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1306 World Bank on aid losses through corruption -- rank: 1000

At 09:02 AM 8/19/98 -0400, you wrote: >Today, Aug 19, the WSJournal reports the World Bank estimating 20% of Bank >project money in Indonesia was siphoned off by officials. For development >funds generally they estimate 20 to 30%. I've seen other, higher, figures >on this list, maybe up to 50%. Anyone care to comment? > >Randy Earnest I suspect a degree of cultural arrogance in this. Although Suharto's cronies appear to be widely detested, the giving of gifts to establish tr ...

Document Size:	5412
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Aug 19 16:01:32 PDT 1998

1307 Reform of IMF (was the global melodrama) -- rank: 1000

At 10:08 AM 8/18/98 Brad wrote: <snip> >I asked my patron (and the former chair of my dissertation committee >Lawrence Summers) this same question: why isn't the IMF loaning East Asian >countries twice as much for twice as long at lower interest rates with less >conditionality? > as he politely put it, "neither your friends on the left nor >your friends on the right want to see a larger, better-funded IMF. Where is >the political coalition to support inc ...

Document Size:	9141
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Aug 19 15:55:12 PDT 1998

1308 Rubin -- rank: 1000

Hi Hinrich, I am glad to see you coming in on this, but I fear that the reference is in practice inaccessible for me. It is not only my slow German, which can sometimes see a translation problem but cannot answer it confidently, especially the nuances. It is also IMO that the German marxist literature is far in advance of the English. That does not mean it is always correct, but my understanding is that over the last 20 years there have been a substantial number of serious marxist journals publi ...

Document Size:	12339
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Aug 18 23:39:12 PDT 1998

1309 the global melodrama -- rank: 1000

At 04:28 PM 8/17/98 -0400, you wrote: >James Devine wrote: > >>>... So I'm wondering if the world's central bankers really *want* this >>deflation to run its course.< >> >>they did in 1930. > >Can we draw any conclusions from that experience relevant to today? > >Doug As I have argued on marxism-and-sciences and marxism-psych, the marxist theory of consciousness is one of semi-consciousness. Of course in this case no one is arguing full blown consp ...

Document Size:	7986
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Aug 17 23:20:23 PDT 1998

1310 Is value transhistorical? -- rank: 1000

I think I am going to have to get on with replying to Andrew's long post in bits, otherwise I will not reply at all. At 05:18 AM 8/4/98 , Andrew Kliman wrote: >This is a reply to Chris Burford's posts of July 13th and 14th. >I'm sorry it has taken me so long to reply, but the issues are >hard ones, and I haven't had a chunk of time long enough to think >things through. > > >Chris: "Now further reading of the Chapter 1 of Capital suggest >to me that the content of va ...

Document Size:	9939
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Aug 17 16:01:33 PDT 1998

1311 Chaos on markets, at polls -- rank: 1000

At 04:48 PM 8/17/98 -0400, Barkley wrote: > This stuff on voting is nothing new. Donald G. Saari >has been at this one for over a decade now. I am not really surprised. I think the volume of these researches will shift thinking about democracy. The old simplistic and idealistic models about taking power by voting a majority of representatives into an assembly to carry out a political mandate, are getting eroded. Political consciousness is being seen to be both more partial and more co ...

Document Size:	5036
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Aug 17 16:10:05 PDT 1998

1312 Land occupations in Zimbabwe -- rank: 1000

The unfinished national democratic revolution in Zimbabwe has seen landless black peasants occupying white farms from late June. Yesterday's Sunday Times (London) reported that at that time 50 families moved in north of Harare. The movement has been spreading. An unnamed western diplomatic source in Harare who is quoted as speaking idiomatic middle class English, attributes this to the machinations of local officials of ZANU. He (presumably he) presumes that it is a "kind of blackmail" ...

Document Size:	9859
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Aug 17 12:06:47 PDT 1998

1313 Chaos on markets, at polls -- rank: 1000

This week's New Scientist has a clip in its In Brief section. In their 4 July issue they had a piece that computer modellers have predicted that electronic stock trading could cause chaotic market swings if large numbers of computer program are allowed to decide which stocks to buy. They draw an analogy with voting, and now report a claim by a physicist and a political scientist that the same thing happens in all group decisions: 'almost any voting rule gives you chaotic outcomes'. The paper by ...

Document Size:	5633
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Aug 16 23:42:56 PDT 1998

1314 Hong Kong tested -- rank: 1000

At 10:46 PM 8/16/98 +0100, Mark wrote: >Chris, the news is a little more adverse to your ideas about structural reforms >than you are conceding. Yes, that is the question I wanted posed. I think it is an interesting way to test ideas to make a prediction and to see how well it stands up to unfolding events. Obviously I am not arguing that the main merits of structural reforms to us are that they enable a capitalist statelet to withstand currency fluctuations. I have been arguing that Hong ...

Document Size:	6002
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Aug 16 23:24:09 PDT 1998

1315 Labor and Value -- rank: 1000

At 01:45 PM 8/15/98 -0400, Andrew wrote: >I will make no apologies for this post. I disagree with those >who think that Ignorance is Strength ... and Slavery is Freedom >and War is Peace. Nothing wrong with taking another subscriber to task if it is in a good cause and it clarifies a point. And Value Theory is a good cause. I am not sure however if Andrew was seeing a closer connection than I had in mind between my post on the Gotha Programme and my delay in responding to the thread o ...

Document Size:	14385
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Aug 16 16:08:25 PDT 1998

1316 Hong Kong tested -- rank: 1000

Hong Kong led a rally in world stock exchanges at the end of last week, but for the rather dubious reason that it had intervened in the market. The government has been criticised this weekend by Martin Lee, head of the Democratic Party, for damaging credibility in Hong Kong's free market and status as a "world financial centre". The government claimed it had not departed from its non-interventionist policy but was thwarting what looks like a highly technical "sustained and heavy&q ...

Document Size:	5608
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Aug 16 14:13:18 PDT 1998

1317 Is value transhistorical? -- rank: 1000

Dear Andrew, My feeling is that our more important debate, is whether value is transhistorical. It is a big challenge to reply to your last post. Can I ask the other way round, if in your reading of Marx, value is not transhistorical, what is? You seem to argue that abstract labour is not either. Regards Chris Burford London.

Document Size:	4707
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Aug 16 03:13:19 PDT 1998

1318 Rubin -- rank: 1000

>Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 20:41:36 +0100 >To: CRG >From: Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> >Subject: Rubin > >I have started to read Rubin on Marx's Theory of Value, as I indicated. I cannot decide how much to get into him. I hope this does not set the cat among the pigeons because there will obviously be a whole range of views, but the preface says he was arrested as early as 1930. It makes no mention of Trotskyism. He was tried on the basis of confessions (which in t ...

Document Size:	5921
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Aug 16 03:19:35 PDT 1998

1319 Gotha Program note -- rank: 1000

It is interesting that we now have two threads running on scathing remarks by Marx about legal marxists - in France, and in Germany. Was this just irritation? Was it objection in principle to lawful parliamentary parties? Was it an inability to see that electoral parties have to appeal to more subjective perceptions than scientific socialism? Was it because the only good marxists are violent ones? Was it for purely theoretical reasons? Our stance on this affects how we use marxist ideas today. I ...

Document Size:	7937
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Aug 15 01:09:30 PDT 1998

1320 Marx on "Marxists" -- rank: 1000

At 05:03 PM 8/14/98 -0700, Phil Gasper wrote: >The exact quote is "what is certain is that I am no Marxist." Engels (in a >letter to Bernstein) says that Marx made the remark to Lafargue to express >his opinion about self-described "Marxists" in France. Can you supply the year? Many thanks. Chris Burford

Document Size:	4813
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Aug 15 01:09:12 PDT 1998