There are a lot of assumptions packed into your brief reply. First, lets talk about what "socialism" requires, not what "Marxism" requires. Marxism is a critical theory. Its tour of duty as an official ideology is, thankfully, over, and it did none too successfully in that capacity. We can ask what Marx himself, or some Marxist or another, would have wanted, but there is no definite answer to what "Marxism" demands. In fact, if you we orthodox about it, Marxism is under a self-denying ordinance when it comes to talking about future social arrangements. So Marxism will tell us, if we ask whether the postcapitalist society will have taxes, We'll see. Can't say just now. Right, Lou?
Now, that said, if you think that socialism requires replacing markets with planning, that planning will have to be carried out by some body with the ability to enforce its determinations, as well as to pass laws and regulations, establish budgets, allocate investments, ensure coorsdination. It's a merely semantic matter whether we call this a "state." If you think it's not in the sense that there are states in class societies, then it's a quasi-state institution; or it's a state in some sense tht encompasses the nonclass functions that class states must perform along with nonclass quasi-states, as with Lenin's post office.
"Workplace democracy" is not a substitute for a state or quasi-state. It addresses the internal organization of the enterprise. However, there must be some way or coordinating the activities of the millions of worker self-managed enterprises that are internally democratically run. Just now we know of two ways of doing that: one is to let them enter into market relations (Schweickart). The other is to have them administratively coordinated by a state or quasi-state bureaucracy, a planning board (Mandel). No one has even sketched a plausible third alternative. I have argued that theAlbert & Hahnel model, which purports to be a third way, is really a variant of the second, with a lot more democracy at more levels than Mandel's version. Personally, I think Mandel's cleaned-up Soviet-style model is vastly superior to A&H's, but that's not the point here.
Whichever way you slice it, you'd need some way of financing the state or quasi-state, whether under a market or a planned socialist system. If not through taxes, then what?
Health care would be, or could be, cheaper if there were a single payer state run national health system. That doesn't mean it isn't fabulously expensive. You'd still need to pay for it.
Public goods, as you well know, are roughly defined as those that the market won't provide adequately on its own because of free rider problems. I think roads are still public goods in that sense.
Love as always,
jks
>
>At 04:19 PM 4/12/01 +0000, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>>One supposes that with a strong socialist state, there would be a need for
>>taxes to maintain its services. In Schweickart's model of market
>>socialism, new investment is financed with an "assets tax," a sort of
>>rent, on the value of assets used by the producer coops. In any system
>>where there is no capital market, and investment is planned, therew ould
>>have to be fairly serious taxation to raise investment capital.
>
>why? --leaving aside from the fact that i don't think marxism requires
>state planning and that worker cooperative/workplace democracy would be
>perfectly fine.
>
>>In addition, taxtion would be required to finance public goods like roads,
>>schools, health care, and the like. Incomer taxtion is not the only way to
>>go--in the USSR, btw, the income tax burden was very low.
>
>health care -- not necessarily. i mean, if there is no attempt to make a
>profit then everything is simply cheaper.
>
>and didn't someone tell me that roads aren't necess considered public goods
>anymore?
>
>
>
>>The usual explanation of why we have taxes under capitalism is so that the
>>state can provide public goods that the market will not provide.
>
>yes, it was a typo! :) i meant to type "communism"
>
>
>kelley
>
>
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com