Louis Proyect wrote:
>Doug, it is a mistake to detach planning from the overall class structure
>of a given society and try to make some kind of case for the merits of
>socialism on that basis.
I know this; I've made this very point just about every time I've been in
this sort of exchange.
>There is every likelihood that in the short-term the economy will go
>backwards because of imperialist blockade and warfare. The reason that the
>economies fail is not because of some sort of inherent failure to obey the
>Hayekian calculation factor, but because of global class relations at the
>disadvantage of the peasants and workers. I have no idea what will work. I
>do know what won't work and that is capitalism. Even if Chile's economy is
>currently on the uptick, the long-term prognosis is misery for the
>majority. Plus, ecological despoliation. In the final analysis, the problem
>facing us is politics, not which economic theories can make socialism
>feasible. That is why I have such little patience for the Albert-Hahnel or
>David Schweickart tinkertoys.
In some ways, that's too easy: the "economic" questions are dismissed as
trivial in the face of "politics." But what is "politics" in this sense?
What would an actual regime do in the face of imperialist hostility? How do
you get people housed, clothed, educated, and fed? You can't just dismiss
these sorts of questions as tinkertoys for policy wonks. Stalin had an
answer to these questions, and also thought that "politics" could take
precendence over "economics." (The quotes are there because I know you
can't separate these two spheres; I'm just talking matters of emphasis
here.) Global class relations work themselves out in part through price
mechanisms; commodity exporting countries know this all too well. Ditto
financial markets: behind such geeky things as asset prices and capital
flows are a whole, largely unrecognized, set of power relations.
Capitalism may be brutal in Chile, but it "works" in the sense that it can
reproduce itself, and that it's convinced most people that there's no
alternative. Until it stops working in both senses, and until socialists
have answers to just these sorts of questions, capitalism will continue in
Chile and everywhere else. Socialism has virtually no credibility anywhere
right now.
Doug
