In the right context I'd say all these things too. But it wasn't just the Americans who made the comparison, the "overtake and surpass" (sorry, I got that the other way around) language is from _Soviet_ propaganda of the 1950s. And like I said, it didn't seem crazy back then to anybody. But it didn't work out that way. Part of the reason is that Russia was poor and under attack. Part of the reason is also that it went overboard with planning too much, or trying too.
If most of us are agreed, though, that we don't want Soviet planning, the thing to do is to learn lessons from everybody -- Soviet planning failures and successes. Western market, planning, and cooperative failures and successes.
The issue isn't really markets vs. plans. Everyone who isn't on crack knows that a good part of any economy is good to involve some sort of markets -- official or not. As Doug and Chris (among others) know, the black market economy in the USRr was probably as big the official economy. And quite necessary to its survival.
The issue is (apart from public ownership and workers' control), how plan what can be planned and avoid the Hayek problems that arise in those contexts, how to market what ought to be marketed and avoid the Marx problems that arise in those contexts.
If we agree on that, "we are all market socialists." Or whatever you want to call it, if that's not MS, when call it what you like, I don't care, the label is not important. Call it economic democracy. Social justice. Common sense. Plain decency. But it is important for our advocacy work taht we actually acknowledge and think about the Hayek problems. We are all pretty good on the Marx side, so I don't stress that here.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> >The Soviet model failed over "surpass and overtake"
> >the West.
>
> And who else has? It's remarkable how little change
> there's been in
> the global hierarchy over the last 100 years. The
> major exceptions
> are in East Asia. So it's kind of remarkable that
> the comparison
> between the USSR and the West is even made.
> Substitute Brazil or
> India for the USSR and see how funny it sounds.
>
> Doug
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