Rasheed, articulate and determined, also raised fundamental issues with regard to the ongoing military operations in FATA and the rest of the NWFP. He claimed that more than 90 per cent of the 7,000 people killed in the military action in the region since 2004 were civilians. In his native Bajaur, he contended that 99 per cent of the 3,000 tribespeople who lost their lives in the military operation were women and children and, therefore, innocent. Rasheed is ready to face punishment if his family is found involved in anti-state activities but he also wants those making accusations against him and his relations to be made accountable if they are proved wrong. Moreover, he wants a judicial probe into the civilian deaths in the military action and the US drone strikes in the Frontier. He is seeking an independent probe by judges, political leaders, the media and human rights activists into the so-called "collateral damage" resulting from the military operations and is willing to defend his viewpoint on all forums. On his part, he believes his hujra was demolished and his mother and niece were killed to punish him for consistently opposing since 2004 the military action in the NWFP and FATA. He considers it as an act of revenge, a claim that the security forces and the government would never accept.

ching kwan lee, 'chambishi rising'

chinese as 'new imperialists' -- only rhetorical impotance, analytically thin

'chambishi is of strategic importance for the Chinese

---

the reason colonialism is not the most productive way to look at China-Africa, she's arguing, has to do with where it focuses our attention (trade statistics, investment, etc.)

these statistics are true--they are true, but they don't suggest a real question

capital is not investment/trade numbers. it is a 'social relation', a process (not 'figures'). so to understand this we need to ask what kind of capitalism are the chinese implementing (both at home and abroad). it is the peculiarity of chinese capitalism that is interesting.

---

we want to think in terms of mechanisms and limits of domination. (the question is not 'capitalism'/socialism; but how we embed the market in social relations-hmph).

we need to understand what the limits are to the kind of capitalism the chinese are pursuing.

---

if you want to make profit, then, the first question is how you control/manage labor? but the chinese encounter distinct additional questions, in this attempt--they cannot simply repeat what the brits were doing, we live in a postcolonial age. but we also live in a post-fordist era, meaning they can't 'buy off' their working class [but what are the parameters of this position?]. they can also not lay claim to hegemony on the basis of universal values, due to the insistence on chinese uniqueness.

the question, in sum, is what is distinctly chinese about this investment?

---

in fieldwork: the number one problem for chinese investors self-reported as labor.

---

why zambia? not because it represents africa; but because, for two reasons, it's a critical case: (1) one of china's closest allies in the continent (independence in '63; '68 -'72, china built railroad that helped it escape white dependence for export of copper). if china has problems here, then, they'll have more problems everywhere else. (2) chambishi is supposed to be the heart of a cross-africa railroad; and, more generally, very central strategically (first of five chinese-owned special economic zone, on a 99-year lease with the promise to bring manufacture--including the value-added part of the copper process)

---

burawoy--writing about the problem of 'zambianization', which was the question of replacing white managers with zambians (british multinationals).

(1) today, however, the problem is not the question of who owns the mine (as perceived by whom? by miners)--zambians have gone through failed nationalization, without improvement of life. followed by IMF-led privatization.

today you have 7 major companies -- the nationality of capital doesn't really matter. what we want is decent pay and decent welfare. they are very aware of class question; national question is no longer the issue. [how strong is the old claim, though?]

less, here, a race to the bottom. competition amongst the seven firms have forced the chinese to lift up the wage levels and welfare benefits. internationalization has produced its own effect.

---

(2) another thing that separates this from Burawoy's work from 40 yrs ago is 'casualization' --liberalization of labor law, no mandate on welfare provision. this has a very profound influence on labor politics; you have to go outside the domain of production to understand labor politics (chinese are not afraid of labor unions; but, rather, wildcat strikes and protests by those who are unemployed/casualized/informal). de-institutionalization of labor politics.

---

against current media presentation, chinese interest in Africa has a lot to do with what is going on inside China. first, the danger of enormous reserves and overcapacity; hyperinflation is looming, real estate prices have gone through the roof. an intense need to find new outlets for chinese capital. Africa allows a release of surplus; 'export of capital'. secondly, of course, there is a real need to guarantee the source of raw materials, particularly in a place where the West has not been as dominant. (and let's not forget, Chinese presence in Africa is not new; an anticolonial bond; China and the Bandung Conference. China is looked at as an alternative; this is particularly how china pitches itself, as a 'model'. this is part, she's arguing, of the hegemonic influence on workers, as well).

---

chinese regime of production

1. creating a chinese-owned economic space: aiming at 60 firms; 6,000 zambian workers, 1,000 chinese. chinese have a 25-year tax holiday, from when they first declare profit. the zambian government is concentrating on this as a source of employment for their voters. they care more about votes, than taxation. also, residential segregation--the 'china houses' are highly regimented/regulated; they have very long work schedules, are controlled as if they were workers. the local Zambian bourgeoisie also like having chinese there--attendant benefits. (crux of her argument is that this is not just a 'space of domination'.

2. zambian time, chinese time: q. of working hard like the chinese.

3. race and 'multi-national capital': after the failure of 'zambianization', race understood differently.

4. collective bargaining and wildcat strikes: 'casualization' is on the table--over the past ten years, the chinese have tremendously improved the conditions of service (in the beginning, they had the largest number of casualized workers; now they have been compelled to change this. conceded on company medical insurance, too). the union's strategy is to encourage wildcat strikes, which are joined by the wives of miners. a very important strategy.

5. managers of state capitalism: most resistant to fieldwork; who are they? many of these have gone through the reform period at home; having rejected state-owned enterprise of the maoist sort, they are totally committed to the mission of capitalism. these managers are effective conduits of chinese capitalism. one vulnerability, though, is that they are responsible for the image of the Chinese gov't. not just tasked with making profit. there is a logic, perhaps, beyond profit-making.

---

chambishi story, in sum

(1) diachronic--chinese concession and expansion
(2) synchronic--elements of a chinese regime fo production
(3) inadequacy of Marxian theory of production (?) -- polanyi's counter-movement; perhaps Bourdieu and notion of 'symbolic capital', perhaps post-colonial notion of difference?

...It is important to understand the complexity of the insurgency. About three quarters, probably more fight within a few miles of where they were born and where their families live. And so for them, many have drifted into the insurgency for a variety of reasons: local tribal grievances, friction, disaffection etc. We believe that they can be brought back into the political and economic mainstream reasonably straightforwardly. It is not that they are opportunistic but they have drifted into it for a lot of local reasons. In a sense they are fighting with the Taleban but not for them. That has happened a lot in Afghanistan in many of the civil conflicts that have gone on in the past...

harry braverman, labor and monopoly capital

Introduction

(10): intermediate classes discussed in the Second International--but abortive

(11): labor movement's critique of capitalism as a mode of production became a critique of capitalism as a mode of distribution

(16): insistence that machine/technology is embedded in social relations

(19): the growth of the forces of production within a mode of production (i.e., the growth of potential forces of production--for the next mode of production, within antiquated forms--industrial capitalism "gives us" electric power, internal combustion engine, atomic power)

(20): technology does not produce social relations, but is produced by social relations represented by capitalism.

(23): Khruschev ridiculing Chinese industrialization as 'eating soup with an awl'

(26): new/old working class confusion -- everything, in some sense, is 'new' as an occupation, in other words, because the labor process has--always--been in flux

(27): this book is about the working class as a class in itself, not a class for itself

(29-30): three expressions of class consciousness

1. absolute expression -- pervasive durable attitude
2. long-term relative expression -- slowly changing traditions, organization
3. short-term relative expression -- dynamic complex of moods and sentiments

PART ONE

Chapter 2

(51): labor-power critically important--won't necessarily look like this to the master of laborers. but for the individuals who allocate their own labor, this is of critical importance (and this is where, he's suggesting, the labor theory of value begins)

(52): emphatically not Smithian--three conditions of capitalist production

1. workers separated from the means of production, can only gain access to them by selling labor-power
2. workers freed of legal constraints that prevent them from disposing of their labor power
3. purpose of employment is the expansion of capital

(54): what the capitalist buys is the right to dispose of the worker for an agreed period of time. this is not the purchase of labor (which is an inalienable human function), but of labor-power.

(55-56): the essential distinction between human and animal labor is the infinite malleability of the former; example of the ox (who lacks the many-sided potentiality of the human)

(57): labor process has become the responsibility of the capitalist

(58): capitalist, thus, strives to take control--this presents itself, to us, as the problem of management.

(60-63): from "timid" to "avid" capitalists--they avoid taking control, at first. but eventually, the potential benefits are simply too great (controlling/moulding the labor process--this is, also, a precondition for rapid technological change)

(66): absolute surplus value, and habituation (association of early industry with prisons, workhouses, and orphanages)

Chapter 3

(72): distinction between the social division of labor and the division of labor in detail

(74): the stupidity of Durkheim (thank you!)

(80): Babbage's innovation--dividing the craft cheapens the laborers you are hiring; decreases the value of labor-power

(82): the capitalist mode of production systematically destroys skills where they exist--bringing into existence skills that correspond to its needs. the end of the generalized distribution of knowledge about the production process.

Chapter 4

(90): Taylor is not someone who was seeking the best way to do work in general, but the best way to manage alienated labor (labor power that is bought and sold).

(98): natural soldiering (laziness) and systematic soldiering. Taylor saw himself as up against the latter.

(100): the conclusion Taylor drew was simple--so long as workers control the labor proceess, capital cannot realize the full potential inherent in their labor power.

(107): and this is the pivot on which management turns--the control over the decisions that are made in the course of work no longer belong to the worker.

(113, 119): three principles of scientific management:

1. dissociation of the labor process from the skills of workers--it should be planned not according to craft or other principles
   
2. separation of conception from execution
3. use of the monopoly over knowledge of the labor process to control each step

(118): Taylor understood the Babbage principle

Chapter 5

(126): separation of hand and brain is the most decisive step, again (socially, of course, their unity still exists; but not individually, in the labor process as experienced by the worker)

(129-130): the influx of laborers from ruined agriculture, the advent of new industries which require some skill training -- all this can obscure a long-term, secular trend toward the incessant lowering of working-class skills.

(132): craftsman traditional repository of technical knowledge of the production process

Chapter 6

(146-149): the way in which the worker is habituated to the capitalist mode of production is not through manipulation or cajolery, but through socioeconomic forces--the capitalist mode of production destroys all other forms of organization of labor, and thus eliminates all alternatives for the working population.

PART TWO

Chapter 7

(156): science, like labor, has been turned into capitalist property [question, here, of the role of the State?]

(166): the distinctiveness of the scientific-technical revolution, the systematic application of science to the labor process (which really takes off in the last quarter of the nineteenth century)

(169): initially, it is the organization of labor that changes. next, it is the instruments of labor that are revolutionized. to the question of how this happens, though, there is no unitary answer (it is open to history, we might say)

(171): and this, then, coincides with a systematic attack on the unity of thought and action in the labor process. this signals its total destruction, in a sense. [there is an important point about technology being both an effect and a cause of the separation of planning and execution, here]

(172): he is arguing, though, that this is an ideal that is only realized within definite limits [the question is what are these limits, and how can they be established]

(179-180): worker is seen as a machine from the perspective of capital, which is the animating principle of this method of labor organization (of this mode of production)

(182): moving, in a sense, towards abstract labor stripped of all its concreteness

(184): two approaches--the engineering approach, which abstracts from social relations, and the social approach, which views technology as situated in social relations.

(185): we must look at technology as it affects the labor process.

(188): the key element in the development of machinery is not size, speed, etc., but the manner in which its operations are controlled (and thus, of course, what this spells for workers and the labor process)

(190-191): trends in machine development -- from universal to specific to universal functions again?

(193): excellently put--machinery presents us with the possibility of human control over the labor process. but this is nothing but an abstraction, as humans is not explicated in the concrete social setting in which we find ourselves. what it really means is that the mass of humanity is subjected to the labor process, rather than it being set to serve the interests of humanity in general [well expressed, here]

(195): machinery offers management a mechanical means of doing what it might be unable to do through organization or discipline -- take effective control of the labor process.

(199): revolutionary effects of 'numerical control'

(203): price ratio is 12 (old) to 1 (new)

(206): the pursuit of the increased productivity of labor, under capitalism, becomes "generalized social insanity"

(208): in this relentless pursuit of productivity without reference to human need, we have the reductio ad absurdum of capitalist inneficiency.

(212): the crux, again -- machinery enabling control of the labor process, from outside.

(216, 218-219): very interesting tables about levels of control (17!)

(227): dead labor and living labor

(229): it has become fashionable to attribute powers to machine, where we ought to be speaking of social relations

(230): in reality, machines also present us the possibility of eliminating drudgery for all (and a commensurate sharing of the remaining boring tasks) -- this is a classic presentation of forces/social relations contradicton

(237): value of labor power/machine implementation discussion --some interrogation needed, here, of his earlier argument and the preconditions for it.

alex callinicos, "plumbing the depths: marxism and the holocaust"

(386): Mandel explains the holocaust as outgrowth of colonialism and imperialist capitalism, comparable to those barbarisms. the racism, interacting with the context of total war. partial, and not specified, says Callinicos.

(391): similarly, explanatory appeals to human nature simply can't grasp the fact that this was limited in space and time.

(392-393): two competing theories, about relationship between Nazism and elites

1. Arno Mayer, who sees fascism as the ancien regime's last stand (ancien regime in power until 1914, in effect)
   
2. those who focus on conflicts between Nazis and the elite

(393-394): resolution, Callinicos is arguing, comes in Trotsky's analysis of fascism as "counter-revolution in the guise of revolution."

1. counter-revolutionary in the sense that its purpose is to smash the organized working class; points of convergence between the Nazis and industrialists
2. yet, revolutionary guise insofar as it was a mass movement which (a) could do this far more effectively than conventional forces of the state, which were in disarray (traumatized by world war, revolution, depression, infaltion) and (b) antagonizes, to an extent, the bourgeoisie; it was not their party

(394): a mass movement of those caught between big capital and organized labor (supported by research done by Gluckstein; not cited at all, by Mann)

(395): interesting question about Trotsky's expectation with respect to the Fascists --

robert brenner, "from theory to history..." [critique of mann]

(189): ok, important but not really powerful--mann's account of the rise of europe is internally contradictory, because it violates his theoretical commitments [since it requires him to presuppose the socio-geographical unity of Europe, even as he's argued for anti-holism in his four forms of 'social power' model'--see 190, 200-201, 205]

(193): why do people sit at the bottom of these hierarchies, for Mann? because they are out-organized. this will come again, and is quite critical to understanding the faults in what he's peddling.

(194): summarizing Mann's argument, which appears here as hogwash, confused/overdetermined/disorganized (formally complex--actually meaningless)

(203): key--there's no account of the economic reproduction of the agents that operate the organizations he's outlining (which, means, then, that there is no account of how they're able to hold sway)

(205): here this point emerges, again, in Mann's treatment of diffused power vs. authoritative power (but this is confused, obviously) -- he retreats to simple 'out-organization'

(207): key--why do those at the top carry any bite--why are those at the top able to carry out their will, at all? [and Brenner has more than hinted at the resolution--these instruments of domination will have to be intimately related to the economic distribution of resources, which these four networks cannot explain, but must presuppose]

(210): "capitalist is a captain of industry because he is a capitalist, not vice versa..."

(211): Brenner's account of why the economic and the political were merged, in feudalism--which has to do with the predominance of 'political accumulation', of course. it could also be come at, from the opposite direction--any class with the means of domination, in hand, would obviosuly use that authority to pursue the conditions for materially reproducing itself.

(217): rules of reproduction--no incentive to innovate, due to immense costs of specialization (safety first)

(220-222): key point--unlike Mann's account and others', Brenner is asserting that the centralized state, in feudalism, does not emerge because of capitalist dynamics. it is emphatically feudal--it emerges due to the material requirements of lords, pursuing its construction. they were obliged to rely on extensive growth, which pit them against rival lords.

(222): neither was this led by a monarch, who proceeded without a political community. he needed lordly followers, since he depended on them for "counsel, administration, finance and military backing. "

(222): thus, feudalism exhibits both a Malthusian dynamic--and a unilineal dynamic to ever larger, more centralized states.

(226): again, it cannot be the simple pursuit of a social need that determines whether you will be successful in establishing a social network with you at its head--this is voluntarist hogwash, and confronts countless counterfactuals which it cannot explain away. you need some account of why certain people triumph over others.

(226-227): similarly, political power is not set up to fulfill political functions, "per se for themselves." one rather can only conceive of states being set up to fulfill the political needs of some already-existing group. [Mann himself recognizes this!

(227): the separation of the economic and the political, under capitalism, becomes possible when economic surplus extraction no longer depends on extra-economic coercion, but on the dull compulsion of the economic structure.

(228-229): key, why does the State not move against the capitalists?

1. historically, it only emerged with the rise of the capitalist class--they pursued a state which could defend their property rights without plundering them (winning of Parliament in 1688-1689)
2. logically, the state--to pursue its own goals--needs dynamic economic growth, which means it needs vigorous capitalist accumulation. "only apparently autonomous, the state is dependent upon capital."
   

Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified United States State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.