Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 20:06:02 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Edward Herman on _The Insecurity State_



Ed Herman is a retired prof of Business at the Wharton School of the Univ.
of Penn. He's been a Chomsky collaborator for a long time--coauthored The
Politiceal Economy of Human Rights and Manufacturing Consent. He's also
a columnist for Z magazine. He's not officially a Marxist, although his
mode of analysis tends to be vulgar Marxist--Manufacturing Consent being a
sophiosticated exception. Like Chomsky he is very dismissive of Marxism
and seems to know very little about it, also to care little about it. He's
a socialist of some sort, perhaps an anarchist like Chomsky. (The eorld's
strangest anarchist, in my view.)

 His scholarly works, like Corporate Power,
Corporate Control, are more restrained and very thorough. In his political
work he tends, like Chomsky, to be extravagantly bitter and sarcastic in
heavy-handed somewhat self-defeating way, in fact, he's rhetorically even
more like that than Chomsky. The Z columns, which I assume are the basis
of this new book, strike me as a bit thin. But in general he's well worth
getting to know. I mean in his work. I never met him in person. so can't
comment on that.

--Justin

On Tue, 14 May 1996, Adam Rose wrote:

> 
> > 
> > Anybody read this book yet?  Any good?  If somebody in NY attends,
> > please consider reporting onlist.  Sounds like it could be a good
> > application of marxian ideas to contemporary circumstances.  
> > 
> > Lisa
> >
> 
> I've not read it, or even heard of it, or of Edward Herman.
> 
> "Insecurity" , aside from being a fact of life, has become 
> part of Blairist ideology. I think this is because it seems
> to address the concerns many people have, without addressing
> the causes of their insecurity. In a way, it is purely linguistic
> eg old labour talked about unemployment, new labour about job
> insecurity.
> 
> The Blairite spin on insecurity is that with New Labour in power, people
> will have secure lives : education / training when they want it, houses
> which they own but can also sell, safe jobs, security in ill health and
> retirement, because everyone will have "equality of opportunity"
> [ where've you heard that one before ? . . . ]
> 
> This sits alongside complete acceptance of the market - not the
> social/christian democratic version of Germany or Sweden, but
> the far Eastern version of Hong Kong or Singapore.
> 
> They fail to point out that capitalism with its boom and bust
> cycle sucks in and then spews out labour, and that this is why
> while unemployment is not as high as it was, people with jobs
> do not feel that they're safe, or that capitalism in crisis can't
> afford pensions, a health service, etc etc. Crime is part of
> Blairite insecurity  - again, they fail to point out that
> there is a direct correlation between crime and unemployment.
> 
> But what is good about it is that it shows that the intellectual
> tide is turning against the idea of a 2/3's , 1/3 society - ie
> that the main division is between an afluent core workforce and a
> peripheral underclass - and back towards the idea that the main
> division is between the vast majority and the super rich minority.
> 
> It reminds me of Lenin's slogan "Peace to the cottages, war to 
> the palaces !". We are insecure insofar as they and their profits
> are secure, and vice versa.
> 
> Adam.
> 
> PS last night on TV I saw one of those influential management gurus, who was
> into down sizing and process reengineering, say that it had all gone
> to far. Industries no longer had the capacity to expand, and if they
> weren't careful, the scales would tip back towards the worker as 
> against the capitalist ( in his terms, not mine ).
> 
> I think they understand, sometimes better than we do, the polarisation
> going on outside the realm of conventional politics. I think this is
> what lies behind the Blairite version of "insecurity" and this management
> guru's about turn.
> 
> Adam Rose
> SWP
> Manchester
> UK
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
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