Jim Devine: > >I see nothing wrong with Robin's mention of his experience with >planning -- since, after all, it was more than relevant to answering >Louis' accusations. Louis: The fact that Robin Hahnel spent some time at work in a Cuban agency is completely besides the point. As is the fact that he has taught "comparative socialism" for 20 years. I have spent about the same amount of time in Sandinista agencies and ANC exile headquarters, but so what? I have also been a socialist activist since 1967. Again, so what. What Robin Hahnel did not do was discuss my ideas. At first he says what's wrong with a little utopianism, then he turns around and says that since he spent time in Cuba, how can he be a utopian. I guess he is not sure how he feels about being labeled as a utopian. Perhaps he would be happier if I labeled him as a half-utopian. I personally don't think utopia is a dirty word and urge him to accept it more graciously. What is wrong with being placed in the company of such figures as Fourier, Saint-Simon, Robert Owens, etc. These people were saintly in comparison to the average apologist for capitalism in the 19th century. >What's important is to criticize any "utopian socialist" scheme on >the basis of whether or not -- and how -- it works, in both theory >and in practice. Such as the possibility that Albert & Hahnel's >scheme might turn into a dictatorship of compulsive meeting-goers. > Louis: Utopian schemes all work on paper. I can't think of a thing wrong with Albert-Hahnel, Pat Devine, Cockshott-Cottrell or even John Roemer. When I think of all of the cruelty of capitalist society, Roemer's utopia seems positively heavenly. Today's NY Times has 2 items that really stand out. One, is about how the mask of somebody getting electrocuted in Florida caught fire and flames were shooting a foot from his head. Doctors are pretty sure that he felt pain from the flames before he died. The other is about how rightist death squads in Colombia have been killing suspected supporters of the guerrillas, including a high-school teacher accused of "selling information" to them. If Roemer's blueprint for socialism was enacted in the US or Colombia, that would be a cause for celebration when events like this are an everyday occurrence, wouldn't it? The problem is that his scheme and all the rest will never be tested in practice. >Louis, please tell us what's good about Cockshott & Cottrell's >proposal, how it's superior to A&H's idea. Though maybe those >authors are still on pen-l and can chime in. > Louis: What's good about it is that it theoretically answers the calculation problem. What's not so good is that the calculation problem will be solved not by supercomputers alone, but by social and political institutions that emerge after a successful revolution. What caused a mismatch between supply and demand in the USSR in the 1920s and 30s was not the availability of reliable information to resolve calculation type problems. Stalin's GOSPLAN professionals gave him a 5 year plan that was based on goals that were realizable, provided that a whole set of conditions obtained (5 good years of harvests, etc.) He promptly tore up the plan and chose his own goals from year to year. And what caused Stalin to usurp these powers? That Lenin and Trotsky said in some speech somewhere that management practices from capitalism were worth emulating? For heaven's sake, all they were doing was endorsing Taylorism. We had Taylorism in the USA for the better part of a century, but no gulags, etc. Economic stagnation and inequality are functions of a set of class relations that have evolved historically, not of what management principles you subscribe to.
