>>> <JKSCHW at aol.com> 05/03/00 09:20PM >>>
In a message dated 5/3/00 6:11:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us writes:
<< Agreeing with Max, the price "mechanism" seems like pretty much the same thing as the Invisible Hand. The mechanism is held in opposition to planning, in the sense that the former purportedly contains an unconscious (to humans) and mechanical guide that automatically balances supply and demand. Planning implies a price "committee" or living group of humans, who consciously balance them. It is difficult to see how keeping the price "mechanism" santized of direct human consciousness is key to guaranteeing its successful function. >>
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That is because you buy into neoliberal myths about the automaticity of markets,. The key to their success is the conscious involvement of people who have an incentive find out information and act on it.
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CB: At the point that they find out the information and before they act, they are planning.
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The problem with planning is that it attempts to aggregate all that informatuion in one place in a group of people who have np special incentive to get it right or to do anything in particular with it. The planning board has to know to much. But markets do depends, absolutely, on human agency. he proof is in the pudding. "The bourgeoisie, in its reign of scarce one hundred years . . . " As the Old Man saw long ago. --jks
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CB: The notion that at some level the whole need not be planned, loses the rational kernel of holism in Hegelianism. However, not all or every last detail of planning need (or should) be done "in one place in one group of people." The plan of the whole can and must be based on and integration of planning of the parts. The fact that the Soviet efforts became over centralized, does not mean that we cannot learn from the trials and errors of that concrete experience , and make appropriate adjustments in the relationship of the whole and the parts of the (now) worldwide economic system. Communism is to be a world, species wide, system.
CB