Dunk
29th September 2011, 07:50
"Gone are the objective laws of the market which ruled in the actions of the entrepreneurs and tended toward catastrophe. Instead the conscious decision of the managing directors executes as results (which are more obligatory than the blindest price-mechanisms) the old law of value and hence the destiny of capitalism."
For Adorno and Horkheimer state intervention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_intervention) in the economy had effectively abolished the tension in capitalism between the "relations of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_of_production)" and "material productive forces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_forces) of society," a tension which, according to traditional critical theory, constituted the primary contradiction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contradiction) within capitalism. The market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and private property (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_property) had been replaced by centralized planning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralized_planning) and socialized ownership of the means of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production).[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory#cite_note-5)Was perusing Wikipedia and I wanted to know the thoughts of others on this. I don't really follow how state intervention can do such a thing, nor do I see centralized planning and socialized ownership of the means of production in this global capital wilderness. This was written during the Second World War, and I can't understand how the totality of capitalism at the time could contain any more than a single country that had centralized planning and arguably something akin to "socialized" ownership of the means of production. I put "socialized" into quotations because "socialized" strikes me as some wishy washy liberal sociological speak that means something other than common ownership. I may be missing something here.
For Adorno and Horkheimer state intervention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_intervention) in the economy had effectively abolished the tension in capitalism between the "relations of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_of_production)" and "material productive forces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_forces) of society," a tension which, according to traditional critical theory, constituted the primary contradiction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contradiction) within capitalism. The market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and private property (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_property) had been replaced by centralized planning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralized_planning) and socialized ownership of the means of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production).[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory#cite_note-5)Was perusing Wikipedia and I wanted to know the thoughts of others on this. I don't really follow how state intervention can do such a thing, nor do I see centralized planning and socialized ownership of the means of production in this global capital wilderness. This was written during the Second World War, and I can't understand how the totality of capitalism at the time could contain any more than a single country that had centralized planning and arguably something akin to "socialized" ownership of the means of production. I put "socialized" into quotations because "socialized" strikes me as some wishy washy liberal sociological speak that means something other than common ownership. I may be missing something here.