Die Neue Zeit
2nd December 2010, 19:25
http://www.revleft.com/vb/prospects-russian-revolution-t126942/index.html
Michael Hudson, once a Marxist economist and now a classical economist, then gave an outline of what he thought “socialism” was. The first three features are:
1) “Public ownership of basic economic infrastructure, natural monopolies […] and the land itself” – included in “natural monopolies” is the banking system and in “land” the broadcast spectrum, two elements not considered by the pre-Marx classical economists. public monopoly on foreign trade[/B], given too many countries’ inabilities to diversify trade. Apart from these, I would also include nationalized military-industrial complexes, given the profit margins skimmed by private companies engaged in military production contracts with their respective governments.]
2) Economic rent should be taxed at optimal levels (land value taxation even if the land is publicly owned, for example).
3) The country’s entire tax burden is on the shoulders of rentiers (landlords, financial speculators, etc.), “industrialists” (Hudson’s post-Marxist description of entrepreneurial capitalists), and perhaps unproductive labour (many self-employed who cheat on their tax returns), as well. This means that productive labour has no tax burden, whether directly (payroll taxes, lotteries, etc.) or indirectly (consumer goods and services, including flat monthly premiums charged by Western governments for public health insurance). Contemporarily speaking, calls for a Tobin tax on financial speculation are cheap compared to Keynes's “substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions.”
Next come anti-inheritance measures and measures against capital flight, which in my programmatic phrasing call respectively for “public, anti-inheritance appropriations of not some but all the relevant productive or other non-possessive properties (that would otherwise be immediately inherited through legal will or through gifting and other loopholes) towards exclusively public purposes” and “confiscatory, despotic measures against all capital flight of wealth, whether such wealth belongs to economic rebels on the domestic front or to foreign profiteers.”
These four features coincide more or less with the first six allegedly "transitional" measures in the Communist Manifesto, for the informed reader.
Two other features can be added: a more prominent role for co-ops in the capitalist economy, which can only come by means of public assistance (Lassalle); and, prioritized at the very bottom of this list, typical welfare state benefits and preferrably more (shorter workweeks, Minsky’s employer of last resort program, more typically “industrial” public works programs, etc.).
Compared to the cheap welfarism of even the most interventionist of post-WWII combinations of "social" plus mere "people power" – that is, rent-friendly social democracy – this economic [I]res publica, or economic republicanism, was the Bourgeois Socialism criticized by Marx from the Communist Manifesto down to his later critique of Henry George’s land value tax replacement for all other tax methods. Nevertheless, knowledge of it as a crucial rebuttal of rent-friendly social democracy and its programmatic inclusion in any Marxist minimum program for the DOTP (nothing “transitional”) are necessary.
1) "Public ownership of basic": Not related to the commanding heights, being less than those in many cases (mass media) yet more in others (land, military-industrial complex, etc.)
2) "And the land itself": Public ownership and rental tenure over all land
3) "Prominent role for co-ops": Inclusive of prohibiting all subcontracting of labour, including whereby at least one contractual party is a workers’ cooperative
4) "Measures against capital flight": Also refers to capital controls and transitory action platform slogans for capital controls
5) "Shorter workweeks": Inclusive of the institution of normalized planning and policy pertaining to reductions in the normal workweek below the participatory-democratic threshold and to related increases in labour productivity
Apart from the above mix of immediate, intermediate, and threshold measures, what other measures - including directional ones - are needed for the very immediate DOTP? [I intentionally left out directional measures for the sake of discussing their applicability of each in the very immediate DOTP.]
Michael Hudson, once a Marxist economist and now a classical economist, then gave an outline of what he thought “socialism” was. The first three features are:
1) “Public ownership of basic economic infrastructure, natural monopolies […] and the land itself” – included in “natural monopolies” is the banking system and in “land” the broadcast spectrum, two elements not considered by the pre-Marx classical economists. public monopoly on foreign trade[/B], given too many countries’ inabilities to diversify trade. Apart from these, I would also include nationalized military-industrial complexes, given the profit margins skimmed by private companies engaged in military production contracts with their respective governments.]
2) Economic rent should be taxed at optimal levels (land value taxation even if the land is publicly owned, for example).
3) The country’s entire tax burden is on the shoulders of rentiers (landlords, financial speculators, etc.), “industrialists” (Hudson’s post-Marxist description of entrepreneurial capitalists), and perhaps unproductive labour (many self-employed who cheat on their tax returns), as well. This means that productive labour has no tax burden, whether directly (payroll taxes, lotteries, etc.) or indirectly (consumer goods and services, including flat monthly premiums charged by Western governments for public health insurance). Contemporarily speaking, calls for a Tobin tax on financial speculation are cheap compared to Keynes's “substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions.”
Next come anti-inheritance measures and measures against capital flight, which in my programmatic phrasing call respectively for “public, anti-inheritance appropriations of not some but all the relevant productive or other non-possessive properties (that would otherwise be immediately inherited through legal will or through gifting and other loopholes) towards exclusively public purposes” and “confiscatory, despotic measures against all capital flight of wealth, whether such wealth belongs to economic rebels on the domestic front or to foreign profiteers.”
These four features coincide more or less with the first six allegedly "transitional" measures in the Communist Manifesto, for the informed reader.
Two other features can be added: a more prominent role for co-ops in the capitalist economy, which can only come by means of public assistance (Lassalle); and, prioritized at the very bottom of this list, typical welfare state benefits and preferrably more (shorter workweeks, Minsky’s employer of last resort program, more typically “industrial” public works programs, etc.).
Compared to the cheap welfarism of even the most interventionist of post-WWII combinations of "social" plus mere "people power" – that is, rent-friendly social democracy – this economic [I]res publica, or economic republicanism, was the Bourgeois Socialism criticized by Marx from the Communist Manifesto down to his later critique of Henry George’s land value tax replacement for all other tax methods. Nevertheless, knowledge of it as a crucial rebuttal of rent-friendly social democracy and its programmatic inclusion in any Marxist minimum program for the DOTP (nothing “transitional”) are necessary.
1) "Public ownership of basic": Not related to the commanding heights, being less than those in many cases (mass media) yet more in others (land, military-industrial complex, etc.)
2) "And the land itself": Public ownership and rental tenure over all land
3) "Prominent role for co-ops": Inclusive of prohibiting all subcontracting of labour, including whereby at least one contractual party is a workers’ cooperative
4) "Measures against capital flight": Also refers to capital controls and transitory action platform slogans for capital controls
5) "Shorter workweeks": Inclusive of the institution of normalized planning and policy pertaining to reductions in the normal workweek below the participatory-democratic threshold and to related increases in labour productivity
Apart from the above mix of immediate, intermediate, and threshold measures, what other measures - including directional ones - are needed for the very immediate DOTP? [I intentionally left out directional measures for the sake of discussing their applicability of each in the very immediate DOTP.]