Michael Nuwer wrote: > It seems to me that cost-benefit [CBA] principles are fundamentally rooted in > and bound to capitalism. If capitalism is characterized as the > transformation of the labor of private individuals into uniform social > labor, i.e., into labor that can be expressed in all use-values and can > be exchanged for them; if within capitalism commodities express their > exchange-value in money, i.e., in their price, and in money they all > present themselves as materialized forms of the same labor; then it > seems to me that cost-benefit principles simply reinforce the fact the > exchange-value of a commodity assumes an independent existence in money > form.
I think it's useful to distinguish orthodox CBA from the more general idea of balancing costs and benefits when making decisions. Mike, you're right on target as far as orthodox CBA is concerned. The more general kind doesn't have to be that way (since we could use non-market values). However, it is part of instrumental reasoning, in which the means are totally separate from the ends (so that the latter can justify the former). In reality, of course, the means often ends up determining the ends. (E.g., capitalist economists see the competition of profit-seekers as a means to promote the public welfare. But the "public welfare" then is defined as a higher (real) GDP -- where the latter is (at best) a measure of market activity.) However, it's hard to imagine any society that completely avoids all forms of CBA. Some things are hard to talk about without any kind of quantifying. One thing that's crucial is to think about what the the _alternative_ to CBA is. To my mind, it would be democratic decision-making. Individuals might use their own CBA, but the process itself would be different. > Whether prices are the result of the process of exchange or the result > of a political process, so long as "one thing exchanges for an infinite > mass of other things which have nothing in common with it" we have not > abolished capitalism. I hope no-one thought that I thought that CBA, even of the most non-orthodox sort, would abolish capitalism. > I have not read Charlie Andrews' book (although I have looked for it in > a few local libraries), but if, under the system of competing > not-for-profit agencies, "the bottom line" remains the measure of > assessment, then it seems to me we would be on the wrong path. you have to get the book from him at www.laborrepublic.org As I understand his proposal, not-for-profits are judged according to their ability to live up to their mission statements and the like, which are proposed to be regulated democratically. Those statements are by definition multidimensional and are thus political in nature (rather than pretending to be apolitical as CBA and profit-seeking do). -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
