[PEN-L:6470] Re: job offer at EPI
I'm in search for a single piece of information on the Luddites: Approximate dates during which they were active. I already have my "position" on their movement which is considerably more positive than standard mainstream OR "left" positions. I just want to locate them in the right century!
[PEN-L:6297] Re: Re: Re: House Rejection of NATO's War Shows Power ofOpposition
Doug Henwood wrote: Robin Hahnel wrote: I did not see a list of who voted yes and no in the Post. Was there a list in the NYTimes? Or can someone post an easy web address for the vote? I'd like to see how Bernie Sanders voted, for one. I'm a bit behind and just catching up, so sorry if this was answered already. The full roll call is at http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=1999rollnumber=103. Sanders voted Yes, the pig. Doug Thank you. Frank (D) and Conyers (D) also voted yes. My old Rep Morella (R)voted yes, but since I moved my new Rep is Wynn (D), who was listed as absent on all the votes. I think that's different from an abstention. I'll have to find out what he's up to.
[PEN-L:6284] Re: House Rejection of NATO's War Shows Power of Opposition
Robert Naiman wrote: The House vote was as close as could be. The resolution supporting the bombing failed 213-213. Twenty-six Democrats voted against the Administration and against the bombing. This group included some of the most progressive Members of the House, like Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee, Jesse Jackson Jr., and Pete Stark. It also included Members who are less likely to challenge the Administration; these Members voted their districts, which have been pounding their offices with anti-war sentiment. Thus, a handful of activists have succeeded in dealing a significant defeat to U.S. foreign policy. To paraphrase Margaret Mead, never doubt that a handful of committed individuals can damage the Empire. I did not see a list of who voted yes and no in the Post. Was there a list in the NYTimes? Or can someone post an easy web address for the vote? I'd like to see how Bernie Sanders voted, for one.
[PEN-L:5947] Re: Re: Polemic and moderation
Gar Lipow wrote: Not all work is pleasant even in small amounts. There is a certain amount of dirty work which has to be done, which simply is not a source of pleasure to many. Not all of this can be automated out of existence even in a decently run society (no examples of which are known) at least not in the short run. I would argue that to the extent such work has to exist it should be divided up fairly evenly. We cannot avoid specialization; no one can know how to do everything. But there is no reason some specialties should consist mostly of empowering pleasant work, and others of robotic, drudge tasks. I hartily endorse the above sentiment, and hasten to point out that the more labor markets are left to the forces of supply and demand the less likely it is that jobs will take on this desirable aspect.
[PEN-L:5529] Re: Young Democratic Socialists position on Kosovo
Nathan Newman wrote: This statement by the Youth Section of DSA is incredibly good and I would say it reflects my views almost in total. --Nathan Newman This statement by the Youth Section of DSA is incredibly slick and plays to humanitarian concerns for every conceivable constituency. I cannot express how disappointed I am that an organization in which so many well meaning and hardworking people have worked for progressive causes over the past two decades has completely failed to understand the nature of US imperialism. I doubt the present victims of US imperialism in the Balkans, and any future victims US-NATO bombing and/or ground forces there make more likely elsewhere, will find much comfort in the exalted values expressed in their statement by the DSA youth. However, unlike Louis Proyect, there are many I think of before Comrade Lenin when thinking of those who have taught us well not to make the mistake the DSA youth are making today. And presumably it is helpful if a sage is still living and able to speak to the case at hand. Noam Chomsky comes first to my mind. Bombing was predictably counter productive to all humanitarian concerns in the Balkans as those who opposed the bombing before it began pointed out, and as the DSA statement now concedes. It is equally predictable that any introduction of US-NATO ground forces into the region under the present circumstances will prove equally if not more counter productive to present and future humanitarian concerns. Specifically, it will not prevent a single Kosovar family from falling victim to "ethnic cleansing" since Kosovo will look like it was scoured by Mr. Clean long before the first NATO soldier steps on the first Serbian laid land mine on Kosovo soil. == (Note: for those as may have missed it, the DSA Youth Section changed it's name to Young Democratic Socialists last fall. RR) Young Democratic Socialists of America Statement on NATO Intervention in the former Yugoslavia US foreign policy has long been hypocritical, dangerously unilateral and guided by narrow interests. It has resulted in the deaths of civilians, the destabilization of entire regions, and the undermining of democratic forces in many parts of the world. For this reason, we do not doubt that NATO's intervention in Kosovo was motivated by an agenda broader than mere humanitarian intervention. In this case, we suspect that the need to justify our huge and expanding military and to demonstrate a continuing need for NATO's existence and extension were factors in choosing to bomb the Serbian forces in Kosovo. The question we face as democrats and socialists is whether the abysmal record of our own military interventions elsewhere can justify non- intervention now. We feel it can not. We feel that the US and the rest of NATO have an obligation to intervene to stop Milosevic's brutal and racist campaign for power. Having failed to intervene to prevent the war in Yugoslavia in the first place; having stood by while 10,000 Muslim soldiers were executed in Srebrenica; and then having failed to broker a tenable position for Kosovo within the new Yugoslavia at the Dayton accords, it is the responsibility of the US and its allies in NATO to intervene now in an effort to finally contain Milosevic's aggression in the region. Our support for military intervention does not extend to the poorly planned and painfully executed bombing of Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro. NATO's bombing has made the horrible conditions suffered by Kosovo's Albanian majority even worse, without laying the groundwork for a durable settlement to the conflict. The refusal to utilize an international ground-based force, as proposed by some European NATO members, has simply bolstered the resolve of the Yugoslavian regime in their efforts to oppress the people of Kosovo. There are no signs that the campaign has significantly weakened Belgrade's ability to prosecute a bloody and indefensible campaign against the civilian population of Kosovo. In short, the bombing campaign has not brought Kosovo closer to autonomy or security. Refusal to commit ground troops is hypocritical, and typical of the US desire to wage war without domestic political consequences. Loss of life is an unavoidable consequence of war. Waging an air-only offensive serves to protect US and NATO forces to the direct detriment of the lives of civilians throughout the targeted area. To really protect citizens and refugees, realistically and regrettably we will have to put soldiers in harm's way. The faith of the US military in "strategic bombing", a tactic with a miserable record in Panama and Iraq, has once again proved unjustified, as witnessed by the growing list of civilian casualties. The effect of strategic bombing is to prioritize the safety of a professional US
[PEN-L:5045] Re: Re: Re: Timetable?
Gar Lipow wrote: I think the critical points to make over and over again are that A) The U.S., in attacking Yugoslavia is committing atrocities of it's own. B) It is creating situations where worse atrocities are happening since the war than before the war started. C) It has not prevented a single atrocity to date, is unlikely to prevent any atrocities in the future, and is likely to continue to cause atrocities in the future. Other points -- U.S. hypocrisy in selecting targets, the U.S.'s own record, U.S. violation of international law are important, but are secondary points. Maybe I'm all wet on this; if so tell me why. I'm going to be writing up a short pamphlet. Glad to hear you're writing a pamphlet. The above sounds excellent to me. The only other thing I would recommend adding is material the helps Americans understand why many in the rest of the world regard US government claims that we are motivated by humanitarian aims rather than the aims of empire BASED UPON OUR COMPLETELY CONSISTENT TRACK RECORD OF ALWAYS CLAIMING HUMANITARIAN GOALS BUT IN FACT CREATING HUMANITARIAN MAHEM WHILE STRENGTHENING US MILITARY AND SOMETIMES ALSO ECONOMIC HEGEMONY. I know you can find the details of the track record on a number of excellent web sites these days -- including ZNet.
[PEN-L:5063] Re: Re: Re: Re: Timetable?
I'm sorry for my garbled post which may have been difficult to decipher as it appeared. Below is a legible version: Robin Hahnel wrote: Gar Lipow wrote: I think the critical points to make over and over again are that A) The U.S., in attacking Yugoslavia is committing atrocities of it's own. B) It is creating situations where worse atrocities are happening since the war than before the war started. C) It has not prevented a single atrocity to date, is unlikely to prevent any atrocities in the future, and is likely to continue to cause atrocities in the future. Other points -- U.S. hypocrisy in selecting targets, the U.S.'s own record, U.S. violation of international law are important, but are secondary points. Maybe I'm all wet on this; if so tell me why. I'm going to be writing up a short pamphlet. Glad to hear you're writing a pamphlet. The above sounds excellent to me. The only other thing I would recommend adding is material that helps Americans understand why many in the rest of the world regard US government claims that the US government is motivated by humanitarian aims rather than the aims of empire with a great deal of skepticism. Namely, BASED UPON OUR COMPLETELY CONSISTENT TRACK RECORD OF ALWAYS CLAIMING HUMANITARIAN GOALS BUT IN FACT CREATING MAHEM ENTAILING HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER, ALL THE WHILE STRENGTHENING US MILITARY AND SOMETIMES ALSO ECONOMIC HEGEMONY, the US government is difficult to take at its word! I know you can find the details of the track record on a number of excellent web sites these days -- including ZNet.
[PEN-L:1015] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3 Articles on Russia
Gary Dymski wrote: Martin's observations (reprinted below) on the skepticism of many Korean people about the market as a solution is right on the money. Jim Crotty and I had a chance to visit Korea in March, and have followed events closely since, and we saw precisely this view -- and even the willingness to engage in struggle over the terms of the IMF "agreement". Jim and I have an article on the Korean crisis that emphasizes the class struggle within Korea in the current Z Magazine; and the next issue will have an update. I very much liked the article and will make use of it for teaching purposes this fall. I look forward to the update.
[PEN-L:417] Re: Books on Bolshevik revolution, Leninism, Stalinism
William S. Lear wrote: I'm a bit naive on these topics and I'd like to read some critical assessments of them. Chomsky contends (if I remember correctly) that the Bolshevik revolution really destroyed the nascent socialism that existed in the soviets, and I'm curious to know more about this episode. Any suggestions would be welcome... For a presentation of this position -- with citation of evidence from secondary sources -- see Albert and Hahnel, Chapter 2: The Soviet Experience, in Socialism Today and Tomorrow, South End Press, 1981. For earlier and more detailed material start with Paul Avrich, Krondstadt 1921, and Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers Control. There are a number of anarchist types who are much more familiar with this literature than I. If you run this request on an anarchist oriented forum I'm sure you will get a much fuller response. There is a rather extensive anarchist literature on this subject that was published by smaller anarchist presses in the West up through the early 1970s. [Try Root and Branch]. This historical work was never published by any mainstream or university press that I am aware of, and of course, was rejected outright and then ignored entirely by any and all Leninist versions of Marxism [Stalinist, Trotskyist and Maoist]. For less obvious reasons (to me) social democratic authors have ignored this literature as well. [This may be due to the Trotskyist origins of influential social democrats laboring in this field, like Isaac Deutscher, which may have saddled him with sectarian biases against anarchists who traced the origins of soviet totalitarianism back to Lenin and Trotsky, instead treating the defeat of Trosky by Stalin as the source of all Soviet evil.] As a result, not only has the public at large received no exposure to this position, the great majority of the academic and political left since the late 1920s has remained largely unaware of what has always seemed to me to be the most compelling interpretation of Soviet history.
Re: Asteroids
Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote: Actually I think that this discussion, although I am not going to participate further in the dino extinction part of it, is relevant. I remind that this arose out of a debate over environmental/ecological economic issues. It slid over into a discussion of the more purely ecological side of things. But, all should keep in mind that the coevolving ecosystem includes the economy and the mutual interactions between the human (economic) and the non-human parts of the broader ecosystem. The relevance of "exogenous shocks" (asteroids, etc.) versus "endogenous shocks" (complex ecosystems undergoing rapid changes as they cross certain crucial thresholds) is obviously relevant in just plain old garden variety econ as well. Barkley Rosser On Tue, 28 Apr 1998 07:53:05 -0700 James Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robin writes: I thought this was a list for economists. Well, OK, not exactly economists but political economists. Is that what makes a political economist different from a mainstream economist. We talk about asteroids and dinosaurs? I think one thing that distinguishes us from mainstream economists is that we're willing to talk about almost everything (as long as we have some kind of informed opinion). More importantly, we're willing to talk about everything -- but don't imitate Gary Becker to reduce everything to the "exchange with maximizing subject to constraints" story. I was only joking about what political economists do or should think and talk about. I would never dream of suggesting that anyone on this list restrict the width of their intellectual gaze or comments.
Re: New Yorker extinction
Max B. Sawicky wrote: Unless I've become too much of a town-booster, Milwaukee is the _only_ American city with socialist government in its purple past, You have. The city of Reading, PA had a socialist mayor by the name of Stump. He had a fondness for the bottle but is generally well-regarded in memory. I'd be amazed if there weren't other cities too. Takoma Park Maryland had a commie mayor, of all things. Sam Abbott proudly wore his communist credentials when running and serving in office. He was greatly loved and re-elected at least once. He died a few years back, and the city hall/senior center is now named after him. MBS
Re: Asteroids
Dennis R Redmond wrote: On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote concerning the demise of the dinos: ...the current scientific consensus that they got zapped by an asteroid hit is really coming on strong. Among other major pieces of evidence has been the discovery of the remnants of the hit in the neighborhood of the Yucatan peninsula. All the pieces seem to fit. Weren't there still a few problems with this thesis, among which (1) the Yucatan geological evidence is still very, very sketchy, and different scientists have wildly different interpretations of the data; there are a couple basins in the region, which may or may not correspond to the Big Slamdunk, and (2) the fossil record shows a die-off stretching over a much longer period than a simple one or two year span? A new answer to that little problem has to do with a very unusual characteristic of the specific surface in the Yucatan that would have released lots of CO-2 when it was vaporized by the asteroid -- creating climate change that would have persisted over a stretch of time long enough to have killed off so many species globally rather than only locally. If correct, this theory implies the dinosaurs were doubly unlucky: 1) that a big asteroid hit earth during their rein at all -- they usually miss. And 2) that it happened to hit in one of the few places that would have released sufficiently large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere to cause climate change sufficient to kill them off globally. I thought this was a list for economists. Well, OK, not exactly economists but political economists. Is that what makes a political economist different from a mainstream economist. We talk about asteroids and dinosaurs?
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Mark Jones wrote: Robin Hahnel wrote: Minimizing pollution, taken literally, means zero pollution, which means not moving and not farting. That hardly seems optimal. and What's wrong with capitalism is no matter how hard we try to achieve the optimal level of pollution reduction, we're doomed to fall WAY, WAY short. and I doubt you would want to make a polluter pay $10 million dollars per gram of pollution emitted if the damage of the gram of pollution was only $10 and the $10 million tax would prevent the polluter from being able to produce a medical vaccine that yields billions of dollars worth of benefits. That sort of sums up the A-Z of our political impotence. If we are so ineffective at changing how things are it might be better starting the discussion from where we want to get to and working backwards. What would a sustainable, equitable human lifeworld look like, one which maximised the benefits of science to the majority? If you know what you are trying to achieve then you have a better chance of working out how to get there. Meanwhile, 'optimising' pollution v. welfare actually only reaffirms an abstract right to pollute, when the real problem is that greenhouse emissions are killing the planet. I couldn't agree more. Since any reasonable person should conclude that capitalism will inevitably overexploit and overpollute the natural environment -- that is, far surpass the optimal level of exploitation and pollution, and fall way short of the optimal level of pollution reduction -- we need to figure out how to organize and manage our economic affairs in a qualitatively different manner. Nobody has argued more strenuously than I for this view. However, we will suffer under capitalism for some time, as will the environment. In this context asking which band aids will stop the most blood is also (without attatching relative importance) a question worth addressing. Pollution taxes, pollution permits (auctioned or given away for free), regulation (a.k.a. "command and controll" which now has been accepted as "politically incorrect" usage)? I would also add: besides which band aid will stop the most blood, we should ask which band aid will be most conducive to building a movement capable of bringing about the necessary economic system change.
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Ken Hanly wrote: Why would not those who suffer the pollution be given ownership of the permits and then they would be compensated directly? Do you give each citizen the same number of permits? If so, this will come out the same as giving each citizen his/er proportionate share of the green pollution taxes I would collect. If you are planning on giving some people more permits than others -- on the grounds that some are more damaged than others (those living closer to the plant, the elderly, the asthmatic, the chemically sensitive, the aesthetically sensitive, etc.) -- how are you going to go about deciding who gets how many? But I agree with your point that collecting taxes from polluters does not guarantee that those who are damaged get payment that exactly compensates them for their degree of individual damage. Unfortunately that's just hard to arrange. But notice, if you could figure out how many permits to give to different people, I could award people the exact same size green pollution tax dividend. If optimal means polluting as long as the social benefits that accompany the pollution are greater than the social costs of pollution, but not polluting once the social costs outweigh the social benefits, then I think that is exactly what the objective of rational citizens -- and environmentalists should be. If optimal degree of pollution reduction means cutting back on pollution as long as the social costs of cutting back are smaller than the social benefits that come from the reductions, but not continuing to cut back on pollution once the social costs of reduction are greater than the social benefits that the reductions bring,then I think that is exactly what we should strive for. Comment: The whole concept of optimizing in terms of costs and benefits ignores questions of justice and rights. I agree with this entirely, and have said already that I do not limit the criteria I think we should use to efficiency alone, but consider equity as well. Of course there is environmental justice to consider, and I'd be in favor of prioritizing it over the criterion of efficiency. But in the above, I was debating with Gar Lipow about what was or was not the most reasonable conceptualization of efficiency. Wouldn't orthodox economic analysis produce the World Bank memo view of optimum pollution levels-- that there is too much in the developed world and too little in many third world countries. Yes, the famous Larry Summers memo, right? I agree entirely with your rejection of decision making based exclusively on the efficiency criterion when it flies in the face of justice. When the costs are born by those who already bear too much of the costs, and the benefits are enjoyed by those who already enjoy too much of the benefits of world economic activity, the results are unacceptable on grounds if further aggravating economic injustice -- even if the aggregate benefits outweigh the aggregate costs. So we should say "nyet." If a neighbouring plant's pollution is seriously hazardous to my health then I don't want to be compensated with a gas mask and annual payments awarded according to some person's estimate of the cost of my discomfort ---and traditional welfare economics doesn't even require this much just that I COULD be compensated not that I am. I want the damn plant closed not taxed or given a permit. Agreed. But a better solution might be not letting the plant move into your neighborhood, or not letting you move near the plant. There is a policy tool called zoning. If musical chair geography can't solve the problem, then you are presenting a case where the social cost of the pollution is so high that no conceivable benefits could justify the costs. Coase has to be one of the most absolutely clueless writers on the issue of rights but quite typical. In efficiency terms it matters not one hoot whether the polluter is given the right to pollute or the victim the right not to be polluted. Just give either the right and efficient trades result in a free market. I could give you a 4 part critique of the usual interpretation of the Coase theorem. For starters, there is no market since in his theorem there is a single polluter and a single pollution victim. If there are more than one of either his theorem does not hold -- and Coase said so. Consider a situation where a union bargains for the reduction of a carcinogen in the workplace to a certain level that is quite expensive for the company to achieve. A cost-benefit analysis might very well show that the total social costs of such a policy outweigh the benefits to the workers. Are we to say that such a contract should be null and void, that it is against rational public policy? If you used cost-benefit analysis or tried to measure the social costs as against the social benefits of saving certain endangered species it is not at all clear that saving the endangered species would be rational. I
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Gar W. Lipow wrote: Robin Hahnel wrote: I doubt you mean "non-tradable" in the above, since non tradable permits are the equivalent of regulations (that most now call "command and control." No, I mean non-tradeable. Non-tradeable permits are not the same as regulation if they are sold to the highest bidder. If in a given area you allow a thousand units of a certain type of pollutant this month, then anyone in the area can bid for each of those thousand units at the beginning of the one month period. The thousand highest bids gain the right to pollute. No trades, no transfers, no refunds. (Actually the highest thousand bids above a floor set to equal the best estimate of what the proper pollution tax should be. Any permit not salable at at least that rate will not be sold.) So you want to auction off the permits. Great. That's better than giving them away for free since it makes the polluters pay and gains the victims some form of compensation in the form of more tax reveunes. And I like the idea of a minimum price equal to the marginal social cost of the pollutant. But why don't you want to let the original buyers resell permits if they wish to? And why don't you want to let polluters who didn't buy as many as they now want at the original auction buy them from polluters who bought more than they now decide they want/need? Admittedly, if all polluters had their acts figured out perfectly at the time of the original auction none would want to participate in a re-sell market, but perfect knowledge is hard to come by, and where's the harm in allowing resales -- otherwise known as making the permits "tradable?" The efficiency issue that is usually never mentioned, is how many pollution permits are "efficient" to issue? The analagous question for pollution taxes is, how high a pollution tax is "efficient"? The truth is there is only one way to answer either of these questions. One must come up with an estimate of the social costs of pollution. There are a host of procedures used to do this -- none of them very good. One thing that should be remembered is that none of the so-called "market based" methods such as hedonic regression and travel cost studies can possibly capture what are called the "existence value" or "option value" people place on the environment. So "market based" methodologies for estimating the social costs of pollution (and therefore the social benefits of pollution reduction) will inherently underestimate those costs and benefits. Once we have the best estimate of the social cost of the pollution we can come up with, we simply set the pollution tax equal to the marginal social cost of pollution. That will yield the efficient overall level of pollution reduction, and achieve that reduction at the lowest social cost. With permits, one has to use trial and error. You issue some number of permits and wait to see what price they sell at. If the price is lower than your best estimate of the marginal social cost of pollution, then you issued too many permits and need to issue fewer. If the market price for permits is higher than your estimate of the social cost of pollution, you have issued too few permits and need to issue more. Once you have got the right number of permits out there so the market price of permits is equal to your estimate of the marginal social cost of pollution, your permit program will yield the efficient overall level of pollution reduction, and achieve that reduction at the lowest social cost ASSUMING NO MALFUNCTIONING IN THE PERMIT MARKET. I think you are relying too much on theoretical models here. In real capitalism, greens can estimate much more easily what level of pollution reduction they wish to achieve (in the case where the goal is not zero) than they can determine what price will result in reductions to that level. Greens only THINK they can do this. Actually, when they pick a level of reduction they want they are whistling in the dark if they don't have any idea what the social cost of the pollution is. Where do they get a number like 20% reduction -- except by multiplying the corporate target figure by a factor of 10? Why not multiply what the corporations recommend by a factor of 20 instead? Knowing how much to reduce involves knowing what the social benefits of reduction are, which is the same as knowing what the social costs of continuing to pollute are. Once one knows that the tax policy is the simple one -- set the tax equal to the marginal social cost of pollution. It is the permit policy that is more complicated since you have to guess how many to issue and then adjust up or down until the permit price is equal to the tax you could have set in the first place. The object, at least under capitalism , is not to achieve some optimum level of pollution. Whose
Re: green permits and taxes
I've already said I prefer auctions to handouts. Robin challenges us to say when were there auctions (they were proposed in Wisconsin, but not carried out). I knew about the Wisconsin case, and must say I'm not surprised that although auctions were proposed (obviously only by some) they were not the method of distribution actually chosen. I don't know of any actual permit program where the permits were auctioned off so the government collected revenue. I'm asking if anyone knows of one. I'll turn it around. He insists on comparing an "ideal" tax system to an actually existing permit system. I did not insist on anything like this. I already stipulated that actual pollution taxes are almost always too low. Just like actual permit programs almost always issue too few permits. I simply said that I don't know of any situation in which an equivalent tax would not be better than an equivalent permit program -- where equivalent means yielding the same aggregate pollution reduction. But in the real world, as I have now already mentioned twice, tax systems are generally combined with subsidies to industry. Is this fine with you, Robin? Do you mean the same companies paying pollution taxes are then given some kind of compensatory reduction in their profits taxes, or some other business taxes they pay? In this case it's not fine with me at all since I can think of no reason to support corporate tax relief. Or do you mean that companies that sequester pollutants are paid sequestration subsidies just like companies that emit the pollutants are charged pollution taxes? I do support this kind of subsidy. As a matter of fact I have been talking up the idea of paying sequestration subsidies to countries that are net carbon sequesterers [these are all third world countries with rain forests] to go along with charging carbon taxes to combat global warming. Another broader question has to do with uncertainty, of which there is humongous amounts on all sides on this issue. Robin presents us with the neoclassical textbook story about equating social MC and social MB, nice and neat, although recognizing that estimating the social costs of pollution is difficult. Indeed. For that matter, governments don't know the costs of cleanup, although the private sector does. I don't want to dispute this point, but the private sector is sometimes as clueless about their own marginal costs of pollution reduction as the government is. Witness the amazing "no action" in the sulfur dioxide permit market the government opened up -- which investigators attributed to private utilities not knowing where they stood visa vis other utilities in the cost reduction hierarchy. If there is a broad band of riskiness regarding the social costs, with a threat of a sharp upward turn, then one would prefer to fix the quantity rather than the price that is controlled in order to guard against a catastrophe. Tradeable permits do that and taxes don't. I've read this argument before. I think its 99% bull. I think its high priced economic theoreticians who have over invested in statistical human capital coming up with theoretical possibilities that serve the corporate agenda -- getting people to buy into permits on supposed "technical efficiency grounds." There is a lot of uncertainty predicting the borderline between more normal pollution and a catastrophe. That is the major uncertainty problem and is just as big a problem for setting the number of permits just below catastrophe -- a lousy policy goal in any case -- as it is setting the tax rate so that the amount of emissions ends up just below catastrophe. But why am I preaching catastrophe (chaos) theory to Professor Rosser?! Also, although the corpps don't like further quantity cutbacks, at least in the US right now there is strong public sentiment in favor of that. There is little-to-no public support for any tax increases. Indeed that is why we here probably have a mostly c and c system rather than a tax one. I remind everyone that for global warming a major needed tax would be a big hike on gasoline. But two years ago we saw the spectacle of Clinton and Dole competing to lower already ridiculously low gasoline taxes. Forget it. I have suggested making pollution taxes attractive to the non-polluting public by cutting regressive taxes, dollar for dollar, for every dollar raised through pollution taxes precisely to make it more politically viable. Clinton competing with Dole to lower gas taxes is certainly a sign of the incredibly bankrupt political times in which we live. Just as conceding the necessity of bribing polluting corporations to pollute us a little less by giving them pollution permits for free is! BTW, one other argument for taxes not put forward by Robin is due to a colleague (Scott Milliman) and a former colleague and co-author of mine (Ray Prince) who argued in a much-cited JEEM 1989 paper that taxes will lead to
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Gar W. Lipow wrote: Granted that parecon would generate full social and ecological price signals, I still don't understand why in capitalism non-tradable, auctioned, permits with a floor are not superior. I doubt you mean "non-tradable" in the above, since non tradable permits are the equivalent of regulations (that most now call "command and control." There are efficiency, equity, ideological, and practical criteria to consider when choosing environmental policies in capitalism. On efficiency grounds, if one issues any number of tradable permits, the exact same results can be achieved with a pollution tax equal to the market price that results for the permits. And visa versa. There is a particular number of tradable permits that will end up selling for the same price as any pollution tax you set. THIS CONCLUSION ASSUMES THERE ARE NO MALFUNCTIONS IN THE PERMIT MARKET SUCH AS 1) non-competitive market structures, 2) market disequilibria, or 3) disfunctional speculative behavior (this is not a concept in mainstream market theory, but you only have to look at the financial markets in Asia to see that it sure does operate in the real world! SINCE MARKET MALFUNCTIONS DO NOT REDUCE THE EFFICIENCY OF POLLUTION TAXES, BUT ONLY TRADABLE PERMIT PROGRAMS, POLLUTION TAXES WOULD APPEAR TO BE EITHER EXACTLY AS GOOD, OR BETTER THAN TRADABLE PERMITS ON PURELY EFFICIENCY GROUNDS. The efficiency issue that is usually never mentioned, is how many pollution permits are "efficient" to issue? The analagous question for pollution taxes is, how high a pollution tax is "efficient"? The truth is there is only one way to answer either of these questions. One must come up with an estimate of the social costs of pollution. There are a host of procedures used to do this -- none of them very good. One thing that should be remembered is that none of the so-called "market based" methods such as hedonic regression and travel cost studies can possibly capture what are called the "existence value" or "option value" people place on the environment. So "market based" methodologies for estimating the social costs of pollution (and therefore the social benefits of pollution reduction) will inherently underestimate those costs and benefits. Once we have the best estimate of the social cost of the pollution we can come up with, we simply set the pollution tax equal to the marginal social cost of pollution. That will yield the efficient overall level of pollution reduction, and achieve that reduction at the lowest social cost. With permits, one has to use trial and error. You issue some number of permits and wait to see what price they sell at. If the price is lower than your best estimate of the marginal social cost of pollution, then you issued too many permits and need to issue fewer. If the market price for permits is higher than your estimate of the social cost of pollution, you have issued too few permits and need to issue more. Once you have got the right number of permits out there so the market price of permits is equal to your estimate of the marginal social cost of pollution, your permit program will yield the efficient overall level of pollution reduction, and achieve that reduction at the lowest social cost ASSUMING NO MALFUNCTIONING IN THE PERMIT MARKET. Regarding equity: Pollution taxes make polluters pay for the damage they inflict on the rest of us. How that payment is distributed between producers and consumers will depend on the elasticities of supply and demand for the products whose production and/or consumption cause the pollution. How the cost is distributed between employers and employees on the producers' side will depend on how much of the cost to producers comes out of wages and how much comes out of profits -- which I prefer to think of in terms of bargaining power and mainstreamers reduce to relative elasticities of the supply of and demand for labor. No doubt the distributive effects of pollution taxes are not optimal from the perspective of equity. Hence the need to combine pollution taxes with changes in other parts of the tax system that will make the overall outcome more equitable -- i.e. progressive. For an "equivalent" permit program, IF THE PERMITS ARE AUCTIONED OFF BY THE GOVERNMENT THE EQUITY RESULTS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS FOR THE POLLUTION TAX. But if the permits are given away for free, in addition to all the above equity implications, there is a one-time windfall benefit awarded to polluters. If effect, the polluters are awarded the market value of the environment! Then, after this massive corporate rip-off, the exact same costs of reducing pollution are distributed in the exact same way among producers, consumers, employers and employees as in the case of a tax or auctioned permit policy. Since no permit program to date [that is a challenge to the pen-l information system!] has auctioned off permits, but instead every permit program to date has handed them out mostly free, on some sort of
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote: Robin, Well, it is your judgment that all the other arguments besides the one you cite are "hot air." Maybe, maybe not. Fair enough. That's why I gave the full reference for Oates' article so people wouldn't have to take my word for it. Personally I am not all that against taxes. I just happen to think you have overstated the argument for their superiority over tradeable permits in general. I have been campaigning on this theme recently because the mainstream of the profession has generated an intellectual stampede in favor of permits and has ignored taxes completely. I think the entire reason is permits can be part of a massive corporate boondoggle -- and pollution taxes cannot. As evidence of a stampede without real intellectual content, witness the effects on Wally Oates and Max Sawicky! So, I have been giving talks challening anyone to come up with a situation in which permits are superior to taxes -- in an attempt to even the debating playing field as much as one radical can. So far my I'm not getting very bloodied in my version of a John L. Sullivan, challenge-all-comers in boxing tour. BTW I agree with your characterization of the history of policy: Economists recommended pigouvian pollution taxes in the 60s and early 70s, and at least in the US they were rejected for regulations [I refuse to use the reactionary label "command and control" for regulation, and suggest that others thing about adopting this new piece of mainstream semantic ideological hegemony!] My understanding is that in Europe pollution taxes were and are still more prevalent. But just as the US is pushing our more barbarian version of capitalism on Asia and Europe, it looks to me like we are pushing on Europe to abandon pollution taxes for permit programs as well. I think it's another case of: You can make book on the fact that if Uncle Sam is pushing it, it ought to be illegal! All of these are within-system amelioriations anyway. I agree completely -- and AT BEST they will only slightly slow the rape of the environment. How would things work in a Hahnel-Albert society? I don't have time to post an answer immediately, but there is a reason left greens have been particularly interested in our version of participatory planning. It was designed to generate full environmental effect social cost price signals to any and all users. More on this when time allows.
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Note to Robin: I wonder if non-tradable permits auctioned with a floor aren't really pollution taxes. Permits and taxes are not the same. The only thing that is "the same" is that IN THEORY -- if there are no market failures in the permit markets -- auctioning off a particular number of permits achieves the exact same outcome as charging a pollution tax equal to the market price of a permit.
Re: Green Permits and Taxes
Now please remind me why my eco-guru Wally Oates said permits are more efficient than taxes? First late me quote Professor Oates. (Cropper and Oates: Environmental Economics, JEL June 1992, p. 687) "Some interesting issues arise in the choice between systems of effluent fees and marketable emissions permits... There is, of course, a basic sense in which they are equivalent: the environmental authority can, in principle, set price (i.e. the level of the effluent charge) and then adjust it until emissions are reduced sufficiently to achieve the prescribed environmental standard, or, alternatively, issue the requisite number of permits directly and allow the bidding of polluters to determine the market-clearing price." Strictly speaking, this is all I wanted to point out. However, when I read Cropper and Oates (1992) I noticed that they went on to argue for various practical advantages for permits over taxes -- which struck me as odd since Oates had been a strong supporter of taxes before permits became so popular. So I read their arguments quite carefully. Every argument for pollution permits over taxes they offered except one was totally vacuous, and I mean amounted to absolutely nothing at all except hot air. The one substantive argument was the following: "Polluters (that is, existing polluters), as well as regulators, are likely to lprefer the permit approach becasue it can involve lower levels of comopliance costs. If the permits are auctioned off, then of course polluters must pay directly for the right to emit wastes as they would under a feww system. But rather than allocating the permits by auction, the environmental authority can initiate the system with a one-time distribution of permits to existing sources [polluters] -- free of charge. Some form of 'grandfathering' can be used to allocate permits based on historical performance [i.e., the worse polluter you were in the past, the more free pollution permits you receive!] Once again, this is all I wanted to point out: The only real difference between free permits and pollution taxes is that with free permits the public gives the polluting corporations a large present. Since this makes the polluters happier campers, it also makes the regulators job easier so they like it too. My entire attitude can be summed up as: Well that's just fine and dandy for them -- polluters and regulators! But it sure as hell doesn't best serve the interests of any constituency I've ever cared about. I suspect Oates was in danger of dropping down in the academic guru for high price hire lecture circuit since he was burdened by the weight of his earlier reputation as a proponent of pollution taxes. Since the big money wanted to hear that permits were preferable to taxes, Wally had to get with the program -- which he did quite nicely in the prominent JEL piece I'm quoting from. But what it reduces to is: BS + corporate interest politics. There is no SUBSTANCE he offers to recommend permits over pollution taxes. Aren't you presuming that firms can freely adjust their production methods so that pollution can be precisely calibrated, and hence on the margin taxes and permits are both perfectly voluntary? What about lumpiness and other non-neoclassical production functions? Sorry, this doesn't extricate you from the hole you've dug for yourself either. If marginal cost of pollution reduction schedules for firms are not smooth and continuous, they will not make smooth or continuous adjustments to changes EITHER in the pollution tax rate OR the price of pollution permits. But that is really of no concern in any case. Take the other extreme: firms with diverse capacities to rejigger their production techniques. Where the nunmber of permits issued is less than the extent of pollution, won't the permits be traded towards a distribution which reduces the costs of reducing the implied level of pollution? A program that issues more permits than the extent of pollution has wasted the money used to print up the permits since there will be no change in any polluters behavior. All permit programs issue fewer permits than current emissions -- which is why the market price of the permits ends up higher than zero. Such a program minimizes the cost of achieving the given level of overall reduction. But a pollution tax eqaual to the market price of the permit also minimizes the cost of achieving the same level of overall reduction. IT IS EXACTLY EQUIVALENT. Now, turning your point inside out, suppose we let you set the floor price at which the government will auction off permits in the quantity you or your favorite decision-making body specifies. I don't want the government to set a floor price. (I don't want them to issue permits at all.) But if they do issue permits I just want them to auction them off to the highest bidders. LET THE FREE MARKET REIGN! [Did I say that??] At least that way the government will collect revenue from the polluters in exchange
Re: boucher, epi and coal
Max B. Sawicky wrote: Replies to Perelman, Schneiderman, Hahnel, Meyer, Proyect Farmer Perelman said: Emissions trading is a crock. If you want to give polluction credits, why not give everybody an equal credit instead of rewarding people for historical patterns of pollution? This is not AT ALL the way permits would work. It is not the way that corporations and corporation collaborationist environmental groups would have them work. But they certainly could "work" this way -- and if this was the policy it would have the same effect on the environment as giving away permits to corporate polluters for free and it would be MUCH, MUCH more equitable. I made a limited statement (below) and Hahnel has dropped a thirty-pound treatise on my head. All I sent were 3 short paragraphs of email. But a hard copy of the treatise explaining the logic of pollution permits, taxes, and regulations is in the mail. But in re: Perelman's 'crock' I should confess I think tradable permits are a good idea in principle. Max B. Sawicky wrote: If government gives away emissions permits, then clearly corporations do not benefit as a group, since one firm's sale is another's purchase. If the government sells them, corporations are net losers in the aggregate. Hahnel says: For every tradable pollution permit policy in which the government sells the permits there is an "equivalent" pollution tax policy that yields the exact same outcomes: same overall reduction in pollution, same individual reductions for each polluter, same overall cost of reduction to polluters as a whole, same individual cost of reduction to each polluter, same gain in government revenue (from permits sales in one case, from taxes paid in the other). EXCEPT... I agree there is a tax equivalent that yields the same aggregate result for pollution but I can't see how it is possible for a uniform tax to yield the same distribution of costs over firms, and therefore the same aggregate cost. I'm sorry you can't see it, but it does. Hint: How much does a permit sell for in a tradable permit policy? Answer, a uniform market price for the permit. If the uniform tax rate per unit of emission is the same as the uniform market price for a permit to issue one unit of the pollutant then the decision the polluter has to make -- pay the tax or buy the permit, vs. reduce emissions -- is exactly the same. Alternatively, there is a cost-equivalent tax in aggregate with a necessarily different pollution outcome. The reason is that permit trading can discriminate among firms and taxes can't. So I'm missing something or Robin is wrong. Let's go with option "A" rather than "B" since I teach this stuff for a living -- and the entire professional community of environmental economists agrees with me on this one. What you're missing is that a uniform emissions tax "discriminates among firms" in the same way a tradable permit system does: Firms with high costs of pollution reduction will buy permits and continue to pollute, or pay the tax and continue to pollute. Firms with low costs of pollution reduction will not buy either permits or pay the tax for polluting. Instead they will reduce their pollution as long as the cost of reduction is lower than the price of the permit or tax. It isn't that the tax or permit price discriminates among firms buy being different for different firms. It's that firms with different reduction costs behave differently in response to the same economic stimulous -- the firms discriminate amongst themselves, so to speak. One must assume that the permit market is competitive and functions perfectly smoothly finding its theoretical equilibrium infintely quickly, etc. etc. -- the usual convenient and unrealistic assumptions, where no such assumptions are necessary for the pollution tax to be efficient. In the abstract this is correct but it imposes too great a practical burden on permits and neglects any comparable problem with taxes (e.g., evasion, avoidance, politically- based distortions). Evasion, avoidance, and politically-based distortions are EXACTLY AS DIFFICULT FOR A PERMIT PROGRAM AS FOR A TAX PROGRAM. Anyone who cheats on paying a pollution tax could cheat on buying a permit -- monitoring and punishment problems ARE IDENTICAL. I know that the mainstream environmental policy community talks about these things as if there were different practical problems for permit and taxing policies -- but it is a classic case of mainstream bull shit. Many in the mainstream don't know any better, but spout this common NON-wisdom. Those who know better don't say it themselves, but do not bother to correct those who do. Since the LIE serves the powers that be, everyone goes along with it. It is our job not to. The above means there is always a pollution tax policy that is equal to or superior to any permit policy on purely technical grounds. As I said, I
Re: boucher, epi and coal
Max B. Sawicky wrote: If government gives away emissions permits, then clearly corporations do not benefit as a group, since one firm's sale is another's purchase. If the government sells them, corporations are net losers in the aggregate. For every tradable pollution permit policy in which the government sells the permits there is an "equivalent" pollution tax policy that yields the exact same outcomes: same overall reduction in pollution, same individual reductions for each polluter, same overall cost of reduction to polluters as a whole, same individual cost of reduction to each polluter, same gain in government revenue (from permits sales in one case, from taxes paid in the other). EXCEPT... One must assume that the permit market is competitive and functions perfectly smoothly finding its theoretical equilibrium infintely quickly, etc. etc. -- the usual convenient and unrealistic assumptions, where no such assumptions are necessary for the pollution tax to be efficient. The above means there is always a pollution tax policy that is equal to or superior to any permit policy on purely technical grounds. When the government gives away permits to polluting corporations they implicitly award legal ownership of the environment to polluters rather than pollution victims. They make a summary judgement entirely in favor of polluters regarding the last remaining common property resource (and therefore still disputed property) on the planet. When the government gives away pollution permits to corporations it is like the government giving away not only the right of way land to the railroads in the 19th century, but all of the land within a thousand miles of either side of the track they lay. Except in this case we don't even get a railroad track! Pollution permit give-away programs have NO technical or efficiency advantages over pollution taxes, may be technically inferior (due to realistic probabilities of market failure), and are the worst imaginable policy on equity grounds. When governments do not collect pollution taxes (or sell permits), but instead give permits away for free to polluters -- model citizens that they have proven to be -- and therefore collect other taxes from other people to finance government programs, just who do you think they collect those taxes from? Last I heard the common working stiff not only held a job but paid more than his/er share in taxes as well!
Re: Santa Fe-Krugman-Arthur
Doug Henwood wrote:
Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
Another wiggle, close but not the same, is that a
system can be behaving very regularly and then quite
suddenly start behaving very erratically ("chaotically"),
with different and smaller changes than the first case.
I don't like this use of the word "system" which is a conceptual and
philosophical horror when applied to human society.
Admittedly some use the word "system" poorly, but that does not make the
concept a poor one. As a matter of fact, one of the [few] methodological
improvements over the past 30 years is analyzing certain interesting
subjects as "systems."
It concedes the most
repellent aspects of bourgeois culture,
au contrare! One of the more serious liabilities of "bourgeoise
ideology" is that it does not analyze in terms of "systems."
the quantification and monetization
of everything. It assumes that the conventional statustics used to
represent economic activity - employment, GDP, and the rest - are an
adequate or desirable representation of social life. In some sense they are, but not
fully.
This last is a total non sequitur. Criticize the inadequacy of
mainstream quantification, criticize the comercialization of human life
-- as many of us do -- but that has nothing to do with thinking in terms
of "systems."
So, I'd sum up with: Often thinking in terms of systems is a useful
advance. Whether or not particular theories of complex systems coming
out of SFI help us understand important dynamics better is another
matter. I suspect they should not be dismissed as quickly as
intellectual work coming out of the Hoover Institute, AEI, or even the
Cato Institute -- to name a few places where the intelligencia is eating
the peasants' surplus production to no useful purpose whatsoever. Of
course, it goes without saying that EPI the SFI is not!
Doug
Re: utopias
William S. Lear wrote: I'm really enjoying this exchange, just the kind of stuff I like to think about, and I have one very small, peripheral question. Robin writes: ... Even competitive markets under conditions of perfect information can lead to very exploitative outcomes -- and inefficient one's as well. I understood competitive markets to be ones in which there is zero, or in "less than perfectly" competitive markets, close to zero profit. How would capital accumulate in any coherent way under such a system and thereby lead to exploitative outcomes? Wouldn't everyone, including capitalists, just be ragged and equally miserable? I was thinking of competitive market models I play with a lot where some people start out with more "seed corn" than others and we open up a labor market that may be perfectly competitive and the result is more exploitation because the lions share of the benefit from the labor exchange goes to the employers. There are similar models of international trade where even when the international goods markets are competitive, when countries exchange goods international inequality increases. Of course how one defines exploitation is crucial, but there are ways to define exploitation I am very comfortable with that often lead to the result that the degree of exploitation increases when competitive exchanges in labor markets, credit market, or even goods markets increase. Also, in defining inefficient, do you take into account the vast amount of duplicated effort that usually takes place in competitive markets? Competitve markets can yield lots of inefficiencies for many different reasons. You sight one. Disequilibria and externalites are biggies.
Re: Ride free or die!
Gar W. Lipow wrote: With gambling or without, I think a Parecon will provide a welfare safety net. I am not talking about the retired, the involuntarily unemployed, or those unable to work. In these cases I assume you would provide average consumption plus any special needs as a matter of decency. I am talking about truly the annoying cases. Imagine for the moment a Bob Black style anarchist who refuses to work because you have not made work "one long ecstatic dance". Are you going to refuse him health care ? You endanger your own health by doing so. Once you maintain someone's health, food is a lot cheaper than treating malnutrition or starvation . Shelter, and clothing are cheaper than treating exposure. Indoor plumbing is cheaper than treating infectious diseases. Thus even in an "undeserving case" you gain more than you lose by providing some minimum. This does not have to mean luxury or anything approaching average consumption. I agree with Lipow on this. Technically, a parecon could have a welfare safety net or not, or a net of whatever fineness of weave. But socially I would think that a parecon would provide a very substantial safety net for the reasons Lipow offers if no others.
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Doug Henwood wrote: Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? Ward Churchill is about as much native american as most white radicals can handle. He has written much to challenge white radicals' views and stands on native american issues. I always find his writings insightful and provocative. I usually agree with him more than most of my white progressive friends do. I by no means always agree with him. He has written books for South End Press and Common Courage Press and others over the past 15 years. He has also published some challenging pieces in Z Magazine from time to time. He writes much more extensively for a variety of indigenous publications. I think his first book with South End Press was titled Marxism and Native Americans.
Re: Ride free or die!
Or, perhaps, my oblique point would be clearer if I came at it from another angle: the greatest indignity inflicted on the poor is not their poverty; it is the retroactive justification of that poverty (and the corresponding wealth of the wealthy) as being "as of right". It's worth entertaining the thought that *most* inequality results not from misfortune or personal qualities but from the ideology erected *ex post facto* to explain, justify and, ultimately, naturalize inequality. I am very sympathetic to this view. Rationalization of exploitation as being in the interest of the exploited is the ultimate insult. [While I have a lot of respect for John Rawls, I believe that his difference principle has been used to do a lot of just this kind of thing. Growing inequality is rationalized under the PRESUMPTION that the greater gains of the better off are necessary to win the more meager gains of the worse off. It's usually just plain BULL.] As a thought experiment, I'll pose an alternative to parecon: "socialotto". Socialotto doesn't seek to eliminate inequality or free-ridership, only to systematically randomize them. As an aside, I'd reckon that, given a choice in the structure of rewards (but not in their actual distribution), people would opt for much less inequality than now exists but for substantially more than a ratio of 2:1. I agree that randomized inequity is better than systematic inequity. Slavery where blacks and whites had equal probabilities of becoming slaves or slave masters would have been better than blacks having a 0% probability of becoming slaves masters while whites had a 0% probability of becoming slaves. But I wouldn't spend a lot of time fighting for randomized slavery. I know from my students' reactions to parecon that most of them THINK they'd like more of an income lottery than 2:1 But they -- mistakenly in the case of the students at the university where I teach -- usually assume they are more likely to come out on the high than the low end too. In any case, American culture is strongly into the "vision" of how exciting casino's can be. I know. I think it's one of the myopias we suffer under -- and I think it is "pushed" on us as part of establishing capitalist ideological hegemony. But, if people really want casinos, we can certainly arrange for them in parecon. If people want to take their effort earned consumption rights and exchange them in a Casino for a possibility of much more consumption right -- and a possibility of much less, I see no reason to discriminate against gambling. So if someone doesn't like the 2:1 distributive odds of the parecon economy, they can make it as risky as they want! A welfare safety net for the losers? What would you say?
Re: utopias
maxsaw wrote: From: Robin Hahnel [EMAIL PROTECTED] By 'proportional share,' do you mean we are financing everything via head taxes? An important first step is that income is distributed equitably in the first place -- which we believe it is in a participatory economy. . . . If incomes are judged 'fair' but still differ, do you still want head taxes? I grant that less dispersion in incomes makes head taxes less objectionable, and zero dispersion makes them kosher, so how much does a regressive tax framework flout your system? Now I see what you're getting at. You're right that if equitable income distribution were exactly equal income distribution head taxes would be proportional taxes, but if there are differences in income, head taxes are regressive rather than proportional much less progressive. Ordinarily progressive taxation is more equitable than proportional which is more equitable than regressive. We're so used to that truism that it's second nature -- and should be. But that is because we live in an economy where higher pretax incomes are almost always too high from a moral view, and lower pretax incomes are almost always too low from a moral point of view. So progressive taxation ameliorates the inequity in the income distribution somewhat -- in the world we actually live in. But in a participatory economy the only reason some would have more income than others is because they choose to deliver less effort. Essentially people with lower incomes in PE are simply opting for more leisure -- which is their perogative. If I choose more leisure and less consumption, and consumption is entirely individual, that is easy to arrange. But since collective consumption is by definition, collective, all in the same collectivities must consume the same amount of collective consumption -- those who would have more leisure and consume less as well as those who would have less leisure and consume more. [All this is further complicated by the fact that while all consume the same package of public goods that does not mean they benefit to the same extent from consuming the same package. But let's abstract from that little difficulty for the moment, and assume that if you and I live in the same neighborhood, ward, city, state, nation -- we benefit equally from consuming the same package of local, state, and national public goods.] The choices would seem to be: (1) Charge people for their proportionate share of the social cost of the public goods they consume -- which was my original statement, and which you correctly pointed out was equivalent to a head tax and was therefore regressive. I'm tempted to add the adjective "technically" regressive. This could be justified on grounds that while those with lower income would be paying a higher percentage of their income for public goods than those with higher incomes, everyone had equal (consumption benefits minus work burdens.) That something we might call "net economic benefits from participating in the economy" was the same for everyone, and viewed from that perspective proportionate charges were the most equitable. (2) Charge people their proportionate share multiplied by the ratio of their income divided by average income. This would yield proportional taxation considering only income as the measure of people's economic benefits. (3) Charge people their proportionate share multiplied by the ratio of their income divided by average income multiplied by numbers greater than one and rising at some rate for above average incomes as they rise, and by numbers less than one and falling for below average incomes as they fall. That would provide progressive taxation considering only income as the measure of people's economic benfits. All would be equally easy to do from an administrative point of view -- even though the last sounds complicated. I can see no strong argument for any of the methods over the others. As I think about I don't find #1 inferior by any means. The idea that consumption benefits minus work burdens is the appropriate bench mark seems more appealing now that I realize that was the implicit basis for the proportional charge system. I would not protest against either #2 or #3 since I personally think people have been pushed beyond their natural inclinations to overwork in capitalism (a la Julie Schor's work) and in the beginning in a PE would all be wise to democratically impose upon ourselves some correctives for a time -- which is what #2 and even more strongly #3 become -- disincentives to choose more income and less leisure and incentives to lighten up a little. On the free-rider issue, it sounds like your scheme presumes that public goods are optimally assigned to types or levels of government. Of course -- if it were non-optimal PE would be less than perfectly efficient. Why would we ever choose that? I'm joking. You're right again. We have assumed this, and pesky reali
Re: utopias
As a precautionary note, I should say that when I envision a worthwhile society, I generally think in terms of free people forming voluntary associations (though that is perhaps a muddy phrase). Thus, I tend to think of: in what manner(s) will people feel like organizing in? Further, then, while the Parecon model is exciting (in short, I'm all for it), it seems to me to be an "end goal" that might not turn out to be the case, simply because certain problems that it solves may not arise (at least, perhaps, not ALL those problems in ALL communities). I hope you get my drift. Neither Mike Albert nor I ever intended our "model" of a participatory economy to be a blue print that people should be forced to impliment exactly -- or be whipped with a wet noodle. We always intended it as a substantive contribution to the thinking process about exactly what kinds of organizations would we, or any sensible people, want to form, and how should they work. If we want our economy to be democratic, equitable, efficient, and promote solidarity what would make sense? We thought alternative-to-capitalism visionary thinking had suffered from lack of specificity and concreteness as an intellectual excercise. That is why we have tried to be very specific. Precisely so people have somthing other than a marshmellow to talk and think about and criticise and improve upon. We are both strong democrats with a small "d." We believe as a matter of principle in respecting whatever institutions and arrangements people decide to govern themselves with through fair democratic means. That doesn't mean we will not want to excercise our democratic rights to disagree with the majority and demand a chance to voice our objections and try to convince the majority to change its mind. But that is how we would always argue for some aspect of PE that was not adopted by a group of self-governing people we were members of. So, any economy in such a free society would have to be "good" enough to gain participation. Thus, exploitative relations would not exist, as no one would stand for it. This strikes me as overly simplistic -- overy optimistic or "utopian" as some use the word. Care is required to avoid exploitative relations. Many who did not intend to enter into exploitative arrangements have found themselves ensnared nonetheless. However, in rural agricultural areas, "Smithian" markets for basic foods may well be deamed adequate. They may be deemed adequate and presumed not to lead to exploitative outcomes. But that doesn't meant that they will in fact be adequate if adequate includes the requirement of equitable outcomes. If not, the acts of voting feet would serve to transform that economy. Voting with feet to join what kind of alternative. Isn't that what the whole debate about desirable alternatives to capitalism is about in the first place. Markets existed in agricultural areas of revolutionary Spain, and while I recognize the perils (and inefficiencies) of markets, considerations of local culture and perhaps a desired rural isolation might win out over concerns of efficiency (which would pull for integration into broader syndicates or councils). Of course, participation in wider syndicates could co-exist with local economies, giving communities the "foreign exchange" necessary to augment the local economy- TV's and stereos, for instance. Am I making sense here? The point is that folks could live basically like the Amish- exchanging basic needs on whatever basis they like- while devoting some of their time to working in the local rope factory to qualify for consumption of exotic goods. Of course, if this backward life seems ridiculous to later, "modern", generations, they may choose to break from the community norms and pull more of their local economy into the broader syndicates- "rationalizing" small farms, for instance, in order to gain more efficiency and increase productivity to earn more manufactured clothes, microwaves and furniture from the "outside world"- in contrast to their parents, who saw no value in such pursuits. I'm not as concerned with how much any group would decide to be self-sufficient or local -- choosing to sacrifice some efficiency advantages of a greater division of labor. That's fine. I'm concerned with ON WHAT BASIS AND HOW AND WITH WHAT EFFECTS they engage in economic interaction with others to whatever extent they decide to do so. Even competitive markets under conditions of perfect information can lead to very exploitative outcomes -- and inefficient one's as well. Participatory planning is designed to avoid some of these unfortunate effects. How do the communities, joined in a federation, settle on who will produce what and on what sort of terms goods are exchanged between communities? I will be curious to know this, too. I think that is one of the tasks of a revolution- to figure these things out. Isn't one of the lessons of the revolutons of
Re: utopias
john gulick wrote: So at last all the latent anarcho-syndics on pen-l come out of the woodwork. I'm pleased. A few questions posed at a fairly high level of abstraction. 1) Even at the admittedly free-wheeling level of pencil-and-paper "models," it's easy to talk about and celebrate workers' democratic planning and management of the social division of labor, much harder to actually get into the nitty-gritty. I don't mean to come on like a naive Unabomber type, but what about the partial correlation between the production of surplus (and I'm not talking about superfluous luxury goods here) and increasingly sophisticated and specialized technical and industrial divisions of labor ? While my practical politics may be informed by certain principles of an anarcho-commie utopia, I'm enough of a "historical materialist" to understand that most people the world over no longer live or want to live in peasant villages and have acquired certain expectations about what constitutes an ideal consumption basket. (I realize that I'm probably playing with a lot of false dichotomies here that I really don't subscribe to). Left Greens like Howie Hawkins and social ecologist Murray Bookchin argue for the kind of democratic economic localism you refer to. Their thinking is motivated by two goals: (1) They want the participatory democratic benefits of New England town meeting style democracy. They think democracy works if it is local, face to face, with people who deal with one another all the time over long periods of time, etc. And they think it doesn't work, it disappears whenever it is attempted on a larger scale leading to representation rather than direct participation and eventually careerism, bureacratism, and apathy. (2) They think that what we should now know regarding ecological truths also points in the direction of economic localism as sound environmental policy and practice. They think much of what you take as the advantages and benefits of the modern industrial and agricultural division of labor and technology is ultimately terribly inefficient because it is so environmentally destructive that it is unsustainable. For them, the kind of economic well being you take as our moderns "birth right" is nothing more than a demand to exploit future generations -- terribly. A few of us, Mike Albert and myself to name two, have tried to have a friendly argument with them along the following lines: (1) Granted there is much about fact to face relations that promote democratic procedures. But even if they are more difficult to achieve, institutions that promote participatory democracy on a wider scale are important, necessary, and not hopeless. In particular we argue that participatory planning as we outline its procedures is an economic institution that can facilitate self-managed decision making among groups of workers and consumers separated be great distances. So, economic self-management does not REQUIRE economic localism. (2) What if they are wrong, in part, about the requirements of sound ecology? What if a much greater division of labor is environmentally sustainable than they believe, at present, to be the case? Then it would be a shame to forego the efficiency gains of an environmentally sustainable division of labor. In this case, the job of managing such a division of labor democratically, equitably, and efficiently remains, and becomes very important. So, what we said to them was to consider participatory planning visa vis these criteria. They responded, quite reasonably I thought, that the first criteria they would use to evaluate participatory planning was whether it would guarantee environmental sustainability. I responded like the economist I am by saying that went without saying under the categories of equity (intergenerational) and efficiency (wise-use/stewardship of the environment rather than overexploitation, despoilation, or, in short, abuse.) They said they felt little protected by economists' usual applications of equity and efficiency. I commiserated with them. 2) Matters of political jurisdiction. What do we embrace as the fundamental organizational-territorial units of planning and management ? Neighborhoods and their hinterlands in a small-scale urban/rural balance ? Worker-governed industrial associations ? Phony nation-states ? All of the above w/gradually diminishing levels of direct democracy culminating in some sort of international assembly ? I don't want to tackle the issue of a world government. But on the other issues, while participatory economics is an economic not a political system, and not intended to be a substitute for a truly democratic political system, it explicitly provides for: neighborhood consumption councils, ward federations of consumption councils, city and county federations of consumption councils, state federations, and a national federation of consumption councils. It also provides for workers councils, and federations of workers
Re: utopias
More belated response to Markland and Gulick on utopian vision: I would think that communities would control their basic needs and interests while joining in federations, both industrial and geographical, in order to take advantage of economies of scale. At least that seems to be the crux of Bakunin-type aspirations as well as the example given by Spain. I think this is fine as far as it goes. But there is a lot of ambiguity in the phrases "basic needs and interests" and "joining in federations to take advantage of economies of scale." Where does "basic need" leave off and something beyond "basic need" that, for want of a better word we can call "luxury" begin? And why should local production and distribution be associated with basic need rather than luxury in any case? What if it is more efficient for a basic need to be filled by production elsewhere and a luxury need is something a community can take care of better locally? How do the communities, joined in a federation, settle on who will produce what and on what sort of terms goods are exchanged between communities? Do they use markets? Do they carry out a joint central planning procedure? Do they get together in a big meeting and just talk about it until they agree (tire)? Mike Albert have put these questions to the left green types like Howard Hawkins and Murray Bookchin and have not yet gotten an answer that we find satisfactory. In our view, the problem of coordinating a division of labor just won't go away. Either you use markets, central planning, or some other kind of planning like participatory planning. Or else you are stuck with autonomy -- not semi-autonomy which the "join in federations" is a prayer for. Or, you put your faith in what a Swedish union official once answered a British trade unionist demanding to know how Swedish unions came to an agreement on a particular issue: "We have a meeting."
Re: utopias
More belated responses on utopian visions: R. Anders Schneiderman wrote: At 12:37 PM 12/2/97 -0500, you wrote: One great thing about participatory planning is it eliminates the free rider problem for expressing desires for public goods. How exactly does it eliminate the FR problem for expressing desires for public goods? I think participatory planning is a good thing, but I don't see how it gets rid of free riders. My neighborhood consumption council will request neighborhood public goods like side walks and play ground equipment for local parks. I am charged me proportional share for the social cost of those consumption goods just like I am charged 100% of the social cost of providing me with any individual consumption goods I ask for. I am also charged my proportional share of any public goods that my ward, city, state, and national consumer federation asks for. So, when I am voting, or instructing my representatives to vote, or voting for representatives who will vote for me regarding public good requests I have no incentive to over request -- since I will be charged my proportionate share of the cost of all such requests (against my work-effort determined total consumption allowance) -- and no incentive to under request since as long as my share of the cost is less than what I feel I will benefit I should want more public goods. In brief, nobody can gain from misrepresenting their true preferences for public gods and each person would only stand to lose by any kind of misrepresentation. This does not overcome the problem of ignorance, or long-standing inefficient habits. Many people -- in my humble opinion -- fail to realize how much they gain from public goods and over estimate how much they gain from private consumption. But the paraticipatory planning system -- unlike the market system that is biased against public good provision and therefore is the source of the habitual bias people have developed -- does not provide people a clear incentive to misrepresent their desires for public goods and attempt to "ride for free" on others' purchases of public goods they cannot be excluded from benefiting from. People get effort ratings from their peers at work that entitle them to consumption rights -- which they can save or get advancements on (borrow). In other words, if you work with a group of workaholics--say, in a "movement job"--you'd get rated poorly if you weren't equally nuts. And if some folks at your job get into a personal quarrel, they can try to screw each other at the peer review. The quality of your work, your impact on your community, none of this matters except as it's perceived by your peers? This is a system worth fighting for? This sounds more like the system we have for tenured faculty--not exactly a model I'd want to use for socialism. I resort to the Shaw defense of democracy: "Democracy is the absolutely worst form of government... Except for all others." (Apologies to George for the bad quote from memory.) "Peer workmate evaluation of effort is absolutely the worst way to evaluate effort Except for all others." You're right. Lots can go wrong with peer review. But lots goes wrong with bosses review! If people should enjoy economic benefits according to how much they endured economic sacrifice -- which is the assumption behind participatory economics -- then we have the problem of assessing effort or sacrifice. Who better to do this than one's workmates. Which is not to say that there are not better and worse systems for going about this. Collect what kind of information? Collect opinions from whom? How? Self-evaluations? Appeals? Grievance procedures? Rotation of effort rating committee members? These -- and many others -- are all issues that individual workers councils will have to solve as best they can to their own satisfaction. One thing workers will check out when choosing where to apply to work will be the effort rating philosophy and system used in different work places. Does it fit my beliefs and tastes? Will the outcomes be imperfect under the best of circumstances? Yes. Will it matter a whole hell of a lot? Not really since we're talking about differences in consumption rights of maybe one to two at most -- nothing like the one to two million in capitalist economies, or the one to two hundred that would occur in market socialist economies without arbitrary limits on the marginal revenue product wage rates that would result from free labor markets. And if you don't like the way your peers evaluate you, that is good reason to go work in a different collective which is your right in a participatory economy. On the oft cited negative example of faculty tenure committees: To paraphrase Shaw again: "Tenure committees are absolutely the worst form of human interaction With no exception." I know that from 15 years of personal experience and am tired of getting beaten over the head with it in discussions of participatory economies where
Re: utopias
Louis Proyect wrote: Robin Hahnel: Or, you put your faith in what a Swedish union official once answered a British trade unionist demanding to know how Swedish unions came to an agreement on a particular issue: "We have a meeting." This was not intended as a criticism of Swedish unionists. As a matter of fact the whole joke was based on an appreciation of the superior ability of some -- such as Swedish unionists -- to engage in successful democratic decision making. Just out of curiousity, Robin, what experience do you and Mike Albert have in democratic decision-making institutions? For all your rhetoric about democracy, I am really not aware that you have ever had any experience with building grass-roots organizations that respect the ranks. Have you ever been elected to anything? For all of your bad-mouthing of Lenin, he had impressive credentials as an elected leader of Russian Social Democracy. The one institution that you two guys seem to have a history around is Z Magazine, which is--to be blunt about it--as much your property as "In These Times" is Jimmie Weinstein's. I am prompted to make this observation by my own personal experience with the mag. You invited me to submit a review of pop music to Z some months ago, which I took some trouble to do. I sent it off to Lydia Sargent and Mike Albert and never even got an acknowledgement that you received it let alone a note that it wasn't suitable. At least when the Swedish bureaucrats "have a meeting", they take the trouble to report back the results. They are one step ahead of you. You guys are writing a constitution for societies based on participatory economics in the future, but can't even reply to an email submission in the here and now. I love it. By the way, your arts section stinks. How do you allow Lydia Sargent to write the same column over and over again for five years straight? Oh, I know. She probably pays good money for this privilege. It was dumb of me to have bothered to submit the fucking review, now that I stop and think about it. I will post it here and on the Spoons Lists tomorrow, where it really belongs, not in a vanity left-wing magazine based on somebody's trust fund income. Louis Proyect As for the rest. Louis, I don't know you. I've never met you. I have never worked on Z magazine or had anything to do with running Z magazine. I certainly did not invite you to submit a review of pop music to Z magazine, so I assume you mean that Mike or Lydia did. I have no intentions of offering a defense of their management of Z magazine to you -- or anyone else for that matter. My only response to your ill-informed personal attack on me is: Fuck you.
Re: utopias
Nevertheless, of greater interest to me is the contention that there will be "No private property at all", which I claim is quite literally impossible and therefore it is a question of how you limit (or just plain "deal with") private property that should be addressed. At this late date, I'd like to respond to Bill Lear's challenge to my contention that there is no private property in a participatory economy. For example, suppose we recognize that a person has a right to the exclusive use of a toothbrush --- that nobody has the right to walk along and snatch the toothbrush or to use it without permission. We have just created property. So, if I bake an apple pie and give it to Doug to munch on, we might reasonably agree that Anders has no right to snatch it up and give it to Tom and Robin. If we agree on this, then we agree that property will arise, quite "naturally", in any form of human society we can imagine. If property indeed, as Wray claims, "destroys the collective security" of society, then we should be aware of the ways in which it arises, and we should be prepared to deal with it, if only to say, "Yeah that will happen, but it won't be a problem because ...". As consumers people will ask for, and receive goods and services for their individual consumption -- like tooth brushes -- in a participatory economy. That kind of "private property" will exist. People will also ask for collective consumption goods and services like play grounds, state parks, national parks, city libraries, national libraries, etc. I don't know what "property" label you want to put on them. As producers workers councils will ask for, and receive productive resources and inputs they need for their production plan. They will be granted temporary user rights over any land, machines, or intermediate good inputs that are part of their approved production plan. They don't receive any income rights that in some economies accompany the user rights that go along with land and machines. And I would say that they do not "own" this kind of "productive property" in any meaningful sense. So my statement that there is no private property was in the traditional political economy sense of "no private ownership of productive property." Admittedly we could start with toothbrushes and work up to cars, houses, and the 10 acre piece of land the house you live in sits on. This does become more complicated. To be brief, what we have tentatively proposed is something like leasing with right of renewal until death -- in the case of a house or appartment. As for inheritance, we propose passing on personal belongings to children and loved ones without tax up to some limit to prevent inheritance of any substantial value that would create unequal economic opportunities among those in the younger generation. As for a house that children may have lived in all their lives, we would extend to children the renewal right on the leasing arrangement. [The lease payment would be equal to the mariginal social cost of providing the size and quality of living unit that is involved.]
Re: utopias
maxsaw wrote: From: Robin Hahnel [EMAIL PROTECTED] My neighborhood consumption council will request neighborhood public goods like side walks and play ground equipment for local parks... This sounded no different than the routine operation of local government. What is new and improved in the decision-making process, aside from the likely non-existence of special interests stemming from capital ownership and the absence of commercial inducements to private consumption? Wouldn't there still be special interests stemming from other factors (e.g., my block versus yours) even with no private ownership of capital? By 'proportional share,' do you mean we are financing everything via head taxes? An important first step is that income is distributed equitably in the first place -- which we believe it is in a participatory economy. If there is disagreement over that, we need to go back and discuss that first. An importatn second step is that we are only talking about different levels of collective consumption, not welfare programs that are also a different matter, handled differently. So, everyone has their fair income and the only remaining issue is how people distribute their consumption right between individual consumption and different levels of collective consumption -- like side walks for their neighborhood and libraries for their city. We don't want the system to bias how people express their true preferences in this regard -- as market systems do by giving people an incentive to ride for free on others collective consumption, which is why local, state, and national governments have to come in and substitute some other decision making system for the free market one. If there are 1000 residents in both our neighborhoods and my neighborhood asks for $2000 worth of new side walks but yours only asks for $1000 worth of new side walks, you will be charged for $1 worth of side walks and I will be charged for $2 worth. If we both live in the same city of 1 million and our city consumption federation asks, among other things for a $3 million dollar new library, we each will be charged for $3 worth of library consumption. You and I will also ask for different individual consumption items that each have their social cost. Your equitable income -- determined by your effort or sacrifice in work as decided by your workmates -- has to cover your total consumption request, that is, your individual consumption requests and your proportionate share of all the collective consumption the different federations you are a member of ask for. Our claim is that this system avoids any free rider problems for public goods. In a sense it is nothing radically different from how government is supposed to work -- in theory, and if incomes were equitable in the first place. Except people consider, submit, and revise their requests for individual consumption and different levels of collective consumption at the same time and in the same way in participatory planning. That is, the planning procedure treats individual and collective consumption on the same, equal footing. There is no sense that a government comes and takes away some of my income to do who knows what with, thereby depriving me of my ability to consume what I want. I think this explains why there is no "my block versus your block" problem. Different neighborhoods will presumably ask for different kinds and different amounts of local public goods -- according to their different preferences. Their residents will be charged for different amounts. Of course there is no guarantee that you will agree with your neighbors about kind and quantity of public versus individual consumption -- anymore than there is any guarantee that you will agree with your workmates on how to run your workplace. But you have as much say and voice as any of them. And presumably people who find themselves outvoted consistently in their neighborood visa vis public good requests will move to more neighborhoods they find more compatible just as workers who get outvoted in their worker councils have an incentive to find more like minded workmates. Finally, I think the absence of "special interests stemming from capital ownership" and absence of "commercial inducements to private consumption" will be a big help too. As a footnote: There are some interesting theoretical tax schemes -- "demand revealing" and "pivot mechanisms" -- that make adjustments to proportional charges for public goods in ways that might be considered more fair, or ways that might enhance the incentive for people to develop a greater variety of preferences for public goods, that do NOT trigger the free rider incentive and attendant inefficiencies. I think a participatory economy is a much more friendly and likely insitutional setting for different localities and states to play around with these variations than market systems.
Re: utopias
R. Anders Schneiderman wrote: That [participatory plannings way of handling collective consumption] would take care of some problems, but what about: 1) people who don't have kids who won't support increasing the education budget for elementary schools? 2) people who vote against increasing spending on extending public utilities needed to support a growing population (since their needs are already being taken care of)? You're right here. People in a neighborhood, or a ward, or a city, or a state, or a nation will NOT always agree on what public goods they want. Sometimes this is due to disagreements on facts: I think pollution reduction will have a much more beneficial effect on people's health than many do. Others think that military spending makes them more secure than I do -- to put it mildly! So because we disagree on the facts we have differences over how much pollution reduction and national "defense" to ask for in OUR public good package. Sometimes disagreements are over values. Even if we agreed on the facts about the health and security consequences of pollution reduction and military spending I might value health more and others might value military security more. And these differences might be just differences, or due to rather obvious differences in the situations of different people such as me being asthmatic and someone else living close to a border where contra like thugs cross to rape and pillage. Childless and nine children families, and those serviced by existing infrastructure as opposed to those needing entirely new infrastructure are examples of the last kind of reason people in a community will differ over what package of public goods they want. Incidently, in my community right now the up county (wealthy) residents with new infrastructure won't vote for infrastructure repairs needed by us (low income) down county dwellers. The bastards! I have no magical solution to any of these kinds of differences and disagreements -- based on differences of opinion, value, or situation. [Except my up county "neighbors" will no longer be wealthier than I am!] Every community will have to hammer these things out as democratically, equitably, and hopefully with as much solidarity as they can manage. But these differences are not what is usually meant by people worried about the free rider problem in provision of public goods. They mean if we leave it to the market for people to buy as much pollution reduction or military defense as they want to, few if any will buy any at all since each enjoys such a tiny fraction of the benefit and all have an incentive to ride for free on the purchases of others. Hence the market bias against public good provision versus private good provision. These are very common free rider problems that local communities have today when they practice some form of democracy. Again, this isn't an argument against participatory economics. I just don't see how it's going to get rid of the free rider problem. It seems to me you'd need other additional institutions/mechanisms to alleviate it. See above. People get effort ratings from their peers at work that entitle them to consumption rights -- which they can save or get advancements on (borrow). Will it [the system for evaluating work performance for consumption rights] matter a whole hell of a lot? Not really since we're talking about differences in consumption rights of maybe one to two at most - nothing like the one to two million in capitalist economies, or the one to two hundred that would occur in market socialist economies without arbitrary limits on the marginal revenue product wage rates that would result from free labor markets. Could you say a little more about this? First off, could you give a better sense of what you mean by one or two? Are we talking about another pair of movie tickets? A week's vacation? A bound edition of Talcott Parson's greatest sayings? Sorry. I meant ratios of the lowest person's income to the highest person's income of one to two for a participatory economyu, versus one to 2 million in capitalism, or one to two hundred in market socialist systems. Second, if your evaluation influences your consumption rights by very little, is it really going to influence behavior very much? And if it doesn't influence behavior by very much, doesn't that undermine the premise your evaluation system started with (i.e., that "people should enjoy economic benefits according to how much they endured economic sacrifice")? I was simply guessing how much difference there would ever be between the efforts, or sacrifices made by two people working full time at jobs that are already balanced to share tasks that are particularly dangerous or pleasant. I thought it was hard to imagine differences greater than a ratio of one to two. [responding to my concerns about the potential evils of peer review:] You're right. Lots can go wrong with peer review. But lots goes
Re: Trot'ism
I'll take your word on this, Lou - and Trotsky himself was no fool, for sure. But what happened? Why did Trotskyist groups - all Marxist groups did, but it seems to be most extreme among Trot formations - show such a prediliction for rigidity, cultishness, and schism? Why have they been reduced to citing formulas and refighting the same ancient battles for the last 30 to 60 years? Doug To which Louis provided a long answer about the history of American Trotskism in particular. I already knew some of that history, did not know some of it, and am not sure I do not dispute some parts of what were related. But, all that interests me very little anymore. I am more interested in whether people in the here and now still agree or disagree with the strategy of political vanguardism. Define political vanguardism however you want, postulate a perfect practice of your own definition of political vanguardism, and then tell me if you think that there is any useful role for this kind of political activism in progressive political activity in the twenty-first century -- yes, we are getting very close. Louis Proyect
Cornelius Castoriadis
I am very sorry to hear of Castoriadis' death. I did not follow his work in psychoanalysis, and did not particularly agree with some of his writings in Telos during the 80s -- particularly his identification of the Soviet Union as a more dangerous threat to human liberation than the threat posed by modern capitalism in the US and Europe. I thought he went overboard there as many Maoists did at one point, and somehow lost sight of the evils and power in western capitalism that his earlier writings had helped me understand. But I would like to say he had a significant influence on my own political and economic thinking during the 70s. I am staring right now at a copy of "Workers' Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society" that was first published under the name of Paul Cardan by London Solidarity in 1972, and reprinted in the US by Philadelphia Solidarity in 1974. Perhaps because I had not read Edward Bellamy or William Morris' utopian novels, or Kropotkin or Pannecock, prior to thinking out the first version of what Mike Albert and I first called "decentralized socialist planning" back in the mid 70s I was powerfully influenced by Castoriadis' pamphlet. I considered it at that time the best thought out version of workers' self management through planning that I had ever seen. Although I think it had some critical flaws, I still think it is a remarkable intellectual tour de force -- published as a pamphlet for activists with terrific cartoons interspersed. I still consider it much more ingenious than many of Castoriadis' articles in Telos that were adorned with more elaborate academic and intellectual sophistication. In any case, I wanted to express my gratitude for the genius and courage that marked Castoriadis' life. I think there were times when he was right on the money with insights that were unpopular with most progressives at the time. He had the genius to see some things clearly long before others could, and the courage to shout his insights from the roof tops. I don't think he was always right. I do think his initial critiques of the Soviet System, his belief in and dedication to the goal of true workers' self-management, and his contributions regarding how councils of workers could coordinate and plan their inter related activities without resort to markets were truly ingenius and will withstand the only test that matters -- the test of time.
Re: DOLLARS * SENSE BOOKS, EXHIBIT BOOTH
Hi Marc. I'll ask Jesse to mail me a copy of the environmental reader, the macro reader, and the progressive reader when he gets back to Boston. I'll give him a check and tell him to fill in the right amount. I'm pretty sure I can use the environmental reader in my environmental economics course this semester.
Re: utopia and the state
Dave Markland notes: The Parecon model "works" independantly of the state (if there is one) and independently of many aspects of society. Mix 'n match yer favorite political forms alongside a parecon. Here and now very little works independently of the state. I am not versed in parecon, but I have serious doubts to claims of models -- present or future -- that are somehow have autonomy vis a vis the state, culture, etc. Especially when we start to grapple with the way states are in the business of producing governable subjects, citizens, consumers. But do we want to get into that? That is, re-thinking the capitalist state as permanent cultural revolution (my current [borrowed, of course] notion of things)? If the answer is affirmative, I have some notes on recent "rethinking the state" lit. (Corrigan and Sayer, Nugent, Abrams, etc.) I could share. But maybe I'm missing some email irony here. Claiming "mix 'n I've been gone for ten days, so if I've missed important messages on utopia, I'm sorry. I can say that parecon, as it is known on the left on line bulletin board -- or participatory economics, or decentralized planning, as its been called at other times and places -- was simply an attempt to present a coherent, concrete way of going about coordinating the interrelated economic activities of groups of workers and consumers without resort to either totalitarian central planning or markets. The idea was to design a system that would afford workers and consumers decision making input in proportion to the degree they were affected by economic decisions -- or what we call self-management -- lead to equitable and efficient outcomes, and stimulate solidarity rather than stir up fear and animosity between participants in the economy as markets inevitably do. We never beleived that a participatory economy could come into existence nor survive without compatible transformations of what we call the political, kinship, and community spheres of social life. However, it is hard to talk about everything all at once. And some people have greater expertise in some areas than others. So we tried to present a concrete and therefore discussable version of an economic system that would promote self-management, equity, efficiency and solidarity assuming that many others would participate in that intellectual task, and that many others would lead and participate in similar projects trying to think through what desirable political, kinship, and cultural systems would look like. In particular, we have always been strong believers that since we are the same people who participate in all spheres of social life there are strong connections between what kinds of values, relationships, and behavior patterns are required or discouraged in different areas of our social lives. So failure to discuss compatible political -- or any other kind of arrangements -- with a participatory economy is not due to either a belief that these issues are separable, or that the economic sphere is more important, for that matter. We just thought we had greater expertise and therefore insight in one area than the others.
Re: utopias (II)
James Devine wrote: 1) on "private" property's abolition: I think that the point of socialism is to replace "private" property with _responsibility_. "Private" property isn't really private: owning it gives one the right to impose a lot of costs on other people and on nature, power without proportional responsibility; owning enough of it gives one the ability to appropriate surplus-value. With socialism, the point is to get responsibility in line with power. Responsibility would be to the democratic assemblage of all of society or to society's delegates. Responsibility -- unlike property -- is temporary (and one can't pass it down to one's children). The responsibility held by society's delegates is similarly temporary. I couldn't agree more with this. The issue is decision making authority rather than ownership which is a red herring. 2) on the free-rider problem: as far as I can tell, there are only three ways to deal with the free-rider problem. One is state enforcement, familiar from econ. textbooks. Another is tradition, custom, combined with a less-than-individualistic attitude on the part of people, a sense of social responsibility. The third, usually or always ignored in textbooks, is also combined with people having a sense of social responsibility: grass-roots (extrastatal) democracy. Socialism would emphasize the last, though it's going to be hard to get rid of the first. Custom seems on its way out (slowly) as capitalism abhors tradition. It is true that the spread of markes obliterates traditional solutions -- which is one thing wrong with markets. But there are "modern" solutions to free rider problems. As a matter of fact, the feature of participatory planning that has federations of consumers "bidding" at the same time and under the same conditions for public goods as individuals "bid" for private goods eliminates the free rider problem for public good provision. Solving free rider problems in private property market contexts IS difficult. Solving the problem in other contexts is not necessarily such an insuperable obstacle. 3) I don't think we can leave important issues of socialism to criminologists and legal theorists. The lines between social-science disciplines are largely artificial. Doesn't anyone know and good radical criminologists. We have a group of lawyers -- gasp -- in the AU law school who are radical law theorists. They have a code word for themselves, like we have "political economist" which I can't remember. Jamin Raskin, Mark Hagar, et. al. I just wanted to defer to these guys who are so much more familiar with the criminal mind than I.
Re: utopia and the state
Dave Markland wrote: regarding the parecon model. It seems to me that Albert and Hahnel have simply thought through the process of democratizing an economy; the parecon model has several features which, though I suspect they would be unnecessary, are simply the logical way to organize a libertarian economy in the event of various problems which may arise. eg. parecon proposes that, in order for one's job to be deemed worthwhile, it shall need a balance of workplace responsibiblity and arduousness of tasks. Thus, in any workplace there will be an explicit evaluation of all tasks s to their desirability. One will need to perform shitty and glamorous jobs. Now, it seems to me that such an explicit feature would only be necesary if all workers agreed on what these good and bad tasks are. From my experience there are some people in every workplace who like what I would call the shitty tasks for whatever reason. Thus this feature of a parecon may rarely be utilized. I concur with this interpretation of what Mike and I were trying to do, including the observation that there might be parts of what we proposed that others might well disagree with -- such as balanced job complexes -- that do not mean we would disagree about other parts -- such as participatory planning procedures or payment according to sacrifice or effort rather than the value of one's contribution. To briefly clarify the idea behind balancing job complexes: First, we proposed balancing the tasks grouped into jobs in two different ways for two different purposes. Balancing for empowerment was suggested to keep formally equal rights to participate in workplace decision making from becoming a kind of dead letter. If some go to meetings and evaluate business alternatives and options all day every day while others sweep floors all the time they will hardly have effectively equal opportunity to affect economic decisions in their workplace even if they each have exactly one vote in the workers council. That's the problem. Our solution was to suggest that there be a serious attempt to make sure that all engaged in some tasks we called "empowering" and the tasks that do little to empower one be shared around. We also proposed balancing job complexes for desirability. Here the goal was not to advance the cause of self-management, but the cause of economic justice. Dilemma: How can it be fair if some people's work lives are much less desirable than the work lives of others? First of all, this is logically separable from balancing for empowerment. And one could consider the possibility of achieving overall economic justice for those with less desirable jobs by giving them greater consumption rights. We opted for the more direct approach. As for how they could be balanced for desirability, actually that is quite simple. A committee makes up the complexes -- imperfectly. But since everyone is free to bid on any job complexes for which they technically qualify, if they are not balanced for desirability there will be long applicant lists for some and short ones for others. That information tells the job balancing committee how to adjust tasks and times to get closer to equal desirability. Of course, what any two people will think is equally desirable will not be the same. So once the jobs are balanced for desirability -- in that usual economists' average sense -- you and I will bid on the ones that meet our own peculiar preferences. I mowed the grass in my family because I enjoyed the meticulous monotony of the nice even rows and sense of steady progress. My son opted for dusting. Each to his own.
Re: Dilbert
Sid Shniad wrote: I heard the author of Dilbert interviewed on national CBC radio a while back. The guy's a reactionary individualist whose perspective is a kind of with it cynicism about anything social (i.e. unions, politics, etc.) I think that too many people embrace his stuff without reading between the (fairly prominent) lines. Sid Shniad From: valis [EMAIL PROTECTED] === Norman Solomon, reachable at [EMAIL PROTECTED], is a writer dedicated to alerting us about the perverse relationship between politics and public language, a realm now almost wholly taken up by the covert combat of spin doctors. . . . I like Solomon's work and haven't read his book, but from your post it sounds like much ado about nothing. I follow Dilbert religiously and never got the impression that it was in great part supposed to be about corporate downsizing. Dilbert is funny because it's about the idiocy of bureaucratic culture in general and the natural follies people who happen to be in a corporate/technical environment. Note that most Dilbert strips could be about workers in a public agency, a non-profit, or, for that matter, a progressive think tank. What a colossal waste of time to get diverted by this. Next we'll have, 'why television cop shows aren't revolutionary art.' Oh wait. We already did that. MBS === Max B. SawickyEconomic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax)Washington, DC 20036 http://tap.epn.org/sawicky Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute other than this writer. === There is a small book that gives a left critique of Dilbert and Adams. I have looked through it but do not remember the author. I know that Dollars and Sense gives it away to people who donate, I think, more than $60 to DS.
Re: U.S. income gaps
Doug Henwood wrote: Robin Hahnel wrote: Ginis among men, and ginis among women -- yes. But that just tells us if something -- wages, income, wealth, whatever -- is more or less unequal among men or women. What would a gini between men and women mean? Nothing I think. I meant the former, gini by sex. Ginis between mf we have already, no? No, we don't have what I think you are imagining. There is no such thing as a gini between mf. gini's are measures of inequality among a large group of people -- or a measure of overall inequality in a large population of some sort. We have differences in mean earnings for all men and all women, and we can talk about the statistical significance of those differences. But that is a ratio of one average to another average. Comparing a gini for income among all males with the gini for incomes among all females would tell you whether there is more inequality of income among males or females -- which might be of some interest for some reason, but I doubt that was what you were interested in.
Re: U.S. income gaps
Doug Henwood wrote: Has anyone ever done gender Ginis? Doug Ginis among men, and ginis among women -- yes. But that just tells us if something -- wages, income, wealth, whatever -- is more or less unequal among men or women. What would a gini between men and women mean? Nothing I think. Doug, don't ask me where to find them. It's not my field.
Re: teamsters
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does anyone out there understand the legal issues in the Teamsters election scandal? How are union elections supposed to be financed, if not from union funds? Or is the issue that Carey's team diverted more than they were supposed to? And where did Hoffa's money come from? ellen Frank The details of the case are more complicated, but I concur with Max's brief response. I would only clarify that the idea is candidates for union office are supposed to raise money from teamsters members who support their candidacy, but incumbents are not supposed to use union dues to finance campaigns against challengers. Also, federal law bars employers from contributing to campaigns for union offices. The charges against the Carey campaign were that they effectively used union dues to finance Carey's re-election campaign by: (1) making agreements to give Teamster union money to liberal causes -- OK in itself -- in exchange for promises of donations from those same liberal ogranizations to the Carey campaign -- not OK; (2) awarding Teamster contracts to do teamster work, like phonings and mailings -- OK in itself -- in exchange for donations to the Carey campaign -- not OK; and (3) avoiding the ban on receiving donations from employers by accepting donations from the wealthy wife of an employer. I guess is running past "I would only clarify" ... but Apparently Hoffa outspent Carey and some suspect he did not raise all he spent from teamster union supporters. I suspect that he comes from a long line of "politicians" who have learned the hard way how to conduct their financial affairs carefully and undetectably under the scrutiny of a zealous, if not vindictive federal government. Hence, the difficulty of the Carey people to collect evidence of Hoffa wrong doing sufficient, to this point, to have Hoffa banned from running as well. The Carey people were the new guys on the block, and apparently babes in the woods in this kind of business.
Re: Question
Doug Henwood wrote: Robin Hahnel wrote: June 1997 article by Peter Gottschalk and Timothy Smeeding "Cross-National Comparisons of Earnings and Income Inequality." Where? Doug Sorry. Journal of Economic Literature, JEL, pp. 633-681.
Re: Question
Peter Bohmer wrote: Is there a recent book you would recommend as a good recent left analysis on the causes of the growing inequality of income and wealth in the United States for an undergraduate program in political eocnomy. Thanks, peter Bohmer Not for your students, but for you, look at the June 1997 article by Peter Gottschalk and Timothy Smeeding "Cross-National Comparisons of Earnings and Income Inequality." It is by no means radical, but chuck full of data and with excellent references on the debate concerning the relative importance of different casues -- which he lists as: changes in industrial structure, increased foreign trade, increased immigration, skill-based technical changes, and the decline in institutions that limit the market such as the fall in the real minimum wage and the decline in unionization.
Re: U.S. income gaps
Doug Henwood wrote: I've been reviewing the 1996 Census Bureau income reports, and I've noticed that that the gaps between male and female incomes continue to narrow, both because of fall in men's real incomes and rises in women's. For example, for all persons with income, women's were 53.8% of men's in 1996, up from 49.6% in 1990, 39.3% in 1980, and 33.5% in 1970. At the same time, the number of women with income has risen to the point where it exceeds the number of men, a substantial gap (of around 20 percentage points) in the early 1970s. For year-round, full-time workers, women's incomes have risen - from 59.2% of men's in 1970, to 60.5% in 1980, to 71.1% in 1990, to an all-time high of 74.3% in 1996. Again, the number of such women has also risen dramatically. Men's real incomes took sharp hits during the 1989-92 slump, falling 9.4%, while women's incomes rose 1.9%. During the subsequent expansion, women's incomes have grown 6.0%, while men's grew 5.3%. Since the 1989 household income peak, male workers' incomes have fallen 4.7%, while women's have risen 7.9%; for year-round, full-time workers, the numbers are -6.7% and +7.2% respectively, while the number of female YRFT workers has grown at twice the rate of males. Any comments on why this has been happening and/or what it means? Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html Sorry. Journal of Economic Literature, JEL, June 1997, Gottschalk and Smeeding pp. 633-681.
[PEN-L:12277] Re: Comp.Econ.Sys. course bibliography
Eric A. Schutz wrote: I have just updated a bibliography on socialist economics that I sent out to pen-l'ers in 1991, suitable for use in courses on, e.g., Comp. Econ. Sys. I'll be happy to e-mail the new version (about 200-titles) to pen-l'ers on request. Cheers -- Eric Schutz Please email me a copy of your syllabus. I'd be most interested.
[PEN-L:11521] Re: Home Mortgage Deduction
I'd be very interested in your paper on housing and the home mortgage interest deduction if you could send it to me at the Department of Economics American University, Washington DC 20016. It sounds excellent.
[PEN-L:11524] Re: mortgage interest deduction
I remember when I was able to deduct all interest payments from my income before calculating my tax liability: credit card interest, consumer loan interest, personal loan, student loan, as well as mortgage interest. Ah -- those were the good old days! Then only home mortgage interest was deductible -- I'm guessing but I think this change was in the early 80s. After which, I remember home equity loans became a big deal not only because the suburban real estate market had done very well in many areas so people had tens of thousands of dollars in equity not necessarily because they had paid off large amounts of the mortgage but because their house's market value had risen 10 -20% per year for a stretch of years, but because interest payments on home equity loans were still tax deductible under the home mortgage deduction rule -- a home equity loan being no more than a second mortgage. My Wash Post today says that the new tax bill will allow deductions for interest payments on student loans up to a maximum of $2500 per year. Which would be the first interest deduction to reappear along side the mortgage interest deduction as far as I know. All deductions are simply subsidies -- which can be good or bad on equity, efficiency, environmental, or cultural grounds.
[PEN-L:11404] Re: Sustainable Development, Complexity theory, and
Carla Feldpausch just completed her PHD thesis,"The Political Economy of Chaos: Multiple Equilibria and Fractal Basin Boundaries in a Nonlinear Envir onmental Economy" with Walter Park (American University), Barkley Rosser (James Madison Univerity), and Robert Blecker (American University) this past Spring, 1997. You can contact her at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11405] Re: Sustainable Development, Complexity theory,
What time is Costanza's brown bag at EPI? I'd like to come.
[PEN-L:10927] Re: juneteenth?
June 19th 1865, I believe, is the day slaves were freed in Texas -- which was in a more than usually ambiguous status during and right after the Civil War. I wonder if that makes Texas the last place on earth to have abolished slavery? Brazil? There is a celebration of June teenth in Anacostia, a particularly race conscious community in Washington DC every year.
[PEN-L:10551] Re: Labor films
I've been off line, but if nobody mentioned Norma Rae starring Sally Fields, I liked that as a labor film especially as it portrays the character of a union organizer and a local activist (Sally Fields) very well. Surprisingly, I think it was more of a Hollywood film than others such as Matewan.
[PEN-L:10480] Re: Labor films
Matewan is a great labor movie.
[PEN-L:10281] Re: planning and democracy
An observation about "planning" that may, or may not be useful: A plan is, by definition a single outcome we all will live with. If one wants to add the adjective "central" to plan in recognition of this reality, I suppose that's OK. But the general equilibrium of a market economy is also a single outcome we all will live with, and few feel compelled to refer to this outcome as a "central general equilibrium." Regarding plans the relevant issues are: 1) Who makes them, how? 2) Is there any reason to believe that the procedure for arriving at the plan will generate a feasible outcome? And specifically under what conditions would the procedure do so, or fail to do so? 3) Is there any reason to believe the particular planning procedure being analyzed would yield an efficient plan -- defined as a Pareto optimal plan works for me, but if one had a different definition of efficiency then that could be used here as well. 4) Is there any reason to believe the particular planning procedure being analyzed would yield an equitable outcome or plan -- defined as compensation according to effort or personal sacrifice works for me, but if one had a different conception of equity that could be used here as well. I believe the adjective "central" is most usefully used to characterize the nature of the planning procedure -- which falls under #1, namely who comes up with the plan, how. The old Soviet procedure that went under the title of "material balances" in my opinion deserved the lable "central planning" as well because of who drew up the plan and how it was drawn up. Most criticisms of material balances in the planning literature focused on its inefficiencies rather than its anti-democratic characteristics -- namely its exclusion from participation the workers who would carry out the plan and the consumers who who benefit (or not) from the results of the plan. I have argued that the inefficiencies of material balances are technically fixable but that the anti-democratic tendencies of this genre of planning procedure are not. Now, however there are at least two coherent planning procedures deserving the adjective "democratic" or "decentralized" or "popular" or "participatory" that are available for scrutiny and criticism. Regardless of their other merits or liabilities they deserve the above adjectives because of who is involved in planning and how they are involved. Workers and consumers, councils of workers and consumers, and federations of workers and consumers are the groups who DO the planning in these procedures -- not an elite of central planners operating under instructions from a political elite who define the economic goals the planners are supposed to figure out how to achieve. See Pat Devine's system of "negotiated coordination" in Deocracy and Economic Planning, Westview 1988, Part IV and Albert and Hahnel, Political Economy of Participatory Economics, Princeton, 1991, chapters 4 and 5 in particular for participatory planning procedures.
[PEN-L:10280] Re: planning and democracy
Max: You could profitably look at either Pat Devine's model of democratic planning he calls negotiated coordination (Democratic Planning, Westview 1988) or Mike Albert and my model of participatory planning (The Political Economy of Participatory Economics, Princeton, 1991). Both treatments deal with most of the "impossibility theorem" red-herrings you have been offering in this debate. FYI every market socialist I know of these days has conceded the technical possibility of democratic or participatory planning and now objects on grounds of "too much trouble" and/or "too unfree" compared to one or another version of market socialism. But most of your objections have been answered and others no longer raise them. Hence, Lear's growing impatience.
[PEN-L:10188] Re: EU, globalization and all that
I really like Bill Rosenberg's analogy and the conclusions it suggests are quite useful in my view.
[PEN-L:10187] Re: EU, globalization and all that
I think Rosenberg's think piece is exceedingly useful and on the mark.
[PEN-L:9785] re: Environmental Economics
I second Jim Devine's message about neoclassicals and the environment in its entirety. The astounding misinterpretation of what the Coase theorem actually tells any reasonable analyst about the likelihood of environmental efficiency being achieved through voluntary and private negotiations of polluters and pollution victims is an excellent case in point. A reasonable reading of the theorem AND ITS INCREDIBLE LIST OF NECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS gives more than enough theoretical reasons for anyone who cares about the environ- ment to immediately embrace a government role!
[PEN-L:9785] re: Environmental Economics
I second Jim Devine's message about neoclassicals and the environment in its entirety. The astounding misinterpretation of what the Coase theorem actually tells any reasonable analyst about the likelihood of environmental efficiency being achieved through voluntary and private negotiations of polluters and pollution victims is an excellent case in point. A reasonable reading of the theorem AND ITS INCREDIBLE LIST OF NECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS gives more than enough theoretical reasons for anyone who cares about the environ- ment to immediately embrace a government role!
[PEN-L:9741] Re: Environmental Economics?
Mike Albert has a nice piece in the current issue of Magazine that criticizes the Mother Jones piece. The mainstream line on externalities has long been: "Serious economists have always known that external effects produce inefficiencies -- and have never claimed otherwise." But then, the infuriating thing is that mainstream economists who offer policy advice implicitly assume these external effects are minimal in both quantity and pervasiveness by ignoring them in their actual policy prescriptions. AND the self-styled "serious" mainstream theoreticians are totally silent voicing no criticisms of the presumed misuse of their theoretical models. See E,K. Hunt and Ralph D'Arge on this subject in the 1970s. They coined the phrase "invisible foot" and talked of externalities as the "Achilles Heel" of Neoclassical economics. Michael Albert and I follow their lead on this subject in "Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics" (Princeton, 1990). Michael Jacobs uses the phrase "invisble elbow" in his excellent book "Green Economics" (Pluto, 1992).
[PEN-L:9552] Re: Sabbatical Replacement
I may well know good people who are interested. Can you tell me any more about what courses they would teach and salary?
[PEN-L:9501] Re: Walras vs. Sraffa
There is a difference between what use people DO make of a theoretical framework and what use COULD BE made of a theoretical framework. And this difference is part of what fuels the Skillman/Ajit debate it seems. But it is also true that certain theoretical frameworks LEND THEMSELVES MORE READILY to certain uses than others -- and certain abuses as well. In this vein I have always appreciated the Sraffian framework for a use it lends itself to that I consider very important. Namely: Wage rates and profit rates are determined by important factors that are either absent from or disguised and buried in politically counterproductive ways in almost all uses of GE theory -- particularly in Arrow Debreu type form- ulations. Since it IS NOT THE CASE that wages and profits depend only on the relative supplies of different kinds of workers and different willingness to save relations, and on the number of buyers and sellers in different labor markets the GE "story" is very misleading as usually told. The personal characterisitcs and attitudes and group relations of employees have an effect on wages and effort levels. There is such a thing as the bargaining power between employers and employees which is influenced by a host of factors -- labor market conditions, political conditions, etc. -- but also by individual and group employee character- istics that are NON CONCEPTS in the GE framework. The usual use of the GE framework implies there is no role for those factors to play -- at least when the economy equilibrates. This is not true and debilitating. Gil can point out that there are no concepts in the Sraffian model that refer to these important factors in wage/profit determination. And he would be correct. BUT the Sraffian framework is more self-consciously limited. It screams out that something other than the analysis you are being presented goes into determining the wage/profit ratio. That anyplace on that wage profit frontier is technically possible, and where we will be, and therefore what the comodity price system will look like depends on forces that are impossible to model and analyze in the same kinds of ways. GE theory sends just the opposite message. Can GE theory be made to tell an accurate story? See, I know where you're going Gil! Well, it is probably possible. But for now I have a shorter way to tell the same story you MIGHT be able to pull out of a GE framework. Namely, a conflict theory of the firm and wage/profit determination story based on game-theory is the most important way to understand how wages and profits come to be what they are. Wealth ownership and exit options are all part of the description of the game. End of theoretical exercise 1. Once we see what wage/profit distribuition is likely we can explain the determination of relative goods prices with Sraffain theory -- focusing on the big part of the story which is cost of production rather than demand influenced factors. The Sraffian part of the story, theoretical excercise 2, is seen as the least difficult and least interesting part of the whole -- a kind of competent mopping up exercise. One last note: Different theoretical models DO lend themselves more or less readily to particular uses and abuses. The GE model probably IS a model that lends itself very easily to a de-politicization of the story about how and why the economy operates the way it does. Consumer beware there is no FDA protecting you -- although your pen-l comrades are not a bad voluntary substitute for government regulation!
[PEN-L:9485] Re: text book hell
I use and highly recommend the Dollars and Sense special issues for undergraduate teaching -- not just at the intro level. At a minimum they provide progressive perspectives on topical issues. I do not think it is a criticism of them to say they are NOT an alternative text, nor do they provide any alternative approaches to theory. They are not intended to be either.
[PEN-L:9439] Re: text book hell
It's not really for a Marxist Economic Theory class. As a matter of fact, its radical political economy but presented WITHOUT using the labor theory of value to explain exploitation and alienation or macro failures or "crises." If you'd like to see a table of contents with short descriptions of chapter contents, I'd be happy to send a copy. Just email me your snail mail address.
[PEN-L:9432] Re: text book hell
For next fall South End Press will have an introduction to political economy book -- not exactly text, but it does have some problems, ex- cercises, etc. -- intended for an intro audience -- i.e. no prior economics is assumed. I wrote it [sorry for the self-promo -- not to be confused with pomo] and the title is still up in the air. ABCs of Political Economy is the going title at SEP. I'd be happy to communicate about contents if you're interested.
[PEN-L:9338] Re: soft budget constraint
I stand corrected on the relative importance of MITI and the Ministry of Finance in the Japanese economic oligarchy. I think Rosser has better information on this than I do.
[PEN-L:9310] Re: soft budget constraint
I would like to express my agreement with Barkley Rosser's explanation of the soft budget constraint as a problem in market socialist economies where different levels of government extended credit to insolvent firms for political reasons, but as a problem that does not afflict centrally planned economies. In addition to the points Rosser has made, I might point out that since prices in centrally planned economies were in some measure arbitrary and not reflective of opportunity costs there was no REASON for central planners to conclude that firms running losses ON PAPER were necessarily socially inefficient and therefore should be shut down. Nor was there reason to conclude that firms running positive profits were necessarily operating in the social interest. But coherent central planning DOES have ways of figuring out which firms should and should not be shut down in the social interest -- which is not to say that central planners acted on this criterion. One last note of interest. A different market economy has often operated with a soft budget constraint -- Japan. Firms on good terms with MITI are often extended whatever credit they need to weather a financial crisis by comercial banks at the behest of the Bank of Japan. This means, if you were in the good graces of MITI you effectively had a soft budget constraint. Now this is not to say that MITI rewarded something other than social efficiency, nor that MITI did not extract a high price in terms of replacing management and changing corporate strategies in ex- change for bail outs. The Japanese were always surprised when the US Congress bailed out US companies who were "too big to fail" but then did not insist on requiring drastic changes in corporate management.
[PEN-L:9311] Re: Spring '92 Science and Society Editorial Dissent
Louis: You're welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed the reference I steered you to: The minority dissenting opinion in Science and Society about the terrible utopian essays their fellow board members and editor were printing. I personally think it stands as a monument to the stupidity of some practicing Marxists. It reads that way to me as much today as it did five years ago. I'm sure you find it completely persuasive and convincing. That only confirms my own opinion that it is dogmatic clap trap.
[PEN-L:9280] Re: utopianism -- final words??
My utopian badge is red and black and is polished every day by the memory of millions who have given their lives for a more just democratic economy that strengthens people's solidarity for one another.
[PEN-L:9242] Re: utopianism -- final words??
I have always embraced the label "utopian" and wear the badge proudly. I have also always criticized Marxists who rail against utopianism as wrong headed if not self-serving. I'm sure Louis wears his labels with pride.
[PEN-L:9243] Re: Slovenia
It's hard to reply briefly about "aggregation" in participatory planning. Our model (and utopian vision) is very different from small semi-autonomous eco-economies ala Gar Alperowitz or Howie Hawkins -- or the more famous Murray Bookchin. We have a large national economy model with federations of workers and consumers playing an important role in the planning process -- along with individual workers and consumers councils.
[PEN-L:9241] Re: Final thoughts on utopianism
I've been called worse by better than Comrade Proyect. I mentioned my teaching of comparative systems and visits to work with Cuban planners in an attempt to argue that, for better or worse, my utopian thinking is not totally uninformed by some study and familiarity with the history of "once existing socialism." If that triggered Louis' anti- academic reflex, so be it. For what its worth, the editorial board of Science and Society went through this -- I must say tiresome -- debate over the sins of utopian thinking before finally publishing their issue in 1992 on the Future of Socialism. Poor David Laibman had to struggle with his editorial board for 6 months to get them to agree to such an issue, and even then a dissenting minority of the board published a letter in the issue in objection. I have seen nothing in Louis or other anti-utopian postings on penl recently that improves upon that expression of the errors of utopian thinking -- with which I completely disagreed.
[PEN-L:9132] Re: utopianism
Michael Albert and I developed our utopian model of a participatory economy in large part in response to our historical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet, Chinese, Yugoslavian, and Cuban experiences. We wrote about those experiences for 2/3 of a book -- Socialism Today and Tomorrow (SEP 1981) -- before offering any utopian ideas for 1/3 of the same book. I have taught comparative socialism for over 20 years and visited Cuba 3 times. I have spent 6 weeks in work with Cuban planners at JUCEPLAN. My utopian ideas are NOT UNBASED in 20th century real world experiences. Louis, you talk too often before you know of what you speak.
[PEN-L:9131] Re: utopianism
Here! Here! Let's here it for a Jim Devine's defense of utopian thinking. And, I'd like to add that I consider my recent reading of Bellamy's Equality -- his lesser known but more complete work on utopianism -- and William Morris' News from Nowwhere -- a libertarian response to what Morris considered to be Bellamy's "too technocratic" utopianism -- to be among the more fruitful things I've read over the past decade.
[PEN-L:9041] Re: more market socialism
If it's of any help to anyone, I can state my position on markets very simply: Regarding markets I'm an abolitionist but not a fool. By which I mean: (1) Markets play NO part in an economy that I consider desirable. [Desirable can be spelled out at great length but I believe markets are inherently incompatible with economic justice, efficiency, environmental sustainability, and meaningful economic democracy. They also have highly undesirable effects on human development. So, I am for the abolition of markets and their replace- ment by participatory planning just like pre-Civil war abolitionists were for the abolition of slavery and free and equal political rights for African Americans. (2) Leaving some economic decisions to the market place is a hell of a lot more damaging than leaving others to the market place. So, there is a sensible progression in which decisions we should work to take out of the market place and which decisions we can best tolerate leaving to the market place for the time being. In other words, we are not going to eliminate all markets in the near future. Given that (sad) reality, a sensible transition program to a desirable economy must accept the existence of some markets for some period of time. Usually the market relations most sensible to criticize and work to replace, constrain, or reform are the ones that cause the most damage and/or the ones whose consequences people are most upset with. That does amount to tolerating market relations in other areas. But tolerating from a programatic point of view is not the same as praising the performance of markets in these areas, or even sanctioning them. Whether or not market socialism -- and I don't mean Roemeresque, managerial, technocratic, corporatist, coupon market "socialism," I mean Yugoslav style workers self-managed market "socialism" -- is a sensible part of a transition program to a marketless and desirable economy is worth debating. I don't think the answer is clearly yes or no. I see at least two problems, one already mentioned in recent postings. (1) If capitalists have every reason to fight as viciously to oppose market socialism as a truly desirable economy and workers/consumers have less reason to fight as hard to win market socialism than a more desirable replacement for capitalism, why is it such a great transition program? This is a political problem. (3) Since many of the economic ills we must mobilize people in "reform" campaigns to struggle against are the result of market relations, how can effective reform campaigns embrace market socialism as a desirable economic system? These are at least two questions I would like to see compelling answers to before embracing market socialism as a transition strategy to a truly desirable economy.
[PEN-L:8841] Re: wealth distribution query
You need to get Eddie Wolff's book on Wealth published by the 20th Century Fund. I borrowed data from that source and put it in "The Political Economy of Economic Justice" (McGraw Hill 1996) available from them for $4.50. Also See the latest EPI version of the State of Working America and The New Field Guide to the US Economy from the Center for Popular Economics.
[PEN-L:8807] Re: PRAISE FOR REAL WORLD BOOKS
As textbooks become more conservative and less topical I find that Dollars and Sense readers are more useful than ever in my undergraduate classes. Dollars and Sense has done a valuable service in keeping them jargon-free, up to date, and inexpensive -- as well as consistently and thoughtfully progressive. I recommend them highly. Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics American University Washington DC 20016 202-885-2712 202-885-3790 fax Feel free to edit or amend as you see fit without further consultation.
[PEN-L:8806] Re: accounting of gov. payrolls?
If you're using Schiller's text, I hope you're getting "Political Economy and Social Justice" for free for your students. If you order the module along with the text it comes wrapped with the text at no extra cost to the students. You need supplemental material on income and wealth distribution, exploitation and alienation and economic justice to go along with that text because Schiller does very little -- not that any other intro text does more.
[PEN-L:8748] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
I agree with Max that an excellent argument for lower interest rates is that it is a humongous budget balancer -- a freebee so to speak. Since much of today's debt is the result of tax cuts for the rich and spending the Soviet Union into bankrupcy -- two highly successful Reagan period reactionary policies, I take great offense that now servicing the debt THOSE lousy policies generated takes as much of my tax dollar as all social programs together -- almost. (debt service 15%; all social programs 18%; military 21% ugh. Sometimes what is most wrong in the world, the really wildly "odd" stuff, is intellecutually quite "transparent."
[PEN-L:8747] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
On what percent of what I pay to the Feds goes to military and debt service. I was wrong, but it does depend on what you count -- particularly social security taxes. I was thinking about my federal income tax excluding my social security tax, since that is how we fill out our 1040s. In the back of my copy of this years 1040 there are two pie charts for the 1995 tax year. Net interest on the debt is 15% and defense is 21% of Federal government outlays. But in that pie social security, medicarte and other retirement are 36% -- and my FICA and Medicare more than pays for that. So if we exclude the 36% social security/medicare payments that leaves: 2% on law enforcement; 18% on social programs; 8% on physical, uman and community development; 15% net interest on the debt; and 21% on national defense. That makes 15% + 21% = 36% of 64% which is over half. My point is that almost 100% of that half I would like not to have my Federal income taxes being spent on.
[PEN-L:8746] Re: market socialism, income tied to labor?
Wages don't have to be equal to marginal revenue products. And since paying people their marginal revenue products is often very unfair -- Michael Jordan gets $20 million a year and a nursery school teacher gets $20 a year -- an equitable economy requires us NOT to pay according to MRP. But, for a market system to be efficient goods, and inputs for making goods, need to be priced according to their opportunity costs. The opportunity costs of different kinds of labor IS precisely their different MRPs. Otherwise users will over and under use different kinds of scarce labor resources that they have to pay less or more respectively than their MRPs. The answer, of course is to charge users of labor according to their opportunity costs -- that is their different MRPs -- but to pay people according to effort, or personal sacrifice since that is what is fair and equitable. It is possible to do this in a planned economy -- and we do it in participatory planning -- but I know of no competent economists who has argued that it is possible to do this in a market economy.
[PEN-L:8721] Re: market socialism, planned socialism
I completely agree with the healthiness and usefulness of the thought expressed by Harry Cleaver as: "We've just GOT to be able to do better than this" --- "this" being capitalism.
[PEN-L:8723] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
While one might hope that relative wages in a workers' managed market socialism would be set according to some criterion other than marginal revenue products -- as Rosser implies they would/could be -- I know of no analyst of such a system who does not conclude that the labor market in such a system would function in a way to generate marginal revenue product wages PLUS perhaps an equal share of after nonlabor and labor cost profits. Domar, Ward, Horvat, Vaneck, etc. David Schweickart seems to assume other wise presumably because he would like to believe otherwise. But he's a philosopher not an economist, for god's sake. We economists seem to know better.
[PEN-L:8720] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
I was only remarking that in central planning wage rates do not have to be equal to marginal revenue products in order to achieve static efficiency. In market socialism, it seems to me they do. And that includes employee managed market socialism a la Vaneck. I know that wage rates were not fair in the old SU, and that wage inequalities increased under Stalin in the 30s -- contrary to Gorbachev's inaccurate characterization of Stalin as a "leveler." More to the point, I think wages should be according to what I call effort, or personal sacrifice in either training for or carrying out one's economic duties. Things that require more effort, in this sense are working more hours, working at dangerous tasks, boring tasks, stressful tasks, training for more hours -- when others get leisure time instead, not when others are working instead. If we agree that this is a fair system of wages, and I think that's what 19th century socialist visionaries and 20th century socialist activists mostly had in mind, then the question is how can we arrange for such a system of payment without creating allocative and/or motivational inefficiencies.
[PEN-L:8719] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
The market teaches people that they DESERVE to get in accord with the market determined value of their contribution. The market teaches people to think that way every day -- just ask my students! But progressive taxation requires one to think that to each according to the market value of his or her contribution is NOT fair. That this outcome is sometimes highly inequitable and not really the proper measure of what is equitable at all. This problem will not disappear even should people get "better service for their tax dollar" -- although it wouldn't hurt to improve the efficiency of public spending. I'd start, of course, with not spending two thirds of my federal taxes on the military and debt service.
[PEN-L:8718] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
I agree with PBurns that central planning does not necessarily solve external effect inefficiencies. What is required is for normal procedures to correctly signal social costs and benefits. Trying to correct after the fact is both intellectually and politically daunting -- as in, it won't happen so don't expect it, anymore in market socialism than capitalism. Mike Albert and I tried to take this issue seriously in our review of the literature on incentive compatible mechanisms in Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics but more importantly in the design and incentives inherent in the participatory planning system we proposed. We argued the key was to make it as easy to express social as private preferences or demands, including desires for pollution reduction and environmental benefits. And to do this in a way in which there are not perverse incentives to misrepre- sent actual preferences. We set up the planning process so that collectives affected by what are external effects in market systems would register their preferences for social goods or environmental benefits without any reason to exaggerate or underestimate their true desires all as part of the same process in which individual groups of workers and consumers registered their desires. This is why we believe that the indicative prices that result from our socially nested system of participatory planning will far more accurately incorrporate all the effects that are ignored and external to market based desision making. I can't spell it out in more detail in an email. Chapter 5 in The Political Economy of Participatory Economics, Princeton 1991 does though.
[PEN-L:8624] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
Barkley, are you going to use labor markets? If so, you will get highly unequal labor incomes that are also quite inequitable. Michael Jordan will get $20 million per year and a nursery school teacher will get $20 thousand. If you don't permit labor markets to determine labor income, they you will have wage rates that certainly do NOT represent marginal revenue products and accurate social opportunity costs. But then the labor component of the costs of items will not reflect social opportunity costs of items. So, equity and efficiency are fundamentally at odds in market socialist economies. And no, markets do NOT provide what people want. In a trivial sense they do. If one seller of shoes is making ugly ones and another is making attractive ones, the market will pressure the former to adapt or depart. But in a much more important sense markets mis-price goods because of extensive external effects, and provide incentives for profit maximizers to externalize costs as much as it provides them incentives to improve product quality. And then there is the problem that the behavioral roles that markets force us to play are hardly the kind of lesson we hope our children learn in play school -- that is equitable cooperation -- rather than advancing our own interests at the expense of others.
[PEN-L:8627] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
For one quick referrence on externalities see E.K. Hunt and R.C. D'Arge, "On Lemmings and other Acquisitive Animals: Propositions on Consumption," Journal of Economic Issues, June 1973. For one quick illustration: One recent study of 500 consumer goods concluded that market prices diverged from social opportunity costs on average by 20% due ONLY to the market's failure to incorporate the external costs of disposal of packaging the items came in.
[PEN-L:8626] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
Is it responsible to suggest that progressive income taxes WOULD actually make labor market outcomes reasonably equitable in a market socialist economy? In labor markets people have to justify what they're paid on the basis of the value of their contribution. After doing that why will most people -- which is what it takes to pass highly progressive taxation -- decide that payment according to the value of one's contribution is not what's fair at all. That instead, 95% of Michael Jordan's labor income should be taken away from him and only 2% of a nursery school teacher's income should go to pay for public goods? And why wouldn't those with high labor market income use their greater economic wealth to buy greater political influence than ordinary citizens, and in particular use that greater political influence to block progressive tax legislation? I am aware that progressive taxation is possible -- and can be a lot more progressive than we ever had in the US. But isn't it possible that Sweden in the 1970s was about the best one can hope for regarding a progressive redistribution of income through the tax system? And I'm not willing to settle for only getting that close to economic justice.
[PEN-L:8595] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, ut
I have been too busy to respond to recent postings on market "socialism" but would like to say that one reason I reject market socialism as my vision of a desirable economy is that it does NOT help us develop our capacities for solidarity and cooperation, but rather whets our invidious and acquisitive "instincts" in Veblen's old terms. In other words, it is destructive, rather than constructive of a "socialist" ideology -- though I no longer care whether we use the word "socialist" to stand for economic democracy, equity, solidarity, and conscious cooperation.
[PEN-L:8369] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, utopian
In part we ARE an "atomized, stressed, and distracted" society precisely BECAUSE we are obstructed from having significant influence over the decisions that most affect us -- economic and political decisions in particular in the 1990s.
[PEN-L:8371] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, utopian
Further thoughts on Justin Schwartz's concern that participatory economies lead to a dictorship of the sociable: Most people would be surprised to discover that participation in participatory planning takes place almost exclusively through a kind of voting that does NOT entail attending meetings and taking part in long discussions. The procedure of proposal, counter proposal, approve, disapprove is all done without attending meetings. Where time is required is cable TV type debates with "experts" presenting their views on what ARE the predictable consequences of new products, technologies, and investment priorties that are provided for people in general, but representatives of federations in particular, to inform themselves before the vote. The problem here, admittedly, is that some will tune in and others will not. Some will process this information more intelligently than others before they vote also. I don't know what can be done about either of these unfortunate results. Ultilmately voting is done according to degree effected. Unfortunately democracy rules out any attempt to weigh some votes more because someone deems them better informed.
[PEN-L:8370] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, utopian
This is only intended as a partial answer to Justin Schwartz's thoughtful question. You're right. There is a fundamental dilemma that cannot be ducked: If people are free not to participate even when given effectively equal opportunities to do so -- and I distinguish "effectively" from "formally" and believe that is one big difference between market socialist models and our model -- then those who do participate will have more decison making input. The alternative of forcing all to participate is, however, worse and ultimately even more alienating. I once answered Nancy Folbre's warning that we would end up with "the dictatorship of the sociable": Better the dictatorship of the sociable -- under conditions where they cannot gain material advantage for themselves -- than the dictatorship of the wealthy (capitalism), the dictatorship of the well educated (what market socialism will reduce to), or the dictatorship of the politically powerful (Communism). I was being only slightly facecious. I have never imagined that a participatory economy would arrive without equally revolutionary and compatible transformations in other areas of social life -- including parenting and child rearing. So not only will there be none who cannot participate because they are too busy surviving economically while others are a leisure class with full time to dominate meetings, parents will be largely relieved of their extra time burdens. I personally don't think this should be entirely the case, but see no problem with people going through 10 to 15 years of their lives with greater parental duties and consequently less time for economic meetings. In both macro institutions -- like participatory planning -- and micro institutions like workers and consumers councils there are better and worse ways to organize equitable cooperative decision making. Debates about such procedures should be at the top of progressive economists think/research agendas -- though they seldom are. Hasta la Victoria Siempre
[PEN-L:8337] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, utopian
The system we call participatory planning bears no resemblance to one long student council meeting. Like any economic model that purports to be "worker managed" we provide full opportunities for workers to participate in decisions about what they will make and how they will make it. We also provide consumers with opportunities to participate in decisions regarding the different kinds of public goods they will, or will not enjoy -- as well as decision making authority over their individual consumption. The principle innovation of participatory planning is that it ALSO provides ways for ordinary people -- workers and consumers -- to participate in the critical decisions about investments and new products that neither market nor central planning procedures can do -- WITHOUT requiring people to go to long contentious, detailed filled meetings. Incidently, I agree that Folbre has expressed the view above, but I never have seen her phrase it as you put it -- like a student council meeting. She has warned of the "dictatorship of the sociable" and the "let's not piss anyone off syndrome."
[PEN-L:8330] Re: market socialism, planned socialism, utopian
WhileB. Rosser is correct that many advocates of socialist planning do NOT address the issue of what classes might or might not develop, and do NOT explain HOW workers (and consumers) would exactly participate in the planning process; that is NOT true of either Pat Devine whose book and articles on the subject of democratic planning deal extensively and in great detail with these two critical issues; nor is it true of the work that I have published with Michael Albert on "participatory planning." Devine, Albert and I were largely motivated by the lack of concrete attention to these issues by many advocates of democratic planning and opponents of market "socialism." Of course, our arguments may be ill-founded, but they are there for any who care to consider them and respond.
[PEN-L:7836] Re: endogenous tastes
Regarding the implications of endogenous preferences for normative economics, what parts of traditional welfare economics does, and does not "go out the window" is the subject of a long, painstaking treatise titled: Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics, by Hahnel and Albert, Princeton Univ Press, 1990. Have fun.
