Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 15:09:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: What went wrong in the former Soviet Union


On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, Kevin Cabral quotes Moshe Lewin:

> 
> 	"..It would have been much more profitable for a country that
> proclaimed socialist aims to have had a "market economy" and to have tried
> to plan it, rather than erecting an administered bureaucratic juggernaut
> that was not a viable economy and, in fact, could not be effectively
> planned. It could only be administered, sometimes with impressive results,
> but also damaging imbalances and waste. The reason thereof lies in the
> lack of sufficient elbowroom for economic agents and the inability to mind
> costs. When one does not know what things cost, there can be no economic
> planning." [p. 285]
> 


Louis: Yes, Lewin does think that market socialism was preferable to what
existed. However, it is a distortion of Lewin's writings to conclude that
he thought that there was anything like central planning ever in the
Soviet Union or that it was ever tried. He has a chapter called "The
Disappearance of Planning." I seemed to missed a chapter with the
heading "The Reappearance of Planning."

He described what went on there as a "mirage" of planning. A mirage means
a fiction, something that is not real. I suppose that if somebody was
presented a choice between market socialism and the "fiefdoms" that
constituted the Soviet economy, they might choose market socialism.
Myself, I have never held much truck with the lesser-evil. I won't vote
for a Democrat. I won't accept the notion of market socialism.

The problem with the Hayekian critique is that it is an ideal construct
applied to something that has very little to do with ideal socialism. You,
Schweickart and Justin Schwartz are excited about the idea of competition.
I hate the whole idea of competition. That is why I became a socialist.

It also seems clear to me that a movement that has as one of its core
beliefs the need for market socialism will lack the fire that is needed to
lead people to any kind of socialist transformation. It is an ideology
that draws from the well of disappointment with the Soviet experiment.
Rather than describing what humanity can do, it dwells on what humanity
can not do. 

Even Lewin himself drinks from the same fountain of despair as Nove and
the market socialists. The difference between he and Nove is that he
avoids prescribing nostrums that could have "saved" the Soviet experiment.
The Soviet experiment failed not because the people in charge of planning
failed to take heed of the Hayekian critique, it failed rather because of
the fundamental weakness and backwardness of Soviet society.  It is
society that must be analyzed, not economic techniques.

What has remained non-existent in the market socialist analysis of "what
went wrong" in the former Soviet Union is a study of class relations. This
is what Marxists have to offer, not the eclectic mix of hatred for
capitalist evil and love for capitalist competition that typifies market
socialism. 




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