Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: RE: Re: The Vulnerable Planet (was Re: suburbia)

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ken, I hope that you sent this before I issued my ultimatum calling for a
halt to this sort of exchange.

On Fri, Jun 29, 2001 at 08:49:43PM -0500, Ken Hanly wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Jones <jones118@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > >
> > > >Comments after passages:
> >
> > Probably things like this make me suspect that Doug is a closet fan of
> > capitalism:
> >
> > >>You can hardly open a newspaper or turn on the TV (well, at least
> > tuned to certain channels) without hearing about a wondrous New
> > Economy. (Though it's sobering to learn that, according to a Scudder
> > Kemper Investments poll, over 80% of Americans have neither heard nor
> > read of a New Economy.) The canonical version is relentlessly, almost
> > deliriously optimistic. It goes something like this. Finally, after a
> > long wait, the computer revolution is paying off economically. It
> > used to be, as the economist Robert Solow famously put it, that that
> > revolution was visible everywhere but in the statistics. Now, with
> > U.S. productivity stats surging forward, Solow's quip has to be
> > retired. It took some time for people and organizations to learn how
> > to use computers (broadly defined, of course, to include all kinds of
> > high-tech electronic gadgetry), but now they've finally learned. All
> > that hardware, now linked from local area networks to the global
> > Internet, along with a political regime of smaller government and
> > lighter regulation, has unleashed forces of innovation and wealth
> > creation like the world has never known before. Flatter hierarchies
> > and more interesting work are the social payoffs; rising incomes and
> > an end to slumps the economic payoffs. Quality replaces quantity,
> > knowledge replaces physical capital, and networks replace hierarchies.
> > The portion of the New Economy discourse that's relevant to Marxism,
> > and specifically to this panel, is that it's appropriated a lot of
> > rhetoric about revolution, about the overturning of hierarchies, and
> > about the democratization of ownership and the workplace that used to
> > be staples of radical politics. At the same time, though, New Economy
> > rhetoric also rejects a lot of the old Marxian catechism: we're now
> > post-material; scarcity is waning as a social force; in an age of
> > endlessly and almost costlessly reproducible goods like software and
> > movies, ownership too is waning as a social force; physical capital
> > doesn't matter anymore, because knowledge, as everyone from George
> > Gilder to Manuel Castells could tell you, is what matters, not
> > things; and place doesn't matter much anymore, as long as you have a
> > cell phone and a net connection.<< [lbo-talk Sep 25 2000 - 11:31:51 EDT ]
> >
> > True, Doug's qualifies his  to American efficiency with what is his
> habitual
> > reservation:
> >
> > >> Obviously I am extremely skeptical
> > about almost all these claims, or I wouldn't have a book to write. <<
>
> COMMENT: After reading this I just wonder if I can trust anything you say.
> The paean? to American efficiency you attribute to Doug is not his at all It
> is Doug's description of the New Economy rhetoric in mainstream business
> media. You represent them as HIS description with a habitual reservation.
> But his reservation is that he doubts almost all the claims of the rhetoric.
> You seem to read whatever you please into
> what Doug says.
> >
> > But scepticism like his is a stock-in-trade which allows you to have your
> > cake and eat it. Doug is always sceptical, but it is only a cadenza to the
> > main theme: the great civilisational benefits of American capitalism. For
> > every expression of Doug's doubts about these benefits you can find many
> > more rants like the above, where the exuberance of what Keynes called  the
> > 'animal spirits' of the business class, simply leaps off the page at you.
> At
> > heart, Doug is a great celebrator of the American Dream.
>
> COMMENT: Oh by the way you didnt notice the above was not Doug's rant.
> >
> > One of his intellectual mentors is Anwar Shaikh, who is a also great
> > believer in the future of capitalism:
> >
> > > If you argue, as Shaikh does, that the solution to the crisis of the
> last
> > > 24 years has been a relentless attack on the living standards of the
> > > working class, then all the noxious symptoms you list are part of the
> > > side-effects of the "cure." If there is an upswing, these pressures will
> > > ease, and real gains for the working class - and a reduction of these
> > > hideous tensions - may be possible.
> >  [--- from list marxism-international@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
>
> >  15.11.97]
> >
> > You get the picture? Capitalism is bad but, hey, things are getting
> better!
> > Even in the colonies:
>
> COMMENT: Well you dont give us direct quotes form Shaikh. But what is
> strange for a Marxist to claim that
> crises are solved by attacks on the living standard of the working class, or
> that during upswings there may be  gains for (some) of the working class?
> You turn this standard Marxist analysis into some sort of defence of
> capitalism.
>
>
> >
> > >>My point was this: life on the capitalist periphery is not some
> > simple narrative of relentless decline. There has been real progress
> > in a lot of places and in a lot of ways. << [pen-l 02 May 2001 18:18 UTC ]
> >
> > Doug even thinks that altho neoliberalism is 'a crime against humanity',
> it
> > too can be a good thing:
> >
> > >>I cite this stuff not to say that neoliberalism is wonderful or that
> > Argentina is paradise. Neoliberalism is a crime against humanity, and
> > Argentina could do a lot better under a more humane regime. But it's
> > just wrong to say that it's all a story of going uninterrupedly
> > downhill.<< [pen-l 01 May 2001 20:12 UTC ]
> >
> > This idea that a crime against humanity can lead to a betterment of the
> > human condition is an odd one, but it is one Doug has expressed repeatedly
> > in one form or another. Thus, the maquiladoras represent liberation (of a
> > kind) for Mexican women, and so on.
>
> COMMENT: You are absolutely perverse. Doug is arguing against those who
> think that neoliberalism has absolutely no positive aspects.
> He is not saying it is a good thing overall. Responding to the view that
> neo-liberalism is wholly negative in its results he points out surely quite
> rightly that this is incorrect. But you have him saying that although
> neoliberalism is terribly evil is produces a  net balance of good.
> :
> >
>
> >
> > See what I mean?
> >
> COMMENT: No. I dont see what you mean. But see your mean antics,
> misconstruing the obvious.
>
>
> > Mark Jones
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx