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There's a new article at Jacobin entitled "Socialize Finance: We already live in a planned economy. Why not make it a democratic one?" Unfortunately the article is about pretty much everything except that. It has much useful information on how finance currently functions, and speculation on how it could be reformed under capitalism, but virtually nothing on how a socialist democracy would use finance for planning. As I've said before, the hypermegasupercharged computers currently used to trade stocks are far, far more powerful than would be needed to allocate resources and plan for the future from the shopfloor to the world as a whole. And in fact those computers used by logistics and retail giants already have a handle on the distribution and production steering wheels. Expropriation of the big banks would allow conversion of current financing computations into qualitatively simpler, product-by-product calculations aggregated up to a society-wide plan - one voted on in essentials at the lowest possible level, from central government down to factory/office/neighborhood. >From calculating safe and equitable healthcare and education worker-per-student/patient ratios, to calculation of a minimum wage that would allow sufficient household income for fulfilling lives, it ain't rocket science. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/finance-banks-capitalism-markets-socialism-planning/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
