Search LBO-Talk Archives

1066 [lbo-talk] Marxists who take lands from peasants and shoot them -- rank: 1000

"Is it me or Marxists who take lands from peasants and shoot them when they resist, for the purpose of plain and simple capitalist development (not even in the name of socialism, national security, etc.), who are hostile to Marxism? " I was a bit confused by this, Yoshie. Are you talking about China? Or maybe Robert Mugabe? Where are these Marxists who are dispossessing the peasants? I was rather under the impression that there were no Marxist regimes or mass movements around. All the ...

Document Size:	6255
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 19 01:06:21 PDT 2007

1067 [lbo-talk] Zizek: "Where to look for revolutionary potential?" -- rank: 1000

Yoshie writes: "You mean wage workers in the formal sector, especially in the North, ...this minority of the global labor force" Minority, but not such a small one. Old figures, but in 1997 the ILO reckoned that 23 per cent of the industrial workforce was in Europe, a further 6 per cent in the U.S. (= 29 per cent) Of the total workforce 1995 Europe was 12.9% (354m), US 5.4% (149m) = 18.3 per cent (503m). Bearing in mind 1. that recent years have seen big employment growth in the US and ...

Document Size:	6452
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Mar 18 16:45:08 PDT 2007

1068 [lbo-talk] Zizek's revolutionary subject -- rank: 1000

On Zizek's revolutionary subject. I think he's asking the wrong questions. Just because there is a hole in the Marxist theory of social revolution, it does not follow that it has to be filled. It is uncomfortable to think that we are not in a time of social revolution, but discomfort is no guide to thinking. It strikes me that neither the symbolic analysts, nor the slum dwellers show much sign of universality. In the future, who can say? But now. No.

Document Size:	5099
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Mar 18 09:30:52 PDT 2007

1069 [lbo-talk] Comrades and Brothers in Egypt -- rank: 1000

Yoshie, thanks for this, it made me feel a lot better about my relation to God: "An Islamic guide to simple living "Eat and drink, but not to excess" (Qur'an, 20:81) Limit consumption. Try not to buy things you do not need and thing about the environmental impact of what you buy ... Reuse and recycle. Even our waste items can do some good to someone. ... Be Generous and Grateful. Instead of wasting money on surplus goods give it away as "sadaqah" (charity) to the poor. T ...

Document Size:	5191
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 14 08:19:36 PDT 2007

1070 [lbo-talk] Comrades and Brothers: Islamists and Socialists in Egypt -- rank: 1000

Yoshie writes: "An ex-Muslim "insurgency" is like an "insurgency" of anticommunists who are former Communists. " Wouldn't it be more true to say 'A Muslim "insurgency" is like an "insurgency" of anticommunists who are former Communists.' I agree with you, though, when you say: "Much of ambivalent attitude toward Marxist theory, especially in West Asia and North Africa, comes from a very mixed legacy of foreign policy of Soviet Socialism and ...

Document Size:	6774
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 14 07:45:49 PDT 2007

1071 [lbo-talk] Comrades and Brothers: Islamists and Socialists in Egypt -- rank: 1000

When I read the Islamist literature that was circulating at the London School of Economics, much of it had clearly been written by people who had an extensive knowledge of Marxist and socialist ideas, but had chosen to re-present them in Islamic form. All the concepts like underdevelopment, national oppression were phrased in ways that recalled the literature of the soviet-influenced Communist Parties, but under a veneer of Islamism. I have been teaching on a development Studies module at Westmi ...

Document Size:	5972
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 14 02:32:04 PDT 2007

1072 [lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics Get the Blame -- rank: 1000

Yoshie > We won't run out of oil, but we can very well run out of time to > prevent the worst climate disasters if Hansen is correct. That is > especially the case since there is no Left to speak of in the USA, the > US working class are mostly politically inactive Discourse analysis of the above would suggest that <climate disaster> has replaced <economic catastrophe> in the eschatology of the left, so that now we must take to action to save the planet, rather than to ...

Document Size:	5780
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 14 02:21:40 PDT 2007

1073 [lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico... -- rank: 1000

Yoshie, I would not go overboard dismissing the technological questions altogether. There are technological issues. They are just different from the political ones. If I were to put in marxist terminology, I would say that capitalist reproduction is at the same time the reproduction of the technological basis of the means of life - (that is why, in volume two of capital, marx insists that there is at any one moment a given proportionality between the sectors creating consumption goods and produc ...

Document Size:	7077
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 12 14:43:15 PDT 2007

1074 [lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics get the Blame -- rank: 1000

Wojtek writes "To me, the Panglossian notion of infinite progress is as idiotic and annoying, as doomsaying. These two sides of the simpleton's mind unable to see the world in more than one dimension." But you should read more closely. I quoted William Cole as saying that the limits to growth confronted in the 1970s were not resource limits, but social restraints. He quite specifically does not say that resources are infinite, only that the shortages of the 1970s were not a manifestati ...

Document Size:	6180
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Mar 11 15:20:26 PDT 2007

1075 [lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics get the Blame -- rank: 1000

Yoshie writes: > What looks like the problem of "peak oil" to some is in reality the > political problem of mismatch between who has oil and who has > investment capital and advanced technology, in the context of rising > domestic oil consumption on the part of oil producers, NOT a > geological problem of running out of recoverable oil (which we WON'T > any time soon). When the original doomsayers' manual Limits to Growth was published, Sussex University scientist Wil ...

Document Size:	6242
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Mar 10 23:53:32 PST 2007

1076 [lbo-talk] South Africa discussion at NYC's Left Forum tomorrow, 5pm -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond writes: "Don't miss the Left Forum at Cooper Union if you're in NYC this weekend, especially our excellent comrades talking SA politics at 5pm on Saturday." It is good to see internationalism at work. I am glad the comrades were not put off by environmental writer George Monbiot's absurd edict: "Global warming means that flying across the Atlantic is now as unacceptable as child abuse" (Guardian, 29 July 1999).

Document Size:	5228
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Mar 9 06:42:53 PST 2007

1077 [lbo-talk] fat lazy Americans -- rank: 1000

Carl writes "IMO the US has a fat, lazy-minded, self-indulgent population because it serves the interests of capitalism as a consumer society to make it so." To which opinion you are no doubt entitled, but that would be reinforcing my argument that working class consumption in the US has not been squeezed as much, and hours not as stretched as much as is being said - though I don't think I would put it in quite the same terms.

Document Size:	4900
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 7 14:49:25 PST 2007

1078 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

Wojtek asks: "What is the point that you are trying to argue? That the world on average is better of today than it was 50 years ago, and still better than 500 years ago." Yes, actually, that was precisely the point that I was trying to make. I had not thought that it was so contentious. So I was surprised when Andie Nachborgen disagreed, saying: "it's just untrue to say we are better off, lots better off, than we were a generation ago, or that the secular tendencies are to make u ...

Document Size:	6352
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 7 14:45:18 PST 2007

1079 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

Carl Remick takes a pop at me, since I am in trouble for saying that Americans are not starving. But what does Carl say about the impoverished yanks? Strangely, Carl does not seem to give much credence to the idea that Americans are hard done by, at least not those in the Red States: "Since the Red States are the locus of the most virulent strains of the obesity epidemic, it occurs to me it might be feasible to leverage this self-destructive gluttony by encouraging Red Staters to stuff t ...

Document Size:	6089
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 7 12:38:30 PST 2007

1080 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

Joanna lauds Doug "Thanks for the due diligence in replying to James dishonest posts." But how so dishonest, Joanna? Doug says my comparison of 1975 with 2007 is unfair because 1975 was the low point of a recession. But it was he who introduced 1973 as the high point of working class purchasing power. If you could tell me what was the low point of the recession in the '00s then perhaps I could make a fairer comparison. I had thought that Andie and Doug were saying that living condition ...

Document Size:	8393
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 7 11:56:15 PST 2007