Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
> . . . every effort was made
> to find you a job, and if one wasn't available, one was created. It
> wasn't cheap - it cost something like 2% of GDP - $200 billion in the
> U.S. - but it was popular.
>
Sweezy & Magdoff once argued that the one New Deal progect that aimed beyond the borders of capitalism was the WPA, which had precisely that principle of creating jobs to fit the workers available. And though I was only around 8 when the WPA was at its height, even so I can remember the flood of propaganda against it: not, of course, because I read the newspaper but because conversations (in a strongly Democratic household) about how terrible the WPA was were apparently vigorous enough to stick in my memory.
Re the debate over market socialism: one problem is that every time that debate comes up Justin & I start flaming each other rather nastily, to no effect. A couple of things seem to me nearly axiomatic, though I won't try to develop or argue for them.
The early stages of socialism will be characterized by a social context, grounded both in the conditions that helped generate a socialist movement and of the struggle of that movement for power (and the mode of resistance of the bourgeoisie) that we really can't imagine now. And that will mean that (both for better and worse, but also just different) that we can't build our vision of socialist construction (or reconstruction) on any description of "workers" in the present. The struggle will have created radically different kinds of responses and motives.
Secondly, under such conditions, of course there will be market dominance, even inside socialism, beyond what Justin even wants. So the immediate struggle (and it will be a struggle) will be to eliminate those markets which even Justin wants eliminated (medical care, child care, education, etc.) What will we do with all the unemployed ad agency personnel, veterans agency (medical care for _everyone_ eliminates the need for special medical care for some), pr men/women, WSJ editorial writers, etc.?
If socialism means anything at all it means democracy within the working class (which I assume is around 85 to 95 % of the population of a "developed economy"). So the keeping or demolition of this or that market will be a matter of political struggle, which the theories of the experts may or may not influence a lot.
Carrol