G'day Carrol, > > Sabri, Marx's theory in question here is about value -- a form of > social > > relations peculiar to capitalism. As such, it would not have > relevance > > under socialism. > > > > Sweezy saw the premise that "economic science" would exist under > socialism as the ideological basis of authoritarian socialism. > Supposedly production will be for use, and productive choices will be > made politically. That can't be reduced to a science. (I think I've > botched up the argument some.) >
Any social formation faces the need to allocate resources (including labour) here rather than there. We've tried command economies and found that, sans market signals, it couldn't be done where and when it was tried - or at least, that it was so wasteful and inequitable that it couldn't survive as a system in the world of the time. If we take away the hostile external environment, WW2 (which wiped out a generation in the SU), and poor calculation technology (computing power exists today that did not exist then), we're still left with one of the central planks of economic science: the balance of incentives. As I see it, the misprojections, untrue inventory reports, uncoordinated transport systems, ridiculous quotas etc were a function of poorly coordinated incentive systems (there was fear, currying of favour and such). The only way to rid ourselves of that is to avoid centralised authority and its attendent stratification (and what we've hitherto called 'politics' would go with it). Which leaves commies with the job of construcing a democratic mode of resourse allocation. I imagine some balance between limited markets and something like Trotskiy's workers' councils or Shliapnikov's trades union management (if there's a real difference there) would provide an answer, but I've never quite managed to satisfy myself on the issue. I know you've often argued we shouldn't be in the business of writing recipes for the future's kitchens, but it's a problem, as Justin has argued, any commie who wants to sound convincing should have thought about a lot, I think. Anyway, I imagine lots of technical knowledge would have to be available to the democratically determining body if the job is to be done well enough to make life universally worth living. The thing is to have technicians and not have technocrats, I think - else, no democracy -> no socialism. Cheers, Rob.
