Robin writes:
> I also marvel at progressives who can look at the world today and not be
> struck by the obvious need to have fewer markets -- even zero in the limit.
Robin doesn't say what limit he's taking. For myself, I'd prefer
that progressives make a distinction between markets for prod
Glad to see that Doug found Roemer's book irritating. I sure did. But I
also found many pen-lers responses to Roemer's book -- not to speak of
the little club that Erik Olin Wright organized to comment on the book --
even more irritating.
For your interest, Doug, I vented all my spleen on the sub
The best piece on planning from Trotsky is his "The Soviet Economy in
Danger" from October 1932 - the paragraph about
"Conditions and methods of Planned Economy" in particular. Here Trotsky
ridicules the Laplacian fantasies of total controll typical for the bureacracy
stresses the importance of
Here's a (slightly) more concrete version of what Mike Lebowitz said:
when he discovered that power was slipping from his hands, Leon
Trotsky published a book called "The New Course," in which he argued
-- among other things -- that successful central planning requires
democracy. Using my words, i
Trond's comment implies that there exists "an optimal" rate of planning,
just like an optimal tax rate or optimal tariff rate. These are mythical
concepts, devoid of any applicability to real life situations. What
really determines how much central planning/market guidance depend on the
concre
Trond Andresen and Mike Lebowitz have both recently pointed to the
undemocratic flow of information - which is tied in turn to the larger
structures of society - in the failure of Soviet-style "socialism."
Along these lines, in his book The Thinking Reed, written largely in the
pre-Gorby era,
In message Thu, 27 Oct 1994 02:36:57 -0700,
Trond Andresen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> The question of how much central planning (as opposed to market
> mechanisms) you can have before the system gets inefficient, cannot be
> discussed without considering how to organize democracy, politics,
The Hayek critique brings up an issue that I brought up awhile back
but somehow got turned into a flame about Roemerism.
The issue, restated: capitalism, because it is based on intense
competition, encourages a competitive culture and opportunistic
behavior. Specifically, it encourages "a
Also, are people aware of Stafford Beer's book Platform for Change? It's a
collection of pieces about using cybernetics/information theory to "drive
decision making down the hierarchy" so that planning does not neccessarily
entail centralization of power nor delay.
The culmination of the book i
> Actually I was partly inspired to ask the question by reading Roemer's _A
> Future for Socialism_, which I find irritating in many ways. This urge to
>
Robin Hahnel has a very good review of Roemer's book in this month's
issue of Z Magazine. Worth checking out.
Alan
The question of how much central planning (as opposed to market
mechanisms) you can have before the system gets inefficient, cannot be
discussed without considering how to organize democracy, politics, the
media.
A program for this is IMO just as important as an "economic" socialist
program.
Tr
A number of recent posts have alluded to the current debate over the direction
of socialism for the future; market--central planning--participatory. This
seem to me to be a crucial issue for the left and I was wondering if we could
see an exchange on pen-l between some of the proponents
You can see the beginnings of an alternative critique of Hayek in Zuboff,
The Age of the Smart Machine -- especially in her notion of the electronic
text. She is a liberal and working in an entirely different context, but
she shows how knowledge can be generalized by diffusing it via new technolo
Gil, can you summarize Stiglitz's argument in a short paragraph?
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
>It seems that everyone these days accepts the Hayek critique of planning.
>Are there any sharp new critiques of the critiques that the comrades
>could recommend?
As for sharpness, the reader will have to judge, but Paul Cockshott and I
have a piece that takes on the critique, prima
Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)
On Wed, 26 Oct 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Doug asks--
>
> > It seems that everyone these days accepts the Hayek critique of planning.
> > Are there any sharp new critiques of the criti
To expand on Peter Dorman's point, viz, that organizations can
be viewed as creating, not merely using, information:
Hayek divided knowledge into two kinds, personal knowlege which
could not be articulated and objective knowledge which anybody
could have. In his 1945 AER article, what makes c
On Wed, 26 Oct 1994, Doug Henwood wrote:
> It seems that everyone these days accepts the Hayek critique of planning.
> Are there any sharp new critiques of the critiques that the comrades
> could recommend?
>
Well, not everyone. I do, more or less, but there are Albert and Hahnel
Doug asks--
> It seems that everyone these days accepts the Hayek critique of planning.
> Are there any sharp new critiques of the critiques that the comrades
> could recommend?
>
Some possibilities: 1) Roemer's _A Future for Socialism_ (1994),
beginning with Ch. 4, wh
Here is one piece of the argument: many left economists (as well as more
heretical mainstreamers) have been considering the theory of the firm from the
standpoint of *generating* rather than simply using information. This leads
to an increased importance to participatory forms of organization, ev
It seems that everyone these days accepts the Hayek critique of planning.
Are there any sharp new critiques of the critiques that the comrades
could recommend?
Doug
Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)
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