Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 11:11:27 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: M-G: Markets, commodities and the distribution of products


There's a little discussion going on between Justin S and myself on
Marxism-Intro that included the following general remarks on Market
Socialism, which might as well be thrown to the other lists.

Justin replies to "Johannes":

>You also assume (as Marx did, mostly) that markets and socialism are
>incomptable. That is one of Marx's fundamental mistakes, in my view. I
>think a market society can exist without capitalists and with social
>ownership of the meand of production. This is very cryptic. We can talk
>about it more if you like.

and I answered Justin:

Justin's nostalgia for the bourgeois society he knows and loves and can't
imagine dissolving shines through here. For Marx, and anyone with a
smattering of economics, markets are places where commodities are
exchanged, they are the only possible mechanism for this, as the
commodities are produced independently by independent producers without
general planning for the allocation of resources in production and
distribution.

So-called market socialists are merely confusing supply and demand, which
are constant categories in any human society, and have to be brought into
balance one way or another, and markets, which are the mechanism used by
commodity-producing societies for balancing supply and demand against each
other. In non-commodity producing societies, such as socialist society will
be once it's left capitalism well behind it, other mechanisms will be used,
such as consumer reports, producer reports, branch monitoring reports,
eco-system feedback and so on. The conscious nature of the balancing out
will be quite explicit, not a dirty business secret as it is in the
centralized planning of today's big monopoly corporations. The reports will
be available for public scrutiny and huge debates will ensue regarding the
best possible allocation of people's labour and material inputs.



Cheers,

Hugh






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