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41686 cultural politics/"real" politics -- rank: 1000

Jim heartfield wrote: >What I am reacting against is the mood that sees working class >consumption as profligacy and waste, but middle class consumption as an >earnest and imaginative investigation of desire. > >Hence my attitude to the car. I'm not sure how you're class-angling the car Jim. "Middle class" people, whoever they are exactly, drive more vehicle miles than poor people. All those suburbanites in their sport utility vehicles - suburban assault vehicles, as the ...

Document Size:	5166
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 4 10:16:29 PDT 1998

41687 cultural politics/"real" politics -- rank: 1000

Catherine Driscoll wrote: >On Mon, 4 May 1998, Thomas Kruse wrote: > >> Is it always only a priviledge? I would be the last to distract attention >> from the all too real contstraints, which you rightly note many identity >> theorists just gloss over. > >Well I've only just joined >Hi Doug, Hi Tom, Hi Catherine. >but I'd like to know who's being thrown around as exemplifying this >failing of "identity theorists". If you don't mind back tracking a ...

Document Size:	6497
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 4 08:49:55 PDT 1998

41688 cultural politics/"real" politics -- rank: 1000

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: >I think I was born just in time for mass production/democratization of SM. Just why is that happening now? Is it just a generally greater openness about sexual practices not approved of by the Bible, or is there something about the eroticization of power in a world where hierarchies are steepening? >Seriously, I think that the number of those who are given the privilege of >fucking-with-identity may be on the decline, with the welfare state, public >education ...

Document Size:	5314
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 4 07:53:53 PDT 1998

41689 cultural politics/"real" politics -- rank: 1000

Jim heartfield wrote: >But the defining characteristic of all of these relations is that they >are forged in the realm of consumption. The relationship that cannot be >so challenged in this theoretical approach is the relationship that >underpins all the others, the relationship of Capital itself. > >We can see this blind spot in the writings of Judith Butler. For Butler >identities are always unstable, never fixed: > >"If there is, as it were, always a compulsi ...

Document Size:	7453
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 3 15:50:46 PDT 1998

41690 "Better times" cannot sustain stock prices -- rank: 1000

Jordan Hayes wrote: >I think it's hard to imagine it reversing; can you share your >imagination a little? Gradual decline leading to disappointment and growing anxiety among pros, who sell; the public, relying only on new savings (since there's not much juice left in the allocation switch), is only a weak net buyer; market drifts in a generally lower direction; bad news - from higher interest rates to mass unrest in China - leads to a sharp selloff and a weak recovery; process resumes from ...

Document Size:	5630
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 3 10:34:45 PDT 1998

41691 "Better times" cannot sustain stock prices -- rank: 1000

Jordan Hayes wrote: >Interestingly, the current bull has attempted to change this, though >I'm not sure it's in a way that you'd like to see. The Official >Sources (NYT/WSJ) love to run stories about Wal-Mart cashiers who >have six digits in a retirement fund; the "ownership" aspect of this >has got to have an impact. People who have worked their whole lives >and used to look forward to the government 'taking care of them' are >now watching mutual fund quotes to ...

Document Size:	5970
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 3 09:46:51 PDT 1998

41692 "Better times" cannot sustain stock prices -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond wrote: >As overaccumulation begins to set in, as structural >bottlenecks emerge, and as profit rates fall in the >productive sectors of an economy, capitalists begin to >shift their investable funds out of reinvestment in >plant, equipment and labour power, and instead seek >refuge in financial assets. Hmm, two things. First, finance is also a way through which the big bourgies force profit-maximizing strategies on fat governments and lazy managers - bond-driven f ...

Document Size:	6660
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 3 09:38:24 PDT 1998

41693 "Better times" cannot sustain stock prices -- rank: 1000

Dennis R Redmond wrote: >Said the cyberbroker to the fly. US stocks are way, way overvalued >relative to their historical averages. And sooner or later, financial >manias which aren't supported by a real economic boom (and for all the >fireworks of the US stock market, real investment in America has pretty >much stagnated throughout the 1990s, and growth rates have been miserable) >come to a grievous end. This isn't to say there aren't good buys in the >market -- just not in ...

Document Size:	6294
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 3 09:05:51 PDT 1998

41694 list ecology -- rank: 1000

I see Hyman Blumenstock slipped in here unnoticed. Folks wishing to keep up with his foodist theories of political economy are invited to do so on Post Keynesian Thought. I also see that my favorite British Morenoite in Swedish exile, Hugh Rodwell, is sounding off in his usual catechistic manner. As Carrol Cox pointed out a couple of weeks ago, Hugh is sometimes a useful foil. But I want this list to be open to people other than adherent to High Church Marxism, Trotskyist Branch, and there's not ...

Document Size:	4908
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 3 08:39:54 PDT 1998

41695 cultural politics/"real" politics -- rank: 1000

Jim heartfield wrote: >Consequently the revolutionising rhetoric of identity theory must stop >short at the realm of production. To call into question the >exploitative social relation that lays the basis for cultural identity >would be to call into question the whole project of identity theory. >There can be no deconstruction of exploitation. Instead the creation of >a surplus - and therefore the social relation that gives rise to it - >must be assumed as a natural given. ...

Document Size:	5178
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 2 12:56:15 PDT 1998

41696 Marshall Berman on Communist Manifesto in 5/11 *Nation* -- rank: 1000

Another bounce from Bill Lear. All is fixed now... Doug ---- Have folks here seen Berman's review of the new (translation, book-jacket, introduction?) Verso edition of the Communist Manifesto? I think it's pretty good --- delightful, actually, giving inter alia a very decent account of Marx's prescient understanding of the global economy --- though there are a few places I feel are a bit lacking. On p. 15, Berman paraphrases Marx's critique of capitalism: [Capitalists] may think of only one thi ...

Document Size:	9453
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 2 10:06:00 PDT 1998

41697 "Better times" cannot sustain stock prices -- rank: 1000

Trond Andresen wrote: >I am chiming in with some thoughts on the incredibly overvalued U.S. stock >market. From the Sydney Morning Herald, New York correspondent Brian Hale, >on Tuesday 28 after the Monday 27 downwards dip: > >"..but Wall Street's best-known bulls, like Prudential's Mr. Ralph Acampora >and Gruntal's Mr. Joe Battipaglia, were out front once more, exhorting >investors to 'give the market a few days' and stay with the faith. Mr. >Battipaglia said: 'Mark ...

Document Size:	6877
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 2 09:58:46 PDT 1998

41698 activism -- rank: 1000

This post from Bill Lear bounced because I was a bit slow at fixing his address. Doug ---- On Fri, May 1, 1998 at 19:21:43 (-0800) Gar W. Lipow writes: >... >What I would like you do is something much harder than a vision of the >future. I want you to look at your vision, look at where we are now >and use your creativity, your knowledge and your imagination to create >a path that gets there from here. Assume your vision will win, and >imagine yourself a historian fifty years fr ...

Document Size:	5782
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 2 08:33:56 PDT 1998

41699 activism -- rank: 1000

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: >Many left-liberal activists are unfortunately 'reverse size queens'; they >love the idea of 'small is beautiful,' though there is no reason to think >that small is necessarily more democratic, ecologically sensible, etc. The smallbiz ideology also appeals to those who think themselves the "natural leaders" of oppressed groups - like urban community activists. New York City is full of community organizations from the 1960s and 1970s that have metamorpho ...

Document Size:	5053
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 1 17:31:12 PDT 1998

41700 intro -- rank: 1000

Bill Cochrane wrote: >Thanks Doug for setting this list up and assuming the awesome >responcibilities of moderator. I hope that the task is less irritating >for you than my forays into moderation. >At the moment I'm puzzling over the apparent split in views between the >IMF and World Bank. My feeling is that although this split might be of >some consequence the reason it looks important is simply that they are so >close together on policy that any difference looms large agai ...

Document Size:	5795
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 1 15:34:59 PDT 1998