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I think that we have reached an impasse here. We all agree that both
Soviet-style central planning and the market are both flawed.
__________
CB: I would dissent from the consensus that Soviet-style central planning and the
market are equally flawed. The planning in Soviet history has a lot to teach whatever
better planned economies of the future come about.
It is not possible to "plan" a planned economy entirely in advance and in theory. It
must be worked out in practice. Soviet history has given us a big practice to learn
from and improve upon.
____________
Neither
market socialism nor (what we might call, for want of a better word)
real socialism have ever been tried. Market socialism is susceptible to
outside pressures, just as European style social democracy is acquiesced
in becoming more like U.S. style raw capitalism. As Jim Devine noted,
market socialism would have a hard time avoiding many of the problems
associated with markets.
The debate here seem to imply that the important objective was settling
upon a recipe -- market socialism or real socialism -- and then the work
was complete. In fact, I suspect that once we began to struggle against
the system is now stands and build counter institutions, these counter
institutions would be more likely to form the basis of any future
socialist state that some recipe that we would cook up here on a male
list.
________
CB: Yea, practice. But we must not throw out the enormous practice with planning that
we have had in the 20th Century as if it was all bathwater and no baby.
