On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, James Devine wrote: > BTW, I want to emphasize that I cannot speak for Robin Hahnel. He said he > thought "market socialism" might be a reasonable transition phase (a > compromise that might be forced on the socialist movement) in a private > conversation which I might misremember. Louis: This question of a "transition phase" is something that gets lost in all market socialism literature I have read. Marx was for communism. Socialism is supposed to be a transition from capitalism to communism. However, the socialism of the twentieth century has been doomed to failure for reasons linked to the backwardness of the agrarian economies that gave birth to it. The reason "socialism" failed in the USSR is that Russia was not even capitalist in the full sense of the word, according to Moshe Lewin in his fine new book "Russia USSR Russia". Marx thought that socialism would come to places like Germany or England where there were highly developed capitalist economies. Even then, it was to be a transitional phase. Market socialism has been set against the flawed reality of the USSR and not the working model that Marx and Engels had in mind, no matter how indistinct. The other problem is that it is tied to the Hayekian critique which offers no meaningful historical critique of the Soviet experience. What the Hayekian critique drags along with it is a basic pessimism about the prospects of communism itself, let alone socialism. Since there are epistemological problems attached to the task of planning (actually, reason is a much more descriptive term for what communist economiies should be based on), there is no hope for a free and equal society at any point in the future. Market socialism then becomes a permanent feature of human society. The problem is that a free market in labor, capital and resources, while guaranteeing those Roemerian income-leisure bundles to the lucky few, delivers a ravaged environment and unemployment to the many. China is a cases in point. 20 years from now a whole series of secondary contradictions in the O'Connor sense will start to cause major upheavals. Some are already present in the form of epidemic viral infections and air or water pollution. These will surely get worse. Market socialism has absolutely no answers to these problems other than to posit the notion that worker-owned firms are less likely to behave in an anti-social manner. A study of the cooperatives contained in the new book "The Myth of Mondragon" is not encouraging. These firms are managed by yuppies running around with cell phones and wages have been slashed to keep competitive with other capitalist firms. The whole market socialism paradigm, like the Analytical Marxism school that inspired so much of it, is very much a product of the late 1980s when faith in the marketplace was common. These hopes no longer exist. This perhaps might explain why Elster has found other things to keep him busy nowadays besides AM. At any rate, if there is to be a socialism and commnism in the future, it will arise out of the existing relationship of class forces in societies that overthrow the capitalist system. Just as Nicaragua could do nothing else except tolerate private ownership of ranches and cotton or coffee plantations, it might be the case that a revolution in South Africa would result in the immediate nationalization of all of the mines, banks and factories and the institution of 5 year plans. Who knows, Thabo Mbeki might be the Kerensky who needs to be overthrown in that eventuality.
