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376 [lbo-talk] The Nation and brain death -- rank: 1000

Bhaskar Sunkara writes about a 'peculiar brand of "liberal radicalism" unique to the United States. Specifically, I mean Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, and even Gore Vidal in his prime, Alexander Cockburn, et all (not sure if Cockburn belongs).' And wouldn't you go back to I.F. Stone, Lillian Hellman, and a couple more expatriate Brits, Christopher Hitchens (he wasn't always a neo-con) and Jessice Mitford? Bhaskar: 'Naomi Klein thinks the left's history in the 1930s was a tremendous succ ...

Document Size:	5102
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 22 00:43:08 PST 2010

377 [lbo-talk] The Nation and brain death -- rank: 1000

Jesse Lemisch writes 'sounds just like Katha Pollitt and Todd Gitlin' - I like what I've read of Katha Pollitt, and of Todd Gitlin. Is that bad?

Document Size:	4712
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Feb 21 14:04:15 PST 2010

378 [lbo-talk] Fascism, right-wing populism, and contemporary research -- rank: 1000

Doug: 'This use of the word "fascism" is mystifyingly promiscuous.' Hear, hear. Yes indeed, and more than that. It is hopelessly unserious. Why would you bandy about this fighting talk if you were not willing to take up the fight? If you really thought that fascism was on the rise, wouldn't you be going round and breaking up their meetings? Picking fights in the street? When the National Front was taking off in Britain in the late 1970s and 1980s, we marched against them, and organised ...

Document Size:	5832
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Feb 21 13:57:45 PST 2010

379 [lbo-talk] questions for the fascist-watchers -- rank: 1000

On relations between tea-partiers, Republicans and Democrats - wouldn't you be tempted to read this flowering of activism as a sign of the disintegration of the Republican party's official organisation. Rather like the Obama campaign, the key to moving these groups is to operate outside of the established structures. Their organisation is looser and more ad hoc. Both the Obama networkers and the Tea-Partiers deal in a 'new broom' ideology, the fantasy (as one Hillary supporter said to me) of a t ...

Document Size:	5541
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Feb 21 03:50:28 PST 2010

380 [lbo-talk] Fascism, right-wing populism, and contemporary research +++ -- rank: 1000

Chris writes: 'BTW, am I the only person who has noted the radical shift in Anglophone media coverage of Ukraine in the last few years?' Well, in this part of the Anglosphere, they have just shut up about it. Most coverage is along the lines of 'ironically, now it is Moscow's favourite who is doing better' - but explanations as to the turnaround are non-existent, and still less so what the basis is for Moscow's and the EUs preferences. I see the election monitors all gave the result a clean bill ...

Document Size:	5413
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Feb 21 00:14:47 PST 2010

381 [lbo-talk] Fascism, right-wing populism, and contemporary research -- rank: 1000

Ted writes 'Marx's understanding of the requirements for the development of enlightenment is mistaken. Among other things, superstition and prejudice are much more securely anchored than he imagined and so, therefore, are despotic political forms such as those in which large numbers of individuals remain open to demagogic appeals.' which is to make two errors, the first to understate Marx's argument that capitalism creates its own superstitions ('commodity _fetishism_' he wrote, adapting Charle ...

Document Size:	5652
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Feb 20 16:50:43 PST 2010

382 [lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification) ADDENDUM -- rank: 1000

Mike writes, perceptively 'To my way of thinking, this quote could also be used to summarise Marx's defense of the labour theory of value.' Yes, indeed. The rest of the letter makes it clear that Marx is explaining to Kugelmann that the demand to 'prove' the labour theory of value is pointless, it is, he says, obvious from the fact that all societies need to distribute labour, and this society achieves it through exchange.

Document Size:	5116
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Feb 20 08:57:35 PST 2010

383 [lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification) -- rank: 1000

SA writes 'Didn't Descartes once posit the idea of an email list created by a malin génie where it turns out everyone on the list is Rakesh except for you?' Hahaha ... still not sure that that one isn't true. Which reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, when it turns out that every member of the Anarchist Central Committee (don't ask) is a police spy, each unaware of the others' hidden identities, carefully plotting to overthrow the state, the better to infiltrate the Anarchi ...

Document Size:	5101
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 17 13:33:17 PST 2010

384 [lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification) ADDENDUM -- rank: 1000

Ted: 'If you mean that the "division of labour" in the sense of the specialization of individuals to specific activities' Plainly, that is not the meaning of 'division of labour'. The necessity for a 'division of labour' arises in the first instance, from the plurality of human needs, and the plurality of natural resources. At any one point in time, it is not possible for all people to do the same thing, or indeed for them as a totality to do things that do not correspond to the reali ...

Document Size:	6423
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 17 13:28:13 PST 2010

385 [lbo-talk] who are the Teabaggers? -- rank: 1000

Sean Collins writes: 'it is very questionable how much of a 'movement' the Tea Party is - it only managed to get 600 people to its convention and most of them appeared to be over 50.' 'Palin: if she didn't exist, they'd have to invent her', http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8088/

Document Size:	4929
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 17 13:27:12 PST 2010

386 [lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification) ADDENDUM -- rank: 1000

Ted writes: '"Division of labour" in the sense of "distributing social labour in definite proportions" among the different instrumental activities that constitute "the realm of natural necessity" isn't what's meant by "division of labour" in the passages I quoted.' No, indeed, it is not, in fact if you look closely at the passages you quote Marx writes 'abolition of the *old* division of labour' using the qualification 'old' before 'division of labour', me ...

Document Size:	6096
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 17 10:58:50 PST 2010

387 [lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification) -- rank: 1000

> that's exactly what I thought too. argumentative + obsession about > labor theory of value = rakesh Well, maybe, but it is hardly a conclusive chain of reasoning, applying to scores if not hundreds of marxists

Document Size:	4855
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 17 07:17:56 PST 2010

388 [lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification) ADDENDUM -- rank: 1000

This is Marx, explaining that it is not possible to do away with the division of labour: 'Every child knows that a country which ceased to work, I will not say for a year but for a few months, would die. Every child knows toothat the mass of products corresponding to diferent needs require different and qualitatively determined measures of the total labour of society. That this necessity of distributing social labour in definite proportions cannot be done away with by the particular form of soci ...

Document Size:	5279
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 17 04:35:04 PST 2010

389 [lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification) ADDENDUM -- rank: 1000

Ted, of me, 'This is pretty much the opposite of what Marx claims.' I think that you have answered the question you thought you heard, not the one that was posed. I said that the factory offers up a technical division of labour that is rationally planned. As per Engels: 'In the midst of the old division of labor, grown up spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division of labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the factory; side by side wi ...

Document Size:	5947
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Feb 17 04:12:55 PST 2010

390 [lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification) ADDENDUM -- rank: 1000

SA: 'I tend to think it's the technical division of labor that would have to be abolished' So we could have an economy where everyone made the same thing? What? Televisions? Cloth? Bolognaise sauce? It is not possible to have a society without a division of labour. Marx's point was that the allocation of social labour under capitalism was attained spontaneously through the exchange of commodities, but that a division of labour could be organised along more rational lines, planned even. One of hi ...

Document Size:	5458
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Feb 16 15:41:39 PST 2010