Seth Ackerman wrote:
> I don't understand. You must be aware that the feasibility of central
> planning has been the subject of voluminous debate since the 1930's at
> least. And that in the past 30-40 years, fewer and fewer socialists
> familiar with the issues have been willing to defend its
> feasibility. By
> feasibility, I mean the system's ability to produce all the good stuff
> you say should be produced in a communist society (laptops, good food,
> power plants) at a rate and quality at least as high as welfare
> capitalism.
"Planning" as understood in this debate is very different from the organization of production by freely associated individuals in an ideal society as imagined by Marx. The latter presupposes fully developed individuals with the intellectual, aesthetic and ethical interests and powers this implies. The organization is the self- conscious creation of such individuals (of what Marx calls "universally developed individuals" in a Grundrisse passage making this point). This also explains why, in such a society, there would be no "state" in the sense of coercive authority.
I doubt myself whether this could ever be practicable, but the reasons have nothing to do with those explaining the failure of central planning in the former Soviet Union or with those advanced as grounds for rejecting the feasibility (in the above sense) of any system of central planning. In neither case does the "planning" involved have any relation to Marx's idea of "universally developed individuals."
Ted