women in > government continues to edge up nationwide. > ? Women now account for 30 percent of math Ph.D.s, up from just 5 percent > in the 1960s. > ? On average, women read nine books every year. Men only read four, and > women account for 80 percent of the U.S. fiction market. > ? The World Bank recently estimated that the global earning power of women > will reach an estimated $18 trillion by the year 2014, up $5 trillion > today. > > "Women really have become the dominant gender," said Guy Garcia, author of > "The Decline of Men." "What concerns me is that guys are rapidly falling > behind. Women are becoming better educated than men, earning more than men, > and, generally speaking, not needing men at all. Meanwhile, as a group, men > are losing their way." > > _http://www.sphere.com/2009/11/06/women-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s/?icid= > main|htmlws-bv-n|dl2|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sphere.com%2F2009%2F11%2F06%2Fwo > men-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s%2F_ > (http://www.sphere.com/2009/11/06/women-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s/?icid=main|htmlws-bv-n|dl2|link3|http://www. > sphere.com/2009/11/06/women-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s/) > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 9 06:35:35 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:35:35 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Keeping Afghanistan Safe From Democracy Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911090535l609dea9bg46e412d694b6d437@mail.gmail.com> Keeping Afghanistan Safe From Democracy By Robert Scheer San Francisco Chronicle November 5, 2009 http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/scheer/#ixzz0W73PpiAz The most idiotic thing being said about America's involvement in Afghanistan is that the best way to protect the 68,000 U.S. troops there now is by putting an additional 40,000 in harm's way. People who argue for that plan clearly have not read Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's report pushing for escalation. The general is as honest as he is wrong in laying out the purpose of this would-be expanded mission, which is to remold Afghanistan in a Western image by making U.S. troops far more vulnerable, rather than less so. He is honest in arguing that American troops would have to be deployed throughout the rugged and otherwise inhospitable terrain of rural Afghanistan, entering intimately into the ways of local life so as to win the hearts and minds of a people who clearly wish we would not extend the favor. He is wrong in indicating, without providing any evidence to support the proposition, that this very costly and highly improbable quest to be the first foreign power to successfully model life in Afghanistan would be connected with defeating the al Qaeda terrorists. As the president's top national security adviser has stated, there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan, and they have no capacity to launch attacks. These remnants of a foreign Arab force assembled by the United States to thwart the Soviets in their hapless effort to conquer Afghanistan are now alienated from the locally based insurgency. As Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain and foreign service officer in charge of the most contested area, said recently in his letter of resignation, we have stumbled into a 35-year-long civil war between rural people "who want to be left alone" and a corrupt urban government that the United States insists on backing. Hoh, who quit after a decade of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote that he was resigning not because of the hardships of his assignment but rather because he no longer believed in its stated purpose: "In the course of my five months of service in Afghanistan ... I have lost understanding and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan. ... To put simply: I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old civil war. ... Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people. ... I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul." Just how unrepresentative was amply demonstrated in a very low turnout election in which the U.S.-backed candidate, Hamid Karzai, won after stealing one-third of the ballots he claimed for his victory, according to U.N. observers. In a message of congratulation to Karzai, President Obama made reference to the need for reform and an end to the corruption that is endemic in the Karzai regime, but then stated, "Although the process was messy, I am pleased to say that the final outcome was determined in accordance with Afghan law, which I think is very important." What law? A runoff was avoided only when Karzai refused to accede to his opponent's demand for changes in the election commission that had stuffed the ballot boxes. When Bob Schieffer of CBS said of the election "the thing was a fraud," White House senior adviser David Axelrod had the arrogance to defend the rigged process as having "proceeded in the constitutional way." Just what is it we are telling the world about our belief in the integrity of elections? It is no different from our having extolled those garbage elections that occurred with great regularity in Vietnam during the war there, a point made to great effect by Hoh: "Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency's true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our nation's own internal peace, against an insurgency whose nationalism we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology." Obama must know the truth of those words and should heed them before he marches down the disastrous path pursued by another Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson - who, we now know from his White House telephone tapes, sacrificed the youth of this country in a war that he always knew never made sense. 2009 CREATORS.COM Robert Scheer is editor of truthdig.com, where this column originally appeared. E- mail Robert Scheer at rscheer at truthdig.com. From farmelantj at juno.com Mon Nov 9 06:56:42 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 13:56:42 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Keeping Afghanistan Safe From Democracy Message-ID: <20091109.085642.25752.0@webmail02.vgs.untd.com> General McChrystal is believed by many to have Potomac fever, that is, he wants Obama's job. Both Abe Lincoln and Harry Truman in their times had their experiences with politically ambitious generals. A major test for Obama will be whether he has the guile and intestinal fortitude to deal with such a general. Jim F. ---------- Original Message ---------- From: c b To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Keeping Afghanistan Safe From Democracy Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:35:35 -0500 Keeping Afghanistan Safe From Democracy By Robert Scheer San Francisco Chronicle November 5, 2009 http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/scheer/#ixzz0W73PpiAz The most idiotic thing being said about America's involvement in Afghanistan is that the best way to protect the 68,000 U.S. troops there now is by putting an additional 40,000 in harm's way. P ____________________________________________________________ Manufacturer-Direct Hardwood Floors Never pay retail again. Wholesale prices on all hardwood floors! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=nOmHS7rGKEBFkIea4HcNugAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAAKMXpD4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANldAAAAAA= From Waistline2 at aol.com Mon Nov 9 19:20:04 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 21:20:04 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Comrade Dave Moore Message-ID: Rest in peace Comrade. Til Victory is Won! Proletarians Unite. WL. From rasherrs at eircom.net Wed Nov 11 16:10:22 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:10:22 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Can Ireland have a successful communist revolution? Message-ID: It is not possible to achieve a communist society in Ireland through social revolution. This is because, if such a society were realized, it would be easily crushed by the imperialist states that surround it. A communist Ireland is sustainable only if communism has been realized in the UK and(or) Western Europe. So any attempts to set up a revolutionary communist party in Ireland makes no sense. It is utopian to claim that in the Irish Republic the politics of social revolution are realisable and sustainable. Consequently soi disant Marxist groups such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party are misleading elements within the working class by claiming that a workers republic can be established and consolidated within the 26 counties of Ireland. The setting up of a workers' republic would, every bit as much an Irish communist society, be duly crushed by the forces of imperialism encircling it. This would almost certainly lead to great human suffering including the loss of many Irish lives. In the light of this James Connolly was equally utopian when he fought for a thirty two county Irish workers' republic at the beginning of the 20th century. The conclusion is that the promotion of Marxist politics in Ireland is a utopian project that misleads the Irish working class filling it with false optimism. Communism can only be an option for the Irish working class within the context of European social revolution that eventually involves world revolution. Generally speaking communism can only be universal in character. The most that communists in Ireland can do is create a communist organization of intellectuals that contributes to the development of communist theory. In a large country like the UK or France it makes more sense to struggle to build a communist political party within the context of building an international communist political party. The working class of a powerful country like Britain, France or the USA has a much better chance of launching a communist revolution than the weak Irish working class. Revolutions from these individual countries can serve as the basis for the successful launching of social revolution in Ireland. Generally social revolution can never begin in a small weak country such as the Irish Republic. We now have a situation where people like Kieran Allen present themselves on radio and TV effectively clamouring for a state-capitalist solution to the problem of the Irish debt crisis. Yet the Socialist Workers Party, of which Kieran is a member, have perennially criticized the character of the former Soviet Union because of its alleged state capitalist character. A state capitalist solution is a tautology for a national solution. There is essentially no difference between this SWP position and the ambiguous position being held by ICTU bosses Jack O Connor and David Begg. Indeed there is no significant difference between the position of the SWP, the Socialist Party, the ICTU and the Fianna Fail party in relation to state indebtedness. All want a capitalist solution within a national, thereby bourgeois, framework. Differences between the different parties are rooted in mere modifications as to how wealth is to be distributed. Modifications in wealth distribution fails to render change in class relations. None of the above elements want a revolution in the character of the production process --a communist solution. This is because there cannot be a communist solution to the debt crisis except within an international framework. In short the Irish working class need the revolutionary mobilisation of the British, French and German working class if the debt crisis is to be solved through revolution. In a sense the Iris debt crisis is a problem for the entire European working class. Other than that a capitalist solution is the only solution possible. Kieran Allen and Joe Higgins mislead the Irish citizenry when they claim to have a "socialist" alternative to the policies of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Labour Party. Their differences only exist in a merely distributionist context. The nationalist policies of the SWP and the Socialist Party are not sustainable. Consequently the SWP and the Socialist Party are incapable of implementing bourgeois nationalist policies nor social revolution. The essential nature of their politics dooms them to political bankruptcy which is why their political character is inherently opportunist. Paddy Hackett Paddy's Blog: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.com From cb31450 at gmail.com Thu Nov 12 08:23:04 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:23:04 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Coleman Young Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911120723w1aca33a8ne89303828727038b@mail.gmail.com> There's a struggle on how to write this article (smile) Coleman Young http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman_Young#Personal_life For other persons named Coleman Young, see Coleman Young (disambiguation). Coleman A. Young Coleman A. Young, Detroit, 1981 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mayor of Detroit In office January 1974 ? December 1993 Preceded by Roman Gribbs Succeeded by Dennis Archer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Born May 24, 1918 (1918-05-24) Tuscaloosa, Alabama Died November 29, 1997 (1997-11-30) Detroit, Michigan Political party Democratic Coleman Alexander Young (May 24, 1918 ? November 29, 1997) served as mayor of Detroit in the U.S. state of Michigan from 1974 to 1993. Young was Detroit's first black mayor. Contents [hide] 1 Pre-Mayoral career 2 Five terms as Mayor 3 Personal life 4 Assessment 5 Quotes 6 Death and Legacy 7 References 8 External links [edit] Pre-Mayoral career Young was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Coleman Young, a dry cleaner, and Ida Reese Jones. His family moved to Detroit in 1923, where he graduated from Eastern High School. He worked for Ford Motor Company, which soon blacklisted him for involvement in labor and civil rights activism. He later worked for the United States Postal Service. During the second World War, Young served in the 477th Medium-Bomber Group (Tuskegee Airmen) of the United States Army Air Forces as a bombardier and navigator. As a lieutenant in the 477th, he played a role in the Freeman Field Mutiny in which 162 African-American officers were arrested for resisting segregation at a base near Seymour, Indiana in 1945. Young's involvement in progressive and dissident organizations including the Progressive Party, the AFL-CIO, and the National Negro Labor Council made him powerful enemies, including the FBI and HUAC, where he refused to testify. He protested segregation in the Army and racial discrimination in the UAW. In 1948 Young supported Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace, which he later viewed as a major mistake. In 1960, he was elected as a delegate to help draft a new state constitution for Michigan. In 1964 he won election to the Michigan State Senate, where his most significant legislation was a law requiring arbitration in disputes between public-sector unions and municipalities. [edit] Five terms as Mayor Young's 1973 Mayoral campaign addressed the role of the violence inflicted upon a predominantly black city by a disproportionately white police department. Young pledged the elimination of one particularly troubled police unit, STRESS (Stop the Robberies and Enjoy Safe Streets.) This one police unit had killed eight black citizens in its first four months of operation. In November 1973, Young narrowly defeated Police Commissioner John F. Nichols (who would later serve as Oakland County Sheriff) to become Detroit's first black mayor. Young promptly disbanded the STRESS unit, integrated the police department and increased patrols in high crime neighborhoods utilizing a community policing approach.[1] Young's effect on integrating the Detroit Police Department was successful with the percentage of black police officers rising from 19% in the early 1970s[2] to 63% by 2000.[3] Young, however, had little effect on stopping police brutality in the long run as the Detroit Police Department has gained notoriety for the alleged reckless use of deadly force.[4] Young won re-election by very wide margins in November 1977, November 1981, November 1985 and November 1989, for a total of 20 years as mayor. Young's administration was controversial, and he found himself the subject of continued FBI scrutiny amid allegations of contract kickbacks. He was criticized for his confrontational style toward suburban interests and the apparent diversion of city resources to downtown Detroit from other neighborhoods. Young was generally popular with the inhabitants of the city proper, while generally disliked by those of the suburbs because of his outrageous remarks that insinuated he did not like white people. Young was a tireless advocate for federal funding for Detroit construction projects, and his administration saw the completion of the Renaissance Center, Detroit People Mover, Joe Louis Arena, and several other Detroit landmarks. He also negotiated with General Motors to build its new "Poletown" plant at the site of the former Dodge Main plant. This was very controversial, as the new plant was larger than the old one and the deal involved many evictions via eminent domain. During Young's last two administration's there was increasing opposition among neighborhood activists to these large ticket projects. This opposition typically manifest itself in rigorous budget debate rather than in serious electoral challenges against Young. During this period City Council President Maryann Mahaffey became an outspoken advocate for neighborhood development with the involvement and leadership of community based organizations. Most of the time Young prevailed over this opposition. [5] [edit] Personal life Young reports many aspects of his personal life and history in his autobiography _Hard Stuff_. He grew up in Detroit's legendary Black ghetto, "Black Bottom", frequenting Hastings Street and Paradise Valley. He was known as a dapper and handsome fellow, a favorite with the ladies. Young fathered a child (Joel Loving, who has recently taken the name Coleman Young himself) with Annivory Calvert. Though he first questioned whether the child was his, he accepted the paternity, after DNA tests linked Young to him following a paternity lawsuit filed by Calvert. Young died from emphysema in 1997. Upon learning of Young's death former President Jimmy Carter called Young "one of the greatest mayors our country has known." Many say that Detroit is forever Young. [6] [edit] Assessment Young himself expressed his belief the reform of the Police Department as one of his greatest accomplishments. He implemented effective affirmative action programs that lead to successful integration, created a network of Neighborhood City Halls and Police Mini Stations. Young used the relationship established by community policing to mobilize massive civilian patrols to address the Devil's Night arson that had come to plague the city each year. These patrols have been continued by succeeding administrations and have mobilized as many as 30,000 citizens in a single year virtually stopping all seasonal arson. [6] Young often offended people with his brashness, comments on race, self-assurance and intentionally provocative comments. Rumors and accusations of corruption and incompetence dogged his administration, and ultimately contributed to a lack of political support as well as a reluctance on the part of businesses to relocate inside of the City of Detroit. His combative nature fueled the deep divide that separated the City of Detroit from the suburbs, and contributed to the opposing governments of suburbs such as Dearborn (under Orville L. Hubbard). Detroit faced a white flight to the suburbs that began in the 1950s and accelerated after the 1967 Detroit race riots and the subsequent racial preference policies of the Coleman mayoral administration. It was common for Young's opponents to blame him for these developments, but it is speculated that other factors such as white resistance to court ordered desegregation, deteriorating housing stock as well as aging industrial plants and a declining automotive industry leading to a loss of economic opportunities inside the city contributed to the phenomenon. By the end of Young's term in office Detroit had a population of just under 1,000,000 from a pre-war high of over 2,000,000. [7] Young has been widely credited with keeping well organized street gangs out of Detroit, thus postponing the introduction of crack cocaine into the city of Detroit for several years. Crime rates in Detroit peaked under Mayor Young at more than 2,700 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 1994. [8] Economic conditions in Detroit generally trended towards the neutral over the sum of Mayor Young's political tenure, with the unemployment rate trending from approximately 9% in 1971 to approximately 11% in 1993, when Mayor Young retired. However, most economic metrics (unemployment, median income rates, and city gross domestic product) initially dropped precipitously under Young, reaching their "low points" in the late 80's and/or early 90's, with the unemployment rate in particular peaking at approximately 20% in 1982. [9] [edit] Quotes Coleman Young was known for his blunt statements, frequently using profanity: "I'm smiling all the time. That doesn't mean a goddamned thing except I think people who go around solemn-faced and quoting the Bible are full of shit." "Swearing is an art form. You can express yourself much more exactly, much more succinctly, with properly used curse words." Coleman Young to Detroit journalists via closed-circuit television from Hawaii: "Aloha, Motherfuckers!"[10] "Racism is like high blood pressure?the person who has it doesn?t know he has it until he drops over with a goddamned stroke. There are no symptoms of racism. The victim of racism is in a much better position to tell you whether or not you?re a racist than you are." "I issue a warning to all those pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all muggers: It?s time to leave Detroit; hit Eight Mile Road! And I don?t give a damn if they are black or white, or if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road."[11] "You can't look forward and backward at the same time." "We need to dream big dreams, propose grandiose means if we are to recapture the excitement, the vibrancy, and pride we once had." "We don't need no Goddamn Greenpeace!" (In response to activists suspended from the smoke stacks of the over-budget, illegal emission level producing incinerator that was about to be put into operation.) "There is no brilliant single stroke that is going to transform the water into wine or straw into gold." "I've learned over a period of years there are setbacks when you come up against the immovable object; sometimes the object doesn't move." [edit] Death and Legacy The mortal remains of Coleman Alexander Young are interred at Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.[12] The city hall for the City of Detroit was renamed the "Coleman A. Young Municipal Building." He has a wing named after him at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History Detroit City Airport, a general aviation facility serving downtown Detroit, has since been renamed Coleman A. Young International Airport. [edit] References ^ , Time Magazine, January 14, 1974 New Men for Detroit and Atlanta ^ "Do Whites Have Rights": White Detroit Policemen and "Reverse Discrimination" Protest in the 1970s ^ Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics, 2000: Data for Individual State and Local Agencies with 100 or More Officers ^ Fieger flirts with mayoral bid. ^ The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 594, No. 1, 125-142 (2004)Race and Representation in Detroit?s Community Development Coalitions ^ The New York Times, February 19, 2008 Civic Angels Curb Detroit 'Devil's Night' Fires ^ Time, October 27, 1961 Decline in Detroit ^ Wayne University Center for Urban Studies, October 2005 [1] ^ Wayne University Center for Urban Studies, October 2005 [2] ^ Desiree Cooper (1997-12-03). "Rapper deifies cusser". http://www.metrotimes.com/archives/young/rapper.html. Retrieved 2008-02-28. "And when addressing a party of Detroit journalists (for whom he held a healthy contempt) via closed-circuit television from Hawaii, Young opened his remarks with a robust: "Aloha, motherfuckers."" ^ McGraw, Bill et al. (1991). The Quotations Of Mayor Coleman A. Young. Wayne State University Press. ^ Coleman A. Young memorial at Find a Grave. [edit] External links United States Air Force portal Harp, Andrea S. April 17, 2001. "Coleman A. Young: Social and Political Powerbroker". The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Wayne State University. (Accessed 20 June 2007) Metro Times. 3 December 1997. "Coleman A. Young (1918 - 1997)" Recollection and remembrance on the longtime mayor. (Accessed 20 June 2007) The Coleman A. Young Foundation. "Coleman A. Young". (Accessed 20 June 2007) Findgrave.com (website) Coleman Young's Sarcophagus was provided by Enduring Memories Headstone Monument Company Gravesite. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gildon_Dissertation.pdf From cb31450 at gmail.com Thu Nov 12 09:37:04 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:37:04 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Six-Day Philly Transit Strike Ends After Pension Accord Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911120837t1f971afeja2c0dc0fc3ba31b9@mail.gmail.com> Six-Day Philly Transit Strike Ends After Pension Accord November 9 3:49 pm By Daniel Denvir In These Times http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5148/six-day_philly_transit_strike_ends_after_pension_accord/ PHILADELPHIA, PA.-Trains, buses and trolleys are moving again here after transit workers ended a six-day strike late Sunday. Members of the Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 234 are expected to ratify an agreement in the coming week, ending a dispute that had centered on pension issues. The union demanded that the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) pay more money into the underfunded pension, but as of Monday morning it was unclear what pension concessions the union succeeded in winning from management. Under the new contract, workers will increase their contribution to the pension fund to 3 percent of their salaries from the current two percent, and maximum pensions will be increased by $3,000, to $30,000 a year. The five-year contract also stipulates a 2.5- percent raise in the second year, and a 3-percent raise each year thereafter. Media coverage of the strike has been marked by hostility to strikers-and a scarcity of reliable information. On Friday night, it was widely reported that a deal would be reached within hours. When the deal fell apart, SEPTA management, Mayor Michael Nutter and Governor Ed Rendell accused the union of backing out of an agreement. The union, however, contends that they had only agreed to a general framework with the governor and were surprised on Saturday morning when SEPTA delivered a contract containing a number of separate provisions. "The governor was correct," Local 234 spokesman Jamie Horowitz told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "There was essentially a handshake agreement on some of the big issues related to salary and pension funding. But the devil is in the details. And when the contract was sent over [Saturday], it included a couple things that were difficult for the union." Local 234 rejected SEPTA's demand that the union agree to re-open healthcare provisions of the contract if the pending healthcare overhaul in Congress raised costs. Local 234 also demanded a forensic audit of the workers' chronically underfunded pension fund. For reasons that are unclear, SEPTA resisted the audit even though the union offered to pay for it. It appears that no audit was included in the final contract, but the union is expected to continue pushing for an investigation. Another mysterious aspect of the deal is a three-year dental plan that has been widely reported as one of the centerpieces of today's agreement. No dental issues were previously reported as a point of contention and it is still unclear what role it played in the dispute. Mike Zappone, who works at SEPTA's 69th St Terminal, says that there is widespread concern among union members that their pension money has been misappropriated and calls the dental issue a diversion. "On the news they're talking about a dental plan? We haven't heard about dental the whole time." In Pennsylvania, a state known for rampant corruption, there is abundant suspicion of malfeasance on the part of both Democrats and Republicans. What is clear is that Local 234's pension has long been underfunded, compared to managers' pension fund. (The workers' pension fund is currently 53-percent funded, compared to the managers' 65 percent.) Pension funds for public sector workers are in crisis across the country, due to the financial crisis on Wall Street and years of management pushback against defined-benefit packages. 401(k)s increasingly dominate the private sector, and public employees are fighting to maintain a secure retirement. In Philadelphia, pensions are also the sticking point in stalled negotiations with public-sector workers. The dominant narrative in the media, however, has framed SEPTA workers as a labor aristocracy insensitive to the recessionary troubles of other working-class Philadelphians. The Media Mobilizing Project, a media activist group that works with labor and community organizations throughout the city, put together a video highlighting the media bias. Ronnie Polaneczky wrote one particularly incendiary column for The Philadelphia Daily News entitled "SEPTA strikers, how dare you!" She argued that public sector workers should not demand better conditions while those of other workers were deteriorating: Unemployment is rampant in this region, and your union actually chose to strike rather than continue hammering out the details of your already excellent jobs? Jobs that we, the transit-dependent public, need you to perform so that our own financially teetering lives don't crash and burn? The union argues that the raises keep wages on pace with inflation and will be partially offset by increased contributions to the pension plan. Chris Satullo, news director at Philadelphia public radio station WHYY, also jumped into the fray. Noting that he grew up in a union household, he charged that public employee strikes undermine public support for unions-but neglected to suggest how else such a union could defend members' rights. Zappone says that the media consistently took management's side in the dispute. "They backed the politicians," he said. Zappone says that workers had no choice but to strike. Yet reporting on the strike's impact overshadowed discussion of worker issues. "How long are we supposed to work without a contract?" he asked. "SEPTA just ignored us." (The Media Mobilizing Project has also put together a video highlighting worker voices: http://mediamobilizing.org/nutter-fox-news-and-septa-strike Negotiations between SEPTA and Local 234 have often led to conflict. SEPTA workers struck for seven days in 2005 over healthcare issues and 40 days in 1998 over management attempts to convert positions to part-time, change work rules and increase outsourcing. "I've been working 36 years for SEPTA," Zappone says. "Every time we go for a contract, it's a battle. They always want to take something from us." U.S. Rep. Bob Brady played a lead role in negotiating a settlement--especially, it seems, given the personal animosity between Mayor Nutter and the union leadership. Mayor Michael Nutter was kicked out of the negotiations on the strike's second day. Local 234 accused Nutter of intransigence at the bargaining table. According to Horowitz, Nutter was worried that a successful outcome for Local 234 would bolster the bargaining position of the four municipal unions that have been working without a contract since June 30. Public employees are often the target of derision in Philadelphia media. But in a de-industrialized city like Philly, once the "workshop of the world," public sector jobs are one of the few opportunities left for a poor person to make a decent living. The union, however, has been roundly criticized for failing to reach out to transit users, and even Local 234 President Willie Brown concedes that the strike was poorly timed. But a Sunday demonstration called to protest the strike fizzled. According to The Inquirer, one protester showed up, greatly outnumbered by an overeager press corps. Workers say that management is out of touch with the working-class public. "They don't care about the people," says Zappone. "A lot of these managers wouldn't know an El from a trolley." Brown has called his decision to call the strike-at 3 a.m. on November 3, just after the World Series moved back to Yankee Stadium in New York-the way he did a mistake. Zappone agrees, saying, "We messed up the first day." The misstep gave SEPTA an initial advantage in directing public anger against the union. "[Brown] has publicly said that it was a mistake to go out at 3 a.m. without giving public advance notice," says Horowitz. "And frankly, we probably could have put a lot of pressure on the employer if we said, `Hey, the clocks ticking. The train won't run if there's not movement on these issues.'" But he says that the union recovered their footing. "The primary issue is pensions. And I think we did succeed in getting that across to the public." Posted by Daniel Denvir From cb31450 at gmail.com Thu Nov 12 12:53:03 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:53:03 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Obama said to want revised Afghanistan options Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911121153t1b9cedb9l34e503df2633a95d@mail.gmail.com> Obama said to want revised Afghanistan options By BEN FELLER and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writers Ben Feller And Anne Gearan, Associated Press Writers 2 hrs 20 mins ago WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama rejected the Afghanistan war options before him and asked for revisions, his defense secretary said Thursday, after the U.S. ambassador in Kabul argued that a significant U.S. troop increase would only prop up a weak, corruption-tainted government. Obama's ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, who is also a former commander in Afghanistan, twice in the last week voiced strong dissent against sending large numbers of new forces, according to an administration official. That puts him at odds with the current war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is seeking thousands more troops. Eikenberry's misgivings, expressed in classified cables to Washington, highlight administration concerns that bolstering the American presence in Afghanistan could make the country more reliant on the U.S., not less. He expressed his objections just ahead of Obama's latest war meeting Wednesday. At the war council meeting, Obama asked for changes in the four options he was given that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and their timeline in the war zone. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the discussion turned on "how can we combine some of the best features of several of the options to maximum good effect." He added: "There is a little more work to do. I do think that we're getting toward the end of this process." One issue in the discussions, Gates said, has been "How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this isn't an open-ended commitment." The president wants to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, said another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity discuss administration deliberations. Meanwhile, Richard C. Holbrooke, Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, left late Wednesday for consultations with allies in Berlin, Paris and Moscow. British officials also are expected at some point to join the talks, part of a continuing effort to coordinate with allies, brief them on Obama's strategy review and discuss what more they might contribute in Afghanistan. The developments underscore U.S. skepticism about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose government has been dogged by corruption. The emerging administration message is that Obama will not do anything to lock in an open-ended U.S. commitment. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday voiced a list of concerns about Afghanistan: "corruption, lack of transparency, poor governance, absence of the rule of law." "We're looking to President Karzai as he forms a new government to take action that will demonstrate ? not just to the international community but first and foremost to his own people ? that his second term will respond the needs that are so manifest," Clinton said during a news conference in Manila with Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo. Obama is still expected to send in more troops to bolster a deteriorating war effort. He remains close to announcing his revamped war strategy ? troops are just one component ? and probably will do so shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends Nov. 19. Yet in Wednesday's pivotal war council meeting, Obama wasn't satisfied with any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, one official said. Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward commander McChrystal's recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama's resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely. The president is considering options that include adding 30,000 or more U.S. forces to take on the Taliban in key areas of Afghanistan and to buy time for the Afghan government's inadequate and ill-equipped fighting forces to prepare to take over. The other three options on the table are ranges of troop increases, from a relatively small addition of forces to the roughly 40,000 that McChrystal prefers, according to military and other officials. The war is now in its ninth year and is claiming U.S. lives at a record pace as military leaders say the Taliban has the upper hand in many parts of the country. Ambassador Eikenberry, who was the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan for two years ending in 2007, is a prominent voice among those advising Obama, and his sharp dissent is sure to affect the equation. The options given to Obama will now be altered, although not overhauled. Military officials say one approach is a compromise battle plan that would add 30,000 or more U.S. forces atop a record 68,000 in the country now. They described it as "half and half," meaning half fighting and half training and holding ground so the Afghans can regroup. "The government of Afghanistan has to accept greater responsibility for its own defense," Clinton said Thursday. She had no comment on the Eikenberry memos. Among the options for Obama would be ways to phase in additional troops, perhaps eventually equaling McChrystal's full request, based on security or other conditions in Afghanistan and troop levels by U.S. allies there. The White House has chafed under criticism from Republicans and some outside critics that Obama is dragging his feet to make a decision. Obama's top military advisers have said they are comfortable with the pace of the process, and senior military officials have pointed out that the president still has time since no additional forces could begin flowing into Afghanistan until early next year. Under the scenario featuring about 30,000 more troops, that number most likely would be assembled from three Army brigades and a Marine Corps contingent, plus a new headquarters operation that would be staffed by 7,000 or more troops, a senior military official said. There would be a heavy emphasis on the training of Afghan forces, and the reinforcements Obama sends could include thousands of U.S. military trainers. ___ Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Manila, Philippines, and Pamela Hess and Barry Schweid in Washington contributed to this report. From cb31450 at gmail.com Thu Nov 12 12:57:28 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:57:28 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Relentless Pressure from Progressive Groups Pushes Hatemonger Lou Dobbs Out of CNN Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911121157yf31d4fetc277c39e06f00414@mail.gmail.com> Relentless Pressure from Progressive Groups Pushes Hatemonger Lou Dobbs Out of CNN By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet Posted on November 12, 2009, Printed on November 12, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/story/143903/ After relentless pressure on CNN by progressive campaigns like BastaDobbs and DropDobbs.com, Lou Dobbs announced on his Wednesday show that he was leaving the network, effective immediately. "This will be my last broadcast here on CNN, where I?ve worked for most of the past 30 years," he said. Dobbs' abrupt departure from the network is a major victory for the Latino advocacy groups demanding his resignation. For years, the talk show host has stirred up xenophobic, anti-immigrant hysteria and promoted an array of right-wing talking points, giving lie to CNN's reputation for impartiality as well as comically belying his own claims of "independence." Some of Dobbs' greatest hits: in 2005 the talk show host implied that Latino immigrants were spreading leprosy in the U.S. He falsely stated that illegal immigrants make up a third of the U.S. prison population. In a March 2009 radio broadcast, Dobbs declared, "Mexico has become our enemy." Of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, Dobbs said "pure, pure, absolute pandering to the Hispanics ? " Dobbs has also stated his support for extremist groups and individuals like the Minute Men, a militia group that patrols the border, and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who marched inmates from his infamous tent prisons through the streets in pink underwear. Dobbs has ties to the hard-line anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR); the talk show host broadcast one of his radio shows from a FAIR event, and the organization, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has given Dobbs an award for, in their words, "his continued efforts in leading the immigration reform movement." More recently, Dobbs shocked even his greatest critics by promoting the birther theory -- the thoroughly debunked claim that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore not eligible to be President. Although Dobbs was repeatedly slammed for giving the racially charged theory a mainsteam platform, CNN refused to take action against the host; network President Jonathan Klein said that pursuing the discredited birther theory was Dobbs' editorial decision to make. Dobb's fear-mongering about Latino immigrants and increasing embrace of the right-wing fringe ? and CNN's seeming inability to rein him in ? inspired the formation of several campaigns to pressure the network to remove Dobbs. The DropDobbs campaign, in partnership with Netroots Nation, National Council of La Raza and Deloros Huerta Foundation, called on advertisers to end their support of Lou Dobbs Tonight. BastaDobbs, a consortium of more than 40 Latino advocacy groups around the country, launched a letter writing campaign urging CNN President Jonathan Klein to drop Dobbs for rhetoric "linked to the rise of bigotry and hate crimes." The organization also worked to alert Latinos to the fact that even as CNN courted their viewership with programming like "Latinos in America", the network also gave Dobbs a platform to spew incendiary anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Roberto Lovato, co-founder of Presente.org, which helped coordinate the BastaDobbs campaign, said "Our contention all along was that Lou Dobbs ? who has a long record of spreading lies and conspiracy theories about immigrants and Latinos ? does not belong on the ?Most Trusted Name in News. We are thrilled that Dobbs no longer has this legitimate platform from which to incite fear and hate." Given all the controversy surrounding Dobbs, it's surprising the network has not kicked him out earlier. Especially since in addition to undermining CNNs brand as "the most trusted name in news" with polarizing, racist rhetoric, Dobbs also failed to bring in ratings. According to Nielsen Media Research, the ratings for his 7p.m. show are down 20 percent since last year. In his statement Dobbs claimed that he did not yet have clear plans, saying "At this point, I?m considering a number of options and directions, and I assure you, I will let you know when I set my course." But even before Dobbs' announcement, a September meeting with Fox's Roger Ailes sparked rumors Dobbs was gearing up to join Fox news. Dobbs' abrupt departure, more than a year before the expiration of his contract, indicates he may found a more fitting home for his hate-filled rhetoric. Tana Ganeva is an associate editor at AlterNet. ? 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143903/ From cb31450 at gmail.com Thu Nov 12 13:08:29 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:08:29 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Demographics of the Labor Movement Shift Considerably over the Past 25 Years Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911121208x1d9e96bfm82c0dcac897d2da5@mail.gmail.com> CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH ________________________________________ Demographics of the Labor Movement Shift Considerably over the Past 25 Years For Immediate Release: November 10, 2009 Contact: Alan Barber, (202) 293-5380 x115 Washington, D.C.- Over the past 25 years, the face of the labor movement has undergone considerable change, according to a new report released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) [http://www.cepr.net/]. "The view that the typical union worker is a white male manufacturing worker may have been correct a quarter of a century ago, but it's not an accurate description of those in today's labor movement," said John Schmitt [ http://www.cepr.net/index.php/john-schmitt/], a Senior Economist at CEPR and an author of the report. The report, "The Changing Face of Labor, 1983-2008," [ http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/changing-face-of-labor/] analyzes trends in the union workforce over the last quarter century and finds that the it is more diverse today than just 25 years ago. These trends in the composition of the unionized workforce, in part, reflect similar shifts in the workforce as a whole. "The unionized workforce is changing with the country," Schmitt continued. "The fastest growing groups in the overall economy are also the fastest growing groups in the labor movement." The findings of the report reveal this and other shifts in union composition. Among them: ? Women now make up over 45 percent of unionized workers, up from just 35 percent in 1983. By 2020, women will be the majority of union workers. ? Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the labor movement. In 2008, they represented 12.2 percent of the union workforce, up from 5.8 percent in 1983. ? Asians have seen considerable gains and made up 4.6 percent of the union workforce in 2008, an increase from 2.5 percent in 1989. ? Black workers were about 13 percent of the total unionized workforce, a share that has held fairly steady since 1983, despite a large decline in the representation of whites over the same period. ? Over one-third of union workers had a four-year college degree or more, up from only one-in-five in 1983. Almost half of union women had at least a four-year college degree. ? Only about one-in-ten unionized workers was in manufacturing, down from almost 30 percent in 1983. ? Just under half (48.9 percent) of unionized workers were in the public sector, up from just over one-third (34.4 percent) in 1983. About 61 percent of unionized women are in the public sector. ? The typical union worker was 45 years old, or about 7 years older than in 1983. (The typical employee, regardless of union status, was 41 years old, also about 7 years older than in 1983.) ? More educated workers were more likely to be unionized than less educated workers, a reversal from 25 years ago. ? Immigrants made up 12.6 percent of union workers in 2008, up from 8.4 percent in 1994. ? In rough terms, five-in-ten union workers were in the public sector; one of every ten was in manufacturing; and the remaining four of ten were in the private sector outside of manufacturing. The full study can be found here [ http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/changing-face-of-labor/]. ### ________________________________________ The Center for Economic and Policy Research is an independent, nonpartisan think tank that was established to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. CEPR's Advisory Board includes Nobel Laureate economists Robert Solow and Joseph Stiglitz; Janet Gornick, Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Director of the Luxembourg Income Study; Richard Freeman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University; and Eileen Appelbaum, Professor and Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. From sara.farris at gmail.com Thu Nov 12 15:07:28 2009 From: sara.farris at gmail.com (Sara Farris) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:07:28 +0100 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Now out: The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism - Peter D. Thomas Message-ID: FYI The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism Peter D. Thomas http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=29354 Publication year: 2009 Series: Historical Materialism Book Series, 24 ISBN-13 (i): 978 90 04 16771 1 ISBN-10: 90 04 16771 4 Cover: Hardback Number of pages: xxv, 477 pp. List price: ? 115.00 / US$ 170.00 Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks are today acknowledged as a classic of the human and social sciences in the twentieth century. The influence of his thought in numerous fields of scholarship is only exceeded by the diverse interpretations and readings to which it has been subjected, resulting in often contradictory 'images of Gramsci'. This book draws on the rich recent season of Gramscian philological studies in order to argue that the true significance of Gramsci's thought consists in its distinctive position in the development of the Marxist tradition. Providing a detailed reconsideration of Gramsci's theory of the state and concept of philosophy, The Gramscian Moment argues for the urgent necessity of taking up the challenge of developing a 'philosophy of praxis' as a vital element in the contemporary revitalisation of Marxism. Peter D. Thomas (Ph.D, 2008) studied at the University of Queensland, Freie Universit?t Berlin, L?Universit? ?Federico II?, Naples, and the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He has published widely on Marxist political theory and philosophy. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism: research in critical Marxist theory. REVIEWS Peter Thomas' book should become the standard text in English on Gramsci's thought. Acquainted as he is with the latest wrinkle in the Italian debate on Gramsci, Thomas combines an unmatched philological research into the sources and a mastery of the ongoing debates about the sense we should make of key ideas like hegemony. He deftly overturns the received orthodoxy and the various abuses of the ideas of the marxist militant by theorists of cultural studies, both restoring Gramsci's work to its true status and opening up fruitful possibilities for understanding his contribution to political theory more generally. The best book on Gramsci's political theory for three decades. Alastair Davidson, Author of Antonio Gramsci. the Man, his Ideas and Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography Peter Thomas's Gramsci is the one we need in an era of economic and geopolitical crises that bears some resemblances to Gramsci's own time. This Gramsci is no embarrassed culturalist, confused strategist, or incipient post-Marxist. Thomas's Gramsci, developed from rigorous critical study of the Prison Notebooks and of the now extensive scholarly literature, is a deeply consequent thinker intent on reconstructing revolutionary Marxism in opposition to the most advanced bourgeois thought of his day. This is also a Gramsci for whom political economy is of central methodological and substantive significance. Not content with scholarly interpretation, Thomas draws his Gramsci into dialogue with contemporary radical thought, illuminating both sides of the conversation. This is a book that will recast the understanding of Gramsci, especially but not exclusively in the Anglophone world. Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, Social Theory and International Political Economy, King's College, London What superlatives can I use to describe this book? Terms like ?outstanding,? ?superb? and ?tour-de-force? suggest themselves, but even these do not fully capture the extraordinary power of The Gramscian Moment. Peter Thomas?s erudite, wide-ranging, and staggeringly sophisticated reading of Gramsci?s Prison Notebooks completely overturns the dominant interpretations including those of Louis Althusser and Perry Anderson. Never again will we be able to read Gramsci solely through their lenses. Henceforth, Thomas?s magisterial exploration of Gramsci?s thought will become the critical point of reference for all serious work in the field. But Thomas does more than meticulous exegesis. He also insists on the actuality of Gramsci?s work, urging that we approach it in the spirit of ?both continuation and transformation, fidelity and renewal.? He succeeds brilliantly on all counts. David McNally, Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto Peter Thomas's The Gramscian Moment demonstrates the extent to which Gramsci?s thought represents a singular synthesis of virtually the entire tradition of Western political thought. The richness of his interpretative frameworks allows him both to integrate partial approaches and contributions and to throw new light on the central questions inherited by this tradition. This work succeeds in presenting Gramsci as a "living classic", an author absolutely central to our understanding of modernity. Given its scope, richness and originality, I have no doubt that this work will represent a milestone in Gramscian scholarship and an important contribution to contemporary debates in political theory and philosophy. Stathis Kouvelakis, Author of Philosophy and Revolution and Co-editor of a Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism The Gramscian Moment is the most thorough and illuminating philosophical study of Gramsci yet to appear in English. It sets a new standard for work not only on Gramsci himself but on the whole complex of issues associated with his legacy ? on the mechanics and dimensions of hegemony, on the role and nature of the subject of political action, on the relation between theory and practice, and between civil society and the state. Thomas does more than any previous reader of Gramsci to demonstrate how his philosophy can fairly claim to meet Marx's famous prescription ? not merely "to interpret the world but to change it". Peter Hallward, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London From steiger2001 at centrum.cz Thu Nov 12 15:13:09 2009 From: steiger2001 at centrum.cz (steiger2001 at centrum.cz) Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:13:09 +0100 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Now out: The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism - Peter D. Thomas In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1258063989.154611.13457.nullmailer@mail1002.cent> I wonder how many readers)subscribers on this list can afford to spend 170 dollars for one book. My library will unfortunately hardly be able to buy it - not to speak about myself. That is my only objection. Stephen Steiger, Prague ______________________________________________________________ > Od: "Sara Farris" > Komu: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > Datum: 12.11.2009 23:07 > P?edm?t: [Marxism-Thaxis] Now out: The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy,Hegemony and Marxism - Peter D. Thomas > FYI The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism Peter D. Thomas http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=29354 Publication year: 2009 Series: Historical Materialism Book Series, 24 ISBN-13 (i): 978 90 04 16771 1 ISBN-10: 90 04 16771 4 Cover: Hardback Number of pages: xxv, 477 pp. List price: ? 115.00 / US$ 170.00 Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks are today acknowledged as a classic of the human and social sciences in the twentieth century. The influence of his thought in numerous fields of scholarship is only exceeded by the diverse interpretations and readings to which it has been subjected, resulting in often contradictory 'images of Gramsci'. This book draws on the rich recent season of Gramscian philological studies in order to argue that the true significance of Gramsci's thought consists in its distinctive position in the development of the Marxist tradition. Providing a detailed reconsideration of Gramsci's theory of the state and concept of philosophy, The Gramscian Moment argues for the urgent necessity of taking up the challenge of developing a 'philosophy of praxis' as a vital element in the contemporary revitalisation of Marxism. Peter D. Thomas (Ph.D, 2008) studied at the University of Queensland, Freie Universit?t Berlin, L?Universit? ?Federico II?, Naples, and the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He has published widely on Marxist political theory and philosophy. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism: research in critical Marxist theory. REVIEWS Peter Thomas' book should become the standard text in English on Gramsci's thought. Acquainted as he is with the latest wrinkle in the Italian debate on Gramsci, Thomas combines an unmatched philological research into the sources and a mastery of the ongoing debates about the sense we should make of ?key ideas like hegemony. He deftly overturns the received orthodoxy and the various abuses of the ideas of the marxist militant by theorists of cultural studies, both restoring Gramsci's work to its true status and opening up fruitful possibilities for understanding his contribution to political theory more generally. The best book on Gramsci's political theory for three decades. Alastair Davidson, Author of Antonio Gramsci. the Man, his Ideas and Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography Peter Thomas's Gramsci is the one we need in an era of economic and geopolitical crises that bears some resemblances to Gramsci's own time. This Gramsci is no embarrassed culturalist, confused strategist, or incipient post-Marxist. Thomas's Gramsci, developed from rigorous critical study of the Prison Notebooks and of the now extensive scholarly literature, is a deeply consequent thinker intent on reconstructing revolutionary Marxism in opposition to the most advanced bourgeois thought of his day. This is also a Gramsci for whom political economy is of central methodological and substantive significance. ?Not content with scholarly interpretation, Thomas draws his Gramsci into dialogue with contemporary radical thought, illuminating both sides of the conversation. This is a book that will recast the understanding of Gramsci, especially but not exclusively in the Anglophone world. Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, Social Theory and International Political Economy, King's College, London What superlatives can I use to describe this book? Terms like ?outstanding,? ?superb? and ?tour-de-force? suggest themselves, but even these do not fully capture the extraordinary power of The Gramscian Moment. Peter Thomas?s erudite, wide-ranging, and staggeringly sophisticated reading of Gramsci?s Prison Notebooks completely overturns the dominant interpretations including those of Louis Althusser and Perry Anderson. Never again will we be able to read Gramsci solely through their lenses. Henceforth, Thomas?s magisterial exploration of Gramsci?s thought will become the critical point of reference for all serious work in the field. But Thomas does more than meticulous exegesis. He also insists on the actuality of Gramsci?s work, urging that we approach it in the spirit of ?both continuation and transformation, fidelity and renewal.? He succeeds brilliantly on all counts. David McNally, Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto Peter Thomas's The Gramscian Moment demonstrates the extent to which Gramsci?s thought represents a singular synthesis of virtually the entire tradition of Western political thought. The richness of his interpretative frameworks allows him both to integrate partial approaches and contributions and to throw new light on the central questions inherited by this tradition. This work succeeds in presenting Gramsci as a "living classic", an author absolutely central to our understanding of modernity. Given its scope, richness and originality, I have no doubt that this work will represent a milestone in Gramscian scholarship and an important contribution to contemporary debates in political theory and philosophy. Stathis Kouvelakis, Author of Philosophy and Revolution and Co-editor of a Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism The Gramscian Moment is the most thorough and illuminating philosophical study of Gramsci yet to appear in English. It sets a new standard for work not only on Gramsci himself but on the whole complex of issues associated with his legacy ? on the mechanics and dimensions of hegemony, on the role and nature of the subject of political action, on the relation between theory and practice, and between civil society and the state. Thomas does more than any previous reader of Gramsci to demonstrate how his philosophy can fairly claim to meet Marx's famous prescription ? not merely "to interpret the world but to change it". Peter Hallward, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London _______________________________________________ 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 cb31450 at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 05:29:31 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:29:31 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Exit Strategy Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911130429r43dfbc9bi14e68785f6f37186@mail.gmail.com> 1 Obama Seeks Benchmarks and 'Off-Ramps' 2 Afghan Plan to Include Exit Strategy Seeking Benchmarks and 'Off-ramps,' President Obama Sends Pentagon Officials Back to their Desks Jake Tapper ABC News Senior White House Correspondent November 12, 2009 http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/11/seeking-benchmarks-and-offramps-president-obama-sends-pentagon-officials-back-to-their-desks.html The president sent war council officials back to their desks to answer specific questions to which he has yet to hear the answers, senior administration officials tell ABC News. For Pentagon officials, one official said, that meant "not just how many young men and women they want to go into Afghanistan -- but when they can go home." The president has not yet heard "sufficient explanation of how we get out of Afghanistan and not simply just be signing up for another eight years, the official said. He wants to know where the "off-ramps" are. The president is well aware that there is no easy answer about the way forward in Afghanistan, an official said, but before making any decision he is pressing for all planners to set benchmarks of what can realistically be achieved by US troops, by US civilians, and by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- and plans for what to do next if those benchmarks are met, or if they are not. The commitment of US troops in Afghanistan is not open- ended, the president has emphasized, and everyone involve needs to know that. The president's eighth war council meeting, held on Wednesday, will almost certainly not be the last one, officials said. Officials are now working on answering questions he has about all four of the possible strategies being debated -- two from Gen. Stanley McChrystal and two other strategies. Another senior administration official says the President was greatly impacted by two classified cables sent by the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Gen. Karl Eikenberry (Ret.), who expressed in urgent terms his concerns about sending any more US troops until Karzai can be viewed as a credible partner. Said one official, "Karl has warned throughout this process about the limits of what we can expect out of the Karzai government," but these cables were significant. The lack of faith the Obama administration has in Karzai's government's ability to clean up corruption and provide basic services for its people is a major source of concern for the president, officials said. Officials are working on a compact to lay out benchmarks for the Karzai government to meet in those areas, as well as in training Afghan police and Afghan army forces. Eikenberry arguably "knows Afghanistan better than anyone else in the US government," a senior administration official said. "He's basically been there non-stop since 2003 in a range of capabilities, at a range of times, and in range of assignments," having served as United States Security Coordinator for Afghanistan, Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan and Commander of the Combined Forces Command. As leader of the civilian diplomatic corps as Ambassador, Eikenberry is "lead civilian Big Dog in this fight," another official said. "The President really wants his unvarnished opinion." The force structure in Afghanistan has already essentially been doubled since the president took office, with 13,000 troops already in the pipeline and 21,000 troops added by the President in March. There is no talk of withdrawing these forces as of now, but the president does not want to add more to their number without clear benchmarks and a timeline -- he wants to know "not just how to get in there, but how to get out," an official said. The recent advice of Gen. Colin Powell (Ret.) for the president to "take (his) time," was important, officials said, and squared with advice given by others who had made major military decisions to get it right, and not to get it done quickly. Senior administration officials rejected accusations that this process was "dithering," as Vice President Cheney called it, or anything other than constructive. Military sources have said that regardless of the strategy the first new troops won't arrive in Afghanistan until January 2010, so more time for the president to make his decision will not necessarily impact that timeline$ One official argued that "this process makes the decision more informed. We will make a better decision because of this process." The president is taking very seriously, an official said, the fact that he is the "sole person who can order these young people into harm's way," in conjunction with the grave "situation in the world in the moment" regarding extremism. === Afghan Plan to Include Exit Strategy By Mike Allen November 12, 2009 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29461.html ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska - President Barack Obama's strategy for Afghanistan will include a plan for "how we're going to get folks out" after a secure environment can be passed to the Afghan government, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday. "We have been there for eight years. And we're not going to be there forever," Gibbs said. "It's important to fully examine not just how we're going to get folks in but how we're going to get folks out." Gibbs spoke en route to Alaska, where the president stopped at an Air Force base in Anchorage before traveling on to Tokyo for his maiden trip to Asia, which will take him to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea. The president "has asked for, and will want, benchmarks to evaluate our progress," Gibbs said. "That's part of his desire to get a sense of where we are rather than committing to an open-ended conflict." "Our success in Afghanistan is most dependent upon the Afghan government being a true partner," the aide added. "What we have to do is establish a security environment that can ultimately be passed to the Afghans to provide that security." Gibbs said no announcement about an Afghanistan strategy is planned before the president returns at the end of next week. "He will continue consultations and questions about this throughout the trip," Gibbs said. Asked if he believes the strategy-formulation process is winding down, Gibbs said: "I do. I think we're making progress, and I think the president gets closer and closer every day." Asked if there will be another formal strategy meeting, he replied: "I think it's probably likely, yes." On Wednesday, Obama held his eighth formal strategy session on Afghanistan. It lasted about two hours and 20 minutes. "I think everybody thought, coming out of yesterday's meeting, that the meeting was very productive and that we made progress," Gibbs said. "What the president wants to ensure is that we take into account and understand - so that the American people can understand - our time commitment and ensure that we have the strongest partner in the Afghan government. And we want to make sure that we continue to work on those aspects. . The meetings were very productive. This has been a very rigorous and deliberative process." c 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC From cb31450 at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 05:30:45 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:30:45 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] YESTERDAY Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911130430t249aef37h988aea8f53d0f7cb@mail.gmail.com> YESTERDAY to me show details 2:01 am (5 hours ago) (Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.) 16 texts shared and 11 discussions started yesterday --- "For Space" by Doreen Massey http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5906/space Massey's _For Space_, complete text. "Sexuation_" by Renata Salecl http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5907/sexuation Sexual difference seems today a slightly outdated topic. Is not the lesson of the postmodern political deconstructionist practices "Cinema 2: The Time-Image (part 1)" by Gilles Deleuze http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5910/cinema-2-time-image-part-1 (book) Gilles Deleuze - Cinema 2: The Time-Image (part 1) "Unpacking My Library: A talk about book collecting" by Walter Benjamin http://a.aaaarg .org/text/5911/unpacking-my-library-talk-about-book-collecting Short essay about the obsession and necessity for collecting "Cinema 2: The Time-Image (part 2)" by Gilles Deleuze http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5912/cinema-2-time-image-part-2 (book) Gilles Deleuze - Cinema 2: The Time-Image (part 2) "From Virtual Reality to the Virtualization of Reality" by Slavoj Zizek http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5913/virtual-reality-virtualization-reality Essay on the virtualization of self in cyberspace "This Funeral is for the Wrong Corpse" by Hal Foster http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5915/funeral-wrong-corpse Chapter 8 of Art and Archive "Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power" by Anna C. ! Chave http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5916/minimalism-and-rhetoric-power Key text on Minimalism and Sexism "The Speculative Left" by Bruno Bosteels http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5917/speculative-left Essay on the marxism in Badiou "Reonologising Race: The Machinic Geography of Phenotype" by Arun Saldanha http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5919/reonologising-race-machinic-geography-phenotype Argues for a materialist ontology of race. "Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject Part 1. The Recommencement of Dialectical Materialism?" by Bruno Bosteels http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5920/a! lain-badious-theory-subject-part-1-recommencement-dialectical-material ism Bruno Bosteels - Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject Part 1. The Recommencement of Dialectical Materialism? "Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis" by Eugene W. Holland http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5922/deleuze-and-guattaris-anti-oedipus-introduction-schizoanalysis This is the official e-book version from Taylor & Francis, complete with diagrams "Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory" by Martin Dodge and 2 others http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5924/rethinking-maps-new-frontiers-cartographic-theory Dodge et al, Rethinking Maps, full text "Geographical Imaginations" by Derek Gregory http:/! /a.aaaarg.org/text/5925/geographical-imaginations Gregory, Geographical Imaginations, full text "The Task of the Translator" by Walter Benjamin http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5927/task-translator In his essay ?The Task of the Translator? Walter Benjamin elevates on translation. "Transmission: The Rules of Engagement 8" by Analysis Group http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5932/transmission-rules-engagement-8 Analysis Group (Dave Beech, Mark Hutchinson, John Timberlake) - "request: deleuze - Cinema 2: The Time Image" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5908/request-deleuze-cinema-2-time-image anybody out there? :) thanks in advance! "Request! Robert Brenner "The Economics of Global Turbulence", New Left Review I/229 1998 " http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5909/request-robert-brenner-economics-global-turbulence-new-left-review-i229-1998 Please! & Thanks in Advance "REQUEST: Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process I & II" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5914/request-norbert-elias-civilizing-process-i-ii Would be very grateful, especially for the second volume. Thanks in advance! "REQUEST: Hannah Arendt, "The Life of the Mind"" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5918/request-hannah-arendt-life-mind "Request: Umberto Eco's Apocalypse Postponed" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5921/request-umberto-ecos-apocalypse-postponed "REQ: Zizek/Robespierre 'Virtue and Terror'" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5923/req-zizekrobespierre-virtue-and-terror n/t "REQUEST: Quentin Meillassoux: "Potentiality and Virtuality" and "Subtraction and Contraction: Deleuze,Immanence, and 'Matter and Memory'" (from Collapse vols.2 & 3). " http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5929/request-quentin-meillassoux-potentiality-and-virtuality-and-subtraction-and-contract "REQUEST: J.-F. Lyotard: The Inhuman: Reflections on Time." http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5930/request-j-f-lyotard-inhuman-reflections-time "REQUEST: Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Individualization." http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5931/request-ulrich-beck-and-elizabeth-beck-gernsheim-individualization "Request: Mckenzie Wark - A Hacker Manifesto" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5933/req! uest-mckenzie-wark-hacker-manifesto I am specifically looking for the book version, as there is more in the book than in the versions available online. Thanks! "REQUEST: "Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis" by George Dickey (1974)" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5934/request-art-and-aesthetic-institutional-analysis-george-dickey-1974 Does anyone have this book? It is out of print and is required soon. Thanks! - (experiment...) visio: @aaaarg Request for Ananda Coomarasamy's The dance of Shiva and any other of his works The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: YESTERDAY using the following email: cb31450 at gmail.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: http://aaaarg.org/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/yesterday/ If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: http://aaaarg.org/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/yesterday If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: someone at aaaarg.org The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: 951 Chung King Road Los Angeles, CA 90012 From cb31450 at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 05:41:03 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:41:03 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Return of the Militias Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911130441v2d0eabb3m6851207a4d12e7df@mail.gmail.com> SPLC Report: Return of the Militias The 1990s saw the rise and fall of the virulently antigovernment "Patriot" movement, made up of paramilitary militias, tax defiers and so-called "sovereign citizens." Sparked by a combination of anger at the federal government and the deaths of political dissenters at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, the movement took off in the middle of the decade and continued to grow even after 168 people were left dead by the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City's federal building ? an attack, the deadliest ever by domestic U.S. terrorists, carried out by men steeped in the rhetoric and conspiracy theories of the militias. In the years that followed, a truly remarkable number of criminal plots came out of the movement. But by early this century, the Patriots had largely faded, weakened by systematic prosecutions, aversion to growing violence, and a new, highly conservative president. They're back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country. "Paper terrorism" ? the use of property liens and citizens' "courts" to harass enemies ? is on the rise. And once-popular militia conspiracy theories are making the rounds again, this time accompanied by nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to "reconquer" the American Southwest. One law enforcement agency has found 50 new militia training groups ? one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers. Authorities around the country are reporting a worrying uptick in Patriot activities and propaganda. "This is the most significant growth we've seen in 10 to 12 years," says one. "All it's lacking is a spark. I think it's only a matter of time before you see threats and violence." A key difference this time is that the federal government ? the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy ? is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate. One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama. At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president's country of birth. Fifteen years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote then-Attorney General Janet Reno to warn about extremists in the militia movement, saying that the "mixture of armed groups and those who hate" was "a recipe for disaster." Just six months later, Oklahoma City's federal building was bombed. Today, the Patriot movement may not have the white-hot fury that it did in the 1990s. But the movement clearly is growing again, and Americans, in particular law enforcement officers, need to take the dangers it presents seriously. That is equally true for the politicians, pundits and preachers who, through pandering or ignorance, abet the growth of a movement marked by a proven predilection for violence. continued at: http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=392 The Militia Movement The Second Wave The return of the militias and the larger antigovernment 'Patriot' movement Nativists to 'Patriots' Nativist vigilantes increasingly adopting the ideas of the 'Patriot' movement Terror from the Right 75 plots, conspiracies and racist rampages since Oklahoma City Download the report (PDF) From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Mon Nov 16 10:37:24 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:37:24 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography Message-ID: I've added some further references to my bibliography in progress, and I'm too worn out to go looking for more material, but here's a good start: Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography compiled by Ralph Dumain http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/jews-marxism.html There are some idiosyncratic inclusions, but there are a variety of angles presented here so as to get a good view of the issues and the various applications of these concepts. As I've mentioned, with but a few exceptions I've deflected attention from Marx's "On the Jewish Question", which is a whole topic by itself regarding in-depth investigation. I could not find any noteworthy work by Engels on this subject. Most of his remarks consist of reportage of specific events and situations or very specific comments. Of more general interest, the only thing I could find was a commentary about the politics of the anti-Semitic peasantry. I have never been able to find a bibliographic reference for the oft-quoted but never-sourced remark by August Bebel: "Anti-semitism is the socialism of fools." It doesn't matter all that much, but maybe someday . . . My bibliography aims at an analytical, theoretical perspective, and is not so much concerned about the specifics of the problem except insofar as the issue is tied into larger struggles over the national question, as per the Bolsheviks vs. the Jewish Labor Bund, which features prominently. Similarly, Zionism plays an ancillary role here, though it is an integral historical component. My explanatory note at the end states my principles of composition. My initial motivation for doing this comes from research into the late 19th-century Eastern European Jewish intelligentsia, without concern for contemporary controversies. However, sad to say, I find this excursion into the past all too relevant to the political degeneracy of the present historical moment. The Internet is a magnificent tool for disseminating poison, and detecting its presence globally. I find that when I have absolutely no intention of getting involved in debates over the Middle East, and even when I'm researching topics having no direct connection with either the past or the present politics of the region or anywhere, I'm bumping constantly into the most vile bigotry as well as the more subtle kind. Such are the fruits not only of the resurgence of the right and neo-nazism, but of the poison tree of Stalinism, ultraleftism, leftist thirdworldism, and third world nationalism, finally dumbed down to the retarded trinity of vulgar anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Zionism, which has been labeled the "anti-globalism of fools." (Excuse all the mixed metaphors, but I'm in a hurry.) In this regard, see: Postone, Moishe. "History and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalism," Engage, Issue 5, September 2007. I am unfamiliar with the political situation in the UK, but I find the group Engage of interest: http://engageonline.wordpress.com/ I actually am more interested in pursuing my original research project, but given the number of assholes I encounter each day, I find myself deflected from my original mission. ___________________________________ "Scholars of Wisdom have no rest in this world or in the world to come." -- Talmud From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 16 12:16:54 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:16:54 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Anti-Germans Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911161116h1d981c8dx7b499045d82a9877@mail.gmail.com> Anti-Germans (communist current) This article pertains to the Anti-German current, for other uses see Anti-German sentiment Anti-German anti-fascist protesters in Frankfurt in 2006. The banner reads "Down with Germany/Solidarity with Israel/For Communism!" Other photos from the same rally at [1]Anti-German (German: Antideutsch) is the generic name applied to a variety of theoretical and political tendencies within the radical, communist left mainly in Germany and Austria. The Anti-Germans emerged as a distinct political tendency as a response to the rise in racist attacks and nationalism in the wake of the German reunification. The term does not generally refer to any one specific radical left tendency, but rather a wide variety of distinct currents, ranging from the so-called "hardcore" Anti-Germans such as the quarterly journal Bahamas to "softcore" Anti-Germans such as the circle around the radical left journal Phase 2, originally conceived as a federal discussion bulletin for the Antifa movement in the wake of the dissolution of the Antifaschistische Aktion/Bundesweite Organisation(Antifascist Action/nationwide Organisation). Some Anti-German ideas have also exerted an influence on the broader radical leftist milieu, such as the monthly magazine konkret and the weekly newspaper Jungle World. Furthermore, the most common practical and theoretical position commonly associated with the anti-Germans, that of solidarity with the state of Israel, is not a position exclusive to the Anti-Germans. The groups Krisis and Exit around the publicist Robert Kurz,[1] as well as many Antifa groups in Germany also hold Israel-sympathetic opinions, while rejecting any identification with the Anti-German current. The basic opinions of the Anti-Germans include support for the state of Israel and - although this is only true for some - American foreign policy such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a critique of mainstream left anti-capitalist views, which are thought to be simplistic and structurally anti-Semitic,[2] and a critique of anti-Semitism, which is considered to be deeply rooted in German cultural history. The Critical Theory of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer is often cited by Anti-German theorists along with the original Marxist as well as post-structuralist theory.[3] In 2006 Deutsche Welle estimated the number of Anti-Germans at between 500 and 3,000.[4] Contents [hide] 1 Emergence of the Anti-Germans and the Birth of the Journal Bahamas 2 The Development of the Anti-German Current in the 1990s 3 See also 4 References 5 External links [edit] Emergence of the Anti-Germans and the Birth of the Journal Bahamas The first stirrings of the emergence of the anti-Germans can be traced back to the dissolution process of the Kommunistischer Bund (KB) ("Communist Federation"), a Marxist-Leninist political organization primarily active in Hamburg and Northern Germany[5] and noted on the Left for its relative sophistication and high level of theoretical reflection as compared to other Marxist-Leninist organizations.[citation needed]. The KB also distinguished itself from other extra-parliamentary groups through a decidedly pessimistic analysis with regard to the potential for revolutionary change in Germany. Known as the "Fascisation" analysis, this theory held that due to the particularity of German history and development, the endemic crisis of capitalism would lead to a move towards the Right and to a new Fascism.[6] The rapid process of collapse of the German Democratic Republic and the looming reunification of Germany led to an internal crisis within the KB and the development of irreconcilable perspectives within the organization. The majority tendency argued that with the collapse of the GDR, questions of social justice in connection with the restoration of capitalism in the former GDR should constitute the center of political work, and this tendency accordingly sought cooperation with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).[7] There also emerged a minority tendency which argued for a position of fundamental opposition to the restoration of a unified German nation-state, essentially representing a radicalized version of the Fascisation thesis, arguing that the coming period was one of reaction, and advocating a perspective of opposition against German nationalism, racism, anti-semitism, historical revisionism and a revival of German great power politics. It is said that during an internal debate, representatives of the majority tendency said that the minority current, due to its bleak analysis and unwavering pessimism, "might as well just emigrate to the Bahamas."[citation needed][8] The minority tendency, in an ironic gesture, thus named their discussion organ Bahamas.[8] The phrase Nie wieder Deutschland ("Germany, Never Again"), which became a central Anti-German slogan, originated in demonstrations against reunification.[4][8][9][10] In its first few years of existence, the journal Bahamas served as a pluralistic journal for a variety of currents of the radical left united by a common opposition to German nationalism, racism, and anti-semitism, as well as against apologetic currents within the left which sought to relativize such issues. Gradually, this diversity of perspectives gave way to a tendency oriented towards a Freiburger organization known as the "Socialist Forum Initiative" (Initiative Sozialistisches Forum), a radical left formation mixing elements of council communism and elements of Critical Theory, particular Theodor W. Adorno and the Frankfurt School. At around the time of this shift in perspective, many of the former KB members left the editorial circle of the journal. In 2007 Haaretz described Bahamas as "the leading publication of the hardcore pro-Israel, Anti-German communist movement."[8] [edit] The Development of the Anti-German Current in the 1990s Anti-fascist protesters carrying Israeli and American flags. Anti-German banner expressing support for Arthur Harris.The notion of a revival of German nationalism and racism as a result of the reunification seemed to confirm itself over the course of the 1990s, as shown by such events as the racist pogrom in the town of Rostock-Lichtenhagen (Rostock) and a murderous attack on a Turkish family in the West German town of Solingen. As a result of this populist wave of xenophobia and violence against foreigners, the German political establishment responded with an increased wave of repression against immigrants and a tightening of Germany's hitherto liberal asylum laws. Throughout the 1990s, elements of the Anti-German critique of the German mainstream society found their way into the broader left, especially the then-popular Antifa movement, which was the dominant organizational expression of radical leftist youth politics in the 1990s. In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, Anti-Germans praised the bombing on the grounds that so many of the city's civilians had supported Nazism.[4] James points to this as an example of a shift towards support for the United States that became more pronounced after 9/11.[4] The NATO intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 was also a focus of opposition for the Anti-Germans, as for most of the radical left. The Anti-Germans condemned the war as a repetition of the political constellation of forces during the Second World War, with the Serbs in the role of victim of German imperialism. The Anti-Germans thus issued a call for "unconditional" support for the regime of Slobodan Milo?evi?, whereas pacifist and other leftist currents also condemned human rights violations committed by the Serbs. This led to a break between "Anti-Germans" and so-called "Anti-Nationalists." [edit] See also From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 16 13:08:13 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:08:13 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Andy_Blunden=92s_Writings?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911161208s17d0b67u85fedc7b70c7b3e9@mail.gmail.com> Andy Blunden?s Writings http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/index.htm All texts listed on this page are authored by Andy Blunden and may be freely reproduced in any format provided only that the author is attributed. The author retains rights to distribute the material notwithstanding any claim by others, as per the Creative Commons licence. The Science and Ethics of Collaboration (2009) 1. Ethics and why the Financial Crisis is insoluble, revised book review for Arena Magazine, January 2009 2. Aggregate Demand, February 2009 3. From where did Vygotsky get his Hegelianism?, March 2009 4. Hegel and Activity, March 2009 5. Marx and Activity Theory, April 2009 6. Vygotsky?s Critique of Psychological Science, May 2009 7. Soviet Cultural Psychology,* June 2009 8. Reading ?Capital?,* June 2009 9. A Differentiated and Re-integrated Gestalt, June 2009 10. The US exploits the rest of the world to postpone its own civil war, June 2009 11. Forms of Radical Subjectivity,* July 2009 12. The Semiotics of Martyrdom,* July 2009 13. When is a concept really a concept?,* September 2009 14. Vygotsky's view on Scientific and Everyday concepts, October 2009 15. Genealogy of Cultural Historical Activity Theory, (diagram) November 2009 Mind and Culture (2008) 1. The Development of the Idea of Gestalt,* for Theory & Psychology, March 2008 2. The Semiotics of Suffering, March 2008 3. ourgov.com, on Kevin Rudd's 2020 Conference, April 2008 4. Claude L?vi-Strauss: Anti-Historicism and the Algerian War,* May 2008 5. Foreword to Hegel?s Logic,* for Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, 7-11 July 2008 6. Vygotsky's Unfinished Theory of Child Development, for Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition , July 2008 7. Social Movements, Science and History: A Response to Eugene Matusov,* for ?Culture & Psychology,? August 2008 8. Getting under the Skin of Liberalism, book review for Arena Magazine, August 2008 9. An Interdisciplinary Concept of Activity, in Critical Social Studies. Outlines,* September 2008 10. Two disasters is better than one,* October 2008 11. Collaboration for the sake of it, October 2008 12. Now is an ideal moment to reinvest in public housing, October 2008 13. Contribution to an xmca discussion on CHAT and sociology, November 2008 Appropriating Hegel?s Spirit: Subject and Substance (2007) 1. The Subject,* Draft in Progress 2. Can an organisation have an intention?, January 2007 3. Althusser?s Subjected Subject, February 2007 4. The Subject Matter of Hegel?s Logic,* a response to An Introduction to Hegel, by Stephen Houlgate, March 2007 5. Hegel on ?state of nature?, April 2007 6. Hegel and the Master-Servant Dialectic: Commentary on excerpts from Hegel, April 2007 7. Masters, Servants and Mediation,* May 2007 8. Hegel, Recognition and Intersubjectivity,* a response to Hegel?s Ethics of Recognition, by Robert R. Williams, May 2007 9. The Young Hegel against Liberalism,* June 2007 10. Noel Pearson and John Howard?s proposals for Indigenous Welfare, June 2007 11. The Nature of Hegel?s Spirit,* July 2007 12. The Abstract General and Social Solidarity,* July 2007 13. How is rational discussion possible on a mass scale?, August 2007 14. The Missing Mediation in Pragmatic Interpretations of Hegel, (long version) October 2007 15. Hegel: The First Cultural-Historical Psychologist (audio)*, October 2007 16. The Individual as a Bearer of Rights and Duties within a Pragmatic Hegelian conception of Subjectivity, October 2007 17. Sources of Activity Theory, November 2007 18. The Missing Mediation in Pragmatic Interpretations of Hegel* for ASCP Conference, (audio version) December 2007 The Individual and Mind (2006) 1. Marx: The Alienated Subject,* Chapter 9 of The Subject, January 2006 2. Marx and Class Consciousness, Talk at Socialist Party Summer School, 4/5th February 2006 3. ?All that is Solid Melts into Air ...?, for Hegel Summer School, February 2006 4. C S Peirce: Semiosis, the Subject as Sign-Activity, Chapter 10 of The Subject, March 2006 5. The Subject: Philosophical Foundations,* Chapter 11 of The Subject March 2006 6. The Politics of Happiness,* a response to Clive Hamilton, Quarterly Essay, March 2006 7. Overview of a dialogue between scientists and humanists, Les Treilles, France, May 2006 8. The Subject of Consciousness,* for Journal of Physiology, Paris, May 2006 9. Why Marx was not an Atheist, talk to the Atheist Society, June 2006 10. Empirical Social Psychology and Critical Theory, for Independent Social Research Network, June 2006 11. Free Will and the Analytical Mind*, a review of Mind. A Brief Introduction, by John R Searle, July 2006 12. Neuropsychology*, Chapter 13 of The Subject, August 2006 13. Phylogeny*, Chapter 14 of The Subject, August 2006 14. The Feeling Neurobiologist, a review of Looking for Spinoza, by Antonio Damasio, August 2006 15. On periodic processes in history, for Independent Social Research Network, September 2006 16. Wallerstein: Utopistics and Simplistics, for Independent Social Research Network, September 2006 17. Individual Agency, review of paper in Mind, Culture and Activity, October 2006 18. Modernity, the Individual and the foundations of CHAT,* for Mind, Culture and Activity, November 2006 19. The Individual, Chapter 12 of The Subject, November 2006 Justice and Subjectivity (2005) 1. Subjectivity, Recognition and Objectification,* talk at Hegel Summer School, 18 February 2005 2. Subjectivity and Semiotics, January 2005 3. The Cult of Safety,* published in Arena Magazine, April 2005 4. Why the Anxiety?, submitted to Eureka Street, January 2005 5. On Method, February 2005 6. Introduction to ?Marx Myths and Legends?, March 2005* 7. Review of Moshe Postone's Time, Labor, and social domination, March 2005 8. The Poststructuralist Subject, review of Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory, by Chris Weedon, April 2005 9. Sartre?s Critique of Dialectical Reason, May 2005 10. Hegemony and Amphictony, May 2005 11. Nancy Fraser?s Status model and the Identity model of Recognition, June 2005 12. False Heroes and Villains, July 2005 13. Subjectivity, Redistribution & Recognition,* published in Recognition in Politics, March 2007 14. Judith Butler?s Abstract General Subject, review of Contingent Foundations, by Judith Butler, August 2005 15. Foucault?s Discursive Subject, September 2005 16. Is Poverty a Linguistic Construct?, published in Arena Magazine, October/November 2005 17. What is Poverty?, November 2005 18. The Semiotics of Martyrdom, published in Arena Magazine,* February 2006 19. The Subject. Introduction,* October 2005 20. The First Subject: Aristotle, October 2005 21. The Renaissance Subject, October 2005 22. Kant: The Sovereign Individual Subject, November 2005 23. Johann Fichte: The Subject as Activity, December 2005* 24. Hegel: The Idea of the Subject, December 2005* 25. Hegel: The Subject as Concept, December 2005* 26. Hegel: The Subject as Self-consciousness, December 2005* Social Solidarity, Voice and Political Communication (2004) 1. Solidarity, Recognition, Subjectivity and Mediation,* Hegel Summer School 20th February 2004 2. Nancy Fraser on Recognition and Redistribution,* March 2004 3. Dependency: The need for an historical Critique,* April 2004 4. Tony Vinson on Social Cohesion March 2004 5. Mark Latham, Mass Capitalism and the Stakeholder Society April 2004 6. Social Solidarity versus Social Capital Draft April 2004 7. Equality of what for whom? submitted to The New Internationalist April 2004 8. What?s wrong with ?social capital?, talk at New International Bookshop, 12th May 2004 9. Capital Investment, published in Eureka Street, June 2004 10. Bourdieu on Status, Class and Culture,* May 2004 11. Some Comments on the Blue Book on Social Capital, published in Arena July 2004 12. The problem of status orders, June 2004 13. Social Solidarity vs Social Capital,* Capacity Building Forum, July 2004 14. A different way of building ?social capital?, published in D!SSENT Spring 2004 15. Recognition, Trust and Emancipation, talk to Atheists Society 10th August 2004 16. Welfare Dependency: The need for a Historical Critique, published in Arena Sept 2004 17. Amartya Sen on Well-being and Critical Voice,* submitted to Constellations August 2004 18. Kicking Australia?s welfare recipients, published in Arena Magazine, February 2005 19. 19 Theses on the Politics of Scaremongering, October 2004 20. The Politics of Fear,* submitted to Arena Journal, November 2004 21. The Politics of Fear,* talk for Rural Australians for Refugees, November 2004 22. Recognition, November 2004 Alliance Politics and Ethical Politics (2003) 1. For Ethical Politics,* February 2003 2. Towards a Critque of Alliance Politics, Hegel Summer School February 2003 3. Political Liberalism: Review of John Rawls? book, March 2003 4. Amartya Sen: Review of Amartya Sen on well-being and critical voice, March 2003 5. Lindsay Tanner: Review of Lindsay Tanner?s Open Australia, March 2003 6. Fukuyama: Review: Fukuyama on Recognition and Trust,* May 2003 7. Mark Latham: Review of Civilising Global Capital, May 2003 8. Alasdair MacIntyre: Review of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, May 2003 9. Globalisation and its Managers: Review of several books on Globalisation, May 2003 10. On Social Capital: Review of several books on Social Capital, July 2003 11. In the beginning was the Word: On Habermas?s Inclusion of the Other, August 2003 12. Ethical Politics, talk for Radio National, October 2003 13. Definitions of Ethical Politics, (Speaker?s notes) October 2003 14. Ethical Politics and Alliance Politics,* Arena Magazine, Dec 2003 15. Honneth?s ?Struggle for Recognition?, December 2003 Ideals and Political Action (2001) 1. What is the most important question of social science?, for Argentinian discussion 2. The Vygotsky School, talk for Hegel Summer School, 23rd February 2001 3. Practical Dialectic, contribution to Panel, 24th February 2001 4. Overview of Ethics, opening discussion on Ethical Politics, March 2001 5. Empire and Imperialism, Blackwood, June 2001 6. Negri and Hardt?s Concept of ?Immaterial Labour?, Blackwood, June 2001 7. Why you need the Socialist Ideal to Fight Capitalism, Blackwood, June 2001 8. Property, preparatory article before Hegel Summer School 2002 Hegel & Social Action (2000) 1. Getting to Know Hegel*, talk at Hegel, Marx and Derrida, Hegel Summer School, 18/19 February 2000 2. The Encyclopedia 3. The Historical Fate of Hegel?s Doctrine 4. The Abstractions We Build for Ourselves 5. The Social Relations Determined by Capital 6. Is Marx really Necessary?, dialogue with Neville Spencer, 23 March 2000 7. Couldn?t we Live Perfectly Well Without Money? for Public Meeting, 15 Sep 2000 8. Building for Collaborative Learning, talk to staff at Melbourne Uni., 18 October 2000 Capital, Labour & Class Struggle in the period of postmodern capitalism (1999) Introduction 1. Labour & Capital 3. Organisation of Capital 2. Voluntary Organisation 4. Class Struggle 5. Summary of results of ABS survey of volunteering in Australia 6. The Logic of Hegel?s Philosophy of Right, Hegel Seminar, 18th June 1999 7. Postmodern Capitalism, for Rethinking Marxism, Woolongong 11 Nov 1999 Knowledge & Value (1998) 1. Knowledge for Sale 2. Liberation Epistemology 3. Classical Epistemology 4. The Value of Mathematics 5. Perception under the microscope 6. Knowledge & Value 7. Essence as Value 8. Theories of Value 9. Post-Structuralism 10. 1841 11. Ethical Values 12. Structuralism 13. National Values 14. Marxism 1997 Meaning of Hegel?s Logic Vygotsky and the Dialectical Method. Barbed Wire Hanging out to dry, July 1997 I?ll have what she?s having, October 1997 The Archbishop and the Pimp, November 1997 Startling New Poll Findings, February 1998 Welcome students to Philosophy 101, March 1998 Labour Hire, April 1998 1993 Stalinism: Its Origin & Future* 1991 End of an Illusion, 30 Aug 1991 On the Class Nature of the Soviet Union, 9 Aug 1991 Planned Economy and Workers Control, talk to meeting of Trotskyists, March 1991 ?Early Works? The Chinese Road to Socialism, June 1989 1986 Poster (Revolutionary Morality, April 1986) Dialectics and Mathematics, February 1984 Review of ?Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts?, June 1983 Real Time Spectrum Analysis, Nuclear Instruments and Methods, October 1983 Excerpt from PhD Thesis (1971) Hitchhiking Stories (1967) Report of my first political speech: The Guardian, 14th July 1966. Photograph of my first political act: Burning Draft Card, March 19th 1966 and subsequent speech. My first published articles: The Vagrancy Laws, 1965 and: A Parable (about conscription for the Vietnam War), 1966 From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 16 13:10:27 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:10:27 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Moishe_Postone_on_the_Subject_i?= =?windows-1252?q?n_Marx=92s_Capital=3A_Review_by_Andy_Blunden?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911161210t42cf3acelfac11eb66a6773cb@mail.gmail.com> Andy Blunden. March 2005 Moishe Postone on the Subject in Marx?s Capital http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/postone.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Review: Time, Labor, and social domination. A reinterpretation of Marx?s critical theory, by Moishe Postone 1993 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This book was written 12 years ago. Much has happened since, and I don?t know what Postone?s thinking may be today. The book?s chosen protagonist is a ?traditional Marxism? which looks more like a pre-Marxist popular socialism, and yet: Within this framework, which I have termed ?traditional Marxism,? there have been extremely important theoretical and political differences: for example, deterministic theories as opposed to attempts to treat social subjectivity and class struggle as integral aspects of the history of capitalism; council communists versus party communists; ?scientific? theories versus those seeking in various ways to synthesise Marxism and psychoanalysis, or to develop a critical theory of culture or of everyday life. ... p. 10. So one might suppose that this book marks the beginning of Postone?s investigations, perhaps after a period of absorption in ?actually existing socialism.? Nevertheless, I will address myself to the contents of the book as written. Postone gives us a good explanation of the notion of ?immanent critique,? so far as it goes, but evidently makes a radical break from it himself. Firstly, having convincingly explained how Marx?s presentation of the categories of capital should be understood as specific to the historical epoch he lived in, Postone makes no effort to address the period that he, Postone, lives in, and makes only very occasional and incidental references to the fact that capitalism has since gone through at least several transformations since 1867. Secondly, criticising those who critique from the standpoint of labor, Postone chooses to critique from the standpoint of his imagination: from the standpoint of what ?could be? rather than from any standpoint within really existing capitalism ? a truly mind-numbing conclusion to draw from a study of Marx?s Capital. Thirdly, despite the fact that Marx never used the term ?subject? in the sense of historical or social agent, and far less ?identical subject-object? (except on a couple of occasions when ridiculing Hegel) and never described the proletariat as the ?(Capital-S) Subject of history,? Postone goes on to claim that Marx ?identifies Hegel?s identical subject-object with the proletariat.? [p. 74] Now, Subject is indeed a category which can legitimately be imputed to Marx, even though he never used the term, but one must take care not to impute to Marx such weird and quasi-religious ideas as the proletariat as identical subject-object. Interestingly however, while Postone is pleased to have proved that the proletariat cannot be deemed to be such an agent of history, and claims Marx as his authority for this as well, Postone arrives at no historical agency whatever. He talks of a ?postcapitalist society? in which bureaucratic administration has been replaced by a ?a political public sphere.? Postone correctly says that capitalism cannot spontaneously pass over into a postcapitalist society, but fails to give even a hint of what agency might bring this about, other than ?what could be.? Postone gives a passably good presentation of the relation of Hegel?s dialectic to the form of exposition of Capital, but having brought out how central is the commodity relation to capitalism, he never looks further into the commodity relation.. He thereafter refers to this relation only under the title of ?value.? He calls for the abolition of ?value? (by whom or how is left to the imagination) but makes absolutely zero effort to investigate the commodity relation or how it might have changed over the 140 years since Capital was written. Such an exercise would be interesting, because Postone is quite content to leave the definition of the proletariat at wage-labour, and build the central plank of his work around time, but does not notice that, increasingly, this definition has turned out to be historically limited and specific. The key and essential fact constituting the proletariat, it seems to me, is lack of access to and control over their means of production, together with, obviously, that their labour expands capital. Nowadays, workers increasingly fight for the right to wages, and capitalists do what they can to distance themselves both from production as such and wage labour. Postone seems to have accepted the tenet of his ?traditional Marxism? that the commodity relation belongs to the sphere of distribution, and hasn?t noticed that it has utterly penetrated the sphere of production, the sphere within which, as he says, Marx locates the contradictions of capital. According to Postone, ?an identical subject-object (capital) exists as a totalising historical Subject? (or rather Postone imputes this idea to Marx). Thus we have two totalising identical historical Subject-objects! This Subject (capital) is alienated historical time. It is interesting to me that Postone has trouble locating a subject outside of his imagination for the overthrow of capital, but regards capital as a subject, an identical subject-object, to boot, while down-playing notions of ?class? which could at least have given some meaning to the notion of capital as Subject. One can only assume that Postone does not rank subjectivity very highly. Capital is a subject, but it can be overthrown without the activity of any subject outside Postone?s imagination? Overcoming alienation ... involves the abolition of the self-grounding, self-moving Subject (capital) and of the form of labor that constitutes and is constituted by structures of alienation; this would allow humanity to appropriate what had been constituted in alienated form. Overcoming the historical Subject would allow people, for the first time, to become the subjects of their own social practices. p. 224. In my opinion, this is the basis for a religion, not a social revolution. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From yvescoleman at wanadoo.fr Mon Nov 16 14:08:41 2009 From: yvescoleman at wanadoo.fr (yves coleman) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:08:41 +0100 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography In-Reply-To: Message-ID: http://www.mondialisme.org/spip.php?article1315 Here you will find many texts about the socalled Jewish question but in French, translated from English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Specifically about your subject maybe you will find of interest the text of Savas Michael-Matsas a Greek marxist (trotskyist) which has an original point of view, even if I strongly disagree with his political views on Israel today. You also have a book of Arlene Clemesha (a Brazilian Marxist) but in portuguese.... Le 16/11/09 18:37, ??Ralph Dumain?? a ?crit?: > > I've added some further references to my bibliography in progress, > and I'm too worn out to go looking for more material, but here's a good start: > > Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography > compiled by Ralph Dumain > http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/jews-marxism.html > > There are some idiosyncratic inclusions, but there are a variety of > angles presented here so as to get a good view of the issues and the > various applications of these concepts. > > As I've mentioned, with but a few exceptions I've deflected attention > from Marx's "On the Jewish Question", which is a whole topic by > itself regarding in-depth investigation. > > I could not find any noteworthy work by Engels on this subject. Most > of his remarks consist of reportage of specific events and situations > or very specific comments. Of more general interest, the only thing I > could find was a commentary about the politics of the anti-Semitic peasantry. > > I have never been able to find a bibliographic reference for the > oft-quoted but never-sourced remark by August Bebel: "Anti-semitism > is the socialism of fools." It doesn't matter all that much, but > maybe someday . . . My bibliography aims at an analytical, > theoretical perspective, and is not so much concerned about the > specifics of the problem except insofar as the issue is tied into > larger struggles over the national question, as per the Bolsheviks > vs. the Jewish Labor Bund, which features prominently. > > Similarly, Zionism plays an ancillary role here, though it is an > integral historical component. > > My explanatory note at the end states my principles of composition. > > My initial motivation for doing this comes from research into the > late 19th-century Eastern European Jewish intelligentsia, without > concern for contemporary controversies. However, sad to say, I find > this excursion into the past all too relevant to the political > degeneracy of the present historical moment. The Internet is a > magnificent tool for disseminating poison, and detecting its presence > globally. I find that when I have absolutely no intention of getting > involved in debates over the Middle East, and even when I'm > researching topics having no direct connection with either the past > or the present politics of the region or anywhere, I'm bumping > constantly into the most vile bigotry as well as the more subtle > kind. Such are the fruits not only of the resurgence of the right and > neo-nazism, but of the poison tree of Stalinism, ultraleftism, > leftist thirdworldism, and third world nationalism, finally dumbed > down to the retarded trinity of vulgar anti-imperialism, > anti-Americanism, and anti-Zionism, which has been labeled the > "anti-globalism of fools." (Excuse all the mixed metaphors, but I'm > in a hurry.) > > In this regard, see: > > Postone, Moishe. > " >History > and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of > Anticapitalism," Engage, Issue 5, September 2007. > > I am unfamiliar with the political situation in the UK, but I find > the group Engage of interest: > > http://engageonline.wordpress.com/ > > I actually am more interested in pursuing my original research > project, but given the number of assholes I encounter each day, I > find myself deflected from my original mission. > > > > ___________________________________ > > "Scholars of Wisdom have no rest in this world or in the world to > come." -- Talmud > _______________________________________________ > 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 yvescoleman at wanadoo.fr Mon Nov 16 14:12:05 2009 From: yvescoleman at wanadoo.fr (yves coleman) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:12:05 +0100 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography In-Reply-To: Message-ID: http://www.po.org.ar/edm/edm22/sobre.htm Here is the article of Michael-Matsas in Spanish. I cant find it in English. Le 16/11/09 18:37, ??Ralph Dumain?? a ?crit?: > > I've added some further references to my bibliography in progress, > and I'm too worn out to go looking for more material, but here's a good start: > > Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography > compiled by Ralph Dumain > http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/jews-marxism.html > > There are some idiosyncratic inclusions, but there are a variety of > angles presented here so as to get a good view of the issues and the > various applications of these concepts. > > As I've mentioned, with but a few exceptions I've deflected attention > from Marx's "On the Jewish Question", which is a whole topic by > itself regarding in-depth investigation. > > I could not find any noteworthy work by Engels on this subject. Most > of his remarks consist of reportage of specific events and situations > or very specific comments. Of more general interest, the only thing I > could find was a commentary about the politics of the anti-Semitic peasantry. > > I have never been able to find a bibliographic reference for the > oft-quoted but never-sourced remark by August Bebel: "Anti-semitism > is the socialism of fools." It doesn't matter all that much, but > maybe someday . . . My bibliography aims at an analytical, > theoretical perspective, and is not so much concerned about the > specifics of the problem except insofar as the issue is tied into > larger struggles over the national question, as per the Bolsheviks > vs. the Jewish Labor Bund, which features prominently. > > Similarly, Zionism plays an ancillary role here, though it is an > integral historical component. > > My explanatory note at the end states my principles of composition. > > My initial motivation for doing this comes from research into the > late 19th-century Eastern European Jewish intelligentsia, without > concern for contemporary controversies. However, sad to say, I find > this excursion into the past all too relevant to the political > degeneracy of the present historical moment. The Internet is a > magnificent tool for disseminating poison, and detecting its presence > globally. I find that when I have absolutely no intention of getting > involved in debates over the Middle East, and even when I'm > researching topics having no direct connection with either the past > or the present politics of the region or anywhere, I'm bumping > constantly into the most vile bigotry as well as the more subtle > kind. Such are the fruits not only of the resurgence of the right and > neo-nazism, but of the poison tree of Stalinism, ultraleftism, > leftist thirdworldism, and third world nationalism, finally dumbed > down to the retarded trinity of vulgar anti-imperialism, > anti-Americanism, and anti-Zionism, which has been labeled the > "anti-globalism of fools." (Excuse all the mixed metaphors, but I'm > in a hurry.) > > In this regard, see: > > Postone, Moishe. > " >History > and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of > Anticapitalism," Engage, Issue 5, September 2007. > > I am unfamiliar with the political situation in the UK, but I find > the group Engage of interest: > > http://engageonline.wordpress.com/ > > I actually am more interested in pursuing my original research > project, but given the number of assholes I encounter each day, I > find myself deflected from my original mission. > > > > ___________________________________ > > "Scholars of Wisdom have no rest in this world or in the world to > come." -- Talmud > _______________________________________________ > 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 karldallas at f2s.com Mon Nov 16 15:58:56 2009 From: karldallas at f2s.com (Karl Dallas) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:58:56 +0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism-Thaxis Digest, Vol 73, Issue 12 In-Reply-To: <9116239.1258398298687.JavaMail.root@n19> References: <9116239.1258398298687.JavaMail.root@n19> Message-ID: Is there an ism called ismism? Perhaps ismism is the ism of idiots. ----------- Go well. Karl Dallas Follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/karldallas Want to help the people of Palestine? Then follow http://www.twitter.com/bradfordvp and http://www.twitter.com/dpalestine Such are the fruits not only of the resurgence of the right and > neo-nazISM, but of the poison tree of StalinISM, ultraleftISM, > leftist thirdworldISM, and third world nationalISM, finally dumbed > down to the retarded trinity of vulgar anti-imperialISM, > anti-AmericanISM, and anti-ZionISM, which has been labeled the > "anti-globalISM of fools." (Excuse all the mixed metaphors, but I'm > in a hurry.) > > > > From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 17 03:53:26 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:53:26 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks. I got some main ideas out of a cursory scan of this article, but I'm confused at other points. Also, I didn't follow the historical exposition too closely. If I could read this is a bone fide English translation I'd do better. I'll just note the points that leapt out at me. 1. The author counterposes pseudo-materialist interpretations to idealist-culturalist conceptions, suggesting that both must be transcended. On the face of it I agree. I am uncertain about what his final view is, though. 2. He singles out Abram Leon as having the most sophisticated historical explanation, dissenting however from the notion of a people-class. 3. The quotation from Rosa Luxemburg reveals an underdeveloped aspect of Marxism, not only on the Jewish question, but on national questions generally. Without unpacking Luxemburg's meaning, it seems incredibly obtuse. 4. The author correctly points out that Marx's article on the Jewish Question is not entirely Marxist but marks a turning point in the break from Hegelianism. Furthermore, he claims: "Apr?s Marx, les marxistes, ? quelques exceptions pr?s (dont Trotsky durant les ann?es 30), n'ont pas analys? de fa?on exhaustive et profonde cette base s?culi?re r?elle." [After Marx, the Marxists, with few exceptions (including Trotsky during the 30s) have not exhaustively analyzed this deep and genuine secular basis.] And of course he goes on to elaborate on this secular basis. But I want to point out something about Marx's essay. It is purely schematic in its contrast and positing of the relationship between the Sabbath and secular Jew, because in actuality, aside from not taking the trouble to describe the secular Jew in other than generalized stereotypical terms, Marx simply states that the Sabbath Jew is an illusory self-image of the Jew, contrasted with the real Jew, but without actually relating the material basis of Jewish existence to the form of consciousness known as Judaism, so as such fails to account at all for this religious illusion in the past or in the present, and most importantly its persistence from one epoch to a radically different ones. 5. The author does at some point relate the Old Testament as a form of consciousness to the material existence of the Jews in antiquity, and later, I think, but I do not understand this exposition. At 04:08 PM 11/16/2009, yves coleman wrote: >http://www.mondialisme.org/spip.php?article1315 > >Here you will find many texts about the socalled Jewish question but in >French, translated from English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. >Specifically about your subject maybe you will find of interest the text of >Savas Michael-Matsas a Greek marxist (trotskyist) which has an original >point of view, even if I strongly disagree with his political views on >Israel today. > >You also have a book of Arlene Clemesha (a Brazilian Marxist) but in >portuguese.... From yvescoleman at wanadoo.fr Tue Nov 17 04:20:29 2009 From: yvescoleman at wanadoo.fr (yves coleman) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:20:29 +0100 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Ralph, you can write to Savas ( eek at ath.forthnet.gr ) and arlene clemesha ( aeclem at hotmail.com ) to know if the first has an English version of his article and the second an English version of her book, or an article in English related to your research. I have never met them but they know me because I have translated articles from them for the journal Ni patrie ni fronti?res. So you can quote my name... The Jewish Question has been recently republished with articles and prefaces notably for the Trotskyist philosopher and 4th international leader Daniel Bensaid but they are in French, as far as I know. Enzo Traverso has extensively written on the Jewish question and I see that some of his books are translated in English but I cant remember if he has explicitly written about the Jewish Question of Marx. I'll check Will look if I find any interesting things in French about your subject. Yours Yves Le 17/11/09 11:53, ??Ralph Dumain?? a ?crit?: > > Thanks. I got some main ideas out of a cursory > scan of this article, but I'm confused at other > points. Also, I didn't follow the historical > exposition too closely. If I could read this is a > bone fide English translation I'd do better. I'll > just note the points that leapt out at me. > > 1. The author counterposes pseudo-materialist > interpretations to idealist-culturalist > conceptions, suggesting that both must be > transcended. On the face of it I agree. I am > uncertain about what his final view is, though. > > 2. He singles out Abram Leon as having the most > sophisticated historical explanation, dissenting > however from the notion of a people-class. > > 3. The quotation from Rosa Luxemburg reveals an > underdeveloped aspect of Marxism, not only on the > Jewish question, but on national questions > generally. Without unpacking Luxemburg's meaning, it seems incredibly obtuse. > > 4. The author correctly points out that Marx's > article on the Jewish Question is not entirely > Marxist but marks a turning point in the break from Hegelianism. > > Furthermore, he claims: "Apr?s Marx, les > marxistes, ? quelques exceptions pr?s (dont > Trotsky durant les ann?es 30), n'ont pas analys? > de fa?on exhaustive et profonde cette base > s?culi?re r?elle." [After Marx, the Marxists, > with few exceptions (including Trotsky during the > 30s) have not exhaustively analyzed this deep and genuine secular basis.] > > And of course he goes on to elaborate on this > secular basis. But I want to point out something > about Marx's essay. It is purely schematic in its > contrast and positing of the relationship between > the Sabbath and secular Jew, because in > actuality, aside from not taking the trouble to > describe the secular Jew in other than > generalized stereotypical terms, Marx simply > states that the Sabbath Jew is an illusory > self-image of the Jew, contrasted with the real > Jew, but without actually relating the material > basis of Jewish existence to the form of > consciousness known as Judaism, so as such fails > to account at all for this religious illusion in > the past or in the present, and most importantly > its persistence from one epoch to a radically different ones. > > 5. The author does at some point relate the Old > Testament as a form of consciousness to the > material existence of the Jews in antiquity, and > later, I think, but I do not understand this exposition. > > > At 04:08 PM 11/16/2009, yves coleman wrote: >> http://www.mondialisme.org/spip.php?article1315 >> >> Here you will find many texts about the socalled Jewish question but in >> French, translated from English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. >> Specifically about your subject maybe you will find of interest the text of >> Savas Michael-Matsas a Greek marxist (trotskyist) which has an original >> point of view, even if I strongly disagree with his political views on >> Israel today. >> >> You also have a book of Arlene Clemesha (a Brazilian Marxist) but in >> portuguese.... > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 17 05:20:01 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:20:01 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Baraka on Barack In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Baraka is and has always been a first class political asshole. How ironic that an erstwhile petty bourgeois bohemian turned anti-Semitic black nationalist turned Maoist jackass--i.e. a lifelong romantic pseudo-revolutionary--should now turn on people just like him and engage in all kinds of slander in support of Obama. I think many leftist positions are empty gestures. Cynthia McKinney's candidacy was more a waste of time even than Nader's--and mentally retarded with her vice presidential running mate--and being a refusenik regarding Obama is also an empty gesture. However, one does not have to lie in order to vote for Obama as one's best option in unfavorable circumstances. But the dishonesty and self-delusion surrounding the support of Obama was and remains over the top. I am not scandalized because a bourgeois politician is a bourgeois politician, as that is to be expected. To get huffy over that alone is a waste of time. It's the specific duplicity embedded in our historical moment and Obama's rhetoric which was dishonest from the beginning, and vacuous compared to the cold war liberals of the past who actually intended to deliver for the labor movement and even civil rights all the while reinforcing the power of capital and empire. That anyone could actually take Obama seriously is an indicator of how right-wing this country actually has become, that it has lost all political perspective. Baraka's position as such is irrelevant. Anyone could argue against various futile gestures of the left. The essential thing is to recognize how worthless Baraka is and has always been. At 10:54 AM 9/9/2008, yves coleman wrote: >I think people can vote for whoever they want...but I don't want to hear >their complains about the negative results of their votes afterwards ! > >Are "Realpolitik" and pushing Party X or Mr Y to do something they will >never do, are these tactics worth the trial ? > >The problem as usual is the impotence, small size and small influence of the >Revolutionary Left everywhere. > >Some people think there are shortcuts and they have THE solution. They are >wiser and they will fool the capitalist class. Well let's see the historical >results of their shortcuts. > >These shortcuts have been practiced for more than a century with no results >whatsover anywhere. >The idea that if we dont chose the lesser evil the worse evil may win is not >new on the political field. It's the argument the Stalinists and Social >democrats use at every election in France. It's an eternal problem for any >revolutionary party or group who is not big enough on the electoral ground >to make any difference. > >With this kind of reasoning, I should have voted Mitterrand against Giscard >in 1981, and for the SP candidate in the following elections, and Chirac >against Le Pen. >Or to take a more dramatic example I shoud have voted for the German >Communist Party against Hitler as Baraka likes to use antifascist metaphors. >Or I should have entered the French CP dominated resistance and help them >have a strike-breaking policy after defeating "fascism" with the major help >of American imperialism. >And if I was in Venezuela I would today support Chavez against its most >reactionary opponents. In Cuba I would support Castro, etc. And in >"imperialist Israel" I would support the Hamas. > >If an individual wants to make these choices, I can only tell him don't >complain about the results and stop presenting your indivual choice as the >most sophisticated revolutionary tactics. You dont think it's worth fighting >for revolutionary politics, that's fine. But dont accuse me to be an agent >of imperialism, fascism, racism, etc. if I choose another option. > >If a political group who claims to have an original and specific view about >history, class struggle, imperialism, socialism, etc. supports actively this >kind of position, I can only say this group should enter the party it is >supporting: enter the Socialist party in France, the Venezuelan party in >Venezuela, the Hamas in Palestine, the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Baas in >Irak, the CCP Party in Cuba, the Democratic Party in the USA, the Talibans >in Afghanistan, etc. Actually that's what many leftists have done in the >past and are doing or supporting. >Have they ever succeeded to "push"these parties or movements to the Left ? >Not until now. >Can one can dream they will succeed this time ? >I have strong doubts about it. > >Real Politik has a heavy price both in international politics and in >domestic politics. The interesting question for me is rather : why is Baraka >so desperate to pay this price ? That's a more interesting question than >debating about if one should vote or not for Obama (1). >Generally when political people make these choices, they have a whole >reasoning in mind, hidden practical ambitions, or illusions the situation >may radically change, etc. >That's at least what I have always seen in discussions inside the Left from >the leftists who supported the NLF or the Cultural Revolution and predicted >it will bring socialism, to those who support Chavez, the Hamas, the >Hezbollah or even the Talibans today. >I don't know what Baraka's politics are but his position can be understood >for me, living in France, only if we discuss about his more general >framework and field of activity in the USA. >If you see him as a reference of thought maybe you could indicate me some >sources on the Net ? I have a collection of his writings but I read only >half of the book and stopped, seing no interest in continuing my reading. >Maybe I missed something very important so "as I dont wont to die stupied" >(a say in French) please help me to. > > >(1) All the bourgeois medias in France support Obama. So supporting Obama is >not really a political issue here. It's the Official Truth and Politics. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 17 05:39:51 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:39:51 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] Re: Baraka on Barack In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: My apologies. I responded to a post over a year old, and so my response has no current relevance. I should have paid attention to the date. I don't think much of Baraka, though, as a poet or as a radical. Sometimes he hits the mark, but mostly he is a fool. I've seen him many times over the years in several cities. He's at his worst when engaging people in conversation, if that's what you want to call his interactions with others. He seems to be incapable of listening. And he is as politically irresponsible as anyone on the ultraleft. I remember one particularly disgusting debate with Paul Robeson Jr. in New York, which also involved black audience members insulting Robeson in the crassest possible manner. Now I think that both of them are sad cases, Robeson the more tragic one. Of all the times I saw Robeson discussing current events, I was embarrassed for him each time, since he never uttered anything but rubbish. He is exactly the opposite of the ultraleftist, constantly debasing himself as a booster of the flavor of the day, be it Jesse Jackson, David Dinkins, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton . . . it's sad and sickening. I also remember Robeson Jr. sharply criticizing Baraka's irresponsible posturing. So as I said, what a turnaround for Baraka to lecture the left for not supporting Obama. From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 06:43:25 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:43:25 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Baraka on Barack ( old post and topic) Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170543j2c902c57l33f3b52b4a8ec36d@mail.gmail.com> At 10:54 AM 9/9/2008, yves coleman wrote: >I think people can vote for whoever they want...but I don't want to hear >their complains about the negative results of their votes afterwards ! > >Are "Realpolitik" and pushing Party X or Mr Y to do something they will >never do, are these tactics worth the trial ? > >The problem as usual is the impotence, small size and small influence of the >Revolutionary Left everywhere. > >Some people think there are shortcuts and they have THE solution. They are >wiser and they will fool the capitalist class. Well let's see the historical >results of their shortcuts. > >These shortcuts have been practiced for more than a century with no results >whatsover anywhere. >The idea that if we dont chose the lesser evil the worse evil may win is not >new on the political field. It's the argument the Stalinists and Social >democrats use at every election in France. It's an eternal problem for any >revolutionary party or group who is not big enough on the electoral ground >to make any difference. > >With this kind of reasoning, I should have voted Mitterrand against Giscard >in 1981, and for the SP candidate in the following elections, and Chirac >against Le Pen. >Or to take a more dramatic example I shoud have voted for the German >Communist Party against Hitler as Baraka likes to use antifascist metaphors. ^^^^^^^ CB: Ok this is an old post and an old topic from 1932, but you are saying one shouldn't have voted for the German CP against Hitler ????!!! ^^^^^ >Or I should have entered the French CP dominated resistance and help them >have a strike-breaking policy after defeating "fascism" with the major help >of American imperialism. >And if I was in Venezuela I would today support Chavez against its most >reactionary opponents. In Cuba I would support Castro, etc. And in >"imperialist Israel" I would support the Hamas. ^^^^^^^^ CB: Who _do_ you support ? ^^^^^^^ From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 06:51:40 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:51:40 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] post-Fordism and geographical scattering of the points of production Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170551i25f2dbc4m514b458b7d6744a6@mail.gmail.com> Oddly enough in this post-Fordist era , Ford has a bit of a turnaround from disater. And afterall, even Wall Street went broke these days CB http://www.ford.com/about-ford/news-announcements/press-releases/press-releases-detail/pr-ford-posts-third-quarter-2009-net-31244 FORD POSTS Q3 2009 NET INCOME OF $1 BILLION; CASH FLOW TURNS POSITIVE; NORTH AMERICA PROFITABLE Print | Email this page | Subscribe Reported net income of $997 million, or 29 cents per share, an improvement of $1.2 billion from the third quarter of 2008. Pre-tax operating profit totaled $1.1 billion, an improvement of $3.9 billion from a year ago. It is Ford?s first pre-tax operating profit since the first quarter of 2008 Ford North America posted a pre-tax operating profit of $357 million, its first profitable quarter since the first quarter of 2005 Reduced Automotive structural costs by $1 billion, bringing the total reduction to $4.6 billion through the first nine months of 2009, and exceeding the full-year target of $4 billion A strong product lineup drove market share gains in North America, South America and Europe as well as continued improvements in transaction prices and margins Ended the quarter with $23.8 billion of Automotive gross cash, up $2.8 billion from the end of second quarter 2009++ Achieved positive Automotive operating-related cash flow of $1.3 billion for the third quarter, a $2.3 billion improvement over the second quarter Ford Credit reported a pre-tax operating profit of $677 million, a $516 million improvement from a year ago Ford now expects to be solidly profitable in 2011, excluding special items, with positive operating-related cash flow Financial Results Summary Third Quarter First Nine Months 2009 O/(U) 2008 2009 O/(U) 2008 Wholesales (000)+ 1,232 57 3,377 (891) Revenue (Bils.) + $ 30.9 $ (0.8) $ 82.9 $ (26.2) Operating Results + Automotive Results (Mils.) $ 446 $ 3,385 $ (2,493) $ 523 Financial Services (Mils.) 661 502 1,194 1,305 Pre-Tax Results (Mils.) $ 1,107 $ 3,887 $ (1,299) $ 1,828 After-Tax Results (Mils.)+++ $ 873 $ 3,882 $ (1,557) $ 2,381 Earnings Per Share +++ $ 0.26 $ 1.58 $ (0.54) $ 1.22 Special Items Pre-Tax (Mils.) $ 108 $ (2,099) $ 3,265 $ 9,484 Net Income/(Loss) Attributable to Ford After-Tax Results (Mils.) $ 997 $ 1,158 $ 1,831 $ 10,619 Earnings Per Share $ 0.29 $ 0.36 $ 0.61 $ 4.55 Automotive Gross Cash (Bils.) ++ $ 23.8 $ 4.9 $ 23.8 $ 4.9 See end notes on page 10. DEARBORN, Mich., Nov. 2, 2009 ? Ford Motor Company [NYSE: F] today reported net income of $997 million, or 29 cents per share, in the third quarter as strong new products, structural cost reductions and improved results at Ford Credit lifted the company?s results despite continued weak global economic conditions. This is a $1.2 billion improvement compared with the same period last year. Excluding special items, Ford posted pre-tax operating profits totaling $1.1 billion, an improvement of $3.9 billion from a year ago. This marks the company?s first operating profit since the first quarter of 2008. On an after-tax basis, excluding special items, Ford posted an operating profit of $873 million in the third quarter, or 26 cents per share, compared with a loss of $3 billion, or $1.32 per share, a year ago. Ford?s North American operations posted a pre-tax operating profit of $357 million, its first quarterly profit since the first quarter of 2005. Ford South America, Ford Europe and Ford Asia Pacific Africa also posted pre-tax operating profits in the third quarter. ?Our third quarter results clearly show that Ford is making tremendous progress despite the prolonged slump in the global economy,? said Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally. ?Our solid product lineup is leading the way in all markets. While we still face a challenging road ahead, our One Ford transformation plan is working and our underlying business continues to grow stronger.? Ford?s third quarter revenue was $30.9 billion, down $800 million from the same period a year ago. Automotive revenue is up $100 million from a year ago. This improvement was offset by a decrease in Ford Credit?s revenue reflecting a decline in receivables. Ford reduced its Automotive structural costs by $1 billion in the quarter, largely driven by lower manufacturing and engineering costs, which included benefits from improved productivity, personnel reduction actions primarily in North America and Europe, and progress on implementing its common global platforms and product development processes. Through the first nine months, Ford has achieved $4.6 billion in Automotive structural cost reductions, exceeding its full-year 2009 target of $4 billion. Ford finished the third quarter with $23.8 billion in Automotive gross cash, compared with $21 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2009. Automotive operating-related cash flow was $1.3 billion positive during the third quarter of 2009, an improvement of $2.3 billion from the second quarter 2009. Automotive operating-related cash flow was $3.4 billion negative during the first nine months. ?The Ford team delivered another solid quarter of results with strong contributions from all our business regions,? said Lewis Booth, Ford executive vice president and chief financial officer. ?Positive cash flow, a stronger balance sheet and a third quarter operating profit are evidence that Ford is meeting the global economic challenges.? The following discussion of third quarter highlights and results are on a pre-tax basis and exclude special items. See tables following ?Safe Harbor/Risk Factors? for the nature and amount of these special items and any necessary reconciliation to U.S. GAAP. Discussion of Automotive overall operating cost changes is at constant volume, mix, and exchange, and excludes special items; discussion of Automotive structural cost changes is at constant exchange and excludes special items. THIRD QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS Ford again increased year-over-year market share in North America, South America, and Europe and continued to achieve improvements in transaction prices and margins. Ford maintained market share in the Asia Pacific Africa region and Volvo gained market share. Other sales highlights: In the U.S., third quarter market share increased 2.2 percentage points compared to last year as the Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands all posted sales gains Ford Europe?s market share was 9.2 percent for the quarter, up 0.6 points from last year and the highest third-quarter level in 10 years. Market share was 10.1 percent in September, the highest monthly share in eight years Record growth in China continued as Ford third quarter sales jumped 63 percent At the end of the third quarter, worldwide sales of the new Ford Fiesta reached 470,000 units since its launch last fall. The No. 2 best-selling car in Europe posted its highest September sales since 1994. In September, Fiesta also had its best sales month ever in China. Fiesta arrives in the U.S. market in 2010 Began selling the new Ford Taurus and Transit Connect in North America. Taurus sales in September were up 60 percent from a year ago The Ford Focus and Ford Escape were among the top new vehicles purchased in the U.S. government?s ?Cash for Clunkers? program Ford?s U.S. hybrid sales have risen 73 percent this year compared to a 14 percent decline in U.S. hybrid industry sales. More than 60 percent of Ford Fusion hybrid sales have come from non-Ford owners Began production of the Ford Transit Connect small commercial van at the new manufacturing plant in Craiova, Romania Announced investment of $500 million at Ford India?s Chennai assembly plant to build the new Ford Figo, a small car targeted at the heart of the Indian market, debuting in 2010 Announced a new $490 million assembly plant in Chongqing, China, which will be completed by 2012, and will produce the Ford Focus for the Chinese market Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brand vehicles in the U.S. had the fewest number of ?things gone wrong? among all automakers, according to the third quarter GQRS study of new vehicle quality Received $886 million in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy for development of more fuel-efficient vehicles. Ford has been approved for up to $5.9 billion in loans in support of projected expenditures through mid-2012 Raised $565 million in new equity as Ford completed its previously-announced plan to issue up to $1 billion of equity Ford Credit completed $10 billion in funding in the third quarter, including $2.8 billion unsecured, and now has essentially completed its full-year funding plan The Ford Taurus and Lincoln MKT both earned a ?Top Safety Pick? from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Ford Motor Company continues to have more IIHS ?Top Safety Pick? ratings than any other automaker Unveiled the all-new Ford C-MAX at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The C-MAX and the Grand C-MAX will debut in Europe in 2010, and the Grand C-MAX debuts in the U.S. in 2011. The new global C-car platform will underpin up to 10 models and more than 2 million units annually by 2012 Announced that Ford?s 1.6-liter and 2.0-liter four-cylinder EcoBoost engines will make their debut in 2010 across Europe, North America, and Australia Unveiled the new Ford Figo to compete in India?s small car segment beginning in 2010 Launched the new Ford Fiesta in Taiwan and continued the successful rollout of the Ford Focus and Ford Everest SUV in additional Asian markets Revealed the new 2011 Ford F-Series Super Duty and two new powertrains developed by Ford ? a 6.7-liter V8 diesel engine and a 6.2-liter V8 gasoline engine Began selling the 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, an off-road performance truck, which captured the ?2009 Pickup Truck of Texas? award from the Texas Auto Writers. The Ford F-150 won the overall ?Truck of Texas? award, the seventh straight year a Ford truck has earned the honor AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR Automotive Sector* Third Quarter First Nine Months 2009 O/(U) 2008 2009 O/(U) 2008 Wholesales (000) 1,232 57 3,377 (891) Revenue (Bils.) $ 27.9 $ 0.1 $ 73.3 $ (23.6) Pre-Tax Results (Mils.) $ 446 $ 3,385 $ (2,493) $ 523 *excludes special items For the third quarter of 2009, Ford?s Automotive sector reported a pre-tax operating profit of $446 million, compared with a pre-tax loss of $2.9 billion a year ago. The improvement primarily reflects favorable net pricing, structural cost reductions, lower material costs and improved market share, offset partially by unfavorable exchange and lower industry volumes. Worldwide Automotive revenue in the third quarter was $27.9 billion, up $100 million from a year ago. The increase is more than explained by favorable net pricing and higher volumes, primarily in North America, offset partially by unfavorable exchange. Total vehicle wholesales in the third quarter were 1,232,000, compared with 1,175,000 units a year ago. Automotive structural cost reductions in the third quarter totaled $1 billion, including $500 million in North America. Manufacturing and engineering costs were $500 million lower, largely reflecting the continued benefits of improved productivity, personnel reduction actions primarily in North America and Europe, and progress on the implementation of Ford?s common global platforms and product development processes. Pension and retiree health care costs were lower, reflecting the effect of the UAW Retiree Health Care VEBA agreement. Overall, Ford reduced Automotive structural costs by $4.6 billion during the first nine months. Net pricing was $1.9 billion favorable, primarily explained by higher U.S. net pricing, reflecting the success of new products, a continued disciplined approach on incentives and selective top-line pricing. North America: For the third quarter, Ford North America reported a pre-tax operating profit of $357 million, compared with a loss of $2.6 billion a year ago. The improvement was primarily explained by favorable net pricing, lower material costs, structural cost reductions, favorable series mix and improved market share, offset partially by unfavorable exchange and lower U.S. industry volume. Third quarter revenue was $13.7 billion, up from $10.8 billion a year ago. South America: For the third quarter, Ford South America reported a pre-tax operating profit of $247 million, compared with a profit of $480 million a year ago. The decrease is more than explained by unfavorable exchange, primarily in Brazil and Argentina. Third quarter revenue was $2.1 billion, down from $2.7 billion a year ago. Europe: For the third quarter, Ford Europe reported a pre-tax operating profit of $193 million, compared with a profit of $69 million a year ago. The improvement was more than explained by structural cost reductions, lower material costs and favorable net pricing, offset partially by unfavorable volume and mix and exchange. Third quarter revenue was $7.6 billion, down from $9.7 billion a year ago. Asia Pacific Africa: For the third quarter, Ford Asia Pacific Africa reported a pre-tax operating profit of $27 million, compared with a profit of $4 million a year ago. The increase primarily reflects favorable net pricing, China joint venture profits, and cost reductions, offset partially by unfavorable exchange. Third quarter revenue was $1.5 billion, down from $1.7 billion a year ago. Volvo: Volvo continues to be reported as an ongoing operation. The effects of ?held-for-sale? accounting-related adjustments are reported as special items. For the third quarter, Volvo reported a pre-tax operating loss of $135 million, compared with a loss of $458 million a year ago. The improvement is more than explained by continued progress on cost reductions, favorable exchange, and higher volume and mix. Third quarter revenue was $3 billion, up from $2.9 billion a year ago. Also, as announced last week, Ford confirmed Geely as the preferred bidder in the ongoing discussions concerning the possible sale of Volvo Cars. Other Automotive: Other Automotive, which consists primarily of interest and financing-related costs, was a third quarter pre-tax loss of $243 million. FINANCIAL SERVICES SECTOR Financial Services Sector* Third Quarter First Nine Months (in millions) 2009 O/(U) 2008 2009 O/(U) 2008 Ford Credit Pre-Tax Results $ 677 $ 516 $ 1,287 $ 1,388 Other Financial Services (16) (14) (93) (83) Financial Services Pre-Tax Results $ 661 $ 502 $ 1,194 $ 1,305 *excludes special items For the third quarter, the Financial Services sector reported a pre-tax operating profit of $661 million, compared with a profit of $159 million a year ago. Ford Motor Credit Company: For the third quarter, Ford Credit reported a pre-tax operating profit of $677 million, compared with a pre-tax profit of $161 million a year ago. The increase primarily reflected lower residual losses due to higher auction values, and lower provisions for credit losses, offset partially by lower volume. Other Financial Services: For the third quarter, Other Financial Services reported a pre-tax operating loss of $16 million in the third quarter, compared with a loss of $2 million a year ago. OUTLOOK Despite the severe global downturn, Ford said it continues to make progress on all four pillars of its plan: Aggressively restructure to operate profitably at the current demand and changing model mix Accelerate the development of new products that customers want and value Finance the plan and improve the balance sheet Work together effectively as one team, leveraging Ford?s global assets Ford said it remains on track to achieve or exceed all of its 2009 financial targets and almost all of its operational metrics. Ford will also continue to pursue actions to improve its balance sheet. Ford expects full-year 2009 U.S. industry sales will be about 10.6 million units, consistent with the guidance previously communicated by the company. In Europe, Ford now expects that full-year industry sales will be about 15.7 million units, which is higher than its previous guidance. Ford expects fourth quarter 2009 production to be up compared with year-ago levels and third quarter 2009 production. This increase is to return to planned dealer stock levels and match production with market demand for Ford products. Ford now expects full-year Automotive structural cost reductions of about $5 billion, exceeding its full-year 2009 target. These costs were reduced by $4.6 billion through the first nine months. Going forward, Ford expects structural costs to be relatively stable as the company has largely completed its significant restructuring actions over the past four years. The company said it expects full-year U.S. and Europe market share to remain at about the same levels achieved during the first nine months. Ford expects Automotive operating-related cash flow to be positive in the fourth quarter, based on the company?s present planning assumptions. Ford now expects capital spending of about $5 billion, or slightly less. Capital expenditures through the first nine months were $3.4 billion; higher projected fourth quarter spending reflects the timing of Ford?s product launches as the company maintains its product plans. Ford Credit expects to be profitable in the fourth quarter and for the full-year 2009. Next year, Ford Credit expects reduced profits based on lower average receivables and the non-recurrence of favorable 2009 factors. Based on its recent performance and present planning assumptions, Ford is changing its full-year 2011 guidance for total company and North American Automotive operations from being ?breakeven or better? to ?solidly profitable? on a pre-tax basis excluding special items, with positive Automotive operating-related cash flow. While the company has confidence that the global economy will be improving by 2011, the near-term growth outlook remains rather uncertain. Looking at 2010, there is a high likelihood of a substantial decrease in European industry volume as scrappage programs expire. This decrease could more than offset U.S. sales volumes, which may improve somewhat from this past quarter?s levels. Ford expects to know more about the state of the global economic recovery and its impact on 2010 auto industry volumes in the coming months. Early next year, Ford will provide guidance on its 2010 planning assumptions and operational metrics when the company releases its full-year 2009 results. ?The third quarter is one the entire Ford extended team can be proud of because it proves that our product-led transformation is working,? Mulally said. ?Leading indicators are now showing signs of recovery in all of our major markets, however, consumer confidence and labor market conditions remain a concern.? ?Despite the continued economic headwinds, we remain confident that we have the right plan and are taking the right actions to transform Ford into a lean company that delivers profitable growth for all our stakeholders,? Mulally added. Ford?s 2009 planning assumptions regarding the industry and operating metrics include the following: Planning Assumptions Full Year Plan Full Year Outlook Memo: First Nine Months Industry Volume (SAAR)**: ?U.S. (million units) 10.5 ? 12.5 About 10.6 10.5 ?Europe (million units)*** 12.5 ? 13.5 About 15.7 15.7 Operational Metrics Compared with 2008: Quality: -- U.S. Improve On track Improved -- International Improve Mixed Mixed --Automotive Structural Costs**** Improve by about $4 Billion Improve by about $5 Billion Improved by $4.6 Billion . -- U.S. Total Market Share (Ford and LM) Stabilize Improve 15.0% Share of Retail Market Stabilize Improve 12.9% -- Europe Market Share *** Equal / Improve Improve 9.2% . --Auto. Operating-Related Cash Flow***** Negative but Significant Improvement On track $(3.4) Billion Absolute Amount: . --Capital Spending $5 Billion to $5.5 Billion About $5 Billion $3.4 Billion FORD IS ON TRACK TO BE SOLIDLY PROFITABLE IN 2011 WITH POSITIVE OPERATING-RELATED CASH FLOW* *........ Pre-tax profits excluding special items **...... Includes medium and heavy trucks *** .. European 19 markets Ford tracks **** Cost changes are measured at constant exchange, and exclude special items and discontinued operations. In addition, costs that vary directly with volume, such as material, freight and warranty costs are measured at constant volume and mix ***** See tables at end for reconciliation to GAAP Ford?s production volumes are shown below: Production Volumes Actual Forecast Third Quarter 2009 Fourth Quarter 2009 Units (000) O/(U) 2008 (000) Units (000) O/(U) 2008 (000) Ford North America 490 72 570 141 Ford Europe 385 (9) 456 91 Volvo 77 5 95 27 CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] releases its preliminary third quarter 2009 financial results at 7 a.m. EST today. The following briefings will be conducted after the announcement: At 9 a.m. EST, Alan Mulally, Ford president and chief executive officer, and Lewis Booth, Ford executive vice president and chief financial officer, will host a call for the investment community and news media to discuss third quarter results. At 11 a.m. EST, Bob Shanks, Ford vice president and controller, Neil Schloss, Ford vice president and treasurer, and K.R. Kent, Ford Motor Credit Company vice chairman and chief financial officer, will host a conference call for fixed income analysts and investors. The presentations (listen-only) and supporting materials will be available on the Internet at www.shareholder.ford.com. Representatives of the news media and the investment community participating by teleconference will have the opportunity to ask questions following the presentations. Access Information ? November 2, 2009 Earnings Call: 9 a.m. EST Toll Free: 866-356-4123 International: 617-597-5393 Earnings Passcode: ?Ford Earnings? Fixed Income: 11 a.m. EST Toll Free: 866-730-5766 International: 857-350-1590 Fixed Income Passcode: 70059906 (Please note the new password) Replays ? Available after 2 p.m. the day of the event through Nov. 9 www.shareholder.ford.com Toll Free: 888-286-8010 International: 617-801-6888 Passcodes: Earnings: 29481628 Fixed Income: 55865600 Ford Motor Company, a global automotive industry leader based in Dearborn, Mich., manufactures or distributes automobiles across six continents. With about 200,000 employees and about 90 plants worldwide, the company?s brands include Ford, Lincoln, Mercury and Volvo. The company provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company. For more information regarding Ford?s products, please visit www.ford.com. From yvescoleman at wanadoo.fr Tue Nov 17 06:54:28 2009 From: yvescoleman at wanadoo.fr (yves coleman) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:54:28 +0100 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Baraka on Barack ( old post and topic) In-Reply-To: <5c2e4d230911170543j2c902c57l33f3b52b4a8ec36d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I dont know why this old post comes up now, a year later after it was posted ! To answer your questions. I dont know what I would do if I was an isolated individual who "wanted to do something" in an unfavorable situation both for me and for the working class historically. The decision would depend on many specific factors I cant list here and which would be more related to fiction than to reality. If I was in a position to form a group or to join a group defending class positions I would not loose my time in Stalinist (German CP) or nationalist-antisemtic (Hamas) or third wordist groups (Chavez party). As regards the Hamas, I would not even try because they would probably kill me given my opposition both to religion, clerical fascism and antisemitism. And if I was living in Venezuela today (which I did many years ago) I would knock on the door of El Libertario and see if their acts correspond to their nice words... And then decide. Le 17/11/09 14:43, ??c b?? a ?crit?: > > At 10:54 AM 9/9/2008, yves coleman wrote: >> I think people can vote for whoever they want...but I don't want to hear >> their complains about the negative results of their votes afterwards ! >> >> Are "Realpolitik" and pushing Party X or Mr Y to do something they will >> never do, are these tactics worth the trial ? >> >> The problem as usual is the impotence, small size and small influence of the >> Revolutionary Left everywhere. >> >> Some people think there are shortcuts and they have THE solution. They are >> wiser and they will fool the capitalist class. Well let's see the historical >> results of their shortcuts. >> >> These shortcuts have been practiced for more than a century with no results >> whatsover anywhere. >> The idea that if we dont chose the lesser evil the worse evil may win is not >> new on the political field. It's the argument the Stalinists and Social >> democrats use at every election in France. It's an eternal problem for any >> revolutionary party or group who is not big enough on the electoral ground >> to make any difference. >> >> With this kind of reasoning, I should have voted Mitterrand against Giscard >> in 1981, and for the SP candidate in the following elections, and Chirac >> against Le Pen. >> Or to take a more dramatic example I shoud have voted for the German >> Communist Party against Hitler as Baraka likes to use antifascist metaphors. > > ^^^^^^^ > CB: Ok this is an old post and an old topic from 1932, but you are > saying one shouldn't have voted for the German CP against Hitler > ????!!! > > ^^^^^ > > >> Or I should have entered the French CP dominated resistance and help them >> have a strike-breaking policy after defeating "fascism" with the major help >> of American imperialism. >> And if I was in Venezuela I would today support Chavez against its most >> reactionary opponents. In Cuba I would support Castro, etc. And in >> "imperialist Israel" I would support the Hamas. > > ^^^^^^^^ > CB: Who _do_ you support ? > > ^^^^^^^ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 07:06:45 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:06:45 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] YESTERDAY Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170606i394b19d4q2ceadb8a3607248b@mail.gmail.com> 9 texts shared and 17 discussions started yesterday --- "A-day-when-nothing-is-certain" by Anarchist Various http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6021/day-when-nothing-certain This is a collection of some of the best writings to come out of the Greek insurrections. "A Feminine Cinematics Luce Irigaray, Women and Film" by Caroline Bainbridge http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6022/feminine-cinematics-luce-irigaray-women-and-film This book takes as its starting point an engagement with recent work done in film theory on the question of gender and spectatorship "Four Dissertations" by David Hume http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6023/four-dissertations The Natural History of Religion; Of the Passion; Of Tragedy; Of the Standard of Taste "The Gesture of Writing" by Vil?m Flusser http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6025/gesture-writing A review on how the actual act and gesture of writing works. In relation to thoughts and manifestation of thoughts. "The Indivisible Remainder" by Slavoj Zizek http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6029/indivisible-remainder on F.W.J. Schelling, 248 p., 1996 "Objectivity relativism and truth" by Richard Rorty http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6030/objectivity-relativism-and-truth book "Philosophy as Cultural Politics" by Richard Rorty http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6031/philosophy-cultural-politics book "Derrida on Time " by Joanna Hodge http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6032/derrida-time book "?ontingency, Irony, and Solidarity" by Richard Rorty http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6038/%D1%81ontingency-irony-and-solidarity Book - "Request: Donna Haraway, Primate Visions" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6018/request-donna-haraway-primate-visions If Anyone happened to have a copy, I'd be eternally grateful. Thanks. "REQUEST: The German Issue"SEMIOTEXT(E)"" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6019/request-german-issuesemiotexte Does anyone have The German Issue from the journal"SEMIOTEX! T(E)" "The German Issue" (1982) was originally conceived as a follow-up to Semiotext(e)'s Autonomia/Italy issue, published two years ... "request: "The Architecture of the City" , Aldo Rossi, 1984" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6020/request-architecture-city-aldo-rossi-1984 "Mennell, Stephen. Norbert Elias : Civilization And The Human Self-Image. Oxford, Blackwell, 1989" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6024/mennell-stephen-norbert-elias-civilization-and-human-self-image-oxford-blackwell-198 "Request: Derrida on Time, Johanna Hodge" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6026/request-derrida-time-johanna-hodge This is only in hardcover and always check-out. would be so grateful if anyone has this... thanks! "REQUEST: "Objectivity, Relativism and Truth", Richard Rorty" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6027/request-objectivity-relativism-and-truth-richard-rorty "REQUEST: Loic Wacquant's Body and Soul - at least the intro and ch. 1" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6028/request-loic-wacquants-body-and-soul-least-intro-and-ch-1 many thanks! "REQUEST: Digital Tectonics, by Neil Leach " http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6033/request-digital-tectonics-neil-leach Digital Tectonics, Neil Leach (editor), Wiley Publishing, 2004. "REQUEST: "Cinesexuality" by Patricia MacCormack, 2008" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6034/request-cinesexuality-patricia-maccormack-2008 Thank you very in advance... :-) "Request: Deleuze and Guattari: critical assessments of leading philosophers" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6035/request-deleuze-and-guattari-critical-assessments-leading-philosophers I was wondering whether anyone has a copy of this? It is really expensive to buy but a cornucopia of D&G articles. "Request: Hannula, Suoranta, Vaden: Artistic Research" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6036/request-hannula-suoranta-vaden-artistic-research I can't find this anywhere: Mika Hannula, Juha Suoranta, Tere Vaden. Artistic Research - Theories, Methods and Practices" isbn 951-53-2743-1 "request Contra the Slovenians: Returning to Lacan and away from Hegel" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6039/request-contra-slovenians-returning-lacan-and-away-hegel Noah Horwitz, Philosophy Today, Spring 2005, pp. 24-32 thanks in advance "REQUEST: "Theodor Adorno" (Routledge Critical Thinkers) by Ross Wilson" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6040/request-theodor-adorno-routledge-critical-thinkers-ross-wilson Thank you very much in advance! :-) "REQUEST: Graham Harman: Guerilla Metaphysics" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6041/request-graham-harman-guerilla-metaphysics "REQUEST: Dominic Fox: Cold World" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6042/request-dominic-fox-cold-world "REQUEST: Geert Lovink - 'Dark Fiber'" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussio n/6043/request-geert-lovink-dark-fiber "REQUEST" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6044/request Pierre Legrand : Derrida and Law; Ashgate Pub Co, 2009 From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 07:07:59 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:07:59 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] YESTERDAY Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170607n4b96e9ecl7bb03f508257fd17@mail.gmail.com> 13 texts shared and 11 discussions started yesterday --- "How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from the Edge of Empire" by Cole Harris http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5992/how-did-colonialism-dispossess-comments-edge-empire An article illustrating the connections between the State and Capitalism that play out through Settler Colonialism "On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets" by David Graeber http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5993/phenomenology-giant-puppets David Graeber analyzes protester and police culture through giant puppets. "Gentrify, Gentrify" by [From "The Intellectual Situation," Issue 8] http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5994/gentrify-gentrify Gentrification": the term ev okes the political and mental life of two generations of city-dwellers "Gabriel Orozco. Sculpture as Recollection" by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5995/gabriel-orozco-sculpture-recollection Alternate history of 20th century sculpture, subverting the regime of commodity production and fetish consumption.. "Esseys Critical and Clinical. Part 1" by Gilles Deleuze http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5997/esseys-critical-and-clinical-part-1 book "Esseys Critical and Clinical. Part 2" by Gilles Deleuze http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5999/esseys-critical-and-clinical-part-2 book "Soundscape_The_Journal_of_Acoustic_Ecology " by World Forum for Acoust! ic Ecology http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6002/soundscapethejournalofacousticecology Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology. Yearly Publication - 12 issues "Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition" by Ales Erjavec http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6004/postmodernism-and-postsocialist-condition Politicized Art under Late Socialism "RADIO CULTURE BY JACKI APPLE & OTHER SONIC ESSAYS" by Apple Jackie http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6005/radio-culture-jacki-apple-other-sonic-essays Radio holds a unique place in American cultural history, and in the shaping of popular culture in particular. "Bardot- De Beauvoir" by Simone de Beauvoir http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6010/ bardot-de-beauvoir De Beauvoir on Bardot and the Lolita syndrome "The Interpretation of Cultures" by Clifford Geertz http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6011/interpretation-cultures book "The Animal that Therefore I am " by Jacques Derrida http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6014/animal-therefore-i-am Derrida's lecture on animality "Learning from Las Vegas, Revised Edition" by Robert Venturi and 2 others http://a.aaaarg.org/text/6017/learning-las-vegas-revised-edition Part 1 of classic text (part 2 to follow shortly) - "request please for Donald Kuspit's The End Of Art" http://a.aaaarg.o! rg/discussion/5996/request-please-donald-kuspits-end-art Thanks in advance... "WANTED:Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, with Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew (2003)" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/5998/wantedunder-perfect-sun-san-diego-tourists-never-see-jim-miller-and-kelly-mayhew-200 "REQUEST" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6000/request Anything by A. Danto on art. Thank you! "Request: does anybody have Guattari's Soft Subversions?" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6001/request-does-anybody-have-guattaris-soft-subversions Particularly the "Becoming-Woman" essay? Would be really really help! ful. "REQUEST: Etienne Balibar: "(De)Constructing the Human as Human Institution: A Reflection on the Coherence of Hannah Arendt's Practical Philosophy"" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6003/request-etienne-balibar-deconstructing-human-human-institution-reflection-coherence- Anyone has access to this article, published on social research, on october 2007? Thanks in advance. "The internet as a public sphere" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6006/internet-public-sphere REQUEST: Anyone has "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere" - Habermas 1962 ? "REQUEST: Alexander Bogdanov - Essays in Tektolgy: The General Science of Organization" http://a.aaa! arg.org/discussion/6007/request-alexander-bogdanov-essays-tektolgy-general-science-organization "Request please for Christopher Fynsk's Death of the Infans" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6009/request-please-christopher-fynsks-death-infans Thanks in advance. "Request: Manuel Castells 'The city and the grassroots' (1983)" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6012/request-manuel-castells-city-and-grassroots-1983 "REQUEST: Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am" http://a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6013/request-derrida-animal-therefore-i-am "Request: Klossowski's "The Baphomet"" http:/ /a.aaaarg.org/discussion/6016/request-klossowskis-baphomet Request: Klossowski's "The Baphomet" The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: YESTERDAY From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 07:22:50 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:22:50 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Reading_=93Capital=94?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170622t599955ccua749c4acab05308a@mail.gmail.com> Andy Blunden. June 2009 Reading ?Capital? There are a number of ways in which people have read Capital. (1a) According to one reading, Marx was (amongst other things) an economist and Capital is a book about economics. Marx recognised that the political economists of the period of the rise of capitalism (Adam Smith, Ricardo) wanted to develop a genuinely scientific theory of the workings of capitalism while later economists (J S Mill, Malthus) were merely apologists, whose theories deliberately obscured the truth about capitalism so as to cover up the fact of exploitation and disarm the workers. So Marx developed the work of the early political economists, and produced a sound body of scientific knowledge, in contrast to modern economic science which is both unscientific and ideological. The cornerstone of Marx?s theory in this reading is ?Marx?s labour theory of value,? and any attack on the LTV is an attack on the working class and an attack on Marx. In this reading, ?critique? means exposing the ideological character of all economics beyond the early period of Smith and Ricardo, and cleansing these early works of their weaknesses and illusions. (1b) In a variation on (1a), Marx produced not the only valid theory of economics, but one among many, and taken together with modern approaches and mathematical methods, is a valuable component part of economic science, with its strengths particularly in crisis theory, long term trends, and in providing a point from which sceptical criticism can be mounted against monetarism, neo-liberal economics and so on. Such readings make up the majority reception of Marx. Marx?s 1865 lecture ?Value, Price and Profit,? where he discusses the underlying causes of movements in wages and prices over the preceding decades is a classic and convincing instance of the effectiveness of Capital as a work of practical economic theory. (2) According to Harry Cleaver and others, Capital is not a book about economics at all ? why would Marx want to give advice to the capitalists? ? but rather is about the class struggle. Not just in 1865, but as early as 1847, Marx was giving talks to workers, debunking the wages fund theory, confirming the legitimacy of the fight for higher wages. Capital shows, for example, the importance of fighting for shorter working hours. In this reading, Capital is actually useless for the capitalists, but is a science of the class struggle under capitalism. Cleaver claims that despite a century of efforts, ?Marxist economics? has failed to provide a useful theory of economics, for either business or government. Marx confirms that the concept of value is similar to the ancient concept of ?natural price?, and that other things being equal, prices should gravitate to their value. But fundamentally, value is not an approximation to price, but a measure of the distribution of the social labour, and prices may deviate from the norm for even historic periods of time. The organic composition of capital, an important category in Capital, measures the proportion of past, dead labour to living labour, something irrelevant to business or capitalist government; the rate of surplus value is a measure of exploitation but nothing to do with profit or even the distribution of household incomes. But this does not alter the fact that a theory which aims to inform the class struggle, needs a practical, realistic theory of prices, wages, employment and so on, and at the very least must not deceive in its description of the economy. (3) According to others, Capital is neither a manual of economics nor a manual for the class struggle, but rather a critique of political economy, that is, a critique of the body of ideas which describe the institutions and behaviours characteristics of bourgeois society. Political economy is the most refined and precise expression of the socially valid categories of bourgeois society, and is interesting only insofar as it is indeed socially valid. Critiquing it means bringing out the ?real meaning? of its categories, getting behind the appearance to the essence of the matter, by demonstrating that what appear to be eternal, necessary and rational relations, relations inscribed in well-established social practices and institutions, are in fact historically bounded, and actually quite crazy ideas which are open to change. Further, the critique of these institutions is located within the struggle to overthrow them. Critique means exploring the basis of the social validity of these concepts and uncovering the internal contradictions in them, to search for possible ways out of them. The difference between (2) and (3) is that in Harry Cleaver?s reading there is no need to reconstruct the whole concrete reality of life in bourgeois society (prices, interest rates and so on) in terms of the concepts of Capital, since the aim is solely class struggle and not political economy as such. It is not that Capital inhabits an alternate universe, but rather that Marx is interested in a different range of problems than the capitalists. On the other hand, even though wages, prices and profit are not the starting point for Marx, the aim is nonetheless to reconstruct these concepts in terms of value. A critique would not be a critique of political economy if it went only to life in bourgeois society (the object of political economy) and not political economy itself, the subject of bourgeois society and the object of the critique. The subject and object of political economy are not identical, but they mutually constitute one another; critique means penetrating a form of life by examining its intellectual forms. There is both a (3a) Humanist (e.g. Cyril Smith) or (3b) Structuralist (e.g. Louis Althusser or Moishe Postone) version of reading Marx?s Capital as a critique, according to whether writer believes with Marx that ?men make their own history, but ... under circumstances existing already given and transmitted from the past,? or on the contrary takes capital as a totalizing identical subject-object absolutely subsuming the consciousness and activity of everyone in modern society. (4) For many, whether Capital is a critique of or a contribution to political economy, or both, it is not the conclusions Marx arrived at in 1867 which are important ? after all, political economy has changed radically since Capital was written ? but rather it is the method of Marx?s study. Marx?s method now needs to be emulated in today?s new situation. This reading would include Geoff Pilling and Tony Smith, but may produce radically different results, according to the degree to which the writer sees Marx as having produced a more or less ?effective procedure? such what Tony Smith calls the ?systematic progression of socioeconomic categories,? or, as others would say that Marx?s critique was immanent, growing out of the practical conflicts within bourgeois society itself: ? whereas Hegel?s aim had been to reconcile these contradictions, Marx?s aim was to sharpen them. I will argue that although the above readings are by no means ?equally valid,? Marx?s own writing, both in Capital itself and his private correspondence, lends some credibility to each of these views. I will propose a reading which demonstrates that a critique of political economy (in Cyril Smith?s terms) asks the question: what is it about bourgeois society that gives rise to this kind of thinking and activity? This entails re-establishing what is socially valid in bourgeois society and the sources and limits of that validity. How else can we explain the fact that Marx was incessantly questioning Engels about how capitalists performed their calculations, what exactly they meant by this or that term, exactly how did they organise the various kinds of wage payment, credit and so on? So such a critique must re-establish socially valid concepts, but on a foundation which transcends the limits of bourgeois society. It must also separate genuine science from self-serving ?Just-so stories,? which contribute nothing to understanding the necessary and lawful character of social relations but serve only to obscure their exploitative nature or put one or another class in a better light. But what results from such a critique, rather than being an economic science, is closer to what Harry Cleaver wants, in that it renders life in bourgeois society transparent in terms of social practice, and contributes to working class consciousness by bringing class interests to light from behind the veil of hourly wages, interest on capital, and so on. It is also not entirely useless for understanding that struggle as it unfolds in the form of capitalist crises, and if correct, such a reading does provide an understanding of Marx?s ?method? ? not as some kind of effective procedure, but as an immanent critique of its object, and therefore a useful guide to continuing his work today. continued http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/reading-capital.htm From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 07:27:19 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:27:19 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Reading_=93Capital=94?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170627t72c8a151qea8e6b95f082fc8@mail.gmail.com> http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/reading-capital.htm Shortly after Marx?s death, Jevon?s theory of marginal utility gained wide popularity and according to Engels: ?[The poor state of political economy in England] is the fault of [Marx], to a great extent; he has taught people to see the dangerous consequences of classical economy; they find that no science at all, on this field at least, is the safe side of the question. And they have so well succeeded in blinding the ordinary philistine, that there are at the present moment four people in London, calling themselves ?Socialist? who claim to have refuted our author completely by opposing to his theory that of - Stanley Jevons!? (Engels to Danielson, 15 October 1888) So this brings us to the question of when is a theory just ideology and apologia, class interests masquerading as science, and how do we know when there is science beneath the shell of ideology. The first theory of the origin of surplus value was Merchantilism, which claimed that profit arose in the sphere of exchange, that is, merchants created wealth by selling things at more than they paid for them. Unsurprisingly, the founders of Merchantilism were traders involved with the East India Company. Next came the Physiocrats who claimed that the soil was the sole source of value. In eighteenth century France, this theory made abundant sense, especially for landowners: the peasants produced more than they needed for their own subsistence, and the rest of the economy operated by circulating that surplus. Unsurprisingly again, the founder of Physiocracy, Quesnay, was himself a landowner. Nowadays, the idea that capital is the source of value, institutionalised in the going rate of interest on savings, appears to be an irrefutable fact; no-one who wants to get rich works. So, we can understand how the idea of ?socially necessary labour? as the substance of value, and surplus value arising from the exploitation of wage-labour have a clear ideological function in the formation of the proletariat as a class for itself. Conversely, attacks on the labour theory of value will be seen as attacks on the workers movement. In other words, all theories of the measure of value and source of surplus value have directly reflected a particular class standpoint. Marx?s British followers reacted to the Marginalist attacks on Marx accordingly, and a theory Jevons had about sun spots being the cause of the business cycle provided a fine opportunity to subject him and his theories to ridicule. The marginal theory is after all little more than a development of the supply-and-demand theory which Marx shows to be relevant only to short-term surface phenomena, and unable to explain, for example, why a car is worth more than a diamond. But historians of economic theory talk about the Marginalist Revolution because in the 1860s Jevons, Manger and Walras introduced quite new methods which transformed economic theory and we have to ask whether it is feasible to dismiss the whole of modern economic theory as a ?variation on supply-and-demand? even though it has its roots in this idea. However imperfectly, modern macro-economics deals with economic wholes. Can we rest on the claim that everything after Ricardo was ideology? The only writer I know who has taken a genuinely critical stance towards modern economic theory is Luc Boltanski and his collaborator Eve Chiapello. These writers have made a deep critique of the management literature of the 1980s especially, relating it to the demands of the movements of 1968. Boltanski shows that radical criticism of capitalism is often reflected in subsequent changes in the practices of the ruling class, something by no means limited to the generation of ?68. Transparently ?political? issues are to be found all through the pages of Capital which bristles with ethical language. For example, the concept of necessary and surplus labour, surplus labour being labour performed over and above what the worker is paid for their sustenance, and appropriated without payment. For example, the proof, taken over from Smith, that other things being equal, the labour market will force wages down to the socially necessary minimum level needed to keep them alive and raise the next generation of workers, and that workers can gain wage rises by industrial action, without losing the value of their pay rise through inflation, but on the contrary increasing the workers? share of the total product. The idea of dividing up capital between constant (goods and services purchased off other capitalists and consumed in production) and variable (wages) and surplus value (lumping rent, interest and corporate largesse in with profits) and then measuring this over the cycle of turnover of capital rather than per annum, just makes no sense within the business of profit-making, but makes abundant sense from the standpoint of the workers. In other words, I think there is plenty of evidence that Harry Cleaver?s claim that Capital is about the class struggle is well made. All the main categories in Capital are about social relations: labour time, value, exploitation, while categories like price, profit and in fact anything relevant to the running of an individual firm are secondary, phenomenal forms of the manifestation of the essential human relations involved. This conclusion would settle the matter if bourgeois economics were purely and simply apologia.. That is, if the claim that capital is the source of new value, that workers are paid the full value of their labour in their weekly wage packet, and that employees? wage levels determine the selling price of a product, were nothing more nor less than fairy tales aimed at covering up the reality of economic life. Some may be, but this is clearly not the case without qualification: these are ideas used to manage bourgeois society. Political Economy is how capitalists behave and think, and in general how non-capitalists think as well. It is the thinking which actually runs the businesses, the banks and the governments. It is in the minutiae of capitalist management that the meaning of the categories of political economy are really revealed. Almost invariably, attempts at fundamental justifications of economic science are, in my experience, ideology from beginning to end, and this is reflected in the inability of economists to do more than predict and control relatively short-term effects. But this does not alter the fact that the objects and practices of bourgeois society appear before people as objective facts. It is now widely and rightly believed that economists don?t know what?s going on. Virtually no-one saw the October 2008 Global Financial Crisis coming even days before it broke out. But on the other hand, capitalism hasn?t collapsed yet, and compared to the 1958 Great Leap Forward in China, in which millions of people died of starvation or the miracles of ?planned economy? in North Korea, it is silly to deny the capacity of the bourgeois to manage a world system of the production and reproduction of material life, something which they have done with some success, at least since the end of World War Two, though no-one can claim with any degree of certainty that their success will last any longer than the close of business tomorrow. But coping in practice does not at all guarantee being able to capture that in theory. As the saying goes: ?you don?t have to be a horse to judge a horse.? The concepts of Political Economy embody the forms of activity which are socially valid in capitalism, and in that precise sense they are valid and confront individuals as objective forms of practice, which you ignore at your own risk. But that does not prove the fact that ?priests of the bourgeoisie?, these ?learned scribes? are able to systematise the forms of thought and practices of bourgeois society, or even that these forms lend themselves to the formation of an internally consistent theory. There is nothing to force us to believe that the thought forms of bourgeois society are free of internal contradiction and fallacy. On the contrary. It is the job of critique to strip of the ideological covering to expose such internal contradictions, aporia and fallacies, and without dismissing them as apologia, bring out the social basis for the various theories through a study of their historical development. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Fri Nov 13 07:21:53 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:21:53 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: till Marx=92s 1859 =93A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,=94 Marx and Engels titled their work critique. And the meaning of =93critique=94 is made clear in Marx=92s 1844 =93Introduction to the Critique of Hegel=92s Philosophy of Right,=94 for which =93the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism,=94 most particularly the views outlined there in terms of a critique of religion are to be taken as a model for the critique of capitalism. =93The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. ... This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, ... The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.=94 continued From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 07:29:15 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:29:15 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Reading_=93Capital=94?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170629v3ad1e106s8f4316012fb2739@mail.gmail.com> http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/reading-capital.htm Political economy is the system of thought forms within which people live by producing and exchanging commodities, and Capital demonstrated this ? the whole universe of sweat-shops, insurance companies, industrial corporations, multimillionaires, famines and wars flows from commodity production. Within such a world, in the main, the concepts of political economy are valid to the extent that they are connected with practice rather than apologetic ?Just So? myths. The struggle against capitalism is therefore the struggle against that world of a particular kind of inverted consciousness, one in which social relations between people take the form of relations between things. But in a letter to Kugelmann on 28 December 1862, Marx says of the soon-to-be-published book: ?It is a sequel to Part I, but will appear on its own under the title, Capital, with A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy as merely the subtitle.? Marx worked hard to get the book noticed and criticised by the professional economists of his day, and clearly wanted to engage them in debate. In the letter to Kugelmann of 11 July 1868, he says: ?... it shows the depth of degradation reached by these priests of the bourgeoisie: while workers and even manufacturers and merchants have understood my book and made sense of it, these ?learned scribes? (!) complain that I make excessive demands on their comprehension.? And while he was most interested in getting it to workers, criticising Lassalle for not working harder to encourage workers to read it, he certainly aimed at taking his fight into the recognised scientific circles. He believed (and with good reason) that his work engaged in a meaningful way with mainstream economic theory; it did not live in a parallel universe. Marx complained that he was being met with a conspiracy of silence, but history shows that Capital did get the recognition it deserved, and Capital haunts bourgeois economics to this day, like the ghost of its dead father. The point is that prices, profits, rents and so on are, in Marx?s scheme of things, merely surface appearances, like the froth and bubbles on the surface of the ocean, the forms of which tell us little about the main business of tidal shifts and melting ice-packs. Marx begins with the concept of bourgeois society and moves to more and more concrete concepts, that is to say, he reconstructs the concrete, the appearances, in scientific terms. In such an approach the effect of a drought in Australia on mortgage rates in the US, and so on, belong somewhere in Volume XX. They are not excluded, but it is the dynamics of class relations which are fundamental and central. So in summary, Capital remains an unfinished work and it seems unlikely that the job of finishing it to the point where it could provide a superior tool for management of government or corporate economic affairs will ever be completed, were it to remain the work of an isolated individual. Basically it is a practical task. With the partial exception of Boltanski, the theoretical work of critiquing political economy seems to have died with Marx. So far as I know, none of the ?Marxist Economists? have critiqued the theory of marginal utility beyond denouncing it as an ideological apology aimed at discrediting Marx and demobilizing the workers? movement (all of which may well be true, by the way). There have been a plethora of new economic forms of activity since 1883. Marx never knew Taylorism, which completely transformed work practices, the social division of labour and the composition of the working class. He never knew Fordism, which completely transformed the form of exploitation, the concept of a living wage, and the nature of working-class communities; he never knew the welfare state with its system of universal state-provided benefits, or Toyota-ism and its appropriation of worker cooperation for the benefit of capital, or the practices of franchising, out-sourcing, the practice of part-time working, and the export of manufacture to non-union industrial zones in far-off countries, or the inflow of economic migrants to the former colonial centres. All these represent transformations in political economy, not anticipated in Capital. Just one example: in Marx?s day, workers were basically locked in a large building to work under their own supervision for as long as the capitalist could force them to using the weapon of keeping wages at near-starvation level. This way of thinking is directly reflected in the categories of Capital because that?s how capital worked. But this is no longer the case in the countries where capital predominates. So those who read Capital to learn Marx?s ?method? have a point. Even some very fundamental features of Capital may no longer be relevant. And what is more, it is fair to suppose that later development in the activity of capital must, in some sense at least, come closer to the essence, the truth of bourgeois society. The critic does not create thought out of thought; theory can only reveal what is already present in social practice. In the Grundrisse, Marx said: ?... Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, ... in the theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as the presupposition.? So the job of Marx?s continuers begins with the latest developments in bourgeois society most especially insofar as the concrete sheds light on the categories of current economic theory and vice versa. It seems likely that such a continuing critique would continue to use the concept of value at its foundation, if we are to be true to Marx. In the letter to Kugelmann quoted above, in responding to a bourgeois critic of Capital, he observes: ?The chatter about the need to prove the concept of value arises only from complete ignorance both of the subject under discussion and of the method of science. Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society?s aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labour asserts itself in a state of society in which the interconnection of social labour expresses itself as the private exchange of the individual products of labour, is precisely the exchange value of these products. ... ?On the other hand, as you correctly believe, the history of the theory of course demonstrates that the understanding of the value relation has always been the same, clearer or less clear, hedged with illusions or scientifically more precise. Since the reasoning process itself arises from the existing conditions and is itself a natural process, really comprehending thinking can always only be the same, and can vary only gradually, in accordance with the maturity of development, hence also the maturity of the organ that does the thinking. Anything else is drivel.? So what is involved is the transhistorical necessity of every society making some arrangement or other for the distribution of the social labour and its products. This is what is contained in the concept of value. Implicit in the concept of value is the notion of the intrinsic equality of human beings. In an emphatically world economy in which capital based, for example, in the US, is manufacturing in India and drastically underpaying labour, we have an instance of price being less than value for long periods of time. But once ?the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities [and] consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities?, there is a necessary tendency towards the equalisation of wages, which nonetheless may take centuries of war and revolution to exert itself. There are dozens of such problems that arise as a result of changes in the political economy of modern life, the solution of which are presupposed in a continuation of Marx?s work. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Nov 17 07:30:53 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:30:53 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Baraka on Barack ( old post and topic) In-Reply-To: References: <5c2e4d230911170543j2c902c57l33f3b52b4a8ec36d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: When I responded to your recent posts, I found this old post sitting right next to it in alphabetical order in my in box. I should have been more attentive, but this is what sleep deprivation does to a person: you just keep going on semiautomatic pilot. The Obama presidency is already dead in the water, and I'm not so much interested in debating the Middle East. My interest in the Jewish question, for example, is mostly historical, but I find it remains such a hot issue that I can't say anything at all about the Jews in any capacity without others immediately connecting it to Israel and denouncing me as a Zionist, though I've never written a single word in support of Israel of any of its policies, and I'm generally interested in questions unconnected to the Middle East. I'm not so much interested in making a political intervention as cleaning up the polluted rhetoric that effectively detracts from clarification and intelligent intervention, and I'm only interested in doing that because of the filth I'm constantly exposed to on the Internet even while minding my own business. However, as I've insisted, the politics of desperation and spectatorship are symptomatic of the moribund state of the left, if not everywhere in the world, anywhere I've had contact with people. And there's another point I made some time ago that didn't get noticed. It's quite one thing for people in the region to take extreme positions out of desperation, or to confront the problem concretely without taking on a more sophisticated perspective. It's quite another for spectators a half world away with no particular connection to the Middle East acting like rabid dogs. On the contrary, it's just because of the distance that political spectators--who may also double as useless "activists"--from the scene of the carnage, need to be exercise greater clarity in their grasp of the historical logic of the situation and in their agitprop. But just the opposite is happening. Secondly, there's the question of the corruption of young minds being recruited into radicalism by sectarian organizations. I'm not proud of what I was thinking as a teenager, and I see 20-year olds now, gung ho fresh converts to radicalism, adopting the most awful sound bite approaches to political problems, worst of all the impossible politics of the Middle East, without any background of historical depth or personal life experience. It's all the politics of empty gesture. What does it in fact mean to support anyone long distance? What is the significance of "taking a position"? It's child's play who decide to be against, but who is there there to be for? The degeneration of politics, including oppositional politics, makes it increasingly impossible to simply take a position backing any particularly political player? If there's anything worse than secular nationalism, it's religious nationalism. If there's anything worse than bourgeois politics with a democratic face, it's outright fascist politics. Who then is there to back, especially from thousands of miles away? I don't trust the left to do anything competently. Pointless floundering is its stock-in-trade. At 08:54 AM 11/17/2009, yves coleman wrote: >I dont know why this old post comes up now, a year later after it was posted >! > >To answer your questions. I dont know what I would do if I was an isolated >individual who "wanted to do something" in an unfavorable situation both for >me and for the working class historically. The decision would depend on many >specific factors I cant list here and which would be more related to fiction >than to reality. >If I was in a position to form a group or to join a group defending class >positions I would not loose my time in Stalinist (German CP) or >nationalist-antisemtic (Hamas) or third wordist groups (Chavez party). > >As regards the Hamas, I would not even try because they would probably kill >me given my opposition both to religion, clerical fascism and antisemitism. > >And if I was living in Venezuela today (which I did many years ago) I would >knock on the door of El Libertario and see if their acts correspond to their >nice words... And then decide. From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 07:41:35 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:41:35 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Baraka on Barack ( old post and topic) In-Reply-To: References: <5c2e4d230911170543j2c902c57l33f3b52b4a8ec36d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170641i2426130clc74958a9607b5f59@mail.gmail.com> On 11/17/09, Ralph Dumain wrote: > When I responded to your recent posts, I found this old post sitting > right next to it in alphabetical order in my in box. I should have > been more attentive, but this is what sleep deprivation does to a > person: you just keep going on semiautomatic pilot. > > The Obama presidency is already dead in the water, and I'm not so > much interested in debating the Middle East. My interest in the > Jewish question, for example, is mostly historical, but I find it > remains such a hot issue that I can't say anything at all about the > Jews in any capacity without others immediately connecting it to > Israel and denouncing me as a Zionist, though I've never written a > single word in support of Israel of any of its policies, and I'm > generally interested in questions unconnected to the Middle East. I'm > not so much interested in making a political intervention as cleaning > up the polluted rhetoric that effectively detracts from clarification > and intelligent intervention, and I'm only interested in doing that > because of the filth I'm constantly exposed to on the Internet even > while minding my own business. > > However, as I've insisted, the politics of desperation and > spectatorship are symptomatic of the moribund state of the left, if > not everywhere in the world, anywhere I've had contact with people. > And there's another point I made some time ago that didn't get > noticed. It's quite one thing for people in the region to take > extreme positions out of desperation, or to confront the problem > concretely without taking on a more sophisticated perspective. It's > quite another for spectators a half world away with no particular > connection to the Middle East acting like rabid dogs. ^^^^^ CB: Somebody told me the other day that half the Israeli army has duel Israeli-US citizenship (?) ^^^^^ On the > contrary, it's just because of the distance that political > spectators--who may also double as useless "activists"--from the > scene of the carnage, need to be exercise greater clarity in their > grasp of the historical logic of the situation and in their agitprop. > But just the opposite is happening. > > Secondly, there's the question of the corruption of young minds being > recruited into radicalism by sectarian organizations. I'm not proud > of what I was thinking as a teenager, and I see 20-year olds now, > gung ho fresh converts to radicalism, adopting the most awful sound > bite approaches to political problems, worst of all the impossible > politics of the Middle East, without any background of historical > depth or personal life experience. It's all the politics of empty gesture. > > What does it in fact mean to support anyone long distance? What is > the significance of "taking a position"? It's child's play who decide > to be against, but who is there there to be for? > > The degeneration of politics, including oppositional politics, makes > it increasingly impossible to simply take a position backing any > particularly political player? If there's anything worse than secular > nationalism, it's religious nationalism. If there's anything worse > than bourgeois politics with a democratic face, it's outright fascist > politics. Who then is there to back, especially from thousands of miles away? > > I don't trust the left to do anything competently. Pointless > floundering is its stock-in-trade. > > At 08:54 AM 11/17/2009, yves coleman wrote: > >I dont know why this old post comes up now, a year later after it was posted > >! > > > >To answer your questions. I dont know what I would do if I was an isolated > >individual who "wanted to do something" in an unfavorable situation both for > >me and for the working class historically. The decision would depend on many > >specific factors I cant list here and which would be more related to fiction > >than to reality. > >If I was in a position to form a group or to join a group defending class > >positions I would not loose my time in Stalinist (German CP) or > >nationalist-antisemtic (Hamas) or third wordist groups (Chavez party). > > > >As regards the Hamas, I would not even try because they would probably kill > >me given my opposition both to religion, clerical fascism and antisemitism. > > > >And if I was living in Venezuela today (which I did many years ago) I would > >knock on the door of El Libertario and see if their acts correspond to their > >nice words... And then decide. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 07:44:32 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:44:32 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Reading_=93Capital=94?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170644o6accd5b3g34d405256b76afb8@mail.gmail.com> "Implicit in the concept of value is the notion of the intrinsic equality of human beings." ^^^^^^ CB: Yes indeedy. Marx's concept of value is radically egalitarian. from Reading ?Capital? by Andy Blunden "So what is involved is the transhistorical necessity of every society making some arrangement or other for the distribution of the social labour and its products. This is what is contained in the concept of value. Implicit in the concept of value is the notion of the intrinsic equality of human beings. In an emphatically world economy in which capital based, for example, in the US, is manufacturing in India and drastically underpaying labour, we have an instance of price being less than value for long periods of time. But once ?the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities [and] consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities?, there is a necessary tendency towards the equalisation of wages, which nonetheless may take centuries of war and revolution to exert itself." From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 10:55:38 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:55:38 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Foucault=92s_Discursive_Subject?= =?windows-1252?q?_by_Blunden?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170955v211b64b7kd8564ec25e9cb79f@mail.gmail.com> Andy Blunden September 2005 http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/foucault.htm Foucault?s Discursive Subject Foucault is credited with ?deconstruction of the subject,? but in reality what Foucault has given us is a critique of the Cartesian subject, the intuitively-given individual subject deemed the original site of all cognitive representation and social action. Foucault?s critique is a continuation of the structuralist project of weakening the concept of agency, a critique which has contributed to the actual demolition of subjectivity since the 1980s. In The History of Sexuality Volume 1, Foucault demonstrates that even such a basic human need as sexuality is socially constructed; there is no ?pre-social? sex drive. Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp, but a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledges, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power. [p. 106] Even if deep down in the human organism there is some need for food, warmth, love and sexual intercourse, psychoanalysis notwithstanding, it has been amply demonstrated that such ?essential? drives and needs are buried so deep beneath elastic and socially constructed interpretations, that the constructivist hypothesis is by far the more relevant as opposed to the essentialist, at least for the purposes of understanding modern society. Human beings are their own product; our essence is nothing but the need to negate and produce our own being; humanity is essentially non-essential. If a person?s needs do not originate in an individual?s ?inner nature?, but are socially constructed, the same is even more true of cognition, the activity of understanding the world, which is shaped by socially available discourse and objectified in books, artefacts, languages, institutions, etc., etc. This word ?discourse? is central to Foucault of course. ?We must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies.? [p. 100] Here the concept of ?discourse? is like that of ?paradigm? in that both arguments ?for? and ?against? are posed within the terms of a single all-embracing ?language.? ?It is this distribution that we must reconstruct, with the things said and those concealed, ... the variants and different effects ? according to who is speaking, his position of power, the institutional context in which he happens to be situated ...? [p. 100] An argument cannot be criticised just in its own terms; analysis must reveal the unspoken ?outside? of discourse, and how discourse shapes relations of power by the implicit relations between the speaker and what is spoken. But it should be noted that ?discourse? is for Foucault, a social and material, rather than purely ideal or linguistic category: ?it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together.? [p. 100] Such a view leaves room for agency at the margins, so to speak: ?Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. ...? [p. 101] If both a person?s needs and understanding are socially constructed, the same is even more true of agency, in which people attempt to assert themselves in the social field. Is it possible to talk of power that is not the power of some subject? ?Power? is for Foucault like an Hegelian Spirit, a ?ruse of history,? an almost metaphysical substance. ?Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere,? and ?one is always ?inside? power, there is no ?escaping? it.? For Foucault, it is in principle impossible to oppose power, because it is only with power that power can be opposed, an observation that is possible once one has made ?power? into an undifferentiated metaphysical substance, detachable from the agents whose power it is. ?Power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations, and serving as a general matrix. ? no such duality extending from the top down and reacting on more and more limited groups to the very depths of the social body.? [p. 93] ?Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power. Should it be said that one is always ?inside? power, there is no ?escaping? it, there is no absolute outside where it is concerned.? [p. 94] Correctly warning us against mechanistic and na?ve conceptions of power which would take institutions at face value, as ?sources? rather than ?concentrations? of power, he says: The ?intelligibility of the social order, must not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendant forms would emanate; it is the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender states of power, but the latter are always local and unstable, and ?Power?, ... is simply the over-all effect that emerges from all these mobilities.? [p. 93] Interestingly, this form of structuralism, gives no more power to individuals who run great institutions than it gives to individuals who have no power in the obvious sense as ?decision-makers?: all are caught up in ?relationships of force.? ?Major dominations are the hegemonic effects that are sustained by all these confrontations.? [p. 94] But this is a metaphysics which is in danger of falling into nullity. The truest actualisation of this type of relation is in the market, where the small change of commerce can be collected into vast capitals, which nevertheless remain subject to the law of capital. Foucault was writing at a time when the second great (monetarist) attempt at macro-economic control of the world economy was approaching exhaustion, and the capitalist powers were about to embark on the strategy of ?microeconomic reform.? The symmetry with Foucault?s observations is remarkable. From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 10:57:19 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:57:19 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Foucault=92s_Discursive_Subject?= =?windows-1252?q?_=28continued=29?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170957h12374bb5qdb607f6e9ec7f0b3@mail.gmail.com> Andy Blunden September 2005 Foucault?s Discursive Subject (continued) In a capitalist economy, the whole network of power relations are generated on the basis of a single ethical relation of exchange of equivalents, the truth of which is an ethical horizon beyond which the market agents cannot see. Doubtless, a traditional society could be understood in similar terms, with power seeming to be wielded by a person occupying a position in a social structure, more properly understood as originating in the impersonal social structure, transmitted through pervasive microscopic and invisible relations of domination. ?Power relations [do not] result from the choice or decision of an individual subject; let us not look for the headquarters that presides over its rationality; [p. 94] I think one must give to Foucault that this is a valid description of the mechanisms of power within any unitary culture, that is to say, within the ?thick ethos? of a society in which there is ?no outside? to the governing ethos, typical of which would be traditional societies, or feudal societies in which personality was almost totally absorbed in subject-position, or even within an institution such as the market or the family, which although not exhaustive is pervasive. Under such conditions, the possibilities of resistance can be described in Foucauldian terms: ?there is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case: resistances that are possible, necessary, improbable; others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, or violent;? [p. 96] Consistent with the method of Archaeology of Knowledge, then, revolution requires the linking up of a multiplicity of points of resistance: ?... it is doubtless the strategic codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution possible, somewhat similar to the way in which the state relies on the institutional integration of power relationships.? [p. 96] The problem with this very powerful insight into the exercise of power without an apparatus of repression, is that the possibility of a discourse being subject to real critique is effectively excluded, leaving only the margins exposed: ?Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. ... There is not, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite to it, another discourse that runs counter to it. Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy.? [p. 102] This conception expresses the aspect of modernity as ?processes without subjects?: ?Power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective. If in fact they are intelligible, this is not because they are the effect of another instance that ?explains? them, but rather because they are imbued, through and through, with calculation: there is no power that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives. But this does not mean that it results from the choice or decision of an individual subject; let us not look for the headquarters that presides over its rationality; neither the caste which governs, nor the groups which control the state apparatus, nor those who make the most important economic decisions direct the entire network of power that functions in a society (and makes it function); ...? [p. 94-5] A discourse is the linguistic or semiotic form adopted by a set of relationships taken as natural, rather than socially constructed. Thus, discourse takes on the appearance of a game, in which moves are made according to a set of rules; while moves may be to the advantage or not of an actor, the rules are a given, the game does not include the making of the rules. In this view, society resembles a mass of people playing chess, chinese chequers and drafts with each other. Not only the moves, but the aims, the needs to be fulfilled, are formed by the games they play. The concept of ?discourse,? as Foucault presents it, does differ from ?language games? because the games support and express relations of power and subordination, and the moves entail force and its effects are inscribed on the body. But a number of important things are left out of the picture here. Firstly, the concept of discourse excludes the idea that there is an outside to discourse which is not socially constructed, but natural science for example has always had to wrestle with the fact that any theory, notwithstanding the fact that everyone believes in it, can fail the test of practice, and will eventually, as a result, attract opponents and undergo the famous ?paradigm shift? associated with scientific revolutions; the same is true of discourses which simply fail to meet human needs, either the needs that they create or other needs. In the test of practice there is undoubtedly a significant cultural and historical moment, but there is also always a natural or extra-social moment. Unless you believe that global warming, exhaustion of energy reserves, atmospheric and ocean pollution, etc., are all myths (i.e., just discourses), these phenomena mark one limit for the Foucauldian conception of the world. In fact Nature shows itself in many ways within social relations. There are objective measures of the validity of a discourse. Secondly, discourses can confront one another as opponents, with rival institutions and social classes harbouring explicitly hostile discourses, mobilising force against one another. In such cases no special science is needed to be aware of the conflict, but nor should science blind us to the obvious. Foucault?s insight that power may be exercised without such open contradiction, does not exclude the fact that this is a normal situation in class society. Real ethical conflicts essentially escape the Foucauldian viewpoint. ?How should we live?? Except insofar as this ?should? refers back to the discourse against which it is directed, Foucault can have no answer to this question. One discourse is as good as another. Thirdly and finally, the conception of processes without subjects, of ?intentional but nonsubjective? exercise of power does characterise an aspect of the modern condition. But in theorising this aspect of modernity we must take care to critique it, rather than reifying it by rationalising it. The inability of people to attain an effective voice in their own lives and our collective failure to achieve simple social objectives, such as the elimination of poverty and war, is testimony to the fact that lack of subjectivity is a source of social injustice today. But what exactly would ?subjectivity? mean in the Foucauldian world? Or, to put it differently, is it possible to recover a notion of subjectivity which retains the essential insights that Foucault has given us? Can we recover a notion of practical knowledge of an objective world distinguishable from knowledge internal to a discourse? Can we recover a notion of a subject with human needs which are more than just an effect of discourse, or does this necessarily lead us into an indefensible ?essentialism'? Can we recover a meaningful notion of agency, consistent with the idea of ?discourse? and ?availability? without falling into determinism or voluntarism? We will take these issues one at a time, but before we can take a step forward, we have to let go of the Cartesian conception of the subject as a knowing, individual agent. The human psyche is a real thing just as the human body is a real thing, but neither a body nor a psyche constitute a subject. Subjectivity is a relationship, an active, human relationship, and it is only in terms of such a collaborative relationship that we can talk of practical knowledge, human needs which are more than the basest of biological inputs, and agency. We have to conceive of a subject which encompasses the agency of mortal individuals as well as discourse ? understood as both really-existing practical relations of cooperation and ideal products of culture ? words images, concepts, artefacts, and so on. From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 10:59:04 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:59:04 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Foucault=92s_Discursive_Subject?= Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911170959o51daafd5w514f5ff6ac125ee1@mail.gmail.com> Andy Blunden September 2005 Foucault?s Discursive Subject (continued) 1. Knowledge The epistemological problem of whether knowledge is entirely enclosed by the paradigm or discourse within which it exists is one that has received ample attention over the past century, and there is no need to recapitulate that debate here. A recent example is the question as to whether poverty exists and can be measured objectively or is on the contrary simply a construct of the setting of the ?poverty line? in welfare discourses. Foucault seemed on strong ground when he pointed out that the very concept of ?sex? is constructed from a multiplicity of pleasures, discourses, needs, and so on, and poverty researchers would do well to learn from this: both poverty and the concept of poverty are social constructs, differing in nature from one epoch or culture to the next, so if they are to be objective and socially relevant, measures of poverty must be constructed critically. It turns out in fact that poverty is subject to objective measurement (life expectancy, rates of psychiatric admissions, child abuse, imprisonment, etc.), even though such measures only present themselves as a result of a critique of the na?ve/intuitive conception of poverty based exclusively on income and monetary wealth. And the line which asserts that on the contrary, the concept of poverty is simply a linguistic construct leads to profoundly reactionary conclusions. Natural science first took up this question on its own territory with Charles Sanders Peirce?s conception of Pragmatism (1878) and Percy Bridgman?s Operationalism (1927), culminating in Thomas Kuhn?s concept of ?paradigm? (1962). Ultimately however, the validity of a theory is tested on the ground of ethics, that is to say, on the domain of a whole form of life. This insight, which can be traced back to Hegel, was first formulated within the discourse of natural science by Jacques Monod, the 1965 Nobel Laureate for Biology. Critique of knowledge can find a firm ground only in ethics, and this is something that Foucault fails to provide. How is knowledge constituted then? Knowledge is the knowledge of a subject. The Cartesian conception of the subject as a thinking ego came under attack centuries before M. Foucault came on the scene. An individual with working nervous system and sense organs, can know nothing; in addition to the nervous and sensori-motor systems with which every human individual is endowed, knowledge presupposes that the individual is participating in some collaborative activity, engaging both systems, with other people, by means of which their needs a met. Collaborative activity connects people with the entire history of humanity through languages, symbols and images, artefacts, not to mention the human bodies and sense organs shaped by many generations of such activity. The knowledge a person has makes sense to them only to the extent that it is connected with their active use of their body in meeting human needs; but closer examination shows that the specific content of that knowledge is formed not by the individual themself but by the efforts of the individual to collaborate with others using and modifying the ideal entities which mediate their collaboration. The knowing subject therefore includes not only the (socially constructed) nervous and sensori-motor systems of the individual person, but also the concept and the material products (including words and images) embodying that concept, used to recognise and make sense of sense perceptions, and the system of human relations and institutions, through which the concept is brought into relation to the person. Let me be clear here: it is not my contention that an individual ?uses? artefacts and other people in order to acquire knowledge. I am saying that the knowing subject is a specific dynamic combination of individuals, ideals and social collaboration. A ?thought? unrelated to any social action or meaningful artefact (word, symbol, etc.) would be as absurd as a reflection without its object, the meaning of a nonsense word, or a nation with no citizens. Foucault directs his fire against the na?ve/intuitive Cartesian conception of knowledge, in support of an idea of knowledge constituted by discourse; discourse is understood as the unity of an ideal conceptual structure and a real set of power relations between people. However, Foucault is seen not as describing a more concrete conception of the subject, but rather as ?deconstructing? the subject, leaving us the absurdity of knowledge without a subject. On the contrary, knowledge is knowledge of some subject, some needy social agent. 2. Human Needs As Marx said at length in the 1844 Manuscripts, ?the forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present.? ?The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object ? an object made by man for man. The senses have therefore become directly in their practice theoreticians.? [Private Property and Communism, Marx 1844] Both human capacities and human needs have been shaped by the historical development of the social cooperation and the division of labour. A person?s needs are not found in some inner personal world, but on the contrary in the social world in which both their needs and the means of their satisfaction are produced; and not just needs, but a person?s entire identity is produced through their activity with other people. The insight that the sense organs are the product of social development, and can sense only what is socially meaningful certainly undermines the idea of a sovereign individual subject, but it does not undermine the concept of subjectivity as such. Discourse shapes the sense organs, but equally, social relations acquire their sense organs in human individuals. Human eyes and ears are the sense organs of subjects, not of individual subjects, but of social subjects, structured around a division of labour and the social production of human life. So Foucault is right when he argues that there is no such thing as a pre-social ?sex? in the human organism, only a range of pleasures and stimuli, arbitrarily bunched together under a concept of sexuality which is a cultural-historical product; but it is equally evident that there can be no sexuality without those pleasures and stimuli which exist only in human bodies. It turns out that human needs are immensely malleable, more malleable than seems imaginable at first, but they remain, nevertheless, human needs. ?all the organs of his individual being [are] the appropriation of human reality. Their orientation to the object is the manifestation of the human reality, ... it is human activity and human suffering? [Private Property and Communism, Marx 1844] 3. Agency If it be granted that human knowledge and human needs are the labour of social subjects actualised by individuals, and that knowledge and needs are irreducibly the functions of real, individual, suffering human beings, it may still be doubted that it is in any way sensible to talk about individual agency. ?Freedom is the understanding of necessity? said Hegel; an individual is free only to the extent that they can make an intelligent choice between real possibilities, rather than being governed by ?blind necessity?. Hegel reserved real freedom for ?world historic heroes?, like Napoleon, who directly express the World Spirit in their lives. Many who have rejected Hegel?s metaphysical conception of history would still grant that the idea of self-determination, or sovereignty, as applied to an individual is an absurdity. At the same time, most frequently when people use the word ?subject? they mean precisely that individual agent who is deemed, on the contrary to lack agency in any real sense of the word. So it is here surely that Foucault?s critique would seem to have the most purchase. It is worthwhile to pause and clarify what is meant by ?self-determination.? Compare the definition given by Kant in his original definition of the subject of moral philosophy and the definition of sovereignty in the law of nations: A person is a subject whose actions can be imputed to him. ... a person is subject to no other laws than those he gives to himself, either alone or at least along with others. (Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals) and ?sovereignty, the principle that each nation answers only to its own domestic order and is not accountable to a larger international community, save only to the extent that it has consented to do so.? (Bederman, International Law Frameworks, p. 50) The same parallelism is found in the ?recognition? paradigm of sovereignty: ?the relations of free beings to one another is a relation of reciprocal interaction throughintelligence and freedom. One cannot recognise the other if both do not mutually recognise each other.? (Fichte, Foundations of Natural Right, p. 42) and ?an unspoken assumption in the criterion for statehood ... that other nations are prepared to treat a particular entity as a member of the family of nations.? (Bederman, International Law Frameworks, p. 54) Thus we see that the concepts of sovereignty developed by the founders of modern moral philosophy (Kant and Fichte) align with the concepts of sovereignty still used in international law to this day. The meaning of the concept in the context of the law of nations is somewhat clearer than in the context of moral philosophy where the writers we have quoted, pioneers of bourgeois ideology, proposed the individual person as a sovereign subject. Clearly such a conception is idealistic; the individual as a sovereign subject is something that can only be imagined for a faraway future society: ?... an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.? [The Communist Manifesto, 1848] Nevertheless, this conception of self-determination can serve as a norm against which the meaning of ?subject? as a ?free being? (to use Fichte?s terminology) can be measured. An individual sees themself in the action of others, where that action fulfils a person?s own aspirations and is the completion of the person?s own actions; people make a ?psychic investment? (to use James Coleman?s terminology) in other people. Thus we can see that individuals even today can exercise self-determination, that is to say ?agency?, in and through their relationships with others. ?Self-determination? does not and never did imply infinite negative freedom, that is to say, to be able to determine one?s actions purely and simply without regard to the freedom of others. Rather, ?self-determination? implies being subject only to laws which the subject may be deemed to have set for themself, either alone or along with others like oneself. Implicit in this concept are norms of procedural fairness appropriate to subjects which recognise each other as moral equals. Thus an individual can enjoy self-determination to the extent that they can freely invest themselves in the actions of social subjects which enjoy self-determination in these terms. A number of issues bear on the question as to whether it is possible for individuals to enjoy self-determination through participation in social subjectivity. These include (i) the presence of ?discursive heterogeneity?, that is, the presence of competing discourses which give individuals the opportunity to take a critical stance in relation to any given discourse before making a ?psychic investment? in it; (ii) if we allow that companies, that is, subjects whose self-determination is directly subject to the ?laws of economics? can allow only qualified access to self-determination, then (iii) the existence of relations of trust and solidarity between mutually independent subjects, which offer opportunities for individuals to participate in determining the conditions of their own lives, and (iv) people in general have some measure of real control over the products of their own labour. As it happens, the past couple of decades have seen the growth of social conditions in which the great mass of people are experiencing a ?loss of agency?, as power becomes more and more concentrated in a relatively small number of great corporations, subject to the ?laws of the market,? while all other forms of social collaboration are being destroyed and society atomised. This is where our attention needs to be focused. To theorise this as if subjectivity was only ever an illusion, or even, as some do, paint ?the subject? as an essentially oppressive entity anyway, only makes the situation worse. What Foucault can help us with though is this: in the modern world it is no longer plausible to conceptualise agency in terms of ?social subjects?, understood as mutually independent institutions, organisations, social movements and so on. The notions of discourse and interpellation into subject positions within a multiplicity of narratives, actually give us a better approach to the conception of subjectivity and self-determination. The kind of mechanical field presupposed in both the above quotes defining the notion of sovereignty, needs to be replaced with a field of interlocking discourses in which each effects a kind of ?matrix transformation? on relationships in the others. This is a complex task, but offers a way forward. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All quotes from Foucault refer to The History of Sexuality. An Introduction. Volume I. Michel Foucault, translated by Robert Hurley, Vintage Books 1990. From rasherrs at eircom.net Tue Nov 17 11:35:44 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:35:44 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Irish Socialist Workers Party has split. Message-ID: <6E23A00D44B348AEB9267FDB8195168A@paddyhacket> by Harry McIntyre from Indymedia Ireland ----------- Split centred around Belfast The Socialist Workers Party has split. There has been some speculation on Indymedia and elsewhere that the SWP was having internal difficulties in Belfast. The dust has now settled, and the bulk of their Belfast organisation is now outside of the party. The SWP has been having a tough time of it in Belfast in recent years. In the early years of the decade, the Belfast SWP was the success story of the organisation, building a number of branches and a strong student group. Then a period of decline followed, with branches merging, the student group weakening and the loss of some key activists. Now an organised split has taken most of the active, politically hardened, remaining members, leaving the Belfast SWP with an occasionally visible prospective election candidate and a handful of his associates. The arguments flared up around electoral strategy. The Dublin leadership wanted to run Sean Mitchell, the excitable young member who got a small but respectable vote in West Belfast last time out. The Belfast committee, essentially a joint branch committee for the two mini-branches the party was operating in the city, wasn't so sure. Most of its members were of the view that Mitchell had been insufficiently active in the area over the last year. It was, in other words, a minor tactical difference of a sort that a democratic organisation could easily accomodate within its ranks. Unfortunately for the SWP, it is not such an organisation. With typical heavy handedness, the Dublin leadership came down on the local dissidents like a ton of bricks. Vitriolic arguments ensued and the Belfast committee was wound up to shut up those who disagreed with the Political Committee. The writing was on the wall after that. The people who had held the SWP together in Belfast over a long, hard, period were told in no uncertain terms that either they did as they were told and shut up complaining or they'd be expelled. They decided to jump before they were pushed and resigned as a group. As the dust settles, Barbara Muldoon, chair of the Anti-Racist Network, Gordon Hewitt, Mark Hewitt and their allies have found themselves outside of the organisation they helped build. It is understood that they are in the process of setting up a new organisation, based on the fundamental politics of the SWP tradition but with a greater commitment to internal democracy. A name, a platform and their first public statements are expected in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the SWP in Belfast has been reduced to Mitchell, a couple of other students and an American academic. Donal Mac Fhearraigh, the SWP's Dublin full time office functionary has been sent North to shore up what's left and try to begin the process of rebuilding. It's worth looking at the wider implications of this split in one city. The splinter group are long standing SWP members with personal and political connections to SWP across the island. They could very easily make a nuisance of themselves to the SWP across the island by offering SWP members the option of an organisation with SWP politics but a less dictatorial internal regime. The big question will be whether they can gain support outside of their home city. For the SWP it further hammers home their weakness outside of Dublin. There isn't one strong branch left outside the Republic's capital. Historic strongholds like Belfast and Waterford are down to a handful of members. Cork and Galway are hanging on by a thread. There's nothing at all in Limerick. Derry has Eamon McCann, which means a high profile, but a weak branch. It wouldn't take much more of a retreat to reduce the party to a regional organisation. Perhaps more interesting for the wider left is what this incident reveals about the SWP's approach to left unity. Firstly, while the SWP is very weak outside of Dublin they do at least maintain a tenuous presence, which can't really be said for the rest of People Before Profit. In Dublin, the SWP are the dominant force in the alliance, but there are others present and involved. Elsewhere the SWP simply are the alliance. South Tipperary may become a dramatic exception when the Workers and Unemployed Action Group announce their adherence, although it is not yet clear if that affiliation will involve taking on the PBP label and fully integrating into the alliance or if it mostly represents a formal commitment to continuing their existing work together. The Belfast split remember came to a head over what candidate to stand and in what constituency in the next Westminster elections. This discussion was carried on entirely in SWP branches and committees. But they weren't talking about standing an SWP candidate, they were deciding on who and where PBP should stand. There is no People Before Profit structure in Belfast, just the SWP using the name and taking whatever decisions it like. In so far as anyone else gets a say, its a case of the SWP presenting them with a fait accompli. Secondly, what does the SWP leaderships complete inability to tolerate even minor tactical disagreements within their own organisation without pushing the matter to a bitter split say about the depth of their much trumpeted commitment to left unity? How can anyone take them seriously when they talk about how the broad left share 90% of their views and need to work together when at the same time they are casting people with near 100% agreement with them in the outer darkness over the most trivial of disagreements? What does it say about their commitment to working together fraternally when their immediate response to dissent is to smash those who won't do as they are told? If they are willing to break with their own long term membership so rapidly and completely, how secure can any of their allies feel that we won't be the next thrown under the bus if we should ever prove surplus to Political Committee requirements From Waistline2 at aol.com Tue Nov 17 12:43:10 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:43:10 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] PBS Tonight 9:00 Waterfront : struggle in Detroit Message-ID: PBS Tonight 9:00 Waterfront : struggle in Detroit From cb31450 at gmail.com Tue Nov 17 13:13:14 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:13:14 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Biggest State Party to Obama: Get Out of Afghanistan Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911171213h3693bb10ne1a84a5393ef52ea@mail.gmail.com> Biggest State Party to Obama: Get Out of Afghanistan By Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed truthout November 16, 2009 http://www.truthout.org/1116095?print The California Democratic Party has called for withdrawal from Afghanistan. (Photo: WikiMedia) This week begins with a significant new straw in the political wind for President Obama to consider. The California Democratic Party has just sent him a formal and clear message: Stop making war in Afghanistan. Overwhelmingly approved on Sunday by the California Democratic Party's 300-member statewide executive board, the resolution is titled "End the US Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan." The resolution supports "a timetable for withdrawal of our military personnel" and calls for "an end to the use of mercenary contractors as well as an end to air strikes that cause heavy civilian casualties." Advocating multiparty talks inside Afghanistan, the resolution also urges Obama "to oversee a redirection of our funding and resources to include an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid." While Obama weighs Afghanistan policy options, the California Democratic Party's adoption of the resolution is the most tangible indicator yet that escalation of the US war effort can only fuel opposition within the president's own party - opposition that has already begun to erode his political base. Participating in a long-haul struggle for progressive principles inside the party, I co-authored the resolution with savvy longtime activists Karen Bernal of Sacramento and Marcy Winograd of Los Angeles. Bernal, the chair of the state party's Progressive Caucus, said on Sunday night, "Today's vote formalized and amplified what had been, up to now, an unspoken but profoundly understood reality - that there is no military solution in Afghanistan. What's more, the vote signified an acceptance of what is sure to be a continued and growing culture of resistance to current administration policies on the matter within the party. This is absolutely huge. Now, there can be no disputing the fact that the overwhelming majority of California Democrats are not only saying no to escalation, but no to our continued military presence in Afghanistan, period. The California Democratic Party has spoken, and we want the rest of the country to know." Winograd, who is running hard as a grassroots candidate in a primary race against pro-war incumbent Rep. Jane Harman, had this to say, "We need progressives in every state Democratic Party to pass a similar resolution calling for an end to the US occupation and air war in Afghanistan. Bring the veterans to the table, bring our young into the room, and demand an end to this occupation that only destabilizes the region. There is no military solution, only a diplomatic one that requires we cease our role as occupiers if we want our voices to be heard. Yes, this is about Afghanistan - but it's also about our role in the world at large. Do we want to be global occupiers seizing scarce resources or global partners in shared prosperity? I would argue a partnership is not only the humane choice, but also the choice that grants us the greatest security." Speaking to The Resolutions Committee of the state party on Saturday, former Marine Cpl. Rick Reyes movingly described his experiences as a warrior in Afghanistan that led him to question and then oppose what he now considers to be an illegitimate US occupation of that country. Another voice of disillusionment reached party delegates when Bernal distributed a copy of the recent resignation letter from senior US diplomat Matthew Hoh, sent after five months of work on the ground in Afghanistan. "I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan," he wrote. "If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons." Hoh's letter added, "I do not believe any military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the US military has received in Afghanistan." And he wrote, "Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can anymore be made." From bogus@does.not.exist.com Fri Nov 13 07:21:53 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:21:53 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Democratic Party leaders who voted to approve the out- of-Afghanistan resolution on November 15 have gone through a similar process. They've come to see the touted reasons for the US war effort as specious, the mission as Sisyphean and the consequences as profoundly unacceptable. Sometime in the next few days, President Obama is likely to learn that the California Democratic Party has approved an official resolution titled "End the US Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan." But will he really get the message? c 2009 truthout From rasherrs at eircom.net Wed Nov 18 02:50:38 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:50:38 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Message-ID: "Myth 2: But the government has to borrow over ?20 billion and so cutbacks are necessary. If we don't take the 'hard medicine' now, it will be worse later. The huge government deficit is a symptom but not the cause of the crisis. Before 2007, for example, there was no deficit as government revenue was ?65.1 billion and spending was ?64.6. The economic crash has wiped out many tax revenues. VAT rates have fallen; PAYE taxes are down, property taxes tumbled and more is being spent on social welfare payments. But the cutbacks have made matters worse. You can see this easily through simple figures.In October 2008, the government claimed that the budget deficit would rise to 6.5 percent of GDP and that cutbacks were needed. But in January 2009, the budget deficit had risen to 9.5 percent - and so more cuts were demanded in an April budget.Yet, after all these rounds of cutbacks, the budget deficit has now risen to 13 percent. In other words, all the sacrifices have been wasted because the debt is even higher. The reason why this occurs is simple. If personal consumption is already depressed through unemployment and wage cuts, reductions in government spending only add to the slow down in the economy. There is even less money to go around and a spiral of economic depression sets in. So instead of digging a deeper hole, we need to embark on a jobs programme that puts people back to work" The above argument was recently written by Kieran Allen and published by the SWP. It is based on underconsumptionist assumptions. The underconsumptionist ideology suggests that economic downturns are caused by a lack of demand. This means that the solution to the problem are increases in demand and thereby consumption. This, it is believed, increases demand which in turn leads to increased commodity production. Increased production means an increase, generally speaking, in the creation of value and thereby economic growth. If this theory is correct it means that capitalism never need experience economic downturns. To prevent recessions all that is needed is continuous increases in demand (or consumption). If this theory is correct there is no need to abolish the law of value and create a communist society. Falling demand during an economic downswing is caused by the overproduction of capital which manifests itself in the overproduction of commodities such as houses, building materials, household goods, cars etc. This overproduction is caused by falling profitability. Falling profitability is a product of the failure of capital to compensate for the fall in the general rate of profit by increasing the volume of surplus value. Capital can only overcome its crisis of overproduction by increasing the rate of surplus value through the devaluation and even destruction of capital while pushing the price of labour power below its value. This has to be done on a scale large enough to increase the general rate of profit so that there is growth in total surplus value. Success here means that as the general rate of profit rises profitability starts to rise. Under these new conditions production of commodities begins to increase. Recovery sets in and the cycle gets underway leading to recovery, boom and bust which is ultimately takes things back to the overproduction of capital again. The problem is located within the capitalist production process and not in the circulation process as Kieran implies. In order to bring to an end economic crises the production process must be transformed. This means that the capitalist production process must be abolished and replaced by a process of production liberated from value relations. In an economic crash when profitability has falling artificially increasing demand cannot solve the problem. Printing more paper money as a means of increasing consumer demand abjectly under downturn economics. The result is merely inflation. The more paper that is injected into the economy the more inflation rises. Rising inflation means that real demand has not increased. On the other hand if the government can freely borrow money as a means of making up for the budget deficit then the upshot is that crashes are superfluous. If this argument is correct then the conclusion is that not excessive credit, but the lack of it, is the cause of the current crash in Ireland. Borrowing, credit, is now the panacea for all economic ills. This being so capital need no longer be concerned over both rising wages and costs. Class struggle is thereby rendered unnecessary and the objective conditions necessary for communism cease to exist. Economic recessions are a product of the inherently limited and contradictory nature of capitalism. It is this limitation that renders borrowing at will impossible. Such borrowing was tried during the period of what was called the Celtic Tiger. We see the results of that economic experiment today -- stockpiles of houses, building materials, furniture household goods, cars and a large reserve army of unemployed workers. Along with bank and factory closures this is evidence of the overproduction of capital that Marx discussed in his work on political economy. Overall to argue, as Kieran Allen and the SWP do, that a programme of increased state spending is the solution to the national debt crisis is a misrepresentation of reality. It is a bourgeois argument that suggests that the Irish state is progressive. Kieran is suggesting that the state (that, according to him, has been taken over by the corporations) can sort out and even, based on the logic of his position, prevent the emergence of national debt crises. Demands made by the Socialist Workers Party calling for increased state spending are (bourgeois) nationalist demands. They are demands that obstruct the class struggle for social revolution. Kieran does not seem to understand that it was that very thing, increased state spending, that played a key part in the emergence of the massive current budget deficit. How can what was a source of the problem form part of the solution? Within the framework of capitalism the only solution to the budget deficit and the economic crash, as a whole, is one that entails the devaluation of capital and the pushing of the price of labour power below its value (this must include the devaluation of labour power as variable capital too). Essentially this is the only solution available under capitalism. This is why the Irish government has been pursuing harsh anti-working class policies. It is not because it is an evil Party that enjoys engaging in economic sadism. These left wing parties, such as the SWP and the SP, claim that there are pro-working class solutions available to the Irish state within a capitalist paradigm. In making such reactionary claims they are merely attempting to fool the working class. There are only two solutions: a capitalist or a communist solution. Paddy Hackett Related Link: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.com From farmelantj at juno.com Wed Nov 18 05:33:28 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:33:28 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Message-ID: <20091118.073328.9435.0@webmail22.vgs.untd.com> Those Marxists like Michal Kalecki or Paul Sweezy (under the influence of Keynes) who embraced the underconsumptionist thesis did not hold that capitalist states would automatically adopt looser fiscal and monetary policies in order to stop or even to prevent economic downturns. On the contrary, they held that capital would be quite resistant to the general adoption of such policies because they would undermine the political power and the social status of capital. Kalecki, for instance, argued that under normal circumstances, capital would be resistant to the adoption of Keynesian-style full-employment policies, even if it was manifestly clear that such policies would boost business profits. That's because, according to Kalecki, such policies would less the social status of businessmen and weaken their political power. Capitalists, in Kalecki's opinion, feared the loss of social status and political power even more than they feared the loss of profits. Hence, their tendency to form political alliances with rentiers (whose incomes would be directly threatened by such policies) in order to oppose full-employment policies. See his famous 1943 paper, "Political Aspects of Full Employment" can be found online here. http://tinyurl.com/ykxusra Paul Sweezy echoed Kalecki's arguments in his early book, " The Theory of Capitalist Development." Later on, both Kalecki and Sweezy pointed out how, what may be called, military Keyensianism provided a way to make Keynesianism work in a way that would be acceptable to capitalists. That of course is not to say that the underconsumptionists were necessarily correct, but rather to point out that Marxist underconsumptionists do not accept the thesis, that even if Keynesian economic analysis is basically correct, that we can ever expect capitalist states to use the tools of fiscal and monetary policy to balance out the business cycle. In their view, the class interersts of capital militate against this happening over the long term. Having said that it must be admitted that the Keynesian influence on Sweezy has always been a bone of contention for other Marxists. Back in the late 1960s, Paul Mattick wrote a critique of Keynesianism, in which Sweezy, was at least by implication, one of his targets. Marc Linder et al. in their book "Anti-Samuelson," while primarily (as the title suggests) targeting Paul Samuelson's brand of Keynesianism, also took time out to critique Sweezy precisely for his Keynesianism. And more recently, James Heartfield has simiarly criticized Sweezy Jim Farmelant ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Paddy Hackett" To: Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:50:38 -0000 "Myth 2: But the government has to borrow over ?20 billion and so cutbacks are necessary. If we don't take the 'hard medicine' now, it will be worse later. The huge government deficit is a symptom but not the cause of the crisis. Before 2007, for example, there was no deficit as government revenue was ?65.1 billion and spending was ?64.6. The economic crash has wiped out many tax revenues. VAT rates have fallen; PAYE taxes are down, property taxes tumbled and more is being spent on social welfare payments. But the cutbacks have made matters worse. You can see this easily through simple figures.In October 2008, the government claimed that the budget deficit would rise to 6.5 percent of GDP and that cutbacks were needed. But in January 2009, the budget deficit had risen to 9.5 percent - and so more cuts were demanded in an April budget.Yet, after all these rounds of cutbacks, the budget deficit has now risen to 13 percent. In other words, all the sacrifices have been wasted because the debt is even higher. The reason why this occurs is simple. If personal consumption is already depressed through unemployment and wage cuts, reductions in government spending only add to the slow down in the economy. There is even less money to go around and a spiral of economic depression sets in. So instead of digging a deeper hole, we need to embark on a jobs programme that puts people back to work" The above argument was recently written by Kieran Allen and published by the SWP. It is based on underconsumptionist assumptions. The underconsumptionist ideology suggests that economic downturns are caused by a lack of demand. This means that the solution to the problem are increases in demand and thereby consumption. This, it is believed, increases demand which in turn leads to increased commodity production. Increased production means an increase, generally speaking, in the creation of value and thereby economic growth. If this theory is correct it means that capitalism never need experience economic downturns. To prevent recessions all that is needed is continuous increases in demand (or consumption). If this theory is correct there is no need to abolish the law of value and create a communist society. Falling demand during an economic downswing is caused by the overproduction of capital which manifests itself in the overproduction of commodities such as houses, building materials, household goods, cars etc. This overproduction is caused by falling profitability. Falling profitability is a product of the failure of capital to compensate for the fall in the general rate of profit by increasing the volume of surplus value. Capital can only overcome its crisis of overproduction by increasing the rate of surplus value through the devaluation and even destruction of capital while pushing the price of labour power below its value. This has to be done on a scale large enough to increase the general rate of profit so that there is growth in total surplus value. Success here means that as the general rate of profit rises profitability starts to rise. Under these new conditions production of commodities begins to increase. Recovery sets in and the cycle gets underway leading to recovery, boom and bust which is ultimately takes things back to the overproduction of capital again. The problem is located within the capitalist production process and not in the circulation process as Kieran implies. In order to bring to an end economic crises the production process must be transformed. This means that the capitalist production process must be abolished and replaced by a process of production liberated from value relations. ____________________________________________________________ Doctorate Degrees Online Boost your career with an online doctoral degree. Enroll today! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=bLmuAOzrDTd2m2scSwGXEAAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAAPeT2z4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAyOQAAAAA= From cb31450 at gmail.com Wed Nov 18 05:49:32 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:49:32 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism In-Reply-To: <20091118.073328.9435.0@webmail22.vgs.untd.com> References: <20091118.073328.9435.0@webmail22.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911180449p2d732963waef6c3140b1a6d8@mail.gmail.com> On 11/18/09, -clip- > And more recently, James Heartfield > has simiarly criticized Sweezy > > Jim Farmelant ^^^^^^^ CB: James H. and I argued about this point of "underconsumptionism" here on Thaxis in about 1999 or so. From farmelantj at juno.com Wed Nov 18 07:12:20 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:12:20 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Message-ID: <20091118.091220.15931.0@webmail06.vgs.untd.com> I should point out that many conservative economists would agree with the portion of Paddy's piece down below. Right-wing critics of Keynes (both in his day and our own) argued that attempts to deal with economic downturns through the loosening of fiscal and monetary policy would most likely result in inflation rather than in renewed economic growth. Such were the arguments of critics like Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises. They, of course, did not use that to argue for the abolition of capitalism. Jim Farmelant ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Paddy Hackett" To: Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:50:38 -0000 In an economic crash when profitability has falling artificially increasing demand cannot solve the problem. Printing more paper money as a means of increasing consumer demand abjectly under downturn economics. The result is merely inflation. The more paper that is injected into the economy the more inflation rises. Rising inflation means that real demand has not increased. On the other hand if the government can freely borrow money as a means of making up for the budget deficit then the upshot is that crashes are superfluous. If this argument is correct then the conclusion is that not excessive credit, but the lack of it, is the cause of the current crash in Ireland. Borrowing, credit, is now the panacea for all economic ills. This being so capital need no longer be concerned over both rising wages and costs. Class struggle is thereby rendered unnecessary and the objective conditions necessary for communism cease to exist. ____________________________________________________________ Instant Health Insurance Get fast, free health insurance quotes online now in 2 minutes. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=tEDlXYC68EpV7ZvH4kxnywAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAAAjMHj4AAANSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABI4JwAAAAA= From rasherrs at eircom.net Wed Nov 18 11:39:55 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:39:55 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Message-ID: <60794CB461BD464E87D945841D14E8FC@paddyhacket> Obama, the Fed and the Treasury are underconsumptionist as is, to a degree, Western Europe. The massive injection of billions of dollars into the economy is an expression of underconsumptionist ideology. But this merely helps postpone the judgment day. The capitalist needs an unprecedentedly deep slump. By these unprecedented injections the slump has been postponed. But the problem has not been solved. Washington has created another bubble type phenomenon. The problem is that there may not be enough gas to blow up to the previous dimensions --a floppy bubble. This is something I am not qualified to answer. Washington has simply done what the Fed was doing under its last boss. Propping up the system "artificially" by providing more apparent spend. ------------ Those Marxists like Michal Kalecki or Paul Sweezy (under the influence of Keynes) who embraced the underconsumptionist thesis did not hold that capitalist states would automatically adopt looser fiscal and monetary policies in order to stop or even to prevent economic downturns. On the contrary, they held that capital would be quite resistant to the general adoption of such policies because they would undermine the political power and the social status of capital. Kalecki, for instance, argued that under normal circumstances, capital would be resistant to the adoption of Keynesian-style full-employment policies, even if it was manifestly clear that such policies would boost business profits. That's because, according to Kalecki, such policies would less the social status of businessmen and weaken their political power. Capitalists, in Kalecki's opinion, feared the loss of social status and political power even more than they feared the loss of profits. Hence, their tendency to form political alliances with rentiers (whose incomes would be directly threatened by such policies) in order to oppose full-employment policies. See his famous 1943 paper, "Political Aspects of Full Employment" can be found online here. http://tinyurl.com/ykxusra Paul Sweezy echoed Kalecki's arguments in his early book, " The Theory of Capitalist Development." Later on, both Kalecki and Sweezy pointed out how, what may be called, military Keyensianism provided a way to make Keynesianism work in a way that would be acceptable to capitalists. That of course is not to say that the underconsumptionists were necessarily correct, but rather to point out that Marxist underconsumptionists do not accept the thesis, that even if Keynesian economic analysis is basically correct, that we can ever expect capitalist states to use the tools of fiscal and monetary policy to balance out the business cycle. In their view, the class interersts of capital militate against this happening over the long term. Having said that it must be admitted that the Keynesian influence on Sweezy has always been a bone of contention for other Marxists. Back in the late 1960s, Paul Mattick wrote a critique of Keynesianism, in which Sweezy, was at least by implication, one of his targets. Marc Linder et al. in their book "Anti-Samuelson," while primarily (as the title suggests) targeting Paul Samuelson's brand of Keynesianism, also took time out to critique Sweezy precisely for his Keynesianism. And more recently, James Heartfield has simiarly criticized Sweezy Jim Farmelant ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Paddy Hackett" To: Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:50:38 -0000 "Myth 2: But the government has to borrow over ?20 billion and so cutbacks are necessary. If we don't take the 'hard medicine' now, it will be worse later. The huge government deficit is a symptom but not the cause of the crisis. Before 2007, for example, there was no deficit as government revenue was ?65.1 billion and spending was ?64.6. The economic crash has wiped out many tax revenues. VAT rates have fallen; PAYE taxes are down, property taxes tumbled and more is being spent on social welfare payments. But the cutbacks have made matters worse. You can see this easily through simple figures.In October 2008, the government claimed that the budget deficit would rise to 6.5 percent of GDP and that cutbacks were needed. But in January 2009, the budget deficit had risen to 9.5 percent - and so more cuts were demanded in an April budget.Yet, after all these rounds of cutbacks, the budget deficit has now risen to 13 percent. In other words, all the sacrifices have been wasted because the debt is even higher. The reason why this occurs is simple. If personal consumption is already depressed through unemployment and wage cuts, reductions in government spending only add to the slow down in the economy. There is even less money to go around and a spiral of economic depression sets in. So instead of digging a deeper hole, we need to embark on a jobs programme that puts people back to work" The above argument was recently written by Kieran Allen and published by the SWP. It is based on underconsumptionist assumptions. The underconsumptionist ideology suggests that economic downturns are caused by a lack of demand. This means that the solution to the problem are increases in demand and thereby consumption. This, it is believed, increases demand which in turn leads to increased commodity production. Increased production means an increase, generally speaking, in the creation of value and thereby economic growth. If this theory is correct it means that capitalism never need experience economic downturns. To prevent recessions all that is needed is continuous increases in demand (or consumption). If this theory is correct there is no need to abolish the law of value and create a communist society. Falling demand during an economic downswing is caused by the overproduction of capital which manifests itself in the overproduction of commodities such as houses, building materials, household goods, cars etc. This overproduction is caused by falling profitability. Falling profitability is a product of the failure of capital to compensate for the fall in the general rate of profit by increasing the volume of surplus value. Capital can only overcome its crisis of overproduction by increasing the rate of surplus value through the devaluation and even destruction of capital while pushing the price of labour power below its value. This has to be done on a scale large enough to increase the general rate of profit so that there is growth in total surplus value. Success here means that as the general rate of profit rises profitability starts to rise. Under these new conditions production of commodities begins to increase. Recovery sets in and the cycle gets underway leading to recovery, boom and bust which is ultimately takes things back to the overproduction of capital again. The problem is located within the capitalist production process and not in the circulation process as Kieran implies. In order to bring to an end economic crises the production process must be transformed. This means that the capitalist production process must be abolished and replaced by a process of production liberated from value relations. ____________________________________________________________ One Up the Competition Earn your MBA from Post University. Free textbooks for new students! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=tG50uAgPzKqK6ySKMuRvcAAAJ1CYA6xXIFl5_AmY7DDiMj1vAAQAAAAFAAAAADFFXD4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABIhWQAAAAA= From cb31450 at gmail.com Wed Nov 18 12:10:06 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:10:06 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism In-Reply-To: <60794CB461BD464E87D945841D14E8FC@paddyhacket> References: <60794CB461BD464E87D945841D14E8FC@paddyhacket> Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911181110v35892b43u48234818af18e283@mail.gmail.com> Yes, however they are not _Marxist_ underconsumptionists (smile) Also, they gave a lot more to Wall Street, which is "supply-side". On 11/18/09, Paddy Hackett wrote: > > > > Obama, the Fed and the Treasury are underconsumptionist as is, to a degree, > Western Europe. The massive injection of billions of dollars into the > economy is an expression of underconsumptionist ideology. But this merely > helps postpone the judgment day. The capitalist needs an unprecedentedly > deep slump. By these unprecedented injections the slump has been postponed. > But the problem has not been solved. Washington has created another bubble > type phenomenon. The problem is that there may not be enough gas to blow up > to the previous dimensions --a floppy bubble. This is something I am not > qualified to answer. Washington has simply done what the Fed was doing under > its last boss. Propping up the system "artificially" by providing more > apparent spend. > ------------ > > > > > Those Marxists like Michal Kalecki > or Paul Sweezy (under the influence > of Keynes) who embraced the > underconsumptionist thesis did not > hold that capitalist states would > automatically adopt looser fiscal > and monetary policies in order to > stop or even to prevent economic > downturns. On the contrary, they > held that capital would be quite > resistant to the general adoption > of such policies because they would > undermine the political power and the > social status of capital. > > Kalecki, for instance, argued that > under normal circumstances, capital > would be resistant to the adoption of > Keynesian-style full-employment policies, > even if it was manifestly clear that such > policies would boost business profits. > That's because, according to Kalecki, > such policies would less the social > status of businessmen and weaken their > political power. Capitalists, in Kalecki's > opinion, feared the loss of social status > and political power even more than they > feared the loss of profits. Hence, > their tendency to form political > alliances with rentiers (whose incomes > would be directly threatened by such > policies) in order to oppose > full-employment policies. See > his famous 1943 paper, "Political > Aspects of Full Employment" can > be found online here. > > http://tinyurl.com/ykxusra > > Paul Sweezy echoed Kalecki's > arguments in his early book, " > The Theory of Capitalist Development." > Later on, both Kalecki and Sweezy > pointed out how, what may be called, > military Keyensianism provided a way > to make Keynesianism work in a way > that would be acceptable to capitalists. > > That of course is not to say that > the underconsumptionists were necessarily > correct, but rather to point out > that Marxist underconsumptionists > do not accept the thesis, that even > if Keynesian economic analysis is > basically correct, that we can ever > expect capitalist states to use the > tools of fiscal and monetary policy > to balance out the business cycle. > In their view, the class interersts > of capital militate against this > happening over the long term. > > Having said that it must be admitted > that the Keynesian influence on Sweezy > has always been a bone of contention > for other Marxists. Back in the late > 1960s, Paul Mattick wrote a critique > of Keynesianism, in which Sweezy, > was at least by implication, one of > his targets. Marc Linder et al. > in their book "Anti-Samuelson," > while primarily (as the title > suggests) targeting Paul Samuelson's > brand of Keynesianism, also took > time out to critique Sweezy > precisely for his Keynesianism. > And more recently, James Heartfield > has simiarly criticized Sweezy > > Jim Farmelant > > ---------- Original Message ---------- > From: "Paddy Hackett" > To: > Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism > Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:50:38 -0000 > > > > "Myth 2: But the government has to borrow over ?20 billion and so cutbacks > are necessary. If we don't take the 'hard medicine' now, it will be worse > later. > > The huge government deficit is a symptom but not the cause of the crisis. > Before 2007, for example, there was no deficit as government revenue was > ?65.1 billion and spending was ?64.6. The economic crash has wiped out many > tax revenues. VAT rates have fallen; PAYE taxes are down, property taxes > tumbled and more is being spent on social welfare payments. But the cutbacks > have made matters worse. You can see this easily through simple figures.In > October 2008, the government claimed that the budget deficit would rise to > 6.5 percent of GDP and that cutbacks were needed. But in January 2009, the > budget deficit had risen to 9.5 percent - and so more cuts were demanded in > an April budget.Yet, after all these rounds of cutbacks, the budget deficit > has now risen to 13 percent. In other words, all the sacrifices have been > wasted because the debt is even higher. > > The reason why this occurs is simple. If personal consumption is already > depressed through unemployment and wage cuts, reductions in government > spending only add to the slow down in the economy. There is even less money > to go around and a spiral of economic depression sets in. So instead of > digging a deeper hole, we need to embark on a jobs programme that puts > people back to work" > > The above argument was recently written by Kieran Allen and published by the > SWP. It is based on underconsumptionist assumptions. The underconsumptionist > ideology suggests that economic downturns are caused by a lack of demand. > This means that the solution to the problem are increases in demand and > thereby consumption. This, it is believed, increases demand which in turn > leads to increased commodity production. Increased production means an > increase, generally speaking, in the creation of value and thereby economic > growth. > > If this theory is correct it means that capitalism never need experience > economic downturns. To prevent recessions all that is needed is continuous > increases in demand (or consumption). If this theory is correct there is no > need to abolish the law of value and create a communist society. > > Falling demand during an economic downswing is caused by the overproduction > of capital which manifests itself in the overproduction of commodities such > as houses, building materials, household goods, cars etc. This > overproduction is caused by falling profitability. Falling profitability is > a product of the failure of capital to compensate for the fall in the > general rate of profit by increasing the volume of surplus value. Capital > can only overcome its crisis of overproduction by increasing the rate of > surplus value through the devaluation and even destruction of capital while > pushing the price of labour power below its value. This has to be done on a > scale large enough to increase the general rate of profit so that there is > growth in total surplus value. Success here means that as the general rate > of profit rises profitability starts to rise. Under these new conditions > production of commodities begins to increase. Recovery sets in and the cycle > gets underway leading to recovery, boom and bust which is ultimately takes > things back to the overproduction of capital again. The problem is located > within the capitalist production process and not in the circulation process > as Kieran implies. In order to bring to an end economic crises the > production process must be transformed. This means that the capitalist > production process must be abolished and replaced by a process of production > liberated from value relations. > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > One Up the Competition > Earn your MBA from Post University. Free textbooks for new students! > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=tG50uAgPzKqK6ySKMuRvcAAAJ1CYA6xXIFl5_AmY7DDiMj1vAAQAAAAFAAAAADFFXD4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABIhWQAAAAA= > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 farmelantj at juno.com Wed Nov 18 12:18:59 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:18:59 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Message-ID: <20091118.141859.2075.0@webmail09.vgs.untd.com> Charles is right about that. Obama's policies more closely resemble those followed by Herbert Hoover rather than those followed by FDR. An unabashed Keynesian would criticize Obama for not directing enough of his spending to lower income people, who, according to Keynes, would have a higher propensity to consumption than more affluent people. All this would seem consistent with Kalecki's political economic analysis, according to which we would expect government spending to follow this course it has been, so far, under the Obama Administration. Presumably, things are not likely to change much unless the Federal government begins to feel the heat of working class insurgency as was the case in the US by the time that FDR became president. Jim F. ---------- Original Message ---------- Yes, however they are not _Marxist_ underconsumptionists (smile) Also, they gave a lot more to Wall Street, which is "supply-side". On 11/18/09, Paddy Hackett wrote: > > > > Obama, the Fed and the Treasury are underconsumptionist as is, to a degree, > Western Europe. The massive injection of billions of dollars into the > economy is an expression of underconsumptionist ideology. But this merely > helps postpone the judgment day. The capitalist needs an unprecedentedly > deep slump. By these unprecedented injections the slump has been postponed. > But the problem has not been solved. Washington has created another bubble > type phenomenon. The problem is that there may not be enough gas to blow up > to the previous dimensions --a floppy bubble. This is something I am not > qualified to answer. Washington has simply done what the Fed was doing under > its last boss. Propping up the system "artificially" by providing more > apparent spend. > ------------ > > > > > Those Marxists like Michal Kalecki > or Paul Sweezy (under the influence > of Keynes) who embraced the > underconsumptionist thesis did not > hold that capitalist states would > automatically adopt looser fiscal > and monetary policies in order to > stop or even to prevent economic > downturns. On the contrary, they > held that capital would be quite > resistant to the general adoption > of such policies because they would > undermine the political power and the > social status of capital. > > Kalecki, for instance, argued that > under normal circumstances, capital > would be resistant to the adoption of > Keynesian-style full-employment policies, > even if it was manifestly clear that such > policies would boost business profits. > That's because, according to Kalecki, > such policies would less the social > status of businessmen and weaken their > political power. Capitalists, in Kalecki's > opinion, feared the loss of social status > and political power even more than they > feared the loss of profits. Hence, > their tendency to form political > alliances with rentiers (whose incomes > would be directly threatened by such > policies) in order to oppose > full-employment policies. See > his famous 1943 paper, "Political > Aspects of Full Employment" can > be found online here. > > http://tinyurl.com/ykxusra > > Paul Sweezy echoed Kalecki's > arguments in his early book, " > The Theory of Capitalist Development." > Later on, both Kalecki and Sweezy > pointed out how, what may be called, > military Keyensianism provided a way > to make Keynesianism work in a way > that would be acceptable to capitalists. > > That of course is not to say that > the underconsumptionists were necessarily > correct, but rather to point out > that Marxist underconsumptionists > do not accept the thesis, that even > if Keynesian economic analysis is > basically correct, that we can ever > expect capitalist states to use the > tools of fiscal and monetary policy > to balance out the business cycle. > In their view, the class interersts > of capital militate against this > happening over the long term. > > Having said that it must be admitted > that the Keynesian influence on Sweezy > has always been a bone of contention > for other Marxists. Back in the late > 1960s, Paul Mattick wrote a critique > of Keynesianism, in which Sweezy, > was at least by implication, one of > his targets. Marc Linder et al. > in their book "Anti-Samuelson," > while primarily (as the title > suggests) targeting Paul Samuelson's > brand of Keynesianism, also took > time out to critique Sweezy > precisely for his Keynesianism. > And more recently, James Heartfield > has simiarly criticized Sweezy > > Jim Farmelant > > ---------- Original Message ---------- > From: "Paddy Hackett" > To: > Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism > Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:50:38 -0000 > > > > "Myth 2: But the government has to borrow over ?20 billion and so cutbacks > are necessary. If we don't take the 'hard medicine' now, it will be worse > later. > > The huge government deficit is a symptom but not the cause of the crisis. > Before 2007, for example, there was no deficit as government revenue was > ?65.1 billion and spending was ?64.6. The economic crash has wiped out many > tax revenues. VAT rates have fallen; PAYE taxes are down, property taxes > tumbled and more is being spent on social welfare payments. But the cutbacks > have made matters worse. You can see this easily through simple figures.In > October 2008, the government claimed that the budget deficit would rise to > 6.5 percent of GDP and that cutbacks were needed. But in January 2009, the > budget deficit had risen to 9.5 percent - and so more cuts were demanded in > an April budget.Yet, after all these rounds of cutbacks, the budget deficit > has now risen to 13 percent. In other words, all the sacrifices have been > wasted because the debt is even higher. > > The reason why this occurs is simple. If personal consumption is already > depressed through unemployment and wage cuts, reductions in government > spending only add to the slow down in the economy. There is even less money > to go around and a spiral of economic depression sets in. So instead of > digging a deeper hole, we need to embark on a jobs programme that puts > people back to work" > > The above argument was recently written by Kieran Allen and published by the > SWP. It is based on underconsumptionist assumptions. The underconsumptionist > ideology suggests that economic downturns are caused by a lack of demand. > This means that the solution to the problem are increases in demand and > thereby consumption. This, it is believed, increases demand which in turn > leads to increased commodity production. Increased production means an > increase, generally speaking, in the creation of value and thereby economic > growth. > > If this theory is correct it means that capitalism never need experience > economic downturns. To prevent recessions all that is needed is continuous > increases in demand (or consumption). If this theory is correct there is no > need to abolish the law of value and create a communist society. > > Falling demand during an economic downswing is caused by the overproduction > of capital which manifests itself in the overproduction of commodities such > as houses, building materials, household goods, cars etc. This > overproduction is caused by falling profitability. Falling profitability is > a product of the failure of capital to compensate for the fall in the > general rate of profit by increasing the volume of surplus value. Capital > can only overcome its crisis of overproduction by increasing the rate of > surplus value through the devaluation and even destruction of capital while > pushing the price of labour power below its value. This has to be done on a > scale large enough to increase the general rate of profit so that there is > growth in total surplus value. Success here means that as the general rate > of profit rises profitability starts to rise. Under these new conditions > production of commodities begins to increase. Recovery sets in and the cycle > gets underway leading to recovery, boom and bust which is ultimately takes > things back to the overproduction of capital again. The problem is located > within the capitalist production process and not in the circulation process > as Kieran implies. In order to bring to an end economic crises the > production process must be transformed. This means that the capitalist > production process must be abolished and replaced by a process of production > liberated from value relations. > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > One Up the Competition > Earn your MBA from Post University. Free textbooks for new students! > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=tG50uAgPzKqK6ySKMuRvcAAAJ1CYA6xXIFl5_AmY7DDiMj1vAAQAAAAFAAAAADFFXD4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABIhWQAAAAA= > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > _______________________________________________ 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 ____________________________________________________________ Manufacturer-Direct Hardwood Floors Never pay retail again. Wholesale prices on all hardwood floors! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=B7OR7yAxEfylWXVkN5M-ZAAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAADkQ1z4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANldAAAAAA= From cb31450 at gmail.com Wed Nov 18 13:31:59 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:31:59 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism In-Reply-To: <20091118.141859.2075.0@webmail09.vgs.untd.com> References: <20091118.141859.2075.0@webmail09.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911181231u6e8a6abco2bf295053ba461e4@mail.gmail.com> On 11/18/09, farmelantj at juno.com wrote: > > Charles is right about that. > Obama's policies more closely > resemble those followed by > Herbert Hoover rather than > those followed by FDR. ^^^^^ CB: True, although I don't think Hoover bailed out Wall Street. He tightened monetarily or something. ^^^^^ An > unabashed Keynesian would > criticize Obama for not directing > enough of his spending to lower > income people, who, according > to Keynes, would have a higher > propensity to consumption than > more affluent people. > > All this would seem consistent > with Kalecki's political economic > analysis, according to which > we would expect government spending > to follow this course it has been, > so far, under the Obama Administration. > Presumably, things are not likely to > change much unless the Federal government > begins to feel the heat of working class > insurgency as was the case in the US > by the time that FDR became president. > > Jim F. > ---------- Original Message ---------- > > Yes, however they are not _Marxist_ underconsumptionists (smile) > > Also, they gave a lot more to Wall Street, which is "supply-side". > > On 11/18/09, Paddy Hackett wrote: > > > > > > > > Obama, the Fed and the Treasury are underconsumptionist as is, to a degree, > > Western Europe. The massive injection of billions of dollars into the > > economy is an expression of underconsumptionist ideology. But this merely > > helps postpone the judgment day. The capitalist needs an unprecedentedly > > deep slump. By these unprecedented injections the slump has been postponed. > > But the problem has not been solved. Washington has created another bubble > > type phenomenon. The problem is that there may not be enough gas to blow up > > to the previous dimensions --a floppy bubble. This is something I am not > > qualified to answer. Washington has simply done what the Fed was doing under > > its last boss. Propping up the system "artificially" by providing more > > apparent spend. > > ------------ > > > > > > > > > > Those Marxists like Michal Kalecki > > or Paul Sweezy (under the influence > > of Keynes) who embraced the > > underconsumptionist thesis did not > > hold that capitalist states would > > automatically adopt looser fiscal > > and monetary policies in order to > > stop or even to prevent economic > > downturns. On the contrary, they > > held that capital would be quite > > resistant to the general adoption > > of such policies because they would > > undermine the political power and the > > social status of capital. > > > > Kalecki, for instance, argued that > > under normal circumstances, capital > > would be resistant to the adoption of > > Keynesian-style full-employment policies, > > even if it was manifestly clear that such > > policies would boost business profits. > > That's because, according to Kalecki, > > such policies would less the social > > status of businessmen and weaken their > > political power. Capitalists, in Kalecki's > > opinion, feared the loss of social status > > and political power even more than they > > feared the loss of profits. Hence, > > their tendency to form political > > alliances with rentiers (whose incomes > > would be directly threatened by such > > policies) in order to oppose > > full-employment policies. See > > his famous 1943 paper, "Political > > Aspects of Full Employment" can > > be found online here. > > > > http://tinyurl.com/ykxusra > > > > Paul Sweezy echoed Kalecki's > > arguments in his early book, " > > The Theory of Capitalist Development." > > Later on, both Kalecki and Sweezy > > pointed out how, what may be called, > > military Keyensianism provided a way > > to make Keynesianism work in a way > > that would be acceptable to capitalists. > > > > That of course is not to say that > > the underconsumptionists were necessarily > > correct, but rather to point out > > that Marxist underconsumptionists > > do not accept the thesis, that even > > if Keynesian economic analysis is > > basically correct, that we can ever > > expect capitalist states to use the > > tools of fiscal and monetary policy > > to balance out the business cycle. > > In their view, the class interersts > > of capital militate against this > > happening over the long term. > > > > Having said that it must be admitted > > that the Keynesian influence on Sweezy > > has always been a bone of contention > > for other Marxists. Back in the late > > 1960s, Paul Mattick wrote a critique > > of Keynesianism, in which Sweezy, > > was at least by implication, one of > > his targets. Marc Linder et al. > > in their book "Anti-Samuelson," > > while primarily (as the title > > suggests) targeting Paul Samuelson's > > brand of Keynesianism, also took > > time out to critique Sweezy > > precisely for his Keynesianism. > > And more recently, James Heartfield > > has simiarly criticized Sweezy > > > > Jim Farmelant > > > > ---------- Original Message ---------- > > From: "Paddy Hackett" > > To: > > Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism > > Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:50:38 -0000 > > > > > > > > "Myth 2: But the government has to borrow over ?20 billion and so cutbacks > > are necessary. If we don't take the 'hard medicine' now, it will be worse > > later. > > > > The huge government deficit is a symptom but not the cause of the crisis. > > Before 2007, for example, there was no deficit as government revenue was > > ?65.1 billion and spending was ?64.6. The economic crash has wiped out many > > tax revenues. VAT rates have fallen; PAYE taxes are down, property taxes > > tumbled and more is being spent on social welfare payments. But the cutbacks > > have made matters worse. You can see this easily through simple figures.In > > October 2008, the government claimed that the budget deficit would rise to > > 6.5 percent of GDP and that cutbacks were needed. But in January 2009, the > > budget deficit had risen to 9.5 percent - and so more cuts were demanded in > > an April budget.Yet, after all these rounds of cutbacks, the budget deficit > > has now risen to 13 percent. In other words, all the sacrifices have been > > wasted because the debt is even higher. > > > > The reason why this occurs is simple. If personal consumption is already > > depressed through unemployment and wage cuts, reductions in government > > spending only add to the slow down in the economy. There is even less money > > to go around and a spiral of economic depression sets in. So instead of > > digging a deeper hole, we need to embark on a jobs programme that puts > > people back to work" > > > > The above argument was recently written by Kieran Allen and published by the > > SWP. It is based on underconsumptionist assumptions. The underconsumptionist > > ideology suggests that economic downturns are caused by a lack of demand. > > This means that the solution to the problem are increases in demand and > > thereby consumption. This, it is believed, increases demand which in turn > > leads to increased commodity production. Increased production means an > > increase, generally speaking, in the creation of value and thereby economic > > growth. > > > > If this theory is correct it means that capitalism never need experience > > economic downturns. To prevent recessions all that is needed is continuous > > increases in demand (or consumption). If this theory is correct there is no > > need to abolish the law of value and create a communist society. > > > > Falling demand during an economic downswing is caused by the overproduction > > of capital which manifests itself in the overproduction of commodities such > > as houses, building materials, household goods, cars etc. This > > overproduction is caused by falling profitability. Falling profitability is > > a product of the failure of capital to compensate for the fall in the > > general rate of profit by increasing the volume of surplus value. Capital > > can only overcome its crisis of overproduction by increasing the rate of > > surplus value through the devaluation and even destruction of capital while > > pushing the price of labour power below its value. This has to be done on a > > scale large enough to increase the general rate of profit so that there is > > growth in total surplus value. Success here means that as the general rate > > of profit rises profitability starts to rise. Under these new conditions > > production of commodities begins to increase. Recovery sets in and the cycle > > gets underway leading to recovery, boom and bust which is ultimately takes > > things back to the overproduction of capital again. The problem is located > > within the capitalist production process and not in the circulation process > > as Kieran implies. In order to bring to an end economic crises the > > production process must be transformed. This means that the capitalist > > production process must be abolished and replaced by a process of production > > liberated from value relations. > > > > > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > > One Up the Competition > > Earn your MBA from Post University. Free textbooks for new students! > > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=tG50uAgPzKqK6ySKMuRvcAAAJ1CYA6xXIFl5_AmY7DDiMj1vAAQAAAAFAAAAADFFXD4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABIhWQAAAAA= > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > > > ____________________________________________________________ > Manufacturer-Direct Hardwood Floors > Never pay retail again. Wholesale prices on all hardwood floors! > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=B7OR7yAxEfylWXVkN5M-ZAAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAADkQ1z4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANldAAAAAA= > > _______________________________________________ > 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 jannuzi at gmail.com Fri Nov 20 03:56:27 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:56:27 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Message-ID: JF: >>Charles [B] is right about that. Obama's policies more closely resemble those followed by Herbert Hoover rather than those followed by FDR. An unabashed Keynesian would criticize Obama for not directing enough of his spending to lower income people, who, according to Keynes, would have a higher propensity to consumption than more affluent people.<< I would say HH and FDR were birds of a capitalist feather. FDR ran on a campaign that criticized Hoover for his profligate spending, the result of budget increases that resulted in high deficits (at least up until that time), and his tax increases. In practice, both HH and FDR pursued both monetary and fiscal measures to address the perceived political crisis that was a result of an economic crisis (any time a politician has trouble get re-elected, the crisis becomes real to him). It's hard to liken Obama to either Hoover or FDR in terms of what he inherited. HH inherited a budget surplus and ran it into deficits. Obama inherits a deficit that is so enormous it is beyond human intelligence to comprehend. I would also say under a capitalist system there are a number of ways to hurt consumption. One would be to run deficits so high that government borrowing squeezes credit. Under the current US system, the idea appears to be to lower interest rates so much that it encourages borrowing. But this could be two sides of the same coin--or even the same side. You can slash interest rates to zero, that doesn't mean people and companies who actually produce something will want to borrow--expand their production or borrow in order to consume now. Moreover, if you have many people who rely, at least in part, on interest income, keeping interest rates low could discourage consumption. That would be people like pensioners or anyone who still saved money because it brought some return in interest on the account. Do any Americans do this? What is the reward doing it now with interest near zero? But bond investing look troubled and might I point out that overall if you hold stocks you haven't seen any overall gain since 2000. In fact, if you take a 15 year view of stocks and bonds, they both suck. Obama is unlike FDR in that the US he inherited never really got out of the mentality that got them through WW II. You could say, in that sense, he is the post-FDR president (since FDR's role was to save American capitalism while getting everyone to support WW II). Still, I like comparisons to Carter better (so far). Also, if Hoover gets slammed with being anti-free trade because of the Hoot-Smawley act passed while he was in office, you also have to point out that a world war isn't really a period of capitalist free trade or globalism (i.e., the FDR follow up), so it would be hard to call FDR an anti-thesis of Hoover on trade. The current policy, inherited from the Bushwaites, is apparently to EXPORT the US's economic crisis through monetary and fiscal policies that devalue the dollar. Yes, a cheap dollar is supposed to encourage exports because the goods are cheaper. But the problem is it saddles other economies with far worse economic crises of their own, thereby limiting any export boom. A good example would be Japan, now stuck with holding huge amounts of increasingly worthless dollars while having to export goods and services denominated in an increasingly high yen (while Japanese live in a country that has had near-zero interest rates for the last 15 years!). I would say much of the current crisis was caused by Bush's policies, many of them supported by, as usual, a Repug-Demoncrat consensus. War, huge deficits on war, high oil (most of all because Iraqi oil was taken off the world market, and that drove up the price of other high grade crudes, and plentiful high grade is what makes Iraq the envy of so many other countries). And then this 'need' to end trade deficits by cheapening the dollar (which in turn drove the oil pricing bubble). Finally, hey it's almost time to organize to get Obama re-elected. I know what he can run on: Don't let all our good work go unfinished. CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ From jannuzi at gmail.com Sat Nov 21 00:49:22 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:49:22 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Does anyone here remember in the waning months of the Bushwa's last term how they sent out everyone a 300 dollar check for 'economic relief'? I think you got one if you filed your federal income tax returns properly. It wasn't in any way a tax refund (although I also remember Bush was a big tax cutter, which is one of the ways he raised the federal deficits so much--in addition to pouring over a trillion dollars a year on militarism in the name of 'security' and the 'war on terror'). That sounds like something postmo Keynesian might argue for, but it didn't seem to have much of an effect on consumption. At any rate, it doesn't look like those depending on interest income are going to spend more--that is because they have far less interest income to spend. Meanwhile, those in debt are trying to pay off debt and/or save, with the latter getting no returns. It looks like a 'critical mass' of people have hit the wall and can't borrow anymore. So it doesn't look like you are going to see any increase in consumption on their part. The Obama administration ought to give each household 1000 dollars and cut the military budgets by 500 billion dollars, starting NOW. That would do it. Of course, there would be a mlitary coup in answer to it (most likely with ironmaiden Clinton taking charge of things with Gen. Gates in a junta). But if that didn't happen, then the Obamaites ought to apologize to Iraqis in order to avoid war reparations and use the savings to provide health care and adequate nutrition to all Americans. Then I would be all for war crimes trials for Bush Cheney Rice etc. Seeing how much dignity they brought to the lynching of Saddam Hussein, Bush etc. could be executed on pay-per-view TV, with the profits going toward the national debt. Oops. I'm letting my fantasies carry me away. The real outrageous fantasy comes in saying that Obama would ever do such a thing as cut the military budgets. I'm glad the boys at the Pentagon taught him how to salute the gyrines and flyboys who ferry him around. It makes it look like he really is in charge in DC. Now if someone would only teach him that you bow to the emperor first and then shake his hand. You don't do both at the same time. For your edification: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Americans-save-more-but-earn-apf-3318981277.html?x=0 excerpt: >>As banks pour money into U.S. Treasurys, it forces down interest rates and yields for people with money in government debt or bank deposits. On Friday, the three-month Treasury bill offered a return of 0.02 percent -- after falling as low as 0.005 percent Thursday. That's the lowest level since a year ago, in the throes of the financial crisis. Lower interest rates make it cheaper for people and companies to borrow, and they help sustain a weak economy. They also help keep mortgage rates low, which is key to turning the housing market around. And lower rates make it much cheaper for the government to borrow money to finance deficits. But the government's policy of stimulating the economy by cutting rates to try to get people to borrow and spend is essentially robbing the elderly of a vital income stream, argued Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. "It takes money out of the pockets of senior citizens and anyone living on a fixed income and gives it to borrowers, many of whom are overly indebted," McBride said. "It's as if Grandma stuffed an envelope full of cash, walked down the street and gave it to the guy with two new cars, a big-screen TV and who's behind on his mortgage." For some perspective on the rapid drop in CD interest rates, just look back a year. The interest rate for a one-year CD was 2.53 percent this time last year. Today, it earns just 0.88 percent. That means a retiree with $100,000 saved in a CD could have earned $2,530 in 2008, or about $211 a month. At current rates, that same $100,000 is earning just $880 year. The retiree's monthly income has sunk to about $73. Besides savers, low rates hurt investors in fixed-income assets like U.S. Treasurys. Demand for Treasury bonds has soared even as the government auctions off record amounts of new debt to finance record budget deficits. Interest rates aren't expected to rise anytime soon. The Federal Reserve seems determined to keep rates low as long as unemployment remains up and consumer spending is weak. Comments made by top Fed officials in recent days, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, have convinced investors that any increase in rates is months away at the earliest. "The Fed is not going to be tightening monetary policy for a long time," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. From jannuzi at gmail.com Sat Nov 21 03:55:23 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:55:23 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Foucault=92s_Discursive_Subject?= =?windows-1252?q?_by_Blunden?= Message-ID: I know ultimately the concept goes back to Kant and Hegel, but the discussion here isn't helped much by missing out Brentano, Husserl, Freud, and Lacan (who is the crucial link to Foucault). I don't think Foucault's starting points for conception of the subject are very original, but his views on discourse and knowledge sure look original--original in the sense of influential. And then there is that move to 'power relations' producing speaking subjects, and so on. So that is Foucault's take on the 'discursive subject'. I remember reading Lacan back in grad school and noting how his phrasing about the subject and the unconscious reminded me of Frege! So see, for example: http://www.envf.port.ac.uk/illustration/IMAGES/vlsh/psycholo/lacan.htm A further dimension of Lacan's theory,. especially evident in his later seminars, such as Encore, is the attempt to give psychoanalysis a mathematical basis. Thus if a signifier only takes on meaning in relation to other signifiers, it can be symbolised by an 4 'x'. A pure signifier, in other words, would be a letter in mathematical language in as far as this signifier is purely formal. Lacan, after the work of Jacques-Alain Miller, argues that the unconscious also was a pure signifier of this 6 type, and is thus able to take on any meaning whatever; that is, it is entirely open to the context in which it is found. Such is the sense Lacan subsequently attaches to the letter in his reading of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, 'The Purloined Letter'. The letter (epistle) which is stolen assumes significance according to whether it is in the possession of the king, the queen, or the minister who stole it. Because the content of the letter is unknown (to the reader) - because it has no essential content - it begins to resemble the letter as the material support of language: a letter 70 of the alphabet. In this sense, the unconscious becomes a form of writing detached from any natural object. As a mathematical formula, it is also teachable. For the inexpressible unconscious now becomes the object = x. During the 1960s and early 197Os, Lacan's teaching bore the influence of mathemati- cians, Frege, Russell, Obdel, and Cantor. More and more he moved away from the rhetorical mode that had dominated his teaching of the 195Os. In Roudinesco's view, 'Lacan's recourse to formalization and math- ematics was a final attempt to save psycho- analysis from its hypnotic roots, but also, at the other end of the chain, from schooling, in a society where school tends to replace the church.'6 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=585B2A47EA3D08F14F3A692F451B24D7?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkpdf&contentId=1610186 Abstract: Purpose ? The purpose of this conceptual paper is to discuss the relevance of Lacanian psychoanalysis for thinking on organizational functioning and organizational change. Design/methodology/approach ? First, the authors discuss basic Lacanian ideas with regard to the notion of the unconscious and its discursive status and with respect to the crucial difference between the ego and the subject. Subjectivity is linked to the notion of the lack. The authors then address implications of Lacanian theory for thinking about and intervening in organisations. Findings ? It is argued that the non-satisfying nature of work needs to be recognised, that organizational intervention entails an intervention on discourse, and that subjectivity is an issue to be recognized in the context of organizational functioning. Originality/value ? In discussing the implications of this point of view, the authors address the possibility of a psychoanalytic ecology of human resources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse Modernism Modern theorists were focused on achieving progress and believed in the existence of natural and social laws which could be used universally to develop knowledge and thus a better understanding of society.[2] Modernist theorists were preoccupied with obtaining the truth and reality and sought to develop theories which contained certainty and predictability.[3] Modernist theorists therefore viewed discourse as a being relative to talking or way of talking and understood discourse to be functional.[4] Discourse and language transformations are ascribed to progress or the need to develop new or more ?accurate? words to describe new discoveries, understandings or areas of interest.[4] In modern times, language and discourse are dissociated from power and ideology and instead conceptualized as ?natural? products of common sense usage or progress.[4] Modernism further gave rise to the liberal discourses of rights, equality, freedom and justice; however, this rhetoric masked the substantive inequality and failed to account for differences.[5] [edit] Structuralism Structuralist theorists, such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Lacan, argue that all human actions and social formations are related to language and can be understood as systems of related elements.[6] This means that the ??individual elements of a system only have significance when considered in relation to the structure as a whole, and that structures are to be understood as self-contained, self-regulated, and self-transforming entities.? [7] In other words, it is the structure itself that determines the significance, meaning and function of the individual elements of a system. Structuralism has made an important contribution to our understanding of language and social systems. Saussure?s theory of language highlights the decisive role of meaning and signification in structuring human life more generally.[6] [edit] Postmodernism Following the perceived limitations of the modern era, emerged postmodern theory.[2] Postmodern theorists rejected modernist claims that there was one theoretical approach that explained all aspects of society.[3] Rather, postmodernist theorists were interested in examining the variety of experience of individuals and groups and emphasized differences over similarities and common experiences.[4] In contrast to modern theory, postmodern theory is more fluid and allows for individual differences as it rejected the notion of social laws. Postmodern theorists shifted away from truth seeking and instead sought answers for how truths are produced and sustained. Postmodernists contended that truth and knowledge is plural, contextual, and historically produced through discourses. Postmodern researchers therefore embarked on analyzing discourses such as texts, language, policies and practices.[4] French social theorist Michel Foucault developed an entirely original notion of discourse in his early work, especially the Archaeology of knowledge (1972). In Discursive Struggles Within Social Welfare: Restaging Teen Motherhood,[8] Iara Lessa summarizes Foucault's definition of discourse as ?systems of thoughts composed of ideas, attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak." He traces the role of discourses in wider social processes of legitimating and power, emphasizing the construction of current truths, how they are maintained and what power relations they carry with them.? Foucault later theorized that discourse is a medium through which power relations produce speaking subjects.[4] Foucault (1977, 1980) argued that power and knowledge are inter-related and therefore every human relationship is a struggle and negotiation of power. Foucault further stated that power is always present and can both produce and constrain the truth.[4] Discourse according to Foucault (1977, 1980, 2003) is related to power as it operates by rules of exclusion. Discourse therefore is controlled by objects, what can be spoken of; ritual, where and how one may speak; and the privileged, who may speak.[9] Coining the phrases power-knowledge Foucault (1980) stated knowledge was both the creator of power and creation of power. From jannuzi at gmail.com Sat Nov 21 04:10:19 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:10:19 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Baraka on Barack ( old post and topic) Message-ID: Baraka on Barack ( old post and topic) >>As regards the Hamas, I would not even try because they would probably kill me given my opposition both to religion, clerical fascism and antisemitism.<< Seems kind of wimpy to me--except in your predetermined judgmentalness (clerical fascism? anti-semitism?). I would sit down with someone like Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin, whom the warpigs of zion assassinated (along with bystanders), before I would some zionist warpig like Sharon or Netanyahu. Hamas resists, Hamas has every right to resist. Yassin was murdered by the warpigs, and he was not a 'clerical fascist'. CJ From jannuzi at gmail.com Sat Nov 21 04:30:24 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:30:24 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] US Israel Policy Message-ID: I'm sure a lot of the money veers 'hard right', but a lot of it goes straight to the Obama administration as well. Rambo Emanuel is also an IDF reservist--as well as Wall Street insider and bagman for the pro-war Demoncrats of Illinois, among oh so many other things. You have to give the Israelis credit--they figured out how to turn tens of millions of dollars of influence-buying into a multi-billion dollars-worth vicegrip on the balls of power in Washington. Of course all that money comes from the US in the first place. Still, look at the results the South Koreans, the Taiwanese, the Japanese, or the Scientologists, for example, got. Hardly anything. CJ From farmelantj at juno.com Sat Nov 21 07:55:15 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:55:15 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Interview with Michael D. Yates: The ABCs of the Economic Crisis Message-ID: <20091121.095516.5304.0.farmelantj@juno.com> http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yates201109.html ____________________________________________________________ Manufacturer-Direct Hardwood Floors Never pay retail again. Wholesale prices on all hardwood floors! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=kZaobSgkk9lEKHjd-QrfeQAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAQAAAAFAAAAALpr5j4AAAMlAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANldAAAAAA= From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 23 06:06:46 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:06:46 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?windows-1252?q?Foucault=92s_Discursive_Subject?= =?windows-1252?q?_by_Blunden?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911230506me1e6152yc62381c56beb1c46@mail.gmail.com> CB: This is good. This is the best presentation I have seen of Foucault, extracting the rational kernel of Foucault , so to speak. On the letter as pure signifier, it reminds me of symbol. A symbol is using something to represent something that it is not. In the beginning of human society was the word, uhh the letter. Symbol being "sign" in French. A letter is a pure signifier of _written_ language. As to spoken language, an utterance, a "word" is a pure signifier. Mathematics is _written_ language. No such thing as unwritten math. Did early hominids have signs/symbols ? French social theorist Michel Foucault developed an entirely original > notion of discourse in his early work, especially the Archaeology of > knowledge (1972). In Discursive Struggles Within Social Welfare: > Restaging Teen Motherhood,[8] Iara Lessa summarizes Foucault's > definition of discourse as ?systems of thoughts composed of ideas, > attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that > systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they > speak." He traces the role of discourses in wider social processes of > legitimating and power, emphasizing the construction of current > truths, how they are maintained and what power relations they carry > with them.? Foucault later theorized that discourse is a medium > through which power relations produce speaking subjects.[4] Foucault > (1977, 1980) argued that power and knowledge are inter-related and > therefore every human relationship is a struggle and negotiation of > power. Foucault further stated that power is always present and can > both produce and constrain the truth.[4] Discourse according to > Foucault (1977, 1980, 2003) is related to power as it operates by > rules of exclusion. Discourse therefore is controlled by objects, what > can be spoken of; ritual, where and how one may speak; and the > privileged, who may speak.[9] Coining the phrases power-knowledge > Foucault (1980) stated knowledge was both the creator of power and > creation of power. On 11/21/09, CeJ wrote: > I know ultimately the concept goes back to Kant and Hegel, but the > discussion here isn't helped much by missing out Brentano, Husserl, > Freud, and Lacan (who is the crucial link to Foucault). I don't think > Foucault's starting points for conception of the subject are very > original, but his views on discourse and knowledge sure look > original--original in the sense of influential. And then there is that > move to 'power relations' producing speaking subjects, and so on. So > that is Foucault's take on the 'discursive subject'. > > I remember reading Lacan back in grad school and noting how his > phrasing about the subject and the unconscious reminded me of Frege! > So see, for example: > > > > http://www.envf.port.ac.uk/illustration/IMAGES/vlsh/psycholo/lacan.htm > > A further dimension of Lacan's theory,. especially evident in his > later seminars, such as Encore, is the attempt to give psychoanalysis > a mathematical basis. Thus if a signifier only takes on meaning in > relation to other signifiers, it can be symbolised by an 4 'x'. A pure > signifier, in other words, would be a letter in mathematical language > in as far as this signifier is purely formal. Lacan, after the work of > Jacques-Alain Miller, argues that the unconscious also was a pure > signifier of this 6 type, and is thus able to take on any meaning > whatever; that is, it is entirely open to the context in which it is > found. Such is the sense Lacan subsequently attaches to the letter in > his reading of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, 'The Purloined Letter'. > The letter (epistle) which is stolen assumes significance according to > whether it is in the possession of the king, the queen, or the > minister who stole it. Because the content of the letter is unknown > (to the reader) - because it has no essential content - it begins to > resemble the letter as the material support of language: a letter 70 > of the alphabet. In this sense, the unconscious becomes a form of > writing detached from any natural object. As a mathematical formula, > it is also teachable. For the inexpressible unconscious now becomes > the object = x. During the 1960s and early 197Os, Lacan's teaching > bore the influence of mathemati- cians, Frege, Russell, Obdel, and > Cantor. More and more he moved away from the rhetorical mode that had > dominated his teaching of the 195Os. In Roudinesco's view, 'Lacan's > recourse to formalization and math- ematics was a final attempt to > save psycho- analysis from its hypnotic roots, but also, at the other > end of the chain, from schooling, in a society where school tends to > replace the church.'6 > > > http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=585B2A47EA3D08F14F3A692F451B24D7?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkpdf&contentId=1610186 > > Abstract: > > Purpose ? The purpose of this conceptual paper is to discuss the > relevance of Lacanian psychoanalysis for thinking on organizational > functioning and organizational change. > > Design/methodology/approach ? First, the authors discuss basic > Lacanian ideas with regard to the notion of the unconscious and its > discursive status and with respect to the crucial difference between > the ego and the subject. Subjectivity is linked to the notion of the > lack. The authors then address implications of Lacanian theory for > thinking about and intervening in organisations. > > Findings ? It is argued that the non-satisfying nature of work needs > to be recognised, that organizational intervention entails an > intervention on discourse, and that subjectivity is an issue to be > recognized in the context of organizational functioning. > > Originality/value ? In discussing the implications of this point of > view, the authors address the possibility of a psychoanalytic ecology > of human resources. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse > > Modernism > > Modern theorists were focused on achieving progress and believed in > the existence of natural and social laws which could be used > universally to develop knowledge and thus a better understanding of > society.[2] Modernist theorists were preoccupied with obtaining the > truth and reality and sought to develop theories which contained > certainty and predictability.[3] Modernist theorists therefore viewed > discourse as a being relative to talking or way of talking and > understood discourse to be functional.[4] Discourse and language > transformations are ascribed to progress or the need to develop new or > more ?accurate? words to describe new discoveries, understandings or > areas of interest.[4] In modern times, language and discourse are > dissociated from power and ideology and instead conceptualized as > ?natural? products of common sense usage or progress.[4] Modernism > further gave rise to the liberal discourses of rights, equality, > freedom and justice; however, this rhetoric masked the substantive > inequality and failed to account for differences.[5] > [edit] Structuralism > > Structuralist theorists, such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques > Lacan, argue that all human actions and social formations are related > to language and can be understood as systems of related elements.[6] > This means that the ??individual elements of a system only have > significance when considered in relation to the structure as a whole, > and that structures are to be understood as self-contained, > self-regulated, and self-transforming entities.? [7] In other words, > it is the structure itself that determines the significance, meaning > and function of the individual elements of a system. Structuralism has > made an important contribution to our understanding of language and > social systems. Saussure?s theory of language highlights the decisive > role of meaning and signification in structuring human life more > generally.[6] > [edit] Postmodernism > > Following the perceived limitations of the modern era, emerged > postmodern theory.[2] Postmodern theorists rejected modernist claims > that there was one theoretical approach that explained all aspects of > society.[3] Rather, postmodernist theorists were interested in > examining the variety of experience of individuals and groups and > emphasized differences over similarities and common experiences.[4] > > In contrast to modern theory, postmodern theory is more fluid and > allows for individual differences as it rejected the notion of social > laws. Postmodern theorists shifted away from truth seeking and instead > sought answers for how truths are produced and sustained. > Postmodernists contended that truth and knowledge is plural, > contextual, and historically produced through discourses. Postmodern > researchers therefore embarked on analyzing discourses such as texts, > language, policies and practices.[4] > > French social theorist Michel Foucault developed an entirely original > notion of discourse in his early work, especially the Archaeology of > knowledge (1972). In Discursive Struggles Within Social Welfare: > Restaging Teen Motherhood,[8] Iara Lessa summarizes Foucault's > definition of discourse as ?systems of thoughts composed of ideas, > attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that > systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they > speak." He traces the role of discourses in wider social processes of > legitimating and power, emphasizing the construction of current > truths, how they are maintained and what power relations they carry > with them.? Foucault later theorized that discourse is a medium > through which power relations produce speaking subjects.[4] Foucault > (1977, 1980) argued that power and knowledge are inter-related and > therefore every human relationship is a struggle and negotiation of > power. Foucault further stated that power is always present and can > both produce and constrain the truth.[4] Discourse according to > Foucault (1977, 1980, 2003) is related to power as it operates by > rules of exclusion. Discourse therefore is controlled by objects, what > can be spoken of; ritual, where and how one may speak; and the > privileged, who may speak.[9] Coining the phrases power-knowledge > Foucault (1980) stated knowledge was both the creator of power and > creation of power. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 23 12:45:36 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:45:36 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] More on Detroit Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911231145x460295abo19e7f2741e6f6bb5@mail.gmail.com> An American Catastrophe By Bob Herbert New York Times November 21, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/opinion/21herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion Detroit In many ways, it's like a ghost town. It's eerily quiet. Driving around in the middle of the afternoon, in a city that once was among the most productive on the planet, you see very little traffic, minimal commercial activity, hardly any pedestrians. What you'll see are endless acres of urban ruin, block after block and mile after mile of empty and rotting office buildings, storefronts, hotels, apartment buildings and private homes. It's a scene of devastation and disintegration that stuns the mind, a major American city that still is home to 900,0000 people but which looks at times like a cross between postwar Berlin and the ruin of an ancient civilization. Detroit was the arsenal of democracy in World War II and the incubator of the American middle class. It was the city that taught mass production to the rest of the world. It was a place that made cars, trucks and other tangible products, not derivatives. And it was the architect of the quintessentially American idea of putting people to work and paying them a decent wage. It's frightening to think seriously about what we've allowed to happen to this city and what is now happening to the middle class and the American economy as a whole. I was in Detroit with Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in labor issues. He grew up in Detroit and his love for the city and its people are palpable, as is his grief for the horrors the city has endured. The popular narrative of what happened to Detroit contains a great deal of truth but its focus is too narrow to account for the astonishing decline of this former industrial colossus. Yes, there were the riots of 1967, and white flight; and political leadership that was not just shortsighted but at times embarrassingly incompetent and corrupt. And, yes, the auto industry was a case study in self-destruction. But as Mr. Shaiken points out, Detroit was still viable enough for the Republican Party to hold its convention here in 1980, when it nominated Ronald Reagan. And it was not the riots, but the devastating recession of the early '80s that really knocked the city senseless. "That's when the place really cracked," said Mr. Shaiken, "and that was about aggressive globalization and the lack of an industrial policy, not the riots." Detroit and its environs are suffering the agonies of the economic damned because of policies, crafted at the highest national and corporate levels, that resulted in the implosion of crucially important components of America's manufacturing base. Those decisions have had a profound effect on the fortunes not just of Detroit, or even Michigan, but the entire U.S. economy. "We've been living with the illusion that manufacturing - making things - is so 20th century," said Mr. Shaiken, "and that we could succeed by concentrating, for example, on complex financial instruments while abandoning the industrial base that sustained so many American families." The idea that the fallout from the wrongheaded economic concepts of the past 30 or 40 years could be contained, with the damage limited to the increasingly troubled urban areas while sparing prosperous suburbia, has now proved as phony as Bernie Madoff's fortune. Americans, whether they live in big cities, suburban towns or rural areas, need jobs, and when those jobs are eliminated (for whatever reasons - technological advances, globalization) without being replaced, the national economy is guaranteed at some point to hit a wall. Professor Shaiken and I drove past vast lots filled with rubble and garbage and weeds, past the old Michigan Central Terminal, which was once Detroit's answer to New York's Grand Central Terminal but which has long since been abandoned; past a onetime Cadillac manufacturing plant that is now an empty lot. We stopped at an old Ford plant and stood in a stiff, cold wind, reading a plaque put up by the Michigan Historical Commission: "Here at his Highland Park plant, Henry Ford began the mass production of automobiles on a moving assembly line. By 1915 Ford built a million Model T's. In 1925 over 9,000 were assembled in a single day. Mass production soon moved from here to all phases of American industry and set the pattern of abundance for 20th century living." Professor Shaiken's grandfather, Philip Chapman, took a job at the Highland Park plant in 1914, earning five dollars a day, and worked on production at Ford until his retirement in the mid-1950s. We're at a period no less significant to the U.S. than Mr. Chapman's early years at Ford. We need a revitalized industrial policy, including the creation of whole new industries, if American families are to prosper in the coming decades. If there is any sense of urgency about this in the hearts and minds of our corporate and government leaders, I've missed it. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 23 12:57:25 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:57:25 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Comments on Herbert column Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911231157x4972199s61e390fa359d8069@mail.gmail.com> Yes, it was a great old city. You might mention, too, that from the days of FDR to those of JFK the Dems always kicked off their every-four-year presidential campaigns on Labor Day, in the genteel heart of Detroit, Grand Circus Park. You might mention the great books on the city, from Harriet Arnow's "The Dollmaker" to Joyce Carol Oates' "them." And the poetry -- lots from Philip Levine on the factories -- my choice his on summer night swimming off Belle Isle, that jewel of an island in the Detroit River, when Levine himself was a high school kid. And, speaking of kids, there's wonderful little novel, oddly-named "Snakes," a glorious look at being a teenager and Black back in the late '40s and '50s when Detroit's neighborhoods were all ethnic, and all ethnicities had some pieces of the pie of prosperity -- or its tool-&-dyes. And Robert Hayden's great short poem about waking up -- a poor Black boy -- on "Those Winter Sundays"? And Motown. And Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum. The Diego Rivera murals at the art institute -- which volunteers protected with their bodies during all-night vigils when Father McCoughlan's right-wing goon squads threatened to destroy them -- in an era when they -- Rockefeller himself -- did actually destroy the similar murals he'd installed in the 1930s-new Manhattan center named for his family. And those Life and Look magazine double-page spreads every early September in the '50s, when we boys (and girls) could thrill to first views of the next model year's chrome, tail fins, and grilles. Yes to American energies -- or, do we say funereal post-mortem? Recommend Recommended by 222 Readers 2. Billl Watson Menlo Park, California November 21st, 2009 7:11 am Unfairness and inefficiency are the giant enemies destroying our country. A quick purge and giant house cleaning of all of the government regulations from top to bottom, White House to village court houses which would find and remove all regulations and policies which impede fairness and open competition would do wonders for job creation and economic recovery. Our country has become crippled by self inflicted wounds. We need to have a system to quickly discover what really occurred causing the destruction of our economy and what caused employers to eliminate so many jobs. When creating jobs punishes employers, as is the case now, no one in their right mind will create jobs. Health care is a huge example of how catastrophic damage is being inflicted upon our countries ability to produce jobs because of harmful government mandates. Forcing individuals and employers to purchase questionable insurance to pay for expensive services and then endure endless hassels, at the hands of the health care system that has failed so many of us, is not helpful to anyone and it will cause great harm to individuals, employers, taxpayers, and our economy. A pure public option, with government sales tax funding replacing insurance, along with distributing all government funded care free to everyone requesting it only through government owned and operated hospitals, staffed by government employed doctors and health care providers, using proven VA systems, is the most cost effective and morally correct way for fixing half of the health care problem. All government funded costs could be reduced drastically, while producing better patient outcomes, if distributed only through civilian government hospitals using the proven low cost VA systems. This solves the Medicare, Medicaid and all other government funded quality and cost control problems that no one will talk about. Seniors choosing public care would have all care and medications free. Everyone choosing public care regardless of age, financial circumstances, or pre existing conditions, could have it no restrictions, no insurance, no co pays, free period. Employers who select public care for their employees would not be required to pay for or have any further involvement with health care. A National Health Care System could also take over states and local government?s health care systems to assure operating standards and relieve local funding problems while providing total transferability for patients. Insurers, drug companies, and private health care providers have convinced the President that they can not compete with low cost government systems. Using these ?unfair government advantages? as President Obama calls them, would save hundreds of billions of dollars annually while giving high quality low cost care. The second half of the health care reform solution is to have a pure private option of insurance and hospitals that would not be subjected to any government mandates. Private health care's roll in public/private reform should be to attract every client they can who would find their services so compelling that patients would pay good money to voluntarily purchase their services. Going back and forth between free public, and user purchased private care, would allow unlimited choices, ultimate freedom, and always free public care would be available. Today?s biggest profits are generated by operators dragging taxpayer dollars from government programs, or diminishing our savings, retirement, and investment money, through programs that financial firms manipulate to reward themselves. The horrific mistakes of repealing Glass-Steagel and enacting Grahm Leach Bliley in 1999 should be reversed at once and we should instantly break up and reorganize the banks and financial institutions that have a strangle hold on our economy and political institutions. Our legislators and regulators only responses are to talk about meaningless reform as they shovel more and more taxpayer money to these destructive enterprises. In a perfect world, a method for fact finding and cleanup would have been the first act, before the first bailout. The time for cleanup is now. Using a carrot and stick, by offering amnesty for cooperation or pursuing prosecutions for lawbreakers who try to hide, would save tons of money and years of time investigating, which did what, and how they did it, while creating our melt down. Bad policies, bad behavior and innocent mistakes need to be identified and corrected. For everyone who confesses everything, embarrassment could be the limit of punishment. Allowing cooperative insiders in business and government, who provide information so we could do a quick cleanup, to keep their jobs or ill-gotten gains would be a small price to pay if we could quickly get our country back. If building business becomes enjoyable and profitable job creation and our economy will take care of itself. Fairn Recommend Recommended by 135 Readers 3. Bob Sallamack New Jersey November 21st, 2009 7:11 am ?We?ve been living with the illusion that manufacturing - making things - is so 20th century,? said Mr. Shaiken, ?and that we could succeed by concentrating, for example, on complex financial instruments while abandoning the industrial base that sustained so many American families.? Germany with the highest labor costs and highest taxes for public services is now the largest exporter of manufactured products in the world. The German government did not listen to the business plan of exporting factories because of high labor costs. Since 2002 the business plan of American companies has been to export every American job that entails sitting in an office and using a computer and telephone. This was the reason for the jobless recovery from the 2001 recession. It took almost 30 years to strip the manufacturing jobs from America but it has only taken 7 years to export over 2 million American jobs and leave us with an economy where only foreign jobs will follow any growth. The government will either stop this stripping of American jobs by American companies, or prepare for a nation with tens of millions of American unemployed and no jobs. The Detroit of today, may very well to turn out to be something to be looked back in nostalgia in a few year. From cb31450 at gmail.com Mon Nov 23 13:56:18 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:56:18 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] AFL-CIO and NAACP Message-ID: <5c2e4d230911231256u341ddd16ic18d36fac5a0911e@mail.gmail.com> Trumka, the head of the NAACP and a few others had a panel discussion on the economic crisis and called for the following: Extension of unemployment benefits lifeline for millions; Commitment of hundreds of millions in federal dollars to rebuild America's schools, roads and infrastructure, including "green" jobs in alternative energy and energy conservation fields Massive aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services; the direct creation of federally funded jobs in the "hardest hit communities," both in minority and other communities that have been devastated Use of remaining TARP (bank bailout) funds to get credit flowing to small and medium businesses that would be a direct help to Main Street, rather than Wall Street