obama verbal brilliancies prove that meanings of what he said was locked in -not so deeply for me as i presaged coming of greater evil] in his nervous system.

he knew what he meant and knew- like ?all wily priests/pols- that he wld be misinterpreted; i.e, understood in just the right way. tnx

If you think I called you a lier, I can’t help that. I’m saying I didn’t but was responding to what you posted at the time regarding the Greens.

My advise, let it go.

Apropos to prior conversation I had originally said:
“Having been in Green Parties since the mid-1980s, I’m very familiar with local concepts of governance and economy. ”

You replied:
“I don’t what “greens” you’re talking about. It sounds like your talking with kooks, not greens. If you are a US citizen, you may find it interesting to note that the USA Green Party began in 2001 (hardly the mid-80s).

I then said (and you had a second chance here to take my word on it):
“I was in two NY Green Parties beginning circa 1986 and in a North Carolina LEFT Green Party for a long time after that. ”

You replied:
“So, NY may have had its own thing going on, but this is the official site’s version.”

I then said:
“There were numerous Green Parties in the US in the 1980s and they were alive and well before I joined them. They existed in virtually every bio-region of the country. Just because they had not formed a national party does not mean they did not exist.”

To which you replied:
“I don’t care whether you met up with some neighbors that said they were green. They could have been anybody, talking about anything.” “…I suggest you stop pawning them off as some kind of EXAMPLE of the Green Party.”
And then you said: “First, I ran for city council on the Green Party ticket so I’m a tad familiar with the party and didn’t need to “look it up” but used the national website to provide you with some information so as to stop your stupid made up crap.”

I then said:
“In the late 80s she (Jacobs) was an inspiration for the NEW YORK GREENS to advocate against building an expressway up the west side of Manhattan that would replace the existing dilapidated structure.”
And further: “NYG was founded by New York Greens Lorna Salzman and Kirkpatrick Sale – both bioregionalists – and you can look them up.”

To which you replied:
” I’m very familiar with Kirkpatrick Sale, but he’s hardly a seminal thinker.”

And I then said (regarding your end run around the subject):
“Who cares if Sale is a seminal thinker or not? ”
And I posted a quote from the NYG’s co-founder’s site:
“In 1985 she (that would be Lorna Salzman – Barry) co-founded the New York Greens, later called the NY Green Party… ”

So then you embark on a mystification PLUS belittling process:
“I simply said that the national party started circa 1991 and became the USA Green Party in 2001 all of which is after the mid-80s when you were cozying up to the folks in NY somewhere. You went on about how Greens were authoritarian, blah blah blah. Much of which is garbage…”

And now I’m saying the record of our conversation clearly indicates you saying I was not talking to Greens (but ‘kooks’) because the Green Party started in 2001 (thus my claim to have been in Greens or Green Parties is a lie.) And you referred to my “stupid made up crap.” I then showed you where you were wrong, and so you switched to belittling Green history in addition to ‘my experience.’ Funny that someone running on a Green ticket would do that. And the kicker is that having been presented with this information you still say; “after the mid-80s when you were cozying up to the folks in NY somewhere.” No guy – you are still not getting it. You were wrong from the start about the Green movement in the US, got called on it, but still resort to personal attack rather than face the facts. How ‘green’ is that?

And we can repeat this sorry scenario with our conversation on Jane Jacobs or with your claim that I said that the “Greens were authoritarian” as well. You got these wrong too.

This is getting embarassing.

I’ve started 3 non-profits all dedicated to implementing what I’m talking about – and they’re successful.

If you’re employing her principles, good for you.

I never called you a lier. I simply said that the national party started circa 1991 and became the USA Green Party in 2001 all of which is after the mid-80s when you were cozying up to the folks in NY somewhere. You went on about how Greens were authoritarian, blah blah blah. Much of which is garbage (that is your experience, which I’m not callling a lie).

I think you’ve blown the “lying” thing out of proportion. We’ve had some harsh words here. We can disagree on particulars but I suspect we have more in common than many.

Max

Who cares if Sale is a seminal thinker or not? You are not one either. He’s a prominent ecologist who was very much involved in the Greens of the 1980s contrary to your statements that the Greens DID NOT EXIST then – and then when you realized your ignorance on this you tried to dismiss it by saying I was talking to neighbors. I guess it’s not enough for you to be in shit up to your ears.

This from Salzman’s website:
In 1985 she (that would be Lorna Salzman) co-founded the New York Greens, later called the NY Green Party, and in the late 1990s she ran for Congress and the US Senate on the Peconic Greens and Green Choice parties respectively. In 2002, she was the Green Party candidate for the US House of Representatives in the 1st CD, Suffolk County, Long Island NY. In 2004 she sought the US Green Party’s nomination for president.

So while we have ALL read Jacobs, some of us were employing her principles while others of us were clueless. Don’t accuse me of lying again. I don’t lie.

Concerning Jacobs, the irony is she hated urban planners and yet they have flocked to her with grandiose schemes of New Urbanization and Smart Growth.

I don’t worship anyone. Jacobs is a particular person who made what I think is a very important contribution. Her view of economics hark back to anscient times and she provides an archeologist’s view to urban growth and decay.

Jacobs view of a healthy city is that it is a fairly “messy” place that people call home. Messy because it grows organically, without regard for sharp edges. There is a school of architecture that swears by her approach to aesthetics. A City is a human community, where living density creates innovation and cultural centers. Where children are reared, not just by parents, but by the community. But the community is not some kind of “socialist” entity, but the neighbor and aunt across the way. Crime is not reduced by having more police, but more well lit places and people who watch out and care for one another.

But Jacobs was not a Marxist (it’s hard for me to use the two in the same sentence). I don’t think she was particularly fond of capitalism either.

She was a decentralist, politically, and hated top-down planning. I think she rather liked the thinking of E. F. Schumacher. She would agree with some basic tenets of Smart Growth, but I rather doubt she’d adhere to them as a way to create a city. Smart Growth is a kind of bastardization of Jacob’s work.

I think that most Marxists, leftists, etc, have found someone other than Marx who articulates their beliefs more clearly, and most probably read other critics a lot more than they do Marx. Marx remains appealing because he guaranetees the overthrow of our current system (indeed, how very Hegelian of him.)

Marx, and most ‘Marxists’, are university types, more interested in theory than the material reality they supposedly want to change. Bakunin was criticising Marx along those lines while Marx was still alive!

However, Jane Jacobs is also ‘adored’ by many who have – perhaps from not understanding? – made many political decisions regarding the city that are indefensible. In Toronto, no one gets elected unless they hail Jane Jacobs as a prophet… same result as calling yourself a Marxist.

At the core the problem remains the same but in reverse: in Marxism, one must try to go from the grand, systematic (and confusing) to the question of the particular: ‘what do I do today to bring about the revolution?’. With writers like ms. Jacobs, we must go from particular to grand, asking ‘how will decisions at the Federal level effect my ability to govern at municipal level?’, and ‘will it be possible to make any positive change while bigger structures exist?’.

In Canada, despite electing ‘leftist’ city councils most of the time, and having a multitude of urban planning professors and academics who have read Jane Jacobs, our cities remain in dire straights. Our transit systems, despite being run by ‘leftists’ are falling apart, and spending money on installing more cameras as fares continue to go up.

Toronto was planning on having an expanded “transit city”, a new light rail expansion for our public transit system. This came out of many years of talking (and need), and a ‘progressive’ council (with many members being direcly, or indirecly tied to the NDP ‘socialist’ party). Now Ontario is running billion dollar deficits and the idea that there is money for this expansion is a joke. At this point its hard to imagine how Toronto can run a transit system at all, considering (this is entirely factualy) that as ridership increases, it actually costs the TTC (toronto transit commission), and thus the City, more! This is because the TTC fare is subsidized by City/province.

Despite talks of expansion, bus routes have been closed recently, even while people cram themsevles like sardines during rush hours (which last a combined 5 hours of the day).

I’m not sure if I’ve made any ‘points’, but I think I’ve expressed something.

thanks.

Her understanding of cities and economics is simply brilliant. She, unlike Marx and Smith, is not a grand systems master. I can’t imagine her calling herself a capitalist or a socialist. I don’t think she had much use for dogma.

I’d suggest, Barry, you actually read her works. Unlike Marx, she’s a clear writer and thinker. (As is the case with Henry George who has much in common with Madame Jacobs.)

Clarity is important. That Jane Jacobs’s work is approachable is a testament to the clarity of her thinking. But it belies an incredible depth of understanding.

I find Karl Marx to be a confused thinker, lost in an abstract dialectic probably has its origins in the German school of philosophy – Grand Systems. I use th word “systems” advisedly. These were really grand schemes that played to the academic crowd.

If you read Henry George – and here I want to be clear I’m not using George as some kind of demigod or ideologue, but purely as a thinker – you’ll see the contrast in his method which was a blend of inductive and deductive reasoning and observation. He was a masterful synthesizer. His language is clear, crisp and clear. His terms are clearly defined and never left to the chance or to a reader’s misapprehension. His mission was equally as clear. He was unfettered by “schools of thought” though he’d read all the classics of his time. He was self-taught and had a keen observational mind. He was not simply hold up in a British library. He lived life.

Jacobs had a similar journey. Keen observer with an exceptional mind to match and articulate.

I’m very familiar with Kirkpatrick Sale, but he’s hardly a seminal thinker.

Why must one choose between left and right? These are legacies of the French Revolution. Like George and Jacobs it’s not about an ism but about a frame of observation. I would take it a step further, it is about emergence. It seems this need to rely on two economic systems has gotten us no where.

Community-owned is socialist. Or do you think you are somehow ‘neither right nor left, but out in front’ with this community ownership thing? Nah, you’re just trying to re-invent the wheel.

Let me try to explain. I didn’t say that Deep Ecologists were not members of the Green Party. No one does a background check to become a registered Green voter. That said, I’m not questioning YOUR experience, I’m simply saying that the Green Party has 10 very explicit Values which explicitly run counter to your claim of authoritarianism. Does that mean you didn’t run into an authoritarian Green? No.

Rant all you want about economies as defined by the works of Marx and Smith. They are inventions to suit human needs and wants. These classical economists were also deeply concerned about the moral and ethical aspect of societies (something missing in the neoclassical economists who were focused on mathematical models, void of morality).

That economic models utilize an understanding (faulty or not) of human nature does NOT make them “discovered” [to paraphrase your point] or simply a description of a “phenomenon”. Economics is about social engineering for the most part (whether for good or ill).

The fact that at some point humans were communial and leaned toward cooperation, democratic, and than toward hierarchical (empire top down) are simply two swings on a pendulum which demonstrate the flux rather than pre-determination of an economic “system”.

Marx set out to CREATE a system both from a social as well as an economic perspective. He recognized the major short-comings of the capitalist model, but saw it as a stage to a “higher” level of human existence.

Both economic systems have led through the introduction of many other factors, to a great chasm between humans and the natural world. Neither set out to do that.

You are the one that mentioned Marx and Smith in the same paragraph. I had not said anything about Smith. My point still stands – you are wrong to think that Marx and Smith invented the two -isms. They merely described economies.

Apparently, the Deep Ecologists and Earth First!ers who used to inhabit the party (among the many you describe as kooks) have come to realize that a party whose ranks are filled with the likes of you will amount to nothing – as you admit. I mean, you do understand that it was possible to be a Deep Ecologist AND a member of a Green Party at the same time, no?

As far as Marx and Smith “claims” what the fuck does that have to do with anything? You spend your time here pushing shit with absolutely no basis for much of what you say.

Barry, economics is a human INVENTION. Dinosaurs are not (am I talking to a two year old?) Socialism is not a natural science (or is it an idiot?). Nor is capitalism (or imbecile?).

Of course I know what Deep Ecology and it is NOT the USA Green Party, sonny.

As to Jane Jacobs, so your home town reads her. Great. When are you going to start? Your point is dumb. I gave you a reference and your response is “my home town reads her”. Now that’s smart.

Green Bay Parkers is a community owned businesses. If you need to see the world in black (capitalism) and white (socialism) that’s your problem. Sometimes the world is just a tad more complex than that ol’ Barry.

We cannot expect professors to forego wages so as endorse their own penury. No one does that. In fact, I’m sure poor people world-wide would find that foolish.

The diet you suggest is survivable for say, a 25-year old male. It does not work for mothers, children, the aged, or infirm.

I’d say the lesser-developed world is not at all stable through this crisis. All across Africa, Nepal and Southeast Asia there is either political turmoil or extreme suppression of that possibility, most of which can be traced to exploited populations with no wage prospects and no political outlets. Some kill their neighbors – some turn to ‘extremist’ groups. Some turn to piracy. Some just die in famines. I don’t think the multinationals care too much about mass deaths in certain parts of the world except as they directly affect primary sector operations. They would care if say, famine, occurred in China right now – that’s their bottomless well of wage-slaves.

The First World expects to make it through by extracting workers from the masses and making soldiers (a warrior class) out of them to be used against their former class. Allegiance is bought with paychecks, uniforms with decorations on them and camaraderie. That’s how it has worked in Latin America – where armies are not built for attacking a neighboring country.

African workers don’t usually carry ‘favored slave’ status. Truth is, Africa is terribly exploited without even the benefit of wage slavery for hundreds of millions. People attempt to get by in the informal sector and often are quite marginal to usual capitalist exploitation. Many Africans would like to go thru wage-exploitation instead trying to make it on the streets selling the detritis of over-developed societies. But for recent Chinese attention, much of Africa is a long-term major DIS-investment environment.

But yes, jobs that were in the US Northeast migrated first to the Southeast or West, then Mexico, then Malaysia (etc) , and now China. The ‘choice’ presented by remaining employers (even in the high-tech arena) is – work cheap or your job will disappear to Asia. Thus we now have lower wages chasing after high-priced goods and the chase has now fallen short – a crisis of capitalism. This is displeasing to the remaining capitalists – the NON-multi-nationals.

But I think there is little chance the US will stand for global socialism any time soon. Both US capitalists and workers can be expected to cling to their declining share. Lord know how it will play out – and we haven’t even begun to integrate global environmental change.

Where I come from, Jane Jacobs is hometown reading. If you’ve just discovered her, then a pat on the head for you.

News for you: Neither Marx nor Adam Smith claim to have invented anything – nor is anyone here claiming they did either. Describing, prescribing, or proscribing relations of production does not mean that person invented it. Do you think people are saying Darwin invented the dinosaurs, Galileo the stars? As far as the Packers go – their ownership has been socialized.

“Brian: What Imperial Benefits? A 175 dollars a month in food-stamp card? Man with 175 dollars you can’t even eat for a whole week.”

?? One can have a very healthy diet at between $10-$15 (depending on cost of food in your area of the country) per day, or less if one really works the system. If one is on food stamps one can go to food pantries and find very cheap ways to get nutrition.

Alternatively, one can live off of rice and pasta and spend *very* little on food, but that results in malnutrition.

As of late 2003, the global median income is $850 a year. That’s $71 a month. 3 billion people in the world (at that time, the number subsequently has risen to roughly 3.5 billion) make at or less that amount, and would LOVE to have anything close to $175 a month in food stamps. The reason they don’t is that they aren’t living in an imperial economy so instead of stolen resources flowing into their country, they’re flowing out of it.

The wage of every single American is based on the imperial economy, including that of the self-employed who are paid by Americans linked to the imperial economy. Progressive professors who rail against imperialism are paid by the very imperialists they are railing against, and they rarely refuse the coin.

Imperial benefits are countless. One example is consumer purchase of manufactured goods. Clothing is made at ridiculously low labor wages, exploited wages in a dominated economy with no rights for workers. Then Americans, many of whom consider themselves to be good people, buy this clothing, thus supporting an extreme form of wage slavery.

That’s why we need a global minimum wage and GLOBAL rights for workers, to end wage exploitation. Multinational corporations bide by no national boundaries and we must do the same.

“Face it, be realist and think in economic terms. Americans are used to consuming all the time, and to a relatively comfortable lifestyle. In fact, third world country citizens are more conformists than US citizens. What you say about the imperial benefits makes it look like US government is a sort of European Welfare State. But remember that US government is a neoliberal government with very little welfare and social programs.”

The US government is a welfare state. Not because it’s kind, but because that’s what it takes to placate the American people. Given that the welfare is a mere fraction of the global exploited value (most of which goes to multinational corporations and by a second derivative to corporate America) it’s the least it can do.

Western Europe has had various empires, some long before the current one led by the US, and is part of the current Western Empire that dominates the world economically, politically, and militarily. Those economies are also welfare states, and you’re right that they provide their people with greater imperial benefits in many ways.

“Those *real small* imperial benefits, combined with a hyperinflationary situation, combined with the US consumerist lifestyle, combined with high unemployment will trigger social uprising a lot more than third world countries and other countries.”

I don’t have a good understanding of revolts in third world countries, which is why I limited my statement to saying that the US will be the last country among Western countries to revolt. Third world countries have very different dynamics and have more differences from country to country than the homogenous Western countries.

I think you’re right that the third world is likely to be fairly stable through this crisis, for the simple reason that the third world is *already* near their maximum amount of exploitation – if the third world gets much poorer there is mass starvation, reducing the labor supply which the multinationals want to avoid. One way or another the third world will make it through this crisis. The first world may not.

Bear in mind the reality of the global situation – American workers are much less highly valued than third world workers – American workers (and other Western workers) are seen by high capital as bad slaves – expensive, loud-mouthed, and unruly, requiring welfare to sustain. Third world workers are highly profitable and thus carry “favored slave” status. This is forming much of the background for the current Western banking bailouts and is part of the destruction of the global non-elite rich (what we in the States amusingly call the “middle class”).

We are approaching a reality where the global elite no longer NEEDS Western slaves. Those slaves may be given a choice – join their global brethren and the very wage structure the Western slaves have supported over the centuries or be cast aside and neglected.

One would hope at that point that America would revolt. If only America would now stand for global socialism.

Lesson 2: Barry, I gave an example of bifurcation. Read Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Chapter 13, The Predicament if you want to know where this example is from.

Lesson 3: Barry, the world is NOT either capitalist or socialist. Sorry, the world existed prior to 1776 when Adam Smith tossed out his opus; and certainly before Marx. Anything that pre-dates these chaps, may have a social/community element or some form of exchange, but it is only in your head “capitalism” or “socialism”. Community ownership, whereby locals own shares in a business is NOT socialism nor is it particularly capitalism. The Green Bay Packers are owned by the people of Green Bay (one rather grand scale example).

The work on hunter/gatherers transition to agriculture goes back a long way. It was Esther Boserup who discussed the alpha and the omega of whether population pressure induced agriculture or the reverse. To say that hunters ran out of game is childlike in its simplicity. Downright loopy. Obviously, your B.A. is NOT in anthropology.

It wasn’t me who accused you of positing local economics as the only solution. As far as ownership of the means of production in a non-band society – the material world – it is either capitalist or socialist – and community ownership is maximally socialist. Stop pretending you’re ahead of the pack.

Barry, your comments about hunters is a total lack of having EVER read or studied what anthropologist and others have disciphered. Your thoughts on these matters are glib and empty, in other words pure BS.

First, I never said that local economics is the total solution. Since you have not followed the discussions around this topic, I’ve made references to community ownership and workers cooperatives as models of proven successful results. These are well documented. Workers’ cooperatives are entrepreneurial, shared risk and provide the means for uniting worker/owner relationship (one and the same). This model can work with sole entrepreneurs who, sell the venture to the workers rather than “going public” or hiring professional management (management class is eliminated).