Re: re-market socialism

[Justin Schwartz <jschwart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 28 Jan 1996, Michael Luftmensch wrote:

> 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.

That wasn't what motivated the remark, but this doesn't matter.

>
> 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.

Fair enough. But the ideology is one thing. The scientific questions
involved in understanding an alternative to capitalism are another. It's
ideology to argue: we need markets so capitalism is great. That's because
we don't need capitalism to have markets.

>
> 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.
>

God knows I do too. That's why I am in law school, being apparently too
red, too old, and published to find an academic job that's acceptable for
someine with a family.

> 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.

I certainly agree about provate property and wagr labor. We both want to
kick away those ladders.

> You insinuate that I am a Leninist fundamentalist. I wonder how you arrived
> at this?

Pardon if I made a too-hasty inference.

 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.

Capitalist imperialism is the form the world market takes at a certain
stage of its development. As I've explained for a number of reasons
markers in MS won't be imperilaistic.

>
> 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.

Well, any alternative to what we have is by definition divorced from
reality. We are trying to envisage al alternative that doesn't exist,
expect for those of us who think we should institute the Cuban or North
Korean systems.

>
> 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.

A rather unMarxist thought, and very ratiobal choice-theoretic, but I
think I agree.

 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?

Oh, there are lots of problems with MS. I've been one-sidedly defending it
against its detractors in the present context, though, But it's an
anti-utopian utopia, one that's sclaed down in terms of our goals and
expectations.

--Justin




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