On Feb 23, 2008, at 6:11 AM, Cseniornyc at aol.com wrote:
> Well it turned out to be rather anticlimactic this meeting.
The threatened leafletting and hostile questions never materialized.
> Strange to
> arrange a panel about whether the economy is about to crash and
> not to have a
> single economist on it.
I think I was playing the economist on the panel, though as you point out, I don't fit comfortably into any existing occupational classification. But a former investment banker (who was a quant) and a realtor who blogs about his business offer pretty relevant perspectives on an economic cycle that's being driven by a housing bust and the failure of exotic securities.
> It is like assembling a panel of architects to discuss
> the best procedure for prostate operations.
> So we had the profession-undefinable Doug Henwood, a Realtor who
> extolled
> the virtues of the market, a literary editor
Aside from being very entertaining, Lewis Lapham made the essential points that bubbles and securities fraud are our national heritage.
> and Nomi Prins a wealthy ex
> Manager Director at Goldman Sachs and Bear Sterns and who made a
> lot of money
> there ,is now retired and playing Liberal Chic.
Nomi is chic, and I mean that in the best sense. But this is an insulting way to characterize her. She really knows what she's writing about and does it very well. Have you actually read any of her stuff? Or do her resume and appearance tell you everything you need to know? I think the left, such as it is, should be glad to have someone who used to create derivatives at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs on our side now.
> I must say that Mr. Henwood was the most coherent of all although he
> disappointed the crowd of mostly gloom and doomers and
> conspiracionists who wanted
> to hear assurances that the final days of Wall St were arriving
> very soon. A
> young questioner was particularly chagrined when Doug told him
> that usually
> after recessions Americans actually vote for the right. Although
> Mr Henwood
> might be taking correlation for causation, it is still a good
> observation to
> keep in mind.
The n isn't a large number, but it's all way have to go on.
> It is interesting to notice that the Brecht Forum, a self-
> proclaimed Marxist
> center is seldom patronized by the working classes
The working class was at home watching TV and maybe taking care of the kids. But a lot of the audience was, actually, working class, even if it didn't match your apparent prejudice about the proper appearance of the horny-handed sons of toil.
> and it is very rare when
> you see a Union leader on a panel or a seminar. Instead Slavoj
> Zizek will be
> there soon again.
> There were no Marxists on this panel either.
I call myself one, though you probably don't agree.
> Might as well because Marx
> didn't say much about money and finance, somehow.
Not that much, but there's plenty of very interesting and suggestive stuff in The Grundrisse, TSV, and K vol. 3.
> En passant, I remember Doug saying on this list not too long ago
> that Marx
> had said that "money is a social relation".Actually he never said
> that.
He didn't say it in exactly those words, but it's all over the works I mentioned above. And he did say in the Grundrisse (p. 157): "The individual carries his social power, as well as his bond with society, in his pocket." Also, around pp. 145-147: "Thus, the exchange value of a product creates money alongside the product.... [I]t is impossible to abolish money itself as long as exchange value remains the social form of products. It is necessary to see this clearly in order to avoid setting impossible tasks, and in order to know the limits within which monetary reforms and transformations of circulation are able to give a new shape to the relations of production and to the social relations which rest on the latter.... [By virtue of its special status as] the general commodity in relation to all others...money...becomes the realized and always realizable form of capital; the form of capital's appearance which is always valid.... What oriinally appeared as a means to promote production becomes a relation alien to the producers. As the producers become more dependent on exchange, exchange appears to become more independent of them, and the gap between the product as product and the product as exchange value appears to widen. Money does not create these antitheses and contradictions; it is rather, the development of these contradictions and antitheses which creates the seemingly transcendental power of money.... Just as the real exchange of products creates their exchange value, so does their exchange value create money."