File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-10-31.000, message 136


Date: Thu, 27 Oct 1994 08:15:04 EST
From: tgs-AT-cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu
Subject: Re: LTV, Working class (fwd)


Justin, 

I want to get back into the list-serv (HI folks, Justin and I have made up
and I've apologized again) with a discussion of youor idea that it's on
me
to prove that planning will work.  I think that's the wrong way of
going about it.  First we must understand that the market is akin to
a disease, with an essentially  corrosive effect on human society, by
its very nature, as McNally indicates.  This can only be accepted if you
acept such ideas as the LTV and the Falling Rate of profit, for which I will
argue later.  In any case, one would not say to one's doctor, if one was
dying of what looks like an ALMOST incurable disease these days:" Oh well,
this other patient I heard about, although he took a completely contorted
version of your remedy, died from your remedy.  Why don't we just see if
we can tinker around a bit more with the disease, to see if I can live
on IT as my guiding corporeal principle"

You get the analogy, I hope: the market being the disease, Marx the doctor,
and Soviet Russia, that mysterious other patient who applied the remedy of
planning in an extremely undemocratic, cock-eyed manner.  I'm reading
Alexander Berkman's book, the Russian Tragedy, right now, and am interested
in his ideas on how things might have turned out.  I'm also doing my
dissertation on Lewis Mumford, who was in something called the Regional
Planning Association of America.  Anybody know about this, or want to discuss
LM, Catherine Bauer, Stuart Chase, et al.?


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