[lbo-talk] Missing the Marx

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Jan 2 10:01:26 PST 2005


andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>[clip] But it couldn'y handle a complex
> modern economy.

Probably both planning and market socialism would maintain this modern economy as "complex" -- hence both would fail to offer an escape from the catastrophe of capitalism.

If we (or, rather, our descendants) can't work out a way to break the tyranny of the future (and that is what "complex economy" means fundamentally), then we are simply not going to survive (or, rather, we will trickle on in some drastic version of Luxemberg's "barbarism").

Planning, as so far understood, means predicting the future, and subordinating the present to that mental projection of the future. In other words, for individuals, there will still be no direct (or 'visible') link of action to motive. Only after the fact will the meaning of today's act become apparent.

And of course it is this break between action and motive which makes the capitalist market economy unbearable. The main virtue you claim for the market, its provision of information on the basis of which the present may be connected to an invisible future, is its fatal flaw.

Carrol



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