Cuba's Destiny

William S. Lear rael at dejanews.com
Sat Aug 29 11:28:30 PDT 1998


On Fri, August 28, 1998 at 12:43:44 (-0400) Rakesh Bhandari writes:
>...
>The strategic emphasis is on the development of ESOPs as islands of
>workers' power, made possible by a myriad of factors: socially necessary
>branches of production being abandoned by capital on grounds of their
>uncertain profitability;

One thing to add to this, to round it out more, is the idea that a great deal of market production is biased toward goods which have negative externalities (under-priced, over-produced), and against those with positive externalities (over-priced, under-produced). This bias in pricing and availability in turn can affect preferences of consumers, leading to further under-provisioning of public goods. Very nasty problem, in my view --- 'course it doesn't compare to the essential problem of capitalistic exploitation and alienation, but you gotta land the punches when you can...


>uncertain profitability; the increased importance of workers' intellectual
>participation in the workplace and thus the need to tie them in via
>incentives; workers own interest in escaping top down control. Harris
>reasons carefully and systematically and there is hardly an objection
>which he has not anticipated. This is a very important book and presents
>a different emphasis on short term reform, rooted in the actual
>organization of the production process, than Doug's targetting of
>rentier power at the level of tax and social security policy.

This is a book I've been meaning to get ahold of ... I'll have to jog down to the library and grab it ...

Bill



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