Doug Henwood wrote: > The point was to refute Mark's rather odd > pastoral take on Chilean agri- and aquaculture, which seems to be related > to his rather odd but enthusiastic recent participation in American > triumphalism. No, Doug. Only one question matters: how to conduct People's War. >Isn't it also important to point out, in a time when The > Market is revered and Planning is dismissed without a moment's > consideration, that some kinds of planning can actually work? I know it's > capitalist planning, I know it's historically contingent and all that, and > I know all its corruption and destructiveness, but still... But still WHAT? Planning has always been the essence of capitalism. Stalin ABANDONED planning after 1929 (if by socialist planning is meant an ALTERNATIVE to capitalism). This event took the form of a debate between the Teleologists and the Stochastics (I guess the latter includes Leontiev). Stalin settled the debate by shooting the teleologists, and believe me, he had a POINT: war was breaking out. After that, Soviet planning took a strictly capitalist form, albeit perhaps with different intent. In fact all capitalist planning is (a)technically and socially inclusive and (b) stochastic. Teleological planning tends to be anarchic and utopian, per contra. Stalin's plans were objectively all about how to increase the productivity of Soviet labour (for his 50th birthday Gosplan announced that in 1929 Soviet labour productivity increased more than US labour productivity). This means that the central objective of Soviet PLANNING was reintegration into the world MARKET. So there is not much to choose between planning Henwood-style and planning Stalin-style. Either it is going to be ineffective, or draconian. In either case, it debouches into reformist preoccupations with living standards, aka living space per square metre, dishwashers per capita etc. And then it comes back to the world market, globalonism etc. Then the stochasm takes over again, accumulation runs rampant and we get depressions and wars. That is why there is no alternative, historically speaking, between capitalism or ecocidal war on the one hand, and socialism or barbarism on the other. > Say, by some unforseen miracle, the world political environment changes, > and some revolutionary or "progressive" regimes actually take power in some > important countries. Why say that? It is clearly not going to happen again, ever. > Say, for example, that Lula became president of > Brazil, or the PCP toppled Fujimori. Well, there, see what I mean? Even the PCP don't believe this, and they are fighting and dying. > What do you adivse such regimes do? > ... All the left anti-communists, local and foreign, who were blowing > hard during the cold war didn't have a clue what to do when the USSR > fell either, leaving a perfectly clear field for the IMF. Everything you said is logical till now (you just didn't follow out the logic, as usual). But to say none of us had any answers is bizarrely wrong. ALL of us, more or less,with a few honourable exceptions, and they can go right now and get their wintergreen -- ALL of us, including YOU, know perfectly well what needs to happen and what WILL happen. Capitalism and the human population CANNOT grow forever at 2% p.a. and cannot NOT, so a demarche is inevitable. You just have to have the balls to look it in the eye and KNOW WHAT YOU MUST DO. > So I think it's pretty > important to compare the experiences of Latin America and Southeast Asia - > not because those are the only available poles of a Hobson's choice, but > because they're real world experiences that we can learn from. Yeah? How? Mark
