I'm afraid my knowledge of Schweickart is largely second-hand. Can you perhaps list some of his most useful writings? Just a few as I am seriously curtailed in regard to time and realistically would only have time to read two or three. The more analytic the better.
My 'non-distributing service sector' is a European development -it's pushed in the EU as part of their partnership model, viz, the inclusion of the private, public, voluntary and community sector in the economic development process. This really only gets lip-service at times but presents radical and progressive movements with the opportunity to push for concrete and realisable objectives which people will relate to. I'm not a huge fan of the Social Partnership approach but do recognise the potential to use the openings it affords to empower people and to counter anti-socialist arguments. The term I used is just a short way of saying profit-making but not profit-taking enterprises. In general these are currently to be found operating in low profit sectors in some countries in Europe, where the market has failed or wouldn't ordinarily develop. These enterprises are usually locally generated and run by local communities. Co-operatives would be a comparitor in the agricultural sector, except they are profit-taking. In places, the EU tends to support such 'social economy' enterprises with grant aid if they can show that they are addressing poverty and exclusion. The big idea is for governments to develop Departments of the Social Economy and to divert funds from ordinary forms of profit-subsidisation for FDI to these local forms, e.g. in the purchasing of equipment and other forms of capital expenditure and even initial revenue support. I think that it's a very marketable concept and something which is already developed in many countries. It just needs to be counterpoised to full-scale capitalism/imperialism/globalisation. As far as the bigger industrial sectors are concerned: a combination of trusts, state ownership and worker control are my preferred option. The difficulty in the EU is that state involvement in 'private sector' markets is curtailed by legislation from Bruxelles - so we see some limited responses in terms of Welsh water - established as a trust under public sector scrutiny. I'm not so sure that the non-profit distributing model works so well for larger industries because workers tend to become impersonalised and lose their sense of collective ownership. For me, the adoption of a MS economic development strategy appears to be the only logical position given the total disrepute which socialist planned economies have in the popular mind (despite their successes in the early Soviet Union and under Ché in Cuba). In the early 20th Century Socialism had no failures for the capitalists to point towards -it is this advantage which is preventing the development of a mass progressive movement in many areas. Cuba is a good example of socialist planning, but even they are looking towards Market Socialism in their difficulty. Any country adopting to a generally progressive line of march would suffer similar forces (just look at Venezuala). Market Socialism is something we can 'sell' to the working class as a better system, but it also has benefits which we would be foolish to ignore. Sé _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
