> >How do you propose to get to a nonmarket socialism? Seems to me the
> >only hope is to bend, push, modify, transform what exists now, which
> >means, in Diane Elson's phrase, socializing markets. It seems
> >abstract and adventurist to talk about any postmarket socialism as if
> >you could just pull it down from the shelf.
> >Doug
>
> What does it mean to "socialize markets"? This sounds like Chris Burford's
> idea. It can't work, needless to say. Reforms like the Tobin Tax, etc. are
> all well and good, but socialism has a completely different agenda. It
> involves dissolving the old state apparatus, nationalizing the means of
> production, a monopoly on foreign trade and extensive use of planning.
> Furthermore it is not pulled down from a shelf, but created through struggle.
> Louis Proyect
Elson makes point about demands for state activity absent self-activity
(of various kinds, seems like she refers to citizens more than workers)
being non-starter. She calls for using state resources to facilitate
networks (worker-consumer-activist) to educate folks to develop what
she calls 'social audit' for assessing economic accountability/
responsibility, and to formulate ideas for new technologies & economic
restructuring. Such networks would become part of regulatory process
and that process could be used to require private property owners and
private firms to be more socially responsible. At some point critical
mass could be reached in which social accountability would supersede
private profitability. DE's premise rests upon emergence of participatory
rather than 'parasitic' state (as Marx called it _Civil War in France_)
with socialism being conceptualized in terms democratic accountability of
resource use. There is 'pulling down from shelf' quality to Elson's
pragmatism given likelihood of increasing tensions associated with
possibility of any kind of socialism. Michael Hoover
