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451 [lbo-talk] In the American Grain -- rank: 1000

The signifying phrase 'hard working people and their families' (shorthanded to 'hardworking families) features a lot in Labour Party election material here. Of course, the 'dignity of labour' was a theme of English socialism since the Chartists. Communist Joe Jacobs, in his autobiography Out of the Ghetto says it was basic sense for agitators that if you wanted to be taken seriously by your workmates you would have to make sure that not only were you the most radical in the workshop, but also th ...

Document Size:	6205
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 18 01:53:55 PDT 2010

452 [lbo-talk] Agricultural productivity (was Thatcherism) -- rank: 1000

Chris Doss writes: 'I don't know if the math on this works out.' I got the one in seven figure from Lester Brown, but it seems to stand up. In 1900 US workforce was 24 million (http://www.bls.gov/opub/rtaw/pdf/intro.pdf )and the agricultural workforce 38 per cent of total (http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfarm4.htm), i.e. 9.12 million. The population was 75,994,266 so each of the nearly ten million agricultural workers would have to grow enough food for seven people for the populat ...

Document Size:	5489
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Apr 17 10:26:48 PDT 2010

453 [lbo-talk] agricultural productivity (was Thatcherism) -- rank: 1000

Shane and Alan think that Brad is wrong to point to increased agricultural productivity as a gain. They could not be more wrong. There are four billion + people living today - two out of every three in the world - who would not be, but for the gains in agricultural productivity over the last 110 years. An American farmer in 1900 fed seven people; today his great grandson feeds 96 people. World grain output rose from 400 million tons in 1900 to 1.9 billion tons in 1998. The spectre of soil exhaus ...

Document Size:	5767
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Apr 17 01:05:43 PDT 2010

454 [lbo-talk] Thatcherism -- rank: 1000

Richard Seymour writes: 'Were the Left socially and institutionally stronger, were there a revolutionary subject comparable to the proletariat of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it would be able to embrace change with less ambiguity and hesitation.' Which seems like an excellent point, but the further conclusions are wrong, and part of the problem, not the solution, or a self-fulfilling prophecy. 'The truth is that the Left has been forced by its weakness into a conservative position of ...

Document Size:	6478
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 16 16:09:53 PDT 2010

455 [lbo-talk] Thatcherism -- rank: 1000

It is not really true that post-Thatcher Britain is more liberal either economically or culturally, though some of the coordinates of repression have changed. *On the cultural front* Britain's legislation has become deeply authoritarian in many ways, though the target have changed. First, there is the astonishing rise in CCTV. I believe that Britain has more video surveillance than any other country. Then there are the innovations in legislation, like the Anti-Social Behaviour Order, and Communi ...

Document Size:	6537
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 16 12:34:06 PDT 2010

456 [lbo-talk] Thatcherism -- rank: 1000

Doug, quoting John Gray: 'Thatcher's economic revolution was meant to go along with something like a social restoration. Instead, it led to Britain as it is today, a society obsessed with the idea of personal self-realisation, more liberal in sexual matters, less monocultural and less class-bound, more insecure and more unequal.' She made a great play of mocking the idea of a job for life as outmoded, but then was surprised that the corollary of that was that there was no marriage for life, eith ...

Document Size:	5531
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 16 10:07:48 PDT 2010

457 [lbo-talk] On Witchcraft -- rank: 1000

Chris: 'More precisely, the Devil qua Devil is not an object of immediate, direct there-it-is-in-front-of-me consciousness. You could make it into an object of intention as an absence. ' Not very many things are objects of immediate, direct there-it-is-in-front-of-me consciousness, so your distinction is a bit redundant.

Document Size:	4767
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 16 06:05:23 PDT 2010

458 [lbo-talk] On Witchcraft -- rank: 1000

Chris: "The Devil is not an object of consciousness" How no?

Document Size:	4482
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 16 05:16:26 PDT 2010

459 [lbo-talk] On Witchcraft -- rank: 1000

'Once during the first world war Scheler visited me in Heidelberg, and we had an informing conversation on this subject. Scheler maintained that phenomenology was a universal method which could have anything for its intentional object. For example, he explained, phenomenological researches could be made about the devil; only the question of the devil's reality would first have to be "bracketed." "Certainly," I answered, "and when you are finished with the phenomenologica ...

Document Size:	5243
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Apr 16 04:31:26 PDT 2010

460 [lbo-talk] new New Left Review -- rank: 1000

It is all very well for the New Left Review to be writing 'Good riddance to New Labour' thirteen years after the event. What did they say when the 'New' Labour government was elected in 1997? 'The comprehensive defeat of the Conservatives in the General Election must be a source of satisfaction, indeed jubilation, to the Left everywhere', wrote editor Robin Blackburn in 1997, going on to give this endorsement of the New Labour programme: 'Notwithstanding a certain vagueness, New Labour's program ...

Document Size:	6582
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Apr 14 13:03:05 PDT 2010

461 [lbo-talk] post-Communism, Hungarian-style -- rank: 1000

Jobbik: an extreme form of the politics of identity Frank Furedi on the Hungarian election The massive electoral triumph of the right-wing Fidesz party in yesterday's elections in Hungary has been overshadowed by the electoral breakthrough of the radical nationalist Jobbik movement. The success of this backward-looking, chauvinist party, which has gained seats in the Hungarian parliament for the first time, suggests that zombie politics can potentially make a significant impact on public life to ...

Document Size:	5157
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Apr 13 16:13:33 PDT 2010

462 [lbo-talk] Lech Kaczynski -- rank: 1000

There is breathtaking hypocrisy over Lech Kaczynski in the press here in the UK. All the newspapers that were slagging him off as an unreconstructed homophobic nationalist are now praising him - and in the self-same breath saying that his death is a great opportunity for Poland to 'move on'! If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would conclude that he had been assassinated by the European Union.

Document Size:	4820
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Apr 13 13:50:43 PDT 2010

463 [lbo-talk] arrest the Pope -- rank: 1000

I believe Jim's correction on Dawkins, but I would be interested to go back and see how he responded to his adoption by the free-marketeers. On another point, Jim points to the gene-centered view of evolution that has been championed by Dawkins ' it might be a side note in science history, but the phrase that Dawkins used to illustrate his thesis was 'the chicken is the egg's idea to get more eggs' (wording from memory), which he calls an old joke, was in fact first made by the great and paradox ...

Document Size:	5343
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 12 08:44:59 PDT 2010

464 [lbo-talk] arrest the Pope -- rank: 1000

Doug: " Hitch wouldn't endorse the arrest of Bush for crimes against humanity, would he? " No, but he did lay charges against Henry Kissinger. On this one, though, I think I would defend the Pope. More curious, perhaps, is Richard Dawkins' intellectual journey. When The Selfish Gene was published, he was widely assumed to be forwarding a socio-biological case for capitalistic self-interest. Now he has become something of a champion of the left.

Document Size:	4911
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Apr 12 01:37:25 PDT 2010

465 [lbo-talk] History, necessity and the New Zealand Wars -- rank: 1000

Mike writes: 'The argument is that the alienation by force of Maori land was neither (1) inevitable nor (2) progressive. It seems that the ambivalence of the Crown is one crucial reason why it wasn't inevitable.' Yes, most definitely, it was not inevitable, nor progressive. I have been working on a comparative history of Aborigine protection policies that suggests to me that the Crown's on-off support for native land rights indicates a substantial difference with the colonists over settlement, a ...

Document Size:	5374
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Apr 11 00:06:10 PDT 2010