Before you close the debate, would you - or anyone else who cares
answer my question:
If you believe that market mechanism makes the world go round, how
come it can also work when regulated? Why should a government
regulate it in the interest of the whole of society, when the
government represent only the industrial/financial power, and as all
state, it is there to upheld this status quo - especially when
(capitalist) regulated (keynesian and monaterist) systems
also ended up in the same overproducing,
inflationary or stagflationary crisis.
I'm on this list for some time now, and I posed this question often
enough, but had no answer yet.
Eva
...
> The ancient (Talmudic) rabbis put it in pithy form: "Pray for the
> government, for without goveernment people would devour each other."
> Nearer our time, in his relatively early work AMERICAN CAPITALISM
> (1950's), John Kenneth Galbraith spoke of the "countervailing power" of
> government to balance against the excesses of market economics, whether
> in the comopetitive or ologopolistic mode. Presumably, the
> countervailing concept would extend further than this: market-oriented
> capitalism can be a tool to balance against excesses of government, and
> government a tool to use against the excesses of capitalism.
>
> Personally, I lean to the sociological interpretation of Schumpeter
> (see, e.g., the small volume called IMPERIALISM AND SOCIAL CLASSES) in
> which he puts forward the hypothesis (advanced contra the Marxist theory
> of imperialism, but perhaps of more general application) that the
> corruption of systems and injustices that are perpetrated are the
> outgrowth of persistent atavistic tendencies to seek and wield abusive
> power, rather than a direct outgrowth of economic activity and
> development. But that brings me back to the point where you and I
> disagree (re. the need for democratic systems) and to the brink of where
> I believe we disagree (your arguments that capitalism intrinsically and
> inevitably must be anti-democratic), and so it is a good point at which
> to end.
>
> Saul Silverman
>
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