Jim, the notion of competing enterprises was precisely at the heart of the Chinese position in the early days of reform. But how do you promote competition, well you need some sort of profit inducement. So, early on the Chinese encouraged firms to operate independently and pursue profits. But, competition also means change and response to market needs. Thus, critical to the entire process is labor market flexibility, or the freedom for management to hire and fire workers. In fact, the Chinese state encouraged foreign investment at each stage of the reform process, including joint ventures pretty early in the process, because it saw foreign capital as setting the basis for capitalist labor relations and encouraging profit maximizing in the state sector.
In short, based on my study of the Chinese experience, while there were some in the state that just supported growing marketization for their own gain, there were many in the party that saw the need to overcome problems of imbalance and inefficiency from the Mao era and sought to do so by encouraging competition between firms and this lead step by step to promotion of profits, and the creation of a labor market and ... Marty Quoting "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Rather than discussing "market socialism," I think it would be worth > pen-l's while to discuss Charlie Andrews' proposal for competing > not-for-profit enterprises (in his FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY). > Maybe Charlie could be dragooned into participating. > > Jim > > > > > > >
