I wanted to come back to this major theme, which Mark posted some time ago.
It is the sort of extract I save to read later.
Generally I agree that the question of individualistic intellectual
property rights has now become one of the most central questions of
capitalism, within states and internationally.
I wanted however to comment on the passage about Adam Smith, below.
At 10:19 17/03/01 +0000, you wrote:
>Michael Perelman is a longtime student of that complex of questions which
>goes under the heading of science policy, intellectual property rights, and
>the social relations and processes of science and technology. Science is a
>mass organised activity at the heart of large-scale production and is crucial
>to capitalism's future. It has alwasy been a central concern for revolutionary
>political theory and the Marxian analysis iof capitalist crisis. Michael
>Perelman is completing a major work on the subject, and here are two draft
>chapters from key concluding sections of the work.
>
>
>Perelman believes "that the current regime of excessively strong intellectual
>property rights undermines science, corrodes the university environment,
>creates an explosion of litigation, and warps the economy, especially by
>accentuating the maldistribution of income.
> The Law of Unintended Consequences
>
>Today, trust in the efficacy of Adam Smith's invisible hand has become an
>article of faith for many economists.
> Smith proposed that individual people seeking their own advantage
> create
>outcomes quite unlike what they had intended. Unfortunately, economists,
>following in this tradition, unquestionably accept that in a competitive
>market the result will be efficient without giving much consideration to the
>special conditions that must hold for that theory to have any validity.
> For example, Smith's theory assumes away behaviors that can
> affect other
>people, except through the operation of the price system. Consequently, in a
>Smithian world, firms do not emit pollution that affects people in any way.
>Nor do scientists perform research that affects the value of what other
>scientists are doing. In a Smithian world, either no long-lived capital goods
>exist or, if they do, then investors have sufficient information about the
>future to allow them to invest efficiently. Finally, public goods do not
>exist in the context of Adam Smith's economic theory.
I read these comments as really a criticism of how Adam Smith's theory has
been used in recent decades rather than a full interpretation of his ideas
in the context of the time.
My understanding is that Adam Smith's economic ideas absolutely assumed,
unlike Mrs Thatcher, the existence of society, including civil society.
It is true that the Scottish Enlightment believed they were making the
world anew, and in many ways they were, but certain assumptions about the
already existing society were taken for granted.
Even if a society of atomised individuals enjoying bourgeois right started
from day zero, the issues Michael comments on here could be constructively
viewed in the wider context of what are the feedback systems within such a
group. Michael has given a number of ways in which the feedback systems are
more complex than the price mechanism alone. But it is more than this. In
line with findings from "complexity theory", the interaction of numerous
individual entities creates emergent properties. In a society of atomised
individuals they are all making guesses about each other. The fluctuations
in the price mechanism to a large extent come about through that. The
choice of which commodities are guessed to be marketable come about through
that. The nature of the capitalist cycle is profoundly affected by that.
The neo-Adam-Smithians are ideologically committed to using his name to
support laissez faire. The truth however is that after its initial rise,
the capitalist system tends to lead not to free markets but to monopoly.
The question is not whether there has to be social regulation of the
market, but how is it done, which classes forces are currently empowered
to do it, and whether they can be overthrown.
Chris Burford
London
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