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This sounds like an important book. I'd want to know more about Gluschov, though (and hopefully will after I get the book), and what alternative he posed. Because Kantorovich's proposals on pricing reform were, as Mandel points out in Marxist Economic Theory, abstract suggestions to make then-popular market reforms more efficient. But those market reforms themselves didn't address the major problem: the frustration of planning by the restriction of far more basic and simple calculations, because the bureaucracy at each level was hiding information from itself (the central planners for instance, gave unrealistic orders to factory heads based on arbitrary decisions and the factory heads lied about their having fulfilled their part of the plan. And the workers were just told to shut up about the whole thing). Even with today's computing power, the Liberman reforms, which the Kantorovich proposals were meant to aid, would merely have provided feedback from more accurate pricing to a system headed back toward capitalism if the reforms were allowed to follow their own logic. And of course more accurate pricing even with the best computers was irrelevant to the anti-Liberman forces. What was missing was workers' control. And as Mandel points out there and elsewhere, the number of decisions needed to be made at each level of the economy once workers really control it are actually far fewer. Nonetheless, the TRILLIONS of trades made on the day of the stock exchanges' "flash crash" last month show once again that computing power is no longer an issue. Andy PS to Jim: the end of your comment got cut off when you sent it. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
