> Anyway, capitalist institutions are bad, but not
>> because of the invisible hand (people doing their own thing with
>little
>> outside direction). They are bad because they lead to outcomes like
>wealth
>> and income inequality, which lead to social division and corrupt the
>> political process, even if it is nominally democratic. They are bad
>> because they are rife with externalities, ususally reinforcing selfish
>and
>> anti-social behavior by under estimating the costs of goods and
>services
>> which are consumed by individuals, and over estimating the costs of
>public
>> goods. And so on.
>
>well, now you're confusing me. the 'invisible hand of the market' is a
>good thing? and what are these 'externalities'?
Sorry to be confusing. By the invisible hand, I simply meant people and firms making decisions independently of each other - there is no central authority that directs economic activity. I like this principle, i.e. decentralized economic activity , but I am nonetheless opposed to the market.
By externalities, I simply mean a case where the consumer does not pay the full cost of a good or service they consume. Pollution is the canonical example. When you buy a car, the cost to society in terms of emissions are not included in the price. These costs are borne by society as a whole, not car owners. You get the idea. Markets are rife with such externalities.
>> The whole point of Albert/Hahnel (and perhaps other) blueprints is to
>> devise institutions which will _prevent_ these kinds of perverse
>> outcomes.
>
>which will regulate the market you mean?
No. There won't be a market. Another mechanism would take its place.
>> Finally, there is this insistence on calling these kinds of blueprints
>> "utopian." Why are they utopian? Because they haven't been
>> implemented yet?
>
>no, utopian in the sense that marx spoke of: as projections into the
>future of an idealised present. ie., the problem with utopianism is not
>that it hasn't been implemented, but that, paradoxically, it has. any
>kind of blueprint will be pretty much like what science fiction writers
>do: they try and situate today's conflicts in an imagined future
>(babylon 5) or poses the future as the resolution of today's conflicts
>(star trek). in either case, 'today' hasn't been overcome; it serves as
>the horizon beyond which our imaginations can't go.
I disagree here. Human thought and ingenuity is capable of improving upon current problems and difficulties, and of peering into the future. The person (or people) who invented the wheel may not have been able to envision the automobile, but they could see how it would make transportation easier. Just because we have this limit doesn't mean we can't envisage beneficial change.
>as sci fi it might
>be boring or interesting (i personally like a lot of sci fi, but
>preferably ones which aren't posited as the end of humanist history,
>like star trek); but as a politics which seeks to be put into practice
>and to serve as a vision of a radically different future, it means we
>already pre-set the limits of that future as a version of the present.
>so, it's not radically different; it's just repetition. and, it's a
>dangerous kind of repetiton precisely when it's posed as a radically
>different future. what happens when, as has happened, this or that
>blueprint is achieved? anyone who wants to go further or someplace else
>is denounced as a counter-revolutionary, because, after all, with the
>realisation of the blueprint, socialism has arrived.
I'm not talking about a radically different future - I'm talking about a radically different present. Take today's society and change its institutions. This has occurred many times in history. Unless you think the Russian revolution was merely a repetition of the Czar's regime, or that the French revolution had no social impact. These were real revolutions - society changed significantly.
As for your second point, I don't find it convincing. Has the US been shackled from "going further" when the Constitution was ratified? I'll admit that this sort of thing happened in Russia and probably occurs in China today. But so what? There will always be reactionaries, but it isn't a law of physics that they will always get their way. Institutions can be malleable by allowing mechanisms for change. If you can successfully institutionalize democratic decision making, then things will change when people want them to - that's part of what successful socialism means. And that's the ultimate goal anyway, not the particulars of what society must be, but the power for people to change their society to fit their needs and desires.
>_IF_ it is possible to have a socialist society, how can
>> theorizing about what it might look like be utopian a priori?
>
>because you're theorising with theories which are past and present would
>be the shortest answer i can give. you can't imagine something you've
>never experienced or heard of.
Of course you can imagine things you've never experienced or heard of. I do it all the time.
Brett