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 --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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