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871 [lbo-talk] Randian Personal Ads -- rank: 1000

I spent a curious weekend at a conference about a year or so ago organised by the American Dream Coalition, who were most of them, though they did not shout about it, Ayn Rand enthusiasts. I found them mostly quite personable, keen to drink and smoke, and make off-colour jokes. Confirming some of the thoughts here, it was quite like being at a Trotskist group's annual conference - you could see the layers of recruitment from the ages and experiences of the delegates, and the pecking order among ...

Document Size:	5192
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 20 06:37:15 PST 2008

872 [lbo-talk] British Nazi Party membership list published -- rank: 1000

Ha! The far-right British National Party's disgruntled office staff have published their entire membership list on-line! I expect that there will be a few policemen and immigration officials looking pretty stupid today. Sad to say, though the story has broken in the press, so far, the list seems to have disappeared again. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/18/bnp-membership-list-leak

Document Size:	5153
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Nov 18 12:08:07 PST 2008

873 [lbo-talk] Why Blacks opposed Prop 8 -- and a simple way to -- rank: 1000

Doug: "Hey, it's the Internet! Who needs evidence?" Well, when I suggested that class, not race gave rise to the higher proportion of African Americans polling hostile to gay marriage, I was drawing on some experience. Twenty years ago, in Britain, the government brought in legislation to prevent the promotion of gay relations as equivalent to heterosexual ones (Clause 28 of the 1988 education act). The trigger was a promotional booklet used by the municipal authority where I was work ...

Document Size:	7178
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Nov 14 14:30:13 PST 2008

874 [lbo-talk] Why Blacks opposed Prop 8 -- and a simple way -- rank: 1000

So far, I am sticking to my theory that the black exception is at least in part a working class exception. I see from the numbers that though blacks poll more hostile to gay marriage, whites are still hostile on the majority. I suggest working class people will tend to be more morally conservative, because the prospect of social and family disintegration is a closer reality for them. Blacks poll more hostile to propospition eight because more of them are working class.

Document Size:	5184
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Nov 14 09:59:41 PST 2008

875 [lbo-talk] Ticktin on the crisis, London 29 Nov -- rank: 1000

Forwarded for the Mute collective ------------- Capitalist Decline, Financial Crisis & Revolutionary Prospects A talk by Hillel Ticktin - organised by Mute Hillel Ticktin's reinterpretation of Marx's ideas enabled him to foresee the disintegration of Soviet Stalinism years before it occurred. Since then he has argued that capitalism itself is in a state of inexorable decline. During the 20th century, world wars, reformism, Stalinism and recently the credit boom successfully maintained capita ...

Document Size:	5753
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Nov 14 03:08:00 PST 2008

876 [lbo-talk] Gay marriage -- rank: 1000

"It is a simple matter of solidarity, with nothing to debate: Gays want marriage; therefore radicals support marriage for gays. Leftists who quibble are scabbing on their companions." Well, I would not want to scab, and as long as the issue is posed as gay marriage for and against, then I am for, but maybe the long-term answer is that heterosexual marriage should be de-legalised. There is something wierd about the government having a role in your private domestic arrangements. And ther ...

Document Size:	5060
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 13 10:56:14 PST 2008

877 [lbo-talk] Gay marriage -- rank: 1000

Shag writes "I suspect the reason why black heterosexism is higher than typical levels of heterosexism ...has to do with desire for cultural assimilation" I am not so sure. Where I take my two girls to school, working class people are generally more conservative on moral questions than middle class people. It came out over sex education (which given my daughter is eight, I thought was a bit quick off the mark, but there you go). The big row was over the use of the word 'clitoris' in th ...

Document Size:	6312
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 13 10:48:08 PST 2008

878 [lbo-talk] Salt ... on your potatoes -- rank: 1000

Michael Perelman "Do you mean the History & Social Influence of the Potato. Outstanding book." The one my friend is reading is called Propitious Esculent:The potato in world history, by John Reader http://www.amazon.co.uk/Propitious-Esculent-Potato-World-History/dp/0434013188/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226388063&sr=8-1 I will recommend him the Redcliffe and Hawkes http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Social-Influence-Potato/dp/B001BF8DJI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books& ...

Document Size:	5306
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Nov 10 23:26:18 PST 2008

879 [lbo-talk] Salt -- rank: 1000

I haven't read Salt, but I have read his previous, Cod. This is quite a genre. I was round a friends' the other day, and he was reading the history of the Potato. A social history, of course. And I have read a history of Oil which I am sure is but one of many. It is an interesting genre, which dwelling on material culture quite interests me. Having said that, though, it all reeks of what Marx called 'commodity fetishism', the belief that objects move people, and not the other way around. It puts ...

Document Size:	5592
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Nov 10 12:22:27 PST 2008

880 [lbo-talk] why did Stygian Stiglitz back Volkisch Volker? -- rank: 1000

Doug, replying to Patrick "One of the reasons that Reagan didn't reappoint Volcker was that he was opposed to further bank dereg. And he wants more reg now." We are talking as if regulation was a good thing. But regulation can be a means to capitalst domination, just like deregulation. More than that, it is naive to take the governing elite at their word. Just because they hide behind their 'free market' rhetoric does not mean that they are in truth for the market against the state. O ...

Document Size:	5980
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Nov 10 10:29:11 PST 2008

881 [lbo-talk] Why did Stiglitz endorse Volcker? -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond asks this excellent question "Does anyone know why Stiglitz would risk ridicule by trying to contrast Volcker - who rapidly deregulated US banking in the 1980s during his sado-monetarist reign - with Summers/Rubin? " I really don't know, but I can't help wondering whether the expectation that Stiglitz ill feelings towards Larry Summers would extend to Paul Volker misreads the 'post-ideological' moment. Stiglitz tacked far to the left in his attempts to move beyond what he ...

Document Size:	5364
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Nov 9 23:05:56 PST 2008

882 [lbo-talk] Marx and Engels on the lazy Mexicans, Slavs, Scots, Basques, Bretons, native Americans -- rank: 1000

Charles replies to my point that life in primitive societies was cruel unrewarding and stupid: CB: Don't have much data by which we can exclude the European imperialists, colonialists and slavers as the main cause of the cruelty, an lack of reward. The "stupidity" part is racist. Which I think is a bit of a weird response. Did I say that those who lived in those societies were to blame? No. The conditions of there existence did not let them rise further. And Charles is right that if yo ...

Document Size:	6734
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Nov 8 15:46:25 PST 2008

883 [lbo-talk] Marx and Engels on the lazy Mexicans, Slavs, Scots, Basques, Bretons, native Americans -- rank: 1000

I think it is a bit of a legend that Marx and Engels changed their minds about primitive peoples. Marx's 'Ethnological Notebooks' are full of damning assessments of primitive society. (An academic, David Smith, I think, has been preparing a new edition of the Ethnological Notebooks for some time now, but you don't need a lot of German to read the 1972 Lawrence Krader edition.) >From the perspective of today's romantic elevation of primitive peoples we tend to condemn Marx and Engels for what ...

Document Size:	8094
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Nov 8 01:59:20 PST 2008

884 [lbo-talk] Marx and Engels on the lazy Mexicans, Slavs, Scots, Basques, Bretons, native Americans etc etc -- rank: 1000

There is lots more of Marx and Engels contempt for primitive peoples. I think David Mitrany (British MI6) did a collection of Marx and Engels against the Peasant: A study in Social Dogmatism to show them up as no friends of the people. More recently N Davidson's Marx and Engels on the Scottish Highlands http://www.atypon-link.com/GPI/doi/abs/10.1521/siso.65.3.286.17770 expressed some disappointment at their disdain for the peasant life. Here are some quotes to add to Chris's "the reproducti ...

Document Size:	9270
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Nov 7 11:05:03 PST 2008

885 [lbo-talk] Nader not the only one to say Uncle Tom -- rank: 1000

Before nineteenth century Britons heard the phrase Uncle Tom to describe a collaborator with the oppressor, there was another name for it. In Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South there is a non-racial version of the outsider who sucks up to power, in the character who turns from mill-hand to become mill-owner. And what does Gaskell call her turncoat character? John Thornton

Document Size:	5096
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Nov 6 14:36:24 PST 2008