It
>allows each and every user to decide what is the most cost-effective way
to go
>from A to B without having to await instructions from command central. It
>encourages "the praxis of everyday life" in which people, individually or
>collectively, are free to develop solution to a myriad of mundane problems.
>This strikes me as far more democratic and creative.
>
(clip)
>Personally, I want to change everything.
>
>Dan Lazare.
Pricing, ie. market socialism, is the opposite of changing "everything." In some respects, China embodies market socialism and the proliferation of luxury automobiles among the red bourgeoisie shows that something different is needed. Two years ago, at a Socialist Scholars Conference, David Belkin--coauthor of a book on market socialism with Frank Roosevelt--debated Harry Magdoff. Belkin argued that if workers wanted cars, they should have them. This is not socialism, it is adaptation to the current consumerist status quo, which favors the industrialized nations against the third world. Pricing is besides the point as long as artificial blocks to the free market exist, namely death squads and censorship. Indonesia will produce cheap oil because the army and cops and fascists murder trade unionists. The only way that prices will reflect reality is when the bourgeosie is overthrown. A mind-blowing task, but we'd better roll up our sleeves now or it will never get done.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)