From chriscd@jhu.edu Wed Jul 1 12:36:27 1998 Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 14:37:17 -0400 From: christopher chase-dunn Subject: oil and the world-system To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu This posting is in response to Jay Hanson's email on the consequences of growing oil and fossil fuel scarcity. While I think Jay raises some important issues, I think the following points need to be emphasized: 1) Estimates as to the amount of recoverable oil vary. There is now, and has always been, serious debate within geological and policy circles as to how much ultimately recoverable oil exists in the earth. Recent reports by economists at the World Bank, for instance, point to rising oil extraction in non-Gulf nations (such as a variety of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America) to make the argument that 'concerns about oil supply are outdated' (World Bank -- forthcoming report). This conclusion stands in sharp contrast to reports from the World Energy Council, the US Energy Information Administration, and the World Resources Institute suggesting that within a few decades growing resource depletion will begin putting pressure on world oil prices. James MacKenzie of the World Resources Institute provides what I think is the most judicious survey of varying estimates, and concludes by saying that the geological consensus is that world oil extraction will plateau somewhere between 2010 and 2030. This does not mean that oil production will suddenly cease, but that the costs of extraction and of the fuel will rise for purely geological reasons. The last remaining producers of oil, which are likely to be in a select group of Persian Gulf states, would then be able to charge premium rates for an increasingly scarce commodity. 2) There are better and worse substitutes for conventional fossil fuels. The plateauing and then gradual decline of world oil production will not inevitably lead to global economic disarray. Instead, it is likely that market and policy dynamics will shift in favor of other energy resources. The question becomes, which resources? According to a resource-fixated analysis, coal would emerge again as the central fuel for world industry (even in transportation applications) since it is the most abundant of the conventional fossil fuels. Or, it is conceivable that nuclear power could resurge. Indeed, advocates of nuclear power are already pushing for the construction of a new generation of reactors that are supposed to be 'inherently safe' in this era of concern about greenhouse gas emissions. It is very important to note, however, that there are a whole range of renewable energy technologies (small-scale hydroelectric, wind, solar, and fuel cells) which now have the engineering and commercial maturity that could allow them to enter into widespread diffusion in the next decades (as is argued by such mainstream organizations as the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, the World Energy Council, and the US Energy Information Administration). These technologies, of course, would have fewer adverse environmental and health impacts than coal or nuclear power. 3) World-systemic dynamics will determine which substitutes are favored. Contrary to the most dire analyses, technological options do exist to construct a post-oil dependent world-economy. Which of the technological paths are taken, however, depends upon a grand convergence of political, commercial, and social forces which has always favored one energy regime over others at particular historical junctures (see Christopher Freeman and Carlota Perez's analyses, as well as my own dissertation). Given the institutional power of coal and nuclear sectors, it may be that those technologies have the best shot at reasserting their growth. Conversely, given the weak political and commercial power of advocates for renewable energy technologies, these systems may never enter into widespread diffusion -- with extremely dire environmental consequences. Nevertheless, it is I believe crucially important to recognize that sustainable energy alternatives exist -- and that given the right political, commercial, and social support they could replace oil as a central component of the world energy system. Extremely dire analyses of the consequences of growing oil scarcity may blind us to the fact that such alternatives exist -- thereby fostering apathy among concerned citizens. Instead, recognizing that viable alternatives exist, environmentalists, world-systemists, policy-analysts, and regular consumers should push for their greater diffusion. If such a movement could capitalize on concerns generated by forecasts of oil depletion, then the plateauing of world oil extraction could in the end ironically turn out to be a beneficial rather than a disastrous world geological event... I welcome any response to this posting. Any requests for citations or clarifications can also be sent directly to me, at the following address. |--------------------------| | Bruce Podobnik | | Department of Sociology | | Johns Hopkins University | | email: podobnik@jhu.edu | |--------------------------| From j@qmail.com Wed Jul 1 13:16:56 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: oil and the world-system Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 09:24:42 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: christopher chase-dunn >the geological consensus is that world oil extraction will plateau >somewhere between 2010 and 2030. This does not mean that oil production Thank you for your comments Christopher. I agree that this issue warrants intense discussion. I would also like to point out that WRI's estimates lie on the conservative side of the spectrum. See, for example, the recent FORBES. Franco Bernabe, chief executive of the Italian oil company ENI SpA, expects the world to experience 1970s-style oil shocks starting sometime between 2000 and 2005. http://www.forbes.com/asp/redir.asp?/forbes/98/0615/6112084a.htm ( I think Bernabe relies on Petroconsultants' analysis. ) >2) There are better and worse substitutes for conventional fossil fuels. In terms of "energy quality", nothing matches oil. I do not believe it is possible to run a consumer economy (as we know it) without oil. Here is a snip from my REQUIEM at www.dieoff.org -------------------------------------------------------------------- [snip] _________________ ENERGY EFFICIENCY There are "theoretical minimum" energy requirements to do a certain amount of work. For example, lifting a ton of rock 100 meters out of the ground requires approximately 235 kilocalories (kcal) of energy to overcome gravity -- the higher the lift, the greater the minimum energy requirements. But in practice, we need much more energy than the theoretical minimum because energy is "wasted" building and operating machinery needed to lift the rock. The difference between the theoretical minimum and the actual energy used is known as "energy efficiency". New technologies can increase the amount of work that energy can do by increasing energy efficiency, but technology can not overcome theoretical minimums. Technology can not repeal the laws of thermodynamics. _____________ ENERGY PROFIT We use up or "waste" energy in systems that supply energy -- such as oil-fired power plants. Energy is wasted when exploring for oil, building the machinery to mine the oil, mining the oil, building and operating the power plant, building power lines to transmit the energy, decommissioning the plant, and so on. The difference between the amount of energy generated and the amount of energy wasted is known as the "energy profit". We presently mine our fossil fuels from the Earth's crust. The most concentrated and most accessible fuel is mined first, thereafter more and more energy is required to mine and refine poorer and poorer quality fuels. It has been estimated that by 2005, it will require more energy to look for and mine domestic oil than the amount of energy recovered. In other words, it won't make energy sense to look for new oil in the US after 2005, because we will spend more energy than we will recover.[15] Decreasing energy profits set up a positive feedback loop: since oil is used directly or indirectly in everything, as it becomes less "energy efficient", everything else will also become less "energy efficient" -- including other forms of energy. For example, oil provides about 50% of the fuel used in coal extraction. Energy efficiency places absolute limits on how much energy we can afford to pay for imported energy. For example, if it takes two barrels of oil to produce the goods and services required to pay for one barrel of imported oil, we can not afford to pay for imported oil -- period.[16] During the next hundred years, the energy profit for fossil fuel plants (oil, gas, and coal) will become negative. It is fundamentally impossible to provide a constant level of energy while aggregate energy profit drops. Keeping the production of goods and services at current levels will require more energy than we now generate. To have more energy in the future means that energy must be diverted now from non-energy sectors of the economy into energy generation. ________________________ FALLING RESOURCE QUALITY Mining resources from the Earth's crust is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. The most concentrated and most accessible resources are mined first, thereafter more and more energy is required to mine and refine poorer-and-poorer quality resources: * The hematite ores of the Mesabi Range in Minnesota did contain 60 percent iron, but we have depleted them and now must use lower-quality taconite ores that have an iron content of about 25 percent.[17] * Since the early 1960s, the amount of energy (in fuels, electricity, and capital equipment) required to refine a ton of domestic copper has nearly doubled.[18] * The average energy content of a pound of coal dug in the US has dropped 14 percent since 1955. * The amount of energy to drill an average foot of oil well has tripled since 1945.[19] When resource quality is defined in terms of energy investment, the record clearly shows that quality is declining across almost the entire spectrum of resources. From 1972 to 1982, the fraction of GDP allocated to natural resource extraction grew from four percent to ten percent.[20] At some point in the future, mining will stop because the energy costs will have become too great. ______________ ENERGY QUALITY And contrary to a commonly held belief, rising fuel prices will not create new supplies of fuel ... despite quadrupling prices for oil and gas products, the "moral equivalent of war", and a 280 percent increase in drilling, the United States is producing less oil today than it did in 1973. -- Gever, et al. One of the most important aspects of energy is its "quality". Different kinds of fuel have different qualities. For example, coal contains more energy per pound than wood, which makes coal more efficient to store and transport than wood. Oil has a higher energy content per unit weight and burns at a higher temperature than coal; it is easier to transport, and can be used in internal combustion engines. A diesel locomotive uses only one-fifth the energy of a coal-powered steam engine to pull the same train. Oil's many advantages provide 1.3 to 2.45 times more economic value per kilocalorie than coal.[21] Oil is the most important form of energy we use, making up about 38 percent of the world energy supply. No other energy source equals oil's intrinsic qualities of extractablility, transportability, versatility and cost. These are the qualities that enabled oil to take over from coal as the front-line energy source in the industrialized world in the middle of this century, and these qualities are as relevant today as they were then: If one considers the last one hundred years of the U.S. experience, fuel use and economic output are highly correlated. An important measure of fuel efficiency is the ratio of energy use to the gross national product, E/GNP. The E/GNP ratio has fallen by about 42% since 1929. We find that the improvement in energy efficiency is due principally to three factors: (1) shifts to higher quality fuels such as petroleum and primary electricity; (2) shifts in energy use between households and other sectors; and (3) higher fuel prices. Energy quality is by far the dominant factor.[22] Per capita energy use in the US has been rising since 1991.[23] World oil consumption rose by 2.4 percent in 1996 to 69.55 million barrels a day[24] with OPEC output hitting an 18-year high of 27.39 million barrels a day in August of 1997.[25] Global oil production is expected to "peak" sometime around the year 2005.[26] As oil is depleted and replaced by lower quality fuels, energy efficiency will also decline. We can't depend on domestic gas because it will be effectively depleted by the year 2020.[27] Even if the energy profit for domestic coal continues to fall at the same rate as it has, it will thermodynamically unrecoverable by the year 2040.[28] Nothing can replace conventional oil, gas, and coal. Several studies indicate no more than 200 million Americans could be supported at a decent standard of living on solar technologies. [29] Youngquist states that oil sands will never be a major world supply, and further suggests that oil shales may never be commercially viable.[30] The World Energy Commission says that a shortage of uranium limits the expansion of conventional nuclear energy.[31] By 2035, all American nuclear plants will have been decommissioned and represent an energy-production loss equivalent to about 9 million barrels[32] of oil per day. Moreover, America, Germany, and France have all dropped their fast-breeder reactor programs![33] [snip] References at www.dieoff.org I have some specifics concerning various alternative energy at: http://dieoff.org/page143.htm In my view, energy is the key to it all. I encourage further discussion. Jay From tbos@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Thu Jul 2 06:19:31 1998 From: tbos@social-sci.ss.emory.edu To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 08:18:58 +0000 Subject: oil, coal, and the world-system In-reply-to: <359A81DC.7B5060E5@jhu.edu> WSN I agree with Bruce. Oil is far more plentiful than previously estimated, there is enough coal to last hundreds of years, and the basic technology to convert coal to gas over 60 years old. The energy crisis of the 1970s was a political problem not a natural shortage. We should concentrate on more dire problems of energy consumption than supply, such a global warming TB From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Thu Jul 2 09:23:27 1998 Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 14:27:55 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: oil and the world-system I found much to discuss in this. It would be nice to see the unpublished World Bank economists' reports you refer to. My experience is that the economists generally are optimists, down to the Morris Adelman position that oil is infinite and should be regarded as a 'renewable'; while the geologists tend to take a more sombre view, down to Campbell and Laherrere's somewhat apocalyptic forecasts of impending doom. In determining where the truth lies, however, ALL sides tend to ignore important fundamentals. Perhaps the single most important thing in discussing energy futures, and one that is almost always ignored except when it is posed as the 'Chinese threat' is the absolutely dire implication for 5 bn people living in the peripheries, of any substantial rise in primary energy prices. And here we are not just talking price rises, but absolute famines of cooking, heating, and transport fuel. What kind of developmental future lies in wait for Asia, Africa etc, if oil production plateaus at present levels, let alone declines? The human, world systemic consequences are so completely cataclysmic that it is futile to hope that the prosperous cores can shield themselves; they cannot. I always assumed that the predictions of future global war of Chase-Dunn et al actually rest on this scenario (energy famine) more than anything else. Not so? What seems totally clear is that dematerialisation and virtualisation of need/want satisfactions are mythical; as Cutler et al have shown abundantly, net material flows and per capita energy use continue to increase both absolutely and relatively in the world as a whole. Therefore, since no-one is suggesting that oil/gas production is going to increase much if at all (even the DoE EIA) in the next 20 years, and will thereafter decline, while the human population is set to go to at least 10bn, it is obvious what kind of world is just around the corner: a mad scramble to scoop out the last oil, amid deepening systemic disarray and accumulating increases in the already staggering, unjust and historically insupportable disparity of wealth and resource-use between the cores and the peripheries (ie, between imperialism and the neocolonies). This is the scenario (and actually one could point a truly terrifying vision, from disintegration of the world market to complete collapse of US urban society) on the basis of which you want us to think more positively about the transiton to renewables. My reading, which has been fairly thorough, suggests that the inevitable tranmsition to renewable (actually, regression to the earlier 'organic' solar-driven energy-base typical of all precapitalist social formations) cannot happen in any way which will permit life as we know it (ghastly enough for 2/3 of humankind) to continue. In any case, the technical/social/environmental and above all, the cost, objections to all the alternatives you list seem practically insurmountable. Has someone yet invented a photovoltaic cell which yields more energy in its lifetime than is consumed in manufacturing it (and the energy used in manufacture is always fossil fuels)? Does anyone suppose that the environmental objections to nuclear have been overcome? What kind of world will it be -- given the appalling geostrategic and country instabilities we shall see -- that is covered with thousands, even tens of thousands of nuclear installations? Even a few minutes reflection suggests the appalling security and accident problems we shall face. But even if they could be overcome (and cost effectively overcome) the physics do not allow us to suppose that humankind can susbtitute nuclear for fossil on a planet-wide basis without encountering the same global-warming and energy-entropy problems as we will anyway with fossil. The arguments are not even all that technical but are consistently ignored: if we substituted nuclear power generators for oil, in sufficient volume to generate the hydrogen to replace gasoline for transportation etc, the ambient planetary surface temperatures will increase by the same order of magnitude as the IPCC indicates for unrestrained fossil use, and we shall get the same consequences of risen sealevels, collapse of the northern tundra casrbon sinks, carbonisation of the oceans, collapse of the ice shelves, increased precipatation and intense weather events, etc. Neithe nuclear nor photovoltaics are substitutes, and nor is wind, geothermal or any of the other supposed alternatives, for a wide variety of reasons. But the real point is this: for social development to occur on a planetary base, such that biodiversity is sustained while living standards in the peripheries can rise to core levels, two things have to be true and neither is or will be. First, energy prices have to show prolonged absolute declines, but they will not, on the contrary. Second, either energy per unit of production has to fall by many orders of magnitude, or some way has to be found to abate the global warming implications of having 5 or 10 bn people use as much energy as 1bn now does. Does anyone seriously suppose that any of these things will happen? The trends are there: we are at least one percent per annum heading south on the key demographic, energy-intensity, energy-efficiency and factor productivity and input-price indicators (if oil prices are falling now it is exactly because the system is already entering the antechamber of general slump and social collapse). This exponential process is a remorseless time-bomb ticking away in the foundations of capitalism. This is why I say that the world system faces a situation reminiscent of Europe 1750-1800: rising population, hunger, social breakdown and revolution. But objectively our circumstances are far worse now than then. Mark Jones christopher chase-dunn [?or Bruce Podobnik] wrote: > This posting is in response to Jay Hanson's email on the consequences of > > growing oil and fossil fuel scarcity. While I think Jay raises some > important issues, I think the following points need to be emphasized: > > 1) Estimates as to the amount of recoverable oil vary. > > There is now, and has always been, serious debate within geological and > policy circles as to how much ultimately recoverable oil exists in the > earth. Recent reports by economists at the World Bank, for instance, > point to rising oil extraction in non-Gulf nations (such as a variety of > > countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America) to make the argument that > > 'concerns about oil supply are outdated' (World Bank -- forthcoming > report). This conclusion stands in sharp contrast to reports from the > World Energy Council, the US Energy Information Administration, and the > World Resources Institute suggesting that within a few decades growing > resource depletion will begin putting pressure on world oil prices. > James > MacKenzie of the World Resources Institute provides what I think is the > most judicious survey of varying estimates, and concludes by saying that > > the geological consensus is that world oil extraction will plateau > somewhere between 2010 and 2030. This does not mean that oil production > > will suddenly cease, but that the costs of extraction and of the fuel > will > rise for purely geological reasons. The last remaining producers of > oil, > which are likely to be in a select group of Persian Gulf states, would > then be able to charge premium rates for an increasingly scarce > commodity. > > 2) There are better and worse substitutes for conventional fossil fuels. > > The plateauing and then gradual decline of world oil production will not > > inevitably lead to global economic disarray. Instead, it is likely that > > market and policy dynamics will shift in favor of other energy > resources. > The question becomes, which resources? According to a resource-fixated > analysis, coal would emerge again as the central fuel for world industry > > (even in transportation applications) since it is the most abundant of > the > conventional fossil fuels. Or, it is conceivable that nuclear > power could resurge. Indeed, advocates of nuclear power are already > pushing for the construction of a new generation of reactors that are > supposed to be 'inherently safe' in this era of concern about greenhouse > > gas emissions. It is very important to note, however, that there are a > whole range of renewable energy technologies (small-scale hydroelectric, > > wind, solar, and fuel cells) which now have the engineering and > commercial > maturity that could allow them to enter into widespread diffusion in the > > next decades (as is argued by such mainstream organizations as the World > > Bank, the International Energy Agency, the World Energy Council, and the > > US Energy Information Administration). These technologies, of course, > would have fewer adverse environmental and health impacts than coal or > nuclear power. > > 3) World-systemic dynamics will determine which substitutes are favored. > > Contrary to the most dire analyses, technological options do exist to > construct a post-oil dependent world-economy. Which of the technological > > paths are taken, however, depends upon a grand convergence of political, > > commercial, and social forces which has always favored one energy > regime over others at particular historical junctures (see Christopher > Freeman and Carlota Perez's analyses, as well as my own dissertation). > Given > the institutional power of coal and nuclear sectors, it may be that > those > technologies have the best shot at reasserting their growth. > Conversely, > given the weak political and commercial power of advocates for renewable > > energy technologies, these systems may never enter into widespread > diffusion -- with extremely dire environmental consequences. > Nevertheless, it is I believe crucially important to recognize that > sustainable energy alternatives exist -- and that given the right > political, commercial, and social support they could replace oil as a > central component of the world energy system. Extremely dire analyses > of > the consequences of growing oil scarcity may blind us to the fact that > such alternatives exist -- thereby fostering apathy among concerned > citizens. Instead, recognizing that viable alternatives exist, > environmentalists, world-systemists, policy-analysts, and regular > consumers should push for their greater diffusion. If such a movement > could capitalize on concerns generated by forecasts of oil > depletion, then the plateauing of world oil extraction could in the end > ironically turn out to be a beneficial rather than a disastrous world > geological event... > > I welcome any response to this posting. Any requests for citations or > clarifications can also be sent directly to me, at the following > address. > > |--------------------------| > | Bruce Podobnik | > | Department of Sociology | > | Johns Hopkins University | > | email: podobnik@jhu.edu | > |--------------------------| From j@qmail.com Thu Jul 2 10:59:06 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: oil, coal, and the world-system Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 07:02:45 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: >I agree with Bruce. Oil is far more plentiful than previously >estimated, there is enough coal to last hundreds of years, and the The US will be effectively out of coal by 2040, global oil production is expected to peak in less than 10 years, global gas in less than 20. Moreover, there really are no alternatives to fossil fuel. >shortage. We should concentrate on more dire problems of energy >consumption than supply, such a global warming What can be done? I see the whole issue as "academic" because nothing can be done to avoid the "crash" anyway. I enjoy writing and communicating with interesting people. Here is another clip from my REQUIEM: ----------------------------------------------------------------- _________________ WHAT CAN BE DONE? While an impressive array of American individuals, companies, banks, investors, and think tanks are scrambling to prepare for the twenty-first century, the United States as a whole is not and indeed cannot, without becoming a different kind of country. -- Paul Kennedy The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage. -- Hazel Henderson What can we do to avoid the "crash"? As a society, Americans can do nothing because of at least two fundamental -- and apparently insoluble -- problems: (1) In principle, democracy (i.e., government by the common people) can not direct a country to any specific goal because democracy is "process" politics as opposed to "systems" politics: As the name implies, process politics emphasizes the adequacy and fairness of the rules governing the process of politics. If the process is fair, then, as in a trial conducted according to due process, the outcome is assumed to be just -- or at least the best the system can achieve. By contrast, systems politics is concerned primarily with desired outcomes; means are subordinated to predetermined ends.[41] (2) American democracy is not even true politics because is based on money -- one-dollar, one-vote. What passes for politics in America is actually a subset of our economic system. In principle, it is not possible for our economic system to avoid the "crash" because its premise, the conversion of nature into commodities, is the heart and soul of our system problems. Moreover, the doctrine of continuous and unlimited economic growth serves as a substitute for redistribution of wealth and true politics. It's a way for the plutocrats to maintain political superiority over the lesser classes while avoiding unpleasant political questions:[42] It is the orthodox growthmen who want to avoid the distribution issue. As Wallich so bluntly put it in defending growth, "Growth is a substitute for equality of income. So long as there is growth there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable" (1972). We are addicted to growth because we are addicted to large inequalities in income and wealth. What about the poor? Let them eat growth! Better yet, let them feed on the hope of eating growth in the future![43] With no true political system -- and no prospect of obtaining one -- we have no means to save ourselves. Unfortunately, several billion innocent people will die untimely deaths over the next hundred years. Individuals in small communities can protect themselves somewhat through cooperation with others (reciprocal altruism). But groups larger than a few hundred will disintegrate under competition for increasingly scarce resources: In brief, our research showed that environmental scarcities are already contributing to violent conflicts in many parts of the developing world. These conflicts are probably the early signs of an upsurge of violence in the coming decades that will be induced or aggravated by scarcity. The violence will usually be sub-national, persistent, and diffuse. Poor societies will be particularly affected since they are less able to buffer themselves from environmental scarcities and the social crises they cause. These societies are, in fact, already suffering acute hardship from shortages of water, forests, and especially fertile land.[44] [snip] References at www.dieoff.org From podobnik@jhu.edu Thu Jul 2 12:20:14 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) 02 Jul 1998 14:20:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 14:20:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Bruce M Podobnik Subject: Alernative Energy Technologies To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu This is a brief follow-up to my email message, Oil in the World-System, which was submitted to WSN through Christopher Chase-Dunn's address. As has been illustrated in the last few energy postings, there is great debate about the engineering and commercial viability of various alternative energy technologies. According to my own understanding -- again based upon studies from such organizations as the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, the World Energy Council, and the US Energy Information Administration (I hate always quoting them, but their mainstream legitimacy sometimes serves a useful purpose), as well as publications from the Worldwatch Institute and other NGOs -- a cluster of alternative energy technologies could indeed provide a viable basis for a more environmentally-sustainable, socially- equitable international energy system. In transporation systems, the crucial role of petroleum could be replaced by hydrogen-powered fuel cells. If this hydrogen was itself produced via solar-powered facilities (which is now being done in pilot plants), this would provide a large-scale, environmentally-sustainable new energy system which could be diffused throughout the world-economy. Meanwhile, a combination of wind, solar, and small scale hydroelectric systems could generate increasing shares of electricity in both developed and developing nations. The unpublished World Bank report I refered to in my first posting (entitled Fuel for Thought: A New Environmental Strategy for the Energy Sector, draft printed in June 1998 with final version due out later this year) contains one scenario in which, given adequate political, commercial, and social support, a cluster of renewable energy technologies actually surpasses petroleum in providing world commerical energy requirements by late in the next century. There is of course nothing guaranteeing that this kind of scenario will come to pass. Difficult political, commercial, and social hurdles must be overcome in order to even begin moving in the right direction. And who knows: perhaps the true reality is that constructing an environmentally-sustainable energy foundation for the world-economy is impossible (as has been suggested in a couple of WSN postings). But I personally encourage all concerned people, including serious critics of contemporary capitalism (as I consider myself to be) to push for the wider diffusion of alternative energy systems NOW, even if the overall global energy trajectory is ultimately unknown. Otherwise, what are we to do, watch as the world-system goes up in smoke and shout "I told you so!" as we cough ourselves to death? Cordially, Bruce |--------------------------| | Bruce Podobnik | | Department of Sociology | | Johns Hopkins University | | email: podobnik@jhu.edu | |--------------------------| From j@qmail.com Thu Jul 2 12:27:17 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: oil and the world-system Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 08:35:06 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" >There is now, and has always been, serious debate within geological and >policy circles as to how much ultimately recoverable oil exists in the >earth. Recent reports by economists at the World Bank, for instance, Not true. "For many years geologists and oil companies have published estimates of the total amount of crude oil that will ultimately be recovered from the earth over all time. Remarkably, these assessments of Estimated Ultimately Recoverable (EUR) oil have varied little over the past half century." [ This is direct quote from a 1996 World Resources Institute paper by James MacKenzie. Take a look: http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/finitoil/eur-oil.html ] Estimates from economists are irrelevant because the limits on oil production are thermodynamic -- not economic. Jay From j@qmail.com Thu Jul 2 12:46:41 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: Alernative Energy Technologies Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 08:54:31 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" >political, commercial, and social support, a cluster of renewable >energy technologies actually surpasses petroleum in providing world >commerical energy requirements by late in the next century. This World Bank report is simply not believable. Undoubtedly, they have concerned themselves with "economics" and failed to consider either "net energy" or the availability of "arable land". David Pimentel understands both net energy and arable land. ------------------------------------------- [snip] Several studies indicate that to enjoy a relatively high standard of living, America's human population should be 200 million or less (Pimentel et al., 1994a). [snip] http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/gaia-pc/Pimentel2.html ------------------------------------------- [snip] The inevitable conclusion is that the availability of land will be the major constraint to the expanded use of solar energy systems because land is needed for solar energy, and this need cannot encroach on that needed by agriculture, forestry, and natural biota in the ecosystem. Our expanding human population can be expected to put increasingly great pressure on land availability and use. The amount of land required to provide solar-based electricity for a city of 100,000 people illustrates the land constraints. To provide the needed 1 billion kWh/yr from wood biomass would require maintaining 330,000 hectares of permanent forest (Table 3). Even hydropower is, in part, land based, because on average it requires 13,000 hectares of land for an adequate size reservoir. Then too, the land used for the reservoir is often good, productive agricultural land (Pimentel et al., 1984). Thus, solar energy and hydropower have serious land and environmental limitations. Note that nuclear and coal-fired power plants, including mining, require relatively small areas of land compared to biomass and hydropower production. Unfortunately, the conversion of biomass like corn into energy such as liquid fuels requires enormous inputs of fossil energy. For example, about 1.5 liters of oil equivalents are used to produce 1 liter of ethanol equivalents (ERAB, 1981; Pimentel et al., 1988). Thus, under optimal conditions only about one-third of the biomass can be converted into valuable liquid fuels (Pimentel et al., 1988). Even if we quadrupled the efficiency so that 1 kcal of fossil energy produced 2 kcal of ethanol, about 10 acres of corn land would be required to fuel one U.S. automobile per year (Pimentel et al., 1988). If we make the optimistic assumption that the amount of solar energy used today could be increased about 3- to 10-fold without adversely affecting agriculture, forestry, or the environment, then from 3 to 10 x 1015 kcal of solar energy would be available (Pimentel et al., 1984; Ogden and Williams, 1989). This is one-fifth to one-half the current level of energy consumption in the United States, which is about 20 x 1015 kcal and averages 8,000 liters of oil equivalents per capita per year (USBC, 1988). [snip] http://dieoff.org/page136.htm ------------------------------------------- Jay From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Thu Jul 2 13:32:55 1998 Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 20:30:25 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: WSN Subject: Re: Alernative Energy Technologies Bruce Podobnik wrote: > If this hydrogen was itself produced via solar-powered > facilities (which is now being done in pilot plants), this would > provide a large-scale, environmentally-sustainable new energy system > which could be diffused throughout the world-economy. > This may sound harsh, but I too have ploughed through masses of this IEA, USGS, World Bank stuff on energy and renewables and I have seen nothing to give me this kind of optimism, on the contrary. The idea that solar-powered hydrogen plants for example can substitute for gasoline/diesel powered transportation systems is surely a fantasy; the numbers do not merely not equate; the orders of magnitude differences between what can be derived from solar fluxes, and what we now get from oil and gas, show an incommensurable, unbridgeable gulf between the present day energy system and anything we might ever hope for, from renewables. This seems totally misguided. Actually it is a strategy for wasting what fossil reserves are left on providing energy cross-subsidies to photovoltaics and similar technologies which have no chance whatever of being cost competitive or, more importantly, of being scaled up to meet the huge demand created by impending energy shortfalls. I know that that people like Amory Lovins have done much to give currency to the ideas about hybrid and fuel cell engines now being frenetically touted by the big auto makers, but this seems sheer last ditchery to me; the world has already wasted tens of billions of dollars on fission and fusion as alternatives: all that colossal investment was also a mere waste of existing fossil fuel resources and the net result is not just zero, it is Chernobyl -- and fantasies about cold fusion. Now we are chaisng even sillier wild geese, in the form of windmills and photovoltaics, and meanwhile ignoring the real but deeply uncomfortable and even shocking alternatives which do exist: the ONLY alternatives. What actually is necessray, although it surely won't happen in a world where the big auto makers have announced 15 new model ranges of gas guzzling 4-wheel drives in the last year alone -- is for the West to transform NOW and VOLUNTARILY its industrial base and energy system, while there is time; and to do so on the basis of a radical redistribution of resources to the neocolonies/peripheries. Nothing of the kind will happen, of course: instead the oil companies will continue to refine their extraction technologies; they already mount nuclear magnetic resonance scanners on their horizontal drills, which snake around under the surface sniffing out the last dregs of oil; production wil climb, all that can be extracted and burnt will be; and then one day it will all be over. The real and instructive anaology is with the world fishing industry which also managed to raise catches year on year using 'advanced' technology, and now the fisheries are collapsing one by one, almost overnight, starting with the disaster in Newfoundland. Overshoot and dieoff is how it will be, unfortunately; the last decade of deregulation and privatisation, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of all attempts at prorationing or real conservation/planned resource use, is what has led to the present glut, but the true price we shall pay for this glut is that the oil will run out sooner rather than later, and the world will be totally unprepared for that calamitous day. Mark Jones From gderlug@nwu.edu Thu Jul 2 14:27:48 1998 Thu, 2 Jul 1998 15:27:42 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <199806171341.UAA03863@mx.nsu.ru> Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 15:30:52 -0500 To: rozov@nsu.ru, WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: "Georgi M. Derluguian" Kolya, Tak ty nadeeshsya na SSHA vyehat? Teper est gde ostanovistya, i bilety by tebe otsyuda zakazali, tak, vrode by, deshevle. U nas zhe beda -- Stepan poseyal gde-to v skverike vse svoi avuary, a bylo u nego azh 32 dollara! U tebya vot v vozraste 7 let bylo 32 dollara valyutoi?! kak-to on umudrilsya nasobirat po tsentu, potom hodil v bank, menyal na bumazhki. Trogaet, chto ved mame hotel ser'gi s serebryanymi klarnetikami kupit'!!! Vse sidel v ugolochke i denezhki schital. A potom zapihal v zadnii karman shtanishek i poehal na velosipede katatsya k svoemu priyatelyu Devidu Parsonsu (oni irlandtsy, katoliki, tam mamasha tolko chto pyatogo rebenka rodila, im vse ravno, skolko detei nositsya vokrug.) Vot gde-to po doroge Stepan svoi portmonne i poseyal. Udruchen tak, chto my i piknut boimsya. A zato na starost u menya vsya nadezhda na nego, denezhnogo meshka. Stepan rodstvennyi, ne ostavit. A vot nash samyi blondistyi v mire Martiros tiho sidit v uglu i chitaet knizhki -- nakonets-to kolichestvo perevalilo v kachestvo, nachal chitat sam. I ego tozhe pridetsya Stepanu soderzhat. Obnimayu! Zhora Georgi M. Derluguian Assistant Professor Department of Sociology Northwestern University 1812 Chicago Avenue Evanston, Illinois 60208-1330 (847) 491-2741 (rabota) From kpmoseley@juno.com Thu Jul 2 15:09:17 1998 From: kpmoseley@juno.com To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 16:55:21 -0700 Subject: Lemuel Johnson : Kpana & Sarjoh; CC, KMK , & The Leonenet Chorus X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 0-97,99-102 --------- Begin forwarded message ---------- From: Lemuel Johnson To: LEONENET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Kpana & Sarjoh; CC, KMK , & The Leonenet Chorus Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 16:09:07 -0400 Here are some program notes, Netters, for a Leonenet Production of *The Merchant of Venice* as *The Debt Problem*. My collaborators, as identified below, inform me that their agreed-upon subtitle for this=20 drama is "No Laughing Matter At All."=20 The Scene: A place "wrack'd on the Narrow Seas"; a "very dangerous flat, and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship lie buried." KMK (as the Duke): The Duke cannot deny the course of law; For the commodity that strangers have With us in Venice, if it be denied, Will impeach the justice of the state, Since that the trade and profit of the city Consisteth of all nations. One-More-Bride! KPANA (as Bassanio) Tis not unknown to you ...=20 How much I have disabled mine estate, By something showing a more swelling port Than my fair means would grant continuance Nor do I now make moan to be abridged From such a noble rate, but my chief care Is to come fairly off from the great debts=20 Wherein my something too prodigal [behaviour] Hath left me gag'ed. SARJOH (as reformed Duke of Morocco) All that glisters is not gold Oft have you heard that told! CCONJOH (as Portia): The quality of mercy is not strained... BIG BAD BARCLAYS (as Shylock): You have called me misbeliever, cut-throat dog ...Well then, it now appears you need my help... What should I say to you? Should I not say, "Hath a dog money? Is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats?" CC (as Portia to G7 or Paris Club or OAU): Mercy is enthroned above the sceptred sway ...bid me tear the bond. =20 Big Bad LENDERS (An IMF Chorus?) Tell me not of mercy... Jailer, look to him... I'll have my bond; I'll not hear thee speak. I'll have my bond, therefore speak no more... I am sure the Duke Will never grant this forfeiture to hold. =20 CC (as Portia, fed up): [S]eize one half of his goods; the other half Comes to the privy coffer of the state... Leonenet CHORUS (variously led by SAHR KPUNDEH, or ABDUL KABBA): =20 [But] there be land-rats and water-rats, water- thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates... =20 ---- Final(?) Act: The Foreign-Experts Scene Or, How To Re-Cycle the Debt Problem (via *Macbeth*): with JONAH* (as Malcolm): I think our country sinks beneath the yoke:=20 It weeps, it bleeds and each new day a gash Is added to her wounds. I think withal There would be hands uplifted in my right; And here from gracious England [my hope] Of goodly thousands. Leonenet Chorus: O Scotland, Scotland! *** Stay well; stay in touch. Eljay PS JONAH* I am a man, this character insists, to whom "taints and blames" are "strangers." He is, so he insists, "As yet unknown to woman, never was foresworn,/ [and] Scarcely have coveted what was not [his] own/." Moreover, "At no time [ever] broke his faith." Kelfala M. Kallon wrote: =20 > Once upon a time, two Sierra Leoneans=96Kpana and Sarjoh=96each receive= d a >loan of $100 from Barclays Bank. --------- End forwarded message ---------- _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] From rhutchin@U.Arizona.EDU Thu Jul 2 17:08:23 1998 Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 16:08:17 -0700 (MST) From: Richard N Hutchinson To: Jay Hanson Subject: Re: Alernative Energy Technologies In-Reply-To: <002101bda5ea$d98a6d20$ba745ecc@jay95> Jay- Assuming that you're right about limits to growth -- and basically, then, so was Malthus -- what do we do? If we're really just bacteria mindlessly reproducing in a petri dish, then why bother to disseminate learned analysis of the situation? (Or entertaining essays like "Lunatic Politics" on your website.) Unfortunately, I tend to agree with the doomsayers, but if there's no leverage for action to be gained in all the analysis, then we should find something more constructive and/or enjoyable to do. Richard Hutchinson From j@qmail.com Thu Jul 2 17:58:21 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: Alernative Energy Technologies Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 14:06:04 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Richard N Hutchinson >Unfortunately, I tend to agree with the doomsayers, but if there's no >leverage for action to be gained in all the analysis, then we should find >something more constructive and/or enjoyable to do. I began my effort to understand these world systems about ten years ago. At that time, I was motivated to join with my fellow creatures to help solve our collective survival problem. Over the years, I developed an ADDICTION to new knowledge and philosophical thought. Although I now know humanity will never achieve "sustainability", I just can't stop reading, writing, and thinking about these issues. In truth, our future is written in our genes. We can no more escape our genetic programming than we can flap our arms and fly to the moon. David Price said it best: "The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet's energy balance." ENERGY AND HUMAN EVOLUTION, by David Price http://dieoff.org/page137.htm Jay -------------------------------------------------------------- "When Leon the tyrant of Phlius asked Pythagoras who he was, he said, 'A Philosopher,' and he compared life to the public festivals, where some went to compete for a prize and others went with things to sell, but the best as observers; for similarly, in life, some grow up with servile natures, greedy for fame and gain, but philosophers seek the truth." Diogenes Laertius From rozov@nsu.ru Mon Jul 6 03:19:31 1998 Mon, 6 Jul 1998 16:12:17 +0700 (NOVST) From: "Nikolai S. Rozov " To: Mark Jones , lbo-talk@lists.panix.com Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 16:15:01 +0000 Subject: Re: Leninist-International Reply-to: rozov@nsu.ru In-reply-to: <35996E5E.E9166204@netcomuk.co.uk> my congratulations with the birth of a new brave list and some question from the country (Russia) that had major happiness of marriage with the proclaimed ideology On 1 Jul 98 Mark Jones wrote: > Announcing the Leninist-International e-mail discussion > list. > The Leninist-International list has been set up, and > will be run, by the Communist Party Refoundation, a new > party established in Britain this year. Refoundation > openly states its views: capitalism is headed for > economic and ecological ruin, and is hell bent on taking > humanity down with it. The only solution is for the > workers and peasants of the world to overthrow the > existing order, establish their own rule, and to proceed > immediately to the revolutionary reorganisation of > society from bottom to top and from top to bottom. We > need a revolution, and a revolution is no tea party. It > will be armed, or it will be nothing at all. good, but how should we treat this claim? maybe it's not more than retorics and joke? you promised below to throw out all wasters of time, so it seems that you are serious if you wish us to read all this, but while reading it seriously the following questions emerge: 1. do you realize the amount of weapons in the modern world? 2. do you realize that "the revolutionary reorganisation of society from bottom to top and from top to bottom" will involve major part of these weapons with mass people extermination? 3. do you realize that NATO and allies have military predominance in the modern world? are you ready, self-conscious and responsible for alliances with Latin-American narco-revolutionaries, with Arab terrorists, with Jirinovski etc, in your struggle with 'late capitalism' because other political-social movements seem not to be ready for this fight 4. modern military experts tell that the most probable weapon for future wars will be biological weapon (very cheap and not less effective than nuclear): when you tell "the revolution will also have to be international" are you ready to continue and to say urbi et orbi that you appeal for the Great Plague in Washington, Paris, London, New-York, Chicago, Boston, San-Francisco, Tokio (to mention only major nets of hatred imperialism)? 5. you pretend to be scientific, so we should expect that you will use in your practice results of sudies of social revolutions (f.e. Skocpol, Tilly, Goldstone, etc) not only Leninins ideology of a century ago; in these terms firts you must do everything for emergence of fiscal crises, and geopolitical strains (preferably open defeat in the war) for initiating a real revolution; that's why are you ready to tell everybody that you wish "the worse the better", that you appeal for more fiscal press on common people and defeat in war of your own country (say, US or UK)? 6. having the historical experience of past revolutions (f/e/ French and Russian), do you realize that the first layer of revolutionaries usually is exterminated later (with all their children and relatives) but following layers of revolutionaries; here it is not a question for you, we should expect that your wifes and children write in the Internet that yes, they are ready to be arrested, tortures and to die in the name of wonderful political ideas of their husbands and fathers - try to organize this action, if you are reall serious 7. do you realize that real transition of political power, military, financial, productive, ideological, and other resourses from modern elits (really capitalist) to some 'worker-peasant' centers of power will not be possible without decades of massive systematic suppression of people and all citizen rights, without new KGB, GULAGS, GESTAPOI, gas cameras, etc; tell us please, when you tell "We need a revolution, and a revolution is no tea party. It will be armed" - how many millions (take it seriously, why not billions???) of people you are ready to sacrifice in the name of your new brave world? 8. and the last question, let us be 'optimistic' (in Leninist sense) for a moment and imagine that after all these disasters you or your followers manage to construct some new global non-capitalist, but Leninist regime. You are designers of this global happiness and we, common people, wish just some guarantees: really, what are your guarantees that there will not be again a predator bureaocracy in this regime, no new concentration of power and resources? no new geopolitical conflicts and wars? no new stages of ecological crisis? no new shifts of hegemony? no new world-systems and competition? maybe you wish to tell us like Fukuiama that the world history will come to its end (not liberal but communist-leninist) after success of your revolution? if so you need VERY serious arguements, please present them to us > The Internet was created by > imperialism in order to strengthen its defences. We will > use it to strengthen our offensive. my questions must seem strange and non-polite because everybody (i suppose including creators of the new list) understand: no, not at all, no new shooting and bombing, no terror, no totalitarianism, to tortures, no mass murder and rape, no plague, just a new toy for Western left intellectuals, just a new niche for their self-promotion and and a nice just little scandalous popularity within the same hatred capitalism, don't worry, be happy > > This new list is one more weapon in our common arsenal. > As our comrades from Turkey and Kurdistan say: We are > right! We will win! but after these words we can again doubt, may be Jim Hillier and Mark Jones are really serious and really revolutionary? if so - please answer on the questions presented above seriously, without it one can suspise that all this staff with Lenininst International and global Revolution is in fact not more than non-responsible chat. best wishes (including not to be victims of any future revolution) Nikolai Rozov, Russia > > Jim Hillier > Mark Jones > Moderators > Leninist-International > > The Insurrection website URL is: > http://www.geocities.com/~comparty From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Mon Jul 6 07:21:01 1998 Mon, 6 Jul 1998 09:20:36 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 09:20:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: "Nikolai S. Rozov " Subject: Re: Leninist-International Nikolai, Not endorsing the group you criticize, I note that you are fighting ideology with ideology, and of the two documents your's is the more deeply ideological, that is, more deeply a distortion of the world. I don't have time to go through and note all of the ways that your polemics have twisted reality all out of shape, but I must protest: "Arab terrorists"? Come on! Andy From gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca Mon Jul 6 12:43:51 1998 Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 14:43:45 -0400 (EDT) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: Gernot Kohler Subject: anatomy of a praxis (Mandela) ....perhaps, something can be learnt for world-system praxeology from the case of South Africa...(I am using the notion of "global apartheid" in the following as a heuristic; no theoretical claims for, against, or concerning essence implied)...South African apartheid did not end in the style of a classical European revolution. The process was different. It was closer to a Gandhi-style overcoming, albeit this model is not fully applicable either because murder and violence of various kinds were part of the strategies of both sides. However, the level of violence did not reach magnitudes as in the war in Vietnam, the Algerian war of independence, or the Spanish Civil War. In European history the class conflicts (and struggles) were mostly between people of the same linguistic and ethnic group (e.g., French revolutions). In South Africa topdogs and underdogs were of different ethno-cultural-linguistic groups, one side having arrived from abroad within the not-too-distant past. Both sides were not homogeneous -- Bantu and Zulu on the African side; Afrikaners and English on the white side; Indians and other groups at the fringes. Interestingly, Mandela and friends did not call for driving the whites into the sea but for "multiracial democracy". (Formal)(liberal) democracy thus became a powerful weapon for the underdogs -- "one man, one vote" (Mandela, ANC). On the underdog side non-Marxists and Marxists had some kind of working relationship. On the topdog side, whites-against-apartheid were important (including white elites against apartheid). The fact that South African apartheid came to an end implies that global capital (or South African capital) was either not "calling all the shots", as one might say, or that their interests were not as crystallized as one might think or that they did not have all politicians in their pockets as predicted by theory. The end of South African apartheid looks attractive as a model for leftist world-system praxeology. Wallerstein called for Unthinking Social Science (book title), Frank calls for ReOrient (book title). In my opinion, these calls have to be extended to the area of praxeology -- Unthink and ReOrient old-fashioned eurocentric leftist praxeology if we want to remake and Re-Form the present Global Formation (book title, Chase-Dunn) in the direction of a democratic and just world serving the people ... just a thought ... no essence, only heuristicism... -gk From dhenwood@panix.com Mon Jul 6 17:18:48 1998 Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 19:19:04 -0400 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: Doug Henwood [Mark Jones, who's having computer problems, asked me to forward this] Subject: Re: Leninist-International Date: From: Mark Jones To: rozov@nsu.ru Nikolai S. Rozov wrote: > my congratulations with the birth of a new brave list and some > question from the country (Russia) that had major happiness of > marriage with the proclaimed ideology Nikolai, We have met before, virtually. But my attempts to engage you in debate on WSN were not very successful: you told me about the idiocies and criminality of the Brezhnev era, and considered this was sufficient argument. I see a certain movement in your thinking now. Perhaps life in Soros-funded Novosibirsk has not been the uplifting experience some Russian academics had hoped. You still seem full of barely suppressed rage at the very idea that anyone with an IQ in double figures could continue to entertain delusions about 'leninism' etc; but now your rage has acquired a Lear- like, tragic quality: after all, Russian capitalism proved a shortlived utopia, did it not? Your thinking now appears confined to the proposition that, yes, OK, maybe the Russian population will decline to 60m or less and the Russian nation even become extinct, but even this seems more bearable than the alternative, if the alternative is the ending of all life everywhere. You argue that it is better to accept slavery than death, for we all know that behind the IMF (and Soros) is Nato, the Bomb, viruses, the Pentagon, the death squads, the torturers etc. This, if I may say so, is not quite the the ringing endorsement of the 'fresh air of freedom' which you were making a year ago. Even if you're right, some may take the view that it is better to die on our feet than live on our knees. I presume we still have that choice. In the era of exterminism, under the rule of thanatocracy, at least the freedom to die honourably is still guaranteed. But in any case, you know perfectly well that the essence of our argument (and of Lenin's) is that capitalism produces crises which tend to debouch in wars and revolutions (as well as recuperations). Mao wrote an essay called 'It's Terrible or It's Fine' in which he mocked the angst of well-meaning intellectuals who would love a revolution, but do not like the mess it brings. Who would love a revolution if it could be accomplished with flowers, mass choirs and Gandhiesque civility and cheek-turning and not by means of 'the criticism of arms'. But you are a practical man of affairs, you know perfectly well, and it's the whole burden of your message, that revolutions do not happen this way. Therefore either the Russian people (for example) will continue to die like flies, or they will rise up in insurrectionary revolt. They won't, let's face it, impress Yeltsin's gang by linking arms and throwing posies at the Kremlin walls. Either world capitalism is sinking into a quagmire -- a historical impasse just like the one the USSR sank into -- only much bigger, more dangerous, and just as impossibke to escape. Or the neoliberals and globalists are right, and everything will be for the best, in a month, a year, a decade; capitalism will bring its long-promised fruits and History will indeed come to a full-stop. In this case, we are wasting our time. In the first case, we are not. In our theses and writings, Refoundation has tried and will continue to try to address your questions with due seriousness. On the question of why the USSR turned out the way it did, I have posted this on our website, and will post more: http://www.geocities.com/~comparty/sr1.htm On the question of 'the worse the better', I think you are being unfair. You should not blame the messenger for the news, after all. The messenger is trying to be helpful in issuing due warnings; it is enough to prove that the message is ill-conceived and wrong without impugning our motives too. I do not believe in 'the worse the better' and as a matter of fact have just been arguing as much elsewhere. Your idea that after the revolution we shall implement a ghastly Brezhnevite dystopia is also a rush to judgment. Someone else on another list said much the same thing (not as passionately as you) and my answer was: I'm happy to state HERE AND NOW FOR THE RECORD AND FOREVER THE FOLLOWING: I DO NOT BELIEVE IT IS WRONG TO WELCOME A PLURALITY OF SOCIALIST PARTIES AND I DO NOT THINK ANY PERSON OR PARTY HAS A MONOPOLY ON THE TRUTH so there (wouldn't be any point in hosting an elist if I did think that, would there?). More: I do not believe in the appropriateness, relevance or correctness of the idea that there must be just one democratic centralist party per country and I do not believe in one-party states in any case. Actually, I lived for a number of years in Moscow and travelled all over the USSR. I have been arrested by the KGB for the minor misdemeanour of attempting to marry a Russian, and seen the inside of a Russian cell. So I do know what it feels to live in a country where no-one has the right to leave (they cleverly took away my exit visa; thus, I became a non-person, with no right to stay and no right to go either. I became a wraith inside my own life.) Still, I understand how these things can happen. You, I know, blame Lenin. I think the thing has something to do with capitalism. If Lenin's World Revolution had materialised at the time he was setting up his first (coalition, remember) government, everything would have been different, wouldn't it? Or do you think the world would have been overrun by Brezhnevs? Nikolai Rozov also wrote: > let us be 'optimistic' (in Leninist > sense) for a moment and imagine that after all these disasters you or > your followers manage to construct some new global non-capitalist, > but Leninist regime. You are designers of this global happiness Nah, come off it, Kolya. I wouldn't be bloody daft enough to try it. No, after all THAT unpleasantness, I'd go off on a long trip, somewhere even Makar couldn't herd his flocks. Best wishes Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty PS You mentioned Zhirinovsky. I once spent an hour or two socially with him. But I am not a fascist nor even a National Bolshevik for all that. Leninism is about internationalism, solidarity, freedom. Lenin lives and shall live. PPS I shall be unable for technical reasons to answer email for the next few days. http://www.geocities.com/cgi-bin/homestead/file_manager - {PAGE|1} - From chriscd@jhu.edu Tue Jul 7 08:13:38 1998 Date: Tue, 07 Jul 1998 10:14:13 -0400 From: christopher chase-dunn Subject: ssha annual meeting To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu the social science history association's annual conference info is now available at http://www.history.upenn.edu/ssha/ chris From austria@it.com.pl Wed Jul 8 02:51:42 1998 Reply-To: From: "Austrian Embassy" To: "<" Subject: websites on European politics for class-room use Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:54:30 +0200 Please enjoy our new Austrian EU-Presidency website under the address http://www.eu.presidency.gv.at Please also take note of our Austrian Foreign Office website at http://www.bmaa.gv.at >From there, you can also download the Austrian Foreign Policy Yearbook, which contains quite a number of in-depth analyses on European integration, regional conflicts, etc. I also inform you about the excellent Le Monde Diplomatique July edition below kind regards yours Arno Tausch (now Counsellor for Labour and Migration Affairs, Austrian Embassy Warsaw) ---------- > From: Le Monde diplomatique > To: English edition dispatch > Subject: July 1998 > Date: Dienstag, 07. Juli 1998 18:24 > > LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE > _________________________________________________________________ > > Le Monde diplomatique > > english edition > > July 1998 > > edited by Wendy Kristianasen > > > > > LEADER > > Hope in Colombia * > > by Ignacio Ramonet > > Colombia, one of Latin America's oldest democracies, is still one > of the region's most violent countries where guerrilla movements > are hand in glove with drug traffickers. But the country's > newly-elected conservative government may provide the catalyst > for a new nation-wide drive for peace. > http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/07/01edito.html > > Translated by Ed Emery > > > > ON THE BRINK OF WAR IN KOSOVO > > NATO at a loss > > by Alain Joxe > > After conducting aerial manoeuvres over Albania and Macedonia in > mid-June, NATO is now considering whether to make good its > threats of military intervention in Kosovo. The Atlantic Alliance > was a creation of the cold war, and the internal disagreements > among its members prove it is having a tough time formulating a > consistent strategy for the new world order. The time has come > for the countries of Europe to establish a continental system of > preventive security independent of the United States. > > Translated by Barry Smerin > > Albania exposed > > by Chrisophe Chiclet > > The crisis in Kosovo has come at a bad time for Albania's > socialist government which regained power a year ago: the > troubles are being exploited by the anti-communist opposition and > there is also the question of the Kosovar refugees. Prime > Minister Fatos Nano has also failed to tackle the problems of law > and order, economic recovery and democracy. And the government > has come under fire even from within its own ranks on the issue > of corruption. > > Translated by Barry Smerin > > > > BITTER FRUITS OF A MIRACLE > > When East Asia falters * > > by Philip S. Golub > > What would have seemed impossible a few years ago is now > happening. Japan is faltering. According to Tony Blair, this is > the greatest threat to the world economy for twenty years. The > whole of East Asia is now being dragged into recession and > financial turmoil which could engulf the entire world. The > restructuring imposed by the West's neoliberal gurus has brought > down Asia's economies - once praised to the skies - and is now > destroying the cohesion of its societies. > http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/07/04golub.html > > Translated by Malcolm Greenwood > > > > > > IN THE SHADOW OF GENERALS, HIRED KILLERS AND DRUG TRAFFICKERS > > Turkey's pivotal role in the international drug trade > > by Kendal Nezan > > In August 1998 General Ismail Hakki Karadayi comes to the end of > his term as chief of staff of Turkey's armed forces. His five > years in the post have been marked by the growing role played by > military officers in all aspects of Turkey's political life - > including the state-sponsored growth of mafia activities related > to the drugs trade and the murder of opposition politicians and > civil rights campaigners. > > > > ESCALATION OF VIOLENCE IN THE HORN OF AFRICA > > Ethiopia-Eritrea, an absurd war > > by Jean-Louis Péninou > > Background to the conflict * > > The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which by mid-June had > claimed nearly a thousand lives, has taken everyone by surprise. > It is not an ethnic, religious or tribal conflict or a power > struggle but, rather, an old-fashioned border dispute. American > attempts to mediate have been spectacularly unsuccessful and the > situation is worrying neighbouring countries and destabilising > the region. > http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/07/07ethio2.html > > Translated by Lorna Dale > > > > POWER STRUGGLE IN KIVU > > Congolese flashpoint > > by Gérard Prunier > > Over a year after the overthrow of the dictatorship in Zaire, it > is clear that the country (renamed Congo) is still facing many of > the same problems. The most immediate is the threat of ethnic and > military unrest in the two eastern provinces, North Kivu and > South Kivu. These were the scene of the 1996 uprising that > signalled the beginning of the end for President Mobutu. Despite > all the speeches about conflict prevention, the crisis is not > unexpected. > > Translated by Lorna Dale > > > > HALTING THE PROLIFERATION OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS > > The spectre of bioterrorism * > > by Gilbert Achcar > > The great powers hang back > > by Bruno Barrillot > > Conventions and treaties * > > Despite the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan, > proliferation of nuclear weapons will remain relatively limited > in years to come. States may however be tempted, particularly in > areas of conflict, to develop other weapons of mass destruction, > such as chemical and especially biological weapons, which are > less costly and easier to conceal. The various international > treaties do not provide adequate control measures: the greatest > threat to our future is now "bioterrorism". > http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/07/09bio1.html > http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/07/11bio3.html > > Translated by Barbara Wilson > > > > > > THE TWO FACES OF THE TUNISIAN REGIME > > Women's rights, but only for some > > by Luiza Toscane and Olfa Lamloum > > With Algeria consumed by civil war and Morocco going through a > difficult transition, Tunisia looks like a oasis of stability. > Yet, in spite of appearances, General Ben Ali has been > responsible for the systematic repression of Islamists. Speeches > about women and reformist measures are an attempt to project an > image of modernity and democracy abroad, but they hide another > part of the picture. > > Translated by Francisca Garvie > > > > MIDDLE EAST BLUE GOLD > > Sharing out the region's water > > by Mohamed Sid-Ahmed > > Will the war for water be the next major conflict? As consumption > increases and reserves fall dramatically, countries are having to > re-evaluate their assets and future development in terms of their > reserves of "blue gold", and apply contractual disciplines to the > way in which rivers are shared out in a vast Middle Eastern > market. However, there is scope for imaginative thinking in order > to increase the supply of water - and, simultaneously, promote > peace. > > Translated by Julie Stoker > > > > > > FROM WELFARE STATE TO PRISON STATE > > Imprisoning the American underclass * > > A boom in private penitentiaries > > by Loic Wacquant > > Prisons in the "free world" are full to bursting point, and > fullest of all are US jails. Over the past twenty years > preoccupation with the virtues of law and order has led to a > toughening of penalties. Worst hit have been those excluded from > the "American dream". The US is constantly tightening its social > welfare budget, but its generosity knows no bounds when it comes > to controlling and incarcerating those whom it has deigned > neither to educate and care for, nor provide with housing and an > adequate diet. > http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/07/14prison.html > > Translated by Julie Stoker > > > > GROWING IMPATIENCE WITH THE STALEMATE IN THE PEACE PROCESS > > How Europe could put pressure on Israel > > by Isabelle Avran > > Flying in the face of international criticism, on 21 June the > Israeli government sanctioned a plan which is a de facto > enlargement of the municipality of Jerusalem to reach Israeli > localities situated to the west of the city and settlements in > the West Bank. This decision marks a new stage in Israel's policy > of annexation of the Holy City and totally violates both the > spirit and the letter of the Oslo accords. Prime Minister > Binyamin Netanyahu's intransigence is made possible by the > apparent inability of the United States to exert meaningful > pressure on its Israeli ally. It is now time for Europe to come > to the aid of a peace process that is seriously under threat. > > Translated by Ed Emery > > > > > (*) Star-marked articles are available to every reader. Other > articles are available to paid subscribers only. > > Yearly subscription fee: 24 US $ (Institutions 48 US $). > > > > ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Le Monde diplomatique > ______________________________________________________________ > > For more information on our English edition, please visit > > http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/ > > To subscribe to our free "dispatch" mailing-list, send an > (empty) e-mail to: > dispatch-on@london.monde-diplomatique.fr > > To unsubscribe from this list, send an (empty) e-mail to: > dispatch-off@london.monde-diplomatique.fr > > > From gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca Fri Jul 10 08:47:57 1998 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:47:50 -0400 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: Gernot Kohler Subject: global pay equity ....if something similar has been stated somewhere else already, please forward a reference... Wallerstein has called for "renegotiation of historically grown wage bargains" in the world-system (Wallerstein 1978). The undervaluation of labour of low- and middle-income countries has been criticized by Emmanuel (1962, 1969/72) and others. From a perspective of global Keynesianism, low incomes of anyone in the world are bad for global demand. MOTION (to the global labour movement): "The global labour movement will place the demand for 'global pay equity' on its list of demands in its demand-setting process" [ if it has one] EXPLANATION: The women's movement has done a splendid job developing the theory, practice and politics of pay equity. An important principle has been developed which is already being used in praxis, e.g., in Canada, namely: PRINCIPLE: "equal pay for work of equal value" (meaning: If persons A and B perform work of the same value, both must be remunerated at the same rate. The fact that one is a man and the other a woman is irrelevant.) This principle can and must be globalized and extended worldwide to any category of person. Thus, if a Mexican performs work of the same value as a Canadian , he/she must be paid the same. The fact that we and "the system" are used to discriminatory global wage differentials is deplorable and, with respect to the principle, irrelevant. In its globalized form, the principle could be stated thus: GLOBAL PAY EQUITY: "equal pay for work of equal value, globally" The demand for global pay equity would generate for the global labour movement added movement and solidarity. Regards, Gernot Kohler School of Computing and Information Management Sheridan College Oakville, Ont., Canada e-mail: gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca "Imagination is more important than knowledge" Albert Einstein From gderlug@nwu.edu Fri Jul 10 09:15:28 1998 In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980710104750.006930f8@pop.sheridanc.on.ca> Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:18:19 -0500 To: From: "Georgi M. Derluguian" Subject: Theory into practice Times"The world-systems analysis, created by Immanuel Wallerstein, illuminates our [Russia's] true position in the world-system... which is now obfuscated by the liberal proclamations of "civilized" well-wishers... Good behavior wouldn't earn us a polite invitation into the exclusive club of core countries. Positions in the core are taken by working with elbows, by crushing the bones of competitors." Evgeni Starikov from Tula (the homebase of General Lebed) "Defenders of the Heartland or Islanders?" letter to the editor of Novy Mir, pp. 235-241. Georgi M. Derluguian Assistant Professor Department of Sociology Northwestern University 1812 Chicago Avenue Evanston, Illinois 60208-1330 (847) 491-2741 (rabota) From TBOS@social-sci.ss.emory.edu Fri Jul 10 13:31:00 1998 Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:30:55 -0400 (EDT) From: "Terry Boswell" To: gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca, wsn@csf.colorado.edu Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:26:46 EST5EDT Subject: Re: global pay equity and development WSN I share Kohler's call for global pay equity. I have raised this issue recently in talking with others in developmental studies who offered two criticisms. I do not fully agree with their critique, but I am interested in hearing responses and counter-arguments from others. I think we need to answer the following criticisms before the push for world pay equity would be taken seriously. 1. The cost of living varies so much across countries, and currencies fluctuate so frequently, that any single global wage standard, much less an equity standard, would be difficult, if not impossible, to measure and enforce. My response is to support minimum standards appropriate to each country, but this runs into the problem of getting individual states, many of which are corrupt and undemocratic, to enforce a global standard. 2. A worse problem is that applying global standards, even minimum wages, raises the cost of doing business in poor countries and makes it harder for them to develop. For example, the NYT ran articles on former sweatshop workers in Indonesia who now pick garbage or work as prostitutes. They long for their sweatshops. I think it was Rosa Luxemburg who said that the only thing worse than being exploited under capitalism is not being exploited. My response is that they would be better off in the long run by ending the cycle of attracting investment by offering cheaper wages than competitors. The problem is thus one of making the TNCs pay for a stepwise transition, which admittedly, would not be easy. I am not satisfied with my responses and hope others have additional replies. Raising global labor standards is, I am convinced, the most important task for transnational progressive movements. TB Date sent: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:47:50 -0400 Send reply to: gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca From: Gernot Kohler To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: global pay equity ....if something similar has been stated somewhere else already, please forward a reference... Wallerstein has called for "renegotiation of historically grown wage bargains" in the world-system (Wallerstein 1978). The undervaluation of labour of low- and middle-income countries has been criticized by Emmanuel (1962, 1969/72) and others. From a perspective of global Keynesianism, low incomes of anyone in the world are bad for global demand. MOTION (to the global labour movement): "The global labour movement will place the demand for 'global pay equity' on its list of demands in its demand-setting process" [ if it has one] EXPLANATION: The women's movement has done a splendid job developing the theory, practice and politics of pay equity. An important principle has been developed which is already being used in praxis, e.g., in Canada, namely: PRINCIPLE: "equal pay for work of equal value" (meaning: If persons A and B perform work of the same value, both must be remunerated at the same rate. The fact that one is a man and the other a woman is irrelevant.) This principle can and must be globalized and extended worldwide to any category of person. Thus, if a Mexican performs work of the same value as a Canadian , he/she must be paid the same. The fact that we and "the system" are used to discriminatory global wage differentials is deplorable and, with respect to the principle, irrelevant. In its globalized form, the principle could be stated thus: GLOBAL PAY EQUITY: "equal pay for work of equal value, globally" The demand for global pay equity would generate for the global labour movement added movement and solidarity. Regards, Gernot Kohler School of Computing and Information Management Sheridan College Oakville, Ont., Canada e-mail: gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca "Imagination is more important than knowledge" Albert Einstein Terry Boswell Department of Sociology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 From dredmond@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Jul 10 17:11:50 1998 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 16:11:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Dennis R Redmond Subject: Re: Theory into practice In-reply-to: To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Georgi M. Derluguian cross-posted: > Good behavior wouldn't earn us a polite invitation into the exclusive > club of core countries. Positions in the core are taken by working > with elbows, by crushing the bones of competitors." > > Evgeni Starikov from Tula (the homebase of General Lebed) > "Defenders of the Heartland or Islanders?" > letter to the editor of Novy Mir, pp. 235-241. There's hope for Russia after all! Today Jakarta, tomorrow Moscow. I'll bet Berezovsky is buying his plane tickets (or maybe the entire plane itself, God knows he has the money) to Geneva as we speak. Looks like the seven merchant bank/industrial groups are going to have to decide whether to be an Indonesian-style oligarchy of robbers or a South Korea-style oligarchy of investors. But is the Russian Left prepared to help them make up their minds? -- Dennis From gderlug@nwu.edu Sat Jul 11 14:37:30 1998 Sat, 11 Jul 1998 15:37:25 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 15:41:40 -0500 To: dredmond@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU, WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK From: "Georgi M. Derluguian" Subject: Re: Theory into practice >There's hope for Russia after all! Today Jakarta, tomorrow Moscow. I'll >bet Berezovsky is buying his plane tickets (or maybe the entire >plane itself, God knows he has the money) to Geneva as we speak. Looks >like the seven merchant bank/industrial groups are going to have to decide >whether to be an Indonesian-style oligarchy of robbers or a South >Korea-style oligarchy of investors. But is the Russian Left prepared to >help them make up their minds? Dennis Well, this raises a major question of whether an anti-systemic understanding is at all possible in the current world. The notions of Left and Right are very confusing in a place like Russia. The Communist party, for instance, is definitely an imperial chauvinist force that is embarrassed by Marx's Jewishness. The neo-liberals who are not in power currently or Yavlinsky may well qualify to be the Left (which they would abhorre, but we are not talking with their ideologues) -- these are the descendants of radical anti-systemic intelligentsia and clearly a system-destroying force. If you look at them, you often see former hippies or countercultural bohemian folks. Or take Western feminists who find the women's agenda in the former USSR disgustingly patriarchal, while Russian women have few words dirtier than feminist (even the Western-funded gender research centers in Russia often avoid the word in their Russian-language names.) Yet, the struggle of Soviet women against gender domination was quite genuine, its goal was to undo the Stalin's period induction of all women into the wage-earner laborforce. So, in this situation the Russian Left probably is General Lebed and his various supporters. They are mostly populists in the old American sense, anti-Big-Business patriotic guys, who take liberalism at its literal meaning -- and, as often happens with ideologies (Communism was a major example itself), when you take the normative statements literally they become quite subversive. Regarding Academician Berezovsky, he is intelligent and ambitious enough not to go to Switzerland other than for the vanity vacations. And he underwrote Lebed's campaign in Krasnoyarsk not just to subvert it. Yours, georgi Georgi M. Derluguian Assistant Professor Department of Sociology Northwestern University 1812 Chicago Avenue Evanston, Illinois 60208-1330 (847) 491-2741 (rabota) From dredmond@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat Jul 11 18:00:23 1998 Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 17:00:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Dennis R Redmond Subject: Re: Theory into practice In-reply-to: To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK On Sat, 11 Jul 1998, Georgi M. Derluguian wrote: > Regarding Academician Berezovsky, he is > intelligent and ambitious enough not to go to Switzerland other than for > the vanity vacations. And he underwrote Lebed's campaign in Krasnoyarsk not > just to subvert it. Really? Boris B., the multimillionaire, is now an academician and even funding opposition movements? Capital civilizes after all! Now if only Soros could underwrite Hungary's export financing for a couple of years... wait a minute, he *has* been underwriting the place for a couple of years. It's the return of the Red Bourgeoisie! -- Dennis From david_nz@xtra.co.nz Sat Jul 11 19:42:53 1998 From: "David Fraser" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: global pay equity and development Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 13:43:46 +1200 TB The problems you identify are indeed significant. But there is more... I guess that I might be a closet member of the flat earth society because I just don't get into globalism. Global anything, despite all of it's good intentions is just another opportunity for exploitation by the global colonialists (multi-national organisations supported by the G7). A system of managing global pay equity implies a system of global pay equity management. With all due respect to the Americans and Europeans in this audience I suggest that the management of the global pay equity process would be subsumed within a white positivist north american-centric paradigm. While that would ultimately be good for American business the rest of us would suffer. Labour laws are foundational to national governance. As a country gives away such law making capability, it's economy will be subjugated to external economic interests, to the dis-benefit of it's citizens. (Mind you that is happening already through the impact of World Bank policies, Moody's, Standard and Pours et al. All of that is not to say that the problem of worker exploitation is to hard and should therefore be ignored. But the solution must come from the industrialised countries in a non paternalistic and therefore non global process fashion. And there is the rub. Will industrialised countries, whose corporate citizens exploit the exploited, forego the resulting benefits (increased standard of living) in order to create global pay equity. I doubt it. DF ---------- > From: Terry Boswell > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: Re: global pay equity and development > Date: Saturday, 11 July 1998 03:26 > > WSN > > I share Kohler's call for global pay equity. I have raised this > issue recently in talking with others in developmental studies who > offered two criticisms. I do not fully agree with their critique, but > I am interested in hearing responses and counter-arguments from > others. I think we need to answer the following criticisms before the > push for world pay equity would be taken seriously. > > 1. The cost of living varies so much across countries, and > currencies fluctuate so frequently, that any single global wage > standard, much less an equity standard, would be difficult, if not > impossible, to measure and enforce. My response is to support > minimum standards appropriate to each country, but this runs into the > problem of getting individual states, many of which are corrupt and > undemocratic, to enforce a global standard. > > 2. A worse problem is that applying global standards, even minimum > wages, raises the cost of doing business in poor countries and makes > it harder for them to develop. For example, the NYT ran articles on > former sweatshop workers in Indonesia who now pick garbage or work > as prostitutes. They long for their sweatshops. I think it was Rosa > Luxemburg who said that the only thing worse than being exploited > under capitalism is not being exploited. My response is that they > would be better off in the long run by ending the cycle of attracting > investment by offering cheaper wages than competitors. The problem > is thus one of making the TNCs pay for a stepwise transition, which > admittedly, would not be easy. > > I am not satisfied with my responses and hope others have additional > replies. Raising global labor standards is, I am convinced, the most > important task for transnational progressive movements. > > TB > > Date sent: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:47:50 -0400 > Send reply to: gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca > From: Gernot Kohler > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK > Subject: global pay equity > > ...if something similar has been stated somewhere else already, please > forward a reference... > > Wallerstein has called for "renegotiation of historically grown wage > bargains" in the world-system (Wallerstein 1978). The undervaluation of > labour of low- and middle-income countries has been criticized by Emmanuel > (1962, 1969/72) and others. From a perspective of global Keynesianism, low > incomes of anyone in the world are bad for global demand. > > MOTION (to the global labour movement): > "The global labour movement will place the demand for 'global pay equity' > on its list of demands in its demand-setting process" [ if it has one] > > > EXPLANATION: The women's movement has done a splendid job developing the > theory, practice and politics of pay equity. An important principle has > been developed which is already being used in praxis, e.g., in Canada, namely: > > PRINCIPLE: "equal pay for work of equal value" > (meaning: If persons A and B perform work of the same value, both must be > remunerated at the same rate. The fact that one is a man and the other a > woman is irrelevant.) > > This principle can and must be globalized and extended worldwide to any > category of person. Thus, if a Mexican performs work of the same value as a > Canadian , he/she must be paid the same. The fact that we and "the system" > are used to discriminatory global wage differentials is deplorable and, > with respect to the principle, irrelevant. In its globalized form, the > principle could be stated thus: > > GLOBAL PAY EQUITY: "equal pay for work of equal value, globally" > > The demand for global pay equity would generate for the global labour > movement added movement and solidarity. > > > Regards, > Gernot Kohler > School of Computing and Information Management > Sheridan College > Oakville, Ont., Canada > e-mail: gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca > > > "Imagination is more important than knowledge" Albert Einstein > Terry Boswell > Department of Sociology > Emory University > Atlanta, GA 30322 From gmd304@casbah.acns.nwu.edu Sat Jul 11 21:20:27 1998 From: gmd304@casbah.acns.nwu.edu Sat, 11 Jul 1998 22:20:22 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 22:22:49 -0600 To: dredmond@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU, WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: Theory into practice At 5:00 PM -0700 7/11/98, Dennis R Redmond wrote: >On Sat, 11 Jul 1998, Georgi M. Derluguian wrote: > >> Regarding Academician Berezovsky, he is >> intelligent and ambitious enough not to go to Switzerland other than for >> the vanity vacations. And he underwrote Lebed's campaign in Krasnoyarsk not >> just to subvert it. > >Really? Boris B., the multimillionaire, is now an academician and even >funding opposition movements? Capital civilizes after all! Now if only >Soros could underwrite Hungary's export financing for a couple of years... >wait a minute, he *has* been underwriting the place for a couple of years. >It's the return of the Red Bourgeoisie! > >-- Dennis Dennis, Don't be too cynical about our nouveaux Russians. Berezovsky is a smart Jewish boy (a devote Orthodox Christian, however, as he likes to stress when meeting with the neo-Cossack buddies or baptizing his newest child before the TV cameras). in the Soviet times he was prevented from the mainstream channels of moibility by his ethnicity inscribed in the famous "fifth line" of the internal passport. Well, his second best choice was to become a well-paid applied mathematician specializing in the field that in the late seventies was simply unclaimed by the Communist party careerists -- computers, too difficult. In the last years of Brezhnev period, when the career mobility practically stalled, computers were a marginal but still working channel to advance in the academic and administrative fields. (I can name at least a dozen rather famous political and business personalities who were heads of "computer literacy circles" twenty years ago, starting with the former Secretary of State and now fugitive Sergei Stankevich, my former "young scholars' council" leader.) Now, Berezovsky achieved the top of what was possible back then -- in 1982-89 he computerized the huge automobile factory AvtoVAZ in the town of Togliatti. That was a mighty career booster to Berezovsky and his graduate students and an opportunity to make many valuable contacts. He was elected Corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1990, a little BEFORE he made the first million. The rest of the success story is very typical -- being smart and close to the top, but unburdened by the old "habitus" of Red Directors, Berezovsky immediately identified new possibilities for private accumulation. I never ask people for details, and we really don't need them so far as I am a sociologist, not a prosecutor. Apparently, Berezovsky offered to Kadannikov, a Soviet counterpart of Lee Iacaccoca, a scheme of avoiding domestic taxes by falsely exporting the Soviet-made Ladas (a native name for FIAT) to Italy. Kadannikov gave okay, but soon realized that he was getting, let say, 10 per cent, and that bloody jewish kid -- 90% of the profit! Without blaming anyone (you can read Forbes, December 1996, if you want jucier details -- Berezovsky sued for libel), let's say someone tried to blow up Berezovsky, but the killer pushed the button of the remote-controlled car bomb half a second too early -- Berezovsky's bodyguard in the front seat was killed as their Mercedes was leaving the gate, but Boris Abramovich survived with only a concussion. He fought back fiercely, with several very prominent gangsters dying rather efficiently and on time. Berezovsky also prepared fire escapes -- Israeli citizenship and the US green card (he later gave them up to become national security advisor of Russia). He knew that the ultimate persoanl safety device was a state position and political clout. For this reason he began frequenting Davos and paying for the visits by Russian officials; he bailed out financially distressed newspapers and bought the controlling package in the Russian first TV channel (the ironically called Public Television of Russia, ORT). He has lots of well-wishers who leak various details into the press, like Berezovsky's secret investment in Lebed's campaign in Krasnoyarsk, a huge Siberian province and a good springboard to presidency. Last but not least, Berezovsky is personally corageous (with the gambler's courage), and is married to a stunnigly beautiful wife. I wish we had a Balzac to describe this, not all those damn post-modernists! Yours, Georgi -- Jorge Rodríguez Ph.D Candidate Northwestern University j-rodriguez2@nwu.edu From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Sun Jul 12 06:19:53 1998 From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "World Systems Network" Subject: Unequal exchange Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 13:17:44 +0100 charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Folks, I just dont see, if one accepts the core of Marx's Capital, how one can say that capital can be accumulated through unequal exchange. The very acceptance of unequal exchange invalidates the possibility of the development of commodity production and circulation. Warm regards Rebecca From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sun Jul 12 09:45:21 1998 Sun, 12 Jul 1998 11:45:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 11:45:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Rebecca Peoples Subject: Re: Unequal exchange In-Reply-To: <01bdad8f$12f952a0$7ce0869f@teresa> On Sun, 12 Jul 1998, Rebecca Peoples wrote: > I just dont see, if one accepts the core of Marx's Capital, how one can > say that capital can be accumulated through unequal exchange. The very > acceptance of unequal exchange invalidates the possibility of the > development of commodity production and circulation. In general, yes. Marx also makes this argument in Value, Price, and Profit: "It is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in individual cases, but that the constant and usual profits of different trades spring from surcharging the prices of commodities or selling them at a price over and above their value. The absurdity of this notion becomes evident if it is generalized. What a man would constantly win as a seller he would as constantly lose as a purchaser." Marx stresses that in order to explain the "the *general nature of profits*, you must start from the theorem that, on an average, commodities are *sold at their real values*, and that *profits are derived from selling them at their values*, that is, in proportion to the quantity of labour realised in them." It is not a case that the capitalist sells his product to the public and makes his profit by charging them more in money than the value of their commodity. The source of profit must be generated through a process internal to production, by producing more surplus-value with the labor-power at the capitalist disposal than the capitalist has to pay in reproducing that labor-power, either through paying wages that will exchange for labor or having to supply commodities sufficient to reproduce that labor-power (other labor not paid for by the capitalist which reproduces labor-power, such as domestic labor or working a small plot of land for subsistence, is put to one side for now). Andy From austria@it.com.pl Mon Jul 13 05:06:44 1998 Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:05:49 +0200 (MET DST) Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:05:30 +0200 (MET DST) Reply-To: From: "Austrian Embassy" To: Subject: unequal exchange Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:49:11 +0200 with interest i read your postings regarding unequal exchange. for a decade now, kunibert raffer of vienna university in his very important book on unequal exchange (macmillan, basingstoke, london; and saint martin's press, new york) has shown the way out from the impasse regarding this important concept of world system theory. this book debated all these issues which you raise, and please have a serious look at it. I assume that kunibert raffer's essays in WORLD DEVELOPMENT are well known to most of you; but his path-breaking book is still overlooked by the US world system debate, in contrast to the European debate! time for a change! kind regards arno tausch From p34d3611@jhu.edu Mon Jul 13 12:33:56 1998 by jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (980427.SGI.8.8.8/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) 13 Jul 1998 14:33:40 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:33:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Peter Grimes Subject: Wages, Capital, State To: WSN Dear list; The recent offerings on global wage inequality have inspired me to stir from my ordinary obligations during the oppressively hot Baltimore summer to throw out the following: 1. The brilliance of Marx's analysis in Vol I was to solve the question of how value could be transferred between classes under conditions where commodities were priced as a fair exchange of equivalents (labor time for money wages). The assumptions underlying his inquiry were precisely those quoted in Andy's piece--essentially, that in a free market "price gouging" could not last long, as competitors to the "gouger" would quickly emerge to set things right. As with Neo-Classical economists today, Marx assumed that prices evolve to oscillate around their true values over the medium run. However, this theoretical assumption of a free market has never been true anywhere for long, nor could it be because of the omnipresent obstacles imposed by monopolies, state regulation, technology, and geography. It is precisely the presence of these obstacles imposed collectively that makes "unequal exchange" both possible and actual. "Unequal exchange" arises from commodities created by labor in the periphery being assigned a price *BELOW* their actual value, resulting in a net transfer from periphery => core. This is the central mechanism that allows the core to accumulate capital from the periphery, and accounts for the ever-growing income gap between them. How does this work? Among other factors--POLITICAL/MILITARY COERCION. Labor in the periphery has always been *COERCED*, often at gunpoint. Today such naked force is less frequent than it was during colonialism, but the regulatory dynamics of the current world-market still rely on the implicit coercion of massive unemployment in the periphery combined with gov't repression of unions to insure the continuation of under-paid labor that enables and perpetuates unequal exchange. Remember that "Political Economy" is as much the study of politics as economics. 2. Before c.1975-80, Capital was more encumbered than today by the limitations of technology. It was still constrained by geography. In the states of the core, this geographical constriction allowed for the emergence of labor unions that could compel both higher wages and better working conditions at those points where factories were located. Also, it was possible for the states of the core to tax both monopoly capital (nationally & geographically bounded) and their workers, and re-distribute a portion of that income to the lower class and provide social services to the working class as a whole (public education, infrastructure, police & fire protection, etc.). The geographical entrapment of monopoly capital within the confines of the core states (a necessary by-product of the contemporary limitations on communications imposed by the absence of cheap computers and lack of communications satellites) allowed those states regulatory powers unique to that era. The wealth accruing to monopoly capital from unequal exchange with the periphery for raw materials allowed it to AFFORD higher wages in the core, while the political requirements of state legitimacy within the core COMPELLED those core states to allow labor unions to press their demands with a minimum of state interference and even a degree of state protection, culminating in the development of PROTECTED labor in the core (in marked contrast to the COERCED status of labor in the periphery). This was the internal balance of power between the state, capital, and labor in the core prevailing between c.1945-75. Meanwhile, during the same period, the periphery was characterized by states which lacked the means to effectively tax either their own local capitalist classes or the expanding role and power of foreign investment capital. Their desperate eagerness to both foster local accumulation and also attract foreign investment precluded aggressive taxation of capital, even as their lack of access to taxation income vitiated the financing of the personnel that would have been needed to pursue tax violations. Further, endemic corruption within the state bureaucracy acted to siphon off any taxes received into personal consumption by the bureaucrats involved. Finally, taxes levied on the working classes were effectively evaded by the fact that the vast majority of the workforce was in the "informal" sector operating with cash "under the table." Given such a fiscal straightjacket, the peripheral states have been unable to provide even a minimum of social security/legitimation functions. Instead, they've been structurally dependent on foreign assistance from the core states via grants and loans, which in their turn have been poured into repressive militaries (to keep wages low) and national prestige infrastructure projects (airports, damns, highways). 3. Now, in the age of geo-stationary satellites, cheap computers, and cell phones, it is possible for factories to be built wherever infrastructure (roads & power lines) allows, even as they are controlled and internationally integrated from a central office in Manhattan. Meanwhile, offshore banks allow money to be laundered & thereby liberated from control by any one state. The net result is a loss of the power to tax profits by states of either core OR periphery. Simultaneously, the mobility of capital has enabled it to pit the wage demands of the (now ineffectively) unionized core directly against those of the coerced periphery, effectively eviscerating the union power of core workers. As their wages drop, so do their tax contributions. The necessary result has been a double blow to the tax revenue of the states of the core, creating the chronic fiscal crisis with which we in the core have grown so familiar-- along with the inevitable cut-backs in all social services and state protections, whose constituencies are so vulnerably powerless. The question of global wage protection begs a much more important one--the emergence of a global state. As I have written elsewhere: "Each bout of corporate and state expansion seems to have followed the same general course: a wave of technological change enabled an expansion in corporate size and control, stimulating popular demands for compensatory regulation on a corresponding governmental scale. Corporate attempts to evade regulation have often involved crossing governmental boundaries, in turn leading to bilateral and multilateral agreements between governments on regulations. Each round has led to an expanded state chasing after an expanding corporate size." ("World-Systems Analysis" pp. 387-417 _Annual Review of Sociology_ 1995.) From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Mon Jul 13 17:47:54 1998 Tue, 14 Jul 1998 00:47:37 +0100 (BST) From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "Andrew Wayne Austin" Subject: Re: Unequal exchange Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 00:45:32 +0100 charset="iso-8859-1" Andy: In general, yes. Marx also makes this argument in Value, Price, and Profit: "It is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in individual cases, but that the constant and usual profits of different trades spring from surcharging the prices of commodities or selling them at a price over and above their value. The absurdity of this notion becomes evident if it is generalized. What a man would constantly win as a seller he would as constantly lose as a purchaser." Marx stresses that in order to explain the "the *general nature of profits*, you must start from the theorem that, on an average, commodities are *sold at their real values*, and that *profits are derived from selling them at their values*, that is, in proportion to the quantity of labour realised in them." It is not a case that the capitalist sells his product to the public and makes his profit by charging them more in money than the value of their commodity. The source of profit must be generated through a process internal to production, by producing more surplus-value with the labor-power at the capitalist disposal than the capitalist has to pay in reproducing that labor-power, either through paying wages that will exchange for labor or having to supply commodities sufficient to reproduce that labor-power (other labor not paid for by the capitalist which reproduces labor-power, such as domestic labor or working a small plot of land for subsistence, is put to one side for now). Rebecca: Hi Andy! Nice to talk to you again. If what you write is correct then how does this explain the apprenently significant accumulation of merchant capital in the commercial phase of capitalism. If there cannot exist, generally speaking, unequal exchange as a necessary condition for the development of commodity circulation then what was the basis for this accumulation of capital by commercial capital? Warm regards Rebecca From gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca Mon Jul 13 17:59:16 1998 Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 19:59:07 -0400 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: Gernot Kohler Subject: comments / global pay equity etc. ....a few comments on the "global pay equity etc." discussion ... (1) GEORGI DELUGUIAN's quote from a Russian newspaper -- I think it is quite remarkable that the world-system school and Wallerstein are explicitly and affirmatively quoted in a Russian newspaper. (2) TERRY BOSWELL's points on global pay equity -- (2a) measurement issues -- this problem has, in part, been solved by the Kravis/Heston/Summers group with/at the World Bank. Purchasing power parity statistics are now available for most countries (see, e.g., World Development Report 1997, or, Penn World Tables) so that the actual purchasing power of wages can be more accurately assessed between countries. (2b) enforcement issues -- a big problem. In my opinion, this could and should be an ongoing fight by sectoral, national and transnational labour organizations and their political allies, at all levels from local to global. (2c) cost of business of Third World firms -- another difficult issue. If a single firm pays higher wages than the competitors, it may be out of business before long. Perhaps, the corporations which could most easily absorb a higher wage would be TNCs operating in peripheral countries (rather than indigenous small businesses). A Canadian businessman stated on a radio talk show that the boots made by his company incorporate CAD$20 of labour costs if made in Canada and CAD 20 cents if made in some Asian country. A doubling of the Asian wage would hardly be noticed in his overall profit. -- Other targets for collective action could be the global monetary / exchange rate system. (2d) While many more minds must mull over this multidimensional monster of global pay inequity, I am very happy that you also think that, in your words, "(r)aising global labor standards is...the most important task for transnational progressive movements." Thanks. (3) DAVID FRASER -- the problem of "global pay equity management", as you call it. You doubt whether the industrialized countries will be interested in creating global pay equity, given their "white positivist north american-centric paradigm", as you say. -- I agree with you 100%. In my opinion, the 175 NON-OECD countries and their labour etc. organizations must put pressure on the 25 OECD countries in order to get a fair deal. By comparison, the western women's movements did not wait for "male society" to be nice and kind to them; they organized pressure and ignored all that market propaganda. (4) REBECCA PEOPLES / ANDREW WAYNE AUSTIN / ARNO TAUSCH on "unequal exchange" -- the concept of "unequal exchange" was controversial among leftists from the beginning. Raffer quotes Bettelheim as accusing Emmanuel of "harbouring Keynesian tendencies." I side with Emmanuel and Raffer in this, taking my cue from two observations, namely: (a) socialists from the Third World (Emmanuel, Amin) are likely to be highly qualified to speak on this issue and may know this better than Bettelheim and Marx (Europeans); (b) Ernest Mandel's introduction to the Penguin edition of 'Capital'. Mandel points out that Marx had planned to write additional volumes dealing with the world market etc. more thoroughly; but he did not live long enough. In my opinion, there is a theoretical gap in Marx's theory of exploitation, and "unequal exchange" fills that gap. The definition of exploitation as per Marx has trouble covering adequately the reality of "rip-off of the low- and middle-income countries by the high-income countries." That's why Emmanuel, Amin, Raffer and the world-system school are needed. (5) To conclude my comments -- Wallerstein called for renegotiation of historically grown wage bargains in the world-system. When you "renegotiate", you must have some clout and you must know what you want. A common labour strategy is that "my workers want the same deal as those other workers" [i.e. those with better wages]. For the workers of the peripheral countries that means "my workers want the same deal as those rich-country workers". A Mexican car factory worker puts the same number of doors, wheels, etc. on a car as a Canadian automotive worker. If the Mexican does not get the same wage, then he is relatively more exploited than the Canadian friend, according to the LTV. In addition, I take a global-Keynesian view on this as well, namely, if the Indonesians, Mexicans, Russians, etc. earned higher wages, then they could buy more of our commodities / goods and services -- which would create more jobs in Canada, etc. For this reason, even labour in high-wage countries should support global pay equity. -gk From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Mon Jul 13 18:10:59 1998 From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "World Systems Network" Subject: re unequal exchange Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 01:08:47 +0100 boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0056_01BDAEC3.F48BCBA0" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0056_01BDAEC3.F48BCBA0 charset="iso-8859-1" Andy: In general, yes. Marx also makes this argument in Value, Price, and Profit: "It is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in individual cases, but that the constant and usual profits of different trades spring from surcharging the prices of commodities or selling them at a price over and above their value. The absurdity of this notion becomes evident if it is generalized. What a man would constantly win as a seller he would as constantly lose as a purchaser." Marx stresses that in order to explain the "the *general nature of profits*, you must start from the theorem that, on an average, commodities are *sold at their real values*, and that *profits are derived from selling them at their values*, that is, in proportion to the quantity of labour realised in them." It is not a case that the capitalist sells his product to the public and makes his profit by charging them more in money than the value of their commodity. The source of profit must be generated through a process internal to production, by producing more surplus-value with the labor-power at the capitalist disposal than the capitalist has to pay in reproducing that labor-power, either through paying wages that will exchange for labor or having to supply commodities sufficient to reproduce that labor-power (other labor not paid for by the capitalist which reproduces labor-power, such as domestic labor or working a small plot of land for subsistence, is put to one side for now). Rebecca: Hi Andy! Nice to talk to you again. If what you write is correct then how does this explain the apprenently significant accumulation of merchant capital in the commercial phase of capitalism. If there cannot exist, generally speaking, unequal exchange as a necessary condition for the development of commodity circulation then what was the basis for this accumulation of capital by commercial capital? Warm regards Rebecca ------=_NextPart_000_0056_01BDAEC3.F48BCBA0 charset="iso-8859-1"
Andy: In general, yes. Marx also makes this argument in Value, = Price,=20 and
Profit: "It is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in = individual=20 cases,
but that the constant and usual profits of different trades = spring=20 from
surcharging the prices of commodities or selling them at a price = over=20 and
above their value. The absurdity of this notion becomes evident = if it=20 is
generalized. What a man would constantly win as a seller he would=20 as
constantly lose as a purchaser." Marx stresses that in order = to=20 explain
the "the *general nature of profits*, you must start = from the=20 theorem
that, on an average, commodities are *sold at their real = values*,=20 and
that *profits are derived from selling them at their values*, = that is,=20 in
proportion to the quantity of labour realised in = them."

It is=20 not a case that the capitalist sells his product to the public = and
makes his=20 profit by charging them more in money than the value of = their
commodity. The=20 source of profit must be generated through a process
internal to = production,=20 by producing more surplus-value with the
labor-power at the = capitalist=20 disposal than the capitalist has to pay in
reproducing that = labor-power,=20 either through paying wages that will
exchange for labor or having to = supply=20 commodities sufficient to reproduce
that labor-power (other labor not = paid=20 for by the capitalist which
reproduces labor-power, such as domestic = labor or=20 working a small plot of
land for subsistence, is put to one side for=20 now).

Rebecca: Hi Andy! Nice to talk to you again. If what you = write is=20 correct
then how does this explain the apprenently significant = accumulation=20 of
merchant capital in the commercial phase of capitalism. If there=20 cannot
exist, generally speaking, unequal exchange as a necessary = condition=20 for the
development of commodity circulation then what was the basis = for=20 this
accumulation of capital by commercial capital?

Warm=20 regards
Rebecca




 
------=_NextPart_000_0056_01BDAEC3.F48BCBA0-- From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Tue Jul 14 03:27:38 1998 From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: Subject: Re:unequal exchange Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:25:25 +0100 charset="iso-8859-1" -----Original Message----- From: Rebecca Peoples Andy: In general, yes. Marx also makes this argument in Value, Price, and Profit: "It is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in individual cases, but that the constant and usual profits of different trades spring from surcharging the prices of commodities or selling them at a price over and above their value. The absurdity of this notion becomes evident if it is generalized. What a man would constantly win as a seller he would as constantly lose as a purchaser." Marx stresses that in order to explain the "the *general nature of profits*, you must start from the theorem that, on an average, commodities are *sold at their real values*, and that *profits are derived from selling them at their values*, that is, in proportion to the quantity of labour realised in them." It is not a case that the capitalist sells his product to the public and makes his profit by charging them more in money than the value of their commodity. The source of profit must be generated through a process internal to production, by producing more surplus-value with the labor-power at the capitalist disposal than the capitalist has to pay in reproducing that labor-power, either through paying wages that will exchange for labor or having to supply commodities sufficient to reproduce that labor-power (other labor not paid for by the capitalist which reproduces labor-power, such as domestic labor or working a small plot of land for subsistence, is put to one side for now). Rebecca: Hi Andy! Nice to talk to you again. If what you write is correct then how does this explain the apprenently significant accumulation of merchant capital in the commercial phase of capitalism. If there cannot exist, generally speaking, unequal exchange as a necessary condition for the development of commodity circulation then what was the basis for this accumulation of capital by commercial capital? Warm regards Rebecca From austria@it.com.pl Tue Jul 14 06:24:44 1998 Reply-To: From: "Austrian Embassy" To: Subject: New Le Monde Publication: LES COMBATS DE L'HISTOIRE Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:31:52 +0200 I am sending you this information about this new publication Kind regards Arno Tausch ---------- > From: Le Monde diplomatique > To: info-diplo > Subject: LES COMBATS DE L'HISTOIRE > Date: Freitag, 10. Juli 1998 13:42 > > > __________________________________________________________ > Manière de voir 40 juillet - août 1998 > > > > LES COMBATS > > de > > L'HISTOIRE > > > (45 F) > > > > ___________________ s o m m a i r e ____________________ > > > ÉDITORIAL > > Tricoter passé et présent > Ignacio Ramonet > > > 1. L'HISTOIRE, UN ENJEU POLITIQUE > > Pour asseoir une vision conservatrice du monde, susceptible > de conforter à la fois fatalisme et soumission, la genèse de > notre système économique et celle de systèmes qui ont > cherché à le dépasser sont souvent dissimulées. Ainsi, > réécrite par les vainqueurs du jour, occultée au gré des > intérêts et des pouvoirs, l'histoire se métamorphose en une > idéologie accablante au dessein transparent : nous > convaincre que nous sommes condamnés à vivre dans le monde > où nous vivons. > > Quand le libéralisme affamait l'Irlande > Ibrahim Warde > > Pourquoi l'Union soviétique fascina le monde > Moshe Lewin > > Les falsifications d'un Ğ Livre noir ğ > Gilles Perrault > > De Lénine à Staline > Michel Dreyfus > > Tapis rouge médiatique > Serge Halimi > > Petits mensonges latino-américains > Maurice Lemoine > > Ces archives qu'on manipule > Edgar Roskis > > Silence sur une répression > Philippe Leymarie > > La France se penche sur sa guerre d'Algérie > Philippe Videlier > > Relectures de l'histoire yougoslave > Gordana Igric > > L'expulsion des Palestiniens revue par les historiens israéliens > Dominique Vidal > > Après l'apartheid, réécrire l'histoire > Christine Martin > > > 2. QUELLES COMPLICITÉS AVEC QUELLES TYRANNIES ? > > Quel crime collectif se commet jamais sans complice ? Mais > une fois le bourreau abattu, qui rappellera la > responsabilité de ceux qui, encore puissants, ont fermé les > yeux, lui ont tendu la main, ont armé son bras ? L'impunité > et l'oubli peuvent assurément permettre de tourner la page, > de ne pas s'user dans d'interminables règlements de comptes. > Cependant, pourquoi la miséricorde est-elle alors toujours > si sélective ? Et la justice, trop souvent celle que s'offre > un vainqueur confit d'une bonne conscience parfois bien > illégitime ? > > Les dessous du pacte germano-soviétique > Gabriel Gorodetsky > > Madrid 1936, Sarajevo 1996 > Juan Goytisolo > > Les bénéficiaires méconnus de la traite des Noirs > Elikia M'Bokolo > > Et l'Elysée encouragea un génocide au Rwanda > François-Xavier Verschave > > Ğ Ingérence humanitaire ğ des Etats-Unis en Indochine > T. D. Allman > > L'Indonésie, martyre du jeu américain > Noam Chomsky > > > 3. QUAND LA FRANCE SERT D'EXEMPLE > > Pour certains médias et intellectuels conservateurs, s'il > existe une Ğ exception française ğ qui ne passe pas, c'est > celle des révolutions. Quand les partis de gauche > l'emportent, quand les cheminots font grève, quand des > militants travaillent à construire une utopie, la tradition > égalitaire née avec la République explique souvent leur > refus du monde tel qu'il est. Et les déceptions, nombreuses, > n'y font rien : l'impardonnable exception française continue > à déstabiliser les pouvoirs installés. Ceux qui occupent le > présent sans être jamais assurés que l'avenir leur > appartient. > > Libéralisme égalitaire des jacobins > Jean-Pierre Gross > > Suffrage universel, une invention française > Alain Garrigou > > Parfois, la gauche osa... > Serge Halimi > > La Commune de Longwy > Pierre Rimbert et Rafael Trapet > > Les irréductibles de Longo Maï > Ingrid Carlander > > Au miroir de décembre, la part de l'utopie > Edgar Roskis > > > 4. DISSIDENTS, MILITANTS, GÊNEURS > > L'histoire est d'abord faite par des hommes et par des > femmes qui, quand tout est menacé ou compromis, quand les > volontés collectives fléchissent un peu, savent rompre avec > les pesanteurs de leur milieu, créer un mouvement à partir > de presque rien, transformer une chimère en un espoir, un > espoir en une victoire. Sans ces rebelles-là, sans les > encouragements que parfois leur mémoire nous lègue, > aurions-nous la même volonté de ne pas baisser les bras et > de devenir à notre tour des faiseurs d'histoire ? > > Cronstadt et ses marins libertaires > Ignacio Ramonet > > Enrico Mattei, corsaire contre le cartel du pétrole > Fabio Gambaro > > Günter Grass, mauvaise conscience de la nation allemande > Brigitte Pätzold > > Contre la désertion intellectuelle, des voix s'élèvent > Philippe Videlier > > Décimées par le FBI : les Panthères noires > Marie-Agnès Combesque > > C'était aussi ça, la gauche américaine ! > Serge Halimi > > Ainsi était le Ğ Che ğ > Ahmed Ben Bella > > Henri Curiel, citoyen du tiers-monde > Gilles Perrault > > > CONCLUSION > > Le musée de l'ordre > Serge Halimi > > > __________________________________________________________ > > Vous pouvez vous procurer Ğ Manière de voir ğ en kiosque, > ou en vous adressant à : > > Le Monde diplomatique > Boutique > 21 bis, rue Claude Bernard > 75242 Paris cedex 05 > > Prix (port compris): > 51 F (France) > 56 F (Autres pays) > > > From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Tue Jul 14 07:44:47 1998 Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:44:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:44:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Rebecca Peoples Subject: Re: Unequal exchange In-Reply-To: <01bdaeb8$52dd6b20$33e0869f@teresa> [Note: I have somehow received probably 3 or 4 copies of Rebecca People's latest post to WSN (WSN posts always come to me in pairs, so that makes around 6 or 8 copies of the same post). Is there a clitch with the listserv? Or are you, Rebecca, repeatedly sending these posts to list? The last round of the same posts are all indented, as if it was forwarded again.] Hi Rebecca, I am very busy with other projects right now, so I really only have time for this post. I will try to answer any questions or points you raise, but it will probably take some time to respond, and then I fear not thoroughly, as the rest of my summer looks hectic. On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Rebecca Peoples wrote: > If what you write is correct then how does this explain the apprenently > significant accumulation of merchant capital in the commercial phase of > capitalism. If there cannot exist, generally speaking, unequal exchange > as a necessary condition for the development of commodity circulation > then what was the basis for this accumulation of capital by commercial > capital? What I quoted from Marx was a typification presented to wage workers to explain where the origin of their economic exploitation lies, that is, whence the source of surplus-value. To do this clearly it was necessary for Marx to explain, in ideal-typical terms, the labor process under industrial capital relations, and to explain competing theories away, in this case the theory that profits arise in unequal exchange as a general rule: if the source of profits was the result of everybody selling dear then every seller's gain would be cancelled by his next transaction. Therefore, in an ideal-typical situation, i.e., on average given ideal market circumstances, such a claim would represent a contradiction. It is typical of Marx to use the assumptions of classical political economy, which are generally pitched in ideal form, to show how that theoretical system cannot work even on its own ideal terms. This doesn't mean that unequal exchange does not go on, of course; and all of the different forms of labor productive inputs, monopoly arrangements, as has been noted, and myriad other complexities, must be kept in mind as real constituents of concrete historical systems. But, all that aside, I am not sure, given the character of other contributions to this thread, that people will find this particular point all that relevant, Rebecca. "Unequal exchange" as it is being discussed here, I think (and I have not been following the thread that closely), is in reference to the theory presented by Arghiri Emmanuel in the early 1970s as a theory to explain uneven development of the world economy, namely, why rich nations keep getting richer and why poor nations keep getting poorer. As for your question on commercial capital, I will give that one a shot. Before doing so, it should be emphasized that equal exchange in the typification that Marx developed in Value, Price, and Profit applies to a particular phase, geography, and sector in the development and expansion of capitalism. I will say more about this at the end of my post when I talk about accumulation. I emphasize this now because my discussion of commercial capital also proceeds from the same object of analysis. According to Marx, commercial capital is one form of merchant or trading capital, the other form being money-dealing capital. Commodity capital becomes either one of these as a "transitional phase" of capital. In Capital, Volume III, Marx defines commercial capital as the transformed portion of circulation capital that is always found in the market, "in the course of its metamorphosis," and "perpetually confined to the circulation sphere." By demanding that we understand commercial capital in relation to the larger set of economic relations in which it is embedded - note the explicitly transitive terminology, e.g., "metamorphosis" - Marx is urging us to think dialectically. He uses this reasoning to pierce through the illusion that commercial capital somehow represents a form of capital independent from productive capital. The point Marx makes is that although commercial capital has the character of an independently functioning capital, if who sold the commodity was an agent of the producer himself, rather than as the merchant capitalist, it would appear at once as only a particular form of capital at a particular phase in the reproduction process. It is, therefore, to confuse matters to suppose that only because this form exists in the sphere of circulation that it is somehow independent from the production cycle. (Actually, this does sort of bear in a far sort of way on the uneven exchange conversation, since as I recall Bettelheim criticizes Emmanuel for dislodging the circulation process, i.e., the exchange relations in the market, from the context of production relations.) The confusion comes in here: Because the merchant (or commercial) capitalist turns a profit, but does not purchase (not directly, anyway) labor-power or otherwise directly extract surplus labor; the merchant capitalist never invests in productive capital. How does the merchant (commercial capitalist) make his profits? Marx contends that like any other capitalist, the merchant capitalist appears on the market bearing money capital that he advances to turn a profit. He buys commodities and sells them. But because it is a step removed from the end result of production, it does not appear tied to the production of surplus-value, and so it seems a contradiction is found: if commodities sell, on average, at their values, how is it possible that the profit the merchant capitalist takes has its origin in surplus-value? After all, from the point of view of the producer, hasn't the owner of productive capital realized his profit with his sale of commodities to the merchant? Is this unequal exchange? Ah, but the commodity, from *its* point of view (so to speak), has not been sold for itself, i.e., it remains a commodity still in the process of exchange. From the point of view of the reproduction of total social capital, the commodity has simply changed owners. It is in the hands of the merchant and not the capitalist, but it retains its character as commodity capital because it has not yet been consumed (finally sold). Therefore, although the commodity dealer valorizes his money as trading capital, Marx emphasizes that we must put that to one side in the ultimate analysis, because adopting that point of view mystifies the reality that commercial capital is the producer's commodity capital that must enter the circuit and be transformed into money. Commodity capital still must "perform its function as commodity capital on the market." The difference between the producer's commodities he sells to the merchant, and the merchant's commodities that he sells to the consumer, is only a matter of an extra (and theoretically unnecessary) phase of transformation, where "instead of being an incidental operation carried out by the producer himself, this function now appears as the exclusive operation of a particular species of capitalist, the merchant, and acquires independence as the business of a particular capitalist investment." Let's go into this a little deeper, because, still, there is more money to be explained at the end of the process than was there at the beginning of the process; to quote Marx: "the merchant buys a commodity and later sells it: M-C-M'." This is the equation for expanding capital. Marx explains this by appealing to the essential difference between the producer and the merchant (an illusory difference from the perspective of total social capital, but real within the specific forms of capital compared): the difference is that what the producer buys is not what he sells; this is not the case for the merchant because in the sphere of circulation involving commercial capital, the commodity is sold twice (and more times than this potentially). Through the reasoning presented below, Marx concludes that the commodity is not "definitively sold," that the merchant is "only continuing the operation of sale - or the facilitation of the commodity capital's function." [I]t is precisely through this repeated sale, the double change of place of the same commodity, that the money advanced by the first buyer for the purchase of the commodity effects its return to him. In the case, C'-M-C, the same money's double change of place makes it possible for the commodity to be alienated in one shape and appropriated in another. In the case M-C-M', the double change of place of the same commodity makes it possible for the money advanced to be withdrawn from circulation again. All of this shows precisely that the commodity has not yet been definitively sold when it passes from the hands of the producer into those of the merchant, and that the latter is only continuing the operation of sale - or the facilitation of the commodity capital's function. It also shows at the same time how what was for the productive capitalist C-M, simply a function of his capital in its transient shape of commodity capital, is for the merchant M-C-M', a particular valorization of the money capital he has advanced. One phase of the commodity's metamorphosis now exhibits itself; with respect to the merchant, as M-C-M', i.e., as the evolution of a specific kind of capital. Thus it is a "transient shape" of the commodity capital, and is a particular valorization of the money the merchant advanced. It is the merchant who has definitively sold the commodity. The merchant becomes part of the circuit, one of the steps completing the process. This development is functional for capitalism because: "as a result of the division of labour, the capital that is exclusively concerned with buying and selling is smaller than it would be if the capitalist had to conduct the entire commercial part of the business himself." The commercial capitalist is an independent extension of the producer, a role that could theoretically be met by an agent of the producer, but only inefficiently for the real system as a whole. Also, because the merchant concentrates on his side of the business, and because he is buying up the producer's commodities, the producer is able to convert capital more quickly, it completes is "metamorphosis" more rapidly, and this the whole system is reproduced and expanded that much faster. I quote a conclusion by Marx: Commercial capital, in so far as it exists in the form of commodity capital - and what we are considering here is the reproduction process of the entire social capital - is evidently nothing more than the part of industrial capital that is still on the market and engaged in its process of metamorphosis. This money exists and functions as commodity capital. Thus it is only the *money* capital advanced by the merchant, the money capital exclusively designated for buying and selling, which never assumes any other form than that of commodity capital and money capital, never assumes that of productive capital, and remains for ever penned into capital's circulation sphere.... Note again that Marx is talking about the reproduction of the whole social capital. "Commercial capital is nothing more than capital functioning with the circulation sphere. The circulation process is one phase in the reproduction process as a whole." You can already see, Rebecca, how you have conceptually and erroneously lifted commercial capital out of its relations. To pull out of all this perhaps the essential point, Marx writes: "But in the process of circulation, no value is produced, and thus also no surplus-value. The same value simply undergoes changes of form." This point is crucial. Surplus-value, according to Marx's theory, can only be generated in production, through the exploitation of some labor input whose productions are destined for capitalist markets. So to explain the M-C-M' process in commercial capital, it must be understood in terms of the production relations that it moves over the top of, and it moves over the top of many different production stages in the development of the capitalist economy. The error I think you have made, Rebecca, is failing to situate commercial capital, a relation specific to the sphere of circulation, in the productive relations that underpin it. Commercial capital, since it does not invest in productive capital, must have a commodity source to tap for commodities to circulate, which means that productive capital, and its transitional form, commodity capital, are presupposed. You have, it appears, separated out aspects of capital and staged them temporally, rather than conceptualized them dialectically, as a moving unity. Now, part of your question concerns accumulation; you want to tie in your perceived demand that, for accumulation to be possible, equal exchange in commmodities must be generalized and surplus-value under wage-labor also must be generalized. But accumulation operates differently depending on the point in the development of capitalism one wishes to look at: in primitive accumulation, wage-labor is created; under articulation with precapitalist modes in colonized societies, accumulation is used to expand the production of primary commodities (raw materials); in manufacture, the capitalist accumulates to pay wages; in machinery and machinofacture, fixed capital is objectified through accumulation. It is this later point in development that Marx analyzes in-depth in Capital (although he analyzes the other forms, too), and all of its attendant social problems, such as the surplus labor population. However, this more advanced form of accumulation should not be taken as the theoretically necessary form and projected back upon earlier stages, regions, and sectors in the development of capitalism (although abstractions from it can be used as analytical tools to understand earlier forms). This is an incorrect method. One other thing. Merchant capital(ism) is independent enough in its sphere (circulation) to attach itself like a parasite onto all sorts of modes of production. It has been historically argued that, unlike its relationship with productive capital, where viewed by Marx from the standpoint of total social capital reproduction it is a dependent and transitional form of capital, in articulation with other modes of production it remains external, thus tapping the commodities generated by precapitalist exploitative relations, whatever these might be (and certainly this has a bearing on the unequal exchange discussion). However, to the degree that such external economic activity over time conditions and determines the character of the precapitalist mode of production one must reconsider the degree of externality of merchant capital to these modes of production. I would argue that a considerable time ago, while this may have been true initially, historically, it became inappropriate to conceptualize commercial capital as external to precapitalist (or backward, underdevelopment, etc.) modes of production. And there is the matter of superficial "precapitalist" modes of production that developed internally the capitalist economy, wherein merchant capital can be misconceived as external. Peace, Andy From 6500jk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu Tue Jul 14 09:40:58 1998 Tue, 14 Jul 1998 08:40:51 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 08:40:51 -0700 (PDT) From: Judi Kessler <6500jk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu> To: 6500jk@ucsbuxa Subject: Re: HELP WANTED In-Reply-To: To the subscribers of this Listserver: I am an advanced doctoral student working on research involving transnational apparel production networks (Southern California and Mexico), 4 years post-NAFTA. I use the commodity chain perspective as my theoretical framework (along with a bit of this and that). Out of about 75 grads in my dept I am the only one doing this sort of work. Moreover, there is no one on my formal committee familiar with either the topic or the theory of my research. The one faculty who *does* do this sort of thing has chosen not to be a part of my committee, although I have been amply funded from 3 sources to complete my work. Is there anyone out there doing similar work? I feel very much alone academically. Would very much like to communicate with someone who knows CC theory and is doing work similar to mine. If you do respond, please do not respond to the entire list (so as not to start an exponential "chain letter"). Thanks. ***************************** Judi A. Kessler Department of Sociology University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 (805) 893-3751 6500jk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu ***************************** From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Tue Jul 14 15:31:46 1998 Tue, 14 Jul 1998 22:31:08 +0100 (BST) From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "Andrew Wayne Austin" Subject: Re: Unequal exchange Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 22:22:48 +0100 charset="iso-8859-1" Rebecca: Hi Andy! Andy: One other thing. Merchant capital(ism) is independent enough in its sphere (circulation) to attach itself like a parasite onto all sorts of modes of production. It has been historically argued that, unlike its relationship with productive capital, where viewed by Marx from the standpoint of total social capital reproduction it is a dependent and transitional form of capital, in articulation with other modes of production it remains external, thus tapping the commodities generated by precapitalist exploitative relations, whatever these might be (and certainly this has a bearing on the unequal exchange discussion). However, to the degree that such external economic activity over time conditions and determines the character of the precapitalist mode of production one must reconsider the degree of externality of merchant capital to these modes of production. I would argue that a considerable time ago, while this may have been true initially, historically, it became inappropriate to conceptualize commercial capital as external to precapitalist (or backward, underdevelopment, etc.) modes of production. And there is the matter of superficial "precapitalist" modes of production that developed internally the capitalist economy, wherein merchant capital can be misconceived as external. Rebecca: Perhaps you miss the point I am making. If merchant capital exists under condtions in which industrial capital is largely of a marginal or sporadic nature how is it possible to for it then to accumulate as capital given the equal exchange of values is a necesary if commodity production and circulation is to develop. This being so how then is it possible for merchant capital to accumulate as capital. In short how is m-c-m' possible under conditions in which there is generally no captalist production process? Where does the increment m', surplus value originate from is equal exchange is be the rule rather than the exception? Warm regards Rebecca From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Tue Jul 14 17:20:08 1998 Tue, 14 Jul 1998 19:19:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 19:19:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Rebecca Peoples Subject: Re: Unequal exchange In-Reply-To: <01bdaf6d$8ce11820$7ae0869f@teresa> Rebecca, I think you first need to ask yourself these two empirical questions: (1) Do merchants appear in precapitalism? And, if so, (2) do merchants down through history, in general, profit from their activities? If you answered yes to both empirical questions, then you have to ask yourself this theoretical question: How do merchants do this in a context other than the ideal-typical industrial relations Marx abstracted from advanced British capitalism in the mid-1800s? A related question that may come up in your puzzling over the matter is this: Whence the source of surplus labor? You will find, I think, that surplus labor exists down through history; and, further, you will find that there is surplus labor that exists in the capitalist world market that does not find its origin in industrial wage-labor. In fact, I bet you will even find that surplus labor comes from sources where no wages are paid at all. In the later instances, you will find, I think, that there is no system of equal exchange between those who appropriate surplus-labor, and those whose labor is exploited. How is this possible? The assumption in back of your question implies that profit, and, moreover, surplus labor, is not possible in a system other than advanced industrial capitalism in Britain in the mid-19th century where commodities are on average exchanged for their values, values which are determined by the amount of wage-labor contained in them. But I think that if you study the matter you will find that this assumption is false. If you are asking me how merchant capitalists make profits in the capitalist system, I can tell you, just as Marx will tell you, they did it by buying and selling. If you ask me where the value comes from, I can tell you, just as Marx will tell you, from the exploitation of labor in various forms, in surplus labor that is bound up in the form of commodities moving through the capitalist market, of which merchants work as specialists in the sphere of circulation. Maybe somebody else can help you, but all I can say at this point is that you mustn't keep bending reality to pure special theory, but rather you must theoretically explain empirical reality. Your error is in failing to apply general Marxian theory flexibly to understanding a historical system at different stages in its development; putting this another way, your error is in trying to force a special theory developed about one stage of capitalist development in a core nation onto other stages of history and other economic sectors for which this special theory is, at least in part, inappropriate (at least without modification). Peace, Andy From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Wed Jul 15 03:50:45 1998 Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:50:12 +0100 (BST) From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "Andrew Wayne Austin" Subject: Re: Unequal exchange Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:43:26 +0100 charset="iso-8859-1" Rebecca: Hi Andy! Andy: I think you first need to ask yourself these two empirical questions: (1) Do merchants appear in precapitalism? And, if so, (2) do merchants down through history, in general, profit from their activities? Rebecca: How amusing! I put to you some straigth questions and you answer me with questions. Andy: A related question that may come up in your puzzling over the matter is this: Whence the source of surplus labor? You will find, I think, that surplus labor exists down through history; and, further, you will find that there is surplus labor that exists in the capitalist world market that does not find its origin in industrial wage-labor. Rebecca: Surplus labour is not at issue. Clearly surplus labour has existed through may different social formations. This is not under question here. I am talking about the accumulation of capital which is an entirely differrnt thing to surplus labour as such. It is a specific historical form of the accumulation of surplus labour. I simply wooooould like you to offer a valid explanation, if one is possible, as to how capital was accumulated by merhcnat capital in the era that preceded given that exchange of equal value was necessary for the existence and development of commodity circulation in the absence of industrial capital. Instead of anwering such a questions you make all kinds of extraordinary assumptions abot my straigth questions. Perhaps someone else would like ot offer an anwer on this list that is dedicated to these issues. Warm regards Rebecca From arg19@tid.es Wed Jul 15 08:53:49 1998 Sender: arivero@tid.es Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:51:58 +0200 From: Alejandro Rivero Reply-To: "rivero@sol.unizar.es" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Unequal exchange > > Rebecca: Surplus labour is not at issue. Clearly surplus labour has existed > through may different social formations. This is not under question here. > > I am talking about the accumulation of capital which is an entirely > differrnt thing to surplus labour as such. It is a specific historical form > of the accumulation of surplus labour. I simply wooooould like you to > offer a valid explanation, if one is possible, as to how capital was > accumulated by merhcnat capital in the era that preceded given that exchange > of equal value was necessary for the existence and development of commodity > circulation in the absence of industrial capital. 585 BC: "The philosopher and the physicist of today share another common link: the same man, Thales of Miletus, is claimed by each as the FATHER of his profession. His biographer, Diogenes Laertius, narrated anecdotes about him which are worthy of mention for the sake of tradition rather than fact. Two of these anecdotes are quite famous, namely, that he fell into a well or irrigation ditch while star-gazing, and that, predicting a scarcity of olives, he cornered the olive market" "One time when Thales was still poor, Thales was talking to a friend who was just as poor as he. His friend moaned and groaned about how hard it was to be poor and how he'd be poor the rest of his life. Thales said it would be easy to become rich. He told his friend to come back and visit him in six months. In six months when his friend returned he was astonished to see Thales the richest man in town. Thales told his friend how he foresaw a bumper crop and bought all the olive presses. He rented them back to the same people that sold them to him and made a fortune. More interested in the science than the money he sold them all back eventually" Well, I have heard more versions of the history, for instance one in which he only buys the rights to use the presses that year. From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Wed Jul 15 10:06:09 1998 Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:05:54 +0100 (BST) From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "AUT" Subject: Orangeism Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:42:20 +0100 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Comrades There has been much controversy surrounding the question of the Orange parades marching down roads such as the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, Ireland. The view of Sinn Fein, Michael Farrell, co-chairperson of the civil rights association, is that it is valid for these parades in general to proceed once the local residents dont object to them. This position is one that obscures the real nature of Orangeism in the North of Ireland. The point is that Orangeism and its parades are of a cultural, ideological and politically reactionary character. Consequently they are opposed by all revolutionary communists. However that does not mean that communists simply take to the streets opposing such marches whether the march proceeds down a staunchly Orange area or non-Orange community. Practical opposition is a tactical matter and must be considered in context such as the kind of support that exists on the ground among the local masses. As a tactical matter how the practical opposition is to be organised and under what slogans are vitally important. As of present much of the Sinn Fein and Garvagy/Omeau form of organising against marching has an opportunist character which rather than attempting to raise political consciousness reinforces sectarianism even further. However communists can engage in propaganda against such marching at any time. To conclude: The view of Sinn Fein and others seems to be that that Organism has a civil and democratic right to march, but not through areas where the marches are found to be offensive to the local community. This position reinforces the existence of Orangeism and its parades and essentially undermines the call for an end to Orange parades down Garvaghy and other areas. The issue of civil rights and democracy in this context is an illusory one that merely obscures the real state of affairs. The point is that Orangeism and its parades, irrespective of the localities, they toddle through are culturally, ideologically and politically reactionary. Consequently universal opposition to both Orangeism and its theatricals is correct --whether the parades proceed through staunchly Orange or non-Orange communities. Warm regards Rebecca charset="iso-8859-1"
Hi Comrades

There has been much controversy surrounding the = question=20 of the Orange
parades marching down roads such as the Garvaghy Road = in=20 Portadown, Ireland.

The view of Sinn Fein, Michael Farrell,=20 co-chairperson of the civil rights
association, is that it is valid = for these=20 parades in general to proceed
once the local residents dont object to = them.=20 This position is one that
obscures the real nature of Orangeism in = the North=20 of Ireland.

The point is that Orangeism and its parades are of a=20 cultural, ideological
and politically reactionary character. = Consequently=20 they are opposed by all
revolutionary communists. However that does = not mean=20 that communists simply
take to the streets opposing such marches = whether the=20 march proceeds down a
staunchly Orange area or non-Orange community.=20 Practical opposition is a
tactical matter and must be considered in = context=20 such as the kind of
support that exists on the ground among the local = masses.=20 As a tactical
matter how the practical opposition is to be organised = and=20 under what
slogans are vitally important. As of present much of the = Sinn Fein=20 and
Garvagy/Omeau form of organising against marching has an=20 opportunist
character which rather than attempting to raise political = consciousness
reinforces sectarianism even further.

However = communists=20 can engage in propaganda against such marching at any
time.

To = conclude: The view of Sinn Fein and others seems to be that that = Organism
has=20 a civil and democratic right to march, but not through areas where=20 the
marches are found to be offensive to the local community. This=20 position
reinforces the existence of Orangeism and its parades and=20 essentially
undermines the call for an end to Orange parades down = Garvaghy=20 and other
areas.
The issue of civil rights and democracy in this = context=20 is an illusory one
that merely obscures the real state of affairs. = The point=20 is that Orangeism
and its parades, irrespective of the localities, = they=20 toddle through are
culturally, ideologically and politically = reactionary.=20 Consequently
universal opposition to both Orangeism and its = theatricals=20 is
correct --whether the parades proceed through staunchly Orange or=20 non-Orange
communities.

Warm=20 regards
Rebecca
 
From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Wed Jul 15 10:14:04 1998 Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:13:48 +0100 (BST) From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: , "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: Unequal exchange Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:10:46 +0100 charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Mate; Dont grip what your saying. Rebecca > > Rebecca: Surplus labour is not at issue. Clearly surplus labour has existed > through may different social formations. This is not under question here. > > I am talking about the accumulation of capital which is an entirely > differrnt thing to surplus labour as such. It is a specific historical form > of the accumulation of surplus labour. I simply wooooould like you to > offer a valid explanation, if one is possible, as to how capital was > accumulated by merhcnat capital in the era that preceded given that exchange > of equal value was necessary for the existence and development of commodity > circulation in the absence of industrial capital. 585 BC: "The philosopher and the physicist of today share another common link: the same man, Thales of Miletus, is claimed by each as the FATHER of his profession. His biographer, Diogenes Laertius, narrated anecdotes about him which are worthy of mention for the sake of tradition rather than fact. Two of these anecdotes are quite famous, namely, that he fell into a well or irrigation ditch while star-gazing, and that, predicting a scarcity of olives, he cornered the olive market" "One time when Thales was still poor, Thales was talking to a friend who was just as poor as he. His friend moaned and groaned about how hard it was to be poor and how he'd be poor the rest of his life. Thales said it would be easy to become rich. He told his friend to come back and visit him in six months. In six months when his friend returned he was astonished to see Thales the richest man in town. Thales told his friend how he foresaw a bumper crop and bought all the olive presses. He rented them back to the same people that sold them to him and made a fortune. More interested in the science than the money he sold them all back eventually" Well, I have heard more versions of the history, for instance one in which he only buys the rights to use the presses that year. From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Wed Jul 15 17:59:57 1998 Wed, 15 Jul 1998 19:59:49 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 19:59:49 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Rebecca Peoples Subject: Re: Unequal exchange (long) In-Reply-To: <01bdafd5$04226620$LocalHost@teresa> Hi Rebecca. I hope I can answer your question in this post. I started off this post with only a few comments in mind, but the post expanded quickly. I apologize for the length of the post. I think you have to be clear about whether you mean capital (a) in general, as that which permits its owner to generate an income, this being capital that exists in any age and in every social formation, or (b) specifically, capital as a social relation specific to capitalism. If it is the latter, then we must emphasize that a discussion about capital's character and function cannot be disembedded from the capitalist relations of production that determine its character and function; it is in these historical relations that capital takes on the character of capital in the capitalist sense. It is true that the latter definition subsumes much of the general character of the former; but it transforms the meaning in terms of historical specificity. And this is not just true of capitalism; the same contextualization is demanded if you want to analyze capital in another mode of production, e.g., under feudalism. (Although, in the precapitalist cases, commercial capital generally has a much more real independent existence than it does under capitalist relations. More on this later.) If we are to proceed on the grounds of Marxian method, we must be very clear about this, Rebecca; because if you mean capital in the second sense (capital as a social relations specific to capitalism), and it appears you do implicitly by the way you are treating commercial capital (hence my criticism that you are abstracting and setting temporally against each another two simultaneously occurring forms of capital), then you already assume capitalist relations of production. This was the purpose of my rhetorical questions in the last post: if you already assume capitalist relations of production, then what is your question really trying to get at? I don't think you recognize the implicit assumption running through your question. In its present form the question is illogical, since it is asking the list how it is possible for commercial capital, with the character of commercial capital under capitalist relations, to accumulate capital outside of capitalist relations or before such relations existed. And no general character of commercial capital is expressed in your posts (or else there would be no need to ask the question). I want you to understand what you are doing: you are lifting a historically specific form of capital out of context, retaining all of its historically specific character, and placing it in a different context, and then asking a logically disorganized question based on this implicit premise. To make your question answerable, it must be changed into either one of following two questions: (1) How does merchant capital accumulate capital in the context of capitalist relations, i.e., what is the source of and mechanism through which surplus is produced, appropriated, and accumulated? This was the question I answered in my previous post. (2) How does merchant capital accumulate capital outside of capitalist relations, i.e., what is the source of and mechanism through which this surplus is produced, appropriated, and accumulated? For this second question I suggested that rather than try to impose upon precapitalist forms of social relations Marx's analysis of capital (specifically commercial capital) in the capitalist-relational context, that you look at the historical facts about merchant capital and, perhaps using Marx's general theory of social formation, develop a special theory about capital and merchants in precapitalist relations. Although commercial capital is more really independent in precapitalist modes of production, you still must analyze these precapitalist relations because (a) the character and the function of the merchant's capital will be conditioned by the context in which it is embedded and (b) if you want to understand the ultimate source of wealth that the merchant is accumulating, you must find how labor is exploited, which, depending on the mode of production (and labor is exploited in many different production contexts), is accomplished variably. But, then again, you might just want to refer to Marx himself, who, in Capital Volume III, discusses the nature of merchant capital (and commercial capital) in precapitalist relations. Marx stresses that "not only trade, but also trading capital, is older than the capitalist mode of production, and is in fact the oldest historical mode in which capital has an independent existence." Money-dealing capital (one form of merchant capital), and "the capital advanced in it, needs nothing more for its development than the existence of large-scale trade in general, and subsequently of commercial, commodity-dealing capital, it is only this latter which we have to deal with now." So, at the most abstract level, to understand commercial capital in precapitalist relations, one only need understand merchant capital generally in terms of large-scale trade (a precondition also for capitalism); and more specifically in terms of the mode of production to which it is attached. In any case, commercial capital is always confined to the sphere of circulation, and "its sole function is to mediate the exchanges of commodities." Therefore, "no further conditions are needed for [commercial capital's] existence...than are necessary for the simple circulation of commodities and money." Marx writes that "[w]hatever mode of production is the basis on which the products circulating are produced - whether the primitive community, slave production, small peasant and petty-bourgeois production, or capitalist production - this in no way alters their character as commodities, and as commodities they have to go through the exchange process and the changes of form that accompany it." Since, Rebecca, according to Marx, "[c]ommercial capital simply mediates the movement of those extremes, the commodities, as preconditions already given to it," the question of whence surplus labor is bound up in the origin of the commodity traded, the existence of which is presupposed in commercial capital and *whatever the mode of production is where commercial capital operates*. Commercial capital, its independent claim to fame being the mediation of exchange, moves over the top of precapitalist relations. I had hoped you would do this bit of work on your own, but I think the answer you want is found here (but, then again, like Dorothy trying to go home, it was there all along). Marx writes: "The extent to which production goes into trade and passes through the hands of merchants depends on the mode of production, reaching a maximum with the full development of capitalist production, where the product is produced simply as a commodity and not at all as a direct means of subsistence. On the other hand, whatever the mode of production is the basis, trade promotes the generation of a surplus product designed to go into exchange, so as to increase the consumption or the hoards of the producers (which we take here to mean the owners of the products). It thus gives production a character oriented more and more towards exchange-value." Sorry for the long passage, but this is relevant (and I am not sure that Rebecca has a copy of Volume III). The metamorphosis of commodities, their movement, consists (1) materially, in the exchange of different commodities for one another, (2) formally, in the transformation of commodities into money, selling, and the transformation of money into commodities, buying. And the function of commercial capital is reducible to these functions, the exchange of commodities through buying and selling. Commercial capital thus simply mediates the exchange of commodities, though it should be understood right from the start that this is not just an exchange between the immediate producers. In the case of the slave relationship, the serf relationship, and the relationship of tribute (where the primitive community is under consideration), it is the slaveowner, the feudal lord or the state receiving tribute that is the owner of the product and therefore its seller. The merchant buys and sells for many people. Sales and purchases are concentrated in his hands and in this way buying and selling cease to be linked with the direct need of the buyer (as merchant). But whatever the social organization of the spheres of production whose commodity exchange the merchant mediates, his wealth always exists as money wealth and his money always functions as capital. Its form is always M-C-M'; money, the independent form of exchange-value, is the starting-point, and the increase of exchange-value the independent purpose. Commodity exchange itself, and the operations that mediate it - separated from production and performed by non-producers - becomes simply a means of increasing wealth, and not just wealth, but wealth in its general social form as exchange-value. [...] The less developed production is, the more monetary wealth is concentrated in the hands of merchants and appears in the specific form of mercantile wealth. Within the capitalist mode of production - i.e., once capital takes command of production itself and gives it a completely altered and specific form - commercial capital appears simply as capital in a *particular* function. In all earlier modes of production, however, commercial capital rather appears as the function of capital *par excellence*, and the more so, the more production is directly the production of the producer's means of subsistence. Thus there is no problem at all in understanding why commercial capital appears as the historic form of capital long before capital has subjected production to its sway. Its existence, and its development to a certain level, is itself a historical precondition for the development of the capitalist mode of production (1) as a precondition for the concentration of monetary wealth, and (2) because the capitalist mode of production presupposes production for trade, wholesale outlet rather than supply to the individual client, so that a merchant does not buy simply to satisfy his own personal needs, but rather concentrates in his act of purchase acts of many. On the other hand, every development in commercial capital gives production a character ever more to exchange-value, transforming products more and more into commodities. Even so, this development, taken by itself, is insufficient to explain the transition from one mode of production to the other.... In the context of capitalist production, commercial capital is demoted from its earlier separate existence, to become a particular moment of capitalist investment in general, and the equalization of profits reduced its profit rate to the general average. It now functions simply as the agent of productive capital. >From the beginning, I assumed you meant merchant capital as capitalism, Rebecca, *because* you were treating it as merchant capital under capitalism. So I went to Volume III of Capital and explained to you Marx's theory on the matter. Remember, you wanted to know how, given the assumption of equal exchange, "the apprenently [sic] significant accumulation of merchant capital in the commercial phase of capitalism," is possible. Volume III has a section specifically on this matter, which I interpreted thoroughly. The commercial phase of capitalism takes place in the sphere of circulation, and capital is accumulated by the merchant as part of the overall circuit of capital, the merchant being an extension of one of the phases of commodity transformation. When commercial capital takes place outside of capitalist relations, then one must proceed on the grounds of the development of a special theory examining the economic relations of the precapitalist mode of production, whatever this might be. *But* commercial capital in any mode of production must depend on the surplus labor of that mode of production for its wealth, since it does not produce surplus itself. This means that the accumulation of capital ultimately occurs through the exploitation of some source of labor, whether this is in capitalist relations or precapitalist relations. It was not like commercial capital prior to capitalism conjured its wealth from thin air. The wealth had to come from somewhere, and since the merchant invests nothing in productive capital, nor does he produce surplus with his hands, we can reasonably assume that the wealth comes from whatever mode of production the merchant is attaching himself to. Your question makes the case that, without the fully developed industrial capitalist mode of production, none of this can take place. The argument you have advanced stands not only against Marx's analysis in particular, which is the perspective you hail from, but it flies in the face of the general understanding of commercial capital down through history. And note that during this discussion, neither Marx nor I have said that commodities on average even in non-capitalist markets are exchanged unequally, that unequal exchange in markets is the source of profit. What I objected to was that in arguing for the precondition for equal exchange for the accumulation of capital in precapitalist modes of production, you carried over with it and out of context, surplus-value produced by wage-labor. You made all the conditions of one specific economic system - no, more accurately, one advanced sector in an economic system, the preconditions for capital accumulation historically. In one of your posts you asked this: "If there cannot exist, generally speaking, unequal exchange as a necessary condition for the development of commodity circulation then what was the basis for this accumulation of capital by commercial capital?" The specific basis for accumulation of capital by commercial capital depends on the mechanism of accumulation of the mode of production to which the merchant has attached himself. So, if surplus labor has its source in slave production, then the capital that is accumulated by the merchant finds its origins in the labor activity of the slave. The problem of equal exchange is to show that the profits obtained by the merchant do not arise from unequal exchange, on average, but arise from the exploitation of some labor source. At one level of abstraction, if one must presuppose an average equality of exchange in markets for commodities to be circulated, then one may reasonably make this presupposition; but the basis for accumulating capital still lies in surplus labor, and so one also must admit at once that s/he cannot claim that exploiting labor and capital accumulation only occurs under capitalist relations. Since this is the case, the merchant accumulates capital from the exploitation of labor whether in a capitalist economy or a feudal economy. The interesting thing about Marx analysis of merchant capital is that it shows how what appears to be selling dear is in reality, from the view of total social capital, merely a functional extension of the transformation of the commodity-form of capital onto money-capital. I want to reiterate the main point and introduce an important related matter. In Capital Volume II, Marx emphasizes that in capitalist relations of production, that productive capital, commodity capital, and money capital are all, in the relations of capitalism (the two latter to the sphere of circulation, former to the sphere of production, which Marx calls "industrial capital"). So, the main point is that one must keep in mind that it is the capitalist relations that define these movements as a particular sort capital. Therefore, Rebecca, if you want merchant capital to be capital in the sense of being *capitalist* then you must have them moving in a capitalist economy. If you want merchant capital just in the general sense of a merchant's capacity to generate income, then you have to do historical analysis about a given social formation to determine the specific mechanism through which the merchant accumulates capital. Marx points the way to such an analysis, even generating a cursory analysis of the matter himself. Secondly, an important related matter, Marx writes that "other varieties of capital which appeared previously, within past and declining social conditions of production, are not only subordinated to [the capitalist mode of production] and correspondingly altered in the mechanism of their functioning, but they now move only on its basis, thus live and die, stand and fall together with this basis." There are several important points to be made. First, according to Marx, capital exists, in other varieties, prior to capitalist relations. This must be capital in general, in the sense of the capacity for generating income. So merchants are accumulating capital in all manner of contexts, most of which have historically not been capitalist. Second, these other forms of capital, upon entering into capitalist relations, become subordinated to capitalist production relations and they are transformed by them. That is, they are "altered in the mechanism of their functioning," and become capitalist. Suppose, for instance, that corvee production becomes subsumed under capitalism; this production becomes capitalist; the mechanism of its functioning becomes altered; and surplus labor bound up in commodities for exchange in capitalist markets becomes surplus-value (see Capital Volume I, Ch. 10, Sec. 2, for a discussion of how surplus labor becomes surplus-value under capitalist relations). An important distinction must be made here. There are other forms of, for example, productive capital that superficially appear as precapitalist forms. They are often identified as precapitalist because they resemble forms of capital in other modes of production (which are themselves very broad abstractions). An example is the productive and commodity capital of the US slave plantation. One might say that under capitalist relations this variety of capital becomes capitalist, since it is subordinated to capitalist relations and its form is altered in this regard. However, slavery in the US South does not have an independent or pre-existing existence to the world-economy of which it was a part and which determined the character of its commodities. Thus, slavery is not subsumed under capitalist relations like corvee production was in Europe; and slavery in the US South is only superficially similar to the ancient slavery mode of production Marx supposed (but never studied). But, in any case, as Marx emphasizes in Capital Volume I, both slave-labor and corvee-labor produce surplus-value under capital, since the commodities generated are exchanged in capitalist markets, they are exchange-values. And, whether you want to call it surplus, surplus-value, surplus labor, or so on, capital is accumulated, and it is accumulated in both capitalist and precapitalist social formations. To specify this further, one can look the issue of labor and labor power. As you probably know, Rebecca, when someone cannot exchange the products of labor themselves for income, then they must exchange their labor power, here the labor activity going to the objectification of objects controlled and consumed by another. The exchange of labor can be for wages or for commodities, these use-values reproducing labor power. And this exchange takes place under variable conditions of coercion, sometimes directly, as in slavery, or by necessity, as it is under conditions of wage-labor. (Surely this is a form of unequal exchange.) The purpose of this relevant matter is to show the process all the way through given various labor processes as they enter, one way or another, into the capitalist economy. The bottom-line is that one must make a clear distinction between the general forms of capital and labor, and specific forms of capital and labor. One determines the general in the same fashion that one determines the general in any other science: through comparison, common characteristics are abstracted from examination of various specific species. Each species will have its own special character, and these can be judged unique by their absence in other species. One can neither neglect the unique features of a species of social formation nor impose unique features of a specific social formation upon previous social forms. If one could do this, then these would not be unique features. Scientific description and explanation requires that the distinction between the general and the specific be strictly observed. Among many of the things not special to capitalism are these: (1) various forms of capital, e.g., merchant capital, productive capital, commodity capital; (2) large-scale trade; (3) surplus labor and exploitation; (4) equal and unequal exchange (and uneven development); and (5) capital accumulation. I hope that this helps, Rebecca. If it doesn't, I hope that some other person can supply you with the answer you desire. I hope you will accept the critique that accompanies this answer in the spirit it is meant. Again, I apologize for the length of the post. Hope all is well, Andy From stormrhymer@hotmail.com Thu Jul 16 01:45:38 1998 X-Originating-IP: [192.91.247.2] From: "John Stevens" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Orangeism Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:45:32 PDT Lovely revolutionary sentiment, Rebecca, but one that I think ignores the political realities of day-to-day life in the Six Counties. Even *this* moderate response on the part of Sinn Fein led to firebombings that killed three young boys who had nothing to do with what was going on. The Orangemen's response was even more reprehensible; to march *anyway* to the beat of a single drum. Anyway, I doubt the parents of those boys (who don't sound very sectarian to me, which probably made them more attractive targets) would be much consoled by a strident call to revolution. Sinn Fein's reaction is certainly not revolutionary, and perhaps does play into sectarianism, but I can't fault them much given their position. Look at how frequently Sinn Fein and other Republican parties and factions get marginalized, stereotyped, and excluded. Look how hard it was for them to even get to the table during the peace talks. Look at the whole history of revolution in Ireland! Perhaps the failures and stuttered gains were caused by them not "doing it right," and I agree with out that it's vitally important to think about how to devise strategies from within the context, but in the end your notion of proper revolution is more of an overlay of a particular rhetoric and ideology from without. Don't think that such organizing is or has not occured, and don't lay all the blame on Orangeman or Sinn Fein. Finally, regarding "reinforcing Orangeism." Orangeism will not be destroyed only by "universal opposition" of a type which has been proven to only make the Orangemen even more reactionary and stubborn. The question is not just how to "conscientize the local masses," but how to conscientize local cultural groups and constituencies with such opposing views of history, political salience, and national affiliation. You need to not only conscientize, say, residents of Portadown or Garvaghy Road, but also the Orangemen and their supporters, and those who just stand by and watch, and those outside of the Six Counties who benefit from these conflicts. Best regards, John Stevens Dept. of Anthropology Cornell University >Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:42:20 +0100 >Reply-To: wellsfargo@tinet.ie >From: "Rebecca Peoples" >To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK >Subject: Orangeism > >Hi Comrades > >There has been much controversy surrounding the question of the Orange >parades marching down roads such as the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, Ireland. > >The view of Sinn Fein, Michael Farrell, co-chairperson of the civil rights >association, is that it is valid for these parades in general to proceed >once the local residents dont object to them. This position is one that >obscures the real nature of Orangeism in the North of Ireland. > >The point is that Orangeism and its parades are of a cultural, ideological >and politically reactionary character. Consequently they are opposed by all >revolutionary communists. However that does not mean that communists simply >take to the streets opposing such marches whether the march proceeds down a >staunchly Orange area or non-Orange community. Practical opposition is a >tactical matter and must be considered in context such as the kind of >support that exists on the ground among the local masses. As a tactical >matter how the practical opposition is to be organised and under what >slogans are vitally important. As of present much of the Sinn Fein and >Garvagy/Omeau form of organising against marching has an opportunist >character which rather than attempting to raise political consciousness >reinforces sectarianism even further. > >However communists can engage in propaganda against such marching at any >time. > >To conclude: The view of Sinn Fein and others seems to be that that Organism >has a civil and democratic right to march, but not through areas where the >marches are found to be offensive to the local community. This position >reinforces the existence of Orangeism and its parades and essentially >undermines the call for an end to Orange parades down Garvaghy and other >areas. >The issue of civil rights and democracy in this context is an illusory one >that merely obscures the real state of affairs. The point is that Orangeism >and its parades, irrespective of the localities, they toddle through are >culturally, ideologically and politically reactionary. Consequently >universal opposition to both Orangeism and its theatricals is >correct --whether the parades proceed through staunchly Orange or non-Orange >communities. > >Warm regards >Rebecca > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Thu Jul 16 15:18:41 1998 Thu, 16 Jul 1998 22:18:20 +0100 (BST) From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "Andrew Wayne Austin" , "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: Unequal exchange (long) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 17:05:24 +0100 charset="iso-8859-1" Rebecca: Hi Andy! I have come to the conclusion that it is a waste of time discussing this issue with you. You engage in continuos long winded misinterpretation of simple questions I put to the list. I had this problem with you before. I gave you to a large extent the benefit of the doubt. Now under the calmer environment there is little difference. My hope of getting serious discussion on these issues with you has been dashed. I would just rather leave things as they are. Perhaps in the future things will change. Rebecca Hi Rebecca. I hope I can answer your question in this post. I started off this post with only a few comments in mind, but the post expanded quickly. I apologize for the length of the post. I think you have to be clear about whether you mean capital (a) in general, as that which permits its owner to generate an income, this being capital that exists in any age and in every social formation, or (b) specifically, capital as a social relation specific to capitalism. If it is the latter, then we must emphasize that a discussion about capital's character and function cannot be disembedded from the capitalist relations of production that determine its character and function; it is in these historical relations that capital takes on the character of capital in the capitalist sense. It is true that the latter definition subsumes much of the general character of the former; but it transforms the meaning in terms of historical specificity. And this is not just true of capitalism; the same contextualization is demanded if you want to analyze capital in another mode of production, e.g., under feudalism. (Although, in the precapitalist cases, commercial capital generally has a much more real independent existence than it does under capitalist relations. More on this later.) If we are to proceed on the grounds of Marxian method, we must be very clear about this, Rebecca; because if you mean capital in the second sense (capital as a social relations specific to capitalism), and it appears you do implicitly by the way you are treating commercial capital (hence my criticism that you are abstracting and setting temporally against each another two simultaneously occurring forms of capital), then you already assume capitalist relations of production. This was the purpose of my rhetorical questions in the last post: if you already assume capitalist relations of production, then what is your question really trying to get at? I don't think you recognize the implicit assumption running through your question. In its present form the question is illogical, since it is asking the list how it is possible for commercial capital, with the character of commercial capital under capitalist relations, to accumulate capital outside of capitalist relations or before such relations existed. And no general character of commercial capital is expressed in your posts (or else there would be no need to ask the question). I want you to understand what you are doing: you are lifting a historically specific form of capital out of context, retaining all of its historically specific character, and placing it in a different context, and then asking a logically disorganized question based on this implicit premise. To make your question answerable, it must be changed into either one of following two questions: (1) How does merchant capital accumulate capital in the context of capitalist relations, i.e., what is the source of and mechanism through which surplus is produced, appropriated, and accumulated? This was the question I answered in my previous post. (2) How does merchant capital accumulate capital outside of capitalist relations, i.e., what is the source of and mechanism through which this surplus is produced, appropriated, and accumulated? For this second question I suggested that rather than try to impose upon precapitalist forms of social relations Marx's analysis of capital (specifically commercial capital) in the capitalist-relational context, that you look at the historical facts about merchant capital and, perhaps using Marx's general theory of social formation, develop a special theory about capital and merchants in precapitalist relations. Although commercial capital is more really independent in precapitalist modes of production, you still must analyze these precapitalist relations because (a) the character and the function of the merchant's capital will be conditioned by the context in which it is embedded and (b) if you want to understand the ultimate source of wealth that the merchant is accumulating, you must find how labor is exploited, which, depending on the mode of production (and labor is exploited in many different production contexts), is accomplished variably. But, then again, you might just want to refer to Marx himself, who, in Capital Volume III, discusses the nature of merchant capital (and commercial capital) in precapitalist relations. Marx stresses that "not only trade, but also trading capital, is older than the capitalist mode of production, and is in fact the oldest historical mode in which capital has an independent existence." Money-dealing capital (one form of merchant capital), and "the capital advanced in it, needs nothing more for its development than the existence of large-scale trade in general, and subsequently of commercial, commodity-dealing capital, it is only this latter which we have to deal with now." So, at the most abstract level, to understand commercial capital in precapitalist relations, one only need understand merchant capital generally in terms of large-scale trade (a precondition also for capitalism); and more specifically in terms of the mode of production to which it is attached. In any case, commercial capital is always confined to the sphere of circulation, and "its sole function is to mediate the exchanges of commodities." Therefore, "no further conditions are needed for [commercial capital's] existence...than are necessary for the simple circulation of commodities and money." Marx writes that "[w]hatever mode of production is the basis on which the products circulating are produced - whether the primitive community, slave production, small peasant and petty-bourgeois production, or capitalist production - this in no way alters their character as commodities, and as commodities they have to go through the exchange process and the changes of form that accompany it." Since, Rebecca, according to Marx, "[c]ommercial capital simply mediates the movement of those extremes, the commodities, as preconditions already given to it," the question of whence surplus labor is bound up in the origin of the commodity traded, the existence of which is presupposed in commercial capital and *whatever the mode of production is where commercial capital operates*. Commercial capital, its independent claim to fame being the mediation of exchange, moves over the top of precapitalist relations. I had hoped you would do this bit of work on your own, but I think the answer you want is found here (but, then again, like Dorothy trying to go home, it was there all along). Marx writes: "The extent to which production goes into trade and passes through the hands of merchants depends on the mode of production, reaching a maximum with the full development of capitalist production, where the product is produced simply as a commodity and not at all as a direct means of subsistence. On the other hand, whatever the mode of production is the basis, trade promotes the generation of a surplus product designed to go into exchange, so as to increase the consumption or the hoards of the producers (which we take here to mean the owners of the products). It thus gives production a character oriented more and more towards exchange-value." Sorry for the long passage, but this is relevant (and I am not sure that Rebecca has a copy of Volume III). The metamorphosis of commodities, their movement, consists (1) materially, in the exchange of different commodities for one another, (2) formally, in the transformation of commodities into money, selling, and the transformation of money into commodities, buying. And the function of commercial capital is reducible to these functions, the exchange of commodities through buying and selling. Commercial capital thus simply mediates the exchange of commodities, though it should be understood right from the start that this is not just an exchange between the immediate producers. In the case of the slave relationship, the serf relationship, and the relationship of tribute (where the primitive community is under consideration), it is the slaveowner, the feudal lord or the state receiving tribute that is the owner of the product and therefore its seller. The merchant buys and sells for many people. Sales and purchases are concentrated in his hands and in this way buying and selling cease to be linked with the direct need of the buyer (as merchant). But whatever the social organization of the spheres of production whose commodity exchange the merchant mediates, his wealth always exists as money wealth and his money always functions as capital. Its form is always M-C-M'; money, the independent form of exchange-value, is the starting-point, and the increase of exchange-value the independent purpose. Commodity exchange itself, and the operations that mediate it - separated from production and performed by non-producers - becomes simply a means of increasing wealth, and not just wealth, but wealth in its general social form as exchange-value. [...] The less developed production is, the more monetary wealth is concentrated in the hands of merchants and appears in the specific form of mercantile wealth. Within the capitalist mode of production - i.e., once capital takes command of production itself and gives it a completely altered and specific form - commercial capital appears simply as capital in a *particular* function. In all earlier modes of production, however, commercial capital rather appears as the function of capital *par excellence*, and the more so, the more production is directly the production of the producer's means of subsistence. Thus there is no problem at all in understanding why commercial capital appears as the historic form of capital long before capital has subjected production to its sway. Its existence, and its development to a certain level, is itself a historical precondition for the development of the capitalist mode of production (1) as a precondition for the concentration of monetary wealth, and (2) because the capitalist mode of production presupposes production for trade, wholesale outlet rather than supply to the individual client, so that a merchant does not buy simply to satisfy his own personal needs, but rather concentrates in his act of purchase acts of many. On the other hand, every development in commercial capital gives production a character ever more to exchange-value, transforming products more and more into commodities. Even so, this development, taken by itself, is insufficient to explain the transition from one mode of production to the other.... In the context of capitalist production, commercial capital is demoted from its earlier separate existence, to become a particular moment of capitalist investment in general, and the equalization of profits reduced its profit rate to the general average. It now functions simply as the agent of productive capital. >From the beginning, I assumed you meant merchant capital as capitalism, Rebecca, *because* you were treating it as merchant capital under capitalism. So I went to Volume III of Capital and explained to you Marx's theory on the matter. Remember, you wanted to know how, given the assumption of equal exchange, "the apprenently [sic] significant accumulation of merchant capital in the commercial phase of capitalism," is possible. Volume III has a section specifically on this matter, which I interpreted thoroughly. The commercial phase of capitalism takes place in the sphere of circulation, and capital is accumulated by the merchant as part of the overall circuit of capital, the merchant being an extension of one of the phases of commodity transformation. When commercial capital takes place outside of capitalist relations, then one must proceed on the grounds of the development of a special theory examining the economic relations of the precapitalist mode of production, whatever this might be. *But* commercial capital in any mode of production must depend on the surplus labor of that mode of production for its wealth, since it does not produce surplus itself. This means that the accumulation of capital ultimately occurs through the exploitation of some source of labor, whether this is in capitalist relations or precapitalist relations. It was not like commercial capital prior to capitalism conjured its wealth from thin air. The wealth had to come from somewhere, and since the merchant invests nothing in productive capital, nor does he produce surplus with his hands, we can reasonably assume that the wealth comes from whatever mode of production the merchant is attaching himself to. Your question makes the case that, without the fully developed industrial capitalist mode of production, none of this can take place. The argument you have advanced stands not only against Marx's analysis in particular, which is the perspective you hail from, but it flies in the face of the general understanding of commercial capital down through history. And note that during this discussion, neither Marx nor I have said that commodities on average even in non-capitalist markets are exchanged unequally, that unequal exchange in markets is the source of profit. What I objected to was that in arguing for the precondition for equal exchange for the accumulation of capital in precapitalist modes of production, you carried over with it and out of context, surplus-value produced by wage-labor. You made all the conditions of one specific economic system - no, more accurately, one advanced sector in an economic system, the preconditions for capital accumulation historically. In one of your posts you asked this: "If there cannot exist, generally speaking, unequal exchange as a necessary condition for the development of commodity circulation then what was the basis for this accumulation of capital by commercial capital?" The specific basis for accumulation of capital by commercial capital depends on the mechanism of accumulation of the mode of production to which the merchant has attached himself. So, if surplus labor has its source in slave production, then the capital that is accumulated by the merchant finds its origins in the labor activity of the slave. The problem of equal exchange is to show that the profits obtained by the merchant do not arise from unequal exchange, on average, but arise from the exploitation of some labor source. At one level of abstraction, if one must presuppose an average equality of exchange in markets for commodities to be circulated, then one may reasonably make this presupposition; but the basis for accumulating capital still lies in surplus labor, and so one also must admit at once that s/he cannot claim that exploiting labor and capital accumulation only occurs under capitalist relations. Since this is the case, the merchant accumulates capital from the exploitation of labor whether in a capitalist economy or a feudal economy. The interesting thing about Marx analysis of merchant capital is that it shows how what appears to be selling dear is in reality, from the view of total social capital, merely a functional extension of the transformation of the commodity-form of capital onto money-capital. I want to reiterate the main point and introduce an important related matter. In Capital Volume II, Marx emphasizes that in capitalist relations of production, that productive capital, commodity capital, and money capital are all, in the relations of capitalism (the two latter to the sphere of circulation, former to the sphere of production, which Marx calls "industrial capital"). So, the main point is that one must keep in mind that it is the capitalist relations that define these movements as a particular sort capital. Therefore, Rebecca, if you want merchant capital to be capital in the sense of being *capitalist* then you must have them moving in a capitalist economy. If you want merchant capital just in the general sense of a merchant's capacity to generate income, then you have to do historical analysis about a given social formation to determine the specific mechanism through which the merchant accumulates capital. Marx points the way to such an analysis, even generating a cursory analysis of the matter himself. Secondly, an important related matter, Marx writes that "other varieties of capital which appeared previously, within past and declining social conditions of production, are not only subordinated to [the capitalist mode of production] and correspondingly altered in the mechanism of their functioning, but they now move only on its basis, thus live and die, stand and fall together with this basis." There are several important points to be made. First, according to Marx, capital exists, in other varieties, prior to capitalist relations. This must be capital in general, in the sense of the capacity for generating income. So merchants are accumulating capital in all manner of contexts, most of which have historically not been capitalist. Second, these other forms of capital, upon entering into capitalist relations, become subordinated to capitalist production relations and they are transformed by them. That is, they are "altered in the mechanism of their functioning," and become capitalist. Suppose, for instance, that corvee production becomes subsumed under capitalism; this production becomes capitalist; the mechanism of its functioning becomes altered; and surplus labor bound up in commodities for exchange in capitalist markets becomes surplus-value (see Capital Volume I, Ch. 10, Sec. 2, for a discussion of how surplus labor becomes surplus-value under capitalist relations). An important distinction must be made here. There are other forms of, for example, productive capital that superficially appear as precapitalist forms. They are often identified as precapitalist because they resemble forms of capital in other modes of production (which are themselves very broad abstractions). An example is the productive and commodity capital of the US slave plantation. One might say that under capitalist relations this variety of capital becomes capitalist, since it is subordinated to capitalist relations and its form is altered in this regard. However, slavery in the US South does not have an independent or pre-existing existence to the world-economy of which it was a part and which determined the character of its commodities. Thus, slavery is not subsumed under capitalist relations like corvee production was in Europe; and slavery in the US South is only superficially similar to the ancient slavery mode of production Marx supposed (but never studied). But, in any case, as Marx emphasizes in Capital Volume I, both slave-labor and corvee-labor produce surplus-value under capital, since the commodities generated are exchanged in capitalist markets, they are exchange-values. And, whether you want to call it surplus, surplus-value, surplus labor, or so on, capital is accumulated, and it is accumulated in both capitalist and precapitalist social formations. To specify this further, one can look the issue of labor and labor power. As you probably know, Rebecca, when someone cannot exchange the products of labor themselves for income, then they must exchange their labor power, here the labor activity going to the objectification of objects controlled and consumed by another. The exchange of labor can be for wages or for commodities, these use-values reproducing labor power. And this exchange takes place under variable conditions of coercion, sometimes directly, as in slavery, or by necessity, as it is under conditions of wage-labor. (Surely this is a form of unequal exchange.) The purpose of this relevant matter is to show the process all the way through given various labor processes as they enter, one way or another, into the capitalist economy. The bottom-line is that one must make a clear distinction between the general forms of capital and labor, and specific forms of capital and labor. One determines the general in the same fashion that one determines the general in any other science: through comparison, common characteristics are abstracted from examination of various specific species. Each species will have its own special character, and these can be judged unique by their absence in other species. One can neither neglect the unique features of a species of social formation nor impose unique features of a specific social formation upon previous social forms. If one could do this, then these would not be unique features. Scientific description and explanation requires that the distinction between the general and the specific be strictly observed. Among many of the things not special to capitalism are these: (1) various forms of capital, e.g., merchant capital, productive capital, commodity capital; (2) large-scale trade; (3) surplus labor and exploitation; (4) equal and unequal exchange (and uneven development); and (5) capital accumulation. I hope that this helps, Rebecca. If it doesn't, I hope that some other person can supply you with the answer you desire. I hope you will accept the critique that accompanies this answer in the spirit it is meant. Again, I apologize for the length of the post. Hope all is well, Andy From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Thu Jul 16 15:28:10 1998 Thu, 16 Jul 1998 17:28:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 17:28:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Rebecca Peoples Subject: Re: Unequal exchange (long) In-Reply-To: <01bdb0d3$8ac50e40$LocalHost@teresa> On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, Rebecca Peoples wrote: > Perhaps in the future things will change. I would make a stronger case for future change than this, Rebecca. I am positive that in the future things will change. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be case, given our past experience with the future. Good luck, Andy From arg19@tid.es Fri Jul 17 01:39:11 1998 Sender: arivero@tid.es Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 09:39:15 +0200 From: Alejandro Rivero Reply-To: "rivero@sol.unizar.es" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Unequal exchange (long) Still, I'd like to hear more about this issue of "surplus labour as origin of capital accumulation", even after reading the long posting from Andy, it seems to me a combination of two mistakes. Actually, I can imagine systems where additional labour drives the owner to benefit loss, due to the offer/demand mechanism. So "surplus" labour, if it exists, is different of additional labour. Similarly, I can imagine porcess where an actual decrease of labour time would increment owner benefits, so "surplus" labour could be less labour! As for capital accumulation, while I can imagine such concept, the use given in Andy post sounds, so to say, as "flogisto theory". I can not see why the interaction of capital with itself is forbidden to produce additional capital. If the argument is about conservation laws, the only one Nature accepts is energy, and well, capital can stole energy from a variety of sources, human work being only one of them. Yours, Alejandro From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Fri Jul 17 07:40:55 1998 From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "World Systems Network" Subject: Orange Order Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 14:29:05 +0100 boundary="----=_NextPart_000_002F_01BDB18F.40D85140" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_002F_01BDB18F.40D85140 charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Comrades The Orange Order is a sectarian organisation designed to perpetuate and develop sectarianism within the working class in Ireland. Its core role is that of increasing the oppression of the Irish working class in the interests of the accumulation of capital. In view of this it is the duty of communists to seek the destruction of the Orange Order. This is done by means of propaganda, agitation and politics entailing the seizure of state power. In view of this communism is opposed to all parades and activities of the OO. Consequently those elements that are only opposed to some Orange marches (Sinn Fein and Michael Farrell retired "revolutionary") misunderstand the real nature of the OO and in fact support its existence. All parades must be opposed irrespective as to whether they proceed down staunchly Loyalist working class areas or staunchly nationalist working class areas. How that opposition takes places is a function the particular conjuncture of events --a tactical matter. In opposing the Orange Order communists are opposing capitalism. However the opposition takes on a form that reveals theoretically and politically this fact. Unlike opportunism the OO is not opposed in such a way as to suggest that it is merely the OO that is the source of sectarianism and the corresponding divisions. To limit the struggle to a mere political attack upon the OO is to obstruct the struggle against capitalism and thereby support the latter and the OO. Sinn Fein and its allies have been seeking to delude the working class into thinking that the problem is Orangeism and not capitalism nor its specific form imperialism. Consequently they focus attention on the need to eliminate, mollify or transform Orangeism as the means to bring about the demise of sectarianism within the framework of the rule of capitalism and specifically British imperialism. They focus attention on the need to cajole, pressurise or woo the Irish, British and American states into forcing Orangeism to mend its ways and eliminate its sectarian character. Orangeism is now the real source of the problem of oppression. Change the Orange man and you change society --create a new population and you create a new society. The Irish, British and American states are neutral arbitrators for good and against evil --superstitious belief in the state. The fight against Orangeism then is the fight against imperialism and thereby capitalism. The fight against Orangeism must be fought on the basis of a fight against the capitalist states on both sides of the border. The fight against Orangeism is a fight for socialism --the class struggle. Warm regards Rebecca ------=_NextPart_000_002F_01BDB18F.40D85140 charset="iso-8859-1"
Hi = Comrades
 
The=20 Orange Order is a sectarian organisation designed to perpetuate and = develop=20 sectarianism within the working class in Ireland. Its core role is that = of=20 increasing the oppression of the Irish working class in the interests of = the=20 accumulation of capital.
 
In=20 view of this it is the duty of communists to seek the destruction of the = Orange=20 Order. This is done by means of propaganda, agitation and politics = entailing the=20 seizure of state power.  
In=20 view of this communism is opposed to all parades and activities of the = OO.=20 Consequently those elements that are only opposed to some Orange marches = (Sinn=20 Fein and Michael Farrell retired "revolutionary") = misunderstand the=20 real nature of the OO and in fact support its existence. All parades = must be=20 opposed irrespective as to whether they proceed down staunchly Loyalist = working=20 class areas or staunchly nationalist working class areas. How that = opposition=20 takes places is a function the particular conjuncture of events --a = tactical=20 matter.
 
In=20 opposing the Orange Order communists are opposing capitalism. However = the=20 opposition takes on a form that reveals theoretically and politically = this fact.=20 Unlike opportunism the OO is not opposed in such a way as to suggest = that it is=20 merely the OO that is the source of sectarianism and the corresponding=20 divisions. To limit the struggle to a mere political attack upon the OO = is to=20 obstruct the struggle against capitalism and thereby support the latter = and the=20 OO.
 
Sinn=20 Fein and its allies have been seeking to delude the working class into = thinking=20 that the problem is Orangeism and not capitalism nor its specific form=20 imperialism. Consequently they focus attention on the need to eliminate, = mollify=20 or transform Orangeism as the means to bring about the demise of = sectarianism=20 within the framework of the rule of capitalism and specifically British=20 imperialism. They focus attention on the need to cajole, pressurise or = woo the=20 Irish, British and American states into forcing Orangeism to mend its = ways and=20 eliminate its sectarian character. Orangeism is now the real source of = the=20 problem of oppression. Change the Orange man and you change society = --create a=20 new population and you create a new society. The Irish, British and = American=20 states are neutral arbitrators for good and against evil --superstitious = belief=20 in the state. 
 
The=20 fight against Orangeism then is the fight against imperialism and = thereby=20 capitalism. The fight against Orangeism must be fought on the basis of a = fight=20 against the capitalist states on both sides of the border. The fight = against=20 Orangeism is a fight for socialism  --the class=20 struggle. 
 
Warm=20 regards 
Rebecca
 
------=_NextPart_000_002F_01BDB18F.40D85140-- From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Fri Jul 17 09:45:11 1998 Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:44:55 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:44:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Alejandro Rivero Subject: Re: Unequal exchange (long) In-Reply-To: <35AEFFA3.A621D07A@tid.es> On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Alejandro Rivero wrote: > Still, I'd like to hear more about this issue of "surplus labour as > origin of capital accumulation", even after reading the long posting > from Andy, it seems to me a combination of two mistakes. Only the most simple of instruments of production can cause themselves - supposing a stick fallen from a tree or a jaw-bone left by the rotting ass - and even then a person must walk over and pick it up. Gold cannot dig itself from the ground, nor pan and sift itself from the river. Nature cannot by herself produce a predictable abundance of wild grains to support a large population; and her abundance of roots and berries must be dug, picked or collected. Even the most advanced self-maintaining robot must ultimately be built by human hands using tools built by human hands, using technical knowledge thought out by human brains. The substance these diverse activities have in common is this: human activity. Only when such activity produces more than it consumes does surplus arise. But this surplus enjoys no special origin over an above the same origin that its means enjoy. So if capital is accumulated, what must be accumulated is surplus labor. Capital laying there without people taking it up and animating it, even if this taking up is only a man pushing a button in the morning in an automated factory, produces no surplus, nor can it pay for itself, and thus, at the end of the day, there is nothing produced to potentially accumulate. What is not produced is surplus labor, since without labor, necessary or surplus, nothing happens. > Actually, I can imagine systems where additional labour drives the owner > to benefit loss, due to the offer/demand mechanism. Sure, I can too. But I think that you have here committed a logical error. Because the ultimate source of accumulated capital is surplus labor does not mean that all surplus labor is accumulated capital. A necessary component to sustaining my life is food intake, but this does not mean that all the food I eat is necessary to sustain my life, and some things I put into my stomach may even be bad for me. > So "surplus" labour, if it exists, is different of additional labour. > Similarly, I can imagine porcess where an actual decrease of labour time > would increment owner benefits, so "surplus" labour could be less > labour! Yes, a decrease of labor time in absolute terms may benefit the owner, e.g., by raising the productivity of labor. But this does not mean that the surplus that is produced, appropriated, and accumulated has its source in something other than human labor. If I am working in a field digging holes for planting by hand, and I think of using a pointed stick for carrying out this task, and so I am finished planting in less time with less effort, the crop which is harvested at the end, if there is a surplus, is no less a product of my laboring with the stick in half the time it took in my laboring with my fingernails. Add to this example levels of complexity (in division of labor, technology, so on) and you will find the same principle holds. > As for capital accumulation, while I can imagine such concept, the use > given in Andy post sounds, so to say, as "flogisto theory". I can not > see why the interaction of capital with itself is forbidden to produce > additional capital. If the argument is about conservation laws, the only > one Nature accepts is energy, and well, capital can stole energy from a > variety of sources, human work being only one of them. Capital interacting with itself does produce more capital. This is the reason we talk in terms of self-expansion. But there must be different sorts of capital at work, namely, the mix of fixed and variable capital, for capital to expand. It is in the variable capital invested that more (surplus) can be produced than was invested. As for the last assertion regarding the sources of energy, there are several problem. First, energy that is harnessed in production must be, in all but a few cases (such as the sun in planting - but then one must not plant in the shade), harnessed by human labor. Second, other sources of energy do not form a social class. A geyser is not exploited; human labor is. It is the surplus from human labor that permits the existence of social classes and strata who do not labor and produce surplus. Third, for purposes of accumulating capital in the capitalist system, where human labor becomes a source of surplus-*value*, capital must be circulated to expand. We have here focused only on production; but it also is the case that without consumers with money in their pockets to buy the commodities produced by workers then there is no motive to produce commodities for a profit. And consumers are also often workers. Suppose that we could eliminate human labor altogether; this would at once eliminate consumers altogether, and the system would be transformed altogether: capitalism could not be possible. Geysers and oil pits and the wind cannot act as consumers in the market. They cannot complete the circulation process for capital to accumulate. Without workers, who are at the same time consumers, then capitalism cannot reproduce itself, dependent as it is on the production of surplus-value. The process of surplus production begins and terminates in human labor - only at the point of production workers produce more than they need so that somebody who does not produce can enjoy privilege and power over them. Btw, what were the two mistakes you thought I made? Thanks, Andy From jenofon@idecnet.com Sat Jul 18 06:44:20 1998 Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 14:39:48 +0200 From: Juan Luis Chulilla To: wellsfargo@tinet.ie, WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: Orange Order Hi all I need to answer to your posting, Rebbeca, since it shock me. In the long, and sometimes hot debate between Andrew and you, I thought that you APPLIED a monumental theory and you were looking for a particular debate. I mean, I thought that you USED the theory. However, looking your post about orangeism, I saw that you doesn't use the marxist theory, but you defines your position exclusively in marxist terms. As was said some days ago, the problem is that marxist theory was a magnificent theoretical model for CONCRETE circumstances of the early industrial Britain. I think that, probably, Marx would have reason in some of his predictions, but the problem is that his adversaries readed his books, and took the appropiate learnings. Well. I think that you have a illicit mixing. You can apply a theoretical model into a concrete proposal, but you have to separate theory from social reality in the analytical proccess. If you don't so, you can reach the distance enough to evaluate properly a concrete subject. Let me explain with a similar anthropological problem: I suppose you know the Pike's distinction between emic and etic reality, distinction which was popularized by Harris. Well, I you can't separate your own analysis from the reality you percive, or with the reality you know through different means, you are damned to evaluate a problem with unappropiate tools; I mean, you will always use your own tool for problems for which your tools are not desinged to work. When you use sentences like "sectarian organisation" and sectarianism, you aren't analyze; you are judging. You have the right to judge, as each human being, but you can't tell us that, at the same time, you are analyzing. Judging means,with no doubt, using the categories of the judge for evaluate a problem which is defined with different categories. Taking in mind that your categories (let me tell you, specially yours) are definited and constructed, you eliminate the construction proccess from the analysis. If you don't construct at the analyzing time, If you don't create (applicating the creations of others or by the pure force of mental creation), your analysis will be sterile. And, if it is sterile, you cannot expect to make a practical propose. You can't expect that reality will adapt your categories. Obviously, you have to adapt. One good star point for adaptation is freeing (as you can) your categories of prejudgements. It's impossible in absolute means, but you have to try and keep constantly in mind. The elimination of your prejudgements will lead to you to a task-designed sort of categories, categories which will be open by the force of the freeing of prejudgements Introducing the concrete problem, the OO 1)In opposing the Orange Order communists are opposing capitalism. How can you tell us this? If capitalism is a world dynamic, you won't harm capitalism even if you obtain victory over the OO. Keeping in mind that, after all, capitalism is a construct, a theoretical model (well, the best model we know for explain the economical dynamics of the modern world), you can't harm it attacking a real group. Capitalism are defined by scholars, OO is defined by itself, by is members. OO has a registrated history, recognized members and different uses and practices perceivables in the reality. You have to apply the capitalism concept to the reality, you have to choose who are his agents, which force it has, which agenda it pursuit. If you don't want to personalize, if you don't want to create an enemy, looking for a fight (a masochistic fight, as it's impossible that you can reach the victory, so, in last instance, you create your own defeat), you have to agree with me that capitalism is an unpersonal force which has reach a dominant situation in social dynamics. well, If you do so, it's illicit that you blend the actions of a concrete, real group, with the results of such unpersonal force. In other words, telling us that opposing the Orange Order communists are opposing capitalism, you are recreating a enemy, I suppose your enemy, in comfortable terms, but in no way you are present us a valid analysis. If you don't have in mind the illicit quality of such blending, well, anyway, there is an unsurpassable difference of dimension between OO and capitalism that invalidate any practice Vs OO that, at the same time, wants to affect capitalism. 2) Change the Orange man and you change society --create a new population and you create a new society. A society is NEVER created. The society creates -or better, configures- it self in a centuries-long proccess. I think about society in system concepts. If you force the society to a concrete way, the society will react, and the results will be unpredictable. Usually, the results are very near to nil, as the negenthropic forces of the society are very strong. Remember a sentence of the master of Marx: "The no-intentional comsecuences of the intentional action". Let me show you a light approximation of the problem in anthropological terms: the symbols and practices of orangeist are the core of their existence as definited group, the representation in reality of their identity. You cannot change, in a short period. You only can destroy their symbols and practices, and with it destroying his identity as a group. It has a name: etnocide. I can tell you a example for my country: the prohibition of symbols and practices of Islam leads to a non-return point to hispanic muslim, whose had to exile for their beloved country. A very small number remained, but the social pressure of the victorious christian force to convert to christianity. The etnocidal proccess last for +-150 years, and meanwhile the cost in blood an suffering was indescribable. If someone try to destroy the Orangeist identity, he would have to keep in mind the integrist quality of such group. OO is defined, as every social group in the world, opposing its own values to the other's ones. The mechanism of definition by opposition leads to the creation of a special figure, the Other, who would be a hated enemy or a different, sometimes feared, sometimes looked suspiciously, sometimes attractive one. Obviously, the integrist members of the OO define their neighbours as an enemy. Well, if the symbols of the OO are attacked, of the practices of the OO are prohibited, Who will be the guilty for the orangeist? his catholic neighbours, so they will attack them in response. As some catholics defines the OO as an enemy, the aspects of human existence that they aren't, an attack from the OO will be response. Do you like to return to the bloody days? If you can change something, you only can change the basis of the relation, and you only can do this changing the basis of each group's definition, the Other figure. you have to change the enemy for the ambiguous figure I defined above. The proccess will be slow, and painful, and the results will not be sure. But it's better that increasing the violence, or commit etnocide to one of the two communities. .. .. .. As a summary, please, don't blend the theoretical terms with the pragmatical ones. Ah, by the way, I basically agree with Karl Until next time, take care PS: please forgive my sometimes bizarre use of English Rebecca Peoples escribió: > Hi Comrades The Orange Order is a sectarian organisation designed to > perpetuate and develop sectarianism within the working class in > Ireland. Its core role is that of increasing the oppression of the > Irish working class in the interests of the accumulation of capital. > In view of this it is the duty of communists to seek the destruction > of the Orange Order. This is done by means of propaganda, agitation > and politics entailing the seizure of state power. In view of this > communism is opposed to all parades and activities of the OO. > Consequently those elements that are only opposed to some Orange > marches (Sinn Fein and Michael Farrell retired "revolutionary") > misunderstand the real nature of the OO and in fact support its > existence. All parades must be opposed irrespective as to whether they > proceed down staunchly Loyalist working class areas or staunchly > nationalist working class areas. How that opposition takes places is a > function the particular conjuncture of events --a tactical matter. In > opposing the Orange Order communists are opposing capitalism. However > the opposition takes on a form that reveals theoretically and > politically this fact. Unlike opportunism the OO is not opposed in > such a way as to suggest that it is merely the OO that is the source > of sectarianism and the corresponding divisions. To limit the struggle > to a mere political attack upon the OO is to obstruct the struggle > against capitalism and thereby support the latter and the OO. Sinn > Fein and its allies have been seeking to delude the working class into > thinking that the problem is Orangeism and not capitalism nor its > specific form imperialism. Consequently they focus attention on the > need to eliminate, mollify or transform Orangeism as the means to > bring about the demise of sectarianism within the framework of the > rule of capitalism and specifically British imperialism. They focus > attention on the need to cajole, pressurise or woo the Irish, British > and American states into forcing Orangeism to mend its ways and > eliminate its sectarian character. Orangeism is now the real source of > the problem of oppression. Change the Orange man and you change > society --create a new population and you create a new society. The > Irish, British and American states are neutral arbitrators for good > and against evil --superstitious belief in the state. The fight > against Orangeism then is the fight against imperialism and thereby > capitalism. The fight against Orangeism must be fought on the basis of > a fight against the capitalist states on both sides of the border. The > fight against Orangeism is a fight for socialism --the class > struggle. Warm regardsRebecca > From muhtar@escortnet.com Sat Jul 18 13:44:37 1998 Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 22:43:37 +0300 From: Ahmet Cakmak To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: living people's concrete problems This is an intensive and compact explanation of my thoughts on the new agenda of world radical left. It is a brief summary.Becouse I would like to learn your first impressions.Then,if I feel that you want to discuss on it,to learn more about it,I send a detailed version of it. I presented my views to the 1995 annual meeting of CSE under the title of ‘Labor-dominated democracy: A third world perspective’. Nowadays I plan to write o book on it. But I have decided to discuss it in this internet forum with you before writing the book. First of all I want to say that I wish I write in my own language. English provide me advantage to express myself better at some points,but at some points it become a fetter for me. I wish the reader don’t forget this. My first assumption is : It seems there is no possibility of revolution in near term,lets say in short term.Here ,by revolution I mean the abolition of waged labor or capitalist relations of production. By short term I mean : At this stage of world capitalism it is not possible to make a revolution ( in the meaning above) in one country,even in one region. It follows from that the short term will continue till the conditions of a real revolution created. We still don’t know what this conditions are. Radical left,in general, has determined its strategies to make revolution. This is its history. Therefore radical leftists only knows: a) to critisize capitalism, b) to think on how to make revolution,and c) to act in their suppozed direction of revolution. So,the only thing they can do today is to look around to understand what’s going on or to survive their moral by looking the events like chipas’ unrest. We must rethink on the core principles of left thinking.At this point,it gains importance to determine the distinguishing features of radical left.The aim of the radical left is to abolish exploitation at the level of states,classes,races,genders,sexes ext.But this only a long run goal.Of course,radical left always keeps this goal,it is their vision. But the same goal (not itself,the wrong interpretation of radical leftists it) leads to political rigitidy ,self-alienation,loss of adaptability and adjustment for radical left.In short,we can say that radical left has no theories and policies for short term. The basic points of radical left for a short term strategy under today’s conditions: Social Democracy has accepted the rules of capital. Gonzales,Blair,Baykal (leader of Turkey’s social-democratic party) ....They all defend privatisation,globalisation and so on. Differences within the working class is growing. The so-called marxian thesis that every laborer has same interests becouse they all sell their labour power is a political,social,and even economic absurditiy. Another basic point of my approach,this time at theoretical level: I believe that the main conflict of the modern world system is the conflict between the center and the periphery. But this is not rests on unequal exchange : Unequal exchange theory rests on assumptions which has no correspondance in real world. I think the correct concept we must use to explain the differences between core and periphery is technological rent. And this concept open the way for a new left strategy. Radical left has not give the importance to south Korea it deserve. It is not a simple military dictatorship case. This is the first country which succeed to jump to first class,the center countries group in the history of capitalism ( some people can say that it is not a member of the first class.This is a very weak claim.South Korea passed the critical point.The rest of the story is only a time problem.Last crisis has no pecularities which changes this reality.But don’t forget: I refer only south Korea,not to others.You can add Taiwan,of course). Today this country sell the world high-tech products,machines ext.They created Hyundai,Samsung ext. And The center changed its policies.As you know,they advocate human rights and democracy today.Becouse this is the way to lower the competitive advantage of this country ( and potential others) based on cheap labor. One of the core principles of traditional radical left: ‘keep away from capitalist production’. Just support the activities for redistribution of income in favor of laboring classes. This is one of the obstacles,I think,which prevent for radical left to see new strategy opportunities. The left of third world countries always defend democracy.They demand more democracy. Production ? no,thanks.We will interested with this subject only after the revolution. Maybe in the second half of the 19.century and some parts of 20. Century the demand for revolution and to fight against poverty overlapped. But,now the situation changed: There are hundred millions of people who suffered poverty in this planet now, only radical leftists can defend policies in favor of them,the revolution ( I want to repeat once again: to abolish waged labor) is far away from us,and we insist to do nothing except to think and struggle (?) for revolution. I call this self-alienation of left. The crucial points of the strategy I offer: We need a new left.Becouse social democracy become a modest right-wing political organisation: they accept the conditions of the current mode of capital accumulation. And Becouse radical left become a revolution-fethisist: Their only interest is their nostalgic imaginery revolution. They suffer self-alienation. Two programatic pillars of the third world leftist parties must be: Democracy and advanced technology. ?f your flag slogan is only democracy this means: everybody can develop and express her demands,they can organise freely to force these demands.....But there are no means to realise these demands. ?s this a joke ? Third world left must struggle for a production based on advanced technology.Today this means microelectronics,biotechnology ext. This will lead to a redistribution of world technological rent in favor of third world on the one hand,and its gradual disappearance on the other. In the long run,third world leftist parties will gain support of great masses to go further goals and the the sleeping giant ( workers of the center countries) will awake thanks to loss of welfare as a result of this redistribution. The economic policy to conduct this strategy: cheap credit,no tax and other supports to capital which invested to production with advanced technology,heavy taxation to others.This is the only way to fight with poverty and to make possible democratisation in third world.Only way to do something substantial for the people who live today and suffer heavy difficulties to survive. Ahmet Çakmak, Marmara University, Istanbul/Turkey From durable@earthlink.net Sat Jul 18 21:25:35 1998 Sat, 18 Jul 1998 20:25:15 -0700 (PDT) From: "Barry Brooks" To: , "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 20:23:35 -0700 charset="iso-8859-1" Ahmet Çakmak, I like your unusual perspective. >The aim of the radical left is to abolish exploitation at the level >of states,classes,races,genders,sexes ext.But this only a long run >goal. >radical left has no theories and policies for short term. Since the word "radical" is related to the the word "root" we could say that anyone wanting significant change of any kind might be called a radical. Today, among the world elite radicalism is growing. The conflict between policies to stimulate the economy and the need to conserve resources and reduce pollution naturally leads many thinkers to consider fundamental changes. The policy of unending growth in the scale of human consumption portends a disaster far greater than mere exploitation. The survival of the world's population is threated by the wage system because the use of the our excess productive capacity requires the waste of resources. The consumer economy is unsustainable. The left has allways agreed with the capitalists. They both want full employment. They both want to exploit the planet. They both assume we have a labor shortage and a resource surplus. To merely question that is radical. Barry Brooks From dredmond@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat Jul 18 23:36:37 1998 Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 22:36:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Dennis R Redmond Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems In-reply-to: <35B0FAE9.48604572@escortnet.com> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK On Sat, 18 Jul 1998, Ahmet Cakmak wrote: > Radical left has not give the importance to south Korea it deserve. It > is not a simple military dictatorship case. This is the first country > which succeed to jump to first class,the center countries group in the > history of capitalism ( some people can say that it is not a member of > the first class.This is a very weak claim.South Korea passed the > critical point.The rest of the story is only a time problem.Last crisis > has no pecularities which changes this reality.But don’t forget: I refer > only south Korea,not to others.You can add Taiwan,of course). Today this > country sell the world high-tech products,machines ext.They created > Hyundai,Samsung ext. > And The center changed its policies.As you know,they advocate human > rights and democracy today.Becouse this is the way to lower the > competitive advantage of this country ( and potential others) based on > cheap labor. The competitive advantage of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and postwar Japan never rested on cheap labor, but on powerful developmental states (a kind of accidental state socialism) and lucrative US export markets; if anything, high domestic wages strengthen your economy, by forcing companies to invest in labor-saving equipment and high value-added markets. Also, we shouldn't forget that workers' rights ARE human rights -- the right to organize unions, to strike, to protest against inhumane conditions, etc. should all be at the top of the global Left's agenda, wherever its country and whatever the struggle. > The economic policy to conduct this strategy: cheap credit,no tax and > other supports to capital which invested to production with advanced > technology,heavy taxation to others.This is the only way to fight with > poverty and to make possible democratisation in third world. You've also got to persuade companies to invest in high-tech markets, even if they don't see an immediate profit in the business; otherwise, capital will "go on strike" or flee the country (the Russian situation). Nationalization was used very effectively in Taiwan and Singapore to spur economic growth; you'd also have to set up some sort of accumulation fund, similar to what the Singaporean PAP did in terms of its housing program (workers and businesses were taxed and the money was used to finance industrial development, which then paid rich returns to those workers and businesses, etc.). In short, you may not have to nationalize every firm (just the really big ones), but you absolutely have to nationalize or somehow rein in or restrict the credit and financial system. One possible model for this, taking into account Turkey's location near the EU, is Central Europe: the West German, Swedish and Austrian Social Democrats weren't always sell-outs. From 1945-75 they pursued some very canny pro-growth policies, strong labor unions kept wages high, and the school and education system was widely democratized (and is still one of the most open, in the sense that students don't have to pay tuition costs or anything, in the world). -- Dennis From j@qmail.com Sun Jul 19 09:30:30 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 05:35:26 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Barry Brooks >The left has allways agreed with the capitalists. They both want full >employment. They both want to exploit the planet. They both assume we have a >labor shortage and a resource surplus. To merely question that is radical. You are right Barry. The doctrine of continuous and unlimited economic growth is the doctrine of death. It makes no difference wheither it comes from the Left or the Right, the outcome will be the same: "In Scenario 1 the world society proceeds along its historical path as long as possible without major policy change. Technology advances in agriculture, industry, and social services according to established patterns. There is no extraordinary effort to abate pollution or conserve resources. The simulated world tries to bring all people through the demographic transition and into an industrial and then post-industrial economy. This world acquires widespread health care and birth control as the service sector grows; it applies more agricultural inputs and gets higher yields as the agricultural sector grows; it emits more pollutants and demands more nonrenewable resources as the industrial sector grows. "The global population in Scenario 1 rises from 1.6 billion in the simulated year 1900 to over 5 billion in the simulated year 1990 and over 6 billion in the year 2000. Total industrial output expands by a factor of 20 between 1900 and 1990. Between 1900 and 1990 only 20% of the earth's total stock of nonrenewable resources is used; 80% of these resources remain in 1990. Pollution in that simulated year has just begun to rise noticeably. Average consumer goods per capita in 1990 is at a value of 1968-$260 per person per year -- a useful number to remember for comparison in future runs. Life expectancy is increasing, services and goods per capita are increasing, food production is increasing. But major changes are just ahead. "In this scenario the growth of the economy stops and reverses because of a combination of limits. Just after the simulated year 2000 pollution rises high enough to begin to affect seriously the fertility of the land. (This could happen in the 'real world' through contamination by heavy metals or persistent chemicals, through climate change, or through increased levels of ultraviolet radiation from a diminished ozone layer.) Land fertility has declined a total of only 5% between 1970 and 2000, but it is degrading at 4.5% per year in 2010 and 12% per year in 2040. At the same time land erosion increases. Total food production begins to fall after 2015. That causes the economy to shift more investment into the agriculture sector to maintain output. But agriculture has to compete for investment with a resource sector that is also beginning to sense some limits. "In 1990 the nonrenewable resources remaining in the ground would have lasted 110 years at the 1990 consumption rates. No serious resource limits were in evidence. But by 2020 the remaining resources constituted only a 30-year supply. Why did this shortage arise so fast? Because exponential growth increases consumption and lowers resources. Between 1990 and 2020 population increases by 50% and industrial output grows by 85%. The nonrenewable resource use rate doubles. During the first two decades of the simulated twenty-first century, the rising population and industrial plant in Scenario 1 use as many nonrenewable resources as the global economy used in the entire century before. So many resources are used that much more capital and energy are required to find, extract, and refine what remains. "As both food and nonrenewable resources become harder to obtain in this simulated world, capital is diverted to producing more of them. That leaves less output to be invested in basic capital growth. "Finally investment cannot keep up with depreciation (this is physical investment and depreciation, not monetary). The economy cannot stop putting its capital into the agriculture and resource sectors; if it did the scarcity of food, materials, and fuels would restrict production still more. So the industrial capital plant begins to decline, taking with it the service and agricultural sectors, which have become dependent upon industrial inputs. For a short time the situation is especially serious, because the population keeps rising, due to the lags inherent in the age structure and in the process of social adjustment. Finally population too begins to decrease, as the death rate is driven upward by lack of food and health services." [p.p.132-134] GLOBAL POPULATION GROWTH WITH LIFE-SUPPORT COLLAPSE Billions ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |11 You are here----------------+ |10 | _ |9 | _ -|~~-_ |8 V _ -~ | ~ - _ |7 _-~ | ~ _ |6 _- ~ | ~_|5 _-~ | |4 _-~ | |3 ____ ---~ Massive human die-off begins. |2 -- ~~~~~~ (GIGADEATH) |1 --|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|--- 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 [P. 133, Meadows, et al., BEYOND THE LIMITS; Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1992. 800-639-4099, 603-448-0317, Fax 603-448-2576; ISBN 0-930031-62-8] Jay -- www.dieoff.org From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Sun Jul 19 13:55:52 1998 Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 20:55:32 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Jay Hanson wrote: > From: Barry Brooks > > >The left has allways agreed with the capitalists. They both want full > >employment. They both want to exploit the planet. They both assume we have > a > >labor shortage and a resource surplus. To merely question that is radical. > > You are right Barry. Well, no, actually. You are both quite wrong. The left has always had two contradictory outlooks. Some socialist movements and parties, including both the Bolsheviks in Russia and the anticommunist social democratic parties of the West, have tended to emphasise economic growth as a priority, altho even there they often do so in ways which reflect other, contradictory priorities such as environmental conservation. But Marx certainly did not believe in endless economic growth as a panacea for human ills and was extremely aware of the dangers to the environment of unbridled growth and despoliation of natural resources. Marx was one of the earliest writers on the connection between capitalist agriculture and desertification and soil fertility loss, and as Michael Perelman, Jim O'Connor, John Bellamy Foster and many others have shown, Marxism is not only compatible with radical enviornmentalism; it is a political philosophy which offers the hope of practical programmes. I notice that Jay recently declared on this List that he is quite sure that humankind is a class of detritovores which is doomed to inevitable extinction, and that it is already too late to save the planet. That kind of fatalism is quite foreign to Marxism. -- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty From j@qmail.com Sun Jul 19 16:23:30 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 12:27:48 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Mark Jones >environmental conservation. But Marx certainly did not believe in endless >economic growth as a panacea for human ills and was extremely aware of the >dangers to the environment of unbridled growth and despoliation of natural William Ophuls: "Karl Marx was even more utopian than either Locke or Smith, for he envisioned the eventual abolition of scarcity. He merely insisted that, on grounds of social justice, the march of progress be centrally directed by the state in the interest of those whose labor actually produced the goods." I haven't noticed you folks calling for reductions in standards-of-living. Did I miss something? Jay From edtgg@cc.newcastle.edu.au Sun Jul 19 18:50:41 1998 From: edtgg@cc.newcastle.edu.au wsn@csf.colorado.edu; Mon, 20 Jul 1998 10:50:02 +1000 Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 10:50:02 +1000 Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems To: j@qmail.com Jay Hanson wrote: From: Mark Jones > >environmental conservation. But Marx certainly did not believe in endless > >economic growth as a panacea for human ills and was extremely aware of the > >dangers to the environment of unbridled growth and despoliation of natural Yes, this was part of Mark Jones clear point, based in historical facts, that sections of the left have had different perspectives and approaches to the question of unlimited growth. > William Ophuls: > > "Karl Marx was even more utopian than either Locke or Smith, for he > envisioned > the eventual abolition of scarcity. He merely insisted that, on grounds of > social > justice, the march of progress be centrally directed by the state in the > interest of > those whose labor actually produced the goods." > > I haven't noticed you folks calling for reductions in standards-of-living. > Did I miss something? > Jay Does quoting some generalisation of William Ophuls about Marx somehow constitute evidence that "the left has always agreed with the capitalists"?, or did I miss something? Tom Griffiths. From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sun Jul 19 19:15:29 1998 Sun, 19 Jul 1998 21:15:21 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 21:15:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Jay Hanson Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems In-Reply-To: <001701bdb364$7fa71600$5e33fea9@jay95> On Sun, 19 Jul 1998, Jay Hanson wrote: > I haven't noticed you folks calling for reductions in standards-of-living. I think, Jay, that it is inherent in the goal of communism to bring down the standards of living for some. Andy From j@qmail.com Sun Jul 19 20:14:15 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 16:18:45 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" >Tom Griffiths: >Does quoting some generalisation of William Ophuls about Marx somehow >constitute evidence that "the left has always agreed with the capitalists"?, or >did I miss something? The left has always agreed with the capitalists with respect to economic growth. They both want MORE of it. Do you say that Marxists advocate a general decline in standards-of-living? Jay From muhtar@escortnet.com Sun Jul 19 21:14:51 1998 Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 06:13:59 +0300 From: Ahmet Cakmak To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: living peoples on full employment: its not capitalism's goal.this point is important.as you know,the last version of the definition of full employment means: if there is no inflation this is full employment.the unemployment rate at this level is the natural rate of unemployment.Anyway,full employment is a cost which capitalism cannot afford.They can live with it only temporarily. on south korea: many countries try growth thanks to cheap labor.Only south Korea succeed. I think the crucial point here the relationships between park chung hee dictatorship and dominant classes. The sate,especially ( only ?) in 1960's , manipulated the people who has the power of money. They forced to invest the areas hee government want, they pay taxes and the people who attempt capital flight abroad faced punishment.This is the strategy which new left of third world must try.But not under dictatorship military or not,but under democracy.This is the core of the new strategy of the new left I think. Globalisation is the rule of the game.Becouse you have not the weapons to deal with it.So,you try to play this game whatever you want. on environment problems: After the note of Mark Jones you,once again began to dance on the ground you like very much : abstract problems of the long run . today's environmental problems: if the north continue to eat like this and if the south continue to populate like this,we cannot continue.This is clear. Rapid growth of population..one of the problems that left don't like to talk.Little girls sold in Thailand,thousands of people died due to starvation and poverty,ext.,ext....How many times we continue just to look at this and say:"oh,poor people.we must abolish capitalist relations of production to help them". The strategy I offer can slow the rapid population growth. And,I don't know whether this is a gift of god or something another: New technologies are friends of nature ,at least,in many respects.And if the redistribution of world income in favor of third world realizes,north must turn to healthy feed ! (really).. From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Mon Jul 20 00:07:52 1998 Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 07:07:01 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: WSN Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Jay Hanson wrote: > The left has always agreed with the capitalists with respect to economic > growth. > > They both want MORE of it. > > Do you say that Marxists advocate a general decline in standards-of-living? This is simply a travesty of most current thinking on the left. Check our, for example, the Capitalism-Nature-Socialism website if you want an insight into where the debate is at. http://gate.cruzio.com/~cns/index.html -- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty From arg19@tid.es Mon Jul 20 04:13:00 1998 Sender: arivero@tid.es Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 12:11:54 +0200 From: Alejandro Rivero Reply-To: "rivero@sol.unizar.es" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Unequal exchange (long) Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: > On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Alejandro Rivero wrote: > > Still, I'd like to hear more about this issue of "surplus labour as > > origin of capital accumulation", even after reading the long posting > > from Andy, it seems to me a combination of two mistakes. > > Only when such activity produces more than it consumes does surplus arise. "produces more than it consumes" implies you are able to compare two quantities. You can say "produces more energy than it consumes", or "produces more grain than it consumes", but no "produces more apples than the meat it consumes". To solve this you can say "produces more capital than it consumes", and then you have a consistent definition of surplus. Only that it is circular, as your capital is built (defined) in terms of surplus. Of course there is also an abstract definition of capital, but no proof about if it is actually a measurable concept, which you need in order to use the word "more". Of course money is measurable per se, but capital is not. > > Actually, I can imagine systems where additional labour drives the owner > > to benefit loss, due to the offer/demand mechanism. > > So "surplus" labour, if it exists, is different of additional labour. > > Similarly, I can imagine porcess where an actual decrease of labour time > > would increment owner benefits, so "surplus" labour could be less > > labour! > > Yes, a decrease of labor time in absolute terms may benefit the owner, > e.g., by raising the productivity of labor. But this does not mean that OR by the offer/demand mechanism. The whole point is that the benefit of the owner is not linearly related to any measurable quantity attached to labour. > Capital interacting with itself does produce more capital. This is the > reason we talk in terms of self-expansion. But there must be different > sorts of capital at work, namely, the mix of fixed and variable capital, > for capital to expand. It is in the variable capital invested that more > (surplus) can be produced than was invested. I like this concept of "expanding" capital, from there it is clear that no conserved object lies under it, and then you dont need the concept of surplus to make capital to increase. But I don't understand the need of "fixed" and "variable" capitals, perhaps it is only a trick to restore again the need of "surplus"? > Btw, what were the two mistakes you thought I made? (no "I", but "we" :-) Well, one of them was the source of capital, I see it is solved by including the so-called "expansion". The other one bas the use of "surplus". And, from your explanation, I think that it is more a rhetorical word than a real point of the theory. I think you use "surplus labour" as a synonym of "labour", at least it seems that your whole answer can be formulated without this adjective. Probably "necessary" amd "surplus" were two good buzzwords for revolutionary propaganda, but no more. Generically, the main problem I see in this focus is that it seems to imply that the whole production under socialism must be, at best, of the same order that under capitalism. From here, one deduces that the only goal is redistribution, making the standards of living of some "families" to fall down. With the marxist "language", it seems a difficult task to proof that socialism would be in fact more productive that capitalism. For instance, is very difficult to show that destruction of capital is actually a legitimate source of income for capitalists. Yours, Alejandro > Thanks, > Andy From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Mon Jul 20 08:32:10 1998 Mon, 20 Jul 1998 10:31:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 10:31:30 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Alejandro Rivero Subject: Re: Unequal exchange In-Reply-To: <35B317EA.EFA9204E@tid.es> Hi, Because there is a lack of equivalents, Rivero says that one cannot say that something "produces more apples than the meat it consumes," whereas one can say that something "produces more grain that it consumes." But how is it that we understand that cows must consume so much more grain (food) than the meat they produce (food)? Because we are able to measure food in terms of volume, calories, weight, all sorts of quantification terms. Because meat is determined by the money value and not the amount of food it produces, the profit motive determines that cows are produced at a loss of food volume. Similarly, we can calculate how labor can produce more than it consumes: because the money-value the laborer consumes in reproducing her labor is less than the money the laborer produces in money-value. To use Rivero's example, a worker who consumes X amount of meat worth Y amount of dollars can produce Z amount of apples worth more than the X amount of meat. As Alejandro must see, his argument fails: it makes just as much sense to talk in terms of something producing more apples than the meat it consumes because both meat and apples are measured by the same quantification terms, in this case money-value. Alejandro wants to "solve" the "problem" of my argument by saying that something "produces more capital than it consumes," and that when you say this "you have a consistent definition of surplus." But the problem is that when you do this, Alejandro asserts, you have created a circular argument. So, evidently, we have not solved the problem at all: making the definition of surplus consistent is to make it circular. First, it should strike us that Alejandro has (not very subtly) set up the problem as a catch-22. He says first that it only makes sense to say that something "produces more grain that it consumes," and that saying that something "produces more apples than meat it consumes" does not make any sense. We have shown that saying that something "produces more apples than meat it consumes" makes perfect sense. But putting Alejandro's first error aside for the moment, Alejandro *now* claims that saying something "produces more grain that it consumes" is circular, since it has the form of "produces more capital than it consumes." Over the course of two short paragraphs Alejandro has contradicted himself. Alejandro writes of the formulation he himself has created: "Only that it is circular, as your capital is built (defined) in terms of surplus. Of course there is also an abstract definition of capital, but no proof about if it is actually a measurable concept, which you need in order to use the word 'more'. Of course money is measurable per se, but capital is not." Whatever we might say for the convolutions presented here, how do they follow from the twisted premise that sets them up? As for the statement "money is measurable," this is like saying that "a ruler is measurable." > The whole point is that the benefit of the owner is not linearly related > to any measurable quantity attached to labour. The point is that the quantity of labor contained in a commodity is the one substance than all commodities share - since they differ in shape, size, material, composition, function, etc. - and that therefore it is the labor substance that is exchanged, since what is common to all becomes the common measure. Understanding common measure prevents fundamental logic errors found in such assertions as 'something cannot produce more apples than the meat it consumes.' > I like this concept of "expanding" capital, from there it is clear that > no conserved object lies under it, and then you dont need the concept > of surplus to make capital to increase. How is capital to expand if its animation does not produce more than it costs to replace the capital used up in production? The concept of surplus is essential to understanding how capital expands, since it is a surplus of capital (generally in the form of commodity-capital) that adds itself to capital existing, causing capital to expand. > But I don't understand the need of "fixed" and "variable" capitals, > perhaps it is only a trick to restore again the need of "surplus"? The terms are very important. Fixed capital, e.g., raw materials, or machinery, cannot produce more value than it costs. These forms of capital are used up in the production process. Raw materials are consumed and must be replaced. Machinery is used up, must be repaired, replaced, modified, and so on. The one capital input that can produce more value than it costs is labor power. Human beings are unique in this way: you can exploit them. It therefore makes sense to differentiate labor inputs from other forms of capital inputs. So we say that revenue that replaces raw materials, machinery, etc., are "fixed" capital, whereas revenue that replaces labor (wages) are "variable" capital, since it produces more than is consumed. > The other one bas the use of "surplus". And, from your explanation, > I think that it is more a rhetorical word than a real point of > the theory. I hope Alejandro now realizes that surplus is not rhetorical but essential. Furthermore, surplus is not just theoretically essential: surplus is a material fact to be explained, not a theory about some unobservable. Surplus is a mind independent fact: the producer of surplus need not be aware that he is producing surplus for surplus to be produced. > I think you use "surplus labour" as a synonym of "labour." No, it is not. While all surplus must ultimately be the work of labor, not all labor produces surplus. This is the second time Alejandro has made this particular logical error. We can see how to correctly think about this from a simple analogy: "Having sex expends energy, but not all expended energy is sexually expended energy." > at least it seems that your whole answer can be formulated without this > adjective. Probably "necessary" amd "surplus" were two good buzzwords > for revolutionary propaganda, but no more. As Alejandro should realize by now, if all labor does not produce surplus, then the term "surplus" is an absolutely necessary qualifier, since it refers to a particular sort of labor and not all labor. "Necessary" and "surplus" in relation to labor are not "buzzwords," but empirical facts to be described and explained. Since if humans do not eat they will die, and this will extinguish their labor, it is necessary for them to eat so their capacity to labor will be restored. And since they can produce more than they consume, which is true because of the empirical fact of surplus, then labor produces more than is necessary. Alejandro, in his zeal to vanquish "revolutionary propaganda" has denied features - the most basic features - of empirical reality! > Generically, the main problem I see in this focus is that it seems to > imply that the whole production under socialism must be, at best, of the > same order that under capitalism. How so? > From here, one deduces that the only goal is redistribution, making the > standards of living of some "families" to fall down. Redistribution is one goal, and a very important one. Some families should have their standards of living reduced and reduced dramatically. > With the marxist "language", it seems a difficult task to proof that > socialism would be in fact more productive that capitalism. For > instance, is very difficult to show that destruction of capital is > actually a legitimate source of income for capitalists. This will have to be clarified and explained. Andy From j@qmail.com Mon Jul 20 10:17:29 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 06:25:25 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Mark Jones >> The left has always agreed with the capitalists with respect to economic >> growth. >> >> They both want MORE of it. >> >> Do you say that Marxists advocate a general decline in standards-of-living? > >This is simply a travesty of most current thinking on the left. Check our, for >example, the Capitalism-Nature-Socialism website if you want an insight into >where the debate is at. Isn't that really the problem? Marxists can't answer simple questions. Jay From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Mon Jul 20 10:45:39 1998 Mon, 20 Jul 1998 12:45:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 12:45:25 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Jay Hanson Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems In-Reply-To: <004d01bdb3fb$00af65e0$adecfea9@jay95> On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Jay Hanson wrote: >>Check our, for example, the Capitalism-Nature-Socialism website if you >>want an insight into where the debate is at. > > Isn't that really the problem? Marxists can't answer simple questions. Jay, This is a straight-forward answer. There has been considerable advancements in the area of the environment where Marxian theory is concerned. Historical materialism, because of its emphasis on the resource base and how this enters into production, is particularly designed for ecological studies. The collected volume Is Capitalism Sustainable? edited by Martin O'Connor and the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism demonstrate that the Marxian critique of environmental affairs is way ahead of the game. The author of the post you criticize was not only disagreeing with you, but was also directing you to a vast store of knowledge on this subject. I also recommend you read the work Alan Schnaiberg and his concept of the "treadmill of production." To continue to assert that Marxists have not been addressing this problem is to admit to a profound ignorance of the very subject you wish to criticize. If you want to criticize the Marxist position on these matters, then it is imperative that you first become aware that Marxists have a position, and then become clear as to what that position is. Only then can your criticisms be taken as something other than an ideological position against historical materialism. Andy From j@qmail.com Mon Jul 20 11:54:11 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 08:02:21 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Andrew Wayne Austin >This is a straight-forward answer. There has been considerable >advancements in the area of the environment where Marxian theory is >concerned. Historical materialism, because of its emphasis on the resource >base and how this enters into production, is particularly designed for >ecological studies. The collected volume Is Capitalism Sustainable? >edited by Martin O'Connor and the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism >demonstrate that the Marxian critique of environmental affairs is way >ahead of the game. The author of the post you criticize was not only I have his book and enjoyed it. But I don't remember any "solutions" that I could relate to. Can you give me a synopsis? What was I supposed to get out of O'Connor's book except the fact that capitalism is not sustainable -- which I already knew. Jay From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Mon Jul 20 14:09:02 1998 Mon, 20 Jul 1998 16:08:48 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 16:08:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Jay Hanson Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems In-Reply-To: <002601bdb408$8b109620$adecfea9@jay95> On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Jay Hanson wrote: > I have his book and enjoyed it. But I don't remember any "solutions" that I > could relate to. Can you give me a synopsis? If you read the book, why do you need me to provide you with a synopsis? > What was I supposed to get out of O'Connor's book except the fact that > capitalism is not sustainable -- which I already knew. This was all you got out of the book? What about Schnaiberg? Read him? What about the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism. Read any of those? Andy From wellsfargo@tinet.ie Mon Jul 20 14:37:13 1998 From: "Rebecca Peoples" To: "World Systems Network" Subject: Fw: Belfast Agreement Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 21:34:22 +0100 boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0089_01BDB426.28C99B60" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0089_01BDB426.28C99B60 charset="iso-8859-1" Date: 20 July 1998 21:25 Subject: Belfast Agreement Hi Comrades, Attached is an interesting and valuable piece from the Sunday Tribune written by Ed Moloney on the Belfast Agreement in relation to human rights etc. Warm regards Rebecca ------=_NextPart_000_0089_01BDB426.28C99B60 name="belfast.max" filename="belfast.max" VmlHQ2oaAAAAAABDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMAAAAAAAEAXQAbAB4AAAAAAAAAAAABAAAAAAAAAAEAAAAAAAAABQAAAAAA AAAAAAAAgMcAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABAAAAAAAAAAAAAADIAAAAAAAA AEgBAAAAAAAAAAAAAMjIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUAAABWWoAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACA 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NETWORK" Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 12:00:19 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Andrew Wayne Austin >> I have his book and enjoyed it. But I don't remember any "solutions" that I >> could relate to. Can you give me a synopsis? > >If you read the book, why do you need me to provide you with a synopsis? > >> What was I supposed to get out of O'Connor's book except the fact that >> capitalism is not sustainable -- which I already knew. > >This was all you got out of the book? What about Schnaiberg? Read him? >What about the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism. Read any of those? I didn't ask for a literary review -- or a political speech. I asked what Marxists propose as a solution? Can you just answer my question without regurgitating dead philosophers or spinning Karl's Prayer Wheel? Jay From j@qmail.com Mon Jul 20 16:18:20 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: I got it!! Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 12:26:19 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" FWD from Alan McGowen : Australian computer scientist Andrew Bulhak has produced a wonderful bit of programming called the Postmodern Generator. Each time you visit it at http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/postmodern, it randomly generates for you a brand new, syntatically correct, postmodernist paper, complete with citations and ready to be submitted to the editors of Social Text, or posted on any deserving list. Below are a few paragraphs from the paper it just made for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------- Dialectic desublimation and expressionism Ludwig Mellen Department of Literature, Cambridge University 1. Realities of dialectic "Culture is responsible for hierarchy," says Marx. Dietrich[1] implies that we have to choose between expressionism and dialectic desublimation. Therefore, any number of theories concerning dialectic desublimation exist. Derrida promotes the use of dialectic libertarianism to read sexual identity. The main theme of the works of Lee is the dialectic, and eventually the rubicon, of conceptual sexuality. 2. Lee and the capitalist paradigm of discourse The primary theme of Prinn's[2] critique of expressionism is the praxis, and hence the dialectic, of subcultural society. In a sense, Mensonge's analysis of presemioticist dialectic theory holds that narrative is created by the masses, given that Bataille's essay on dialectic desublimation is valid. and so on ... Jay From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Mon Jul 20 17:23:47 1998 Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 23:58:56 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Jay Hanson wrote: > I asked what Marxists propose as a solution? > This do? -- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty -------------------------------------------------- The capitalist world system is sinking into turmoil and chaos. Imperialism won a decade more life for itself by plundering the fallen socialist world. The 'fire sale at the end of history' consumed a staggering accumulation of values and assets, the hard-earned achievement of decades of sacrifice and labour by generations of Soviet men and women. By some estimates more than three trillion dollars was pumped out of Russia and eastern Europe between 1990-1998 -- a sum equivalent to the gross national product of France, Italy and Britain combined. No-one knows what the true losses are, and the haemorrhage continues to bleed this vast territory white, at the costs of millions of lives, of the despoliation of the Soviet resource-base, the ransacking of nature and unrestrained environmental destruction, and by stealing the futures of hundreds of millions of lives; stealing even the food from their mouths (Russian nutritional levels have fallen drastically) (see Russia). Such a catastrophe has few historical precedents: the annihilation of the native American civilizations after the 16th century is one. But the conquest of the Americas, the genocidal extirpation of at least 70 million native Americans slaughtered or dead through famine and disease, the wholesale enslavement of African peoples and their mobilization in the greatest flowering of slave-production since ancient times: all this bloody massacre and plunder, which formed primitive accumulation and allowed 18th century protocapitalism to launch the Industrial Revolution: this was the work of three centuries! And the equivalent plunder of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has been the work of less than a decade... Such is the frantic acceleration of capitalism's moloch-machinery, such is the intensification of the frenzy of exploitation which sucks whole peoples and generations into its maw; and still it is not enough. The sacking of socialism released vast new resources, in particular energy (oil above all) and enabled a dramatic hike in the profit-rate in the imperial centres. It has directly fuelled the boom in asset-values in the Anglo-Saxon centres and helped stabilize the German-led European Union. Newly-unified Germany could afford to spend $800 bn incorporating east Germany (the former German Democratic Republic), to power the new revanchist German imperialism, yet even this vast sum has proven insufficient to overcome the profound dynamic of centralisation and concentration of capital which is the hallmark of the area. The German revanchists tried to swim against the tide which sucks value out of the neocolonies into the metropoles. For historical and chauvinist reasons they tried to incorporate the East German working class but this politics has been negated by the main trend at work in the world today, namely to leach out value from the peripheries. This is a most striking evidence of the elemental force of the dynamics of imploding capitalism. US imperialism is the heart of the vortex, and this is the pole which draws profit and superprofit to itself, bleaching white the world system. Germany, the second-strongest imperialism, was unable to resist the centripetal process and today, despite its huge subsidising of east German reconstruction, the wasteland of unemployment and despair which capitalism creates in all its neocolonies is as much in evidence in east Germany as anywhere else. (see BasicFacts) China, too, under the neofascist Deng Xiaoping clique, has become fully incorporated into the circuits of world capitalism. The Chinese revanchists have raised the banner of renewed Chinese imperialism and aspire to compete with the existing imperial powers. Explosive social contradictions have opened up in the space of former Chinese socialism but the drive to construct a world-centre of capitalist accumulation in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong axis has failed. China cannot escape the dramatic crisis unfolding in Asia, as cannibal-capitalism gnaws its living tissue. China is inescapably caught in the apocalyptic spiral of crisis now dragging the capitalist world system down into chaos, disintegration and war. And a terrible price has already been paid by the Chinese working class for the benefits its parasitic rulers hoped to gain from joining the imperialist club. The achievements of Chinese socialism have been demolished, the assets painfully accumulated since 1949 are being gutted with the same frenzy as in the former Soviet Union, while tens of millions of dispossessed Chinese workers -- robbed of their socialist birthright -- are conscripted into the cauldron of the Chinese coastal enclaves. The collapse of the world system is proceeding at an ever- increasing pace, and the tempo of Chinese accumulation has proven wholly insufficient to drag Chinese capitalism free of the vortex. At the same time, a whole new dimension of crisis is revealed beneath the growing rents and tears of Chinese capitalism. It is daily clearer just what terrible price future generations of Chinese workers will pay for the alleged benefits of economic growth experienced in China since the fall of Chinese socialism. A terrible whirlwind of environmental and resource depletion has been sown by the so-called Green Revolution which has produced agricultural growth in China and throughout Asia. The mechanism of boosting crop-production also led directly to the dispossessing of hundreds of millions of peasants, decanting these discontented, hungry masses into the vast new megacities of Asia, from Bengal to Shenzhen. But this Green Revolution was won not only at terrible social cost; it has resulted in a wholly-unsustainable agriculture which is ravaging the environment and depleting water resources and soil fertility at an unprecedented rate. At the same time, environmental pollution has created a nightmare world for the multimillioned Asian masses. 'Booming' Asian capitalism has created this stinking environmental hell, characterised by the pollution of water bodies, coastal seas and the land, covering vast regions with global-warming induced forest fires, turning the megacities into uninhabitable death traps. The 'Keynesian' reformers seek to refuel Asian capitalism, but if they succeed then these fundamental resource and environment crises will only be intensified to an intolerable degree; in the next decades the collapse of Asian ecosystems will only accelerate, made worse as global warming raises sea levels and inundates coastal regions where almost a billion people now live. Thus Keynesian reforms, insofar as they are implemented successfully, will serve only to exacerbate the underlying crisis and to hasten the final day of revolutionary reckoning. The contradictions of Asian capitalism are ripening at a furious pace and this is producing political aftershocks which are already beyond the capacity of world imperialism to direct or control. The mechanism of crisis has assumed a capricious, uncontrollable character and this tendency itself is accelerating. Imperialism, which in the past has eagerly sought to intensify crises, in eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere, is now in a desperate struggle to slow down and contain evolving crisis, but does not know how. Whereas crisis has always been welcomed as a mechanism for destroying the working class, for increasing the tempo of exploitation through constant speed-ups and restructuring and the retirement of 'obsolete' capital (i.e., the productive systems painfully built-up in the course of development and often perfectly suited to the specific conditions in the neocolonies), today imperialism wants to apply the brakes to a world crisis spinning out of control. The political confusion this abrupt change of direction produces is best evidenced in the response of the West to the Asia meltdown. The shock troops of world imperialism -- its parastatal organs such as the World Bank and the IMF - responded to the Asian crisis by applying the tried and tested' methods of crisis INTENSIFICATION. Thus the IMF introduced shock-therapy regimes designed to intensify the rate of exploitation in Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere and to further bind these neocolonies into the straitjacket of world capitalism; but the immediate result was to exacerbate the crisis and further destabilise these states and the Asian economy as a whole. This has led to turmoil, confusion and loss of political direction within imperialism, evidenced by the astonishing public criticisms voiced by leading IMF and World Bank bureaucrats and their political masters in Washington, who now openly prescribe the sort of 'Keynesian' social reforms they previously strove with might and main to bury forever. Now the IMF itself speaks of 'labour rights' and 'social protection', and has begun to address the need to reflate collapsing economies and to stimulate demand, all of which flatly contradicts the mission given to these policemen of finance capitalism. Such is the terrible fear felt in high places, now that the working class has begun to stir and to waken from its slumbers. Do the new reformers ave any chance of success? With their vocal and enthusiastic supporters in the whole gallimaufry of Non-Governmental Organisations, 'left' social democrats, trade unions, and so-called 'Communist' Parties, these craven lickspittles of world imperialism are seizing their chance, voicing loud 'critiques' of the IMF strategy and urging their imperialist masters to 'relent', to be more 'forgiving' -- i.e., to forgive not just the debts run up by their fellow predators, the banks and speculators who have got caught in the collapse of Asian financial markets, a collapse their own greed catalysed, but also to 'forgive' the peoples of Indonesia, Korea and elsewhere the doubling and tripling of food and fuel prices and the other usurious exactions the IMF and Washington sought to impose. But the crisis of world capitalism has no precedent since 1945, and not even since the shattering dramas of finance capitalism and imperialism which destroyed the Pax Britannica in 1914 and which led directly to both the Russian Revolution of 1917 and to the installation of the United States as the 20th century's imperial hegemon. Thus we can say with certainty that the whole historical cycle which began in 1917 has ended, and that the collapse of the USSR was only the harbinger of still more striking and apocalyptic events, in which the stake is not just the safety of US imperialism, but the survival of world capitalism itself. Therefore it is clear that the present world crisis is still in its early stages and that its further development will be marked by a rising tide of working class resistance. This is the real significance of the disarray and confusion now visible in the councils of imperialism. The stench of decay is growing; the dissolution of world-capitalism's structures and institutions is profound and unstoppable and therefore it will be the proletariat which will increasingly make the political running, as the crisis continues to deepen and the inexorable decomposition of morbid capitalism, the gangrene which has already begun to kill off its extremities, accelerates. The malevolent heart of vampire-imperialism beats inside the Washington Beltway. Here are the arrogant institutions of imperial power. Here are the great services -- the dark forces -- of its increasingly-open criminal rule. From here will belch forth the foulest, hitherto unknown technologies of repression, control, assassination, genocide and global war waged by US imperialism against the whole of humankind, including the US working class which itself has suffered much under the iron heel. For during the past two decades the US proletariat has experienced a decline in wage-levels and living standards with no precedent in US history. Now the politics of rotten imperialism will be torn to pieces by the same vast forces that are wracking the capitalist world system. The neoliberal-globalist politics of the past decade is already foundering as its theoretical models and practical policies come under increasingly bitter attack by the forces of the capitulationist-left (the NGOs, academics, labour unions and soft social-democrats mentioned earlier). Keynesian reformism is being feverishly dusted off, the long-discredited politics of social reforms and demand management being hurriedly refreshed in the face of a catastrophic world deflation which is already exposing the brittle, shallow foundations of post-war 'miracle' Japan. Vamped-up Keynesianism, as we have seen, would only propel world capitalism deeper into the historical impasse from which there is no escape anyway. New cycles of capitalist growth, which can only be brief and local in any case, will only deepen the underlying contradictions between capitalist development and the environmental and resource-depletion costs which are the true source of the superprofits sucked by vampire imperialism from the material world which workers have to inhabit: the world of relentless exploitation and environmental degradation, with few of the promised compensations of consumerism. But in any case, political incoherence in the face of uncontrollable crisis does not permit imperialism to implement any single sustainable restructuring process. Thus in opposition to the 'soft- face of reforms, there is already visible the hideous mask of outright, bloody repression. While the beleaguered elites argue matters out inside Washington's Beltway, the dark forces of US imperialism are already taking matters in their own hands. While the 'humanistic' reformers bleat, the CIA and the Pentagon plots. The conscience stricken reformers have now begun to issue their pleas to the IMF and the World Bank, arrogantly claiming for themselves the right to speak on behalf of the world's oppressed and exploited, wringing their hands and venting crocodile tears for the fate on millions of lives imperilled by their own greed -- for none have so benefited from the merciless exploitation of the working class as the milk fed priesthood of US culture, as the harlots of the US intelligentsia, including the so-called left intellectuals - and it is nothing else but their own skins and their comfortable lives that they fear losing and shed tears over. (see 11m.Children Die) Meanwhile the dark forces have begun their campaigns of assassination, torture, 'disappearances', political pressure, harassment and the like. And this is only the first claw of the monster lurking in the heart of imperialism. There can be no illusions that imperialism will ever give up freely what cannot be torn from its death grip by force. If history teaches anything, it teaches this: imperialism knows no limits. Imperialism will destroy the world sooner than surrender supremacy. The enemies of humankind and of all life on earth are already chafing at the bit, and they will be the first to sweep aside the bleating platoons of reformists blatherers. As the tides of class struggle rise and the fire of people's war meld together, imperialism will convert the politics of the neoliberal 'New World Order' into war. Secret war waged with all the unscrupulous, inhuman zeal of which the Pentagon and CIA are past masters: 'anti-insurgency' low-intensity operations designed to decapitate the proletariat by slaughtering its leaders. Proxy wars waged by the imperial satraps against one another, at Washington's behest. Irredentist and intercommunal wars fomented and instigated by the dark forces whose masters understand the vital importance of divide and rule and hope to save their skins by generalising a Hobbesian war of all against all, outside their own borders. Religious wars instigated by the fanatics who are often the sons and daughters of small tradespeople and the lower professions, and who seize on bigotry and xenophobia to vent the rising frustration and anger of the submerged masses, and thus guarantee their own leading positions within obscurantist theocracies which allow scope for massive personal corruption and the 'good life' for their leaders. In the past two decades imperialism has shown its mastery of this politics, shunting petit-bourgeois political elites away from the developmental, anti-colonialist politics of the 50s and 60s and towards the most, brutal, inhumane and totally senseless forms of sectarian and intercommunal strife, which are always tolerated and supported by imperialism: even when states are declared 'pariah', such as Libya, Iraq and Iran, imperialism does nothing to damage their regimes and even goes out of its way to defend them, as US imperialism has always vigilantly defended its client, Saddam Hussein and his murderous Iraqi regime. Compare this with the fate accorded petit-bourgeois led anticolonial movements a few decades earlier. In Africa, Latin America and Asia, such states and leaderships were always surrounded, isolated, destabilised, and bled white in silent, mostly unreported wars. The allegedly anti-imperialist regimes of the Middle East and elsewhere which are led by professional fanatics, soldiers of fortune or religious zealots, are as much the enemies of the people as are their secret imperial masters; they, like revanchist religious movements, including those castigated as 'terrorist' by imperialism, are roadblocks in the way of world revolution. The imperialists never cease to meddle in the affairs of the neocolonies. US imperialism gave the green light to the Indian government of the right-wing religious BJP fanatics to detonate nuclear devices. They did not just turn a blind eye to the Indian tests, they permitted them, and the hollow White House sanctions rhetoric does not disguise the truth. The imperialists' objective was transparent. The Indian bomb is designed to warn both Islam and China. US imperialism is terrified of risen Islam; this was the whirlwind of jihad which the imperialists themselves encouraged and fostered, for if not Islam, then what else can the West Asian and Middle Eastern masses turn to? Only socialism, only communism, only Leninism. The imperialists did all they could to push Arab nationalism in obscurantist, theocratic directions in the 1950s and 1960s. World capitalism is dependent on Arab oil. This is the secret they dare not speak, although it shouts out its own name loudly enough. To safeguard oil supplies, imperialism has for many decades skilfully sought to create endless instability, local wars and geopolitical 'churning' throughout the Middle East. Now it has raised the stakes still higher, for an apocalyptic endgame approaches: it was time to give Hinduism its bomb, and to let Islam flex its nuclear muscles in the shape of Pakistani reciprocal tests. (see Energy) Thus imperialism sets the stage for fascism in the neocolonies and for war between Islam, Hinduism and China. At the same time, this unleashing of the dogs of war further evidences the disintegration of US hegemony, announced with such arrogant triumphalism only a few years ago as the Cold War ended. The global New World Order is giving way to its opposite -- a world of terrifying disorder in which vast forces have accumulated ready to crash down on humankind in apocalyptic landslides of terror, reaction and mass death at any moment. Will such occasions come to pass? A better question is how will they be avoided, given the deepening systemic disarray of hurrah-capitalism and geopolitical formations and political instances. Economic collapse is being chased by apocalyptic horsemen of eco-catastrophe, hunger, revolt and war. Globalism, neoliberalism, have collapsed almost as soon as they have been announced: the universal hegemony of the markets, a thin screen for rapacious finance capitalism, will dissolve away at the first cold blast of a general, world-wide slump and depression. US imperialism already knows that the choice is not between 'Keynesianism' on the one hand and globalism on the other. The choices are incalculably grimmer and starker. Will the world war be confined to Asia and the Middle East, and fought to the death between imperialism's proxies: India, Pakistan, China? Or will the US game plan to cut the head off Asian resurgence by smashing down Chinese and Japanese capitalism, and by the threat of nuclear war, be only the prelude to a general war, a new and final world war? For it must be said that allowing India to have nuclear weapons would be unthinkable if US imperialism did not face still more abysmal challenges. It is obvious to any competent observer of the world energy scene that capitalism's dependence on fossil fuels, primarily oil, is as great as ever. There are no substitutes which can allow capitalism to continue in anything like its present form, and the collapse of oil supplies will, in the BEST case, be the preliminary to not years but decades of turmoil and reconstruction within the world market. But oil is more scarce than is ever admitted, and the future energy scenarios now published by the US government are more fraudulent and full of barefaced lies and statistical manipulations than anything ever attributed to the mendacity of the Soviet Union. An unsustainable situation already exists with respect to energy supply. It is absolutely clear that if world growth continued on the high trajectory evidenced before the 1997 Asian meltdown, then instead of the present glutted energy markets, an oil-famine was already a looming prospect as world oil production peaks and then inexorably declines. Peak production at present rates will occur in the next few years: far too short a time scale for crisis to be forestalled, even if any of the long touted 'alternatives' (cold fusion, nuclear power, photovoltaics etc.) came to fruition, but NONE of them has. Production is geared to cheap oil, even if there were alternatives it will take two decades at least to relaunch the world economy on a different energy path. But there are no alternatives. Imperialism cannot permit the Chinese economy in particular to grow at 10 percent a year. Within a decade, such growth would create Chinese demand for oil equivalent to present day total world production! And if the Chinese growth engine dragged Asia in its wake, then demand would increase still further, but the truth is that world oil production is close to peaking and can never be doubled. The Indian bomb is one of imperialism's answers to the Chinese threat. And it is more evidence of the unscalable historical impasse capitalism has entered. World capitalism is in the early stages of its deepest crisis, embracing all spheres of society, culture and production, all social classes, states, nations and regions. The capitalist world has entered a cul-de-sac from which there can be no escape. The beast is writhing in its death-agony. Its politicians, apologists and strongmen have no viable renewal policies. Beneath the triumphal mask of hurrah-capitalism are the steel teeth of what the Russian communists call samoyezd -- cannibal -- capitalism. Behind the soft words and polite smiles of its salons and academies, where the liturgy of neoliberalism was crafted, with its talk of open markets, democracy and 'one-world' hides a policeman with a truncheon, and behind him are the torturers with their shock-batons. World capitalism is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn't. Damned to economic meltdown, conflict and war if it fails to launch a new accumulation cycle and to jerk free of the fetters now dragging it down. Damned to run into unassailable obstacles if it does recommence accumulation, for the energy and resource deficits which have dogged the world-system for more than two decades are now gigantic impediments to renewed growth. The optimism of hurrah-capitalism is based on nothing more solid than the hypnotic repetition of mindless mantras: 'technology will find the solutions'; 'the Information Revolution will sweep all before it'; 'virtualisation and dematerialisation will solve its resource problems' and last and most baleful: There Is No Alternative. For if the doomsayers are right, and continued growth is unsustainable, threatening the integrity of the biosphere on which all life depends, and if resource limits are insurmountable, then what IS the alternative to capitalism? What OTHER way from the impasse but the relentless pursuit of technology, and if this is so, then surely it is necessary -- however regrettable -- to allow the markets to work unimpeded, retiring old, energy inefficient, polluting capital, and concentrating capital in the imperial heartlands whose powerful science and technology complexes offer the only hope of survival, of feeding the next century's hungry masses, of leapfrogging over technical obstacles? In a word, if generalised prosperity is impossible with existing technology -- and most now agree that it IS impossible to give the Asian masses, for instance, Western living standards -- then surely it makes sense to bow to the inevitable and acknowledge that the only hope for these billions of people, is to put their trust in the galvanic powers of western technology, and wait quietly for better times as capitalism refreshes its cornucopia-machinery. The present generations in the neocolonies will be sacrificed, true, but not for the benefit of the hardworking West, but for the sake of their own unborn generations. It is necessary to tax from these people the wealth necessary to refuel the engines of innovation, strengthen and stabilise markets and western socio-economic systems, and prepare to 'reculer pour mieux sauter'. In any case, Socialism has been tried, has it not? Who seriously suggests that the example of planning Soviet-style offers anything other than monumental waste, bureaucratic corruption and stagnation, shortages, grey uniformity, lack of dynamism and economic vitality? If the problems are really so serious, who is better placed to solve them than the enlightened social theorists of Harvard, Yale and Oxbridge, or the powerful scientific enterprises of the metropoles? To throw away the unquestioned benefits of freedom and capitalist enterprise in pursuit of revolutionary will o'the wisps promoted by power-crazed sociopaths -- this is not sensible is it? What after all, does Communism mean, but gulags, queues and unfreedom, in the midst of terrible pollution and environmental disregard? The mantras of capitalist apologetics will be heard until the moment the ship finally sinks and the waves close over their heads. First of all, it is capitalist science and technology, capitalist rapacity, and the vast overgrowth of surplus population ('the most general law of capitalism', as Marx called it) in the form of a colossal reserve army of labour, which has created the world we now live in. It was precisely the capitalist Green Revolution which triggered a second population explosion among the dispossessed of the world, in just the same way that the population of the first industrial countries exploded, as peasants were made landless and forced into the cities. In fact there is no surplus population in any absolute sense: there is only a population which is surplus to capitalism's requirements. Nevertheless world population will double to more than 10 billion in the coming decades; and these new members of the world proletariat will not be satisfied with virtual food or dematerialised roads, cars, homes, schools, hospitals. Crisis has its inescapable logic. It exhausts one potentiality for growth after another. And in the same way, the working class and its allies inevitably progress on a learning curve which contains as many troughs as peaks. Communism is not just one option among others. If that was the case, we should be wasting our time hoeing such a hard furrow. Communism is inevitable because capitalist crisis is inevitable. Nevertheless, its inevitability will only become transparent to the people when all the other options have been tried. That is just in the nature of things. Left to itself capitalist crisis can only deepen, its contradictions become still more explosive. Nothing can stop the deepening of capitalist crisis or the sharpening of its contradictions; that may still not be so evident in the first class salons of the west, but in the barrios and megacities of the rest of the world, it is self-evident. The contradictions will continue to ripen, and setbacks and defeats suffered by the proletariat only intensify the process. That is the entire lesson of the fall of the socialist world and what followed: the sequel was not the end of history and the final triumph of the capitalist system, but a fantastic acceleration of the necrosis of the tissues and fibre of capitalist society, world-wide. And it is the lesson of the whole 250-year history of industrial capitalism, this Lazarus which has stumbled by many zigzags and deviations, and many unsuspected resurrections, into the present and final crisis. Whether the world likes it or not, we will have Communism because the alternative is barbarism and the extinction of life. There is no alternative... to Communism. Whatever hardship the Soviet people endured, besieged and hounded by the West and under the yoke of a Party which ceased to be Communist and degenerated into one of humankind's most corrupt institutions, nothing prepared the Soviet people for the holocaust of lives, hopes and living standards which capitalism has brought them. The only glimmer of hope in the nightmare visited on the world by capitalism, is the hope offered by socialism: the hope of a world without capitalism, without markets, without warring classes, and without a Sword of Damocles hanging always over our heads. This is the only future open to humanity. All other roads lead to ruin and despair. Only communism offers hope, only communism offers life. "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society." [Karl Marx, Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)] That point has now been reached. We must bury capitalism because if we don't, it will bury us. Communism is not a utopia, but a material necessity. This, the fundamental truth of scientific socialism, is no longer a prediction, but a palpable fact. From j@qmail.com Mon Jul 20 18:14:07 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 14:22:08 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" With respect to solutions, this is all I found: > Whether the world likes it or not, we will have Communism because the > alternative is barbarism and the extinction of life. There is no > alternative... to Communism. Is that it? Can you say exactly how Communism will save us? Or are we supposed to take your word for it? Jay From stormrhymer@hotmail.com Tue Jul 21 01:17:46 1998 X-Originating-IP: [192.91.247.2] From: "John Stevens" To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 00:17:38 PDT Just out of curiosity, Jay, do *you* have anything approaching a workable or enlightening solution, or are you just a crank? I myself am not too Marx-inclined, but I've appreciated the high volume of explanation and overall thoughtfulness of the responses I've seen so far. I'm actually learning more here than I ever did in my Marxist anthro class. I don't agree with some of it, but this after all a process of *dialogue,* not just of poking people until they yell at you. Cheers, John Stevens >Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 14:22:08 -1000 >Reply-To: j@qmail.com >From: "Jay Hanson" >To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK >Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems > >With respect to solutions, this is all I found: > >> Whether the world likes it or not, we will have Communism because the >> alternative is barbarism and the extinction of life. There is no >> alternative... to Communism. > >Is that it? Can you say exactly how Communism will save us? >Or are we supposed to take your word for it? > >Jay > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From arg19@tid.es Tue Jul 21 02:25:33 1998 Sender: arivero@tid.es Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 10:18:07 +0200 From: Alejandro Rivero Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin , rivero@sol.unizar.es To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Unequal exchange Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: > Hi, > Because there is a lack of equivalents, Rivero says that one cannot say > that something "produces more apples than the meat it consumes," whereas > one can say that something "produces more grain that it consumes." But how > is it that we understand that cows must consume so much more grain (food) > than the meat they produce (food)? Because we are able to measure food in > terms of volume, calories, weight, all sorts of quantification terms. > Because meat is determined by the money value and not the amount of food > it produces, the profit motive determines that cows are produced at a loss > of food volume. Similarly, we can calculate how labor can produce more > than it consumes: because the money-value the laborer consumes in > reproducing her labor is less than the money the laborer produces in > money-value. To use Rivero's example, a worker who consumes X amount of > meat worth Y amount of dollars can produce Z amount of apples worth more > than the X amount of meat. As Alejandro must see, his argument fails: it > makes just as much sense to talk in terms of something producing more > apples than the meat it consumes because both meat and apples are measured > by the same quantification terms, in this case money-value. If money value is one of the fundamentals of the theory, then I resign. Money must be a deduction: Capital ownership drives to bartering, and bartering against additive objects drives to money. Your counterexample is CONFUSE: you invite people to think of capital as money, which it IS NOT. > argument. So, evidently, we have not solved the problem at all: making the > definition of surplus consistent is to make it circular. > > First, it should strike us that Alejandro has (not very subtly) set up the > problem as a catch-22. He says first that it only makes sense to say that I was trying to show that you seem to define capital as the accumulation of surplus, and surplus as the origin of capital. So the catch-22 should not strike you, as it was a purposeful play. Only a minor correction; in: > something "produces more grain that it consumes," and that saying that > something "produces more apples than meat it consumes" does not make any > sense. We have shown that saying that something "produces more apples than > meat it consumes" makes perfect sense. But putting Alejandro's first error > aside for the moment, Alejandro *now* claims that saying something > "produces more grain that it consumes" is circular, since it has the form > of "produces more capital than it consumes." Over the course of two short > paragraphs Alejandro has contradicted himself. the first "it" was meant to be "grain". For instance, a field produces more grain than the quantity of grain needed to grow the new plants. So no circularity here, no need to abstract grains to "capital". > > The whole point is that the benefit of the owner is not linearly related > > to any measurable quantity attached to labour. > > The point is that the quantity of labor contained in a commodity is the ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ > one substance than all commodities share - since they differ in shape, ^^^^^^^^^ Hmm even Aristoteles' physics is better for this task. > size, material, composition, function, etc. - and that therefore it is the > labor substance that is exchanged, since what is common to all becomes the > common measure. Understanding common measure prevents fundamental logic > errors found in such assertions as 'something cannot produce more apples > than the meat it consumes.' Claiming the existence of a common measure is only that, a claim. Would you be so kind as to propose an actual experiment showing the existence of such substance? If you can not, I'd beg you to avoid to use the word "empirical" in any follow-up of this discussion. > > I like this concept of "expanding" capital, from there it is clear that > > no conserved object lies under it, and then you dont need the concept > > of surplus to make capital to increase. > > How is capital to expand if its animation does not produce more than it > costs to replace the capital used up in production? The concept of surplus > is essential to understanding how capital expands, since it is a surplus > of capital (generally in the form of commodity-capital) that adds itself > to capital existing, causing capital to expand. Pity, so here you really think that capital "adds", ok, not "expands". Expansion is very different of addition. > As Alejandro should realize by now, if all labor does not produce surplus, > then the term "surplus" is an absolutely necessary qualifier, since it > refers to a particular sort of labor and not all labor. "Necessary" and > "surplus" in relation to labor are not "buzzwords," but empirical facts to > be described and explained. Since if humans do not eat they will die, and > this will extinguish their labor, it is necessary for them to eat so their > capacity to labor will be restored. And since they can produce more than > they consume, which is true because of the empirical fact of surplus, then > labor produces more than is necessary. Alejandro, in his zeal to vanquish > "revolutionary propaganda" has denied features - the most basic features - > of empirical reality! The empirical facts in your parragraph are the ones related to humans: They will die if they do not eat, etc. But you put the label "empirical" to the most theoretical concept in your discussion. Well, that is really propaganda if I saw one! The two last parragraphs are more interesting, so I'll split discussion here. Alejandro From arg19@tid.es Tue Jul 21 03:45:43 1998 Sender: arivero@tid.es Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 11:35:03 +0200 From: Alejandro Rivero Reply-To: "rivero@sol.unizar.es" To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Declining standards and all that (Was Re: Unequal exchange Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: > > Generically, the main problem I see in this focus is that it seems to > > imply that the whole production under socialism must be, at best, of the > > same order that under capitalism. > > How so? > > > From here, one deduces that the only goal is redistribution, making the > > standards of living of some "families" to fall down. > > Redistribution is one goal, and a very important one. Some families should > have their standards of living reduced and reduced dramatically. > > > With the marxist "language", it seems a difficult task to proof that > > socialism would be in fact more productive that capitalism. For > > instance, is very difficult to show that destruction of capital is > > actually a legitimate source of income for capitalists. > > This will have to be clarified and explained. Ok, let me then to raise then the black flag, as the "other" theory is needed for this, so lets invoke Proudhon' spirit and point out that Ownership is the key of capitalism system. A capitalist gets its benefit by trading ownership rights through a bartering process. Such process contains random and structural components. A capitalist is aware of such random components and manages them to maximize benefit. Sometimes this implies to increase production to sell more products. Other times this is done by exercising *his right* to destroy production then increasing price. With Marxist vocabulary (surpluses, etc.) it is very difficultous to study the process of capital destruction. Even worse, such destruction is rarely physical; sometimes it takes the form of resource deallocation or so, usually the owners purposefully avoid to produce the maximum quantity of product they could make from the available resources. But even a bad axiomatic systems gets results if the thinker proceeds adequately, and so Marx was able to see how such destruction was needed in order to equilibrate the capitalist system. But he claimed that it was a weakness of the system, postulated that the destruction process would drive to a succession of "crisis" which would drive to the final destruction of capitalism, etc... Actually, capital retention (destruction if needed, or simply avoiding production increases) can be done in a quasi continuous form; and even if a "crisis" happens, the mechanism corrects capitalism and surviving capitalists get benefit from it. > Andy It is to be noticed thats that common preach contain a lot of conditionals: For if the doomsayers are right, and continued growth is unsustainable, threatening the integrity of the biosphere on which all life depends, and if resource limits are insurmountable, then what IS the alternative to capitalism? What OTHER way from the impasse but the relentless Other common error is malthusianism and its derivations: First of all, it is capitalist science and technology, capitalist rapacity, and the vast overgrowth of surplus population ('the most general law of capitalism', as Marx called it) in the form of a colossal reserve army of labour, which has created the world we now live in. It was precisely the capitalist Green Revolution which triggered a second population explosion among the dispossessed of the world, in just the same way that the population of the first industrial countries exploded, as peasants were made landless and forced into the cities. Malthusianism was initially claimed as an excuse for the existence of poor people and an argument to displace charity and redistribution efforts in favour other social tasks. The oldest version was "people will expand always to saturate existing resources". This was sophisticated to a pseudocientifical claim: "resources grow polinomically while population grows exponentially". Now, it is clear that resource harvesting is related to the number of people available to do such task, thus resources harvested grow exponentially if population do. This is so until we reach the *physical* limit of resources, which probably have not happened yet; such physical limit would be surely related to Sun energy and Earth albedo (the capacity of earth to radiate heat out of the planet), if we agree to reject earth-based nuclear sources and/or perhaps controlled oil burning. From j@qmail.com Tue Jul 21 10:33:51 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: RIVETS FOR SEX Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 06:41:43 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: John Stevens >Just out of curiosity, Jay, do *you* have anything approaching a >workable or enlightening solution, or are you just a crank? Sorry to rain on your parade John. I was just wondering if the Marxists actually had any solutions or if they just want more sex? ----------------------------------------------------------------- RIVETS FOR SEX by Jay Hanson Once upon a time there was a spaceship in which "rivets" were used for currency. Why rivets? Because on this particular spaceship, one could trade rivets for sex! SPACESHIP POLITICS Those individuals who were best at pulling rivets out of the spaceship hull -- the "Pullocrats" -- had the most political power because they controlled the most sex. As might be expected, "pulling rivets" became the most-talked-about and most-envied measure of personal worth. GOD REVEALED IN EACH TRANSACTION Unsure of their moral justification, the Pullocrats employed "Pulling Priests" (or "PPs") to search Holy Scripture for the truth. A careful re-read of the Scripture by the PPs discovered that "pulling rivets" maximizes "utility". Although no one has ever seen or measured "utility", the PPs say that God reveals his preferences in each transaction thereby proving that "utility" is maximized. So with the circular blessing of the PPs, the doctrine of continuous and unlimited "rivet pulling" became the organizing principle of the entire spaceship. Indeed, nothing else mattered to anyone. A TINY BIT OF A PROBLEM In the real world of a spaceship, a tiny bit of air leaks out after each rivet is pulled out of the hull. And while the air supply system was designed to stay ahead of normal leakage, so many rivets have been yanked out of the hull, that at the present rate, the ship's atmosphere will be unable to support life in 12 hours. A rescue ship is on the way, but it will take 24 hours to reach the ship. The Pullocrats must: #1. Organize to ignore their PPs, stop pulling rivets out of the hull, and start pounding them back in, OR #2. They will die. ----------------------------------------------------------------- It's FREE! Send SUBSCRIBE BRAIN FOOD to j@qmail.com From dp@hss.iitb.ernet.in Tue Jul 21 10:35:59 1998 Tue, 21 Jul 1998 22:05:05 +0530 (IST) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 22:05:05 +0530 (IST) From: "d.parthasarathy" To: Andrew Wayne Austin Subject: Re: living people's concrete problems In-Reply-To: On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: > This is a straight-forward answer. There has been considerable > advancements in the area of the environment where Marxian theory is > concerned. Historical materialism, because of its emphasis on the resource > base and how this enters into production, is particularly designed for > ecological studies. The collected volume Is Capitalism Sustainable? > edited by Martin O'Connor and the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism > demonstrate that the Marxian critique of environmental affairs is way > ahead of the game. The author of the post you criticize was not only > disagreeing with you, but was also directing you to a vast store of > knowledge on this subject. I also recommend you read the work Alan > Schnaiberg and his concept of the "treadmill of production." > > To continue to assert that Marxists have not been addressing this problem > is to admit to a profound ignorance of the very subject you wish to > criticize. If you want to criticize the Marxist position on these matters, > then it is imperative that you first become aware that Marxists have a > position, and then become clear as to what that position is. Only then can > your criticisms be taken as something other than an ideological position > against historical materialism. > > Andy > I have not been following this debate as closely as I would like to and I may have missed out on some of the contributions. I am also not subbed to the Capitalism-Nature-socialism. However I would like to bring the following two points to the notice of those who may be interested in following the thread regarding historical-materialism and the environment/nature. 1. The following points made by Marx in Capital Marx are interesting. Firstly in discussing technology he refers to it as disclosing "man's mode of dealing with Nature, the immediate process of production by which he sustains his life" Secondly his critique of the notorious "law of diminishing returns", which charges Nature with the defects, limitations and contradictions of capitalism. Thirdly his statement that nature is as much the source of material wealth as labour is. The paragraph from Chapter 1 of Capital Vol.1 is worth quoting here. "The use-values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements -- matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter. [13] Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use-values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother." I was just quoting some of these to show that there were immense possibilities for an ecological analysis of modern economic and social systems in Marx's writings which have still not been fully elaborated. For one elaboration of Marx's thinking on the environment see Alfred Schmidt "The Concept of Nature in Marx". Regards D.Parthasarathy Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology, Powai Mumbai, 400076, India Phone: 091 022 576 7372 email: dp@hss.iitb.ernet.in From arg19@tid.es Wed Jul 22 08:10:56 1998 Sender: arivero@tid.es Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 16:04:47 +0200 From: Alejandro Rivero Reply-To: rivero@sol.unizar.es To: mike shupp Subject: Re: Unequal exchange (long) (fwd) Mike, I doubt if we can label such civilizations as "capital accumulating" ones. At least, it is clear that they didn't got to accumulate enough capital to survive the first millennium BC "disturbances". Yet, most accounting of the old empires continues sleeping, as it seems we lack of enough students to finish the analytics. So please let me to avoid strong claims in this area. In any case, the capital accumulated in that civilizations was completely destroyed, so it does not originate "our" actual capital. It is interesting to remark that first civilizations are located in very specific sites, the nature of the terrain and clima are characteristic. If, on the other hand, labour were the only implied factor, civilizations would be randomly scattered around the globe. Your point about water wheel seems to me more fundamental. I think you would move the invention some centuries back, but I am unsure. Note that by first century BC the principles of mechanics were well known (Archimedes "support point" and all that). Perhaps I would choose sailing as the first example of direct intake of energy for social/economical purposes. I think that capital accumulation is closely related to the intake of energy each civilization was/is able to do. So, we start playing animals (very indirect sun energy), and primitive uses of wood and coal, then we proceed to wind and water, then a centuries wide epoch of harvesting again from nature (and humans), and finally we restart with vapour machine, and now oil and nuclear. Capital seems very related to this intake. Aside, let me to note that Wall Street fundamental line has only two "plains", correlating to 1929 crisis and to seventies' oil crisis. Last but no least, we must not forget that we look for an egalitarian society as a mean to continue our civilization, no to starting it. Our guess is that a non-egalitarian society (or species) has a survival probability lower than an egalitarian one. I am sorry if I sound too crude, but if anyone want spiritual reward, I'd urge him to contract some religion. Alejandro > If the point is "surplus labour as origin of capital > accumulation", we should bear in mind that until > the first century BC or so (when the water wheel was > developed), humans steal energy only from other humans > or animals. If we go back to the actual "origin" of > capital accumulation, at the dawn of history we find > a great deal of work-- farming for example or cloth > making-- performed by virtually interchangeable unskilled > human laborers in exchange for shelter and food. It's > not at all unreasonable to see the "value" of something > like a woven rug in 4th millenium Uruk as being the sum > total of the labor embedded in it, nor to argue that a > rug made by a poorly fed and unpaid slave might have a > "surplus" value higher than whatever subsistence ("wage") > was supplied to the slave. > > Uruk, Peru, China.... there's no place in the world where > nice egalitarian societies built civilizations. Capital > accumulation of some sort (temple mounds, trade goods) is > possible without too much exploitation, up to a point, > but "real" progress always seems to require whips and > chains and god-kings. > > Sad, ain't it? > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > ms44278@huey.csun.edu > Mike Shupp > California State University, Northridge > Graduate Student, Dept. of Anthropology > http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm From spector@calumet.purdue.edu Wed Jul 22 12:20:15 1998 Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 13:22:46 -0500 From: Alan Spector Reply-To: spector@calumet.purdue.edu To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Marxists on environmental destruction Those who too casually dismiss Marxism have sometimes not read enough Marxism. Over 100 years ago, Engels (Marx' collaborator) wrote of the slash and burn policies of capitalist agriculture in the Carribean and how the profit system leads to short sighted polices of environmental destruction. Alan Spector -- From ms44278@email.csun.edu Wed Jul 22 14:27:32 1998 Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 13:27:20 -0700 (PDT) From: mike shupp To: Alejandro Rivero Subject: Re: Unequal exchange (long) (fwd) In-Reply-To: <35B5F17F.16E7C1AC@tid.es> On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Alejandro Rivero wrote: > ....I think that capital accumulation is closely related to the intake > of energy each civilization was/is able to do. So, we start playing > animals (very indirect sun energy), and primitive uses of wood and > coal, then we proceed to wind and water, then a centuries wide > epoch of harvesting again from nature (and humans), and finally > we restart with vapour machine, and now oil and nuclear. Capital > seems very related to this intake.... Yes and no, IMHO. Capital/energy got embedded in very material form in ancient times, after all, whether as ovens and streets or golden statues, and some of this was used for what we might term "investment" and some wasn't. It's estimated Julius Ceasar looted 4000 Druidic temples in Gaul, for example. The cost of filling these temples with objets d'art must have been considerable, but it's not likely that this "accumulation" contributed in either Gallic or Roman hands to economic development. As I see it, the very notion of economic development as a steady process was probably alien to classical civilizations. Instead, most people/nations saw plunder as a preferable means of obtaining wealth. Effectively, Marx was correct in seeing a great difference between a "Slave Mode of Production" and what came later. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ms44278@huey.csun.edu Mike Shupp California State University, Northridge Graduate Student, Dept. of Anthropology http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm From gernot.kohler@sheridanc.on.ca Thu Jul 23 08:36:42 1998 Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 10:36:37 -0400 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu From: Gernot Kohler Subject: Ahmet Cakmak's paper Ahmet Cakmak's approach (see, recent wsn postings) is very interesting. Ahmet, I see a certain similarity between your approach and the recent writings of Samir Amin (e.g., 1997 book). Amin calls for a "reconstruction" of the "social power of the popular classes" (you say: "new Third World left"). Amin argues that "global socialism" is a long way off ("a long trail") and that the immediate future is very important (you say: "concrete problems of living people"). Amin states that "the immediate takeover of power" is not the major issue and that the build-up of real democracy from the bottom up is a phase which must not be skipped, even if it seems slow (you emphasize labour and democracy as well). Amin says that one must not "cling to time-worn formulae" which have become obsolete due to the dialectical unfolding of material reality (pardon me, he said "globalization"). Well, you are proposing a new formula. All that looks like a common Amin-Cakmak-Third Worldist nouveau socialisme perspective. Could your complete paper be placed in the wsn archive? It would be interesting to see all of it. Gernot Kohler Oakville, Canada From j@qmail.com Thu Jul 23 21:08:00 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: Marxists on environmental destruction Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 17:15:45 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Alan Spector >Those who too casually dismiss Marxism have sometimes not read enough >Marxism. Over 100 years ago, Engels (Marx' collaborator) wrote of the >slash and burn policies of capitalist agriculture in the Carribean and >how the profit system leads to short sighted polices of environmental >destruction. Well, that's one explanation for environmental destruction. But in truth, our propensity to destroy the planet is innate. That's why capitalism is so successful: it's genetic. Here is a snip from my REQUIEM at www.dieoff.org ____________ MIND HAPPENS Since the mind evolved to select a few signals and then dream up a semblance, whatever enters our consciousness is overemphasized. It does not matter how the information enters, whether via a television program, a newspaper story, a friend's conversation, a strong emotional reaction, a memory -- all is overemphasized. We ignore other, more compelling evidence, overemphasizing and overgeneralizing from the information close at hand to produce a rough-and-ready realty. -- Robert Ornstein The word philosophy means the love of wisdom, but what philosophers really love is reasoning. And one thing philosophers reason about is reasoning itself. Indeed, throughout history, most philosophers believed that reason was sine qua non of humanity: "What continued to give humanity some special status, though, is its capacity for rationality."[8] But the human mind is not rational, the human mind just happened. The mind is a billion-year accumulation of innovations through countless animals, and through countless environments for specific reactions to specific situations. The ability to solve problems implies that "rational" thinking is carefully weighing the important, known variables and making that decision which is most likely to achieve the solution. But studies show that people are not rational,[9] they give recently presented information undue importance, thereby producing answers that are not rational. So if people are not rational, how do "experts" get the right answers? In a paper presented to American Psychological Association, Robert Hamm tells us: "... experts who make consequential decisions based on their hypotheses about the state of the world usually follow rule-like scripts, rather than explicitly revise probabilities."[10] In other words, experts -- like all people -- behave as one of Skinner's rats in a maze, they find out what works, and then do it again! The human mind evolved to ignore slow changes and routine events, but notice sudden changes and respond rapidly to them. It was vital for primitive man to find the right food at the right time, to mate well, to generate children, to avoid marauders, to respond to an emergency quickly. Genes for a panic response to threat are millions of times more likely to pass on to future generations than genes for contemplation -- the runner wasn't as likely to get eaten as the thinker. "Rationality is a great idea and ideal, but we never had the time for it; we don't have time for it now, and thus we don't have the mind for it."[11] If people can not make rational decisions, how can democratic governments solve problems in complex systems? According to a rule in science and philosophy called "Ockham's Razor", the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable, and an explanation for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known. Evolutionary science provides the simplest explanation of human behavior that fits the physical facts. People, like all animals, were optimized by evolution to put their genes into the next generation. Those strains of humans that were not so optimized are no longer here. Three of the most important innovations that allow people to put their genes into the next generation are exploitation (making the best use of something -- including other people), lying (I love you, so let's go to bed), and self-deception.[12] Exploitation and lying contributed to human survival for millions of years, self-deception for at least 40,000 years. Self-deception contributed to our survival by making us better liars! In business, politics and love, sincerity is everything -- if you can fake that, you've got it made! Unfortunately, the genetic programming that makes us so good at lying, exploitation and self-deception, now blinds us to our obvious and terrible fate. [snip] references at www.dieoff.org From muhtar@escortnet.com Thu Jul 23 23:18:55 1998 Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 08:17:57 +0300 From: Ahmet Cakmak To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: living peoples I will write a new version of my paper for wsn members after reading Amin's book. Gernot Kohler,thank you for your message.you motivated me.Ana thanks again,you informed me Amin's book. From br00727@binghamton.edu Fri Jul 24 13:58:19 1998 Subject: New Address For Sociology at Binghamton Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 12:58:14 -0700 From: "Eric W. Titolo" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Greetings- The web site for the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University has been moved to another server. In addition, the site has been completely redone and will have much more content coming in the next few months. Here's the new address: http://sociology.binghamton.edu If you or someone you know has a link to our department, please update your pages at your convenience. Thanks, Eric Titolo Webmaster +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Eric W. Titolo | Fax - 607-777-4917 | | Department of Sociology | email - br00727@binghamton.edu | | Binghamton University | | | State University of New York | http://sociology.binghamton.edu | | Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 | | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ From spector@calumet.purdue.edu Fri Jul 24 14:27:21 1998 Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 15:26:37 -0500 From: Alan Spector Reply-To: spector@calumet.purdue.edu To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Capitalism genetic? Funny, but not so funny... --------------C2DB5868D96D5E01B974300C Jay Hanson wrote: But in truth, our propensity to destroy the planet is innate. That's why capitalism is so successful: it's genetic. ---------------- Problem with a post like Jay Hanson's last post is that it reads like satire. I feel a little foolish, thinking that I might be getting tricked into responding seriously to a joke and appearing to have no sense of humor. But the issues raised are pretty important, so I'll take that risk. Of course, I don't know anything about Jay Hanson, personallly, so I don't mean this as an attack against him personally. Just the ideas, which many other people espouse as well. The philosophical-theological tract "REQUIEM" that he cites is the kind of pseudo-science that appeals to people who like to use philosophical arguments devoid of serious data to argue their own particular standpoint. The advantage of using "common sense" is that it has great appeal -- like apeals to "Ockham's Razor" it allows impatient people to grasp at simplistic answers to complex questions, thereby enabling people to avoid the hard work of analysis and the ever so stressful feeling that accompany the indeterminacy that is a part of analyzing data. The disadvantage, of course, is that "common sense" rhetoric can be used to prove anything, and is often contradictory. For example: One can attempt to dismiss the attempts of scientists to understand human behavior and instead resort to a kind of pseudo-populist appeal to people who are frustrated with the ambiguities of science by making a remark such as this (as Jay Hanson did in his recent post): But the human mind is not rational, the human mind just happened. This type of quote allows one to dismiss those types of analysis with which one disagrees by implying that the analysts are grasping at conclusions based on wishful thinking when really, the intelligent analysis understands that the situation is very complex and it foolish to seek underlying explanations. Having dispensed of all opposing theories based on some attempt at science/data analysis, the writer is then free to LO AND BEHOLD! advance a theory based on pseudo-scientific rhetoric of his own......in this case, a pseudo-biological explanation that is based, not on evidence, but on speculation about how genes may have responded to the environment. For example: The human mind evolved to ignore slow changes and routine events, but notice sudden changes and respond rapidly to them. It was vital for primitive man to find the right food at the right time, to mate well, to generate children, to avoid marauders, to respond to an emergency quickly. Genes for a panic response to threat are millions of times more likely to pass on to future generations than genes for contemplation -- the runner wasn't as likely to get eaten as the thinker. "Rationality is a great idea and ideal, but we never had the time for it; we don't have time for it now, and thus we don't have the mind for it."[11 Why am I bothering to respond to this foolishness? Because sociobiology and other forms of biological determinism are not "bad science." Worse, they are theology, posing as science. They play fast and loose with the data, relying on speculation, folklore, and other hunches that have the appeal of common sense. The ultimate conclusion, however, is that we should just go along with oppression, because it is so-called "Human Nature." Taken to its extreme, of course, we find ourselves in the universities of Germany in the late 1930's, where cynicism and fatalism were given a pseudo-scientific camoflauge by intellectuals, helping to lay the basis for genocide. There is a certain comfort that some people take in giving up. If they have an occasional twinge of conscience about that, it then becomes necessary to assert that this is natural, and then to recruit more people to the fatalistic position. The more people who adopt cynicism as their philosophy, the more the cynics can feel self-assured that they were correct to write humanity off. Despite what many liberals say, the main danger is not from the fanatics -- it is from the cyncism and passivity that can convince people, at least for a time, that opposing the oppression is futile, or even "unnatural!" Who wants to be considered unnatural?!!! I plan to use the section from REQUIEM in my classes as a fine (negative) example of subjective theological philosophy posing as science to advance the personal opinions of those who want to justify their own cynicism and inaction and recruit others to passivity as well. Alan Spector --------------C2DB5868D96D5E01B974300C Jay Hanson wrote:

But in truth, our propensity to destroy the planet is innate.  That's why capitalism is so successful: it's genetic.
 

----------------
Problem with a post like Jay Hanson's last post is that it reads like satire. I feel a little foolish, thinking that I might be getting tricked into responding seriously to a joke and appearing to have no sense of humor. But the issues raised are pretty important, so I'll take that risk.  Of course, I don't know anything about Jay Hanson, personallly, so I don't mean this as an attack against him personally.  Just the ideas, which many other people espouse as well.

The philosophical-theological tract "REQUIEM" that he cites is the kind of pseudo-science that appeals to people who like to use philosophical arguments devoid of serious data to argue their own particular standpoint. The advantage of using "common sense" is that it has great appeal -- like apeals to "Ockham's
Razor" it allows impatient people to grasp at simplistic answers to complex questions, thereby enabling people to avoid the hard work of analysis and the ever so stressful feeling that accompany the indeterminacy that is a part of analyzing data.  The disadvantage, of course, is that "common sense" rhetoric can be used to prove anything, and is often contradictory.

For example:

One can attempt to dismiss the attempts of scientists to understand human behavior and instead resort to a kind of pseudo-populist appeal to people who are frustrated with the ambiguities of science by making a remark such as this (as Jay Hanson did in his recent post):

But the human mind is not rational, the human mind just happened.

This type of quote allows one to dismiss those types of analysis with which one disagrees by implying that the analysts are grasping at conclusions based on wishful thinking when really, the intelligent analysis understands that the situation is very complex and it foolish to seek underlying explanations.

Having dispensed of all opposing theories based on some attempt at science/data analysis, the writer is then free to LO AND BEHOLD! advance a theory based on pseudo-scientific rhetoric of his own......in this case, a pseudo-biological explanation that is based, not on evidence, but on speculation about how genes may have responded to the environment. For example:

The human mind evolved to ignore slow changes and routine events,
but notice sudden changes and respond rapidly to them.  It was
vital for primitive man to find the right food at the right time,
to mate well, to generate children, to avoid marauders, to
respond to an emergency quickly.  Genes for a panic response to
threat are millions of times more likely to pass on to future
generations than genes for contemplation -- the runner wasn't as
likely to get eaten as the thinker.  "Rationality is a great idea
and ideal, but we never had the time for it; we don't have time
for it now, and thus we don't have the mind for it."[11
 

Why am I bothering to respond to this foolishness?  Because sociobiology and other forms of biological determinism are not "bad science."  Worse, they are theology, posing as science.  They play fast and loose with the data, relying on speculation, folklore, and other hunches that have the appeal of common sense. The ultimate conclusion, however, is that we should just go along with oppression, because it is so-called "Human Nature."  Taken to its extreme, of course, we find ourselves in the universities of Germany in the late 1930's, where cynicism and fatalism were given a pseudo-scientific camoflauge by intellectuals, helping to lay the basis for genocide.
 

There is a certain comfort that some people take in giving up. If they have an occasional twinge of conscience about that, it then becomes necessary to assert that this is natural, and then to recruit more people to the fatalistic position. The more people who adopt cynicism as their philosophy, the more the cynics can feel self-assured that they were correct to write humanity off.  Despite what many liberals say, the main danger is not from the fanatics -- it is from the cyncism and passivity that can convince people, at least for a time, that opposing the oppression is futile, or even "unnatural!"  Who wants to be considered unnatural?!!!
 

I plan to use the section from REQUIEM in my classes as a fine (negative) example of subjective theological philosophy posing as science to advance the personal opinions of those who want to justify their own cynicism and inaction and recruit others to passivity as well.
 

Alan Spector --------------C2DB5868D96D5E01B974300C-- From j@qmail.com Fri Jul 24 20:02:16 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 15:42:01 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" Alan Spector: Why am I bothering to respond to this foolishness? Because sociobiology and other forms of biological determinism are not "bad science." Worse, they are theology, posing as science. They play fast and loose with the data, relying on -- It's tough for many people to accept the fact that humans are just a bunch of animals, but they are. In fact, humans are the chimp's closest relative with only a 1.6% DNA difference. EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE Evolution is the complex of processes by which living organisms originated on earth and have been diversified and modified through sustained changes in form and function. The earliest known fossil organisms are single-celled forms resembling modern bacteria; they date from about 3.4 billion years ago. Many of the evolving organisms have become extinct (e.g., the dinosaurs), but some have developed into the present fauna and flora of the world. Extinction and diversification continue today. Charles Darwin's ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES (1859), is a landmark in human understanding of nature. Darwin noted that while offspring inherit a resemblance to their parents, they are not identical to them. He further noted that some of the differences between offspring and parents were not due solely to the environment but were themselves often inheritable. The new and emerging field of "evolutionary psychology" looks at the mind as "it," asks "how does it work?", and discovers organic design and functional purpose. Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand the human mind by understanding the evolutionary process that designed it. To do this, they engage in a kind of reverse-engineering, trying to piece together how the minds we have today evolved little by little through the process of natural selection. They are not interested in the competition between species, but rather the competition between genes within the human species. Natural selection creates new traits and adaptations in a species by putting genes through a process of trial and error. New genes arise in an individual organism by chance mutation. If a new gene produces a trait that decreases the organism's chances of reproduction, that gene, and the trait it produces, will not be passed on. This is the fate of the vast majority of genetic mutations. However, if a new gene produces a trait that makes the host organism more effective in reproduction, this gene will be "selected," that is, passed on to the next generation. In this manner, highly successful genes and traits spread throughout the species, gradually overtaking "competing" genes and eventually becoming "species-typical" traits. The fundamental theorem upon which evolutionary psychology is based is that behavior (just like anatomy and physiology) is in large part inherited and that every organism acts (consciously or not) to enhance its inclusive fitness -- to increase the frequency and distribution of its selfish genes in future generations. And those genes exist not only in the individual but also in his or her identical twin (100%), siblings (on average, 50%), and cousins (on average, 25%) and so on down the kinship line. (Thus, aid to and feelings for relatives makes evolutionary sense.) One of the most important points to keep in mind in thinking about evolutionary psychology is that all mental mechanisms were evolved in and designed for a specific social and environmental setting -- small bands of hunter-gatherer families who roamed the savanna planes of the Pleistocene era, 2 million to 10,000 years ago. The mental mechanisms we inherit from our ancestors are therefore not necessarily adaptive to today's environment. The modern two-year-old who recoils in fear from a moth will blindly run into on-coming traffic. Fear of insects is automatic, but parents have to work hard to teach their children to avoid speeding cars because that threat didn't exist in our evolutionary past. This revision and extension of Darwinian evolution, from "survival of the fittest" to inclusive fitness, was worked out primarily by George Williams (in the US) and by William Hamilton and John Maynard Smith (in the UK) in the 1960s, with some clever twists added by Robert Trivers (in the US) in the 1970s. [ Much of the foregoing was just cut and paste from: http://www.skeptic.com/04.1.miele-immoral.html http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dlane/evomed.html ] People, like all animals, were optimized by evolution to put their genes into the next generation. Those strains of humans that were not so optimized are no longer here. Three of the most important social characteristics that allow people to put their genes into the next generation are exploitation (making the best use of something -- including other people), lying (I love you, so let's go to bed), and self-deception. Exploitation and lying contributed to human survival for millions of years, self-deception for at least 40,000 years. "Humans have existed as a separate evolutionary line for some five million years... biologically modern humans did not appear until sometime in the last 120,000 years... behaviorally modern humans probably appeared sometime in the last 120,000, and certainly by 40,000 years ago." [ p. 355, Kelly, 1995 ] Self-deception contributes to survival by making us better liars! In love, business, and politics, sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made. [ http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.htm http://www.clark.net/pub/wright/toc.htm http://www.a3.com/myself/ravenpap.htm ] OUR ANIMAL NATURE For millions of years, humans LIVED the Tragedy of the Commons. Hunter gatherers exploited an area -- literally ATE themselves out of an area -- and then moved to a new one. That's just the kind animal they were -- that's just what they did. Modern hunter gatherers, such as the !Kung bushmen, still do: "As one might expect, the bushmen prefer to collect the desirable foods that are closest to the water supply. They occupy a camp for a period of weeks and literally eat their way out of it. For example, they often camp in the nut forests and exhaust the nuts within a 1.6 km radius during the first week of occupation, within a 3.2 km radius the second week, and within a 4.8 km radius the third week." [ Lee, 1969, cited in Pimentel, 1996 ] Humans adopted settled agriculture ONLY about 12,000 years ago. In other words, humans are still evolved and optimized as hunter gatherers and have simply not had enough time to evolve and adapt for survival at present (and expected) population densities like, say, termites. Jay From bernardo@gte.net Sat Jul 25 07:31:31 1998 Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 08:29:42 +0000 From: Judge To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: Marxists on environmental destruction Alan Spector wrote: > Those who too casually dismiss Marxism have sometimes not read enough > Marxism. Over 100 years ago, Engels (Marx' collaborator) wrote of the > slash and burn policies of capitalist agriculture in the Carribean and > how the profit system leads to short sighted polices of environmental > destruction. > > Alan Spector > > -- Still true today. Point A. Given the following: Gain from an agricultural product is based on yield, but unregulated capitalism has to maximize profit. It follows that: 1. If insurance pays higher than the market will, then burn the crop. True for sugar cane. 2. Maximize profit by keeping all costs down. A Cartel, Coffee is an example, can do it better by forcing the producers to sell to a single buyer at their fixed price. If that price is barely subsistence level, farmers will not consider the benefit of conservation when struggling to survive. Also coffee plantations do not burn well. Neither do bananas. Too humid. 3. Maximize profit by adulterating the product. There will not be enough coffee on the market so add garbanzo or whatever is available. You will be surprised to find what comes out of a ground coffee can nowadays. If milk is your product then add water or calf feed stock. Horror show. No problem. 4. Maximize profit by making more farming land available. To the non farmer capitalist soil is soil. Forest keeps the producer from that soil. So burn the forest and get this unwashed poor farmer trash from our cities. Too bad that soil can't produce dick (Brazil). 5. Exploitation harms people and destroys the environment but, hey, it maximizes the profit and works for me. (with apologies to Hunter Thompson) Point B The free market idea is based loosely on the Darwinian concept of evolution. Survival of the fittest. Although this mechanism works well in explaining biological species phenomena it is the utmost stupidity to consider cultural or other events to be explained the same way. Again this goes back to an earlier European brain storm that everything can be explained by "scientific" (not science the method, but scientific the opinion) law. And if a watch works well with gears then everything that works must have gears. Ergo everything must be a watch. The problem is WRONG* thinking. It is usually called an "ideology". Be it "conservative ideology", "religious ideology" or "free market / capitalist ideology". There is such a thing as "scientific ideology" too. =The same goes for Marxism.= * Note: WRONG means what the word says. Thinking that lacks vision, wisdom, perception, correct information, etc. Based on a myopic view of events or things. Where recycling old incorrect analogies is easier than creating new ones. Where rabid emotional commitment to the concept is more important than validity, accuracy and practicality of the information. See ideology. In other words what makes us what we are now. Caveat: All previous statements are opinion. Not validated by research. And constitute my "private ideology". Regards; Judge From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Sat Jul 25 07:54:57 1998 Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 14:54:31 +0100 From: Mark Jones Reply-To: leninist-international@buo319b.econ.utah.edu To: WSN Subject: L-I: Immanent Limits to growth? Internal or External Limits If you take Marx's view that ‘[c]apital develops adequately’ on the basis of ‘unlimited competition and industrial production,’ [Marx (1973) p.559] and that its purpose is not the production of goods but of profit -- not use-values, but value -- then there can be no external limits to capitalist accumulation. [Marx (1976) p.725: ‘the employment of surplus-value as capital, or its reconversion into capital, is called the accumulation of capital.’] Capital is vampiric: but vampires don't have any natural life span, do they? ‘Money attempted to posit itself as imperishable value,’ Marx said, in the hallucinatory language of the Grundrisse: ‘as eternal value, by relating negatively towards circulation, i.e. towards the exchange with real wealth, with transitory commodities, which ... dissolve in fleeting pleasures. Capital ... alternates between its eternal form in money and its passing form in commodities; permanence is posited as the only thing it can be .... But capital obtains this ability only by constantly sucking in living labour as its soul, vampire-like...’[Marx (1973) p.646] Marx is at pains to develop the idea that the limits to capitalism can only be internal. It is central to the closure of his system that this should be so. At the same time, he gives no theoretical guarantees that in practice capitalism ever will bump up against its limits. Those who think he did, and that subsequent history therefore disproved him, are wrong. For Marxism, as with neo-classical economics, there are tendencies ... and counter-tendencies. Which wins out, history will decide. Marx said 'the integument must burst asunder' and his work is infused with that thought, but far from taking it for granted, he endeavours to find out why it may NOT happen, i.e., what are the preconditions for equilibrium. His attempt to define equilibrium states led Marx to devise models of capitalism -- in fact he was the first macroeconomist, the first to utilise multi-sector modelling. Almost single-handed, Marx made equilibrium the main subject of study among a generation of political economists. Marx concluded that over time two related things will happen: despite frequent crises, capital will go on accumulating until it confronts us with an alternative world of mysterious and potent technologies, embodied in a gigantic accumulation of technical and industrial processes, machinery and networks. Confronting this social-other is the inflated reserve army of labour. This confrontation is the presence of history in Marx, for it is obvious that this strange bifurcatory world cannot last, although it was never clear to Marx or his successors what would come after; Lenin and the Bolsheviks never rose above capitalism's own programme of urbanisation and factories. Equilibtrium is real, but it cocneals an inexorable historical progression. ‘The greater the social wealth [Marx said], the functioning of capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and therefore also the greater the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productivity of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army... The more extensive, finally, the pauperized sections of the working class and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.’ [Marx (1973) p.798] And still more clearly: ‘Accumulation of capital is therefore multiplication of the proletariat’[Marx (1976) p.764]. The result a century later is a world where less than 200 million employees of transnational corporations and big capital produce three-quarters of the profit which valorizes the world's social capital, while four billion workers and landless peasants form a largely-immiserated mass of humankind with an average income of less than $5,000 per annum, one billion on less than a dollar a day. Endless population growth pose its own problems. Eco-catastrophe seems likely before capital is desroyed by its internal contradictions. Ecological damage and Malthusian limits are on Marx's agenda. But these are not the limit-point he means when he says 'the integument must burst asunder'. Internal contradictions -- falling rate of profit, rising organic composition of capital, creation of a reserve --form the limits to growth. Marx did anticipate environmental destruction as an external limit. Examples of ancient world collapses due to salinisation, desertification, deforestation were there. The impact of capitalist agriculture on English soil fertility was also clear. If the use of clove and legumes in the Agrarian Revolution of the 18th C had fixed nitorgen in depleted soils, ensuring adequate harvests for the burgeoning cities of the Industrial Revolution, by the mid 19th C these gains had been lost and English agriculture begin to import guano in competition with European powers. This race to overcome soil depletion has characterised capitalist agriculture and is still its central drama. Why did Marx not incorporate these externalities into his totalising social logic of capitalist accumulation? His work was incomplete, the planned studies of the formation of classes, of the state, and of imperialism, left as sketches and notes; the studies in natural science and mathemetics still more preliminary. Marx's views on Darwin and the German agronomist Liegig ('more important than all the economists') leave no doubt that he would have continued this work if he'd had time. But Marx left us all that is needed to continue. Capitalist accumulation reproduces its contradictions in more intense forms. Therefore the progress of capitalist science and technology, reflected in increased factor productivity, would never be sufficient to jerk the system free of its limits. No materr how much agronomy increased soil fertility, the gains would inevitably be absorbed by accumulation itself. Gains are short-term and illusory and only bring closer the day of reckoning, when accumulated environmental deficits result in insurmountable, final crisis. Marx was thus a deep ecologist, sure that the logic of accumulation is bound to lead to planetary disaster unless capitalism is displaced by communism. The counter-arguments to Marxian doomsaying depend upon continuing uncertainty about the longterm outcome of capitalist accumulation. The uncertainties operate at all levels. If population stabilises and the demographic transition does happen, for example, then Marx's predictions about increasing reserve armies of labour wil be falsified. In this case, sustainable capitalism seems possible after all. If the world's population peaks and stabilises, as many demographers predict [IIASA, The Future Population of the World (1996)] -- and at the same time capitalism converts to renewable energy-systems, as the World Bank now says it can [Fuel for Thought: A New Environmental Strategy for the Energy Sector, World Bank, draft, June 1998] then what's to stop capitalism continuing in a stable state? That's one prognosis: capitalism will survive the upheavals of the next decades and in a century or so the world will have uniform high standards of life. People enjoy near- immortality amid wired-up techno-splendour. Enthusiasts from as Wired! argue that nothing short of runaway warming or general nuclear war can prevent this utopia. Of course the fate of the planet has possibly already been decided by anthropogenic changes to the ocean conveyor. But short of that, capitalism can survive almost anything: Massive human die-offs, the collapse of entire regions (Russia, Africa) -- all this is either new business opportunities, or can be ignored as evil but unavoidable friction-costs. Markets can be restructured to favour green-capitalism. Pollution- permits will drain the carbon from the energy system. Even if Marx was right and capitalism must Grow or Die, growth will be virtualised and GNP dematerialised as services grow, informatics substitute for matter and energy per unit of output falls. Is this another way Marx's predictions might be falsified? Even Herman Daly believes in the sustainable market-based economy. Crisis gives capital the chance to retire obsolete plant and restructure with 'greener' systems. It no longer greatly fears popular resistance, which can be recuperated. Systemic shocks, if severe enough, produce not revolt but passivity, withdrawal and helplessness, as in Russia. The extent of the collapse has paralysed collective responses and reduced the population to socially-excluded spectators at the bacchanalia of the criminal oligarchy. Hopelessness, despair and impotent passivity is expected; the West counts on it, and that is clear from many public pronouncements. The strategy of permitting the Russian people to sink or swim was deliberate. Preoccupied with the problems of immediate survival, and lacking any faith in popular institutions, the Russian people could not resist what was done to them. In the socially-inclusive and politically-integrated core countries, the destruiction of obsoleted proletariats, squeezing of wlefare budgets and widening of income and wealth differentials has continued for two decades without signs of serious social resistance. Meanwhile efforts have been made in the ideo-cultural sphere to construct new personality-templates and to adjust mass- psychology accordingly. Capitalism has long ago abandoned universalist ideas of development and rising standards for all. No-one objects. Under the guise of abandoning the neurosis, guilt and parsimony of the patriarchal personality, which was a principal social invention of 19th century capitalism, and stimulated by the mass conscription of women into the labour-force, there has been a resolute attempt to deconstruct the family as a residual instance of solidarity against capital, and to pull away the psychic supports of a personality-template organised around a psychic centre of sacrifice, heterosexual gender identity, sexual control and repression of the feminine. In its place we are witnessing the creation of a new personality-type adequate to global capital which has subordinated the family as well as the nation, commoditising their functions and liquidating the arsenal of atavistic symbols of community, mystery, sacrifice and other- directed struggle, seen as no longer required to legitimise bourgeois hegemony and objectively now only the rags of archaic value-system, absorbed by the deceitful misogynies of the New Right and no more than a menace to Neo-liberalism. The new ludic, androgynous personality, playful, self-regarding, narcissistic perhaps, is meant to be incapable of solidarity or commitment; post-modern feminism has made of the great feminist issues a study in misanthropic self-glorification and gender-hatred. Conceiving of emancipation as freedom from biology (universally misunderstood as 'sociobiology' by writers like Judith Butler, Teresa de Lauretis, Kaja Silverman, whose followers amplify their own profound ignorance of real science), they wilfully reject any notion of genetic determination of the personality or gender-identity. Only a dramatic social crisis, removing many social support- systems and throwing individuals back on their own resources, is likely to revive collective forms of activity which in any case are likely to seem contradictory, anachronistic and ineffective, even ludicrously so. The introjection of capitalist-spectacle has overwhelmed forms of mass resistance even in semi-colonial peripheries where people have far less to gain from collusion; nevertheless the symbolic power of capital and its self- aggrandising brand name-imagery and its pervasive suasion of self-provision, even in circumstances where no form of self-help makes any sense, has swept all before it. The counter-revolution in Russia has emboldened capital to persevere in its deconstruction of residues of older forms of proletarian or class-based subjectivity. At the same time, the leading imperialist countries retain strong and socially-inclusive states. In France, Australia and Germany the centre-right has begun to collapse under the insidious pressure of long-term deflation and chronic high unemployment; in these countries, as also in Britain, Italy and the USA, it will be left to centre-left populist governments of the Blair type to bear the brunt of the impending slump, an economic tsunami which will sweep across the world market and strengthen right-populist movements, backed by finance capital. Thus, strong states may survive and become more repressive in the short term; elsewhere, in parts of Asia, the former Soviet Union, Africa and Latin America, states will weaken and sometimes collapse. The reconsolidation of world imperialism in one or two super centres requires a radical redistribution of the power and reach of states. At the same time, Manuel Castell's visions of an inverted, global gulag of enclaves and networks of wealth, disregarding borders and and cutting across the historic and spatial limits of every ethnos, will also appear to be a determining instance of global, post-national capitalism. The overarchign eco-crises, combining energy and water shortages with flooding of densely populated coastal regions and with massive new effects of anthropogenic climate change, will further darken the picture, further deepen the extremes of human misery and of grotesque, obscene wealth. The rediscovery of the ecological imperative at the heart of Marxism enables us to reconsider its emancipatory agenda. Instead of urbanisation and development, the revolution will inaugurate a historical cycle of defending and repairing ecological networks and of reconfiguring our absorption of the landscape and our construction of locales, based or reordered archietctures of space and time and radically different uses of energy inputs. The task of reversing entropy will prove extraordinarily complex and challenging and embraces reversing four millennia of urbanisation. Taking the energy and materials flows out of the 'urban gulag', reconverting exurbia into truly ruralised spacetime and energy flows (dismantling the suburbs, or allowing ecosystems to encorach on them and reabsorb them) -- these will be the forms of reappropriation of wealth, the forms of redistribution of power and privilege, and the way in which 'the countryside surrounds the city'. This is to invert the strategic preoccupations of Bolshevik marxism. It is to repudiate the marxism-leninism which John Gray, author of 'False Dawn', defines this way: "Classical Marxism, its Soviet embodiment, and western neo-liberalism, also share a cavalier attitude to ecological and environmental limits. They are radical technological optimists - arguing that whatever the short-run damage to the environment, it will be more than compensated for by the advancement which rapid industrialisation and the displacement of older types of economic life allow. So both of these philosophies embody a radically modernist attitude to humankind's relations with the earth, to cultural forms and types of economic life standing in the way of its increasing mastery." [New Times, Number 146, 9 May 1998] In fact blind faith in progress is already confined to crackpots like Julian Simon and Rush Limbaugh. Instead of the golden uplands of communist plenty we faced a future of resource-depletion, ecosphere collapse and a potential inability to sustain the exurban infrastructures of the postmodern city. Socialism is not even a question of redistribution; there may be nothing to distribute. As was shown in Russia, when urban systems begin unravelling they do so with terrifying speed and leave little behind. Cities are parasitic as they always have been. They depend upon enormous fluxes of energy and material inputs. They give back only entropic waste: that, and improved technology. If the technology starts to lag behind the accumulated disorder which increasing complexity brings, then cities swiftly become unsustainable. But there is no longer a viable countryside to retreat to. The exurban postmodern society has been involuted, decanted itself into the country and made of wilderness a besieged enclave within itself. We are tied to the fate of the city as we have never been, the more so now that more than half the world's bloated human population live in cities, as Marx predicted. Yet the city is no longer viable. It has to be replaced. That's the scale of the challenge, the problem and the drama. Capitalist production is simultaneously the production of 'surplus' population; capitalist enrichment of the few is always and everywhere also the pauperisation of the majority. Marx called the production of surplus population, 'the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation'.(Cap I p798, Penguin ed.). This 'absolute general law' of population is central to understanding the conjuncture: 'The production of a relative surplus population, or the setting free of workers, therefore proceeds more rapidly than the technical transformation of the process of production that accompanies the advance of accumulation ... in proportion as the productivity of labour increases, capital increases its supply of labour more quickly than its demand for workers'. (p789) 'The constant movement towards the towns presupposes, in the countryside itself, a constant latent surplus population, the extent of which only becomes evident at those exceptional times when its distribution channels are wide open... The third category of the relative surplus population is the stagnant population...' (p796). It is impossible to analyse tidal movements of people which are at the heart of so-called immigration crises, without understanding the general law of population in the first place. That is why Marx spent so much time analysing the matter. Immigration into the US is the direct result of the previous creation of a surplus population, principally by driving peasants off the land in the process of extending capitalist agriculture. There is a one-to-one connection between the aggressive extension of monopolised agriculture in the oppressed peripheral countries, and the creation of the megacities in the South which are the sumps of stagnant surplus population, and the ultimate source of contemporary tidal immigration into the US, Europe etc. The argument from social justice begins with the proposition that as of now, we have enough food production capacity to feed people all over the world comfortably. All that is needed is more equitable distribution, meaning among other things less meat in Western diets. This is the classic Green argument: if we eat more wholesome beans and vegetarian foods, there is enough food for everybody. But it is utopian. The call for social justice involves not just redistribution, but a structural change in the mode of food production itself. What will this change entail, and how can it be implemented? Once you start to examine the problem in detail, you discover that the level of food production we have today, which is historically very high, depends upon the inputs which the total capitalist system provides: everything from chemical inputs, pharmaceutical, pesticides, stock breeding, biotech -- to distribution methods, the vertical organisation of agriculture, the existence of a large scale, powerful agronomy research sector, the existence of sufficient energy inputs etc. Third World food depends on the 'Green Revolution' in agriculture which is itself just an aspect of modern capitalism. This 'Green Revolution' which produces an abundance of food also produces new 'surplus' populations, i.e., former peasants made landless and driven into the cities. But if people object on spurious grounds even to the terminology 'surplus population' the we are unable even to define the problem, which is that the productivity of modern capitalist agriculture creates excess population as a by-product. This surplus population is a hostage to imperialism and it guarantees that modern capitalist agriculture, far from becoming sustainable or green/organic, will be still more intensified, capitalised, and imbued with the technologies of gene- modification, germplasm patenting, chemical saturation of soils etc.: because there will be no other way to feed the hostage populations of the megacities which their very process creates. Pools of hunger, scarcity, malnutrition, epidemic disease etc. are produced by capitalism alongside and together with the enclaves of prosperity. Over-population confronts the world with multiform crises whose scale and intensity make alternatives to capitalism almost unthinkable. Socialism's law of population must begin with the fact that the population cannot exceed Earth's carrying capacity, and all economic processes including food production must be sustainable. The population already exceeds carrying capacity, yet it may rise to 10 bn. within forty years. This huge surplus population will be hostage to capitalist agronomy, science and technology, to monopolised agribusiness with its complete dependence on unsustainable technologies, on chemical and pharmaceutical inputs, biotechnology and gene-manipulation, to the monopolistic food producing centres which will be concentrated in the temperate zones of the rich North. The tempo of change, too swift to plan or vary; and the structural imbalances which will only deepen over time, make this fate seem all the more inescapable. But this only means that capitalism's crises will become still more explosive and dangerous. -- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty --- from list leninist-international@lists.econ.utah.edu --- From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sat Jul 25 12:32:48 1998 Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 14:32:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE In-Reply-To: <011e01bdb771$539c94c0$e5cbfea9@jay98> List, Nobody I know in the scientific community claims that Homo sapiens are not animals. I don't think that Alan Spector advances a position claiming that they are something other than animals. These slogans of Jay Hansen's - strawman and hyperbole - are rhetorical devices, mere segue into hacked and uncritically assimilated materials cut and pasted from web files that either support, or are made to appear to support, Jay's reactionism. One need not in this instance wonder the intent that lies behind the noting of the well-known genetic likeness of humans and chimpanzees. Given the sociobiological argument being advanced, it is clear that the appeal to genetics is meant to tap widespread assumptions about other primates, assumptions that are largely erroneous, and claim that certain of these behaviors are in the genes of humans. We are to here consider the "naked ape" in light of the alleged brutality of the hairy ones. The interesting thing about typical appeals to chimps is that Pan bonobo - which shares the genetic structure of the chimp - is ignored because its "peaceful nature," *within the frame of reference being advanced here*, refutes the claims of the sociobiologically inclined. This is because of something Alan Spector made quite clear: the frame of reference is an ideological one; thus it doesn't even judge itself by its own criteria! Moreover, it is a reactionary frame of reference. It isn't, therefore, "tough for many people to accept the fact that humans are bunch of animals" - this is generally acknowledged. What *is* tough for people to accept, and what they must not accept, is the fallacious argument that because humans are animals this automatically makes the claims of sociobiologists true and at the same times makes the claims of their opponents, in the words of the Nazis who fund sociobiological research, "biological egalitarians." Nobody here - I don't think - needs an introductory lecture in Darwinian evolution. What would be more appropriate to the list is a discussion of how hominid evolution bears on social formation. And such a discussion must be pursued scientifically, not through ideological appeals to human nature. Evolutionary psychology, simply a rehash of views long debunked, perhaps at best representing a more stealth version of the same racist crap that has unfortunately found no lack of funding and audience over the past several decades, does not advance our understanding of social formation. It is an ideological distortion to be debunked (it already has been debunked). And it is a political program to be exposed (it already has been exposed). The origin of this research is, in large measure, found in the funding and under the direction of racist-eugenicists. Spector can tell you about this, as well. Those of us who have studied the social network of sociobiologists are well-aware of the political-ideological core of the program. See also the work of Steve Rosenthal and Russ Bellant. Oh, but surely the science, despite who funds the work, is sound. Don't be so sure. One of their primary modes of analysis, cited by Jay himself, has been the twins studies, where, for example, researchers have demonstrated that 50% of religious preference - that is, whether somebody is Jewish or Catholic - is explained by genetics. Hard science this is: religion is in the genes. (I must be a born atheist; although it must have been a recessive gene.) So Jews really are a different genetic race. Jay must learn to be a better propagandist. Consider, for example, that the information Jay posted to this list regarding these matters is a false representation of one of the files it draws upon. The file from http://www.skeptic.com/04.1.miele-immoral.html is not a positive review of sociobiology; indeed, in the file racists like Philippe Rushton are cited as being in the forefront of evolutionary psychological research. Most of the ideologues of evolutionary psychology do not cite Rushton, or several other leaders in the field, because work by debunkers has revealed the political force behind their sociobiology. That Rushton is cited is a good indication that the file Jay found is hostile to - or at least objective about - evolutionary psychology. Who is Philippe Rushton? He claims that there is an evolutionary trade-off between head size and penis size and that this explains why, according to him, black people have big penises and small heads. Also in the files Jay referenced there is the claim that chimpanzees express very little sexual dimorphism. Compared to what? The Black Widow Spider? Yes indeed, Jay's claims rest on hard science. Andy From j@qmail.com Sat Jul 25 15:58:46 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 12:06:29 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Andrew Wayne Austin >argument that because humans are animals this automatically makes the >claims of sociobiologists true and at the same times makes the claims of >their opponents, in the words of the Nazis who fund sociobiological >research, "biological egalitarians." Hitler was a sociobiologist? Comeon Andrew, this really a cheap shot. Perhaps inside of every Communist there is a little Stalin trying to get out. "What the scientist's and the lunatic's theories have in common is that both belong to conjectural knowledge. But some conjectures are much better than others..." -- Sir Karl Popper, THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION http://dieoff.org/page126.htm Jay From bernardo@gte.net Sat Jul 25 16:23:18 1998 Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 17:21:34 +0000 From: Judge To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: > List, > > Nobody I know in the scientific community claims that Homo sapiens are not > animals. I don't think that Alan Spector advances a position claiming that > they are something other than animals. These slogans of Jay Hansen's - > strawman and hyperbole - are rhetorical devices, mere segue into hacked > and uncritically assimilated materials cut and pasted from web files that > either support, or are made to appear to support, Jay's reactionism. > (snip) Well overall said. > Who is Philippe Rushton? He claims that there is an evolutionary > trade-off between head size and penis size and that this explains why, > according to him, black people have big penises and small heads. If brain size and a bigger head to contain it are indications of evolveddevelopment then we sure have a problem. Seems that I read somewhere both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal had bigger brains than modern man. Could it be we are descended from something less appealing, like snakes perhaps. Some of the "ideology" that is sometimes quoted makes one wonder so. I will follow the argument where it may: Head size is not determined by the size of the penis. It is determined by the size of the vaginal channel.(The brain cannot be fully developed in humans at birth due to this effect. It means that a child needs longer nurturing to survive. It does not mean that culture develops automatically from this event.) A larger vagina would allow bigger headed children. And so more brain therefore more intelligence. A larger vagina would mean a selection for larger "penised" men since smaller penises implies reduced sexual pleasure from at least one partner. QED Gifted men should be sought among the more endowed. I wonder if anyone will do some research on Einstein or Mozart fathers dicks. > Andy Regards; Judge From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sat Jul 25 16:40:16 1998 Sat, 25 Jul 1998 18:40:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 18:40:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Jay Hanson Subject: Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE In-Reply-To: <003f01bdb818$7a4c7980$2f82fea9@jay98> On Sat, 25 Jul 1998, Jay Hanson wrote: > Hitler was a sociobiologist? Comeon Andrew, this really a cheap shot. Hitler was a sociobiologist. And mainstream sociobiologists are continuing his work. Consider leading sociobiologist Roger Pearson, former advisor to the Reagan Administration, currently heads up the Council for Social and Economic Studies (CSES), a think tank that publishes the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies. CSES also publishes a 37 year old "quarterly scholarly journal" titled The Mankind Quarterly. Mankind Quarterly, backed up by the official sounding Washington-based Institute for the Study of Man (ISM), controlled by Pearson, is one of the principal publishers of sociobiological research, particularly evolutionary psychology (e.g., Lynn, Rushton, Cattell, who recently had a life-time achievement award held up at the APA because it was brought to their attention that he advocated eugenics, and others publish here). Leading and internationally famous racist-eugenicists publish in the Quarterly, many of them funded by the eugenicist organization the Pioneer Fund. Who is Pearson? He is a Nazi, Jay. In his books, Eugenics and Race, Pearson writes: "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide." Pearson, leader of the Nazi organization, the Northern League, advocates eugenics programs and has advocated racial extermination programs. Pearson was brought to America by Willis Carto, an anti-Semite who publishes the Spotlight and who is an associate of the American Nazi Party. Pearson used to be a member of the Heritage Foundation and published their policy journal. Members of Pearsons' CSES currently sit on the board of Heritage. This is serious business, Jay. It's not a cheap shot. You're ignorant of the facts. Anybody who would have to ask if Hitler was a sociobiologist doesn't know history. But, we have to emphasize, Hitler's doctors and scientists were taught by British and American eugenicists. You would do good to follow up on the names I mentioned (also read Stephen Kuhl). Your crack about Stalin is just the sort of overblown red-baiting speech I expect from an ideologue who advocates sociobiology. Andy From j@qmail.com Sat Jul 25 17:33:12 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 13:40:51 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Andrew Wayne Austin >This is serious business, Jay. It's not a cheap shot. You're ignorant of >the facts. Anybody who would have to ask if Hitler was a sociobiologist Sociobiology IS a branch of science -- not a branch of politics. Hitler was NOT a scientist, Hitler was a politician. Was that world-champion, mass-murderer Stalin a sociobiologist too? Where did Pol Pot get his sociobiology degree? How about Idi Amin? Genghis Khan? You might try a more plausible explanation for mass murder Andrew. In truth, people will say or do anything they can get away with to gain political power: it's genetic. Jay From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sat Jul 25 22:20:57 1998 Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 00:20:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) In-Reply-To: <001b01bdb825$a8f26300$adaafea9@jay98> On July 23 Jay Hanson wrote that "in truth, our propensity to destroy the planet is innate." On that same day he told us that "capitalism is so successful" because "it's genetic." Today, Jay Hanson writes: "In truth, people will say or do anything they can get away with to gain political power: it's genetic." And, then, he kindly suggests, even though I offered no theory for mass murder, that I "might try a more plausible explanation for mass murder." Let me see... a more plausible explanation for mass murder... hmmm... Ah ha! I got it: Mass murder is genetic. Andy From chriscd@jhu.edu Sun Jul 26 09:00:23 1998 Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 11:00:43 -0400 From: christopher chase-dunn Subject: [Fwd: Tracking U.S. Trade (fwd)] To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Reply-to: chriscd@jhu.edu This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------3772B371B055ECC422455C46 --------------3772B371B055ECC422455C46 for chriscd@jhu.edu; Tue, 21 Jul 1998 18:45:59 -0400 (EDT) 21 Jul 1998 17:43:50 -0500 (CDT) 21 Jul 1998 17:39:25 -0500 (CDT) by mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/mcfeeley.mc-1.21) 21 Jul 1998 17:36:43 -0500 (CDT) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 17:36:42 -0500 (CDT) From: trade@uts.cc.utexas.edu Subject: Tracking U.S. Trade (fwd) Sender: owner-lasnet@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu To: t-u-t@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu Reply-to: trade@uts.cc.utexas.edu Dear Tracking U.S. Trade subscribers, The Tracking U.S. Trade index has moved. You can find us at: http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/cswht/tradeindex/index.html Our page has been fully updated with the most recent trade data for U.S. trade with the Western Hemisphere. You may contact us by e-mail with any comments or questions at: trade@uts.cc.utexas.edu Sincerely, Tracking U.S. Trade staff --------------3772B371B055ECC422455C46-- From j@qmail.com Sun Jul 26 10:53:26 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 07:01:05 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" >Andy: >Let me see... a more plausible explanation for mass murder... hmmm... Ah >ha! I got it: Mass murder is genetic. Now I know what the "scientific" stands for in "scientific socialism". Jay From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sun Jul 26 16:15:31 1998 Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 18:15:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) In-Reply-To: List, Despite that the issue of biological explanation for complex human behavior was raised by an individual who is not serious about logic, facts or with linking hominid development with the rise of human society in a historical way, the issue has been raised nevertheless, and it is a issue that bears on the political-ideological function of science in a capitalist political economy, the scientization of racist ideology, and the nature of scientific explanation. Concerning the matter of scientific explanation, we have been presented with a clear example of the problem with human nature arguments: one can justify any claim they make about human behavior by appealing to genetics. Examples of the appeal abound. People say and do anything to gain political power because their genes drive them to do it. People destroy the planet because it is in their genes to do so. Capitalism is so successful because it is genetic. Like the magic bullet selfish behavior, the appeal to genetics produces a self-sealing argument, a vulgar tautology, in which all behavior is explained by reference to a non-falsifiable and infinitely rationalizable construct. But let's leave aside the fallacy of the self-sealing argument for now and ask about the science: Has Jay Hanson, or perhaps someone he knows, isolated the environmental destruction gene? Has the gene for capitalism been discovered? Has Jay and his team of sociobiologists isolated the power-mongering gene? I watched a network news program a couple of days ago where born males surgically altered to be females were said to, despite being raised as girls, behave like boys. Being a boy is in the genes, the story went, and therefore gender is not as social as the biological egalitarian thinks. The proof was a scene where one of the girls participating in the study was video-taped playing with army men. "Look," the female reporter pointed out to the male researcher, "she isn't playing like a little girl. She goes straight for the army men." "Yes," the researcher sighed, "alas she is." The ahistorical stance of both this scientific novice and the psychologist was astounding. But this is the sort of popular scientism that gets wide play in the media. The thought of little boys down through history in whatever society they found themselves in having an urge to play with little green plastic army men but having no little green plastic army men to play with since little green plastic army men had not yet been invented would have made me laugh except for the fact that this is the state of mainstream science and popular understanding, and this understanding affects real people. The same ahistorical thinking lies at the heart of the claim that capitalism is genetic. If capitalism is genetic then how is it that for most of human existence there was no capitalism? Why did it take so long for Homo sapiens to finally begin acting as they were genetically programmed to act? Odd, don't you think, that for all the eons Homo sapiens have been around they finally got around to their nature only a few hundreds years ago? Jay and people like him are stuck with having to claim that there existed for all this time some powerful countervailing force that prevented human beings from coming home to their true (i.e. genetic) nature. And, if we are to proceed scientifically, this countervailing force must be identified. What was it? What was this, what must have been powerful, countervailing force that kept humans from their natures for so many tens of thousands of years? The same is true with the claims that people say and do anything to get political power. Where were those among the gatherer and hunter driven to say and do anything to gain political power? What could have suppressed the operation of power-hungry genes for so long? There is no scientific evidence for the claims made by Jay and others. The genetic explanation is nothing more than a one-shot nonfalsifiable slogan - a theological truth - leveled against any attempt at subtle understanding of complex and historically variable phenomena. Why do human beings war? It is in the genes: territorial imperative. Why do men rape and beat women? It is in the genes; men are by nature to dominate and take women. Why are men in control of society? Because they are genetically equipped to lead women. Why is there racism? It is in the genes; you know, the territorial imperative again. Why are their standards of beauty? Because our genes are selfish and they want only the nicest vehicles to ride around in. And so forth and so on. There is nothing scientific about any of this. It is an ideology. I received this afternoon a private post that spoke of the truth of sociobiology and against the resistance of this truth by some social scientists. In a key rhetorical strategy, social scientific resistance to racist ideology is always treated as an ideological position in itself. The post struck me as the same sort of stuff I sometime get from evangelical Christians who take my atheism as evidence that I am simply not well enough acquainted with the word of God and that if I would only listen to the Gospel I would see the light and give up my pagan resistance and existence. But, like Christianity, I know all too well the nature of sociobiology, and I attack sociobiology not because I am seeking more scripture; I come to this issue only to attack a racist political program masquerading as science. Thus, more important than the logical and factual failures of sociobiology, and what explains sociobiology's continuing existence in the face of total failure, is its utility as a reactionary political-ideological program. As we have seen, a sociobiologist is somebody who believes that culture is, to a significant degree, genetically transmitted. One of the central foci of the literature of sociobiology are those culture traits that are shared over the whole of humanity, the so-called culture universal. But, given the reductionism and central premise of sociobiology, how do we explain different cultural behavior? Different genetic structures, of course. The belief that cultures differ because the people differ genetically we call "racism." Just as the claim that things are the way they are everywhere because it is in the nature of humans for things to be that way is used to justify the naturalness of hierarchy, the idea that cultural differences arise from different human types is used to maintain hierarchy. Just as the characteristics of the rich are used to explain their wealth, the characteristics of the white "race" is used to explain their position of superiority in the world-system. The reason why so many elements of the mainstream scientific community resist giving up sociobiological theory, even though there is no scientific evidence for it, is because this position is politically and ideologically advantageous. Many of us have understood this for decades. Still, every several years, we have to expose the latest version of scientific racism; this time around it is "evolutionary psychology." And we will in the future have to debunk social Darwinism in some other thinly disguised form over again. Its constant resurrection is expected, for it is a vital ideological component not only for the racist program, but also for the patriarchy and capitalism. From the sociobiological point of view they can explain and justify gender and racial inequality, development and underdevelopment, social stratification, or any other systems of domination. Since there is no scientific support for the position of sociobiology, and since we have seen the ends to which this point of view is put, what other reason lies behind its continuing development and widespread acceptance? Science is never really separate from politics, but here we have the simpler matter of politics masquerading as science; and we have the inept among the scientific community adopting a political-ideology on the basis of their failure to comprehend this fact. But not all of the advocates of sociobiology are mere incompetents; there are real material rewards that come with perfecting social Darwinism. Andy From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Sun Jul 26 17:10:47 1998 Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 00:08:57 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: WSN Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Andy wrote: > Being a boy is in the genes, the story went, > and therefore gender is not as social as the biological egalitarian > thinks. The proof was a scene where one of the girls participating in the > study was video-taped playing with army men. "Look," the female reporter > pointed out to the male researcher, "she isn't playing like a little girl. > She goes straight for the army men." "Yes," the researcher sighed, "alas > she is." The ahistorical stance of both this scientific novice and the > psychologist was astounding. > But being a boy IS in the genes: the X and Y chromosones, to be precise. The problem with this way of arguing with Jay Hanson is that you throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a huge amount of research which has got as far as indetifying the genes which give girls better social skills and more 'intuition' than men, and it's not much use labelling it 'popular scientism', which is actually just a mirror-inverse of the labelling Jay does. Of course, the personality and gender differences are socially constructed, but there is a material basis, isn't there? Capitalism is not in the genes but no other species makes things for sale, that I know of. That has to mean something. Jay's fatalism is unfortunate, but I see where he's coming from. If you live in his moral universe, and cannot even think an alternative to capitalism, then yes, the future is pretty bleak. Socialism, too, is not in the genes so it's still there to be worked for and won. -- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sun Jul 26 17:39:11 1998 Sun, 26 Jul 1998 19:39:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 19:39:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Mark Jones Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) In-Reply-To: <35BBB708.C5A00124@netcomuk.co.uk> Mark, The status of "boy" is socially designated, and it is based on phenotypic markers. XY is a genotypic reference. There are girls with XY chromosomes. You made two mistakes in your post: (1) confusing phenotype with genotype and (2) confusing gender designation with genotypic reference. These are egregious errors considering their basic understanding in the scientific community. Andy On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Mark Jones wrote: > Andy wrote: > > > Being a boy is in the genes, the story went, > > and therefore gender is not as social as the biological egalitarian > > thinks. The proof was a scene where one of the girls participating in the > > study was video-taped playing with army men. "Look," the female reporter > > pointed out to the male researcher, "she isn't playing like a little girl. > > She goes straight for the army men." "Yes," the researcher sighed, "alas > > she is." The ahistorical stance of both this scientific novice and the > > psychologist was astounding. > > > But being a boy IS in the genes: the X and Y chromosones, to be precise. > The problem with this way of arguing with Jay Hanson is that you throw > the baby out with the bathwater. There is a huge amount of research > which has got as far as indetifying the genes which give girls better > social skills and more 'intuition' than men, and it's not much use > labelling it 'popular scientism', which is actually just a > mirror-inverse of the labelling Jay does. Of course, the personality and > gender differences are socially constructed, but there is a material > basis, isn't there? > > Capitalism is not in the genes but no other species makes things for > sale, that I know of. That has to mean something. Jay's fatalism is > unfortunate, but I see where he's coming from. If you live in his moral > universe, and cannot even think an alternative to capitalism, then yes, > the future is pretty bleak. Socialism, too, is not in the genes so it's > still there to be worked for and won. > > > -- > Mark Jones > http://www.geocities.com/~comparty > > > From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Sun Jul 26 17:58:16 1998 Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 00:57:58 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: WSN Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: > There are girls with XY chromosomes. Indeed, and it was the research into their socialisation which first located the functional physiological basis for soem social skills, pattern recognition, etc. > You made two mistakes in your post: (1) confusing phenotype with genotype Andy, you foolish boy. We all know the difference. Why, I've had dinner with Mr Dawkins, which is more than you have. > and (2) confusing gender designation with genotypic reference. Andy, I never in my whole life met anyone so able to combine cleverness and silliness in the same brain pan. You are a wonder. Mark From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sun Jul 26 18:08:49 1998 Sun, 26 Jul 1998 20:08:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 20:08:42 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: Mark Jones Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) In-Reply-To: <35BBC285.4FDAE4CD@netcomuk.co.uk> On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Mark Jones wrote: > Andy, you foolish boy. We all know the difference. Why, I've had dinner with Mr > Dawkins, which is more than you have. Mark, wasn't it you who the other day offered up as support for another of your claims the fact that you had dinner with Vladimir Zhirinovsky? Do your personal encounters with reactionaries now constitute the empirical support for your scientific claims? Andy From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Sun Jul 26 18:22:51 1998 Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 01:22:34 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: WSN Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Dawkins isn't a reactionary, altho Zhirinovsky perhaps is (actually he's a stooge of the neoliberal west, therefore not the Black Hundred he seems, ie, he's a diffrent kind of libertarian reactionary). But are you saying that one ought not to talk to people one disgrees with? -- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty PS To the list managers: I get four or five spurious address/returned mails whenever I post to WSN, which is tedious. Someone needs to purge the duff addresses. From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Sun Jul 26 18:35:31 1998 Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 20:35:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) In-Reply-To: <35BBC84A.FB869FCD@netcomuk.co.uk> On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Mark Jones wrote: > Dawkins isn't a reactionary, altho Zhirinovsky perhaps is (actually he's > a stooge of the neoliberal west, therefore not the Black Hundred he > seems, ie, he's a diffrent kind of libertarian reactionary). But are you > saying that one ought not to talk to people one disgrees with? I could care less who you have dinner with, Mark. What I am questioning is the relevance of your dinner with Dawkins to the matter that your claim was exposed as completely vacuous. Actually, I am not even questioning the relevance of your personal encounter; having dinner with sociobiologists doesn't bear on anything we have been discussing. Andy From j@qmail.com Sun Jul 26 20:50:54 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 16:58:32 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Mark Jones >But being a boy IS in the genes: the X and Y chromosones, to be precise. >The problem with this way of arguing with Jay Hanson is that you throw >the baby out with the bathwater. There is a huge amount of research You guys can't hear my points because you can't get past the social minutiae. For example, would any of you argue that "breathing" is not genetic? Jay From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Mon Jul 27 01:05:10 1998 Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 08:03:25 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: WSN Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Jay, You know we have talked often in the past and I have always been tremedneously impressed by your passionate seriousness about the politics politics of eco-catastrophe. Your work is so unswervingly singleminded in its readiness to face unpleasant (indeed terminal) truths that people (who often have spouses, families, careers) can get terribly depressed and can find it much easier to reject the messenger than accept the message. I do think sometimes you make it easy for them to do just that, and in this way you don't do your own cause much good (which I just as pssionately support). You simply trivialise political responses to eco-crisis, as either inadequate to the scale of the problem, or as somehow part of the problem. You have created a whole army of strawmen in this discussion: you are not arguing with Marxism, for exmaple, but a miserable caricature of it. I don't see how this posting is helpful. Andy Austin and I are old sparring partners. He knows damn well I can tell a hawk from a handsaw; he just loves to rile me up. But most of his substantive points are worth arguing, and you haven't doen that at all; and in the process of trivialising him you have managed to devalue the importance of your own message. Shame, really. Jay Hanson wrote: > From: Mark Jones > > >But being a boy IS in the genes: the X and Y chromosones, to be precise. > >The problem with this way of arguing with Jay Hanson is that you throw > >the baby out with the bathwater. There is a huge amount of research > > You guys can't hear my points because you can't get past the social > minutiae. > For example, would any of you argue that "breathing" is not genetic? > > Jay -- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Mon Jul 27 01:09:59 1998 Mon, 27 Jul 1998 08:09:47 +0100 (BST) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 08:09:36 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: j@qmail.com Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) This from the London Times today (no endorsement fro me :)) July 27 1998 MIND AND MATTER New research suggests our genes do not tell everything about the way we are, says Anjana Ahuja The nature of nurture Robert Plomin shakes his head as he picks through his salade niçoise and admits he is embarrassed: "It's unbelievable. Everywhere we look, we find that genes have a substantial influence. I'm embarrassed by how important genetics is turning out to be." This is a peculiar thing for him to say, because Professor Plomin is one of the most eminent behavioural geneticists in the world. Even if you haven't heard his name, you will know of his research. Previously based at the University of Colorado and now deputy director of the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, his achievements include the discovery of a gene for intelligence (or, more correctly, a gene which accounts for a tiny fraction of the variation in intelligence). It was revealed last week that his team of researchers had found a gene for language ability in young children. You might have thought this would plant him firmly on the nature side of the nature v nurture debate in the discussion of how genes and environment shape individual personality. But Professor Plomin adopts an unexpected stance. He thinks the pendulum has swung too far in his favour: "Once, everybody thought environment was all-important, and the only thing that mattered was the way you were brought up. Then behavioural genetics came along and it seemed that genes was everything and environment was nothing. Actually, environment is terribly important too. "Take schizophrenia. Identical twins, who have identical genes, have a 50 per cent concordance on the condition. That means that if one twin develops it, the other has a 50 per cent chance of developing it. Since their genes are the same whether they develop schizophrenia or not, it must be to do with environment. It's an amazing finding." Further support for the significance of environment comes from a new study by Professor Plomin of 720 American families, each featuring a mother, father and two adolescent children. According to conventional belief, children brought up in the same home share the same environment. So one would expect natural brothers and sisters to share many traits. However, they can be poles apart in personality. But Professor Plomin and his colleagues discovered that the issue of environment was more complex than previously thought. For one thing, it turned out that parents often treated each child differently, or were perceived as treating each child differently. This implied that each child in the family was being nurtured in a slightly different environment. "For example, some adolescents felt their parents were more antagonistic to them than to their brother or sister. So you think: 'This explains why one child develops antisocial behaviour.' But when you see a video of the parent and child together, you realise the parent is reacting to the child's aggressive behaviour. How can a parent be loving when their child is acting like a jerk? Genes are affecting the family environment." It raises the possibility that people choose or shape their surroundings according to their genes. This has led Professor Plomin to think about nature v nurture not as a tug-of-war between disparate influences but as part of one phenomenon. He has renamed it the "nature of nurture". Professor Plomin also thinks that experiences outside the home for each sibling may be significant in moulding character traits. "It's a shot in the arm for the environmentalists. It opens up opportunities for studying gene-environment correlations." Some might suggest that, if environment is so important, why should we pour in millions of pounds teasing out genetic influences, especially if individual genes have such minuscule effects? "Behavioural genetics is a scientific target but it's also a practical target," he says. For example, society could provide preventive therapy for those at risk from alcoholism or drug abuse: "Alcoholism wrecks lives. But we wait to see who develops it and then step in with cures that don't work. If we have the genetic markers, we should use them to alleviate suffering. Preventive medicine is the future." The concerns raised over possible pre-natal testing to screen out certain diseases do not bother him unduly. "When the amniocentesis test was developed, people thought it was the end of the world. But women chose to have it. Why would a woman do it unless she was prepared to contemplate abortion? If mothers were selecting for certain traits, that would be dodgy." What about discrimination by employers and insurance companies against those found to be at risk of developing disease? "That would not be ethical but I am sure we will have laws to protect against it." He thinks most people, provided there are preventive treatments available, would prefer to know their genetic destiny, despite the drawbacks.He also objects to the idea that geneticists are part of a right-wing conspiracy to engage in dodgy social engineering. (Professor Plomin, who grew up in inner-city Chicago, is a Labour supporter.) He elects not to study topics such as the differences in intelligences across race and class. "I'm too chicken to do stuff like that," he says. What especially bugs him is when the word "Nazi" is mentioned in the same breath as behavioural genetics, as happened on the Today programme last week. "Some of the media seem to want to protect the public from the wicked scientists," he sighs. "It's a very condescending view and I am willing to bet that the man in the street isn't that worried. "Geneticists have this anecdote about parents, which I think has a measure of truth about it: when parents have one child, they think the kid's behaviour is down to how they are bringing them up. When they have a second child and they start noticing big personality differences, they begin believing in genetics." In a way, he says, the ethical concerns surrounding the field of behavioural genetics constitute a badge of honour. "All great advances in science have problems," Professor Plomin reflects. "So it's terrific that we have given ethicists so much to think about." Next page: Science Briefing Arts (Mon - Fri) | Books (Sat) (Thu) | British News | Business | Court page | Features (Mon - Fri) | Go (Sat) | Metro (Sat) | Obituaries | Interface (Wed) | Opinion | Sport | Travel (Sat) (Thu) | Vision (Sat) | Weather | Weekend (Sat) | Weekend Money (Sat) | World News Next page: Science Briefing Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard terms and conditions. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website. Mark From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Mon Jul 27 01:17:56 1998 Mon, 27 Jul 1998 08:17:46 +0100 (BST) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 08:17:34 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: > I could care less who you have dinner with, Mark. What I am questioning is > the relevance of your dinner with Dawkins to the matter that your claim > was exposed as completely vacuous. Actually, I am not even questioning the > relevance of your personal encounter; having dinner with sociobiologists > doesn't bear on anything we have been discussing. > Oh, come on, you care a little. But are you so dismissive of Dawkins? You don't think he has any credentials at all? Hmm. Well, I DO. -- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty From j@qmail.com Mon Jul 27 10:00:38 1998 From: "Jay Hanson" To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 06:08:03 -1000 charset="iso-8859-1" From: Mark Jones >damn well I can tell a hawk from a handsaw; he just loves to rile me up. But >most of his substantive points are worth arguing, and you haven't doen that >at all; and in the process of trivialising him you have managed to devalue The crack about Hitler being a sociobiologist put Andy in perspective for me. Moreover, I am not really interested in debating politics: assumptions are never stated, terms are never defined, and it's only done for personal gain anyway. For me, politics has never been anything more than a brutal struggle for power using any conceivable means at hand. Nowadays, I leave the lies, bribes, Molotov Cocktails and the Ethnic Cleansing for the youngsters to enjoy -- I'm too old and just don't have the stomach for it. Jay From ms44278@email.csun.edu Mon Jul 27 10:17:55 1998 Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 09:17:20 -0700 (PDT) From: mike shupp To: Andrew Wayne Austin Subject: Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE In-Reply-To: On Sat, 25 Jul 1998, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote: > Hitler was a sociobiologist. And mainstream sociobiologists are continuing > his work.... Ummm... this is overkill. I'm not especially sold on sociobiology myself-- a lot of it seems pretty damned trivial, and a lot of it isn't much deeper than arm chair speculation-- but the original notion, of applying up-to-date evolutionary biology to humans (and other animals), was a worthwhile one, and there are perfectly respectable people working in the field-- for example, Laura Betzig and Sandra Hrdy. It's a method of analysis, not an ideological program, after all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ms44278@huey.csun.edu Mike Shupp California State University, Northridge Graduate Student, Dept. of Anthropology http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu Mon Jul 27 14:53:32 1998 Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 16:53:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin Reply-To: Andrew Wayne Austin To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) In-Reply-To: <000701bdb90a$7152b860$d581fea9@jay98> Good Afternoon, There are several posts I want to respond to. These posts are by Jay, Mark, and Mike. I answer them in that order. On Sun, 26 Jul 1998, Jay Hanson wrote: "...would any of you argue that "breathing" is not genetic?" Nobody is doubting that we are physical animals, Jay. We have already said this. Breathing is a reflex. There is nothing special about human breathing. All animals breathe. But do all (any) animals instinctually develop capitalism? Do all (any) animals instinctually destroy their natural environment? Do all (any) animals instinctually develop political systems and then do and say anything to acquire power within these systems? Breathing is not an instinct or a behavior anymore than our cells undergoing mitosis and meiosis, the skin covering our bodies, the mobilization of our immune system, or the need for sleep constitute instincts or behaviors. You have been making claims about specific *human* behaviors, about *human* nature. We are talking about social behaviors and relations relative to humans, i.e., capitalism, politics, racism, and so on. How does one move from the empirical fact that all animals breathe to the ideological argument that capitalism is genetic? You need to come down off this constant sloganeering and endless production of strawmen and non sequiturs if you want people to treat your position with even a remote degree of seriousness. Given everything I have seen so far, I don't see how anybody can treat you seriously at this point. I am a scientific materialist to the bone and believe in biological evolution. It is on scientific materialist grounds that I am first opposed to sociobiology. Sociobiology is a false application of evolutionary science to the study of social relations and behavior. It is, for this reason, an ideology, and not a science. Given that it is an ideology, I subsequently oppose sociobiology on the grounds that I oppose the political program it covers and legitimates. You would be served by reading the rest of this post where I criticize both Dawkins and Wilson, the latter of whom I suspect you draw your claim that human beings are genetically driven to destroy the environment. Mark's post today attempts two things. It is foremost a rhetorical attempt to dismiss my critique of his position on gender; more on this in a minute. Secondarily it is a continuation of Mark's need to drag Richard Dawkins into this conversation, as if Dawkins somehow represents the strong hand of sociobiology. To answer his question about Dawkins, I first admit that I find the whole sociobiological discourse to be ideology and intrinsically reactionary. There are sociobiologists like Pearson, Cattell, Lynn, Rushton, Murray, Herrnstein, etc., who operate quite openly in the realm of racism and eugenics. They are honest and conscious racists. It requires only a little bit of decoding and consciousness raising to expose them. However, sociobiologists like Wilson and Dawkins operate under a more clever scientism. Perhaps this is what has mislead Mark. But is Richard Dawkins really so clever? Would Dawkins ever employ the traditional reactionary attack on the critics of sociobiology, the attack that characterize them as "biological egalitarians" and connecting this up with the spectre of Marism-Leninism (this was the form of critique launched by the Pioneer Fund, a principal source of research funding and coordination of sociobiological research)? You tell me. In reviewing Rose, Kamin, and Lewontin's Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature (Pantheon Books, 1985), Dawkins ("Sociobiology: the debate continues," New Scientist January 24, 1985) attacks Rose et al.'s work in the following terms: Where others might thank colleagues and friends, our authors acknowledge "lovers" and "comrades." Actually, I suppose there is something rather sweet about this, in a passe, sixtiesish sort of way. And the 1960s have a mythic role to play in the authors' bizarre conspiracy theory of science. It was in response to that Arcadian decade (when "Students challenged the legitimacy of their universities...") that "The newest form of biological determinism, sociobiology, has been legitimated...." Getting beyond the sheer pettiness of Dawkins' language, we find that in one short passage, Dawkins, up there with the best of the sociobiology ideologues, has managed in his assault on his critics to let his readers in on the fact that Rose and "comrades," in a "passe, sixtiesish sort of way," are commies and hippies (probably druggies) who advance a "bizarre conspiratorial theory of science." Yes, Mark, serious science is going on here. Dawkins, in attacking those who dispute his claims about human nature, characterizes the domination of capitalist ideology in science, domination that both you and I know is real, as a "bizarre conspiratorial theory of science." He red-baits and ridicules those who refute his position. It would appear that Dawkins reacts to challenges to sociobiology, on both scientific and ideological grounds, in the same fashion as do some of his fellow sociobiologists who are a little more conscious of the politics of their position: although Dawkins refers sarcastically to class struggle throughout his defense of sociobiology, he is clearly engaging in class warfare himself. What *are* Dawkins' claim about human nature that Rose and comrades are criticizing? From the publisher's blurb on the jacket cover plugging the merits of Dawkins' best-selling The Selfish Gene: We animals exist for their preservation and are nothing more than their throwaway survival machines. The world of the selfish gene is one of savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit. But what of the acts of apparent altruism found in nature - the bees who commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, or the birds who warn the flock of an approaching hawk? Do they contravene the fundamental law of gene selfishness? By no means: Dawkins shows that the selfish gene is also the subtle gene. Basically, Mark, Dawkins provides scientific proof for Ayn Rand's claims that all behavior, even altruism, is essentially selfish behavior, and all this exist at the level of the gene. (Is this what mainstream scientists really mean when they talk about "objectivism"?) It is this selfishness that is the real explanation for evil in the world, an evil that Rand elevates to a virtue. So do many of Dawkins' colleagues. E. O. Wilson makes similar arguments about our inherent selfishness and how this leads us to destroy the environment. This is Jay Hanson's argument. But I don't want to overdraw the importance of human agency here; it does not necessarily matter the conscious intentions of the sociobiologist. They may believe they are operating in the realm of science and remain unaware of any ideological commitments. Indeed, ideology is more effective when it operates at the deeper levels of legitimacy. Rather it is *knowledge systems* that are racist, sexist, etc.. Most people, including very perceptive and intelligent people, are ignorant of the real character of certain scientistic forms of intellectual discourse, and they unwittingly accept these tenets. Sociobiology is particularly effective at tapping unquestioned and uncritical sources of legitimacy because it prays on the most basic common sense assumptions that people have about the world. Sociobiology represents the biologizing of tacit daily common sense. It is for this reason a particularly dangerous form of racist-sexist discourse. In his post of this morning Jones refers to us as "old sparring partners" and that I like to "rile him up." I appreciate Mark's understanding that the points I make are valid. However, I neither set out to nor enjoy riling Mark up; I don't contribute to these listservs for the personal satisfaction of jibing people. I don't know Mark Jones very well. We have had a handful of confrontations on a couple of listservs, but these didn't get very deep, mainly because he resorts to personalizing everything and avoiding the issue, as he has clearly demonstrated today. But it is not in my nature to rile people up purposely. If they get riled up that's their business. All this posturing by Mark is designed to trivialize my argument by reducing it to a mere polemic designed to rile him up, as if I really don't believe what I am writing, but rather designing it around what I perceive to be the hot buttons of an opponent, an "old sparring partner" (of course, sparring partners are useful only insofar as they stand up for a few rounds so that a good workout can be had). This red herring is meant to avoid the initial post in which Mark's understanding of these issues was shown not pass the most basic level of understanding. In another post this morning, Mike felt that my Hitler reference was overkill. But it is not. This is the history of sociobiology that people don't like to admit, for obvious reasons. US and British sociobiologists helped Hitler's scientists get on track with their sociobiological research, and eugenics organizations that funded these scientists helped Hitler draft his extermination and sterilization programs and laws, justified on the basis of sociobiological "findings." Hitler put sociobiological tenets in practice on a mass scale. We have to remember that these tenets were put into practice in the US, as well, as they were in dozens of other European countries. After Hitler was exposed as a ruthless mass murderer, this made sociobiology and eugenics look bad, so the US scientific and medical community reflected on their sterilization laws and many states repealed them. The eugenics societies changed their names - e.g., from the "American Eugenics Society" to the "Society for the Study of Social Biology" - began re-writing their history, and now cloak themselves in what Mike characterizes as "a method of analysis." Much of the talk today among sociobiologists is expressing their regret that Hitler spoiled their "method of analysis" by tainting it with this matter of sterilization, genocide, and other such nasty sounding business. They decry those critics who drag Hitler into the discussion, claiming that appealing to a single madman's obsession with social biology is a non sequitur. What they never admit is that the sociobiological community organized Hitler's project. Nazi scientists were colleagues with American and British scientists working towards a common project of social biology. When Hitler's name comes up it is not bringing in a single ideologically driven madman, but bringing in the bare face of a whole ideologically driven scientistic culture. Mike insists that sociobiology is "not an ideological program, after all." But this dismisses as an aside what has been the main point all along. Sociobiology is so successful as a political program because its scientism has convinced people that it is a "method of analysis" and "not an ideological program." I re-emphasize that practitioners of sociobiology do not have to be conscious of the character of their ideology. But knowing that these scientists rub elbows with one another, go to eugenics conferences, accept funding from racialist-eugenicist organizations, publish in eugenics journals and publish with racialist-eugenicist publishing houses, are conscious enough about it to change their organizations names and hide their funding sources - it is hard for me to believe that they are not aware of the true character of sociobiology. Perhaps unfortunately, however, is not hard for me to understand that many of those contributing to this discussion are not aware of this, however, given the degree of ignorance concerning the field and the unwillingness to be critical of the position. So the Hitler example is shocking not because it is hyperbole, Mike. It is shocking because Hitler and the Nazi movement was a major figure and event in the development of sociobiology, both in its explicit and programmatic forms, and that it represents one of the causes of sociobiologist's cloaking after things didn't go so well for the Nazis. Hitler believed these things with a fervor; he was consumed by what he considered the force of social biology. Men and women had their places in society because these were their places in nature. Races were real and there is also a natural hierarchy of racial types, different types that not only explain why groups differ from one another, but to justify differential treatment of human beings based on the natural hierarchy. Nazi doctors and scientists, along side leading US and British intellectuals, worked to prove the theory true. They are still working to prove it true. The theories have no changed. And they have acquired no more evidence. Ever hear of George Lincoln Rockwell? He was the founder and leader of the American Nazi Party. He sought to systematize national socialist philosophy and their sociobiological science. He was a very bright fellow. In his work he lays out a sophisticated sociobiological view of the world, and from this view claims he legitimates his political position. He is (was, one of his followers murdered him) a different sort of sociobiologist in that he basically admits that his science is designed to legitimate his political position. Of course, the science he advanced is nothing more than his political position. Rockwell was instrumental in bringing sociobiologists together in the post-Nazi era, and those who worked with him and his associates are the leaders in the field today. Sociobiology must be understood not only in terms of the explicit claims of its practitioners - though these are revealing enough - but it must also be understood in terms of its function in the structure of white male capitalism. Peace, Andy From Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk Tue Jul 28 14:35:45 1998 Tue, 28 Jul 1998 21:34:17 +0100 (BST) Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 21:33:11 +0100 From: Mark Jones To: "lbo-talk@lists.panix.com" Subject: Formation of the Capital Reading Group Forwarded from Sven Buttler. Reply to Dear Comrades, The Capital Reading Group has been formed in order to study Karl Marx's "Das Kapital", one of the most important theoretical works in the history of marxism - and surely one of the most challenging, too. Revealing the inner mechanisms of capitalism Marx equiped the workers with a powerful weapon which even today - round about 100 years after Marx - hasn't lost it's meaning and importance for the workers' movement. The Capital Reading Group is a virtual seminar which is open to anyone interested in advancing his understanding of political economy. Especially younger militants are welcome for we are going to start from the very roots. To join in you just need to read the first chapter of Capital to August 1st and tell me that you want to participate. I hope you're with us! For communism Sven Buttler From ms44278@email.csun.edu Tue Jul 28 15:02:01 1998 Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 14:01:43 -0700 (PDT) From: mike shupp To: Andrew Wayne Austin Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) In-Reply-To: In a long, interesting post, Andy Austin (among other things) disagreed with my charge that his equating Hitler with Sociobiology was "overkill". In response: Fascinating, but I'm still in disagreement. Turn of the century Eugenics ("What do we do about the burgeoning numbers of genetically feeble minded?") isn't quite the same thing as Sociobiology ("Why are children more often killed by step-parents than natural parents?"). I don't doubt there is some overlap, since both touch on human societies and genetics, but from my viewpoint they look towards different questions and come up with different answers. In particular, eugenics was preoccupied by nasty issues of public policy which sociobiologists tend to shun and nastier prescriptions. I'll add that I'm not totally sold on sociobiology as currently preached. There are great gaping holes in some of its arguments (e.g., the existence of incest taboos) which are covered over by appeals to what all good-thinking Euro-American adults learn as children ("Nice people don't do that, dear"), so I'd have to say the field is less than philosophically rigorous. Maybe it'll get somewhere in another century; more likely it's a way station on the way to a more elaborate science-- "life history" analysis, for example. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ms44278@huey.csun.edu Mike Shupp California State University, Northridge Graduate Student, Dept. of Anthropology http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm From bernardo@gte.net Tue Jul 28 16:23:57 1998 Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 17:21:32 +0000 From: Judge To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK Subject: Re: It's Genetic (was Re: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE) Jay Hanson wrote: > From: Mark Jones > > >But being a boy IS in the genes: the X and Y chromosones, to be precise. > >The problem with this way of arguing with Jay Hanson is that you throw > >the baby out with the bathwater. There is a huge amount of research > > You guys can't hear my points because you can't get past the social > minutiae. > For example, would any of you argue that "breathing" is not genetic? > > Jay No, breathing definitely is not. The child must be "slapped" to producecrying which results in rapid inhalations that last for life. There is a disorder where people forget to breathe (forgot the name) and humans can train themselves to slow their breathing to a cataleptic state. Something similar happens to persons drowning in cold water. They can be revived after half an hour with no brain damage. So this is a phenomenon that entails gas (CO2) balance in the blood and how the brain sensor perceives it, temperature, homeostasis, and on and on. Stuff that we know nothing about perhaps. To claim it is based on the genes is like saying the sun is bright. True, but useless as an explanation. Try again. Regards; Judge "If it has gears it must be a watch..." From slayman@2nature.org Thu Jul 30 10:18:04 1998 From: "Stephen Layman" To: SLayman@2nature.org Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 12:34:44 -0400 Subject: Educational Resources job announcement Second Nature is a nonprofit organization that works with college and university faculty, administrators and students to help them make environmental and sustainability principles the foundation of learning in the classroom, the campus, and in community outreach. Second Nature's Educational Resources Program acquires, creates and disseminates tools and resources to help educational professionals teach about sustainability. These resources are then made available as hard-copy publications and/or website content < http://www.2nature.org >. The primary responsibility of the Educational Resources Program Associate will be to acquire educational materials from higher education faculty and related sources. 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To apply, please mail or fax your resume, cover letter, and salary requirements prior to August 7, 1998 to: Steve Bolton Second Nature 44 Bromfield Street, Fifth Floor Boston, MA 02108-4909 USA Fax: (617) 292-0150 No phone calls, please.