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916 [lbo-talk] Dustup - final installment -- rank: 1000

Maybe I am being a bit thick, but Ted seems to be saying that the 300 000 years of human history are only precursors to the end point, communism (which hasn't even happened yet). All those preceding modes of social organisation are in some way deficient - self estranged - derivatives of the end time to come. Not so. This strikes me as being closer to Heidegger's conception of fallen-ness than Marx's of alienation. The latter really is a condition of capitalist societies, not to be confused with ...

Document Size:	7352
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jul 29 16:41:44 PDT 2008

917 [lbo-talk] Dustup - final installment -- rank: 1000

Ted writes "This idea of the human essence is found throughout Marx's writing." but I am not sure how much light this sheds. If the essence is the relations but the relations are different in different epochs/ at different levels of technique/ then the essence changes. Since the usual understanding of essence is that it is unchanging, does the concept of 'relational essence' (an oxymoron?) help. Is there an unchanging human essence in Marx? Only in the most abstract terms: men rework n ...

Document Size:	5797
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jul 29 11:06:57 PDT 2008

918 [lbo-talk] Patrick Bond responds on Chinese labor market -- rank: 1000

"China is experiencing a boom, one of the most remarkable in history, despite the best efforts of some Marxists to deny it (because it violates theory?)." I don't know if I qualify as a Marxist (where do you pick up that diploma?) but I did attempt an explanation of China's take-off by reference to Marx's theory, in the RRPE http://rrp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/37/2/196

Document Size:	5179
Author:	heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Date:	Thu Jan 17 07:32:10 PST 2008

919 [lbo-talk] Patrick Bond responds to voices in his head -- rank: 1000

Patrick, on Chinese labor stats: > this is nothing to be proud of, the way you > ... It's a disgraceful way > to improve growth > so your readers > can empathise with the creators of durable consumer goods they utilize > today. But this is just a sleight of hand. The readers of LBO are no less empathetic to Chinese labor than South African professors, and quite capable of surfing Monthly Review - indeed among its target audience. Who said that Chinese labor practices were 'some ...

Document Size:	6162
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Jan 17 00:03:38 PST 2008

920 [lbo-talk] Chinese labour stats -- rank: 1000

If what Doug says "So what this is reporting is that employment in state enterprises declined sharply - which everyone knows already - but that other forms of employment (i.e., a growing capitalist labor market) rose dramatically. Total employment was up 50%, which is a long way from nothing." is right, then Patrick's point is 180 degrees wrong. We started arguing about whether the *capitalistically employed* workforce in China had grown. If the state-employed workforce shrunk, that in ...

Document Size:	5418
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Jan 16 16:27:13 PST 2008

921 [lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation? -- rank: 1000

Patrick writes > Huh?! Das Kapital repeatedly shows how dialectic analysis derives the > laws of motion - including crisis formation - that exist independ of > contingent events. because I said >> When Marx talked about crises, he had in mind real world events, that >> were >> evident to all, not hidden laws at work under the surface of society. >> Crisis >> for him was that point when the law of accumulation's fundamental >> contradictions erupted. ...

Document Size:	8449
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Jan 16 02:16:59 PST 2008

922 [lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation? -- rank: 1000

Patrick, replying to my assertion that capitalism had stabilised between 1994 and 2007, says "the 1990s and first half of the 2000s saw progressively lower per capita growth rates, so you can chop/change and find 1994-2007 as a slightly higher period but it's a strange slice because you've got two upstages and just one recession, so I've never heard of this kind of dating aside from people who like to torture stats until they confess and I'm *sure* that doesn't include you." Well, look ...

Document Size:	9114
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jan 15 09:35:31 PST 2008

923 [lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation? -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond writes: " There was not a 'crisis' in that sense from the 1940s-60s, but by the late 1960s systemic overaccumulation and crisis displacement processes began to be evident" This strikes me as a misapplication of Marx's crisis theory. A crisis that has been running from 1969-2008 can't really be called a crisis - especially not when it includes a prolonged period of (modest) growth 1994-2007. Just think of the expansion of the capitalistically-employed global workforce betw ...

Document Size:	6413
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Jan 15 01:37:41 PST 2008

924 [lbo-talk] [Marxism] Subprime crisis -- rank: 1000

Patrick writes: "Well, the Doug I know and love keeps intervening with sanguine snarky sentiments whenever the talk turns to the bad 'c' word, crisis." The problem I have with Patrick's arguments is that since he seems to have been announcing a pending crisis for the last fifteen years, he was bound to be right sooner or later. Compelling to me, anyway, is how *little* this current credit crunch looks like a typical Marxist over-accumulation crisis. Marx's precondition was a rising org ...

Document Size:	5389
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Jan 14 01:21:42 PST 2008

925 [lbo-talk] Profiting from emerging markets -- rank: 1000

> From: Joanna <123hop at comcast.net> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Profiting from emerging markets > > Is there something other than the picture? > > Joanna > > James Heartfield wrote: >> The Daily Telegraph gets explicit on its advice to capitalists >> http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=484776&l=7ca8c&id=756513153 Yes, the text is as crass as the illustration "...Those who missed the great bull run must bitterly regret doing so. While the ...

Document Size:	5852
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Jan 12 16:21:22 PST 2008

926 [lbo-talk] US manufacturing sector -- rank: 1000

I found WB data on manufacturing value added going back to 1980, which I copied out of a report in the British Library. I put some of it (1980-1998) in this article in Critique (http://www.critiquejournal.net/jamesh35.pdf, page 37). It seems to back up Seth Ackerman, showing that the US did ok in that period, though I would have to dig up the original excel file to give you the numbers. > I can't find anything like that in the WB's World Development > Indicators database. Their data for va ...

Document Size:	6096
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Jan 12 10:13:52 PST 2008

927 [lbo-talk] Profiting from emerging markets -- rank: 1000

The Daily Telegraph gets explicit on its advice to capitalists http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=484776&l=7ca8c&id=756513153 James Heartfield

Document Size:	4846
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sat Jan 12 07:13:05 PST 2008

928 [lbo-talk] Chavez, slow down -- rank: 1000

I would be interested to see a good criticial analysis of the Bolivarian revolution, but I am not sure that this is it. It sounds like a high-Tory complaint against mass society to me, with its back image of a lost organic harmony. Paul posted: "The Bolivarian model of development that is being implemented in Venezuela makes the goal of"another world is possible", that the people of the world are fighting for, unattainable. This model not only maintains the old paradigm of past go ...

Document Size:	5249
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Fri Feb 29 23:52:18 PST 2008

929 [lbo-talk] GM exec stands by calling global warming a "crock" -- rank: 1000

"General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a "total crock of s---," saying his views had no bearing on GM's commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles." well, of course, he's right. Corporations are making a fortune out of environmentalism, flogging us Green Capitalism - as I explain in my new book, Green Capitalism.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Capitalism-Manufacturing-James-Heartfield/dp/1906496102/ref=sr ...

Document Size:	5533
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Feb 25 13:24:13 PST 2008

930 [lbo-talk] Strauss 1 -- rank: 1000

Chuck wrote: "Strauss takes up Aristotle on these traces and evokes the concept of Public Safety as the necessary arbiter and limiter of natural right. Ah, yes the national security state and its arguments for the limits on rights in times of national emergency, the need to seek out the enemies within, etc. Then Strauss turns the tables, and gives the state the freedom to determine how best protect itself, so that natural right is only free to change under a state power threatened by extern ...

Document Size:	6008
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Dec 23 03:18:27 PST 2008