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796 [lbo-talk] Marx without quotations -- rank: 1000

Ted: "The idea of "freedom" embodied in the idea of "free manifestations of their lives" in "the true realm of freedom" sublates Hegel's idea of it as "the unity of the universal and individual", the unity of "freedom" and "necessity". This idea makes the ontological assumption that there is a knowable and objective "good". It's this "good" that Marx treats as "transhistorical", as the "unm ...

Document Size:	5178
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Apr 1 16:27:58 PDT 2009

797 [lbo-talk] Kucinich on money -- rank: 1000

Shane Mage (thank you for the Roman history correction) wrote: > C. Wright Mills called it, more elegantly, >"Crackpot Realism." Ionesco called it 'realism, with all four feet firmly on the ground'

Document Size:	4693
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Sep 29 19:57:31 PDT 2008

798 [lbo-talk] "fuck the homeowners"? -- rank: 1000

"fuck the homeowners"? most people in Britain live in homes their families own. Private renting is relatively small, as is social housing. Most homeowners are not members of the ruling class, due expropriation, but working class people. I would guess America is not so different.

Document Size:	4809
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Sep 29 17:33:01 PDT 2008

799 [lbo-talk] If I was Pat Buchanan... -- rank: 1000

Isn't this the time for some right-wing populist to revive the Roman plebeian demand to cancel all debts? Tear up the credit card bills and the mortgage repayments, and tell the banks to go to hell. That way you could rally overspent Americans in a chauvinist campaign against Wall Street and the Chinese lenders. (Public health warning - not a serious suggestion from me)

Document Size:	4916
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Sep 29 17:19:16 PDT 2008

800 [lbo-talk] there can be no bailout -- rank: 1000

Dymytry, so wise on so many things, is I think wrong here "A country that consumes more wealth than it produces can only last as long as it's military is effective at exacting tribute from client states. ..American must, and will, consume less. There is nothing anyone can do about it, short of war." First off, wrong because the simpler alternative would be to produce more. And given we are considering throwing away $700 billion - what seven per cent of GDP? - to shore up the wholly un ...

Document Size:	5533
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Sep 29 16:37:02 PDT 2008

801 [lbo-talk] nationalise the banks? -- rank: 1000

Was it Shane who wrote "Revolutionary socialists have always, always, always advocated nationalization of the banks and democratic accountability of the Central Bank." ? But nationalisation is by no means incommensurate with capitalist rationalisation. Engels wrote 'since Bismarck went in for state-ownership of industrial establishments a kind of surious socialism has arisen degenerating now and then into a something of flunkeyism ... that declares all state ownership, even of the Bism ...

Document Size:	6160
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Sep 29 16:28:55 PDT 2008

802 [lbo-talk] political abstension -- rank: 1000

whoops, sorry, that last from me was meant for another list James

Document Size:	4593
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Sep 28 02:20:50 PDT 2008

803 [lbo-talk] Political abstension -- rank: 1000

I suspect that if Loren or Gerald were in Vietnam in 1945, or Spain in 1936, they would be arguing against the revolution, on the grounds that there were leaders involved, or bloodshed was likely, or that the class struggle should not be mixed up with which political elite was in charge. The issue is not Left Opposition vs Stalinism, but whether or not you think that the struggle for political power is an issue for the working class. In essence Loren's position is political abstension. He consid ...

Document Size:	6033
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Sep 28 01:53:07 PDT 2008

804 [lbo-talk] French Theory -- rank: 1000

Yes, Cussett's book is very good (but in the end, wrong, I think: anti-Marxist, and apologetic for pomo wank). I lent on it in this review of a collection on Derrida http://www.culturewars.org.uk/index.php/site/article/ghostly_demarcations2/

Document Size:	4766
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Sep 25 15:29:24 PDT 2008

805 [lbo-talk] a cool trillion -- rank: 1000

I can't help but think that we have all been had. The banks put on this great show, full of flashing lights and hysteria-inducing high-wire acts. And what is the outcome. Vast sums of government cash given over to the banks. A little reorganisation and consolidation. This is what you call a crisis? It looks to me like a hissy fit.

Document Size:	4805
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Sep 19 16:23:35 PDT 2008

806 [lbo-talk] Christian output -- rank: 1000

Jim Davis wrote: > He will probable get more real work done as a Left Christian, than as a > Marxist. > > peace, ?? > > Jim Davis > Ozark Bioregion, USA and "shag" responded >what would real work be? how would we measure his output? In pie-charts in the sky? Angels dancing per head of pin? In St Peter's Scales?

Document Size:	5073
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Wed Sep 17 12:00:15 PDT 2008

807 [lbo-talk] Mencken -- rank: 1000

"There's also the option of being a detached, despairing, ironic critic - a kind of left-wing Mencken." Maybe I am falling into a trap, but I rather liked Menkcen, especially as played by Gene Kelly in Inherit the Wind (and what about Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow?). There is a more left wing, or at least radical, Mencken, in the marvelous Ambrose Bierce, author of the Devil's Dictionary

Document Size:	4936
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Wed Sep 17 11:01:43 PDT 2008

808 [lbo-talk] Baader-Meinhof -- rank: 1000

Did "it" better. When the "it" is a moronic attempt to leap over the problem of getting popular support by blowing up stuff, then that is not much to be proud of. As a teenager I was convinced that the authorities had murdered Ulrike Meinhof, but unhappily Stefan Aust's book makes it pretty clear that she was suicidal because she had worked out just what a crackpot venture it all was. The appearance of radicalism that the quasi-militant tactics gave the Baader-Meinhof group w ...

Document Size:	5914
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Tue Sep 16 12:42:22 PDT 2008

809 [lbo-talk] authentically working class -- rank: 1000

It turns out that Alaskans and New Yorkers are about as good or bad as each other qhwew crime is concerned, except in the case of rape, where Alaskans are the worst offenders in the country Per 100 thousand Murder Violent crime Rape Alaska 4.3 600 70 New York 6.6 673 17.5 http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/akcrime.htm http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004902.html

Document Size:	5171
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Sep 12 13:53:14 PDT 2008

810 [lbo-talk] reply to Yates/authentically working class -- rank: 1000

Well, ok, I'm sorry, I dashed through the comments, and read what I thought was there, reading them again, I agree, they are a lot more nuanced that I gave credit for - and certainly more nuanced than your intemperate reply. But you're right. I was wrong. And you're right of course that I don't live in America, and don't know that country as well as those that do. I am only replying to what I read here.

Document Size:	5060
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Sep 12 10:34:48 PDT 2008