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736 [lbo-talk] Fw: Concerning your submission to *Science & Society* -- rank: 1000

Pete, these are the comments, appended to the bottom of the email let me know what you think James ----- Original Message ----- From: "Science & Society" <info at scienceandsociety.com> To: <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 3:17 PM Subject: Concerning your submission to *Science & Society* December 14, 2009 Dear James Heartfield, The S&S Manuscript Collective has completed its reading and discussion of your paper, "A crisis of ...

Document Size:	10340
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Dec 18 01:27:26 PST 2009

737 [lbo-talk] My TV program on the climate debate - -- rank: 1000

Bryan Atinsky writes: 'That Piers Corbyn made me feel squeamish and embarrassed just listening to him.' Really? Because you believe that man made climate change is a myth and deserved a better champion? Or, more likely, is your embarrassment just a posture, triumphalism masquerading as embarrassment? (as an aside, Piers Corbyn, like his brother, my Member of Parliament, Jeremy Corbyn was active on the left since the 1980s, when he was a contributor to London Labour Briefing - not suggesting, of ...

Document Size:	5161
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Dec 17 16:02:01 PST 2009

738 [lbo-talk] Towards a union of the unemployed -- rank: 1000

> Does anyone know the history of attempts to build a union of the unemployed > in the US or attempts by organized labor to reach out to the unemployed? No, but I can tell you that Wal Hannington's account of Unemployed Struggles in Britain in the thirties is pretty good. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unemployed-Struggles-1919-1936-unemployed-illustrations/dp/B0014IQ9IE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245783591&sr=1-3

Document Size:	5153
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Dec 6 13:25:15 PST 2009

739 [lbo-talk] A diversion -- rank: 1000

I like the deadpan of Kafka's Metamorphosis 'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.'

Document Size:	4563
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Dec 6 13:13:06 PST 2009

740 [lbo-talk] climate change -- rank: 1000

'The BBC's Politics Show has obtained research which suggests that ironically, the people who talk most about tackling climate change are the worst polluters. 'Data analysts Experian ... have found a direct link between wealth and willingness to embrace a green agenda; those most concerned about climate change tend to live in the wealthiest parts of the country. 'But here's the rub. The company has also found that the richest constituencies... are also the most polluting. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1 ...

Document Size:	5066
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Dec 4 12:08:03 PST 2009

741 [lbo-talk] 'Grey Vampirism' -- rank: 1000

I thought Shag was being a bit po-faced. It just sounded rather funny to me. I can hear what you say when you say it is an ad hominem argument. But lots of argument tests the boundaries of proper debate. It is a caricature of a certain kind of rhetorical posture, to call them a 'troll', or a 'grey vampire'. Caricatures tend to work, though, because they have a resonance. I can see that the characterisation of some points of view as being 'beyond the pale' might be a conservative way of excluding ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Dec 3 13:40:49 PST 2009

742 [lbo-talk] 'Grey Vampirism' Obama's betrayal of hope -- rank: 1000

Dwayne wrote about 'something Mark Fisher calls "Grey Vampirism":' which is the best thing I have read on the internet for years. Do have a look http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011182.html thanks Dwayne

Document Size:	4938
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Dec 2 01:31:23 PST 2009

743 [lbo-talk] Confiscation of American Prosperity -- Chapter -- rank: 1000

On Sat, 2009-08-29 at 14:40 -0700, michael perelman wrote: > In light of the discussion about who predicted the Depression, I thought > that I would post the first chapter of The Confiscation of American > Prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next > Great Depression but when didn't you predict a recession, Michael?

Document Size:	4997
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Aug 31 01:50:47 PDT 2009

744 [lbo-talk] US not a private enterprise system -- rank: 1000

Dennis writes: 'Exactly. The labor-surplus of North American/South American/South Asian/African slaves, plantation serfs, indentured laborers, coolies etc. was extracted by British capitalism for centuries, with near-genocidal consequences for the extractees. Liberal Brit capitalism = illiberal Brit Empire.' It is true that British capitalism used slave money to get going, that it used the anti-slavery campaign as a cover for colonial conquest http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/heartfield260107 ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 28 01:14:30 PDT 2009

745 [lbo-talk] Twitter: >40% pointless babble -- rank: 1000

Twitter, like any technology can be a vehicle for political action "Britons pour love on 'evil' health care http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/14/britain.america.nhs/ ... Tens of thousands of people have joined a Twitter group expressing pride in the UK's National Health Service (NHS), which offers free taxpayer-funded medical care to all British residents, while leading politicians have spoken out in support." Though, whatever it looks like over there, the NHS campaign over here is ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Aug 14 09:53:11 PDT 2009

746 [lbo-talk] Angela Davis a Stalinist -- rank: 1000

Charles writes: "Today we can confidently pronounce Stalinist industrialization and collectivation premature, forced , rushed and evil. Not so easy to do so in 1930." That makes it sound like a single decision, taht anyone could have called wrong. But Stalin, and the group around him fought a bitter struggle first to conquer the Bolshevik Party, and then to force collectivisation upon the unwilling peasantry. Certainly it was not easy to hold to the Trotskyist policy in the Bolshevik P ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 13 10:38:52 PDT 2009

747 [lbo-talk] Angela Davis a Stalinist -- rank: 1000

"it's plausible to argue that if Trotsky had total command over Soviet policy he wouldn't have engaged in a Mike Davis-style planned famine" Neither Trotsky nor Stalin could have substituted their own will for a democratically planned economy - the difference is that Trotsky knew that, and Stalin didn't. I am not sure that Stalin set out to starve people, either. The issue was not whether one man was in charge or not, but under what conditions the Soviet Union industrialised. Bukharin ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 13 08:25:26 PDT 2009

748 [lbo-talk] Angela Davis a Stalinist? -- rank: 1000

Sheldon writes: 'Perhaps we need other more general descriptive categories for these things? Like "authoritarian state socialist" or something like that? I guess "Stalinist" is a simpler stand in for a phrase like that regardless of how imprecise it is.' 'Stalinist' really was a Trotskyist term of abuse, and is a category of the Trotskyist critique of the official (or 'Stalinist) Communist movement (and of society in the USSR). Trotskyists did not really think that Khruschev ...

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Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Aug 13 04:39:39 PDT 2009

749 [lbo-talk] U.S. auto sector socialized! WITBD? -- rank: 1000

SA asks whether it was true that British workers were opposed to nationalisation before 1914, to which there is no simple answer. First, many workers were supporters of the Liberal and Tory parties, which opposed nationalisation, and many more workers were indifferent to politics, and whether industry was nationalised, and indeed many worked in small, unorganised trades, where the question hardly arose (see Gareth Stedman Jones on Outcast London). Among organised labour and the left there was ge ...

Document Size:	8134
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Apr 29 00:16:32 PDT 2009

750 [lbo-talk] U.S. auto sector socialized! WITBD? -- rank: 1000

Well Carrol's comparison with nationalisation of industry in the UK is correct in one important respect: the only companies that were ever put into public ownership - or in the case of Merdien - under workers' management - were those companies that had already tanked. Nationalised industries were, by definition, failed industries. Of course it was a problem for those workforces, who could hardly refuse the prospect that nationalisation might be the best way to defend their jobs in the here and n ...

Document Size:	5500
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Apr 28 16:02:17 PDT 2009