Search LBO-Talk Archives

691 [lbo-talk] Kenneally, some notes and background -- rank: 1000

> Is there some society in which people have no spinal cord? Well, thanks to modern social care, people with paralysis due to spinal injuries no longer have to be left on the hillside to die, so yes, the society in which there are (some) people without a functioning spinal cord who nonetheless make a contribution, is our society. Chris writes "All human organization of production is social, because we are social animals. " To which I say, there is social production and social produc ...

Document Size:	5698
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Jun 12 11:00:21 PDT 2009

692 [lbo-talk] Kenneally, some notes and background -- rank: 1000

> Frankly, though this sounds rather grand, it's also > nonsensical. People are born with spinal cords, livers, > etc. These structures are not "socially conditioned", > and they can do certain things and not others, period, > full stop. well, you could look at it this way: the population is currently six and a half billion. Without social organisation of production, the human species would not have generated the surplus product to sustain more than what, a million peopl ...

Document Size:	5438
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Fri Jun 12 03:29:12 PDT 2009

693 [lbo-talk] Voters steer Europe to the right -- rank: 1000

Not wishing to downplay the seriousness of the successes of British National Party and other far right parties in the Euro elections, but I am not sure that is the main story. As has been said, the turnout was very low - lower than its ever been in Euro elections. Mainstream parties were struggling to get their vote out, which tended to exaggerate the far right successes. Also, it was much more the mainstream Christian Democrats who were the victors than the far right - which is no comfort at a ...

Document Size:	5956
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jun 8 14:32:32 PDT 2009

694 [lbo-talk] Surrealists and politics and homosexuality -- rank: 1000

Yes, it is daft to take issue with Dali's political statements, which were surrealist provocations, not really political statements at all. Like Sid Vicious wearing a Swastika, or Big Tom of Finland drawing hunky Nazis. I think there is some evidence that in later life he was a bit uncomfortabele about what might have been a homosexual relationship with Lorca. There is also the case of Bataille of The Accursed Share, who also flirted with Fascist imagery - much pilloried for that, but probably j ...

Document Size:	5206
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Jun 5 11:30:30 PDT 2009

695 [lbo-talk] Surrealists and Marxism (was homosexuality) -- rank: 1000

Magritte painted agit-prop anti-war paintings for the Belgian Communist Party, but they did not display them. The Party was embarrassed by Picasso's jaunty drawing of Stalin for his birthday, but he stayed in the party. Breton collaborated with Trotsky on a pamphlet. Dali's fascism was a pose, most likely an expression of his irritation at the pious leftism of his formerly iconoclastic fellows. He once insisted on greeting Franco on a visit to his home town, and arrived, elderly, dressed in a mi ...

Document Size:	6354
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Jun 5 11:22:53 PDT 2009

696 [lbo-talk] Libertarian "smackdwn" on Chomsky's "private tyranny" idea re: corporations -- rank: 1000

Wasn't the virtue of Lenin's concept of the state that it was tyrannical? As a student of Engels, Lenin knew that the revolution was not a tea party, but the forcible suppression of one class by another (c.f Engels' essay On Revolution).

Document Size:	5206
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jan 27 12:43:47 PST 2009

697 [lbo-talk] Giuliani: I hope Obama has read Amity Shlaes -- rank: 1000

"tried reading Mattick's book Marx and Keynes once, and found it absolutely pointless" Well, granted it is better as a restatement of Marx than a critique of Keynes, but given it was published in 1969 and the book's central thesis was that the post-war boom did not herald the end of the business cycle, but was on the contrary the state-led reconstruction of capitalism about to reach its limits, I would have said it was rather to the point. "There's nothing necessarily militaristic ...

Document Size:	7079
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 26 14:01:45 PST 2009

698 [lbo-talk] Giuliani: I hope Obama has read Amity Shlaes -- rank: 1000

"an account from the sectarian press" The International Council Correspondence, under its editor Paul Mattick, wasn't sectarian, but a far-sighted critique of the militarist dynamic of Keynes-style national recovery plans.

Document Size:	4862
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 26 13:06:56 PST 2009

699 [lbo-talk] Giuliani: I hope Obama has read Amity Shlaes -- rank: 1000

Doug, no disrespect to your Dad, I am sure he had a great time in the CCC (my grandfather enjoyed his years making cordite for the munitions industry, come to that). But the International Council Correspondence for March 1935, page 8, reports, for example that rebellious boys in the South Mountain Reservation, in New Jersey were put under military discipline by one Captain Tobin, and the mutineers expelled.

Document Size:	5044
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 26 11:50:49 PST 2009

700 [lbo-talk] Giuliani: I hope Obama has read Amity Shlaes -- rank: 1000

A while ago I read over the International Council Correspondence coverage of the New Deal. They reported that Roosevelt's regime was the closest to America ever came to Fascism. Young people were dragooned into work camps, and put under military discipline by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Trade Unions were either attacked, or incorporated into the state machine. In the war that followed monetary wages rose, but with more production directed towards armaments and heavy industry, real consumpti ...

Document Size:	5308
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 26 11:21:17 PST 2009

701 [lbo-talk] Banks of Marble -- rank: 1000

My two daughters were singing The Banks are made of Marble with the Whittington branch of the Woodcraft Folk last Thursday.

Document Size:	4554
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 26 11:09:55 PST 2009

702 [lbo-talk] bankers quoting Marx! -- rank: 1000

The bankers 'quote' is probably a garbled recollection of the following from Capital, Volume 1, though as you will see, it only comes close to supporting the meaning of the first sentence, their is nothing like the second about banks and bankruptcy in Volume 1. "A larger part of their own surplus product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make ...

Document Size:	6649
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Jan 25 03:18:23 PST 2009

703 [lbo-talk] Obamauration -- rank: 1000

This is a bit impressionistic, but rushing through the LBO reaction to Obama's inauguration, the chasm between that and the reactions to his election seems huge. Shouldn't we go back over what we all said then, and compare it with the hyper-critical reaction to him now? I feel as though I was too critical then, and a bit distanced from the criticisms made of him here, now. Is the disappointment relative to the great hopes placed in the man? Are the disappointments a bit overdone? He is not left ...

Document Size:	5644
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jan 22 03:30:21 PST 2009

704 [lbo-talk] on the current mess -- rank: 1000

Good interview. There's certainly no bottom in sight, here in Ukland. All commentators are in a state of near panic after the Bank of England's massive bailout singularly failed to restore confidence in banks or sterling. UK banks owe $4.4 trillion (more than GDP, which stood at $2.13 trillion in 2007). I see the pound is currently trading at $1.40. (I think I can remember when it was $6). Talking it over with a friend, we thought that it was unlikely that the capitalists would stabilise things, ...

Document Size:	5212
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Jan 21 12:51:51 PST 2009

705 [lbo-talk] CO2 free economy -- rank: 1000

Shane Mage, proposed a "CO2-free economy". Would we only be allowed to breathe in, then? Would there be no livestock or plants?

Document Size:	4575
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jan 20 12:11:01 PST 2009