Anarchism / Marxism debates

[William S. Lear]

On Tuesday, August 17, 1999 at 10:57:42 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
>Brett Knowlton wrote:
>
>>Currently I'd support a democratic plan a la Albert and Hahnel.
>
>I'm a bit mystified by all these utopian blueprints. It's not like 
>there's going to be a revolution in the U.S. or any other OECD 
>country where everything will be changed overnight. (Anyone who 
>thinks there is, please provide an imaginable scenario.) Seems to me 
>you push where you can - more unionization, more worker control of 
>the workplace, more socialization of consumption and investment (free 
>day care, education, health care, etc.), more democratic forms of 
>land use planning, regulatory and other constraints on corporate 
>power, what Diane Elson calls "socialization of the market" (opening 
>up corporate pricing and other strategies, attacks on intellectual 
>property rights, popularly controlled financial institutions), 
>attacks on the discipline of money (minimum incomes, etc.).... The 
>point would be not only to improve people's lives, but to give them 
>more confidence and capacity to improve them in the future. After a 
>few generations of that, who knows where we'd end up?

Of course all of this is perfectly compatible with Hahnel and Albert's
vision.  They do not offer a "blueprint" for arriving at their utopia.
They are interested in providing a hopeful target, admittedly far off,
for us to aim at.  I think their criticism of market socialism is
quite powerful, and they in no way disparage efforts to socialize the
market.  They do see ultimate limitations to what the reforms within a
market society can accomplish.

My impression of their work is that by trying to sketch an answer to
the question "who knows where we'd end up?", they try to provide a bit
of confidence that we are moving in the right direction, and that once
we "end up" there, we have some idea of what sort of society we'd like
to build for ourselves.

Bill