File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/97-01-19.073, message 55


Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 18:03:59 +0000
From: Nick Holden & Kate Ahrens <glengate-AT-foobar.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-G: Re: planning please


Justin Schwartz writes:
> > Dave asserts that "the law of value" governs in all markets. I replied,
> > first, that markets are not tied to capitalism, at least not necessarily.
> > There could be socialist markets. These would involve commodity prodiction
> > by cooperative workers. Productive property would be socially owned,
> > spefically, state owned. So it would not be private. The state would rent
> > productive assets to the workers. The would work as cooperators rather
> > than as wage labors. So wage labor would not exist and labor power would
> > not be a commodity. There would be no market in labor power. Workers would
> > be remunerated with profits from the sales of the products on the market.
> > They would recoup all the profits. None would be appropriated by a class
> > of nonproducers. So there would be no exploitation. This is a brief skept
> > of noncapitalist markets.
> >

Now I don;t claim to be an expert on the theoretical aspects of this, and although I have tried to follow the 
debate on amrket socialism, I have found it difficult for several reasons (time, etc.) not least of which being 
I still don't understand the term, 'market socialism' which seems a tautology to me.

Despite (or because of, possibly) my ignorance, there is a big question mark for me over the comments made by 
Justin above.

He says that "There would be no market in labor power. Workers would be remunerated with profits from the sales 
of the products on the market. They would recoup all the profits. None would be appropriated by a class of 
nonproducers. So there would be no exploitation."

If the workers receive 'all the profits', then how are the social costs of society to be met? How does such a 
society cope with unemployment, retirement, the sick and disabled? It seems to me that this vision of social 
markets is utopian, and similar in many ways to the dreams of Robert Owen - it is concstructed by taking the 
individual in society, and building upwards to construct a model of how life would be for everyone. Each person 
essentially gets 'all the profits' from their production, although they work together (in co-operatives, 
naturally) to do so more efficiently.

So far so good. But as Marxists, we cannot accept that society is merely a collection of individuals. Societies 
by their very existence require collective (not co-operative) forms of organisation, if they are not to break 
down into competitive ones. Who decides, in the example given above, what happens if one co-operative appears 
to be far more efficient at producing a particular item that all the others? Under capitalism (and as I see 
it, under any market system), the other organisations will collapse, and the first one will increase massively 
its market share, and its profit. How do we view this?

If we accept that there is no contradiction between market forces and socialism, then we have to say, 'fair 
enough'. They have worked for their money, let the members of co-op A take all this extra profit, and do with 
it as they wish. As for the members of co-op B & C, they have less (or no) profit available to share - they 
will have to close their business, and go elsewhere. But this is just the same chaos as capitalism, it is part 
of what we're fighting against, comrades, not what we should  be eulogising.

The ideas of market socialism, far from being a 'reality' against the 'idealized planned economy', as someone 
else suggested a day or two ago, are actually idealism of a lower order - they are fantasy, based upon an idea 
of society that is essentially petty-bourgeois: everyone a self-employed producer (or a co-operative one). 
These dreams take no account of those in society who cannot play the role of producer, and lead to the 
re-emergence of capitalist modes of production.

Those who argue against central planning as a means of promoting market socialism are constructing a straw man, 
to knock down with ease. Stalinist monolithic central planning and petty bourgeois marketism are not the only 
choices: we can be confident, I think, that workers after the revolution will be able to construct mechanisms 
for planning the needs of communities and societies that are responsive to people's needs, operate 
collectively, and take account of the various needs, and abilities that exist in that society. Some things 
(railway timetables, for example) may require national level planning (or supra-national in the case of Europe) 
but the idea that these jobs, of necessity, create a strata of beauracrats who oppress the masses unless they 
are done through a market is surreal - make the beauracrats accountable to the masses, and the opportunity for 
oppression disappears.

I suspect that the reason why some comrades have shied away from planning models and now find market socialism 
a convenient hiding place is that they do not want to finally cut themselves off from what they see as the 
'gains' of Stalinism and similar forms in China, etc. States where democracy and accountability are formal 
words, and do not exist in practice, of course degenerate into ones where the planners have power to oppress.

But the solution to this is not to say, 'central planning is the mistake'. We should say, 'the lack of 
democratic accountability is the mistake'.

Nick




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