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211 [lbo-talk] Seymour Drescher and the Decline of the West Indian planters -- rank: 1000

Does anyone have a good answer to Seymour Drescher's 'Econocide' (1977)? Drescher takes issue with Eric Williams' Marx-inspired argument that slavery was abolished in the British colonies because it was already in economic decline. Drescher, who thinks that abolition was a moral choice that cost the British Empire dearly in economic terms uses Schumpeter's estimates of UK economy to show that, on the contrary, the West Indian plantocracy was in rude health and expanding. (There is a recent book ...

Document Size:	5517
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Sep 23 07:02:52 PDT 2010

212 [lbo-talk] European welfare state -- rank: 1000

'The question is German performance on economic inequality, poverty rates, and social spending indices versus the United States. ' Really? That's the question? If so, it's a bad question. The conditions of welfare are dependent upon the dynamism of accumulation, not the dynamism of accumulation dependent on welfare. Germany has a lower gini coefficient because it has high growth rates, higher wages (and also can spend more on welfare). (It also has a very exclusive labour market, dependent on st ...

Document Size:	5046
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Sep 20 16:24:52 PDT 2010

213 [lbo-talk] the CFR worries about decline -- rank: 1000

The difficulty of assessing US power is a real paradox, not just a difference of opinion. The model of 'decline relative to other powers' does not properly capture the dynamic at work. The US is both pre-eminent in the world, and at the same time, paralysed by its own insecurities. It is not the Taliban, the 'resistance' in Iraq, Ahmadinejad or Chavez that are causing the US to hesitate and falter - rather they are only taking advantage of America's loss of confidence. There is no real challenge ...

Document Size:	5163
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Sep 11 00:13:42 PDT 2010

214 [lbo-talk] Austreity in the face of weakness -- rank: 1000

Doug, to Patrick: 'I really don't see how relying on capitalism to blow a gasket - repeatedly predicting it, rejoicing when it seems to be happening, expressing regret when it's revealed to be a false alarm - demonstrates a great helping of forward vision.' Or as Paul Mattick mocked: 'For some of his disciples the "law of value" . seems to assure the breakdown of capitalism ...Marx's critique of political economy became the ideology of the inevitability of socialism.' ('Value Theory an ...

Document Size:	5138
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Sep 8 05:40:40 PDT 2010

215 [lbo-talk] blog post: a nation in decline, part 2: signs of distress -- rank: 1000

'IMHO, the most interesting political innovation since the creation of the UN is the creation of the EU - regardless of what one may think of certain EU policies. I mean, the EU is the first ever created confederacy of independent states - and formed by mutual consensus of all participants rather than by a hegemonic force. Not seeing the innovative character of that development smacks of British insularism and Europhobia :).' There is innovation in the EU, and I would not and do not dismiss Eu ...

Document Size:	5547
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Sep 7 09:52:58 PDT 2010

216 [lbo-talk] blog post: a nation in decline, part 2: signs of distress -- rank: 1000

Bhaskar takes issue with Kathryn Bigelow, but I remain a fan of Strange Days (?) and quite liked the Hurt Locker. Chuck G. asks 'So, James give your own views of Hobbes---if you think they are representative of a liberal-left view in UK academic circles.' Well, I don't think I am representative of such. Contemporary liberal thinking would be down on Hobbes, in much the same way as it is down on the (rather later figure of) A.V. Dicey (see Tony Wright's book Citizens or Subjects, for eg). Myself ...

Document Size:	6273
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Sep 6 16:28:21 PDT 2010

217 [lbo-talk] Anarchists (was blog post: a nation in decline, part 2: signs of distress) -- rank: 1000

Chuck Munson writes: 'The classic anarchists were pretty effective at what they were doing.' Blowing people up, mostly: "Enough of organisation," thundered Luigi Parmeggiani's L'Internationale in London in 1892, "let's busy ourselves with chemistry and manufacture: bombs, dynamite and other explosives are far more capable than rifles and 'barricades' of destroying the present state of things, and above all to save our precious blood" (Alex Butterworth, 309). But decidedly not ...

Document Size:	7550
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Sep 6 16:13:52 PDT 2010

218 [lbo-talk] blog post: a nation in decline, part 2: signs of distress -- rank: 1000

Angelus Novus wrote: ...Spain Rodriguez Oh yes: http://www.bookpalace.com/acatalog/Home_Spain_Rodriguez_Art_816.html And while we are on it Art Spiegelman Wally Wood http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/lacru/_p/vrici/disney_memorial_orgy.png Robert Williams http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=259112&l=3217a9c275&id=756513153 and Steve Ditko, too http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=407932&l=e6989486ba&id=756513153

Document Size:	5666
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Sep 5 16:18:12 PDT 2010

219 [lbo-talk] blog post: a nation in decline, part 2: signs of distress -- rank: 1000

US-based innovations? TV: Mad Men, the Wire, Sopranos Film: Charlie Kaufman, Tim Burton, Kathryn Bigelow, Todd Solondz Literature: Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers and McSweeney's, Don De Lillo A black presidency, and the networking-based campaign that got it going (admittedly the second part owes something to S. Korea's) Facebook, Twitter, and social networking sites The Tea Party (OK, so you don't like it, but it is still an important innovation) The campaign against the Iraq war Seattle and the ...

Document Size:	5307
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Sep 5 14:01:22 PDT 2010

220 [lbo-talk] blog post: a nation in decline, part 2: signs of distress -- rank: 1000

Dennis and Chuck dismiss the US and all its works. But that seems a bit eccentric to me. The US is still the most productive country in the world (using such simple metrics as labour productivity, output and so on). Yes, some exciting things are happening in China, India and Brazil, and even in sleepy Europe - but America is still the most important country in the world economy. More than that, it is still one of the places where the most interesting cultural, intellectual, scientific and politi ...

Document Size:	6222
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Sep 5 12:14:30 PDT 2010

221 [lbo-talk] Tea Party Numbers (and Chomsky's citation of polls) -- rank: 1000

Doug: 'Ours [capitalists of the 1960s] tolerated such them [Keynesian arrangements] because they thought they had no choice. By the 1970s, they'd reached the breaking point, and launched a war.' It's a question of interpretation, I guess. For some, no doubt, the whole 'statist' interlude was an insult to be suffered - rather like the Evelyn Waugh character who wondered, after the end of the Second World War, why it was still necessary for anyone to work for the government. But I think there were ...

Document Size:	6153
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Sep 3 14:47:05 PDT 2010

222 [lbo-talk] Tea Party Numbers (and Chomsky's citation of polls) -- rank: 1000

Doug to Eric: 'It's why capital hates Keynesian arrangements' No, I don't think so. The capitalists of the 1960s favoured such Keynesian arrangements, which seemed to correspond to the secular expansion of capitalism at that time. I don't know what was happening in America, but in Britain we had a pointedly Keynesian government from 1997 to this May, which was committed to counter-cyclical spending. The involvement of the state in private industry was extraordinary. (What Tony Blair's and Gordon ...

Document Size:	5378
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Sep 3 09:52:31 PDT 2010

223 [lbo-talk] Austerity In The Face Of Weakness -- rank: 1000

Patrick chides Doug for failing to 'notice a crisis was coming down on your head within weeks' but then adds that in 'the last 20 years, crisis has been rather persistent'. But if it was already there, then it would not be 'coming down on your head' it would be here. It is the ABC not of Marxism, but of the English language, that (as Marx writes in TSV) 'there are no permanent crises'. Crisis means eruptive event, by definition, a crisis cannot be prolonged. If it is the ordinary state of affai ...

Document Size:	6585
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Sep 3 09:44:17 PDT 2010

224 [lbo-talk] Austerity In The Face Of Weakness -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond: 'There was much confusion in the ranks of some Marxists (names available upon request) who believed that a revival of superficial profitability (failing to discount financial fluff) from the mid-1980s through 2007 meant there was no 'crisis' in the Marxian sense. Phew, did they get that wrong.' There was a lot of guff from some Marxists to the effect that the financial spasm in 2008 was finally realisation of the promised collapse of capitalism. I am tempted to say, 'Phew, did th ...

Document Size:	5612
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Sep 1 02:35:07 PDT 2010

225 [lbo-talk] Blixa Bargeld Reads Hornbach -- rank: 1000

Mike Beggs posted (but didn't write?) this, which I think is rather wrong: 'For whom was the Seventies a period of crisis? As far as I can make out, it wasn?t a crisis for the unions, it wasn?t a crisis for the poor, it wasn?t a crisis for workers, it wasn?t a crisis for the young, it wasn?t even a crisis for business, or if it was, this was as much due to rapacious new Neo-Liberal asset strippers like James Goldsmith and various stock market bubbles as it was ?the English disease?. It wasn?t a ...

Document Size:	7082
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Oct 28 08:57:45 PDT 2010