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2461 GDP is unscientific and unfair for poor people. -- rank: 1000

In message <000201bef1e4$cb5f23c0$88685dcb at juchang>, chang <chang at public .shenzhen.cngb.com> writes >Stephen E Philion, >Do you agree that GDP is unscientific and unfair for poor people? > >Sincerely, >Ju-chang He I don't think I agree. It's not the form of economic measurement that is disadvantageous for poor people, it's the fact of production for profit. Changing the form of measurement would not change the fact of exploitation, it would only disguise the real ...

Document Size:	6948
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Sun Aug 29 02:49:55 PDT 1999

2462 software as capital -- rank: 1000

In message <v02130502630bdb4042ef@[128.112.71.62]>, Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> writes >What are to make of software/IT growth as a percentage of total business >investment? A while ago there was a lot of research on the impact of computers on productivity which said that it was negligible. Thomas Landauer of Bell laboratories said that companies expenditure on new technology was essentially wasteful: 'computers have been consumer products not capital go ...

Document Size:	5454
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Sun Aug 29 01:27:51 PDT 1999

2463 Religion and schools: a query -- rank: 1000

In message <199908281904.PAA05326 at panix7.panix.com>, gcf at panix.com writes >You would be hard put to find evidence of my detesting science. >On the contrary, in the very message you're quoting I acknowledged >its powers. I read this as a little ironic: 'which can tell us how to vaporize great cities in the twinkling or an eye or give us Frankenstein foods to eat'. > However, if the fundamentalists say that belief >should be free and someone else says it should be coerc ...

Document Size:	6448
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 28 12:49:54 PDT 1999

2464 Religion and schools: a query -- rank: 1000

In message <199908281625.MAA03512 at panix7.panix.com>, gcf at panix.com writes >If the Left is the side of liberty and equality, as opposed >to the side of authority, power, private wealth, status, and >order -- the Right -- then the it seems to me it's the role >of the Left to defend the freedom of ordinary people to >think and believe what they wish. If that's creationism or >the Great Turtle, so be it. Science, which can tell us how >to vaporize great cities in t ...

Document Size:	7631
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 28 11:25:36 PDT 1999

2465 Planning, Market & Unemployment -- rank: 1000

In message <v04210105b3eda931c1c9@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes >Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > >>planning plain and simple > >What's plain and simple about planning? Maybe the way to look at this is the wrong way around. Rather than trying to think of planning as an addition to creative activity, we ought to ask how it was that the planning element of work is suppressed. Work after all is conscious application of endeavour. Most work is a ...

Document Size:	9456
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 28 11:25:02 PDT 1999

2466 Planning, Market & Unemployment -- rank: 1000

In message <199908280143.VAA12241 at fn3.freenet.tlh.fl.us>, Michael Hoover <hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us> writes >Soviet central planning system certainly mobilized human (and natural) >resources for rapid industrialization. Maximum investment was >channeled into heavy industry (steel, iron, coal, electric power, >machine building, and military). A kind of permanent war-time >economy, Soviet economic mobilization was not directed to fulfiling >individual consumer de ...

Document Size:	8569
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 28 01:43:32 PDT 1999

2467 Religion and schools: a query -- rank: 1000

At school in West Yorkshire in the 1970s I insisted upon my rights as an atheist not to sing hymns or say the Lord's Prayer, and, after some threats from the deputy head, was excluded from school assembly. I sat in an empty maths class with five Muslim boys, and we were ushered into the back of the hall for the announcements. We also had Religious Education lessons, but RE teachers were often the most hippyish of the lot, teaching us about every religion but Christianity, out of plain embarrassm ...

Document Size:	6476
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Sat Aug 28 01:50:56 PDT 1999

2468 Gore: creationism OK -- rank: 1000

In message <000a01bef0bb$a381dca0$f4f48482 at nsn2>, Nathan Newman <nathan.newman at yale.edu> writes >Most people are profoundly ignorant of OTHER religions, which breeds >ignorance and suspicion. Having travelled in Jerusalem this summer where >religious belief and ignorance mix in all sorts of fascinating ways >(especially among American or other English-speaking tourists I met), it >just reinforced that sense. I missed Nathan in Jerusalem this summer, and though I ...

Document Size:	5303
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 27 14:34:58 PDT 1999

2469 Gore: creationism OK -- rank: 1000

In message <3.0.6.32.19990827123052.00b3a8f0 at jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu>, Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> writes >At 11:34 AM 8/27/99 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: >>Max B. Sawicky wrote: >> >>>The exclusion of religion from public education, by which >>>I do NOT mean from science courses, has gone >>>way overboard, leading to profound ignorance of it. I don't >>>think this is a good thing. This is the most important point - that scien ...

Document Size:	5830
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 27 12:38:32 PDT 1999

2470 replies to Rakesh, Wojtek, Charles, Chris Anarchism / Marxism debates -- rank: 1000

In message <37C6CF28.DC74C401 at igc.org>, Roger Odisio <rodisio at igc.org> writes >Marx said that social subsistence needs are commonly known. And, because those >needs were so basic in his time, this was largely true. With, for example, the >proliferation of consumer goods, determining needs is now a much more difficult >task. This is such hogwash. Like any price, the price of labour power is not reckoned by some rational planning process, but established through exc ...

Document Size:	8734
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 27 11:02:10 PDT 1999

2471 v and the value of labor power -- rank: 1000

In message <v04210120b3eb7b34274f@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes >Yeah, but there's a lot of slippage in defining the reproduction of >labor power. For the typical First World worker it includes a car and >a TV; for a Mexican worker (who may be employed by Ford or Sony), it >includes a house made of sheet metal, plastic sheeting, and >cardboard. A generation ago, the unit reproduced was said to be the >"family"; now it's pret ...

Document Size:	10491
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 27 00:53:50 PDT 1999

2472 planning (and the side issue of nazism) - was lots of other silly headers -- rank: 1000

In message <010c01beefed$dbd96e20$ace13ecb at rcollins>, rc-am <rcollins at netlink.com.au> writes >jim: > >>I'd suggest, no, clearly, the state, being itself an expression of >alienated human relations, could hardly be an instrument of their >supercession. The state is important as an instrument for the >suppression of the capitalist class, but exhausts its positive role in >that.< > >so a two-step, then. So, a meaningless comment, then > but how, ...

Document Size:	8318
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 26 16:06:55 PDT 1999

2473 replies to Rakesh, Wojtek, Charles, Chris Anarchism / Marxism debates -- rank: 1000

Roger seems to be talking a different language. Do working people have some other source of income from which they meet their needs than wages? There is benefits, but this is really negligible. Roger talks as if the value of labour power were some ideal standard with no bearing upon real life. He talks as if it were "a number created by analysts". Who knows what he is talking about. Marx's view is that the value of labour power is a real and objective magnitude. The workers' subsist on ...

Document Size:	8241
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 26 15:27:34 PDT 1999

2474 RIP, GM organisms? -- rank: 1000

In message <B03898593BC0D011A5B50060973D0F5C0113CC9B at rlm- exch1.rlmnet.com>, Carl Remick <cremick at rlmnet.com> writes >[Angela kindly alerted me to the following Guardian story offlist. >Europe's biggest bank has advised the world's largest investors to sell >their shares in leading companies involved in the development of >genetically modified organisms because consumers do not want to buy >their products. Yes, indeed. I agree with Carl. This is a milestone. It s ...

Document Size:	5247
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 26 06:17:06 PDT 1999

2475 v and the value of labor power [was Re: Immiseration: Jim H] -- rank: 1000

In message <37C3265C.192215A4 at igc.org>, Roger Odisio <rodisio at igc.org> writes >Labor power does NOT sell at its value, Rakesh. It sells at a wage, >which has >little to do with its value. Roger has gone barmy again. He really thinks that the price of something has little to do with its value? Is the value of labour power, then an entirely ideal sum that has no manifestation in reality? The value of labour power is the principle determinant of the wage. All other fluct ...

Document Size:	5449
Author:	Jim heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 26 06:21:58 PDT 1999