review of bhaskar

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Thu Oct 28 15:20:27 PDT 1999



> With regard to Yugoslavia, market socialism, in combination with political
> decentralization (i.e. weakening the federal powers & augmenting the powers
> of the republics), basically laid the material foundations (i.e.
> centrifugal tendencies and entrenched regional interests) that the USA &
> European powers could exploit.
> Also, I venture to say that market socialism & political decentralization
> were not good for women in economically depressed areas such as Kosovo (and
> elsewhere in Yugoslavia).
> That said, Doug says that the Diane Elson article on the socialized market
> (in New Left Review 172, Nov-Dec 1988), cited & criticized in the Radical
> Chains review of Bhaskar, is very persuasively argued. Have you read it?
> Yoshie

re. Yugoslavia, couldn't have said it better myself...

re. Elson, I read above mentioned article when it came out (I used to sub to NLR) and kept it in my files until recently...as I recall, she makes good point about demands for state activity absent self-activity (of various kinds, seems like she refer to citizens more than workers) being non-starter...but she goes on to call for using state resources to facilitate networks (worker-consumer-activist) to educate, folks, develop what she calls 'social audit' for assessing economic accountability/responsibility, and formulate ideas for new technologies & economic restructuring...such networks could then become part of regulatory process and that process could be used to require private property owners and private firms to be more socially responsible... at some point a critical mass can be reached in which social accountability will supersede private profitability...all this is premised on emergence of participatory rather than 'parasitic' state (as Marx called it _Civil War in France_) with socialism being conceptualized in terms democratic accountability of resource use... Michael Hoover



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