The Limits of Keynesian Economics:
A. Central Themes to be discussed:
1. The Apologetics of capitalist economics after Ricardo
2. Idol Worship: Neo-classical equilibrium theory and Say’s Law
3. Equilibrium? The depression explodes the ruling model
4. Keynes explanation for the breakdown
5. Keynes’s goal: restoring capitalism
6. Keynes’s political goal: Reviving the Liberal Party
7. Keynes’s policy prescription: the central government supplements private investment
8. The Mechanics of Keynes’s policy prescriptions
9. Flaws: Keynes’s utopian capitalism
10. Keynes versus Marx on stagnation and crisis
B. Questions and Discussion
See the Mayday Site for further details,
By FellowCommodityDooley
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Adventures in GringoLandia
"The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver, 2009
Barbara Kingsolver is one of the best authors in the United States. What this means is that any story she writes, even ones with certain flaws, has more resonance than works by lesser writers. This is also true of certain film directors, like Altman, Kurosawa or Penn, and certain playwrights, like Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner or August Wilson.
A ‘lacuna” means a ‘hole’ or ‘gap.’ The first lacuna we meet is a long dangerous tunnel off the ocean full of water, that surfaces in a possibly ceremonial pool or ‘cenote’ in-land. The lacuna is off Yucatan on Isla Pixol in Mexico in the 1920s. A half-American/half-Mexican boy is taught to roll soft tortilla flour into sweet concoctions called ‘blandas.’ The boy’s name is Harrison William Shepherd, and his seemingly true story is told in the forms of a first-person diary; by a southern friend, Mrs. Brown; by an ‘archivist;’ in letters; through newspaper clippings and in standard, third-person narrative. This gives the story the feel of a documentary reconstruction of Harrison’s life. However, the construction itself makes the story somewhat hard to follow at times. The boy Harrison, later christened ‘Insolito' or 'Soli' by Frida Kahlo, swims into the lacuna, holds his breath for a long time and survives to come out on the other side in the pool.
Harrison moves to Mexico City in 1930 with his gold-digger mother, Salome (!) and, using his blanda-making skills, becomes the plaster-maker for a certain muralist, Diego Rivera. He meets Frida, becomes one of the cooks, and then the typist for the Rivera’s, lives in their odd square box houses, then moves to the Kahlo family’s ‘Blue House’ in Coyoacan. Insolito wants to become a writer, and keeps his diary through this whole time. There, eventually, arrives Lev Trotsky and his wife, Natalya in 1937. Harrison details the time that Trotsky lives in the Blue House, then moves out to another house down the street after a legendary but perhaps inaccurate infidelity is discovered. Shepherd works for Trotsky as a typist too, taking dictation of the various articles and books Trotsky never stops writing. Shepherd accidentally leaves a certain document lying around that leads to a fight between Trotsky and Rivera, and feels very bad about it. He details the first assassination attempt against Trotsky, and then the successful one by a ‘friend’ of friends – the GPU agent Jacson. The death of Trotsky is the second ‘lacuna’ of the book – and in a way, the deepest.
Harrison eventually moves back to the United States. He becomes employed by the US government to preserve paintings from U.S. federal galleries, which are being hidden in Asheville, North Carolina. They are being hidden because of threats of invasion during World War II. He gets the job through the good offices of Rivera’s gallery friends in New York. Frida carefully rescues an early story of his about the conflict between the Aztecs and Cortes from the Mexican police, who had confiscated it at the time of the assassination, and sends it to him. Shepherd finally opens the package, finishes the story, and becomes a famous writer in the United States. He continues writing books that indict militarism and government lying, while hiding the politics in coded fictional stories about Mexico’s history.
Shepherd tries to stay as invisible as possible, and his long-term homosexuality is also kept hidden. He never gives interviews and rarely leaves his house. However, the McCarthy period comes calling. Shepherd is eventually denounced in Asheville as a Communist, being accused of being an associate of notorious people like Rivera, Kahlo and Trotsky. As they say, guilt by association. He becomes a ‘non-person’ in Asheville, except for his older female friend and typist, Mrs. Brown. It is she that gathers his documents and tries to tell the story of his life. Due to the anti-communist hysteria, Shepherd’s last book contract is finally turned down by the publisher after they try to get him to put out the book under someone else’s name. As such, he can no longer earn a living. This is the third lacuna.
Insolito eventually returns to Isla Pixol, intentionally swims into the same ‘lacuna’ again … and drowns.
What I find interesting is that Barbara Kingsolver, a normally liberal or perhaps leftish writer, would retell this iconic story of Kahlo, Rivera and Trotsky, and in not unfriendly terms. In certain ways, the death of Trotsky is the emotional center of the book. Liberals are not known for their friendliness to communists. A similar story was also delineated in the film “Frida,” based on the biography of Frida Kahlo, a flim by director Julie Taymor. Kahlo’s paintings have toured the United States, and were recently shown here at the Walker. (See review below.) As someone who tracks ‘memes’ – ideas that spread through culture – the fact that Trotsky is not seen as some kind of crazed devil by some liberals and progressives, but a martyr to true communism and the working-class, is significant.
Kingsolver does have a long record of progressive political writing. Kingsolver wrote the non-fiction “Holding the Line” about the failed Phelps-Dodge strike of the 80s, especially highlighting the role of women. She is a clear environmentalist, whose non-fiction “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life” is a contribution to the anti-corporate organic food movement. The excellent “The Poisonwood Bible” is a clever demolition of religious fundamentalism. “The Bean Trees’ is about the violence done to Central American immigrants, along with its sequel, “Pigs in Heaven.” “Animal Dreams” is about fighting pollution in some Arizona orchards.
Kingsolver is a writer who does not tell stories just to ‘entertain’ the middle class –the hallmark of American bourgeois literature. The recent spate of navel-gazing ‘memoirs’ written by dysfunctional individuals and their 12-step miseries is an example of the middle-class attempting to give their writing some significance – and failing. Run with these scissors, fuckhead! Kingsolver writes about the actual events of the wider world – a usually taboo preoccupation in bourgeois fiction, except as a ‘backdrop’ to some more important individual drama. As Kingsolver would point out, we are really more than ourselves.
And I bought this at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, 8/14/2010
Barbara Kingsolver is one of the best authors in the United States. What this means is that any story she writes, even ones with certain flaws, has more resonance than works by lesser writers. This is also true of certain film directors, like Altman, Kurosawa or Penn, and certain playwrights, like Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner or August Wilson.
Harrison moves to Mexico City in 1930 with his gold-digger mother, Salome (!) and, using his blanda-making skills, becomes the plaster-maker for a certain muralist, Diego Rivera. He meets Frida, becomes one of the cooks, and then the typist for the Rivera’s, lives in their odd square box houses, then moves to the Kahlo family’s ‘Blue House’ in Coyoacan. Insolito wants to become a writer, and keeps his diary through this whole time. There, eventually, arrives Lev Trotsky and his wife, Natalya in 1937. Harrison details the time that Trotsky lives in the Blue House, then moves out to another house down the street after a legendary but perhaps inaccurate infidelity is discovered. Shepherd works for Trotsky as a typist too, taking dictation of the various articles and books Trotsky never stops writing. Shepherd accidentally leaves a certain document lying around that leads to a fight between Trotsky and Rivera, and feels very bad about it. He details the first assassination attempt against Trotsky, and then the successful one by a ‘friend’ of friends – the GPU agent Jacson. The death of Trotsky is the second ‘lacuna’ of the book – and in a way, the deepest.
Harrison eventually moves back to the United States. He becomes employed by the US government to preserve paintings from U.S. federal galleries, which are being hidden in Asheville, North Carolina. They are being hidden because of threats of invasion during World War II. He gets the job through the good offices of Rivera’s gallery friends in New York. Frida carefully rescues an early story of his about the conflict between the Aztecs and Cortes from the Mexican police, who had confiscated it at the time of the assassination, and sends it to him. Shepherd finally opens the package, finishes the story, and becomes a famous writer in the United States. He continues writing books that indict militarism and government lying, while hiding the politics in coded fictional stories about Mexico’s history.
Shepherd tries to stay as invisible as possible, and his long-term homosexuality is also kept hidden. He never gives interviews and rarely leaves his house. However, the McCarthy period comes calling. Shepherd is eventually denounced in Asheville as a Communist, being accused of being an associate of notorious people like Rivera, Kahlo and Trotsky. As they say, guilt by association. He becomes a ‘non-person’ in Asheville, except for his older female friend and typist, Mrs. Brown. It is she that gathers his documents and tries to tell the story of his life. Due to the anti-communist hysteria, Shepherd’s last book contract is finally turned down by the publisher after they try to get him to put out the book under someone else’s name. As such, he can no longer earn a living. This is the third lacuna.
Insolito eventually returns to Isla Pixol, intentionally swims into the same ‘lacuna’ again … and drowns.
What I find interesting is that Barbara Kingsolver, a normally liberal or perhaps leftish writer, would retell this iconic story of Kahlo, Rivera and Trotsky, and in not unfriendly terms. In certain ways, the death of Trotsky is the emotional center of the book. Liberals are not known for their friendliness to communists. A similar story was also delineated in the film “Frida,” based on the biography of Frida Kahlo, a flim by director Julie Taymor. Kahlo’s paintings have toured the United States, and were recently shown here at the Walker. (See review below.) As someone who tracks ‘memes’ – ideas that spread through culture – the fact that Trotsky is not seen as some kind of crazed devil by some liberals and progressives, but a martyr to true communism and the working-class, is significant.
Kingsolver does have a long record of progressive political writing. Kingsolver wrote the non-fiction “Holding the Line” about the failed Phelps-Dodge strike of the 80s, especially highlighting the role of women. She is a clear environmentalist, whose non-fiction “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life” is a contribution to the anti-corporate organic food movement. The excellent “The Poisonwood Bible” is a clever demolition of religious fundamentalism. “The Bean Trees’ is about the violence done to Central American immigrants, along with its sequel, “Pigs in Heaven.” “Animal Dreams” is about fighting pollution in some Arizona orchards.
Kingsolver is a writer who does not tell stories just to ‘entertain’ the middle class –the hallmark of American bourgeois literature. The recent spate of navel-gazing ‘memoirs’ written by dysfunctional individuals and their 12-step miseries is an example of the middle-class attempting to give their writing some significance – and failing. Run with these scissors, fuckhead! Kingsolver writes about the actual events of the wider world – a usually taboo preoccupation in bourgeois fiction, except as a ‘backdrop’ to some more important individual drama. As Kingsolver would point out, we are really more than ourselves.
And I bought this at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, 8/14/2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
A sympthetic essay in today's FT, comparing unions in Asia and the "developed" West:
Workers at a garment factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, went on strike at the end of last month in protest against the dismissal of one of their union officials. The factory produces for Gap, Benetton and Adidas, whose customers have long benefited from low-cost Asian labour. But union militancy in Cambodia’s textile sector can now count some successes: the minimum wage went up by $11 a month in July – less than the unions wanted, but enough to end the wave of strikes.
The large, even heroic, tasks of protecting rights might be declining sharply in developed nations. But they are increasingly common in the catch-up world – especially in China and south east Asia. In many recently (or still) communist countries, labour remains exploited and union activism is badly needed.
is the most eye-catching example. Strikes swept through foreign-owned companies – including Honda, Hyundai, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Toyota – in the south of the country in June, in spite of heavy attention by police. Unofficial as they were, they worked. Party leaders, including Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, called for improved wages and conditions, especially for the low paid and precarious migrant workers, who have formed much of the work force in areas such as Guangdong.
Mr Wen told an audience in Beijing that migrants’ work “is glorious and should be respected by society at large. Migrant workers should be cared for, protected and respected.” However, as Simon Clarke of Warwick University, who studies unions in Russia and China, stresses, independent unions in China and south east Asia are often fleeting, while membership remains hazardous. Official unions, unused to militancy, even try to suppress activism.
A similar problem is true in Russia, where the legacy of unions wholly dominated – indeed, created – by the Communist party lingers. In post-communist Russia, control by the party has been replaced by control by the state. Established unions suffer from a pervasive culture of poor civic and political activism. As Simon Clarke puts it, Russia’s labour movement “is completely under the thumb of [prime minister] Vladimir Putin.”
Yet even if Russia isn’t following suit, the growing strength of unions in Asia is a welcome move; one which will put pressure on the regimes to increase domestic consumption, raise skill levels and develop social and welfare services, especially for migrant workers. True, neither the remaining Communist parties (as in China and Vietnam) nor the old official unions will want to relinquish control that has served them well. Even so, bolstered by newer campaigning unions, the economic struggle can be waged hopefully.
Success is a much fainter hope in the west, where unions suffer from a past seen as noble and a present seen as irrelevant. But now with austerity as the posture of choice, unions scramble to reassert themselves. British unions are planning an autumn of discontent with demonstrations, special conferences and possible strikes. That said, French public sector workers, British Airways cabin crew and Greek workers in any sector – all have tested the resolve of their governments and none have succeeded.
Indeed, in rich countries unions continue to weaken, especially in the private sector. Even in Germany, where co-operation with employers has ensured power at corporate level, they have been helpless to stop loss of income, to cancel cuts, or to change the government’s mind on raising the retirement age to 67. At the conference in June of the federal unions (DGB) delegates seemed to agree with the centre-right chancellor Angela Merkel – who addressed the union to mild applause rather than catcalls – that “very hard years lie ahead”. Michael Sommer, the DGB chairman, lauded the government’s commitment to social equilibrium – which has meant, in practice, acceptance of layoffs and wage cuts.
Yet they might also raise their sights: for if they are unlikely to succeed in their traditional search for better wages they might fare better by returning to the moral force they mobilised in early years. Vast discrepancies in earnings between the bulk of salary earners and those at the top of the corporate sectors can unite ethics and polemics. Labour movements have a chance to sway public opinion and in so doing regain a status they lost with their draining of members and shrinking of ambitions.
If not, the declining unions of the developed world may begin to look jealously at the achievements of their less privileged equivalents. “The union makes us strong” was ever the slogan of workers’ movements. But the contrasting strengths of unions east and west illuminate one basic fact: unions do well for their members in rising economies, but in more austere times, moral suasion is their best – and perhaps only – card.
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