On Sun, 8 Apr 2007 10:09:18 -0400 Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com>
writes:
> Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> > It should be noted that Hayek and von Mises faced rebuttals
> > from a number of economic writers including the Polish
> > Marxist economist, Oskar Lange (who argued that market socialism
> > could provide an answer to Hayek's objections to socialism) while
> > other writers like Paul Sweezy and Ernest Mandel defended
> > the feasibility of a planned socialist economy. In more recent
> > times, the British economists, Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott
> > have attempted to answer directly Haykek's arguments and to
> > defend the feasibilty of a planned economy.
>
> None of these deal with the problem of organizing instrumental
> activity in an ideal community as conceived by Marx.
>
> He understands the "economic" problem in ancient terms as the
> problem
> of meeting the "needs" of a "good" life. The content of a good life
>
> is non-economic; it is ethical - creating and appropriating beauty
> and truth within relations of mutual recognition. It is the problem
>
> of "friends" (in a sense derived from Plato and Aristotle) who, as
> friends, "should have all things in common."
>
> So the "economic" problem, in this sense, is capable of being
> solved. "Universally developed individuals," who, by definition,
> have the developed capabilities required for both the instrumental
> and end in itself activity that define, respectively, what Marx
> calls
> "the realm of necessity" and "the true relam of freedom," meet their
>
> "needs" in the above sense with a minimum expenditure of time and
> energy.
>
> Because they are "friends," the "interest" of each is in the meeting
>
David Laibman gets into some of these issues in his new book, *Deep History: A Study of Evolution and Human Potential*. In a review of that book that I have been working on I write:
Laibman not only holds that his PF-PR model can be used to elucidate the many issues concerning the feudal-capitalist transition (issues that have been debated by scholars like Paul Sweezy, Maurice Dobb, Perry Anderson, Robert Brenner etc.) but that this model has important implications for understanding how the transition from capitalism to socialism and beyond might occur. He considers an evaluation or rather re-evaluation of the experiences of the Soviet Union and of other Soviet-type societies in both their positive and negative aspects to be of crucial importance for understanding the dynamics of the capitalist-socialist transition. In this discussion, Laibman discusses a number of issues including the proposals that have been made for market socialism as a model to be preferred over Soviet-style centrally planned socialism. Laibman rejects market socialism but recognizes that markets may play a very significant role in the building of socialism and he points out that the Soviet economy did have markets of various types. In Laibman’s view, one cannot abstract markets from the social contexts in which they exist, as most forms of free-market ideology tend to do. He also discusses the proposals by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel for a participatory economy in which collectives of workers would be organized to negotiate the production and distribution of goods without any sort of reliance on market relations but would also be lacking in any central bodies or structures of authority that could degenerate into a bureaucratic caste. Negotiations between producer and consumer collective would be mediated through an Iteration Facilitation Board in a system of horizontal coordination. Laibman sees some merit in Albert & Hahnels’ proposals inasmuch as they place strong emphasis on democratic participation. However, he faults them for unwittingly proposing to reproduce much of the alienation associated with the market economy. There are no mechanisms provided in their proposals for achieving or facilitating the development of social consensus concerning the outcome of iterations. The iterations, as Albert & Hahnel admit, will be designed to reproduce the allocations that would have been generated by the market, since their iteration model is supposed to guarantee economic efficiency by replicating the Walrasian general equilibrium Their model does not allow for the establishment of a conscious political control over economic activity. Instead, it attempts to replicate the outcomes of markets without making use of markets. Laibman also objects that the constant meetings and negotiations that would be required for the iterative organization of production and consumption would require more time and participation than most people would be able to bear.
Likewise, Laibman finds both significant merits and demerits in the proposals made by W. Paul Cockshott and Allin F. Cottrell for a computerized centrally planned socialist economy. Against bourgeois economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, Cockshott and Cottrell argue that developments in computer technology make it possible to overcome the so-called socialist calculation problem. The many thousands, if not millions, of simultaneous equations that economists tell us would have to be solved in a complex economy, can in fact be solved within seconds by computers. Moreover, Laibman agrees with them that modern computer technology, including computer networking, makes rational economic coordination possible without our necessarily having to rely upon markets. However, Laibman objects that Cockshott and Cottrell fail to take into account the importance of things like local knowledge and traditions, which cannot be easily factored into mathematical models. To some extent, Laibman actually endorses the Misean-Hayekian objection to the idea that central planning cannot be expected to handle those sorts of issues very well. And he also faults them with attaching too much importance to the problem of economic coordination whereas he thinks that the decisive advantage of socialism will most likely turn out to be in the area of what he calls consensualization, that is the establishment of participatory planning which aims to create consensus and shared vision as the economy and society are brought under the conscious control of the masses. However, he agrees with them that the revolution in information technology is a decisive example of how capitalism is being undermined by the development of the PFs. Modern technology makes possible the “decisive transcendence” of capitalism. Laibman proposes that under socialism we might wish to rely upon what he calls an “E-Coordi-Net” which would be modeled after the Internet and which would be responsible for registering and processing the flows of economic data, thereby facilitating participatory democratic control over the PFs.
Laibman as a historical materialist holds that the development of productive forces under capitalism necessarily undermines the kinds of incentive and control structures upon which capitalism has long been reliant. Further economic and social development will require more advanced levels of consciousness and incentives, but these are unavailable under capitalism. Hence, capitalism will have to be transcended if human progress is to continue. In that sense for Laibman the triumph of socialism is inevitable, barring such catastrophes as nuclear war or ecological collapse. In the chapters on “Socialism” and “The Soviet Experience,” he provides an extended discussion of the role of both material and moral incentives and of individual versus collective incentives in the building of socialism. At any given stage in the development of socialism, all of these different types of incentives will be operative. Policymakers will have to find ways for combining individual/material incentives with collective/moral incentives to maximize the advancement of both production and consciousness. A materialist view of incentives and consciousness will see this as a matter of the working out of a dialectic between people’s developing consciousness and their changing material circumstances as humanity emerged out of capitalist society. In other words, the combinations of material and moral incentives that would be required for promoting further economic and social progress will likely change over time. Presumably, in the earlier stages of socialism, more reliance will have to made on material and individual incentives as people would still be “stamped with the birthmarks” of the old society, However, as socialism develops, the balance will tend to shift in favor of increasing reliance upon collective and moral incentives. Laibman concedes that in the earliest stages of socialism, policymakers will be confronted with making trade-offs between increasing production and increasing the quality of life (which would involve increasing equality and participation). The experiences of countries trying to implement policies to increase quality of life suggest that this is the case. To that extent, the neo-liberal critics of socialism are correct in his opinion. Where these critics go wrong is that as socialism proceeds to more advanced levels of development, these sorts of trade-off will cease to exist. In other words, whereas in the earlier stages of socialism, it might well be the case that increased quality of life can only come at the expense of increased productivity, under a more advanced socialism, the continued improvement of productivity will require changes in people’s motivational structures. Improved productivity will come only if people display a high sense of commitment and creative fulfillment in their work. Those sorts of changes in motivational structures would be best fostered under conditions of increasing democracy and equality.