Severian
26th September 2005, 02:56
Originally posted by
[email protected] 25 2005, 01:17 PM
Is it a good step to take shortly after the destruction of capitalism? The immediate next step?
A considerable role for the market is inevitable in not just the first step, but a considerable period after the overthrow of capitalism. It'd spring up like a weed even if you tried to abolish it.
But this is at best a necessary evil, and part of the construction of socialism is seeking to restrict the market's field of operations more and more.
Can the market be manipulated for the common good?
Not really. Soviet economists argued that socialism could harness the laws of the market. But the truth is, they never could make use of the market's real advantages.
The problem is, that under capitalism prices are set by the competition of different capitals seeking to maximize profits and survive. Real profit is impossible in a competition between state-owned entities, and therefore so is real competition and a real market.
A lot of administrators would do economically inefficient, even insane things to maximize the pseudo-profitability of their enterprises in a pseudo-market statized economy. Things that wouldn't be profitable in a real market.
If you look at the capitalists' horror stories of Soviet economic irrationality, a lot of them are about this.
The other problem, as Che pointed out, is that by relying heavily on market-like mechanisms and material incentives, they were promoting capitalist values like "look out for number one." A number of things by Che are worth reading on this, as well as Carlos Tablada's book about Che's economic ideas.
Old thread with a discussion between Sc4r, a fairly serious "market socialist", yours truly, and Redstar (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=6429&st=0)
The thread's a bit corrupted by the board's archives (that happens), one of Sc4r's posts is mislabeled as mine but it should be possible to see which.