Ajit,
In response to your questions on "capitalist technology" and
"socialist ideology".
I agree completely that these are key issues for
"market socialism". I have focused particulary on the latter,
i.e. the contradiction between "market ideology" and difficulty this
raises for the kind of after-the-fact adjustments that many market
socialists acknowledge are necessary for equity, social division of labor,
and long term planning, and even more problematic is a socialist espousal
of "markets" as a label in today's "insane maretization" (to use Peter's
words) climate.
The former of course cuts both ways, we want "socialist technology"
but we also want innovation and often painful technological change
when this is socially beneficial. This relates to the problem of
innovation that Roemer, Kotz, and others have highlighted as a key
problem of Centrally Planned Economies and an issue that democratic
planning must address. As I noted in my post I think Laibman's model
does address this by introducing competition, and cross contracting,
between socialized entreprizes, within a planning framework which would
presumably also have input as to the kinds of technologies chosen and if
techno change is truely socially beneficial.
This is something we (who prioritize democratic planning) have to
work on - I think a gradual approach from here (cap market economy) to
there, with various levels of *broadly defined* stakeholding merging to
a degree of centralized planning for the commanding heights , as I outlined
in my previoius post, may offer a practical resolution to this issue.
But of course this needs to be much further specified and elaborated.
