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1006 [lbo-talk] dev'ts in world economy and foreign ownerrship -- rank: 1000

There always was a difference between the interests of capital-in-general and those of the individual capitalists. The 19c. imperialists always understood that prestige was quite as tangible a thing as capital. There was a lot of evidence cited that the US capitalists were surprised by the money they made during the Spanish-American war, which tempted them into supporting imperialism. As for war-for-oil, this always was the reductio ad absurdem of radical politics - the left's commodity fetishis ...

Document Size:	6185
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Sun May 27 16:35:23 PDT 2007

1007 [lbo-talk] Thirtieth anniversary of "Critique" -- rank: 1000

I could use my last post of the day to get distracted by this marvellous non-sequiteur from Joanna: "I'm sorry but these statistics simply don't reflect my experience." But instead, let me recommend the Thirtieth Anniversary volume of Hillel Ticktin's excellent journal of socialist thought, Critique - and not just because my piece on the European economy is in it, but also because of * an excellent paper on car-workers' struggles in Iran - which I recommend to everyone, but Yoshie in p ...

Document Size:	6212
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue May 15 04:36:16 PDT 2007

1008 [lbo-talk] Why is America so violent/Workers Are on the Job More Hours over the Course of the Year -- rank: 1000

Doug wrote: "I wonder if the time crunch is a more socially acceptable way of saying alienation, depression, and anxiety?" I think alienation is right (I don't know if I would put depression and anxiety in the same bracket). Wage labourers have always been alienated from their creative lives, but how you experience that alienation depends on the working class's own level of organisation. In times of broader and deeper unionisation, workers imaginitively reappropriated their alienated s ...

Document Size:	7002
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue May 15 02:06:45 PDT 2007

1009 [lbo-talk] Workers Are on the Job More Hours over the Course of the year -- rank: 1000

Miles Jackson on Monday: "I still insist that households/families are working more wage labor hours than they were in the 1960s. The data that James provides obscure this fact by treating the individual worker as the unit of analysis." Pardon me, but I don't think that I obscured the position of families by introducing the individual worker as the unit of analysis. That was Miles, when he wrote on Sunday: "In the U. S., it's an irrefutable fact that the average worker is working ...

Document Size:	7094
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue May 15 00:42:00 PDT 2007

1010 [lbo-talk] US average weekly hours worked (Why is America so violent) -- rank: 1000

Miles Jackson wrote: "In the U. S., it's an irrefutable fact that the average worker is working far, far more than the average worker in previous generations (we're about 400 hrs/yr higher than workers in the 1970s, if I recall correctly; Doug will probably check)." Far from being an irrefutable fact, it is wrong. hours of work per week UNITED STATES 37.7 1969 37.1 36.9 37.0 36.9 36.5 36.1 36.1 36.0 35.8 35.7 35.3 35.2 34.8 35.0 35.2 34.9 34.8 34.8 34.7 34.6 34.5 34.3 34.4 34.5 34.7 3 ...

Document Size:	6261
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon May 14 01:44:24 PDT 2007

1011 [lbo-talk] Why is America so violent -- rank: 1000

It seems to me that Marv, Gar, Chuck, Carrol and the Bitch are all illustrating the point by their subjective reaction (disbelief) to the objective statistics. The Time Use studies show that US leisure time is holiding up pretty well despite the pressures from work time and domestic labour. Which is interesting (ok, maybe in a bit of a geekish way) because nobody believes that to be the case (i.e. their subjective experience is that they are very short of time). The disjuncture between subjectiv ...

Document Size:	7029
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun May 13 14:48:24 PDT 2007

1012 [lbo-talk] Why Is America So Violent? -- rank: 1000

Doug Henwood wrote: > There was a thread about this a month or two ago - it's looking like >the time crunch hypothesis is way overblown. Americans have quite a >bit of leisure time - 4 or 5 hours a day. And Joanna replied "I'm really not sure about that. ...I was ...my mom ... my dad ...I now ... I work ...I also ...so, no, I don't get much leisure time, and I don't watch TV at all." This sounds really snotty, but it is not meant to be, honest. But one of the things about time ...

Document Size:	7658
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat May 12 13:50:59 PDT 2007

1013 [lbo-talk] Russia's economy -- rank: 1000

Yoshie wrote: > "In any case, the principle of democracy is that the > Russian government's > legitimacy derives from the Russian people, not from > leftists in the West" And Andie replied, (unless I misunderstood what he was replying to): "A pure Stalinist line. Literally." Are you sure that is what you mean? You really mean that sovereign democracy is the essence of Stalinism? The very idea that governments are elected by the people is what you take to be the me ...

Document Size:	5720
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat May 12 07:38:33 PDT 2007

1014 [lbo-talk] Russia's economy -- rank: 1000

Yoshie wrote, elegantly as ever: "In any case, the principle of democracy is that the Russian government's legitimacy derives from the Russian people, not from leftists in the West" Yes (and the same is true of Iran, too). And also "What if the Russians prefer a less authoritarian state with a slower growth rate and lesser industrial base to a more authoritarian state with a faster growth rate and larger industrial base like China's? Maybe the Russians are not so enamoured with fa ...

Document Size:	6331
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 11 06:30:55 PDT 2007

1015 [lbo-talk] Russia's economy -- rank: 1000

Doug: "but who said that Russia is just a third world country being sucked dry of its oil?" Maybe I misread, but that did seem to be the tenor of Andie's contribution. "The argument is that Russia is not creating any new industries or investing in the capital infrastructure necessary for future prosperity. It's growing, but not developing." It is not developing new industries like China, but then China was an overwhelmingly peasant economy twenty years ago, and is industriali ...

Document Size:	5558
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri May 11 00:22:30 PDT 2007

1016 [lbo-talk] weird titled post -- rank: 1000

Sorry, just to say that that last post's title got mixed up, it should have been Russia's economy (now question of consent), rather than something about cartels, prices and Schoenbaum James

Document Size:	4695
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu May 10 13:36:04 PDT 2007

1017 [lbo-talk] living costs were pushed up by a law allowing cartels to fix prices in 1935 (Schoenbaum, 126) -- rank: 1000

Andie says "you can believe it or not, but living standards and GDP per capita, along with other measures of well-being increased in Germany significantly in the late 30s from the early years " GDP per capita is a good measure of output, but not of living standards. But in any event, I don't have to believe anyone, because the numbers are a matter of public record. Though weekly earnings rose by a quarter between 1932 and 1938, hourly rates were marginally down over the same period (Sc ...

Document Size:	7622
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu May 10 12:58:50 PDT 2007

1018 [lbo-talk] Russia's economy (now question of consent) -- rank: 1000

Andie: "The average life of the ordinary citizen ... in Hitler's Germany, was an improvement over the past." I don't believe that is true for the wage earners. There were longer hours, less wages, resoures were redirected from the production of consumer goods to armaments. Tens of thousands were prosecuted for breaching labour discipline, and thousands executed - all of which added to a climate of terror in the workplace. Also, notwithstanding the ideological commitment to the peasants ...

Document Size:	5863
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu May 10 10:18:01 PDT 2007

1019 [lbo-talk] Popular support for imperialism? (was Russia's economy) -- rank: 1000

Carrol says "no one in England or the U.S. or France did anything to stop Leopold". Assuming you mean King Leopold of Belgium, though the general point (that opposition to imperialism was not widespread) might be right, the specific point is not. Indeed it was quite common for radicals to attack the imperialist policies pursued by the economic rivals of their own nation-state. That is why we know as much as we do about King Leopold's brutalisation of the Congo - it was widely popularis ...

Document Size:	7955
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu May 10 03:16:22 PDT 2007

1020 [lbo-talk] Russia's economy -- rank: 1000

Plainly, the idea that Russia is just a third world country being sucked dry of its oil does not hold up, any more than that it is a direct rival to US blue chip companies. The truth must be somewhere inbetween. Andie N. says Russian society is not just authoritarian, but kleptocratic (and therefore doomed to subordination to the West). But 'kleptocratic' needs unpacking. On the one hand that appeals to the discourse which paints the Oligarchs as thieves raiding the workers' nationalised propert ...

Document Size:	6947
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed May 9 15:19:35 PDT 2007