Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> it seems to me that _any_ specific program (a carbon tax, planning,
> cap'n trade) can be totally anti-working class or much less
> anti-working class (or somewhere in-between). Repeating what I said
> above, he actual implementation of _any_ program depends on the
> balance of class forces at the time. It's a mistake to focus on any
> specific capitalist policy as being a disaster for the working class.
Really? Any specific policy can be actually implemented in a pro or anti-
working class way?
Deregulating energy
Privatizing water
Dismantling the public school system
"Separate but equal"
Ending welfare
John Holdren's geo-engineering schemes
The war in Afghanistan
>
> Most importantly, simply calling for one program rather than another
> does not change that balance.
I do oppose various programs, but why would you say that I am "simply"
calling for it? Because it's easier than analyzing the arguments I give about
what the results of the carbon tax will be?
>
> Regulation (planning, command, and control) schemes can fail too,
> unleashing these dire forces. The old USSR did a really bad job of
> planning its economy (though it wasn't totally their bureaucracy's
> fault).
Actually, there is a definite relationship between how the USSR, once it
took on its consolidated state-capitalist form, handled planning, and the cap
and trade and carbon tax schemes. There's the same combination of a large
bureauracy and the attempt to manipulate financial incentives to get the
desired outcome.
In my article on "the coming of the environmental crisis and the fear of a
carbon dictatorship", I took the time to make this point, basing myself on
facts that can be found in any reasonably decent economic history of the
Soviet Union. I analyze the significance of the facts differently than these
histories, but the basic facts are pretty clear:
* * * * * * * *
. Many advocates of market solutions cite the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the difficulties that afflicted Soviet planning as evidence that direct
regulation of production is inefficient, doesn't work, and is bad for the
environment. But the view that Soviet planning had nothing to do with
individual profit-seeking and market forces reflects a Cold War stereotype of
the Soviet Union. A study of the actual Soviet economy tells another story.
. It is of course well-known that the Soviet economy was ruled by five-year
plans. But under Stalin, the official policy was that market forces, if
restricted and redirected by the directives of the Soviet ministries, and the
prices set by these ministries, would orient factories to produce according
to the demands of the five-year plans. Enterprises ran on the basis of
"khozraschet", which refers to business accounting and self-financing; the
enterprises had their own financial balances and each was supposed to make a
profit. Moreover, the managers -- and to some extent, the workers -- received
rewards if their enterprise fulfilled the state plan. Each enterprise was
supposed to be motivated to be efficient by the discipline of not only
fulfilling the production plan given it by the ministries, but of earning a
profit. Although in theory the enterprise managers had little power, in
practice they had wide discretion in meeting various goals in the way they
felt proper; it's notable that even during the bloody purges of the mid-1930s
some of them boasted in Soviet journals about how they flouted some of the
directives that had been issued to them or even violated Soviet laws in order
to meet their production quotas. They also developed ways of trading among
themselves outside the plan. Thus in practice, although the Soviet ministries
directed resources to major projects as they chose, the economy didn't run as
a single well-oiled machine. Instead, enterprises competed with each other,
and so did ministries. A description of this can be found in the article "The
anarchy of production under the veneer of Soviet revisionist planning" in the
March 1997 issue of "Communist Voice". (15)
. This system continued under Khrushchov and his successors. Indeed, one
generation after another of Soviet economic reformers attempted to solve the
ills of the Soviet economy with new schemes to unleash market forces; they
insisted that the previous generation had run into problems because it hadn't
sufficiently unleashed the profit incentive. More incentives, and more leeway
in the search for profits, would be given to the enterprises, that is, to the
enterprise management, and new ways of determining whether the enterprise had
fulfilled the plan, and thus earned bonuses, would be devised. But each time
private interest and market forces acted according to their nature, and the
enterprises found ways to be profitable while violating the goals of the
ministries. And again and again, when enterprises supposedly fulfilled their
assigned output of goods, thus earning their bonuses, but produced the wrong
goods or inferior goods, instead of looking into why this happened and
changing the way the enterprises were run, the ministries readjusted the
profit incentives.
. Thus the ministries found that the enterprises, rather than becoming more
and more efficient in fulfilling the state plan in order to make profits,
would find ways that were profitable for them, but that harmed the Soviet
economy. It wasn't as easy to tame market forces as Stalin, Khrushchov, and
the new Soviet bourgeoisie thought. The Soviet economy grew rapidly for a
time, but this growth went hand-in-hand with the development of internal
problems and contradictions. Something similar happens in Western market
economies, where recessions, crises, and the impoverishment of large sections
of the population can accompany overall growth.
. In the Soviet Union, rapid growth eventually gave way to increasing
stagnation, and even to deterioration of parts of the economy. There is a
large body of literature about how every time the ministries issued new
indices to measure compliance with the plan, the enterprises found unexpected
ways to thwart the ministry's intention. A typical story would run something
like this: If a factory was judged on producing, say, a sufficient supply of
nails, it used too many resources. If the ministry changed the indices to
take account of supplies, the factory produced a lot of small nails. If the
indices were changed to demand both a variety of nails and economy of
resources, the factory would produce weak nails. But this wasn't because the
factory director didn't know what type of nails was needed; it was because
the factory director didn't care: all that was important to him was earning
his bonus by fulfilling the ministry's indices. Meanwhile the ministry
involved wouldn't directly intervene in the factory to change the system
whereby it intentionally produced inferior products. The ministry and the
factory management were both composed of the same class of officials. Any
solution was supposed to preserve the interests of this class, so it could
only involve changing and rechanging the indices.
. The economy worked this way because the Bolshevik revolution had died out
and been replaced by a system of state-capitalism that had consolidated in
the 1930s. The economy was under the control of a new bourgeoisie, and the
workers were left in a passive position where their only role was to produce,
not to supervise the enterprises individually or the economy as a whole. Thus
workers weren't in a position to exercise mass control over how the factories
operated; this would go against the whole logic, the class structure, of the
system. Supervision was the job of the new bourgeoisie, such as the
enterprise managers, and market forces were used to discipline the managers.
But even those readers who don't agree with this assessment of the class
structure of the Soviet economy will, if they examine any reasonably good
history of the Soviet economy, find a description of the competition among
Soviet enterprises, the motivation of managers by the desire for greater
profit, and the constant attempts to redefine the production norms so that
enterprises would be motivated by the spur of profit to do what the
ministries wanted. The economists of different political trends who have
studied the Soviet economy differ sharply among themselves as to why these
things occurred and what their significance is, but the basic facts about the
anarchy of production in the Soviet economy aren't too hard to find.
. The difficulties that the Soviet ministries had in directing the
enterprises resembles the attempt in Western capitalist countries to solve
environmental problems through market forces. Market forces result in
corporations producing and selling environmentally-harmful goods. Instead of
directly regulating production and interfering with market forces, the neo-
liberal economists insist that indirect methods should be used, such as
creating a market in pollution-certificates or relying simply on taxes, so
that properly-directed market forces will themselves lead to cleaning up the
environment. For example, a market in pollution-certificates may be created.
This may accomplish something, just as Soviet enterprises did carry out the
instructions of the ministries to some extent. But it will also be found that
corporations will evade the intent of the pollution-certificates just as
Soviet enterprises evaded the intent of the ministries. The Soviet nail
factory might produce only small nails, while an EU enterprise may invest in
a dubious carbon offset in order to avoid making real reductions in
greenhouse emissions. The Soviet enterprise sought to get its own
representatives in the ministries in order to get the plan changed in its
interests, and the Western enterprises lobby the bourgeois politicians and
bribe or suborn officials in order to get exemptions from requirements, more
carbon permits, or favorable estimates of how much greenhouse gas they are
emitting.
. The Western economists claim that trying to get market forces to solve
environmental questions is the alternative to Soviet methods. But Stalinist
state-capitalist economists also claimed that profit-seeking could be used to
ensure compliance with their aims. In fact, neither the market capitalists
nor the state-capitalists ever found the way to civilize market forces.
(www.communistvoice.org/39cKyoto.html)
* * * * * *
>
> That's enough for today. If you have a magic formula so that we can
> change the balance of class forces in the progressive direction -- so
> that whatever program is instituted is better for the working class
> than what's likely to occur today -- please tell me.
I know no way to ensure that neoliberal programs and imperialist
interventions will be instituted in a pro-working class way. That would
indeed be magic. As for "changing the balance of the class forces", you can
read what we are doing to encourage working class organization at
www.communistvoice.org.
-- Joseph Green
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