Re: Re: >Shouldn't PEN-L members be working furiously to crafteconomic political

[ALI KADRI <akadri_00@xxxxxxxxx>]

So let us recap and correct me if am wrong, mind you I
am often wrong as I discover myself:


Before the onset of current economic crisis we had:
An African continent tattering in the grip of poverty,
war and disease.
A Latin American continent whose half of its children
wallow in absolute poverty as reported by the press
two days ago.
An Asian continent in destitute, with the exception of
the isolated east Asian case whose livelihood depends
on exports to western market, war and depression
paints the day.
In all, these countries develop in severe crisis under
the tutelage of the bw institutions. Come high or low
abroad, these are always socially in the low.
Now estimates show these continents have fared worst
under structural adjustment and privatisation. At
least for the whole, there may exceptions, but too
small to consider. I am treating the facts in a broad
stroke approach for the time being, i.e. not
analytically theorizing.
Deaths from, let us say, from malnutrition and
commonly curable diseases are roughly estimated at
about 35,000 a day. These estimates vary a lot but
they go anywhere between 35.000 and 65.000 people a
day. I do not how accurate they are, but big they are
and in times of crisis they get worst.

So if we are simply to establish a trend under the
regimentation of the current economic policy regime
things tend to look worst.

To add insult to injury, there comes recession in the
west. Deep or shallow as it may be the case in the
west, it is going to be very deep abroad.

I would like to recall Baran?s ?that the benefits of
capitalism to the working class in the west were tardy
and skimpy, but devastating to the third world?

Add to this deleterious mixture, the war against a
backward nation, which upholds a fatalistic approach
to life and living, from a  US aggression that is
carving heroes and role models for the third world;
this leaves open many questions, principally I say,
what to do in the face of a fast deteriorating
economic condition world wide when the force of
opposition to dominant world capital takes a nihilist
and fatalistic approach to struggle.

The world is fast moving towards more
interconnectedness by the very secular pressures
population growth, technical advance, and information.

Where to stand in the face of this anarchy, and is it
possible for the world to continue at this two pace
approach: some go to the moon while others have a
malaria medication simply because British cows in the
thirties contracted a parasitic disease whose drugs
later served useful to holding back malaria.

One would not go too far in saying that anarchy
requires some form of control or that it requires a
disciplining of the process that besets these social
conditions. It is, I think, truly impossible under the
very anarchic and warped conditions of world
development to arrive anywhere when big states act
outside of international law, small clienteles states
act like slave drivers for the interests of the big
states, and when the means of destruction become more
ubiquitous than they presently are, and so on. Marx
may have said that humanity never gives itself more
problems than it could solve, but that was not a time
when weapons of mass destruction were about to be
abound.

To make a long story short since I have to go back
work to do, there is now a serious possibility to
"organise man and nature." I think we should start
from here.

So we can say, short of being coy, a spectrum of
poverty death and disease haunts the world, so it time
for communism to haunt it back.

--- Peter Dorman <dormanp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> While I think we should welcome any friendly
> comments from people like Krugman and Stiglitz, I
> don't think they offer a real opening for radical
> economics.  They are essentially objecting to the
> dogmatic wing of the discipline, as well as the
> cynical exploitation of these doctrines by the rich
> and powerful.  Fine.  But neither has taken the
> first step toward promoting work by people outside
> the mainstream.
>
> Like Jim, I have tried to craft an alternative
> rhetoric.  I always worry about the bumper sticker
> version of a theory as well as its highfalutin'
> incarnation.  But folks like us are really on the
> outside looking in -- at least with respect to
> professional economics.  We have a better chance of
> making an impact in other realms: popular protest,
> political think tanks, etc.
>
> Peter
>
> Charles Brown wrote:
>
> > >Shouldn't PEN-L members be working furiously to
> craft economic political
> > rhetoric even more radical than Stiglitz and
> Krugman ?
> >
> > <jdevine:
> > sure, that's what I do, when I find people who
> will listen.
> >
> > ((((((((((
> >
> > CB: Yes, I realize that.
> >
> > Doesn't Stiglitz and Krugman's lead give the
> opportunity to break out of the narrow confines of
> "heterodox" economics , and founding a new
> post-neo-orthodox school which is radical again, to
> break the next ground in academic economics and ....
>


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