"Radical Chains" (was Re: Fwd: offlist - review of bhaskar)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

I wrote:
>>[someone sent this offlist]
>>David Gorman reviews A Meeting of Minds: Socialists discuss
>>philosophy - towards a new symposium Roy Bhaskar (ed.), foreword by
>>Roy Edgely. Published by the Socialist Society for The Socialist
>>Movement, ISBN 1 872481 10 8, £3.95.
>
>Since I haven't read the book reviewed, perhaps I should refrain from
>making a comment, but allow me to proceed anyway.
>
>>Where the Radical Chains project is concerned with the
>>understanding of a system or totality of interlocking social
>>relations, Bhaskar and company see instead a mere aggregation or
>>collection of relations that are subject to an open set of
>>permutations. This can be seen in Bhaskar's description of the
>>socialised market: 'It involves public ownership and worker-managed
>>enterprises with a basic wage guaranteed irrespective of work, in
>>exchange for domestic or caring labour, with labour, producer goods
>>and consumer goods markets, subject to over-all planning norms and
>>with market-making undertaken by publicly funded bodies and backed up
>>by buyer-seller information networks' (p.28-29).
>>
>>The Socialist Movement wants to abolish the market in capital but
>>retain the market in labour.
>
>I don't know if the quoted passage refers to what the Socialist Movement
>holds as the end point of social transformation or a step on the way to
>communism.  In any case, though, I agree with the reviewer to the extent
>that I am not in favor of market socialism.  If only the reviewer expressed
>his belief in a less turgid language!  (What is this group called "Radical
>Chains" anyway?  Can anyone enlighten me?)  For those who are interested in
>a more persuasive critique of market socialism, read David McNally's
>_Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist
>Critique_ (Verso, 1993).

I went back to the website where the review was posted and found the
homepage of "Radical Chains" on my own.  The group's "statement of intent"
says the following:

*****   Planning has not superseded the law of value, and is not doing so.
There cannot be planning except by the producers. Administration, by
bureaucracies and elites, functions in a variety of forms as a surrogate
for the law of value. Centralised, top-down attempts to coordinate the
activities of the direct producers and adjacent social strata must fail,
for they are properly subject neither to the discipline of the market nor
to that of the consciously associating society. In the presence of combined
labour, containment and external coordination of an administrative nature
can only be partial, unstable, and unsuccessful.

<http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/guest/radical/RC-INTRO.HTM>   *****

So, the members of "Radical Chains" criticize market socialism but are
opposed to planning as well....  In this regard, I think the reviewer's
critique of market socialism is as unhelpful as Angela's demand that we
wage a "struggle against the plan."  (No wonder the reviewer's language is
so turgid!)  I renew my recommendation of the David McNally book.

Yoshie