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1831 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

In message <F82T0apMHi0SYNIPukg00002dc0 at hotmail.com>, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> writes >>It is cheap sentimentalism to beat your breast over how much the US >>consumes if you are not prepared to advance a practical programme that >>calls for a wholescale reduction in US living standards. >> >>-- >>James Heartfield > >Perhaps we can leave that to the magic of the marketplace, JH, old sport. >Let's see what this incipient re ...

Document Size:	5145
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 13 01:00:07 PDT 2001

1832 Scarcity, Needs and the 'Natural Economy' in Marx -- rank: 1000

In message <12.b293ff9.28066eee at aol.com>, LeoCasey at aol.com writes > In this passage -- and completely contrary to what James Heartfield > would > have us believe about Marx on the subject -- one can find Marx's > equivalent > of Rousseau's 'false' needs of civil society, as well as the link > between > those 'false' needs and the phenomenon of alienation. I can see how Leo might interpret the passage quoted as above. The following two passage ...

Document Size:	10563
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Apr 12 02:00:37 PDT 2001

1833 primitive communism? -- rank: 1000

In message <a05010418b6fa9c0a93c1@[10.0.1.7]>, Brad DeLong <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> writes, questioning the proposition >>In his intro to the >>Formen, Hobsbawm notes that Marx "found himself increasingly appalled" by the >>inhumanity of capitalism and that M and E "always admired the positive social >>values embodied, in however backward form, in the primitive community"... > Brad: >Illiteracy? Patriarchy? Serfdom? Antisemitism? ...

Document Size:	15020
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Apr 12 01:53:57 PDT 2001

1834 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

In message <20010411095020.A8805 at panix.com>, Gordon Fitch <gcf at panix.com> writes, quoting Marx, and interpreting him as follows: >In effect, then, technology, in presenting us with new >things, satisfies no deep longing or important desire, >generally speaking. We do not miss what we never had. >Before we can experience the deep desire, we must first >become addicted to the substance which occasions it. Or >as Uncle Karl was just quoted in this mailing list, ...

Document Size:	5490
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Apr 11 08:52:31 PDT 2001

1835 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

In message <p0501040eb6f8d6163a49@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes >Yes, scientists are notable for their phantasmic projections, while >those who claim there's nothing to worry about are firmly in touch >with the reality principle. Assuming this to be ironic, wouldn't you agree that the consensus amongst scientists in the period 1900-1940 that humanity was divided into biological races, hierarchically organised, was a phantasmic projection of r ...

Document Size:	5926
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Apr 10 13:18:40 PDT 2001

1836 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

In message <p05010414b6f8e43e8e78@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes >But how completely can you separate "technology, medicine, knowledge, >etc." from the modes of social organization - large-scale >enterprise, to name just one - that make it possible? And how can you >lift the bits you like from non- or precapitalist societies? Isn't it >fetishizing both technology and social organization to treat them as >so easily separable ...

Document Size:	6332
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Apr 10 13:05:18 PDT 2001

1837 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

Yes, In message <95A711A70065D111B58C00609451555C0C118978 at UMKC-MAIL02>, Forstater, Mathew <ForstaterM at umkc.edu> writes >the evidence >concerning famines, e.g., shows that scarcity was not the cause, rather socially >and politically determined distributional issues are what are at bottom. The >idea of "scarcity" is used to excuse all kinds of unnecessary suffering and >problems and policies. and isn't the obvious conclusion to this that the imagined 'sc ...

Document Size:	6800
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Apr 10 01:00:41 PDT 2001

1838 Euro-court outlaws criticism of EU -- rank: 1000

I've met Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, son of the celebrated anthropologist, who though definitely Tory is not a naturally dishonest man. Certainly the article puts a spin on the judgement (by way of an exaggerated drawing out of the consequences), but nonetheless it is a pretty poor judgement, that indicates the authoritarian instincts of the Commission as regards democratic scrutiny. The British government, too, often hides behind employment law in the suppression of whistle-blowers like Peter Wrig ...

Document Size:	8095
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 9 03:57:55 PDT 2001

1839 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

In message <003e01c0c0b7$fb832d00$2a20aace at oemcomputer>, Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net> writes >New book, could be illuminating,"Mao's War Against Nature >Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China, " >by Shapiro, Judith > > Maoist China provides an example of extreme human >interference in the natural world in an era in which human relationships >were also unusually distorted. >Judith Shapiro teaches environmental politics at ...

Document Size:	6414
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 9 00:33:20 PDT 2001

1840 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

In message <p0501040cb6f6751805df@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes in reply to Brad's >>But--from the perspective of any previous millennium--we do live on >>Big Rock Candy Mountain... > >But does it feel that way? There's no evidence that increases in >wealth, beyond a certain minimum, make people happier (or lead them >to report themselves as being happier). There's no satisfaction in >satisfaction, as Freud put it. I'm not s ...

Document Size:	5709
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 8 17:44:22 PDT 2001

1841 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

In message <a05010407b6f6266415ec@[10.0.1.2]>, Brad DeLong <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> writes >But--from the perspective of any previous millennium--we do live on >Big Rock Candy Mountain... I remember a while ago posting some statistics showing that average world life expectancy was rising, infant mortality falling, literacy rising, and that many diseases that had been killers were under control. Surprisingly, a met a storm of protest, as though some subscribers were disappo ...

Document Size:	5678
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 8 08:04:37 PDT 2001

1842 UK Martial Law, Milosevic -- rank: 1000

The WEEK ending 8 April 2001 Martial law? No thanks In Britain in the 1970s, leading figures in the British establishment prepared plans to institute martial law, while the army did take control of the six counties of northern Ireland. This week Conservative leader William Hague demanded that the military be given full operational control of the foot and mouth crisis, only to be snubbed by Brigadier Alex Birtwistle, who said 'I don't want to lead this operation' and added that the army were very ...

Document Size:	8720
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 8 03:50:03 PDT 2001

1843 Rimbaud & the Paris Commune (was Re: Baudelaire on the Flaneur) -- rank: 1000

According to Graham Robb's rather excellent biog. he missed the main event, but was swept up by a variety of communards, whom Verlaine introduced him too. Rimbaud did attend meetings of the Working Men's International, probably including some of Dr Marx's lectures, drunk, snogging Verlaine in the back row. Robb's bio. does good work on his work as arms trader and imperialist in Ethiopia, too. I'm just reading season in hell, quite magnificent. In message <p0500190db6f401b03e6b@[140.254.114.19 ...

Document Size:	6096
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 6 22:52:26 PDT 2001

1844 Scarcity -- rank: 1000

In message <p0500191bb6f4544fa9e5@[140.254.114.190]>, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes >>>Could you tell us why you think scarcity is inescapable? Justin, wisely: >>We will never live on the Great Rock Candy Mountain, where roast >>chickens grow on trees and fish jump into our frying pans. In the >>background there are two great facts: one is the absolute material >>limit on certain resources--oil, coal, gas, fresh water, arable >&g ...

Document Size:	7532
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 6 23:06:08 PDT 2001

1845 Global Warming -- rank: 1000

In message <5.0.2.1.2.20010406165646.021b3da0 at mail.jps.net>, Patrick Ellis <patricke at jps.net> writes In response to my >>No, I'm sure that capitalism does not need any help ruining the economy, >>but environmentalism might be providing an intellectual rationalisation >>of that. > >Which of course is why the most capitalist nation in the world refuses to >grapple with the most important environmental issue we face? Eh? European countries attacking the ...

Document Size:	8118
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Apr 7 00:08:16 PDT 2001