File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-11.141, message 14


Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 22:17:08 -0500
From: Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu (Yoshie Furuhashi)
Subject: Re: M-I: Cooperatives?


Kevin wrote:
>                                                       Basically I think
>technocrats,
>managers, accountants, counsultants, etc. will emerge in a market
>socialist system just like they would emerge in a planned economy, and do
>under capitalism. I do not share Lenin's idea that accounting will be as
>simple as basic algebra, nor do I expect that market socialism breaks up
>the division of labor so that everyone is an accountant, manager, and
>worker at the same time. Market socialism, though, gives the managed the
>opportunity to decide to take on responsibilities if they want them: what
>to produce and how to do so.

Wouldn't such a firm division of labor between the managers and the managed
create different interests for each group, and wouldn't market socialism
generate its own contradictions as capitalism does? Wouldn't those who find
themselves in the management positions want to create the conditions that
would augment their "right to manage"? Even with a large measure of
decision-making power, wouldn't the managed find their work boring, rutine,
repetitive, and unpleasant compared to the kinds of intellectual labor
performed by the managers? Wouldn't they find such a division of labor
unfair? Wouldn't education, with its function of sorting out people into
different occupational categories, become an arena of competition and class
struggles as it is in the present form of society?

Yoshie Furuhashi




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