File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-23.012, message 57


From: Rahul Mahajan <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
Subject: Re: M-I: Market Socialism
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 18:35:53 +0000


I have not read Schweickart, Roemer, or whatever other proponents of market
socialism people on this list seem to be in love with. If someone can
convince me that market socialism is at all an intellectually serious idea,
then I'll do my best to find sources like these, but so far it seems, from
the writings of its boosters on this list, to be an idea utterly without
value. On the other hand, it seems to me, that most of the defenses of
planning I've seen here miss the point, with a few notable exceptions. The
points are:

1. The discussions here, and, as far as I can tell, the general market
socialist criticisms of planning, depend on hypostatized conceptions, dealt
with for the most part in a highly fetishized manner, of planning and the
market. Aside from one or two people, no one seems to have attempted to
analyze these notions more clearly. Thence come claims, made without a
second thought, or so it seems, that "planning" cannot respond as quickly to
changes in demand or that it necessitates a slower pace of innovation than
the "market" or, most prominently, that it necessarily involves far more
massive calculations than a market system would. All of this stems from a
lack of understanding that, on the one hand, the market as generally
conceived involves a considerable abstraction from the quotidian facts of
the running of any capitalist economy (this is not referring to political
questions, but solely to organizational ones), and, on the other, the fact
that the crucial defining characteristic of the market has little or nothing
to do with its form of organization and everything to do with the social
relations it embodies.

What does all this wind mean? What distinguishes "market socialism" from
other forms is not that it "allows competition" or "utilizes more efficient
information-transmission mechanisms" (the abstract notion of the market),
but that it retains the profit motive. Furthermore, to speak as if the
"market" transmits information about how production should be organized so
as to meet consumption desires completely obscures what really goes on. As
Zeynep mentioned earlier, corporations under capitalism plan. Decisions are
not automatically made by the interplay of idealized buyers and sellers
communicating their preferences at the speed of light. Nor are the plans
that companies make infinitely flexible. Bureaucratism, plus the profit
motive, lead to the stifling of innovation more often than to the
implementation of it. A socialist system may not be all that great at
stimulating invention and discovery, but it only has to be roughly as good
as capitalism, or even not quite so good, just as long as it isn't orders of
magnitude worse. There is no reason to assume it wouldn't be better. 

2. The main question about planning is political, not economic or
calculational. As Justin has noted, democracy will make little difference if
the plan is something rigid and only changeable on the time scale of years,
but it's hard to fathom why he thinks that plans must be of this nature.
There is no reason for them not to be at least as flexible, and organically
rather than mechanically determined, as production in capitalism, if not
before. The needs of consumers will be taken into consideration because
there will be no entrenched bureaucracy with an authoritarian state behind
it to keep its power and privilege intact. Ordinary people will make these
decisions for some fixed period of time, then be rotated out at the end of
their term. Furthermore, the plan will not be made by a bunch of people
sitting in rooms full of computers in the capital city, but by a network
that is articulated in just as complex a manner as the network that actually
makes these plans in an advanced capitalist economy. The only difference
will be the substitution of other motives for those that drive people under
capitalism -- a mixture of fear of poverty and degradation for the poor,
desire for professional advancement and conspicuous consumption for the
petty bourgeoisie, and the profit motive for the rich (this doesn't even
cover the real motives of many people who produce scientific, technical, and
other advances, but that's another issue). Substitute the motives of your
choice -- solidarity, interest in your work, desire to protect the freedom
of one's society, a feeling of responsibility to one's fellow workers, a
desire for respect, you name it. 

To reiterate: there is no calculation problem, or rather none that is of any
more complexity than those that arise in a capitalist economy. Nobody will
have to comprehend the whole plan or the whole economy. That was the kind of
idea that had a lot of currency in the early parts of the century, but it
seems a little naive now, at least to me. Things run without anyone
understanding them. Plans are made even when they are not fully understood.
As long as mechanisms for adapting to the exigencies that will inevitably
arise exist, there need be no fear. Such mechanisms have no necessary
connection with the retention of the profit motive.

3. Even among those with their heads high up in the clouds, it should be
understood that what is relevant is not the construction of some abstractly
workable model, but rather the construction of a model that is stable at
least to small perturbations from the ideal. This is obvious, since the
perfection of any model cannot be realized in practice. This said, it should
be equally clear that any proposed idea of market socialism is highly
unstable. This cannot be proven mathematically, but a cursory look at
history should suffice. 

Capitalist social relations always reassert themselves. Even among the most
enlightened people of the best will, they slip in the back door as soon as
they get the ghost of a chance. I'll give a single example, although the
history of socialism is full of them. In Spain, much of the working class
and the peasantry had come very close to a true socialist consciousness.
Engineers were in the same unions as assembly-line workers, and sometimes
even drew the same pay. Doctors joined communes and consumed no more than
illiterate farm workers. Furthermore, even without internal "markets," these
communes performed incredibly well, often producing huge surpluses for the
soldiers on the front line. In fact, they were by far the most efficient
form of agricultural production that Spain had seen. Still, even in communes
where there was no money whatsoever (some even experimented with having no
fixed rations, allowing members to take as they felt they needed, but, not
surprisingly, this was found to be rather difficult to maintain), the same
old attitudes crept in in other ways, the main example being that, although
there were purely socialist relations inside the commune, they dealt with
other communes simply as capitalist enterprises. Any kind of socialism
requires ceaseless vigilance against capitalism by the members of the
society, at least until the "new human" is really created. A form in which
markets and the profit motive are institutionalized could not conceivably
remain socialist in any possible way, unless, of course, an authoritarian
government like that in Yugoslavia or China or Hungary kept things that way. 

4. Of course, in a transition to socialism, one will be dealing with a great
many people who are still deeply infected with the idea of capitalism, so a
transitional stage in which certain vestiges of capitalism are maintained
will be necessary (yes, the NEP was essential in the Soviet Union, although,
as so many proponents of market socialism seem not to understand, as an
emergency measure, not as a fundamental policy change). Also for this
reason, in addition to the more obvious one of imperialist assault, a
government that rules by force will be necessary. With the one, as with the
other, the idea should be not to institutionalize these abhorrent mechanisms
but to use them to keep the society running while the transformation of the
society into one where they are not needed is accomplished. Rosa Luxemburg
was dead on when she said of the Bolsheviks, "The danger begins only when
they make a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete
theoretical system all the tactics forced upon them by these fatal
circumstances, and want to recommend them to the internaitonal proletariat
as a model of socialist tactics." In this, as in much else, it seems that
the market socialists and the various proponents of authoritarian socialism
have a great deal in common.

Rahul



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


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005