Over on Medium I have a Summary a ( https://medium.com/@jimfarmelant/summary-and-take-away-of-online-debate-with-remarkl-on-young-ronald-coase-as-socialist-1c347f694db6 ) nd take-away of online debate with Remarkl on “Young Ronald Coase as socialist ( https://medium.com/@jimfarmelant/summary-and-take-away-of-online-debate-with-remarkl-on-young-ronald-coase-as-socialist-1c347f694db6 ) ”
If you read the responses to my *The Young Ronald Coase as socialist* ( https://medium.com/@jimfarmelant/the-young-ronald-coase-as-socialist-eddab4d1a2c8 ) post, you will see that a fellow Medium blogger Remarkl ( https://medium.com/@remarklj ) challenged my attempt to ground a case for socialism in terms of a partial synthesis of Coase and Marx. Remarkl very much takes a pro-capitalist stance but is not any sort of a libertarian free-marketeer, rather Remarkl accepts the need for government regulation and for a strong welfare state. Remarkl, in fact, praised the Scandinavian social democracies for providing a strong social safety net while remaining very much capitalist. What follows is a summary of that debate. ---------------- 1. Shared ground ---------------- *Remarkl* and I agree on several foundational claims: * Capitalist economies generate harms (externalities, inequality, instability) that *require political intervention*. * Democratic regulation has historically *mitigated some of capitalism’s worst outcomes*. * Any economic system must be *institutionally workable* , not judged solely by abstract models. * Frictionless theories — of markets or planning — are inadequate for real-world analysis. Thus, the disagreement is *not* about whether politics matters or whether capitalism is ever regulated. -------------------------- 2. Remarkl’s core position -------------------------- Remarkl’s position can be summarized as follows: * Capitalism is an *amoral profit-driven system* , not a moral philosophy. * Politics is *not external to capitalism* , but a *market-like corrective mechanism* , analogous to collective consumer action. * Democratic regulation is best understood as a *form of coordinated market choice* , enforced through political institutions. * This view closely aligns with *James Buchanan’s* ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Buchanan ) ** *public choice framework* ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice ) , which treats political decision-making as exchange-like behavior among self-interested actors. * On this view, capitalism is *politically corrigible* rather than self-justifying. * Historical evidence shows capitalist systems *can improve over time* without systemic collapse. * Socialism fails because its incentive problems are *fatal* , whereas capitalism’s incentive problems are *manageable through politics*. * The appropriate standard is *progressive improvement and survivability* , not ideal alignment. In short: capitalism adapts through political feedback mechanisms analogous to markets; socialism does not. ------------------- 3. My core position ------------------- My position diverges at a deeper structural and theoretical level: * Capitalism’s improvements occur *despite* , not because of, its core incentive structure. * Politics is not a market-like process but an *institutionally distinct mode of coordination* , involving authority, coercion, and asymmetric power. * Treating politics as a market (à la public choice) *collapses critical distinctions* between democratic constraint and profit-driven allocation. * Continuous political correction signals a *structural limitation* , not a system success. * Capitalism has a recurring tendency to *erode, evade, or reverse reforms*. * Viewing politics as endogenous to capitalism *renders capitalism, definitionally insulated* from structural critique. as a system. * Coasean analysis explains why large-scale coordination increasingly outcompetes markets technologically; Marxism explains *who controls that coordination and why*. In short: capitalism persists only through ongoing restraint, and that persistence does not constitute vindication. ---------------------- 4. The real fault line ---------------------- The disagreement between Remarkl and myself is not primarily about whether capitalism has improved historically, whether socialism has failed in practice, or whether incentives matter — on all three points there is substantial overlap. The real fault line lies in how politics itself is conceptualized and, on that basis, how economic systems are evaluated. I treat politics as a qualitatively distinct mode of coordination from markets, involving authority, coercion, collective decision-making, and asymmetrical power relations. From this perspective, regulation appears as an external constraint on markets, and the need for continuous political correction reveals structural limits in capitalism’s incentive system. Remarkl, by contrast, drawing on James Buchanan and public choice theory, conceptualizes politics as market-like: a process of exchange among self-interested actors aggregated through democratic institutions. On this view, regulation is not external to capitalism but one of its endogenous feedback mechanisms. As a result, Remarkl denies that such internal evaluation is meaningful, instead judging capitalism by its long-run capacity for improvement and survival. I maintain, on the contrary, that capitalism can and should be judged by the incentive structure it generates, and that it is therefore institutionally accountable as a system; What ultimately divides us is not so much empirical history but incompatible theoretical starting points about the nature of politics and institutional change. A major issue left unaddressed in our exchange was imperialism. While we both acknowledged that capitalism has been associated with significant social improvements, those improvements have been overwhelmingly concentrated in the capitalist core — North America and Western Europe. A public-choice response might argue that this reflects differences in domestic institutions, governance quality, or voter preferences, rather than anything intrinsic to capitalism itself. However, such an explanation abstracts from the historically documented role of core capitalist states — especially the United States — in actively constraining the political and economic choices available to peripheral countries. Efforts by governments in the periphery to pursue reformist or developmental strategies have repeatedly been met with external intervention, ranging from sanctions and financial pressure to electoral interference and outright military force. These actions cannot be explained as the outcome of local political failure or voter preference; they represent deliberate exercises of power by core states to preserve favorable conditions for capital accumulation. As a result, comparisons between “successful” regulated capitalism in the core and stalled development in the periphery cannot be treated as independent institutional experiments. The political constraints that make capitalism appear corrigible in the core have often been denied, by force if necessary, to those outside it. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39936): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39936 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116961607/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
