File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-25.033, message 7


From: "Patrick Bond" <pbond-AT-wn.apc.org>
Date:          Thu, 23 Jan 1997 08:37:09 +0000
Subject:       Re: M-I: Market Socialism


Doug Henwood: 
> Anyway, this passage reminded me of one of my own obsessions, the fact that
> MS types have conceded too much to the Hayekians on the price-as-signal
> issue. Prices in financial markets float the most freely of any prices on
> earth; there, market mechanisms operate with as few constraints as are
> humanly imaginable (i.e., individual participants can't have any more than
> a fleeting influence over prices; there is minimal price stickiness; time
> is measured in the millisecond, not the product cycle or fiscal year;
> etc.). And what do we get there? A lot less signal, and a lot more noise,
> than pure market partisans like to hear about. 

This is important. What I always thought was most interesting about the 
`transformation problem' debate was that at some stage the silliness 
of relating actually-existing capitalist pricing to the ideal of 
effecient, clearing markets became evident. In other words, that 
prices don't correlate to labour values was less a problem for 
Marxian economics, and more a reflection of underlying crisis 
tendencies in capitalism itself. Disproportionalities and crisis 
displacement send all the `wrong' -- often self-destructive -- sorts 
of signals to capitalists about investment and rates of return and the like.

This feature of actually-existing K makes mincemeat of 
Roemer's and other attempts to sneak in embryonic forms of MS and 
socialist shareholding. Roemer was in Jo'burg last year and insisted 
on punting a `coupon socialism' via the local stock market, as 
hideously bloated as any you'll find. No takers.

Ciao!

Patrick Bond
National Institute for Economic Policy
PO Box 32848 Braamfontein 2017 South Africa
(2711-403-3009 * fax 339-6395)
or
51 Somerset Road
Kensington 2094 South Africa


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