Everyone thought that Hayek had died too with his critique of Keynes as well as
socialism! I don't see how the failure of Gorbachev proved anything except that
a lot of the Russian elite including the gangsters thought that something like
capitalism where they owned the productive facilities was much more in their
interest than market socialism. If failures show an economic system doesn't work
how come capitalist businesses go broke all the time but no one seems to
conclude capitalism is a failure. Soviet communism may have been a failure but
what replaced it is even more of a failure, increasing poverty, knocking ten
years off life expectancy etc.etc. Something like the old style socialism might
come back. Indeed, in states such as Belarus it still exists to a certain
extent. Factories are not allowed to close but they can alter what they produce
I understand. The worst aspects of Soviet style "socialism" were the lack of
input into decision-making by those outside the party and the lack of civil
liberties together with repression of even non-violent dissent. True there is no
longer a working model of socialism market or otherwise, with the possible
exception of Cuba, but then there is no working model of capitalism according to
neo-classical economics. That doesn't seem to stop
it from being touted as the way to go and preached from a hundred pulpits.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
Doug Henwood wrote:
> Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> >One other key element of the demise of AM is the market socialism they
> >often upheld. When the Gorbachev experiment failed, when the CCP went off
> >the deep end welcoming in Nike, etc., when Yugoslavia imploded, it made it
> >more difficult to talk about the benefits of including market mechanisms in
> >a socialist society. If AM is finished, so is market socialism.
>
> And so is Soviet-style socialism. So what's left?
>
> Doug
