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40981 Marshall Berman on Communist Manifesto in 5/11 *Nation* -- rank: 1000

Another bounce from Bill Lear. All is fixed now... Doug ---- Have folks here seen Berman's review of the new (translation, book-jacket, introduction?) Verso edition of the Communist Manifesto? I think it's pretty good --- delightful, actually, giving inter alia a very decent account of Marx's prescient understanding of the global economy --- though there are a few places I feel are a bit lacking. On p. 15, Berman paraphrases Marx's critique of capitalism: [Capitalists] may think of only one thi ...

Document Size:	9453
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 2 10:06:00 PDT 1998

40982 "Better times" cannot sustain stock prices -- rank: 1000

Trond Andresen wrote: >I am chiming in with some thoughts on the incredibly overvalued U.S. stock >market. From the Sydney Morning Herald, New York correspondent Brian Hale, >on Tuesday 28 after the Monday 27 downwards dip: > >"..but Wall Street's best-known bulls, like Prudential's Mr. Ralph Acampora >and Gruntal's Mr. Joe Battipaglia, were out front once more, exhorting >investors to 'give the market a few days' and stay with the faith. Mr. >Battipaglia said: 'Mark ...

Document Size:	6877
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 2 09:58:46 PDT 1998

40983 activism -- rank: 1000

This post from Bill Lear bounced because I was a bit slow at fixing his address. Doug ---- On Fri, May 1, 1998 at 19:21:43 (-0800) Gar W. Lipow writes: >... >What I would like you do is something much harder than a vision of the >future. I want you to look at your vision, look at where we are now >and use your creativity, your knowledge and your imagination to create >a path that gets there from here. Assume your vision will win, and >imagine yourself a historian fifty years fr ...

Document Size:	5782
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 2 08:33:56 PDT 1998

40984 activism -- rank: 1000

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: >Many left-liberal activists are unfortunately 'reverse size queens'; they >love the idea of 'small is beautiful,' though there is no reason to think >that small is necessarily more democratic, ecologically sensible, etc. The smallbiz ideology also appeals to those who think themselves the "natural leaders" of oppressed groups - like urban community activists. New York City is full of community organizations from the 1960s and 1970s that have metamorpho ...

Document Size:	5053
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 1 17:31:12 PDT 1998

40985 intro -- rank: 1000

Bill Cochrane wrote: >Thanks Doug for setting this list up and assuming the awesome >responcibilities of moderator. I hope that the task is less irritating >for you than my forays into moderation. >At the moment I'm puzzling over the apparent split in views between the >IMF and World Bank. My feeling is that although this split might be of >some consequence the reason it looks important is simply that they are so >close together on policy that any difference looms large agai ...

Document Size:	5795
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 1 15:34:59 PDT 1998

40986 activism -- rank: 1000

Gar Lipow nominates activism as the antidote to all those disabling oppositions. Yes, but the whole idea of activism as an antidote to theoretical isolation reproduces the division it aims to undermine. A few years ago, I was on a panel about economic development in NYC, and most of my colleagues were hot on stimulating small business. I piped up to say that for the most part, small business jobs pay less, offer few benefits and less training, are typically more dangerous and more volatile. For ...

Document Size:	4868
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 1 13:27:00 PDT 1998

40987 intro -- rank: 1000

Ok, here's the intro file. Comments welcome. Doug ---- LBO-talk is a mailing list for the discussion of politics, economics, and culture, all expansively defined. It is sponsored by Left Business Observer <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>, a newsletter mainly about economics, and moderated by its editor, Doug Henwood. Despite that sponsorship, I hope this list will be a forum for speaking across intellectual and social boundaries that have divided the left, such as it is, for ...

Document Size:	5524
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 1 12:44:18 PDT 1998

40988 welcome -- rank: 1000

Welcome to LBO talk. You're here because you expressed an interest in this list when it started up; if you don't want to be, I'm sorry; send the usual "uns*bscribe lbo-talk" to majordomo at lists.panix.com. I got a little ahead of myself; Panix' excellent web front-end for managing majordomo made it so easy, the list was open before I really knew it. And before I'd written something as frightening as a mission statement. One of those will be along soon, but for the moment, welcome to L ...

Document Size:	4616
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 1 12:24:51 PDT 1998

40989 GM strike -- rank: 1000

Justin Schwartz wrote: >Well you do. Sound like a Spart, that is. What do you mean by class >struggle unionism? It's a fancy phrase, but what's the content? You know, like unions represent the organized interest of the working class, which is in a rather long-term battle with something called capital, and that the bosses' and stockholders' profits come from the workers' labor. If you think that way, you are not likely to cut "jointness" deals, or enter into jointness joint ventur ...

Document Size:	6945
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 30 20:50:25 PDT 1998

40990 Resurrected Fascism -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >> I believe Mosler has paid lots of money for travel and >> expenses, bribes if you like, to academics for their >> support. So what. They don't give an inch in their > >Got any evidence for this? Can we forget about Ryan and his silly claims? He's already outside, gnashing his teeth. Doug

Document Size:	4708
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 30 20:36:22 PDT 1998

40991 GM strike -- rank: 1000

Michael Eisenscher wrote: >Yikes! Again no big argument, Doug. At least not with your basic >conclusion. But I would observe that if you want to affect change within >the labor movement (UAW included) rather than just talk about it, using the >language you use here is counter-productive. Even honest militant trade >unionists, who are aghast at what the top leaders are doing, will often >recoil defensively when you draw into question everything they do rather >than distin ...

Document Size:	7754
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 30 15:02:03 PDT 1998

40992 Richard Grossman -- rank: 1000

William S. Lear wrote: >Last night, I caught a bit of Richard Grossman giving a talk at >U. Colorado, Boulder. He and Frank T. Adams put out a booklet called >"Taking Care of Business" (Charter Ink, 1995). I thought his speech >was quite stirring, though he seems firmly in the populist-style >"Let's control corporations" rather than the "Why should they exist at >all" camp. > >Earth Island Journal printed a short version of the above bookle ...

Document Size:	5924
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 30 14:05:20 PDT 1998

40993 Albert & Hahnel -- rank: 1000

Gar Lipow tried to send two long pieces to the list - one by Albert & Hahnel, and one his own review of their work - which bounced back to me because of majordomo's 30k length restriction. Anyone interested in getting copies of these please email me privately. Doug

Document Size:	4596
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 30 11:24:57 PDT 1998

40994 GM strike -- rank: 1000

Michael Eisenscher wrote: >If that's what Dougie is saying, I have no quarrel with it. Thanks, Mikey. >But that said, >real workers face real threats to their economic welfare and security that >require immediate strategies. Promising them solutions under socialism is >little different than telling them they'll get their reward in heaven. >Neither is a very satisfactory response to what they confront in the moment. >Academics can debate and dissect the "logic of capita ...

Document Size:	5642
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 30 11:13:06 PDT 1998

40995 GM strike: a question (off-list) -- rank: 1000

Justin Schwartz wrote: >Now, I grant that Legal is sort of isolateed from other parts of >Solidarity House; we do legal stuff, oddly enough, and don't make policy. >But I think that the unrelievadely horroble impression of the UAW that's >being promulgated on this list is misleading and erroneous. Sure, it's a >rather stick in the mud labor bureaucracy. No, it's not a revolutionary >organization. Yes, a lot of my comrades in New Directions spend a good >deal of time eyeball ...

Document Size:	6700
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 29 20:21:46 PDT 1998