Reply to Louis and Arno

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Sun Sep 27 09:54:37 PDT 1998


I don't think the dangers I raised about the devaluation of the yen which would follow from Krugman's plan reflects any kind of paranoia. It is a well recognized danger; I just fear that Keynesianism will be forced down the road of such neomercantalism in the pursuit of higher domestic employment. This is also a well known area of controversy in Keynesian economics. After all, it was Joan Robinson who analyzed beggar thy neighbor policies in the context of the Great Depression.

What is not tolerable is Proyect's insinuating a connection between Neumann's book and Goldhagen's thesis. After all, Neumann even suggested that the Germans had been the least anti-semitic of all the European peoples. Moreover, Neumann's spearhead theory of anti semitism is opposed to Goldhagen's thesis rooted in the German mind. Goldhagen does not refute Neumann directly.

Boddhisatva's important reply I will answer tomorrow.

I am going over limit to respond to Arno.

1. The Indian superfreak Rajneesh is well known in Germany and throughout Europe. Arno's feigning why I would be upset at being so called is unbelievable. But if he can name his colleague Rajneesh and provide a sample list of his publications, I will apologize for flying off the handle about what I perceived to be an insult. I checked with someone else who also thought it was a clear insult. If am wrong, then I will apologize.

2. Of Arno's reply to Marx's List critique, I can only understand his claim that List advocated the skilling of labor in the development of infant industries (for List's infant industry argument, I am relying on Douglas A Irwin, Againt the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade--sorry I do not have the time to read List or new books on the topic; I am sharing with you previous store of reading).

But of course this does not speak to Marx's point--that List had only prettified the human consequences of industrialism which in this case Andrew Ure better understood than List. Ure clarified that industrialism would mean the degradation of labor.

The construction of machinery, esp machinery with which to construct machinery, requires skilled labor but the overall impact of the machine system is to dehumanize and degrade labor.

3. List was a political liberal--he would not have approved of Bismarck's anti socialist laws (though whether his political liberalism would have forced him to oppose the trade union ban does not seem clear especially since he seems to have never offered any specific program on behalf of labor as say William Thompson or Thomas Hodgskin).

At any rate, Arno provides no guidelines by which national protection would be regulated so as to not allow industrialists turned patriots from turning a country into a modern ancien regime in which the domestic bourgeoisie exploited the proletariat even more than a foreign bourgeoisie and in which modern industries continued to enjoy public subsidies for private profit.

Moreover, as Silberner argued his political liberalism was not meant to apply to international relations, which of course is central to Neumann's argument.

4. List never defended any kind of protection for the so called third world. Indeed he militated for the freest trade exactly among those who supplied raw materials and tropical commodities. There was no question of locking them in as servants of the advanced capitalist countries.

5. More bizareness:
> It does not bother me that the Nazis, or whoever, claimed something somewhat
> similar. The nazis were also in favour of food and rest. And I agree.

6. List's opposition to slavery does not help clarify what he meant when he approved miscegenation with blacks only of the 4th or 5th generation. As I pointed out this was not taboo in the American South. In order to defend List from accusations that he defended capitalist colonialism, you pointed to his approval of miscegenation. I am merely reiterating that the qualification of in the 4th or 5th generation makes the passage quite unclear. List's promiscegenation views hardly make him a cosmopolitan.

best, rakesh



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