Economic Calculation argument VS Cockshott [Archive]

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inkus

16th July 2009, 03:16

After having read paul cockshots book towards a new socialism http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/new_socialism.pdf

I decided to try out his refutation of the economic calculation argument in debate - the Austrians however remain adamant that socialist planning is ''impossible'' - responding to my arguments with

If I understand your position correctly, you and other post-Cottrell/Cockshott socialists claim to have "won" the economic calculation debate by proving that they can now perform the requisite calculations through sheer brute force of modern computing power.

However, even if this were true—and experts in computational modeling would have their serious doubts; look at the proliferating complexities involved in meteorological modeling, for instance—the central contention of Mises and Hayek is not that a socialist economy cannot perform adequate calculations on the data. It's that the socialist economy has no way of generating the required data in the first place.

Put another way, the socialist simply has no way to discover all of the distributed, fluctuating, and often subjective knowledge that freely interacting individuals disseminate under a market system. Therefore, his calculations, predictions, spreadsheets, Teletext pages, or whatever, must ultimately must be based largely on meaningless guesswork. As Brewster notes: "The conclusion then is not just that socialist calculation happens to be too much for us, but that it is logically impossible—something that cannot be accomplished in any possible world, or by an omniscient, omnipotent God."

Naturally, Hayek puts this much more elegantly than I can:

If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic. That is, the answer to the question of what is the best use of the available means is implicit in our assumptions. The conditions which the solution of this optimum problem must satisfy have been fully worked out and can be stated best in mathematical form: put at their briefest, they are that the marginal rates of substitution between any two commodities or factors must be the same in all their different uses.

This, however, is emphatically not the economic problem which society faces. And the economic calculus which we have developed to solve this logical problem, though an important step toward the solution of the economic problem of society, does not yet provide an answer to it. The reason for this is that the "data" from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society "given" to a single mind which could work out the implications and can never be so given.

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources—if "given" is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these "data." It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

Any suggestions for response ? Help would be appreciated

SocialismOrBarbarism

16th July 2009, 07:59

Austrians think that value comes from the subjective valuations of individuals in a market and has nothing to do with the amount of labor that goes into a product, so this must be the only way to effectively measure somethings social cost. It's so obviously ridiculous that I don't know why people still try to use it:

Since capital goods and labour are highly heterogeneous (i.e. they have different characteristics that pertain to physical productivity) economic calculation requires a common basis for comparison for all forms of capital and labour.Money, as a means of exchange, allows many different goods to be analysed in terms of their cost in a very easy way; the cheaper good is a more desirable one to use. This is the signalling function of prices, and the rationing function prevents over-use of any resource.Without money to facilitate easy comparisons, socialism lacks any way to compare different goods and services. Decisions made will therefore be largely arbitrary and without sufficient knowledge, often on the whim of bureaucrats.

According to this, without market prices we will be paving streets with gold because market prices are the only way to "rationally" measure social costs. We're too stupid to notice that gold requires more labor to acquire than asphalt and that this would therefore be less efficient, apparently.

They're pretty much forced to ignore any alternative and more efficient methods of measuring somethings cost to society, such as the amount of labor that goes into it or the energy required to make it...otherwise this would leave a big opportunity to attack many of their theories. Obviously the amount of energy used to produce something is able to serve as a standard of measurement and can be used to determine which solutions will require the least amount of resources. They're looking at "rational allocation of resources" from the standpoint of the capitalist...something could be far less efficient when it comes to the amount of energy used, but because of price fluctuations could also be cheaper. For example, a large machine might be used for a process that could have been done with a smaller machine that required less energy/resources to create, but because the large machine was overproduced and therefore cheaper on the market it is used instead. Is that rational? No. Is it profitable, and therefore "rational" to a capitalist? Yes. I'd just ask them how something like energy accounting is not "rational allocation of resources."

robbo203

16th July 2009, 08:25

Hyacinth

16th July 2009, 08:48

Well, I really don't see the point in engaging in this debate, insofar as Austrian economics is not so much a serious theory as it is a matter of blind faith, an ideological justification of the market. Hayek, in fact, concedes the case when he says that "[i]f we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic."

As for the point about the alleged logical impossibility of preforming the calculations, complete nonsense, whoever said that evidently doesn't have a very firm grasp of either logic or economics. If the task was logically impossible, as it is claimed, then the market couldn't preform it anymore than a planned economy.

The last semblance of an argument that I see there is in the claim that even if sufficient data processing capacity exists, something that is increasingly harder and harder to deny, that we do not have sufficient data gathering capability. Notice that no argument is actually given for this, it is merely asserted, and, more importantly, it is false. Modern communications technology makes it possible to track consumption patterns in practically real time, something which even the market doesn't do, so, if anything, one would expect a contemporary planned economy to outperform a market in meeting consumer demand, precisely because it would be capable of gathering all the previously dispersed data at a faster rate than a market can. In fact, mechanisms such as this are already employed by the likes of Walmart to keep track of both available store stock, but also consumption patters. In the case of Walmart such technology is used to maximize profits, and has been effectively put to this use, in the case of a socialized economy we would seek to maximize desire satisfaction.

And, finally, even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that at this time the data gathering and processing capabilities are insufficient for socialist planning, this is a far cry from maintaining that it is impossible, no matter what, to effect such planning. Meterological modeling actually weakens their case, insofar as it is something that has increasing become more and more reliable over time due to advances in computing, among other things. So to maintain that a perfect, or at least a better (since, after all, we don't need to have a perfect planned economy, all we need to do is outperform a market, hardly a hard task), is impossible on the grounds of current technical limitations is shortsighted.

ZeroNowhere

16th July 2009, 13:20

Previous threads on this:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/economic-calculation-problem-t88432/index.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/understanding-economic-calculation-t92043/index.html
They should both help.

mikelepore

16th July 2009, 16:55

On July 9th in philosophyforums.com I expressed an opinion about the defense of capitalism based on "economic calculation."

I wrote the following:

***********

About the so-called "economic calculation problem" that Mises concocted:

In the ancient empires, Mesopotamia and Egypt and Rome, there would always be a class of priests who had the job of thinking up philosophical excuses for why the people should believe that the emperor was a god, etc. In modern capitalist society, this role of apologetics for the status quo of power is performed partly by economics professors. Given the inexcusable fact that society is stratified into the many who produce wealth but don't own it, and the few who own wealth but don't produce it, the high priests' task is to construct edifaces of theory to make it appear as though the inexcusable facts were instead normal and inevitable.

The Austrian professor Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was one such.

Mises came up with the notion that prices of consumer goods that are determined in a competitive, capitalist market environment comprise a form of necessary "information." A socialist economy, he claimed, would lack this required "information" and would therefore have no way to make efficient decisions. He even said that socialism is "impossible", implying that its absense of "information" would make socialism inefficient to the point of the system completely falling apart.

Let me list a few of Mises' fallacies and errors.

(1) His claim that competitively-determined prices communicate all relevant facts is not plausible, because there is no way that the many dimensions of industrial decisions, such as what kinds of goods consumers want, how best to use limited natural resources, which policies to follow, etc., could all be encapsulated by any one-dimensional numerical measurement.

(2) Where high prices reflect limited natural resources, this information is redundant. For example, if people are paving the roads with rocks, a panel of geologists could just as easily give them a list of the types of rocks are most abundant while meeting technical specifications, and it wasn't necessary to have prices set in a competitive marketplace for people to know that you don't pave the roads with precious gemstones.

(3) The only kind of useful information communicated by market transasctions is something that will always be available to any capitalist or socialist system, or any other conceivable kind of economic system, namely, quantities shipped and sold. Industry has to produce more of the things that consumers buy a lot of, and produce fewer of the things that consumers buy less of. This information is conveyed by counting how many units are shipped from warehouses to refill store shelves. It has nothing to do with price levels.

(4) The only thing communicated by how much buyers are willing to pay for various things is how desperate they are, that is, how much they feel they would suffer if they had to go without those things. This is useful information only to those who want to take advantage of the misfortunes of others by finding opportunities to raise prices. It is a morally reprehensible as well as socially useless purpose.

(5) While numerical information, intelligently measured and used, can tell management how many of each currently-existing type of product to make, and how to allocate resources, no measurement system can ever tell management and designers what sort of new products, which don't yet exist, they should develop. For example, if only gasoline cars existed, then 100 percent of the car buyers would buy gasoline cars, and this statistic would say nothing about whether there is a desire or a need for electric cars or maglev trains. Such decisions require value judgements. To have humanistic and not myopic judgements arrived at, we need production for social use instead of profit, and one-person one-vote election of industrial managers instead of one-share one-vote.

cyu

16th July 2009, 19:14

Well, I really don't see the point in engaging in this debate, insofar as Austrian economics is not so much a serious theory as it is a matter of blind faith, an ideological justification of the market.

In the ancient empires, Mesopotamia and Egypt and Rome, there would always be a class of priests who had the job of thinking up philosophical excuses for why the people should believe that the emperor was a god, etc. In modern capitalist society, this role of apologetics for the status quo of power is performed partly by economics professors.

The Austrian professor Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was one such.

Indeed. There are two ways to study the economy. One is to simply study it. The other is to study it with the explicit goal of trying to protect the privileged position of the wealthy. The second is basically what Austrian economics is all about - it is what the funders of their research organizations pay them for. The problem with this kind of study is that the "science" becomes handcuffed - it is only "allowed" to show results that ultimately favor the wealthy - thus it is no longer a science at all.

cyu

16th July 2009, 19:18

the central contention of Mises and Hayek is not that a socialist economy cannot perform adequate calculations on the data

Capitalism has its own economic calculation problem. From http://everything2.com/user/gate/writeups/Demand+is+not+measured+in+units+of+people%252C+it+ is+measured+in+units+of+money

A market economy can work pretty well to determine what needs to be produced, provided there's one condition: that everyone has relatively equal amounts of spending power. Consider the concept of supply and demand: in theory, the more demand there is for some product or service, a market economy will be encouraged to increase the supply for that product or service.

However, there is a flaw in the theory above that many pro-capitalists overlook: demand (in a capitalist economy) is not measured in units of people, it is measured in units of money. Thus you can have 99% of the people "demanding" basic necessities of life, but it won't matter a bucket of spit compared to a rich man with millions of times more money, who is demanding luxury goods. As the gap between rich and poor increases, the market economy will be focused more and more on producing luxury goods.

In order to have a market economy that serves everyone, rather than the wealthy few, spending power must be relatively equal. But can that be achieved through non-violence?

If wealth is concentrated in stocks, then employees should assume democratic control over their companies, thus rendering stocks worthless.

If wealth is concentrated in the hoarding of commodities, then people who will actually use those commodities should just take them from the storage areas where they are just being held for speculation.

If wealth is concentrated in paper money or gold, then people should just stop accepting that paper money or gold as legal tender, and start using something else as legal tender.

All these acts are non-violent. However, you may be attacked while carrying out these activities, in which case fighting back would only be self-defense.

mikelepore

16th July 2009, 19:50

Below I am copying a post I wrote today on another site:

But then how does one account for the opportunity costs of production? If a firm is making guns when there is a greater market for butter, it can be operating usefully, people may use the guns, but i don't see how it can know that its resources are being allocated to the right sector of the economy.

Capitalism doesn't have any ability in that area that socialism wouldn't also have. In any economic system, a production facility can easily adopt the policy to make each type of item just as fast as other people consume it. This is the quantity form of the inventory roll equation that the cost accounting department of every large manufacturing company today already uses. The formula is this simple fact: quantity in inventory for the next time period = quantity in inventory for the previous time period + new production for the current period - shipments out during the current period. This equation tells the manufacturing line how many new starts to schedule.

Nothing essential remains to be done except to impose conscious decisions, such as building a new research center, building the Mars missile, discontinuing some toxic substances, etc. Except where conscious decisions are inserted as overrides, the plan of record for industry is to go on making everything at the rate needed to fill orders from wherever it has been used, combining personal uses and industrial uses.

Capitalism has an extra mode of failure here, because, when money available to buyers establishes the perception of "what people want", it's not possible for human judgements to temper the economic calculations. For example, if there were a lot of money available to wealthy people buying decorations for yachts and limousines, but insufficient money available to poor people buying medical accessories, then industrial capacity has to get pushed in the direction of the frivolous, and neglect what is more vital to society.

inkus

17th July 2009, 02:30

Heres a responce to my last post

Me

The data processing capacity exists, your implying that we lack sufficient data gathering capacity, an argument that's both outdated and false. Modern communication technology allows consumption patterns to be tracked in real time - something the capitalist market falls short on, contemporary planning would outperform the market in meeting consumer demand due to the ability to gather once dispersed data at a faster rate. Some large supermarkets use this technology and it works with great precision, consider utilizing it for an entire economy.

Austrian

My argument presumes that you can't read people's minds and predict their actions and desires, which is quite a different thing entirely. You're not seeing the actual problem here, synd. When Hayek talks about the "dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess," he's not describing problems in tracking people's consumption patterns. He's talking about the many and varied informational flows that influence individual decisions, which in turn affect markets, which in turn generate different informational signals, which in turn produce different decisions. And so on, and so on. And you simply can't presume to ever calculate this—ever hear of the butterfly effect?

In other words, the problems outlined by Hayek simply can't be solved by some kind of Comrade Clubcard tracking system in a supermarket. In fact, they can't be solved by any mechanism other than the free market—which is kind of the Austrian point.

Me

Quote:
Measurement of consumer behavior can make very accurate predictions for demand.

Austrian

In a market economy, yes. But you can't abstract "consumer behavior" out of the context of free markets—that's yet another huge problem for your socialist system.

Me

Quote:
As for your referral to meteorological modeling - this further weakens your case given its increased advancements over time.

Austrian

You talk like one of the early twentieth-century meteorologists who confidently predicted that meteorology could be reduced to a calculation problem. Then, in the 1960s, along came chaos theory. Sound familiar?

Me

Quote:
Here's more refutation of the calculation argument http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm

Austrian

By a wannabe Spanish peasant?

Why is it that, 16 years after the publication of Towards a New Socialism, nobody has actually attempted to implement such a system? Why is it that all mention of central planning has pretty much dropped out of the economics literature—other than to note what a failure it was?

The world understands that Mises, Hayek, and the other Austrians were right. Socialistic planning doesn't work—it has never worked, and it can't work. Only a small, intractable band of diehard, hardcore Marxists refuse to accept that reality, clinging to the belief that if they only have the right computer running the right equations on the right data, utopia will be theirs.

Deluded isn't the name for it.

-----------------------------------------------

As you can see allot of ad-hom and not much rebuttal - it annoys me that this guy consistently spreads anti-socialist propaganda on a very popular forum, people not educated enough about socialism become disheartened through this sort of intimidation. He needs to be stopped :mad:

Anyone care to to chip in ?

Nwoye

17th July 2009, 03:02

paul cockshots
:laugh:

Die Neue Zeit

17th July 2009, 03:06

Can a mod please change the spelling in the title to "Cockshott"? Thanks. :)

Lynx

17th July 2009, 03:23

Inkus, if people in the other thread are curious or interested in this issue they are free to visit this site or research it on their own. p.s. You're quite right, there is nothing substantive in his reply to you.

Hyacinth

17th July 2009, 04:09

To reiterate, debating these people is hopeless. You'll no more get through to them then you will to a theist, they will simply ignore anything that contradicts their dogma.

That being said, one does not need to read people's minds or anything of the sort to find out what they want, we can find out by (a) asking them, and (b) seeing what they do (after all, trying to get is the most primitive sign of wanting). There is nothing that markets do that cannot be done otherwise, it isn't as though markets are somehow magic, which is what these libertarians make it sound like. Notice that they do not elaborate on what exactly markets are suppose to do such as to make measurement of consumer behavior predictive of demand only under markets.

As for chaos theory, if anything, by improving our understanding of the behavior of dynamic systems has improved our capability of predicting and planning such systems. And, besides, chaos theory says nothing of the impossibility of economic planning.

inkus

17th July 2009, 04:42

Hyacinth

17th July 2009, 07:27

Im really not sure what to make of this assertion that socialist calculation is unable to calculate peoples ''innermost thoughts'' - no system is able to do this, obviously. Consumption patterns or direct orders are the (only) available info we can utilize with regards planning under ''any system'', the problem with capitalism is that decisions made on the market don't reflect needs, they reflect ability to pay.

Austrians ''seem'' (given their love of philisophical rhetoric) to be proposing that socialism cant compute the ''mystical amalgamation of subjective choices found on the market'' - What the does this bloody mean !? - that computational planning cant synthesize the ''spirit of the market'' ?. Im actually starting to believe that these basket cases conceptualize the vast composition of individual transactions as encompassing some sort of divine spirit. Fallacy of composition and mental illness - these people belong in institutions and ''although an anarchist'' I am starting to consider the need for post revolutionary gulags :)

Libertarianism gets a lite approach on the left I find, It has been suggested due to their size, however I disagree, they have significant influence in the field of policy. I see libertarianism as being one of the most dangerous ideologies going to be honest.
Well, while right libertarianism and its variants are indeed absurd and, at times, downright insane, I do not think they are actually very influential, mostly because no real capitalist actually wants the sort of free market that they are proposing. After all, what actual capitalist wouldn't be wetting themselves at the prospect of a government granted monopoly? Not to mention, the bourgeois state is recognized by the bourgeois as a whole to be a necessity in maintaining the entire system from self-destructing.

That being said, the ideology is still dangerous insofar as it attempts to justify capitalism, and, more importantly from our perspective, to argue that there are no alternatives. After the failure of the Soviet Union there has been the perception that there is indeed no alternative to neoliberal free market capitalism, and further that socialism is not viable. Now, ignoring the fact that the Soviet Union wasn't socialism, so much as state capitalism, as well as the profound changes that have taken place in the last two decades which have made socialist planning viable, those on the left are still stuck with the huge, unjustified, PR blow. While I find arguing with the Austrians, as you call them, to be completely futile, insofar as it is unlikely that we'll persuade them, what we do need to do is show people that socialist planning is indeed (a) a viable alternative to a market system, and (b) can outperform a market system. Dismantling the Austrian sophistry is here essential.

Die Neue Zeit

17th July 2009, 15:05

Comrade, right "libertarianism"/propertarianism is indeed not influential on the bourgeoisie. The basis of this garbage lies in the petit-bourgeois small business owners and especially in those within the wage system who don't advance society's labour power or capabilities (in this case, the self-employed). I put emphasis on the latter because at least the petit-bourgeois small business owner interacts with employees. The latter group doesn't, dealing with business customers or screwing workers-as-consumers (while potentially avoiding taxes in the latter scenario), hence their staunch individualism.

Dismantling any Austrian influences upon professional workers and even coordinators would be key, but on the whole professional workers and coordinators, while not revolutionary at this time, are less receptive to this garbage.

inkus

19th July 2009, 16:31

The Luwig von Mises institute - the Cato institute ect. are all well funded by large business interests to propagate bourgeois propaganda. Although it is true that the full implimentation of free market policy is not in the interest of the ruling class, the bourgeois utilize pshudeo science for numerous reasons

A. To undermine the possibility of alternative modes of developmement
B. To undermine arguments for increased social expenditure
C. To argue against union activity ect.

I have for a time believed that the core of contemporary bourgeois ideology is to be found in the field of economics - not philosophy ect. Economics is vitally important because it is the main discipline which allows ideology to masquerade itself as an objective science, it allows subjective opinion to present itself as unmitigated fact. In the post scientific era the ruling class hegemony was upheld through religion - now given that truth requires scientific process the upper class are presented with a problem.

They can no longer justify their position via religion nor can they utilize hard science to legitimize their ideology considering it is based upon subjective opinion. Hegemony to be considered legitimate ''cannot'' be presented as subjective - it must be universal law.

They have realized this and made use of economics due to the fact that it is

A. Not a science, but carries the same social legitimacy.
B. Determines how society will be organized/stratified.

Those who control the field of economic theory control the economic base and consequently the superstucture.

It would be wrong to conceptualize these new priests as not having influence. On the contrary, they determine the very culture we live in. In the pre-scientific era the populace understood the biblical books to be the core of social hegemony - now who knows what books our society is constituted upon ? Von Mises, Adam Smith, Stewart Mill ect - I would argue that it serves the upper class ''not'' to have knowledge of core liberal theorists known to the public - because liberalism ''must'' be presented as the natural outcome (what humans gravitated towards in absence of ''ideological coercion'') - The Marxist project should attempt to expose liberalism as nothing but a subjective ideology created by a minority and upheld in their specific interests.

On the point of the ruling class not being interested in the full implimentation of free market theory. I would argue that the libertarian institutes DO NOT EXIST TO IMPLEMENT SUCH POLICY - they serve as a convinent reference point drawn from when ''proof'' is needed by upper class policy makers as to why social welfare ''causes poverty'' or unions ''cause unemployment'' ect. The proposed aims of these institutes are inconsequential - they the core tools of upper class domination. Whats-more, the assertion that they ''are against monopolies and existing capitalism ect'' is nothing but a diversion, an idealogical protectionary mechanism designed to mask their macro function.

You only need look at the sponsorship records to understand ie. their sponsors would have no interest in a ''free market'' The Koors foundation are large contributers to the Luwig von Mises institute ect. And only an idiot would conceptualize the members of these libertarian institutes as being oblivious to the overall situation.

angus_mor

19th July 2009, 23:59

I don't mean to be Captain Obvious, Inkus, and I'm sure you amongst all who've been paying attention thus far realize this, but the aforementioned Austrian Apologist sure serves you up a load of Grade A Bull Shit when he says:

My argument presumes that you can't read people's minds and predict their actions and desires, which is quite a different thing entirely. You're not seeing the actual problem here, synd. When Hayek talks about the "dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess," he's not describing problems in tracking people's consumption patterns. He's talking about the many and varied informational flows that influence individual decisions, which in turn affect markets, which in turn generate different informational signals, which in turn produce different decisions. And so on, and so on. And you simply can't presume to ever calculate this—ever hear of the butterfly effect?And yet he has the balderdash to assert that:

In other words, the problems outlined by Hayek simply can't be solved by some kind of Comrade Clubcard tracking system in a supermarket. In fact, they can't be solved by any mechanism other than the free market—which is kind of the Austrian point.Without explaining how markets and price mechanisms which are solely based on the simple calculation of numerical value expressions manage to read peoples' minds and precognitively predict their economic choices. All this ado to say that there's nothing that neoliberal economics can do that communistic economics can do better.

Kwisatz Haderach

22nd July 2009, 14:24

Your Misesian was correct in identifying the central point of the Austrian calculation argument:

The central contention of Mises and Hayek is not that a socialist economy cannot perform adequate calculations on the data. It's that the socialist economy has no way of generating the required data in the first place.

Put another way, the socialist simply has no way to discover all of the distributed, fluctuating, and often subjective knowledge that freely interacting individuals disseminate under a market system.However, there's a major problem with that: If we can never discover all this "distributed, fluctuating, and often subjective knowledge"... then how do THEY know it exists?

The Austrian notion of tacit information is a funny thing. On the one hand, this information is by definition unknown and unknowable - the Austrian calculation argument basically says that you cannot have rational economic planning because you can never know this tacit information. But on the other hand, if it's so mysterious and unknowable, you cannot prove that it actually exists. And even assuming it exists, how do you know it is important for economic calculation?

The Austrian argument asks us to believe that economic planning is impossible because of the existence of something that is by definition undetectable. It's about as convincing as saying that socialism is impossible because of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

On the point of the ruling class not being interested in the full implimentation of free market theory. I would argue that the libertarian institutes DO NOT EXIST TO IMPLEMENT SUCH POLICY - they serve as a convinent reference point drawn from when ''proof'' is needed by upper class policy makers as to why social welfare ''causes poverty'' or unions ''cause unemployment'' ect. The proposed aims of these institutes are inconsequential - they the core tools of upper class domination. Whats-more, the assertion that they ''are against monopolies and existing capitalism ect'' is nothing but a diversion, an idealogical protectionary mechanism designed to mask their macro function.

You only need look at the sponsorship records to understand ie. their sponsors would have no interest in a ''free market'' The Koors foundation are large contributers to the Luwig von Mises institute ect. And only an idiot would conceptualize the members of these libertarian institutes as being oblivious to the overall situation.
Quoted for truth. This is an excellent analysis of the situation, and it is important for all leftists to understand it. Before we make fun of libertarians for supporting things that real capitalists would never accept, we must remember that the purpose of libertarian organizations is not to put their ideas into practice, but to produce bourgeois propaganda. The job of libertarians - and the reason they get funded - is to persuade people away from socialism. As such, we must vigorously attack their propaganda, not simply dismiss it as being insane.

GPDP

27th July 2009, 09:52

I like to think of libertarianism as one of the ruling class's primary weapons in maintaining the status quo. In that way, it is kind of similar to fascism. Both are means towards the preservation of the current order, though obviously they are employed under very different conditions.

Libertarianism is the bourgeois method of persuasion and pacification; a peaceful method of repression, if you will. It is, as was said by mike, a kind of farce perpetuated by high priests who claim to be objective know-it-alls of how things should be run because they have fancy credentials. They exist to shut down debate when talk of change arises.

Of course, some of these high priests are more idealistic than others, as can be seen by comparing the "radical" Austrian school loons to their tamer and obviously more in-tune-with-reality neo-classical Chicago school counterparts. The later have far more pull in terms of influencing policy, but the former obviously have their part to play, else they would not get the funding they currently do. As was also said, however, the ruling class is not stupid. They fund these think tanks and organizations not because they actually embrace libertarianism, but because they can ignore all the bullshit unfavorable to them and merely take what's useful. They will toss aside the stuff about ending government favors to big business, and happily take the stuff about gutting the welfare state.

Pathetic, really. Libertarians, especially the idealist ones, really are nothing but goons. Their purpose is to shill for the current order, all while they are supposedly trying to better it by turning it into something not even the ruling class would ever go for.

Son of a Strummer

26th August 2009, 16:33

A while back socialists from Manchester University published an interesting analysis, critique and proposal in The Cambridge Journal of Economics and Studies in Political Economy....http://www3.sympatico.ca/bernard.leask/renewal.html

and here are a few more links....http://www3.sympatico.ca/bernard.leask/ecal.html