> Dear self proclaimed Boddhisatva,
> 1. Are you implying that consumers should remain sovereign in their
> decisions over the consumption of commodities? Are consumers sovereign? Or
> dependent as Veblen, Schumpeter and Bourdieu have all shown?
> 2. How do you plan to democraticize investment? The privatization of social
> security funds? The euthanasia of the functionless investor? A somewhat
> comprehensive socialization of investment? The expropriation of capital?
> 3. Are you saying that social relations should remain mediated through those
> commodities? Should we then scrap unemployment insurance, welfare, free
> medical services, etc?
> 4. What exactly are you proposing to end what you call wage slavery?
First, note that "boddhisatva" is spelled wrong and it is, after all, just a screenname. I've used it for so many years, I wouldn't know what else to use.
1) As for the "sovereignty" of the consumer, it's a magesterial phrase but what does it mean? Consumers select from the range of goods that workers (well, capitalists) can provide. Obviously consumers cannot directly control the realities of production. But I do HOPE that consumers are sovereign. After all, the purpose of the economy is to serve the needs of the community - thus the needs of consumers.
2) The plan to democratize investment is complex. I see the question as being "what will the financial system of socialism look like?" I know what it *won't* look like. For 150 years the answer from Marxists has basically been "there won't be a financial system" and I think that's clearly a non-starter.
We all pretty much agree what the end-state should look like. To get there from Capitalism as Marx described it, one is tempted to simply throw out everything down to the basic mechanisms of exchange. I think that's short sighted. I think Marx misapprehended Capitalism to a significant extent and therefore he did not anticipate the changes that capitalism itself might go through. Although Marx posited that we would find the seeds of socialism in the development of capitalism, I don't think he really believed it or perhaps Marx the polemicist got impatient with what Marx the implications of what Marx the theorist was laying out.
Again, the question is "what will the financial system of socialism look like" and I think that a discussion of abandoning the "value form" is yet another iteration of the argument "there won't be one".
3) I'm saying that social relations WILL be mediated in the form of commodities. When last I checked, the social programs you cite were designed to *buy* commodities like food and medicine from people who produce them for the marketplace. The programs themselves (and therefore the taxpayers) are consumers and the beneficiaries are consumers with choice.
An enormously important thing that workers do is to provide choices to consumers. Is providing choices somehow oppressive? I don't think so. And once there are choices, there is exchange and once there is exchange, value comes into play in managing that exchange fairly. Do you anticipate an economy without choices?
4) What I'm proposing to end wage slavery is Socialism: workers' controlling the means of production. To bring that about, we will have to create a financial system for socialism and that means not rejecting the "value form" but figuring out how to provide maximum value to all workers most fairly and reasonably.
First and foremost, we have to create a system where workers do not need permission from a small, self-interested class of capitalists in order to fultill their desire to meet the needs of consumers - their community.
boddi