File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-13.105, message 14


Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:25:25 -0500
From: Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu (Yoshie Furuhashi)
Subject: Re: M-I: Market Socialism


>On Sat, 11 Jan 1997, Zeynep Tufekcioglu wrote:
>
>> I'm going to abstract out a few points to be able to ask a few questions.
>> One, I don't think we really have to prove that socialism can work in order
>> to bring about revolution. That does not mean that we shouldn't care at all
>> about the question. Two reasons, one, for the majority of the participants
>> in revolutionary struggles, that's not the main issue.
>
>Z, this misses the point. The problem is that there are so few of us who
>participate in these struggles. Those who do, we don't have to be
>persuaded. It's those who don't who have to be persuaded. Whenever I talk
>to working class people about socialism, they want to know the answers to
>questions that only modelling can provide. Workers won't go along with us
>unless they think that socialism will be better for us.
>
> Number two, it is not
>> possible to foresee events so clearly so as to be able to assume that
>> socialism will have to survive under condition A or B.
>
>As I'[ve said before, modelling is only about prediction at the very
>highest level. A model is first of all a political organizing too here and
>how. Second it is an heuristic that would give us a set of tools to work
>with in concrete situations, something to deviate from.
>
> What if we have a
>> revolution in Turkey? I don't know. What's happening in Greece, Iraq, Iran,
>> Kurdistan and the US? What's the political balance, how much of the
>> productive base has been destroyed, have we had a civil war, what are the
>> chances of an imperialist intervention, what is the level of
>> internationalism, etc. So, I don't have any idea what would work in Turkey.
>> I sort of believe that life does pose us the relevant problems in a certain
>> sequence.
>
>Well, if Hayek is right, we do have a general idea about what wouldn't
>work in Turkey, or anywaywhere else. Likewise if Albert and Hahnel are
>right, we have a notion about what might work perhaps in Turkey. The fact
>that a market socialist or democratic planning model would not be
>implemented in a concrete situation in the future exactly as written now
>is not to the point.
>
>>
>> But, of course, the question has some implications for today and our
>> understanding of socialism, so it shouldn't be brushed off.
>>
>> I'd like to pose a few questions. Thinking outloud.
>>
>> I think about the role of the markets and I come up with "conveying
>> information" and "efficiency". Rough, but for the sake of the argument. I've
>> worked with research companies as well. The type that do mass-sweeps of the
>> market such as retail audits and consumer panels. I'm convinced it is fairly
>> straight-forward to obtain a lot of information from consumers about their
>> preferences by means othen than that of the market, using current levels of
>> technology.
>
>Sp argue Albert and Hahnel. But here are some problems:
>
>1. People are not necessarily good predictors of their needs and
>preferences over any period of time. I myself "plan" by making a shopping
>list when I go to the supermarket. I always forget something important and
>have to go back at least twice during the week. And that's only for a
>limited range of items (food) for a very short period (a week). I cannot
>imagine having to predict everything that I would want or need for a year.
>Somethings are unpredictable in their nature. Children grow at unexpected
>rates and need sizes of clothing you don't anticipate. People develop new
>tastes and interests. Things break.What if I had failed tp predict the
>failure of my furnace?
>
>2. Aggregation of the preferences of millions of consumers is likely to
>result in compromises that fail to satisfy any of them very well even if
>people could know about them accurately years in advance. A planned system
>threatens to produce say, either too many or too few shoes of styles
>that really satisfy no one. One-size-fits all programs don't account for
>variations in tastes and preferences and risk, I would say guarantee,
>widespread dissatisfaction where it does not create actual harm by
>creating real shortages of things that people need. Maybe we could all
>live with ugly but servicable shoes.But what about a shortage of snow
>boots or mediciness?
>
>3. One nice thing about markets is that it provides a scope for raw tastes
>that don't have to be justified. A problem with Hahnel and Albert model
>you are discussing is that it puts people in the position of having to
>defend their tastes politically in areas where that may not be
>appropriate. I care a lot about music, especially classic jazz. This is a
>luxury taste, to be sure. Is there are limitred resources for recorded
>music, it is likely to be swamped by more popular preferences for lite
>jazz, rap, country, etc. Will the plan force me to defend my taste in
>terms of, e.g., preserving our cultural heritage, etc., when what's really
>at issue is that I like this music? Will it limit classic jazz output to a
>handful or recordings a year?
>
>> accurate measure. Of course, there is the fact that people would be telling
>> *beforehand* what they wanted, instead of choosing from alternatives. To me,
>> that sounds not like a handicap, but a plus. To hell with artificial,
>> commercial pumped needs. Long live true creativity.
>>
>The beforehand problem is very serious, as I said. There is no reason to
>think that the needs one can predicts are nonartificial and the ones one
>cannot are artificial. And I am disturbed by the thought that you or me or
>anyone else should set ourselves yup as arbiters of what people's true
>needs are. A rough hierarchy of needs is possiblwe and will command
>general assent. All humans need water, food, shelter, and clothing before
>they come to fancy shoes and classic jazz. But apart from that crude but
>necesasry division, I wouldn't want to have to argue that your
>hypotherical taste for rap is artificial and not worthy of satiusfaction,
>unlike my natural, nonartificial need for classic jazz. And if somone
>wantsto trade off smaller living quarters for fancy shoes, who are you to
>object?
>
>
>> I think the problem with planned economies not producing proper consumer
>> goods was more a problem of their political structure, not some inherent
>> wrong-ness with planning. They treated their "citizens" and "consumers" as
>> one-way-feeding machines. Their political and economic structure collapsed
>> mainy for those reasons. People weren't listened to either as workers
>> producing or consuming the the goods or citizens making the relevant
>> decisions. As far as I'm concerned, that's a matter of political will and
>> the participatory nature of the revolution (before and after). The argument
>> for markets conveying information hence is not very attractive for me.
>>
>Nor for nme. But the consequences of planning seem even more dismal.
>
>> As for efficiency, I have *a lot* of qualms. The efficiency of the markets
>> stems from the fact that punishment for the inefficiency is concentrated on
>> the failures. They do cause enormous amounts of inefficiency and waste, and
>> they correct it by penalising specific segments. The capitalist goes
>> bankrupt, the workers are unemployed. Otherwise, in order to compete, the
>> workers have to work more in order to compete, under the threat of being
>> fired. Now, we're not talking about some loafers who want to free-ride on
>> the rest of the society. We're talking about the whole working class working
>> harder so as not to get fired. Remove that threat (bankruptcy, and implied
>> bankruptcy causing workers to work harder, ignore safety, etc.) and where
>> comes the link between competition and efficiency? No loser, no efficiency.
>> So, one can't just say competition is good and not think about what exactly
>> competition is.
>
>Effiency can mean a lot ofthings. I want to take it here as the
>commonsense notion of avoiding waste, which is at the bottom a waste of
>human effort. If planning is inefficient in the sense that I argue, it
>results in an immense amount of human effort going for naught. Now, I
>think that the consequences of unemployment are bad enough for people that
>fair amount of inefficiency has to be tolerated to avoid i. But not an
>infinite amount. Even under a rational plan, inefficient enterprises
>should be streamlined or closed down and the workers given other work to
>do. I don't think that planning can manage this. Shwo me otherwise. What
>incentives exist in a planning system to use workers productively, ration
>resources intelligfently, and so forth?
>
>> It is obvious one of the main problems with Soviet Union was the fact that
>> they continued to use capitalist indicators.
>
>No, they didn't. They might have been better off had they done so.
>Capitalist indicators would have involved reasonable approximations of
>comparative costs, how many yards of linen this ton of steel costs us, and
>so on against all other possible uses of resources. In short, money
>prices, as Marx explains in CI, Part I. The Soviet planners never had an
>accurate sense of comparative costs.
>
> Of course, you don't measure
>> steel in anything but tons, but quality of life and efficiency don't have
>> the same meaning in capitalism and in socialism.
>
>Sure. "Efficiency" in capitalist externalizes costs onto the workers.
>Costs to them don't count. One thing that's nice about cooperative market
>socialism is that decisionmakers are those who pay the costs taht are
>ignored under capitalism, the workers. We can resaonably conclude that
>they will not ignore the costs to themselves in making their economic
>decisions.
>
> As far as I've thought of
>> the question, (I've read a fair amount, but not as extensive as the other
>> participants to this debate), markets require us to adopt the same criteria
>> capitalism used.
>
>Well, yes and no. Capitalist markets use profits and prices and so do
>socialist ones. But who mnakes the decisions and in whose interests,
>that's different. The class structure of society matters. That is why
>market socialism is not a technical fix, but a socialist alternative.
>
> Planning offers a way out of this, but, a lot of problems
>> need to be worked out such as indicator, planinng unit, participation, etc.
>
>OK, get working. I'll keep working on planning and we'll try to perwsuade
>thew orkers and each other.
>
>--Justin
>
>
>
>
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