me:
> But I do get [Julio's] point (I hope): if a mode of production -- such as
> the one that used to prevail in the old Soviet Union -- cannot get the
> job done of producing and distributing goods and services with a
> reasonable degree of efficiency compared to other existing modes of
> production, it's bound to fail eventually if it doesn't solve the
> problem.
This does not prove that the "less efficient" mode of production is the
inferior mode of production.
I didn't say it did. I just said that a "reasonable degree of
efficiency relative to other existing modes of production" was needed
for survival. For example, the fact that the late USSR didn't do a
reasonable job of producing and distributing goods and services was
one factor that led to its demise.
the problem was summed up (but simplified) by the Russian saying that
"we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." The Soviet workers
didn't spend much time in their workplaces and didn't do much work
when they did it. The bosses paid them in money, but there weren't
many goods on the shelf, which undermined the motivation to work.
Also, the workers spent a lot of time waiting in line to get products,
which detracted from work time. An economy that has this kind of
problem is in trouble.
To paraphrase Dickens's Cissie Jupe, "Who
has got the goods and services?" in that wealthier nation? A mode of
production which (a) provided good preventive medicine for its entire
population (b) minimally decent care for all the disabled and (c) equal
medical care for all would be superior (and fuck efficiency) to any mode
of production, however more efficient overall in the provision of goods
and services, that was inferior in these three measures.
Morally superior, yes. (Or rather "maybe," since the country _might_
fail on other matters.) But I wasn't talking about morality but
survivability. A lot of morally superior organizations fail to survive
in the real world.
I don't accept social Darwinism (that which survives is good, a
version of might makes right). Rather, its the survivors that can
impose their conceptions of what's "right" on others. What we need is
a system that is both right (by my standards, at least) and survives.
No socialist system is going to produce a mass of goods to match an
advanced capitalist society -- and that will be an advantage, not a
disadvantage.
as explained above, I wasn't talking about a the production of a "mass
of goods." Instead, I referring to getting a workable solution to the
problem of production. Capitalism has a workable (but disgusting)
solution to this problem, i.e., the use of the reserve army of the
unemployed to threaten workers if they don't work hard enough.
Total production has to fall (from US/EU/Japan levels) or
the human species won't survive.
again, that's true but irrelevant to my point.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your
own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
