Socialism after Hayek

[Die Rote Fahne]

http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=93585

What the hell is he proposing?

[Durruti's Ghost]

Sounds like a non-anarchist form of mutualism.

[blake 3:17]

Based on the link, it sounds like worthless academic market socialism. Hayek was the braintrust for Thatcherism.

The only meaningful encounter between Hayek and Marx I've ever come across is Hillary Wainwright's Arguments for a New Left. She's behind Red Pepper: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/

[mikelepore]

He wants a system of private companies that interact on a capitalist basis, where the companies are owned by their workers. It would be worthwhile for this forum to have a discussion of what such a society would be like. What would happen? What would it turn into?

[Durruti's Ghost]

He wants a system of private companies that interact on a capitalist basis, where the companies are owned by their workers. It would be worthwhile for this forum to have a discussion of what such a society would be like. What would happen? What would it turn into?

Well, it would probably start out as technically socialist (i.e., characterized by worker ownership and control of the means of production), but I don't think it could stay that way very long. Either market forces would cause some cooperatives to accumulate more wealth than others, resulting in a chain of events that would restore the capitalist mode of production, or the various cooperatives would see the advantages of merging with each other and producing for utility rather than profit, with the ultimate result of ushering in a genuine communist system.

Which begs the question: as long as the workers are seizing the means of production, why wouldn't they just start off on the path to communism to begin with and avoid the danger of a backslide into capitalism as the predictable result of market forces?

[Die Neue Zeit]

That's funny. I was always under the impression that the author wanted the socialization of surplus value with the retention of private property. He distinguishes between "capitalist property" relations pertaining to the process of producing and appropriate surplus value (i.e., the worker sells his labour power, and the labour expended becomes the property of the capitalist) and private property in terms of merely owning land, buildings, and equipment.

I'd like to read Paul Cockshott's comments on this book, because his own transitional measures mirror something like this:

http://21stcenturysocialism.blogspot.com/2008/08/programmatic-objectives-of-socialism.html


Note that none of this directly involves the state taking over the means of production. The goal is to undermine capitalist relations of production leading to a syndicalist economy as a transitional stage to a fully socialist economy. But the aim is to mobilise a mass of the population into actions which bring them into conflict with the most reactionary section of the capitalist class: the banking system.

Also: http://www.socialismoxxi.org/extendedPonenciaPaul.ppt

[mikelepore]

That's funny. I was always under the impression that the author wanted the socialization of surplus value with the retention of private property.

Perhaps what I said was in error. I was just only attempting to interpret what "about the book" paragraph at umich.edu says: "Burczak envisions a 'free market socialism' in which privately owned firms are run democratically by workers."

[Die Neue Zeit]

No worries, comrade. I implied above that I could be wrong, too ("I was always under the impression"). The line of thinking that I think he suggested isn't new, and is sort of implied in recent Vatican statements on Marx and Marxism.

[mikelepore]

Well, it would probably start out as technically socialist (i.e., characterized by worker ownership and control of the means of production), but I don't think it could stay that way very long. Either market forces would cause some cooperatives to accumulate more wealth than others, resulting in a chain of events that would restore the capitalist mode of production, or the various cooperatives would see the advantages of merging with each other and producing for utility rather than profit, with the ultimate result of ushering in a genuine communist system.

Which begs the question: as long as the workers are seizing the means of production, why wouldn't they just start off on the path to communism to begin with and avoid the danger of a backslide into capitalism as the predictable result of market forces?

It has always seemed apparent to me that the social problems that capitalism causes, it causes because of the existence of separate companies. To have separate financial entities that have to buy their labor and materials and sell their products, that's where I see the root of most crises for which I ordinarily say "capitalism has caused this." To those who want to continue to have an economic system composed of "businesses", but in a "socialist"-inspired modified form, whether that modification is to be a worker self-management method, a non-profit charter, etc., I want to ask such writers what their point is, what exactly they think causes whatever social problems they are attempting to solve, and exactly how do they expect their proposals to solve them.

For example, the problems of companies polluting the air and water to cut costs, strip-mining and forest clearing, cutting back on safety procedures for the sake of production volume and schedules, dishonest advertising and product labeling, planned obsolescence built into the products, etc. -- IMO, the existence of separate businesses would continue to generate such social problems, even if the management is performed by a board of worker representatives, even if the planners operate with a break-even, not-for-profit charter. The social relationships that the company operates according to would still be capitalist.

[Durruti's Ghost]

For example, the problems of companies polluting the air and water to cut costs, strip-mining and forest clearing, cutting back on safety procedures for the sake of production volume and schedules, dishonest advertising and product labeling, planned obsolescence built into the products, etc. -- IMO, the existence of separate businesses would continue to generate such social problems, even if the management is performed by a board of worker representatives, even if the planners operate with a break-even, not-for-profit charter. The social relationships that the company operates according to would still be capitalist.

I agree that all the social ills that you enumerate here are a result of market processes and would continue in a free market system dominated by worker cooperatives. However, I also regard all these as secondary to the principal social ills of capitalism: domination of the worker by the capitalist, exploitation of the surplus value generated by the worker, and alienation of the worker from the product of his/her labor. Because this system would do away with these primary social ills by removing the capitalist from the process of production, I don't think it's quite appropriate to call it "capitalist". Your mileage may vary, though.

[mikelepore]

I don't mean to imply that I would oppose it. Anything worker-controlled and free of exploitation, its scope of application either the whole or the part of society, would be an improvement and also an instructional experiment.

[mikelepore]

The "after Hayek" in the book title is revealing. Hayek set out to demolish the idea of socialism, contributed nothing, achieved nothing, promoted nothing but cliches and fallacies, and only people who don't know the first thing about the meaning of socialism think that Hayek was successful. What kind of a theorist would propose a "new kind" of socialism, one more suitable "after Hayek"? It's like an an author saying that we should adopt atheism, but a new kind of atheism, one that avoids the errors that Pope John-Paul II warned us about. If the author of this book thinks that Hayek offered a particle of relevance, then I think that the author of this book doesn't offer a particle of relevance.