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541 [lbo-talk] Trotskyite fetishization of the workplace -- rank: 1000

Joseph, understandably non-plussed by being called "a bourgeois wanker, a crypto-Thatcherite"... but to my ears there is a strangely English lilt to this New York Trotskyist? 'Wanker'? 'Thatcherite'? Are those terms in common use in the US? And no, Trotsky did not think that workers' management of industry precluded wider decisions being made for the good of the economy. Sounds to me like your antagonist was blustering a bit. And anyway, even a Trotskist like me would know that Trotsky ...

Document Size:	5246
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Oct 7 07:03:40 PDT 2009

542 [lbo-talk] overconsuming health -- rank: 1000

Dorene writes: 'If I were going to go look for some comparative international data on how other countries manage to live longer on less money, I would look at different things other health systems do to keep Big Pharma at bay.' I believe it is one of the more rational arguments for health reform in the US that America spends disproportionate share of GDP on health compared to say, the UK, with its predominantly public provision. In Britain, though, GPs are also tempted to overprescribe by drug c ...

Document Size:	6069
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Oct 6 13:21:20 PDT 2009

543 [lbo-talk] Michaels, against diversity -- rank: 1000

Chris wrote ""Multiculturalism" as usually practiced is pretty toothless, a sort of Western version of the "you can wear your funny hat but basically you have to be like everybody else" Soviet approach to cultural variation (cf. recent discussions here on Iran). Also, ethnicities (cultures) are already divided without capitalism even showing up." I agree, the Soviet approach to cultural difference was very interesting, and I looked at it a bit here. http://www.infor ...

Document Size:	5552
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Tue Oct 6 07:28:59 PDT 2009

544 [lbo-talk] Michaels, against diversity -- rank: 1000

"The entire school of British Cultural Studies -- flushed down the toilet with that comment." if only...

Document Size:	4785
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Tue Oct 6 07:13:17 PDT 2009

545 [lbo-talk] Michaels, against diversity -- rank: 1000

Joanna writes: "Of course "diversity" and "multiculturalism" is good for capitalism: it introduces more choices; it grows the market. But it will never, never, never be anything more than symbolic." I don't see 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' as being euphemisms for choice on the market. I see them as euphemisms for inequality and the division of the world into competing nationalities. Those are two things that capitalism is unlikely to abolish. It is convenient ...

Document Size:	5379
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Tue Oct 6 02:11:20 PDT 2009

546 [lbo-talk] Michaels, Against Diversity -- rank: 1000

Julio Huato writes ' anti-racism and anti-sexism are top in the political agenda of the global left. If you ask me, they are left-wing politics on the cutting edge. ' The picture is more complicated. I can remember when the left, reformist and radical, here in Britain was determinedly hostile to all oppression issues on the grounds that they were a 'distraction' from 'class politics', or sometimes 'bread and butter issues'. I mean sometime around 1977. Then, if you raised a political issue at a ...

Document Size:	7380
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 5 14:21:50 PDT 2009

547 [lbo-talk] Michaels, Against Diversity -- rank: 1000

I think Michaels has a point, really. And after all, Zizek has said as much, already, arguing that capitalism can readily tolerate multiculturalism. As did Naomi Klein, raging against identity politics in No Logo. Kenan Malik already said that diversity is an apologetic for class division.

Document Size:	4902
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Oct 5 13:13:53 PDT 2009

548 [lbo-talk] The Draft: Further Thoughts -- rank: 1000

There is a reason to think differently about military service (and therefore the draft), and that is that many oppressed groups fought for the right to give military service. That was the meaning of the Dreyfus trial, and the importance of Eleanor Roosevelt's project of getting black combat groups into the army. The right of women to fight alongside men has been ongoing, and most recently we have had the row over coming out in the military. The mobilisation of the working classes in wars over th ...

Document Size:	6225
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Oct 4 23:48:15 PDT 2009

549 [lbo-talk] more noxious crap (useful, this catch-all confession as a heading) -- rank: 1000

Marv Gandall writes: "There's nothing in the behaviour of the the US capitalist class which suggests it would peacefully defer to a radical left wing party genuinely bent on stripping it of it's wealth and power rather than engage it by mobilizing the reactionary sectors of the population for civil war. At present, there's every indication that it would find enough willing foot soldiers from a Republican base which would be breaking further to the right than the left in a deeper crisis. &qu ...

Document Size:	6453
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Oct 3 13:28:43 PDT 2009

550 [lbo-talk] more noxious crap -- rank: 1000

'I'm not sure that's true. Didn't Marx suggest that England might advance to socialism without a violent revolution, via reform?' I think it was Engels, and as I remember it, it wasn't a very elaborated reflection, rather dwarfed by his contrary views. I am sure that Marx would not think that you would have to make a fetish of revolution, and saw social change coming through all kinds of forces - war, legislation, famine for example. But both thought that capitalists had a material interest in t ...

Document Size:	5363
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Oct 3 12:50:48 PDT 2009

551 [lbo-talk] Gadaffi the liberator -- rank: 1000

Doug asks: 'But how can anyone not be part of the world capitalist economy these days? Should Venezuela stop selling oil?' That was Samir Amin's position, 'decoupling' he called it. But it was not Lenin's. He thought that the USSR ought to seek to continue to be a part of the international division of labour, exchanging goods for western technology, but should at the same time resist a free market. That would establish a direct relationship between Russian farmers and western purchasers, bypass ...

Document Size:	5106
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Oct 3 04:45:08 PDT 2009

552 [lbo-talk] more noxious crap -- rank: 1000

SA writes: 'Do you mean Stalin would have permitted the eastern countries to accept the Marshall Plan? He specifically forbade them to.' Yes, it is true that after 1947 and the 'two camps' theory fronted by Zhdanov, the USSR put up a solidly anti-European Recovery Plan argument - even getting French Communist dockworkers to block imports under it (once again imposing painfully unpopular demands on the PCF). But the 'two camps' theory was a reaction to the way that the US had already withdrawn ec ...

Document Size:	7348
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Oct 3 04:34:14 PDT 2009

553 [lbo-talk] more noxious crap -- rank: 1000

Chris, responding to the point that the Soviet authorities were a stabilizing force in East Europe "Dare I point out that Europe had just been destabilized by World War II, and so stabilization was rather important." Yes, I think you are right to. Stability was indeed the basis for what authority the USSR and its allied regimes had. And compared to the disasters visited on them, that was indeed appealing. I have lost the quote, but I think it was Primo Levi who accounted for the author ...

Document Size:	5906
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 2 16:02:54 PDT 2009

554 [lbo-talk] more noxious crap -- rank: 1000

> > I read a few Nation archives from the late 1940s, early 1950s that struck > me > > as oddly soft on Stalinism, Yes, but then a lot of intellectuals and establishment figures, in the US as in Europe, were resistant to the ideological hostility to the Stalinist bloc - not meaning that they identified with it, but that they knew that the realities on the ground were not favourable to capitalist restoration in the East. Churchill was once asked whether it was a wise policy to back ...

Document Size:	6236
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 2 09:37:37 PDT 2009

555 [lbo-talk] sexual abuse statistics -- rank: 1000

"Think about it. Are kids really going to report rape or molestation?" But you can't prove something by the *lack* of evidence, and anecdotal evidence is a poor guide to society-wide trends.

Document Size:	4677
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Oct 2 01:31:33 PDT 2009