Monday, December 05, 2005

Creationism be damned

In my never ending quest to debunk the religious ideologist here we go again with a science tidbit that proves once again the empircal basis for evolution.

Study: Earliest Birds Have Dinosaur Feet

The earliest birds had theropod dinosaur-like feet, according to a new study released yesterday based on the best reserved Archaeopteryx fossil.

These findings support the arguable theory that Archaeopteryx, the first known bird, was a closest relative of the theropod dinosaur, and that modern birds arose from the dinosaurs, German and U.S. researchers said in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Science.


And the New York museum has opened its controversial display on Darwin, with no corporate funding thanks to the pressure groups from the right lobbying against evolution. Which is fine by me we have to much corporate scientism being offered as science.

The same right whingnuts who denounce climate warming as junk science are really saying that evolution is junk science too.

Ok lets be clear here they are actually saying science is junk, just believe in the big white guy in the sky.

SCIENCE, RELIGION CONFLICT

Florida State University Michael Ruse, author of The Evolution-Creation Struggle echoed that, calling America "a peculiarly religious country" which was also a "science powerhouse. How can it be such?" he asked.

Ruse suggested the answer lay partly in history, not least being the Civil War after which Southerners turned to the Bible, and evolution "was taken to represent everything about the North that they disliked."

The result, he said, was the "red state-blue state clash -- It's not science versus religion as such -- but very much a cultural clash that we've got in America today." Others concurred, saying that the schism was part and parcel of a broader cultural war over contentious issues like abortion, gay rights and gun control.


Part of the problem with Darwinism, is that it is the identification with the theory of evolution with one man. Evolution is not just a theory of Darwin there were others including Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace and Darwin collaborated on the theory of natural selection. But given the dominace of the need for bourgoise culture to create a solo individual hero, we have forgotten Wallace and equated evolution with Darwin only.

In reality evolutionary theory pre-dates Darwin and influenced his own work.In particular the work; Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

Here we have another example of the missing link in the history of science and ideas, the role of the masses, and in particular the working classes; mechanics, in reading and practicising science as an aspect of their trades. Such was the case since the founding of the Royal Society in England, the clash between the aristocracy and its erudition of scientific experimentation and the mechanics who read their works and improved if not proved or disproved their hypothesis.

It was the creation of the popular culture of reading and study, of the science of the common man that was the basis for Darwins later popularity. But without those who came before him, promoting a materialist history of the world to counter the dominant hegemony of the Church, we would have no Darwin.

And those who came before him like Wallace and the unknown author of Vestiges were social reformers, radicals. Darwin was not as radical as his predecesors, but benefited from the reforms in the society around him that allowed him to publish and confront his antagonists with relative safety.

Evolution as a theory was the result not only of pure science, as there is no such creature, but of the movements to challenge the ideas of the day, the movement known as Free Thought, closely aligned to atheism, which was still a hanging offense in England. Luckily such is not the case now, though the rightwhingnuts might make it a capital offense again should they gain political and cultural dominance.

The history of science and evolution in the 19th Century is the history of social reform and radicalism, as much a part of the workers movement as it is of the parlour rooms of the bourgoise.

Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. James A. Secord. xx + 624 pp. University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Most historians of science have treated Vestiges as a minor remnant of mid-Victorian culture. It has been typically regarded as an indicator that the evolutionary ideas earlier formulated by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck continued to intrigue and trouble, even after they had been thoroughly repudiated by established scientists. Chambers's book is certainly remembered because Charles Darwin feared that the clever but amateurish "Mr. Vestiges" would render the intellectual public ill-disposed to any evolutionary understanding of life. James Secord conceives of Chambers's book in quite different terms. In Victorian Sensation he contravenes the usual presumptions. Because of his striking erudition and extraordinary scholarship, he has produced an argument that cannot be ignored, even if it must be resisted.

Through some 16 chapters, Secord details how Vestiges was physically made (with steam presses, but with hand composition of the lines of print), the way in which prices of the various editions determined its public (it became a cause only with the "people's edition"), and the manner in which different segments of British society (from working-class mechanics, to radical reformers, to Whig scientists, to Tory churchmen, to the Queen herself) read the message of the book and what meanings they imparted to their reading. Middle-class consumers, for example, took up the book with the same enthusiasm they felt for the latest novels of Sir Walter Scott. High Churchmen condemned its materialistic message, whereas radical reformers thought it supported their efforts. Scientists quite generally dismissed its shoddy zoology and botany.

The second subversive reason for focusing on the reaction of the reading public is that it allows us to advance another model of science. We need no longer be in thrall to the heroes of science. We can, rather, look to underlaborers such as Chambers who made Darwin's so-called genius possible: "Like all forms of hero-worship, this celebration of the author undermines possibilities for individual action, for none of us can be a Darwin, at least in the terms that the myth provides. It sets an unobtainable ideal?the genius revealing great discoveries?as the model of what a scientist should be." So histories such as Secord's have a pragmatic, even a moral purpose. It is troubling, though, to recommend Chambers as a model for even the mid-Victorian scientist. As far as we know, he never identified a fossil, never cracked a rock with a geology hammer, never charted the course of the planets.


Angus Reid Poll Dec 3


Canada Election 2006: A Two-Party Race Develops
Source: SES Research / CPAC
Methodology: A national random telephone survey is conducted nightly by SES Research throughout the campaign. Each evening a new group of 400 eligible voters are interviewed. The daily tracking figures are based on a three-day rolling sample comprised of 1,200 interviews. To update the tracking a new day of interviewing is added and the oldest day dropped. Margin of error is 2.9 per cent.


Well at least they have included the Green Party in this poll. Though things don't look good for the NDP, thanks to Buzz.....dumb dumb dumb.......But considering the lead in announcements all week was the Conservatives for good or bad, they have had little impact on the Liberal vote. They have taken a point away from both the NDP and Liberals. Mind you this is only week one of what is going to be a very loooooong campaign. Its a two way race alright, for who will be the next minority government in Ottawa.

Conservatives Take Fashion Lead

" Get Thee To Henry Rosen's"

Election week one and the Harper takes the lead in the all important fashion look. Yep he got more comments from the Media and pundits about his New Look, which they mistakenly called the Turtle Neck.

Get with it folks. Don't you guys shop at Henry Rosen or Tip Top. Now I know guys don't watch Fashion TV ,except for the Victoria Secret segments, but come on we got some female pundits here and they should know the difference between a Mock Turtle Neck and a Turtle Neck.

The Harper is sporting the latest in casual yet office acceptable apparel for those who don't want to wear neckties. It's not a T-Shirt and its Not a Turtle neck its the Mock Turtle Neck.


And Lets not get confused again.

Mock Turtle


Turtle Neck


Harpers mock turtle neck seems appropriate for his politics they are after all mock conservative, and he specialises in mocking the Liberals, and well he got mocked for his choice of cowboy attire this summer, including by me.

And it makes him look like the University Professor he always wanted to be. Ah the Intellectual Harper, not the every man but the expert.

Well congrats to the Tories for finding someone to dress him properly after this summers Stampede cowboy debacle.


So first week of the election the Harper sets the fashion agenda. Image is everything in politics. Mssrs. Duccepe, Layton and Martin, gentlemen how will you top this?

Certainly not dressed like this....

















Workers Control vs Corporate Welfare


The headline reads;
PM vows he'll examine help for laid-off workers
Country lacks industry strategy, Conservative says
CORNWALL, Ont.—Prime Minister Paul Martin, who has been trumpeting Canada's economic good times, got an earful here from union representatives about the 900 jobs that have disappeared with the closing of the Domtar paper mill. "We presented the absolute devastation for the city of Cornwall from the loss of Domtar," said Bob Huget, who along with two other union officials elbowed his way into a planned consultation between the Liberal leader and local authorities about the plant shutdown.

Well there is no industrial strategy, its just more corporate welfare. Liberal policies costly: think-tankWhile the Conservatives strategy is well, wait for it....more corporate tax cuts. And you know what I think of those. Nope no strategy. Retraining laid off workers is not an industrial strategy. Lets take a lesson from the workers in Quebec who took control of their Alcan factory when it was going to get shut down. Ran it for month and made a profit. Why is no-one talking about what is as obvious as the nose on your face. Taxpayer funding to the workers to own and run their own factories. If the bosses wanna leave fine, go. But the productive infrastructure no longer belongs to them it goes to the workers, including managers, and they get to run it. With capitalization from the government and from venture capital funds, including union funds and credit union debentures specifically targeted at supporting the specific plants. There thats democratic capitalism for ya.

A Plague on Both Their Houses

So your choice is Evangelical Christian Liberals or Conservatives. That's no choice.

In the case of Liberal Raymond Chan the Martin Government made a pre-election announcement about the Chinese Head Tax, but like their other announcements any repatriations were frozen once the election was called. It was all for show for Mr. Chan.

Now he is running against the Past President of the right wing lobby Focus on the Family, who is a Conservative. Part of the evangelical conservatives campaign to take over the Conservatives. And apparently the Liberals as this article shows.

I don't care what party they run for they have an agenda, to make Canada look like the USA. They are anti-gay, anti-women, anti-non protestant, anti-liberty, pro-America, pro-male supremacy, why do I care what party they run for. A plague on both their houses.


Multiculturalism Minister Raymond Chan, who won by 3,700 votes, is being challenged in Richmond by Darrel Reid, an articulate former senior aide to Preston Manning. Reid is already pushing two wedge issues to wrest support away from Chan in Richmond's large Chinese-Canadian community.

He says Chan's $2.5 million Chinese head tax redress package announced last week is inadequate, and Reid has made clear he is opposed to gay marriage, whereas Chan voted in favour. Both men are evangelical Christians.

The Liberals will show no mercy, however, in portraying Reid as the poster boy for the religious right. Reid was until recently president of Focus on the Family Canada, a creation of Dr. James Dobson, considered President George W. Bush's most influential evangelical Christian ally.

The Liberals will use the same approach trying to retain Don Bell's seat in North Vancouver, where the Tory candidate is Cindy Silver, who once did legal work for Focus Canada and lists at the top of her website's endorsements page the backing of former Reform MP Sharon Hayes, a Focus Canada board member.

But Silver is moderately pro-choice on abortion and is a far more telegenic politician than Conservative Ted White, who Bell upset last year by a narrow four-per-cent margin. More important, it will be tougher to portray Silver as "scary" given that both Bell, the former District of North Vancouver mayor, and Silver attend the same evangelical church.

Yep thats whats really scary the voters get to choose Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

NDP's Duh'Oh

Canadian press reported that Homer Layton, err Jack Simpson, err no make that Jack Layton needs to clean up his clarity act around Health Care. Its a faux pas, an opps worse a Duh' Oh the NDP does NOT need but well stuff happens.....
NDP Leader Jack Layton said private clinics are a “fundamental aspect” of the health-care system founded by former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas and not much can be done about them.
Mr. Layton was trying to take advantage of a slow day on the part of the other leaders to frame the debate around the health-care issue. But he ended up leaving reporters following his campaign stumped about his position. Being generous the CP wire story entitled their story; Layton seems to support private clinics.

By the end of the day no matter the clarification given the headlines were reading;


Not opposed to private health care, Layton says

Layton softens stand on clinics

Layton not going to shut down private clinics, just stop the flow ...

NDP Would Keep Private Clinics Open: Layton

Which means his media handlers went wonky on their messaging leaving the NDP with a bad day for headlines. Lost in the headlines is what Jack wanted to say because he and his handlers said too much.

His speech yesterday was focused on the views of Liberal Senator Michael Kirby, whom he described as the "Wizard of Oz of health-care privatization."

Mr. Layton said both Mr. Harper and Mr. Martin support Mr. Kirby's proposals, as outlined in a Senate committee report, for privately delivered health care provided Canadians do not have to pay for it out of pocket.

Mr. Layton said the health-care platforms of the Liberals and Conservatives are indistinguishable and only the NDP would stop public money going to private health care.

This is what the headlines should have been, Layton would halt funding for private clinics but by trying to clarify, the NDP lost control of the messaging and it ended up coming out like this;

But when asked afterward about the specifics of his position, Mr. Layton suggested an NDP government would not do anything to stop such clinics provided they are 100-per-cent private.

"That's not our concern. What I've said is we would stop the flow of public money to the Copeman clinic," he said.

Some services at the Copeman Healthcare Centre, considered a mostly private clinic, are covered by the B.C. Medical Services Plan.

When asked if such a position would allow the two-tier health-care system his party has long opposed, Mr. Layton said that entirely private health care has always been an option for Canadians.

"That's been available since medicare was established. That's a fundamental aspect of what Tommy Douglas established in Canada. There's nothing new about that," he said.

"Our focus is on what happens to the public tax dollars that we all contribute to help take care of Canadians. We don't want them going to the American-style, for-profit health corporations that end up skimming off profits instead of financing people's health care."

The problem isn't just private clinics, in fact in Alberta the clinic I go to is private, the family doctors are all independent businessmen, part of an overall conglomerate they have bought into. In other private clinics called medi-centres doctors are available and they run these as franchises all paid for by Medicare.

Jack is right in principle the way Medicare funds doctors currently allows for a form of privatized delivery. That is the flaw in the system that pays out doctors on the basis of billing.

As I wrote here we need to create a publicly funded medicare system that proletarianizes medical services, doctors on salary, with clincs publicy funded as non-profit co-ops delivering multiple services including dentistry, psychological/psychiatric, naturopathy as well as
allopathy, chiropractors, as well as pshysiotherapies, and wellness programs.

I gave the example of the Boyle McCauley Clinic in the inner city in Edmonton where such a program is done and the doctors, dentists and nurse practicioners are on salary. Such clinics are not limited to this kind of delivery to just the poor. It needs to be generalized.
This is where Layton should have given his speech, and this is the alternative delivery system we need to make REAL Health Care reform. All else will be band aids.

Currently Family Health Centres are being tried in Ontario, where clinics like the one I go to are not availble. However while based on the Boyle McCauley model they still are allowing the doctors to bill for services rather than putting them on salary.


Labour A House Divided

For those making a big fuss and broohaha over Buzz and Paul ferget about it, its a flash in the pan. This too shall pass, and while Buzz's strategic voting strategy is doomed to failure I doubt it will have much impact on the NDP except as a one day news story.

As I said here, Buzz's Strategic Voting strategy began in 1999 after the Bobby Rae NDP Government screwed Ontario, and in effect Alberta, workers. Ralph Klein was only to eager to blame his social contract freezing and rolling back public workers wages on Bobby Rae and ironically the wage roll backs unionized Safeways workers took in the province. Ever an opportunist that Ralphy boy of ours. Anyways in the 1999 Buzz started his strategic voting campaign against Ralph Kleins doppelganer; Mike Harris. And Buzz has done this ever since. Such is his hatred of Conservatives. It really is not so much strategic voting for Buzz as much as Anybody but the Conservatives. So why all the shock and awe in the MSM and Blogosphere.


Buzz at least admits to being an NDP supporter, not a Liberal, and has what he thinks is a pragmatic plan for strategic voting as flawed as it is. While the NDP may have been the party of Labour it was never a Labour party. And Paul Martin has gotten support from unions before this, in particular the largest private sector building trades union in Canada, the General Construction Workers Union of Toronto. And the CCWU is not the only Liberal Labour supporter.

Dan McLellan of AUPE is a Liberal and includes in his fan club his golf partner Ralph Klein, as well as Right Wing Sun Columnist Neil Waugh. He is their favorite Labour leader. And like Buzz he is promoting Strategic Voting in Edmonton Centre for the only Liberal left standing in Alberta, Landslide Anne MacLellan.

Remember last election when the Liberals raided the NDP for candidates in B.C. including current Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, former NDP Premier of B.C.

As for Labour the Liberals in B.C. got David Haggard, the former President of the International Woodworkers of America to run for them last election. And recently he held a fund raiser for his pal David Emerson another B.C. Liberal and Minister of Industry.

Those in the know forwarded me this little missive to my email.


From Public Eye Online
www.publiceyeonline.com

September 23, 2005
Our definition of eclectic

Friends and associates of David Emerson paid out $200 each last night to
attend a fundraising roast for the federal Liberal industry minister's
constituency association. According to our operatives, former Industrial,
Wood and Allied Workers of Canada president David Haggard hosted the event,
held at Sun Sui Wah Seafood Restaurant. Barbs were delivered by Senator Jack
Austin, minister's regional office executive director Billy Cunningham,
Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh and former provincial deputy minister Bob
Plecas. And a who's who list of powerhouse personalities was on hand to
witness that delivery.

From the union movement there was British Columbia Federation of Labour
president Jim Sinclair and British Columbia and Yukon Territory Building and
Construction Trades Council executive director Wayne Peppard. Former top
British Columbia bureaucrats John Allen, Lee Doney and Don Wright also
showed up. And so did Barrett administration cabinet minister Bob Williams,
ex-Vancouver-Fraserview New Democrat backbencher Bernie Simpson and 24 hours
president and former premier Glen Clark, who was sitting at The Pattison
Group's table. Other notables included First Nations Summit executive member
Grand Chief Ed John and Chief Stewart Phillip of the British Columbia First
Nations Leadership Council, as well as a number of forest industry
executives.


The house of Labour is truly divided. For the first time in fifty years since it founded the NDP the House of Labour is a family set against itself. And the Liberals will take advantage of this family fued as long as they stay in power.

Eleven Days of Scandal Alberta Style

So another of the shortest sittings of a Legislature in Canada has once again ended in Alberta. And it was business as usual in the only One Party State in North America. "There were also questions, but few answers, about the government's plans for health-care reform and how it intends to fix shortcomings in long-term care for seniors. "
And if you were expecting any explanation of the Governments 'Third Way' for Health Care as King Ralph did his Grande Tour of Canada, avoiding being in the Leg, well there weren't any. Albertas own scandal ridden Government sat for eleven days and failed to explain why it was giving out a contract on privatizing Health Care to a company charged with Fraud. Or why upon appointing a Chair for the Alberta Securities Commission (the Alberta Stock Exchange watchdog) he is found to have profited from insider trading and is fined by the OSC. Then he donates his ill gotten gains to the Food Bank and figures thats that. As does the Minister of Finance. And then the Klein Reich votes down a private members bill on Transparency in Government cause its not needed. Nope not here, cause all the pigs are at the trough and we can read about it in the press. Yep the Chretien Liberals pulled off Ad Scam in the wrong province, should have done it in Alberta and they would have gotten away with it. So is this the new ethical model of government we can expect from the Federal Conservatives, whose base is of course Alberta.

Peter Drucker RIP

Peter F. Drucker the father of post modern management passed away Nov. 11. He was a student of Joseph Schumpeter and classmate with leftwing economist Karl Polanyi. And while they both came out of the ecomomic mileu of Vienna both of them rejected Von Mises and Hayek for different reasons. However in the end Drucker would end his life rejecting the very capitalist system he, like Polanyi, would attempt to ameliorate. Last weeks Business Week reported on Druckers passing and his disenchantment with capitalism;

The story of Peter Drucker is the story of management itself. It's the story of the rise of the modern corporation and the managers who organize work. Without his analysis it's almost impossible to imagine the rise of dispersed, globe-spanning corporations.

But it's also the story of Drucker's own rising disenchantment with capitalism in the late 20th century that seemed to reward greed as easily as it did performance. Drucker was sickened by the excessive riches awarded to mediocre executives even as they slashed the ranks of ordinary workers. And as he entered his 10th decade, there were some in corporations and academia who said his time had passed. Others said he grew sloppy with the facts. Meanwhile, new generations of management gurus and pundits, many of whom grew rich off books and speaking tours, superseded him. The doubt and disillusionment with business that Drucker expressed in his later years caused him to turn away from the corporation and instead offer his advice to the nonprofit sector. It seemed an acknowledgment that business and management had somehow failed him.
The Man Who Invented Management

Drucker and Polanyi as students of Schumpeter, and survivors of the economic and poltical changes occuring in the world after WWI saw the failure of Vulgar Marxism, the belief in the ultimate crisis in the capitalism business cycle would create a revolution, and its supercession not just by Keynesianism but by a new rebirth of Capitalism from the ashes of the Great Depression. Unlike the Vienna School of economists both Polanyi and Drucker shared a common concern that economics was NOT divorced from society.

However, when Polanyi argues that it is the advent of the economic logic that destroys the social fabric, and that the latter protects itself through, for instance, the social regulation of labor markets, environmental pollution, and financial speculation, he seems to be treating not only "the economic" as an autonomous extra-social logic, but also "the society" as an undifferentiated whole. When "the society" is pegged against "the economy," it becomes difficult to see how "society" may be divided between those who do and do not benefit from the rule of markets and how "the economy," including the institutions of market society, is always shaped by political struggles, animated by cultural codes, and most importantly, embedded in economic theory.Karl Polanyi: Freedom in a complex society

Gone was the Fordist production model of industrial capitalism with its Tayorist management theory of fitting the worker to the machine. The workers aspiration for revolution were dashed by the failure of the Bolshevik revolution to ignite a world revolution, with the reactionary counter-revolution of fascism, and with capitalisms rebirth through war, when it seemed doomed in the Great Depression.

Keynes, Schumpeter, and Drucker all viewed the world from the influence that the failed workers revolution of the 20th century had had on capitalism. Druckers conclusions and predictions were based on the aspirations of the worker as a human being in the corporation not as an institution but as a community. These were exactly what workers who created Workers Councils and practiced Worker Self Management, during the revolutions in Russia and Europe and later during the Spanish Civil war, were decrying capitalism for.

Drucker's model of management is the Self Management of the failed workers movement, in the same way that Keynes economics was influenced by the need for capitalism to meet the social demands of the working class, unemployment insurance, benefits, the sharing of the good life capitalism promised for all and not just the elite. Schumpeters view that capitalism must overcome its bourgoies nature, and become the capitalism of everyman sums up what this school of post-modern capitalism offered the post WWII world.


-- It was Drucker who introduced the idea of decentralization -- in the 1940s -- which became a bedrock principle for virtually every large organization in the world.

-- He was the first to assert -- in the 1950s -- that workers should be treated as assets, not as liabilities to be eliminated.

-- He originated the view of the corporation as a human community -- again, in the 1950s -- built on trust and respect for the worker and not just a profit-making machine, a perspective that won Drucker an almost godlike reverence among the Japanese.

-- He first made clear -- still the '50s -- that there is "no business without a customer," a simple notion that ushered in a new marketing mind-set.

-- He argued in the 1960s -- long before others -- for the importance of substance over style, for institutionalized practices over charismatic, cult leaders.

-- And it was Drucker again who wrote about the contribution of knowledge workers -- in the 1970s -- long before anyone knew or understood how knowledge would trump raw material as the essential capital of the New Economy.
The Man Who Invented Management

Drucker grasped the mundane fact that prosperity and democracy are the result of most people spending most of their time working for others. Somehow the crooked timber of mankind has to work as one. It has to organise and thus be managed.

After the second world war Drucker did something unprecedented: he examined a company, General Motors, as a social phenomenon. He saw it not as a Victorian sweatshop but as a living, breathing institution whose chief creative resource was its staff and customers. The resulting masterpiece, The Concept of the Corporation, appalled GM and its executives were banned from reading it. It sold millions, notably, the author noted wryly, in Japan.

Drucker was a radical conservative. A passionate capitalist, he realised that companies which behaved as mere assembly lines to enrich their owners soon fall victim to state control, as they had in fascist Germany. (He also noted that assembly lines moved no faster than their slowest operative.) Workers had in some sense to “own” their work or they would not innovate.

From this he evolved the concept of the “knowledge worker”. He invented, or first articulated, concepts such as decentralisation, privatisation, teamwork, globalisation, management by objective and corporate social responsibility. Companies must be part of American society, the American dream, he said, or good people would not work for them and bad people would capture them and need ever-tighter regulation. Drucker’s writings and preachings made corporate America respectable again after the Depression.

How my hero would have wept at Whitehall’s mad managers

The Engineer Edward Deming inspired by Druckers work developed his management model, another subversion of workers self management, TQM; Total Quality Management. Today we know it for just in time production, multi-tasking, worker empowerment, etc. all the language of the self managed workers movement now turned on its head and used against the workers to guarntee a profitable capitalist enterprize.

Drucker and Deming's ideas were not accepted by American corporations until they face two major economic crisises, the first after the Oil crisis of '74. And later after the economic melt down with black October on Wall Street in 1987.

I think that economics sticks to the behavior of commodities. Absolutely. Consider the Arab oil boycott; it was very easy to see in 1973, and I was one of the few who said it would fail, because unlike modern American economists I do know a good deal of history. And modern American economists are incredibly ignorant of history— unbelievably—especially of economic history. But cartels have never lasted ten years; the only cartels that last are cartels that systematically cut their price, and OPEC made no signs of doing so, yet it isn't going to last. All 'a cartel does is signal the end of the dominance of its industry. That's it. And people will, when petroleum becomes expensive, find ways of doing with less. People will switch to different cars. In that sense I'm very much an economist. I believe in rational behavior, economically rational, in economics, but I do not believe that it is the dominant rational behavior, it is dominant in certain situations which people see as economic situations. But look, if you take the theme petroleum and then go back to the Depression, gasoline consumption didn't go down at all because people in this country discovered that wheels are more important than food. Freedom is more important than food. Now that is not an economic fact.

And so, long ago, I saw economics as an extremely important way of looking at things. But I don't accept the idea that it is a science, that it is mathematical, that it is rigorous, and that it is autonomous. In American economics today, there is no basic economic theory—no theory of price, no theory of value, no theory of change, no theory of the correlation of technology and economics, no theory of work—all the basic problems of economics are excluded because they are not capable of being quantified. That's much earlier, that's 1920. Economics is the last discipline in which logical positivism [the doctrine that the only truths are those affirmed by the methods of natural science] still holds sway, and that's why you can predict with certainty that this is the last generation of modern economics. Because in everything else, logical positivism is gone. And you know I was born into it. Logical positivism is the result of the marriage of America and Vienna. A Conversation with Peter F. Drucker

Their work was accepted by the post War economies of Japan and Germany. With Schumpeters observation of the Creative /Destructive nature of post modern capitalism came the rebirth of these two countries as economic competitors with America. And they did by adapting their unique forms of state capitalism to fit Druckers and Demings management structures. In the case of Japan it was the hierarchical creation of MITI, the joint state, business, banking corporation, which determined production for years in the future. In Japan it also took the destruction of the unions to be able to introduce Demings TQM models of production, where the workers once again was loyal to the company. The old paternalistic capitalism was writ large across the face of Japan.

In Germany it was the model of tripartism that succeeded, where state capitalism functioned through Works Councils, which meant the unions, corporations and the state shared in the risks and wealth of the growth of the German economy. This meant workers on the Boards of corporations, and a national strategy for growth much like Japan.

Schumpeter, Drucker and Demings were the new models of post modern management of capitalism, models of comptetive state capitalisms that gave America a run for its money. America still a nation of corporations and institutions in competition with each other did not accept the Drucker model of management nor Demings until the economic crisis of the late 1980's and eraly 1990's.

It was used to smash unions, roll back wages and benefits, outsource work, privatize the public sphere, and to get more work out of workers for less. It was the Wal-Mart greeter as happy worker in the corporation as community. No wonder in his last years Drucker turned his back on corporate America who had so abused his ideas.

CR: Do you think that your writings on management lend themselves to misuse?
PD: Most people, most laymen, when they hear management hear business management, but that is their mishearing. And from the beginning, even though my first books dealt with business simply because it was the only experimental area available, my public has been, especially in this country, at least as much nonbusiness as business. And you have a very peculiar situation because in this country by merely, believe me, pure historical accident: The study of organizations is located in the business school largely because the political scientists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century focused on constitutionalism and thus failed to see the emergence of the civil service and of government as an institution.

Concern with the working of government came out with the New Deal. Actually, Herbert Hoover was the first one with an interest in it, but no one picked it up until the New Deal. Very late. And then it was organized as a separate discipline and called "public administration," which is probably one of the most boring things we ever created; it deals only with procedures.

And so we had no focus where one could look at the new reality of an institution after this. Even now your liberal arts tradition considers organizations to be abnormal. Here is Ken Galbraith, who writes a book which argues that there exists two institutions: first the government and then business. It never occurred to Ken that Harvard University is a very powerful institution. I once said to Ken, an old friend, at dinner, "Your last book is a tour de force but, you know, from a Harvard professor, no mention of the university as an institution is a little funny." And he looked at me and said, "My God, I never thought of that." And he doesn't know that the labor union and the hospital are institutions. A Conversation with Peter F. Drucker

And this is the very failure of the American Ruling Class, both its poltical and economic arms, remain divided, as does its ideolgy as reflected in the Free Market Liberaltarians on one hand and the Republican War Party on the other. That failure is why in Canada an American style neo-con movement has failed, because our civil society is made up of insitutions, organization, and the 'individulaist' ideology of American liberaltarianism is out of touch with the rest of the world. It is a throw back as Drucker correctly points out to the 19th century. There are no new ideas coming out of the neo-cons despite the 'neo' in their name.

Drucker on the other hand understood that modern capitalism had become dominant, that it is reflected in all aspects of society, not just the board rooms. In fact his work in the NGO and non-profit sector showed that this was no longer the volunteer sector but a growing area of new capitalist organization.

His insights, like Polanyi's, into the function of capitalism as social organization while neither Marxist nor Anarchist benefits both in adding to a radical understanding of capitalism being the dominant social realtionship of society. As much as Foucault has with the issue of governability. And while Foucault is more popular with the Left, a little Drucker could go a long way to understanding how capitalist organization dominates all social institutions including unions, academia, meals on wheels, etc. Those who fail to see capitalism as a social relation, and only as an economic system will continue to miss this point.


"Economic liberalism was the organising principle of a society engaged in creating a market system. Born as a mere penchant for non-bureaucratic methods, it evolved into a veritable faith in man's secular salvation through a self-regulating market.... Only by the 1820s did [economic liberalism] stand for the three classical tenets: that labour should find its price on the market; that the creation of money should be subject to an automatic mechanism; that goods should be free to flow from country to country without hindrance or preference."

"There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. ... Laissez-faire itself was enforced by the state. The [1830s and 1840s] saw not only an outburst of legislation repealing restrictive regulations, but also an enormous increase in the administrational bureaucracy able to fulfil the tasks set by the adherents of liberalism. ... Laissez-faire was not a method to achieve a thing, it was the thing to be achieved."

"This paradox [of the need for a strong central executive under laissez-faire] was topped by another. While laissez-faire economy was the product of deliberate state action, subsequent restrictions on laissez-faire started in a spontaneous way. Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not."

Karl Polanyi

Hot Air Over Climate Change--Business as Usual


Guess who is not sitting at the Climate Change Conference table in Montreal? Those most impacted by the decisions of course. In this case first nations peoples of the Arctic North like the Inuit. Inuits Transformed by Global Warming

Guess who is sitting at the table?

Why the corporate bosses of the petroleum industry.
Regional, not global, carbon cuts most likely - BP Like the President/CEO of British Petroleum, now branded BP with groovey TV ads about being environmentally aware. And prepared to profit from new technologies and alternative energy. BP to build world's biggest alternative power business

And of course politicians who have failed to either accept Kyoto or have like Canada's Liberals failed to fulfill their Kyoto commitments.Political turmoil on eve of Canada's climate forum / Host country struggles to meet Kyoto pledge

Not that that Kyoto was anything but a sop for capitalism anyways. It was all about making Capitalism Green. Alcan funds planting of 100,000 trees in project to keep Montreal Climate Change Conference carbon neutral Carbon sinks and carbon credits, exchanges of credits between polluting industries and countries with trees. Greenpeace says rich countries export climate change But Kyoto and this conference, dubbed Kyoto2, will NOT change anything because frankly Capitalism Is NOT Sustainable.

And hey I am not the only on to say that the Montreal Conference will do little to change capitalism. So does the influential Policy Think Tank of the Executive branch of Capitalism, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the United States. And they set the agenda for the most powerful capitalist country in the world.

David G. Victor, a Council adjunct senior fellow for science and technology and director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University, spoke to cfr.org's Esther Pan on November 23 about what to expect from the Montreal Conference.

What you expect to come out of the climate change conference in Montreal?

Mostly nothing.

And until the fact that climate change is the direct result of capitalism is realized the protestors who want something done about climate change will be gain nothing but more hot air from Conferences like those in Montreal. The protocols will be all about alternatives to keep capitalism functoning with business as usual, CLIMATE CHANGE: Blair Hopes for New Nuclear Programme

While the very real impact of capitalism on climate change continues on an expotential curve that increases its impact on our lives every day.

Health effects of climate change felt worldwide

Many farmers see climate change as threat

Capitalism is in a period of what the communist left calls decadence or as economist Joseph Shumpeter joyfully called it Creative Destruction.


"Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can." Thus opens Schumpeter's prologue to a section of his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. One might think, on the basis of the quote, that Schumpeter was a Marxist. But the analysis that led Schumpeter to his conclusion differed totally from Karl Marx's. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes.Innovation by the entrepreneur, argued Schumpeter, led to gales of "creative destruction" as innovations caused old inventories, ideas, technologies, skills, and equipment to become obsolete. The question, as Schumpeter saw it, was not "how capitalism administers existing structures,... [but] how it creates and destroys them." This creative destruction, he believed, caused continuous progress and improved standards of living for everyone.

That means that as we produce more and more goods, and expand the technological capablities of society we also end up destroying more of our world not to improve the living standards for everyone, but for the few in the industrialized nations. And while capitalisms ability to create a technology of rational distributive good its fails to do so because it is dominated by the need to make profits. Where Schumpeter left his analysis the decadence theory of capitalism picks up and says that the contradiction as Marx points out is that advanced capitalism actually holds back technological or other creative solutions to problems, like Climate Change, because it needs to make a profit whether it be through mass layoffs, wars, famines, or environmental destruction. So while it is creative it is ultimately destructive, a suicidal system.This is the reality of Creative Destruction or the decadence of Capitalism. And it is having a world wide impact. Focus: So, are we going to freeze or fry?

The real domination of capital, technology-driven mass production, became prevalent only in the 20th century (and continues its development to this day). The moment at which the progress of real domination fundamentally changed the conditions of accumulation for global capital is hard to pinpoint. But it is certain that such a change took place, whichever term is used to describe it, that massive devalorization became an intrinsic part of the accumulation process, that therefore the continuation of capitalism imposed on society increasingly brutal violence and self-destruction and thus placed before the working class the need to fight, not to improve its conditions of exploitation within capitalism, but to overthrow it. That’s why we consider 1914 as the starting date of capitalist decadence. In the remaining part of the century, war would make more casualties than in the entire preceding human history. It is true that amidst this endemic destruction, capitalism continued to develop and to grow, that real domination continued to deepen and spread, and that the resulting technification continued to stimulate productivity and thus also the quantity and quality of use-values, even for the working class. Those who think that the conditions for revolution require the irreversible stagnation of capitalism and abject poverty for the vast majority of the working class will wait forever. They have not understood that an irreversibly stagnating capitalism is an oxymoron, that crisis and productivity growth do not exclude each other, that capital seeks higher productivity to fight its crisis, yet worsens it this way, that the struggle of the working class is not one of variable capital reacting only against its own demobilization but of the part of humanity which, because of its place in the production process, is most capable both of recognizing the mortal danger that capitalism represents for humanity and of eliminating it.
THE GENESIS OF CAPITALIST DECADENCE