Re: summary of calculation debate

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Well, for this I imagine people would turn to China, our very own "market
>socialism" (as it describes itself). This is an example with enough
>peculiarities and specificities to make it difficult as a potential model,
>though.
>
>----Ben

I don't know enough about China to say this with the kind of assuredness
that I would if I were talking about Cuba, but it seems to me that NEP
describes China more than 'market socialism'. You have lots of foreign
enterprises along the Pacific Coast, which operate much as they do in the
"Asian Tigers". But there is a huge amount of state-owned industry that do
not operate on anything like the profit motive. More importantly, they all
incorporate the "Iron Rice Bowl" which protects workers from unemployment
while providing basic social services as day care centers, clinics, etc.
This is the segment of the economy that the people in charge want to
dismantle. By the same token, this segment has been successful by any
measure. Starting from scratch, the Chinese Communist Party created basic
industry to supply capital equipment and consumer goods for a mostly
peasant nation of nearly a billion in the late 1940s. If this is not a
testament to the superiority of planned economies, then nothing is.

Louis Proyect
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