> Alan Rudy wrote:
>
> But, surely, you are only suggesting that abolishing commodity exchange
>> and
>> replacing it with top-down, undemocratic, and unrealizable bureaucratic
>> "plans" based on crappy data and unreasonable hopes and expectations on
>> top
>> of undemocratic and largely unregulated workplaces is the only way to go?
>>
>> It strikes me that the Soviet Union represents a pretty lousy case to
>> appeal
>> to as a straightforward "test" of this sort of thing.
>>
>>
>
> No, the Soviet Union is a perfect test of this sort of thing. If you
> believe abolishing commodity exchange will abolish self-seeking as a human
> motivation in economic life, then that's what should have happened in the
> SU, even if the system contained all kinds of other flaws.
>
> The usual argument goes: "Economic life will always be marked by
> selfishness as long as there is commodity exchange." It sounds like you're
> now amending that argument to read: "Economic life will always be marked by
> selfishness as long as there is commodity exchange or 'bureaucratic'
> planning or 'crappy data' or 'unreasonable hopes.'" I'm sure the list could
> be lengthened ad infinitum. All societies have flaws, no? Where does that
> leave Charles Brown's plea?:
>
> Couldn't there be competition but not
>> motivated by getting money ? Amateur
>> sports have competition
>> without money rewards to the winner.
>> It is conceivable that a whole
>> new system of motivation for
>> innovation could be developed.
>>
>
I think I left a negative out of the first sentence I wrote, though I think
you interpreted it as I intended..
in any event, I am now really confused and am presuming that I missed
something earlier on in this exchange...
on the one hand, remembering Capital, v.1, there has been commodity exchange
as long as there has been exchange - capital, the complex relation,
transforms the nature of commodity exchange by engendering qualitatively new
forces and relations of production, distribution, consumption, regulation,
etc....
so the Marxist problem isn't with commodity exchange, per se, it is with
capitalist commodity exchange and capitalist commodity exchange - as we all
know from Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, David Harvey (whatever you think of
his recent pronouncements), socialist feminists, Stuart Hall, Terry Eagleton
and many others is a phenomenon with far greater reach than the exchange of
commodities... a reach so profound that, at least to me, the idea that
eliminating commodity change, writ large, necessitates assuming that there'd
be an immediate and successful move to self-provisioning... which is
farcical.
Even if I suspend disbelief and accept the idea that commodity exchange
could be eliminated, the idea that a new system of motivation could be
developed afterwards boggles the mind... and this was my point about the
SU...
If we are thinking at all relationally, here, there can't be a stepwise
movement - isn't this what feminists, oppressed racial and ethnic
minorities, GLBT and environmental activists have been saying to socialists
for 100+ years when it comes to assertions that their issues will be dealt
with after the revolution?
Reading the response to Carrol, I think we agree and the problem lay in my
writing a lousy sentence (and also misunderstanding what it was that was
being tested by the example.) Do we agree?