Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 00:45:54 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Red pom-poms (was POCMPPMP)


BodySack writes:

>Before, that culture was a complex network of social norms meant
>to keep rogue accumulators (or cliques of accumulators) from destabilizing
>the capitalist system.  These social norms have recently proved unequal to
>that task.

Capital III is full of examples of the impossiblity of either bourgeois
social norms or political norms keeping accumulators (rogue or otherwise)
from destabilizing the system. The only stability during the postwar boom
was provided by the existence of a competing system of workers' states.
Left to itself, capitalism is a blind, lurching monster, or knot of
monsters, ripping and gnawing its way through and over other parts of
itself, smashing into walls and falling on its face, leaping wildly into
the air, brandishing its fists or cowering in terror.


>	Second, and at another angle entirely, we have to consider what it
>would mean if the state (or the "people" or the "party" or whatever)
>became the creditor of the economy rather than the allocator of resources
>as such. To take on one point: does not the concept of credit deal better
>with *risk* than the allocation of resources?  Credit demands repayment at
>interest, forcing the borrower to make adjustments in case plans don't
>work out.  Allocation of resources provides for very little slack.  Credit
>forces borrower and lender to take responsibility for possible mishaps.
>Allocators have all the effective responsibility if there are cock-ups
>under a planned allocation system.

>	From the very macro point of view, credit is the trust by the
>creditor segment of the economy that the debtor segment of the economy
>will be able to expand the economy.  Isn't one worker trusting another
>worker to make his life better what socialism is all about?
>

First, set up your society of cooperative associated producers, then
organize the distribution of resources as efficiently as possible after the
widest and best informed consultation. Body's ideas about mutual obligation
certainly sound worth trying.


Cheers,

Hugh




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