re-market socialism

[MLuftmensch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Luftmensch)]

re-market socialism


A NOTE TO JUSTIN SCHWARTZ

Dear Justin, -  In reply to your statement  -"What I get is abuse, not
argument" - I feel compelled to write that I did not mean to abuse you by
refusing to offer an alternative model to that of Schweikart.

My argument is that the ideology of the market is instrumental in  keeping us
down. And that rather than engage the other side in a debate over how to
perfect the market, we would do much better to demystify the ideology of
competitiveness which is being used to justify the ongoing onslaught against
working people.

There are billions of people who, although unable to "refute Mises and
Hayek," experience the market as a form of blackmail and intimidation. I
count myself among them.

You wrote that logically speaking you see no necessary connection between
markets, private property, and wage labor, and that private property and wage
labour are ladders we can kick away when we have climbed them.

To me, this sounds like the well-known trick of the fakir, who throws a rope
into the air, climbs up into the sky, and disappears into the clouds as the
rope falls to the ground. Perhaps you can accomplish this feat. But for many
of us, the ladders of private property and wage labour are the route of our
descent into a pit.

You insinuate that I am a Leninist fundamentalist. I wonder how you arrived
at this? I didn't write that the free market caused World War Two, but I do
find it hard to understand how you can separate "capitalist imperialism" from
the world market.

If I take issue with market socialism, it is not because I am an advocate of
a competing model, but because market socialism seems to me to be divorced
from reality. All things being equal, perhaps your model of market socialism
would be relevant; but all things being unequal, it strike me as being
wishful thinking.

It seems to me that social change proceeds unconsciously, in the sense that
what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges
is something that no one willed. Unlike you, I have no idea of what
alternatives will emerge the day after tomorrow. The future you depict, the
best of all possible worlds, free of contradiction, is a bit too rosy for me.
What happened to the worms?

No abuse where none intended,
luftmensch



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