JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>
I am a bit bored with it too, but not because I think that we need not
worry about questions of institutional design since only the future will
shwo how to solve our problems. After the debacle of communism, no
workers will pay any attention to anyone to says that they should tear
down what they have to replace it with something (but we're not saying
what, except that it won't involve markets) better (we promise!).
SP:There are models of socialism worked out in some detail that have minimal use of markets. Pat Devine's one seems the best to me. My point was rather that questions of institutional design cannot be settled wholly a priori. Alternatives to capitalism are largely forged in the struggle against it. Starting where we are now, it is hard to say what kind of socialism will emerge in the struggle against capitalism. It will differ from place to place too.
JKS:Do you see things as operating differently under planned socialism? Are you with Charles B on this, no unions, nos trikes, one party, which is the Communist Party that represents the worker's interests by definition?
SP:If there is only one class then there is nothing to strike against.
Of course this is what the authorities said in the USSR and China but it
obviously wasn't true.I
would hope that there are disagreements and vigorous debate.
Parties remain a good way to organize people. Many of the world's CP's
were forged under conditions of severe repression which leads to a
different party structure than in conditions where there remain
political freedoms. Open and democratic organizations are hard to
organize in politically repressive environments, clandestine work
doensn't facilitate it. Not an excuse for repressive internal workings
of a party but it is hard to tell how a party or movement will adapt to
survive against continuing offensives from the capitalist state.
>
> JKS:I agree about the hard budger constrint, but that has nothing to do with labor markets. The HBC means that if a firm is failing, it doesn't get bailed out. It means real bankruptcy.
SP:Yes, but it is the _fear_ of the company you work for going bankrupt and you going unemployed and into poverty that forces people to work hard, accept concessions and speed ups. That fear is what drives labor markets, taking it away takes the teeth out of the market. I would add that a lot of people do not need incentives to work hard, they just do it for pleasure or out of conscience. This would increase in a socialist workplace. Peer pressure goes along way in getting others to pick up the slack.
JKS: Democratic planning is not an incentive.
SP: No, what I meant was giving workers a greater say in micro *and* macro aspects of their lives is an incentive. So is giving them a greater say in the spheres of consumption and culture.
JKS:It is an alternative economic system which may have incentives in it. The incentive in MS to work hard is increased profit shares.
SP:If it's a market ecnonomy, profit shares will rise and fall. So workers are supposed to set up a fund that will see them through hard times? I'd just say: "why are firms competing? We all belong to the same class, why not co-ordinate our activities.?" Further, what kind of culture are you going to promote in MS, a competitive or co-operative one?
JKS: I think this[imperialism] is more problematic. Schweickart argues that MS would be less likely to be imperialist because worker self-managed firms are not expansionist.
SP:If they aren't expansionist how are they to survive in a market economy? Or is it forbidden by law? You need to explain how the nature of capital accumulation will change in MS such that firms do not to expand to mass surplus value or market share.
JKS:That is true, but it does not explain how existing inequalities are
to
be corrected. Perhaps that is a problem in any system where national
sovereignty is respected.
>
> You misunderstand what is the HBC. It is true that there is a tension between efficiency and equity, but it is a tradeoff and not absolute. the market will not collapse if the government has to hire some people who cannot be picked up by coops for whatever raeson.
SP:It depends on how many such people there are.
JKS:Besides, there are lots of public goods that we market will not provide for those people to work on. Many of these are necessary for markets to operate, like roads.
SP:OK.
>
JKS: And you don't see the difference between this and being told, you
will be a housepainter in Vancouver; we have enough economists, thank
you.
SP:That is what happens to many people today and its not because they are crappy economists. Good old manual labor would do intellectuals some good at least part of the year (1-3 months a year maybe.) If the experience of the former state socialist countries is any guide, intellectuals had enormous priviledges comparatively speaking. This is even true in <drumroll> North Korea. Creating an intellectual class was one way of hiding people with origins in the upper classes.
BTW, has anyone read Joe Stiglitz' book *Whither Socialism*? Sam Pawlett