[lbo-talk] How would democratic ownership and control move us towards serving human needs?

[Wojtek S]

[WS:]  Oskar Lange argues that private ownership of the means of
production and wealth inequality associated with it creates impediment
to achieving optimal distribution of resources (aka Pareto optimum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency) since most people do
not have adequate resources to make market purchases according to
their needs and preferences.  This skews the supply toward luxury
goods that the rich can afford (aka "plutonomy").  A socialist
economy, or market -socialist economy to be more precise, will
eliminate this problem by two means: first by nationalizing the means
of production and subjecting them to rational planning (setting
prices) that is responsive to consumer demands, and second by
providing certain amount of purchasing power to everyone.

The beauty of Lange's argument is that it relies solely on the
"bourgeois" economic theory to make the point - more precisely, on the
claims of superior economic efficiency of the socialist system rather
than on a moral imperative.  As Lange himself would say, the problem
with socialism is not economics but sociology - that is to say,
socialism (public ownership + planning) can be more efficient in
distributing resources than capitalism (private ownership + free
market) but it faces a major obstacle in the form of power structure
i.e. undemocratic governance that impedes good economic planning.

Wojtek

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 1:20 AM, Rick <cr70814 at verizon.net> wrote:
> I keep wondering about a very basic question in political economy that I'm
> sure has been answered a million times but I keep forgetting the answer: if
> our goal is a society that serves human needs rather than profits, how
> exactly would changing the mode of ownership from private to
> public/community/worker accomplish that?  It seems that a society based on
> democratic ownership might not necessarily escape the nexus of capital
> accumulation, profit above all else, highest return on investment, etc.
>  Conceptualizations of "a system based on private ownership of the means of
> production" and "a system based on serving profits rather than human needs"
> don't really describe the same thing, so why would ending the former end the
> latter?  How exactly would socialism end the dominance by the profit system
> and instead serve human needs?  It seems all it would do is change ownership
> relations.
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-- 
Wojtek
http://wsokol.blogspot.com/