But neither does "private" ownership promote 'efficiency' at workers' expense or otherwise. The point is that legal ownership form per se does not matter - what matters is the organizational structure of the enterprise and th eorganizational environment. SOEs can be as efficient/inefficient or democratic/authoritarian as Western corporations that are nominally "private." Besides, what does private versus state ownership mean other than ideological shibboleths? In both EE's SOEs and Western public stock corporation the actual control of the firm was quite separate from ownership, and in both cases the personal rewards of the execs were tied to the performance of the firm itself.
I agree with your point that "state ownership" does appear to be major motive force only inasmuch as "formal ownership in general" does not appear to be such a force. That is, not by itself. It is possible that under certain historical conditions state ownership can be either 'efficiency maximizing' or "equalizing" force and much so than private ownership (I think that the three-year plan in Poland is a good example of that) - but that does not mean that it will have that effect under diffrent sets of historical conditions. Ditto for private ownership, not-for-profit ownership, etc.
I think that the larger point is that we ought to look into a much broader set of historical circumstances than "regime types" when comparing any two nation-states - and analytically separate (if possible) effects of different factors and combination of factors. Unfortunately, taht analytical work is often neglected - which btw is my major bone of contention with Professor DeLong who seems to prefer simple demonization instead.
>> The idea of Eastern Europe 'exporting' revolution or their
>economic system
>> is a myth invented by US propaganda.
>
>Sure, but did anybody say this? I don't recall.
Not on this list, but in general. But anyway, that was just a strawman to emphasize a point.
>8 hrs a week strikes me as a hell of a big difference, but
>in any case this speaks to the dubious value of state
>ownership as an index of the well-being of the working
>class.
This was precisely the point I argued, albeit from a different set of assumptions. I think that the claim of democracy offers a weak foundation, because the term democracy is too vague to be used in any comparative analyses - it is basically a political shibboleth whose importance is limited mainly to legitimating ideology in the West. Eastern Europe did not build its legitimation systeme on the myth of democracy (i.e. parliamentary representation) but on Communist eschatology (the end of history).
A much more useful terms come from organizational sociology - such is autonomy, organizational coupling etc. which denote the level of decision making freedom individuals have in diffrent institutional settings - but that is subject for another discussion.
wojtek