Ecological Headstand: The Luddite Question: Rhythm, Rebounds and Elastic...

Ecological Headstand: The Luddite Question: Rhythm, Rebounds and Elastic...: "Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber and Frances Woolley at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative have all chimed in recently..."

Marx is quoted from Capital, and the conclusion is:

In this account of business cycles, the alternating expansion and contraction has become endogenous, regardless of whatever "accidents" may have engendered them. Moreover, given such periodicity, unemployment -- the production of a relative surplus population, the industrial reserve army -- is not some regrettable side-effect but becomes a necessary condition of modern industry and of the continuing accumulation of capital. Thus the long-run rebound of employment, far from curing unemployment, simply establishes the condition for yet another round of displacement.

The continual submersion of skilled workers into the unskilled is neccessary for Capitalist development.

What is not mentioned in the article is the role of the industrial reserve army in keeping wages down. This alone ensures that there will never be full employment in a Capitalist economy. All benefits of productivity increases have to accrue to the Capitalist.

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Unskilled labor

Seth Godin wants to redefine Unskilled labor.

Unskilled now means not-specially skilled.

What Godin emphasises again and again is that workers have to take control of our future. We can no longer rely on Capitalists to tell us what to do.

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Posts Noted 2011 March 10

Blog posts noted on 10 March 2011

• Tomgram: James Carroll, Where Did All the Fatwas Go? recounts the failure of the discourse that all Arabs are bad.

Perhaps the two biggest surprises of all here: out of a culture that has notoriously disempowered women has sprung a protest movement rife with female leadership, while a religion regarded as inherently incompatible with democratic ideals has been the context from which comes an unprecedented outbreak of democratic hope. And make no mistake: the Muslim religion is essential to what has been happening across the Middle East, even without Islamic “fanatics” chanting hate-filled slogans.

• Ted Rall asks Unions? What Unions? (Labor Leaders to Blame for Workers’ Weakness). The labour bureaucracy has failed in its reformist agenda. Class war means there is no common ground with the Capitalists.

Labor is on the ropes. With the economy getting worse, however, there has never been a greater need for union leaders to get smarter and more militant—or a better opportunity to reverse their long slide.

• Noahpinion says In a pinch, upgrade the humans or redistribute the robots. This is a consideration about when Departments I and II are fully mechanised.
• Another species shows that co-operation is natural: Elephants give each other a helping trunk.

The elephants’ success is equally compelling, even though their task was simpler. They clearly knew enough to wait for their partner and to abandon their end of the rope when their partner couldn’t reach theirs. “These results put elephants, at least in terms of how quickly they learn the critical contingencies of cooperation, on a par with apes,” says Plotnik.

• Skeptics will scoff at Polar ice melt raising sea levels rapidly: study.

The pace at which the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting is "accelerating rapidly" and raising the global sea level, according to findings of a study financed by NASA.

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Posts Noted 2011 March 8

A few posts I found interesting

• Seth Godin has another approach to the commons in A flip side: the asymmetrical gift

The internet makes it easy to give gifts to large numbers of people at very very low cost.

• Juan Cole has Kusha: Iran vs. Egypt: Qualitative Differences in Capabilities: Revolutionary governments are more resilient.
• Naked Capitalism has Guest Post: Head of World’s Largest Asset Manager Says “Markets Like Totalitarian Governments”

Investors can determine whether a nation prospers or starves.

Investors can determine the course of nations, including who gets elected and who gets the boot.

No wonder there are so many totalitarian governments in the Middle East, North Africa and around the world.

No wonder totalitarianism has been creeping into America’s politics and economics.

• Mark Thoma comments on Paul Krugman: Degrees and Dollars. My comment is that this causes problems for Department I as not all Department II can relocate there.
• Seth Godin explores The limits of evidence-based marketing: not all people are convinced by evidence - sometimes an opinion-maker needs to change before others do.
• Mark Thoma agrees with Gramsci that Politics Matters

There are alternatives to helping the well off and hoping it trickles down -- there are trickle up alternatives that help middle and lower class households directly -- but we haven't put enough effort into developing these policies. That needs to change.

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Corporate Solidarity

Paul Krugman notices class solidarity among the rich in Corporate Solidarity.

Matt Yglesias has a post about the remarkable solidarity of corporate executives, who seem to support their class interests even when their individual firms would benefit from the policies they oppose.

The ruling class always knows what is at stake. The working class has to be kept divided through racism, sexism, homophobia, consumerism, etc.

How can the working class ever become the ruling class without emulating the Capitalists by putting class interests ahead of individual interests?

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