Peter Evans, state actors and economic development

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Nathan, if I follow your argument below, what you are arguing is that
opposed to method of capitalist guerilla warfare, private initiative and
competition--as Preobrazenskii referred to them--state organized
investments are superior because they can set off a chain connection in the
movement of the whole complex? I  know I am not getting you exactly right
or being clear.

 It seems that you are making a connection between the necessity of
expanding simultaneously on a broad front in the development of technology
and the superiority of state led investments in doing so. Or simply put,
that a state form of ownership makes possible the application of higher
form of technology than is possible under private capitalism?  But then why
did the Soviet Union suffer from technological backwardness?

yours, rakesh


>What the state accomplishes is a coordination and independence from the
>economic rivalry that often undermines innovation.  This is partly an
>escape from short-termism in investment (the most traditional Marxist
>explanation for state capital mobilization) but it is also an escape from
>the modes of commerce that prevent joint action in opening new markets.
>Technology is not science but a whole set of institutions that must move
>forward together and the state can encourage the creation of new
>institutions that can never form in a world of marginal utility.
>
>The autonomy of the state necessary to escape the interests of traditional
>business interests is the sociological problem here.