Robin, Peter, Justin, et. al.,
I wanted to get to the end of this thread before putting in my
own two bits.
1) Aside from the issues raised there is a substantial difference
between Schweickart and Devine on the issue of "the social division of
labor" which Schweickart hardly addresses but which is very important to
Devine (and Hahnel and Albert) and does reflect a critical weakness of
"market socialism" which does after all make "individual choice" an
operative principle at least for static allcoation of goods and labor -
thus the relevance of Robin's point about the Tyrany of the Educated
under market socialism.
2) Labels are important (note Justine's recent literary citation)
i.e. as a political principle I think it is a grave mistake for
socialists to call their vison "market-something" - thus though I like
David Schweickart's book a lot esp as an introduction to a serious
critique of cap. of non-political economy readers- with caveats as noted
above - as at
least he sees a need for investment planning. His willingness to call it
a form of Market-socialism is a weakness - though I'm not sure that he uses
this phrase in the book itself.
3) I lean toward a David Laibman's (see Science and Society, Sp. 1992)
more democratically centrally and decentrally planned model
with social pricing as well as financial planning, with attention to the
social division of Labor a la Devine and Hahnel and Albert. It seems to
me that critics of planning (I've had several go arounds with David
Belkin on this in Socialist Forum) forget that the alternative is Markets
i.e. the rule of those who need resources the least, or about the worst
kind of planned allocation one can think of. David L's model also posits
a makt soc and possibly a private sector for smaller and very small
enterprizes (much like China now perhaps).
4) It seems to me that the issue is one of individual versus
social choice and of the magnitude of externalities.
Now of course
there are numerous issues and problems associated with constructing
forms of accountable, efficient, and democratic social choice. But
there is no getting around the need for social choice itself - in part
that's what socialism is all about. You can't just reduce these to
individual choices (or in Devine's words "sectional" choices) - The
downside of allowing markets decide will in most of these cases be far
more severe than even an inaddequate mechanism of social choice.
Of course this would have to be shown on a case by case basis - and for
that reason it would make sense to start with major sectors with huge
externalities (Autos, finance, international trade, etc) and gradually
develop systems (of dmeocratic social
choice) which do work.
In a panel with
David Schweickart (at the Midwest Radical Scholars and Sctivists a couple
years agao) , it was clear to me that this was our key difference.
Unlike David S., (and like H&A, Devine, and Laibman) I believe that
Externlities are pervasive (and likely to get more so as economy becomes
more and more "networked" and interdependent - see Harrison Lean and
Meand and note Microsoft) so one can't just address "financial"
planning. Democratic social choice will require social pricing and other
forms of planning in goods and labor markets - particulary if the goal is
human development.
5) Also increased investment in human resources will require
prices with much higher mark-ups on Human capital (which gets more
important in more advanced ecomies) so that investment in human services,
education, cutlure, research, etc. is not a side-bar to commodity
production and production pricing. This is a long-term convivial growth
issue which transcends static allocation issues (which i am working on
showing that market pricing is grossly sub-optimal even in static
stiuations). See David L.'s book VALUE TECHNICAL CHANGE AND CRISES
m.e.sHARPE, 1992, aNDREAS bRODY, FOR more on this. Shifting to this kind
of pricing by the way, which puts people instead of commodities and
capital at center of the pricing system, asymtotes to labor value pricing.
So in summary, I think a serioius look at the political economics
involved - and not just the politics and philosophy - ultimately points
to serious planning - i.e. not just investment planning.
6) Regarding the issue of meetings etc., I'm sympathetic with the
problems raised by Folbre (and Beckett or Oscar Wilde?) of too many
meetings so often a problem in non-profits. But the issue here I think
is voluntary versus paid professional work. Any large organization
(especially large corporations) have lots of meetings, but between highly
paid people who specialize in the topics at hand. My conclusion is that
there is no getting around paid and professional planning - and
professional elected public officials - to make the nitty gritty
decisions subject to broadly debated programs and priorities.
Its just like what we have now except no public accountability (for
CEOs), but it would go beyond this to look at whole markets and
industries as in Devine's Negotiated Coordinating Committees.
This is getting too long - hope its useful.
In Pen-l Solidarity,
Ron Baiman
Dept. Of Econ.
Roosevelt Univ.
Chicago
