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

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 23 08:18:44 PST 2012


[WS:] I think the human needs part is taken care by Lange's argument - it will do it in the same way as any well functioning market. The advantages of public ownership over private ownership is the planning and the elimination of income inequality, which according to Lange impedes market efficiency.

As to environment - it is a very different point. Private ownership exacerbates environmental problems because it creates incentives for externalizing environmental costs (i.e. shifting them on general public), which makes economic sense for them, since it increases profitability of individuals firms. Under public ownership, such externalization would not exist because there will be no economic incentives for it. In other words: it makes economic sense for me to dump my trash to my neighbor's backyard instead of paying for its removal, but it does not make sense for my to dump it into my own backyard, because I still have to pay for its removal at some point. Likewise, socialist planners will not allow establishment x to pollute, because they will have to pay establishment y to deal with the pollution.

This is, of course, in theory. In reality, socialist economies were among worst polluters because they faced no pressure to reduce pollution. In other words, they were dumping in their own backyard because nobody gave a flying fuck about the accumulating trash. It is subject to debate whether this represents economic or sociological problem in Lange's terminology. That is - a fundamental inability of economic planning alone to deal with environmental issues or merely the abuse of power by socialist bureaucrats who poisoned their won environment without fearing popular backlash. I tend to believe the latter, but I can be persuaded otherwise.

wojtek

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Rick <cr70814 at verizon.net> wrote:
> Right -- I totally agree.  I just don't understand how changing ownership
> relations would result in ending a system based on profit and instead
> produce for human and environmental needs.  I think for most of my life I've
> taken this association for granted but the more I think about it I'm not
> sure I get it.
>
>
> On 1/23/2012 4:15 AM, Lew wrote:
>>
>> Rick wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>>
>> If the profit system is retained then it can be expected to reassert its
>> dominance over human needs. The empirical evidence for this is
>> overwhelming. From a Marxist theoretical perspective the answer is to
>> completely remove the profit system and produce solely and directly for
>> human and environmental needs.
>>
>> --
>> Lew
>>
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-- Wojtek http://wsokol.blogspot.com/



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