File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9706, message 221


Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:46:43 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: state capitalism


rakesh bhandari wrote [quoting Barkley Rosser]:

>"European command socialist economies collapsed when confronted with the
>external pressure to make a Schumpeterian leap to a higher level technique
>cluster, the information-computer technology. This technology is best used
>and developed in the sort of individualistic entrepreneurship system
>associated with competitive market capitalism. The very effort to take
>advantage of relative backwardness and to adopt this technology unleashed
>the social political forces that eventually led to the collapse of
>socialism."

There may be something to this analysis, but it's is also a rather
selective history of the evolution of computer technology, which emerged
(like the Internet) from the deeply subsidized and highly planned economy
supervised by the Pentagon. Further, computers have in many cases been
forces for centralizaion and concentration (of both information and
authority).

It also lets the Soviet ruling class off the hook for the collapse of
socialism. Barkley's recycling two kinds of bourgeois propaganda: one about
recent capitalist history, the other about the end of the USSR. Too bad
he's not here to accept the brickbats he deserves.


Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
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New York NY 10024-3217 USA
+1-212-874-4020 voice  +1-212-874-3137 fax
email: <mailto:dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
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