This is a very helpful post. Is there anywhere on line where one could read up on
the essential features of market socialism etc. I am not too close to a
university library and even when I get there I expect with cutbacks most stuff is
not there. I would have to get it on interlibrary loan.
Just a few points:
1) Paul's response to Louis does not really say anything about the extent to
which the success of Yugoslavia depended upon Western finance. If market
socialism arises in a hostile capitalist environment things might be different.
This brings me to
2) How does Schweickart envision that we get from here to his system? Surely
it is important to trace the forces withing capitalism that lead to market
socialism. It seems to me that as the energy crisis hits us workers will demand a
command and rationing system rather than a market. In a market distribution of
scarce energy resources those in developed countries will see what were earlier
considered everyday comforts and conveniences priced beyond reach.
3) What of pensions both old age and disability? What is a public good? Is
electricity marketed? Gas?
How does one decide?
4) As for the calculation problem. I have not studied it. In fact I don't
know precisely what it is supposed to be except broadly the difficulty of
compiling all the information that one would need to plan production in the
absence of market prices. I thought that computers could help solve that and
techniqus such as input-output analaysis as well. What of Timeworks remarks on
the issue? But how come it should be do problematic to plan the economy as a
whole. To a considerable extent this has been done in situations of crisis such
as wars. If Mark Long is correct, and I think he is but over a longer term, we
will be in a crisis situation that will demand command
controls under capitalism or socialism. The revolutionary potential will be for a
command socialist economy as the market makes the division between rich capital
and everyone else not just evident but so
oppressive that the potential for revolution will exist.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In a message dated 7/16/00 2:09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> << Justin, you, and to some extent Doug, have been asking for concrete
> explanations of how planning would work. I don't see how market socialism
> would work either. Seriously. The problem is that markets don't work
> very well either. If you are dealing with what Sol Tax called penny
> capitalism -- a small village economy -- markets work reasonably well in
> achieving static efficiency, but buyond that .... >>
>
> OK, here's the Schweickart model in the four promised sentences:
>
> (1) Production of consumer and capital goods is carried out by
> worker-self-managed cooperatives in wht all are cooperators, there are no
> capitalists or wage labors--all profits are captured by the cooperators.
>
> (2) These compete for business in a fairly free, although regulated market.
>
> (3) The capital assets are owned by the state and rented to the producers,
> who pay a sort of capital tax on their use and must maintain their value
> (discounted for depreciatuion), although they may sell and buy capital
> assets: there is no private productive property.
>
> (4) New investment is planned through a system of state-owned banks according
> to criteria of profitability as well as job creation, econological soundness,
> and other values, under general priorities democratically determined by the
> legislature; there is no primary financial market.
>
> (1), (2), (4) are the socialist bits: no exploitation, no private property,
> no market in financial capital, which is planned. (1) and (2) are the market
> bits: free cooperative enterprise.
>
> There is more to it--the government provides as well for public goods (roads,
> schools, health care) that the market cannot provide or provide well, runs
> macroeconomic policy, maintains full employment, and of course regulates the
> market, but that's the core of it.
>
> Now, for more details, you really should read some of the places where Dave
> has explained this over the last 20-odd years. A short statement is in
> Bertell Ollman, ed. Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists. The long
> statement is in Dave's Against Capitalism (Westview 1996). He has a
> medium-length statement in a fiorthcoming book, on which I and others are
> commenting at the Radical Philosophy Association in Chicago in the fall,
> Beyond Capitalism. Dave exaplins a great length why the model is better than
> laissez faire or welfare state capitalism and why it avoids the problems
> those generate. He doesn't much talk about why it is better than planning--he
> leaves that to me.
>
> --jks
