--- Cmde. boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
> First, I take Wojtek's point that the Soviet Union
> maximized the
> Keynesian notion of state finance. But this is
> separable from my
> point. The Nazis also used a very similar mechanism
> of state finance.
> This is not to derogate it as such, but to suggest
> that the use of the
> state bank as the unitary financier ultimately
> proved to be, at best,
> an interim step.
Several points. First, what makes you think that the Soviet system was anything but an interim step? True, the US propaganda claimed that the Soviets are "exporting a revolution" but that was just a bullshit scare tactic targeted at semi-litereate morons afraid of thier own shadows. In reality, the Soviet system from the start was conceived as a series of interim steps to overcome not just their backwardness, but also negative aspects of rapid industrialization (mainly price instability due to skyrocketing demand) - Gerschenkron makes that point quite convincingly and there is plenty of evidence that the Soviet system was undergoing reforms from within almost since its inception (from NEP, to 1956 to 1970 and to 1989) systematically introducing market-like elements. Again, th eidea was to catch up with the West, to to export the revolution, and central planning was an interim instrument in that goal. And it worked splendidly.
Second your discussion of risk sounds like a talking point cooked up by some right wing think tank - it is really a fetishization of risk. A concepr of risk is mainly that of probablity it is a chance of success or loss of a particular outcome vis a vis many possible outcomes. That concept makes sense only if we assume that the goal is to confine certain benefits to a narrowly defined group. That is to say, an individual capitalist takes a 'risk' because he faces a chance of passing his resources to someone else. However, rom th epopulation's point of view, such concept of risk is virtually meaningless because the resources will stay within population whether the capitalist owns them or not, and the chance of these resources disappearing altogether is rather slim. This is, btw, the principle on which the insruance industry operates, they turn individual risk i.e. a chance of loss into the certainty of a collective gain i.e. the insurance company making a surplus. Now imagine that this company is collectively owned by the entire country, and you have the rough idea how a socialist state deals with the concept of risk and that Keynesian "assuming risk away" was correct - becaus that notion becomes meaningless at the level of population (as opposed to individual).
I think that the concpet of risk that you describe is really a justification of capitalist collusion and graft to create an impression that they add value. This is of course, not to say that finance is all but useless speculation. In fact, money play an important role as a "signal" i.e. prices indiciating which activities and products are more desirbale for the system as a whole. For example, you can use price signals to change people's behavior to be less wasteful by making them pay what they use and thus save the environment. But that does not have to do anything with th ecapitalist risking lose his profits.
That is the way money was used in the centrally planned economy - price was menat to reflect or signal the social value of products. Thus necessities were priced low while luxuries were priced much higher than their actual production cost, because consumption of luxuries was considered "detrimental" to the national goal of maximizing investment. It makes perfect sense - if you want to buy a new house, you do not blow your money on frills.
You of course realize that with such pricing the cost, but not risk, is being socialized becaouse benefits are socialized as well. E.g. cost of public transit or health care is socialized because society as a whole benefits from it in the form of less pollution, greater investment and thus faster development, or prevention of epidemics. The element of risk appears only at the individual level i.e. I must pay the cost of universal health insurance but if I am not exposed to the risk of catching a disease, then I risk of losing that money.
As to the arguments that money is slavery, x-USSR lost because it was besieged by enemies - I'm pretty much with you, I think it is mostly hot air, robin-hoodism or utopian socialism if you will, and thus it is not the proper framework for discussion marxism or central planning. In fact Marx trashed utopianism with vengeance.
Wojtek
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