Re: Re: Re: Schweickart

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 23:04 16/07/00 -0400, you wrote:
> In a message dated 7/16/00 7:04:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> cburford@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
>
> << There is a streak of naivety in Schweickart but I do not think the issue
> of
>  Yugoslavia is central to deciding the merits of his model. His naivety is
>  that he writes with scrupulous logic and goodwill about various economic
>  and political scenarios. I cannot help feeling his location in the Loyola
>  University, Chicago, is significant.
>   >>
>
> You don't know Chicago political geography, companero. The market geeks are
> at the big famous school on the south side. Dave works at a working-class
> Catholic commuter school up on the north side. The people at the two
> institutions literally never see each other, and the U of C crowd is much too
> snooty to talk to anyone at Loyola.


That is in fact what I rather assumed. I almost said I understood he came
from the "good" university of Chicago. In more recent decades the Jesuits
have had links with liberation theology, no? His book has a flavour of
Jesuitical logic about it at its best. That is he examines the ethics of
different economic systems from all sides.

eg Chapter 3 "Capitalism or socialism? efficiency"
     Chapter 4 "Capitalism or socialism? growth"
     Chapter 5 "Capitalism or socialism? liberty, equality, democracy,
autonomy"

Chapter 7 is on "transitions" to his "Economic Democracy" and is divided into
"From advanced capitalism
"From command socialism
"From neocolonial underdevelopment"

This is one of the most practical chapters in the book. In it, among other
things, he lists structural flaws in the Yugoslav model, and its dependence
on loans from western banks, to compensate for these.

Chris Burford

London