[OPE-L:3568] Query: Newsgroup on Planned Economy

[Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In response to Anders Ekeland's question:

In May an June 1998 I tried to start a mailing list with
Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell as moderators, with the
plan that we should start off from their book "Towards a New
Socialism" and work out more of the details of a
computerized socialist economy.  The purpose was to think
through some of the problems of socialism and come up with
solutions which we would feel comfortable with.  During the
first two months students from my undergraduate class were
subscribed, and after this I hoped that the discussion would
continue.

The discussion never took off.  Some list members did not
agree with the basic framework of the list and sidetracked
the discussion.  And I have the impression that list members
generally did not feel comfortable discussing socialism in a
country like the USA, a counterfactual situation, at such a
concrete level.

Later someone else tried to continue the discussion from a
different perspective not clearly grounded in marxism.  I
forget the details, but this did also not work out.

I think there is a need for a list about socialism, but
those who organize such a list need to be really clear what
they want to achieve and why, and they must be prepared
to defend their objectives, since thinking about socialism
unfortunately has a very bad reputation among Marxists.


Hans Ehrbar.