Compared to what? It's hard to argue with its capacity to grow, innovate, and produce cheaper commodities over the centuries - at a high social and ecological cost, for sure, but I don't think you can win the "efficiency" argument from the left. It has to be on other grounds.
This isn't so if the degree of rationality characteristic of the mentality dominant within capitalist relations of production is less than what would obtain within relations more consistent with the development of rationality. In so far as the capitalist corporate form embodies characteristics which express the psychopathology of those whose creature it is, it won't be as "efficient" as a form expressive of less psychopathology. This effect goes unnoticed where (as with Doug's recent interviewee Leo Panitch) it's simply assumed that capitalists are fully instrumentally rational. Moreover, where compensation arrangements give the stock market significant influence over the decision making of corporate executives, the degree of psychopathology characteristic of these decisions will be increased because of the greater psychopathology characteristic of the mentality dominant in financial markets.
The psychopathology can't be competed away if it's an essential feature of the mentality generated by the internal social relations that define capitalism.
Ted
