We should remember that state ownership of the means of production (nationalization) forces us to ask the question "who controls the state?" If the wrong group or class controls the state, a system of nationalization can easily turn into something socialists don't like at all. After all, the ancient Pharaoh's system involved state ownership of the means of production.
Fred writes that >>The use of government banks to pursue important public policy objectives, >>rather than profit maximization, would be a model for the rest of the >>economy. More and more people might start to realize that an entire economy >>run according to democratically decided policy objectives would be preferable >>for the vast majority of Americans to our current economy run according to >>profit maximization, which produces great inequality and is also highly >>unstable and prone to crises which cause great suffering and hardship, like >>the present crisis.<< This presumes that the state is run democratically. That seems a really strong assumption. Under capitalism and other class systems, whether or not the state is run democratically depends on whether or not there is a mass movement of working people and their allies that countervails the organized power of capital and its allies. With strong socialist, social-democratic, and/or communist movements that is organically linked to the working population (and don't fight with each other), nationalized sectors are much more likely to serve that population. While the idea of nationalizing the banks is attractive on the surface, it gets the cart before the horse: we need a mass movement first, not second. Otherwise, the nationalized banks never get beyond simply saving capitalism's bacon (making sure that its financial system actually works as advertised). As mentioned, the banks would soon be denationalized, while (as Carrol mentions) their various problems when nationalized would be trumpeted as reasons to avoid any kind of government "meddling" in the future. (Denationalization is currently advertised as part of the program: hey, the citizen-taxpayers may actually make a profit on the bail-out when the preferred stock, etc. is sold once the crisis[*] is over.) (This reminds me of something my good friend Howard Sherman once said, back in the 1980s, I believe: he argued that the problems that arise from price controls in a market economy simply open people's minds to the idea of other government interventions (non-price rationing, as during WW2), starting us down the road to socialism. Hogwash. Without a mass popular movement pushing us down that road, what's more likely is that the price controls are abolished, as with what actually happened.) Now don't get me wrong: evidence from Western Europe after World War II (and the weaker case of the US welfare state during the same period) suggests that social democracy runs capitalism better than the capitalists do. State management of capitalism can play a major positive role from a leftist perspective (even though capitalism itself continues in place). But the relative success of that system required that the political-economic basis be built first. Also, there's a problem that's more important for other countries than for the US: nationalizing a country's banks leaves the international financial system in place, even if a lot of other countries do likewise. [*] Back in the 1970s & 1980s, when we radical political economists were arguing about crisis theory, one question was about the meaning of "crisis" (especially since the word was over-used). We may have found its meaning in practice: 1. We're in a crisis when establishmentarian types (and not just people on the fringe) use that word; or 2. with a nod to Claud Cockburn, we're in a crisis when establishmentarian types repeatedly and vehemently deny we're in a crisis. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
