Re: Socialism Now

["Greg Schofield" <g_schofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Actually Fred I owe you and others on the list an apology. I used the term market loosely, when I should have used the phrase "free market". The exchange of goods under any conditions is a market otherwise exchange-value could never be realisied.

However, the "free market" where producers compete against one another for buyers and from which much of the classic dynamism of capitalism derived is all but dead. In some sense we have returned to the guild market conditions of the late middle ages. Socialisation has lead to the elimination of certain markets and to the close control of nearly all the others to the point where the concept of a free market is negated.

Given the control of markets exerecised by monopolies, market forces appear as a crisis in profit realisation and for these major players a natural motivation for changing their planning. In a sense this was exactly the same as in Marx's day, the difference lies in the available solutions and the enormous distance between production and eventual profit relaisation. There are so many mediating levels that the role once occupied by the free market in regulating socially useful labour has now been exiled to the very periphery of production, what dominates labour is the corporate plan.

The reduction of the role of the market leads inevitable to an expansion of administration in order to compensate for its previous role (accountants, manargerial controls, etc) and a greater and greater emphasis placed on profit realisation (much of the so called service industry) which boils down to a lot of energy placed in controlling the market in order to render profits.

Both tendencies lead to an explosion of non-productive labour (labour which adds nothing to the actual products being sold but becomes essential to finally sell them).

Against this backdrop the call of the socialist movement for more planning and less market influence is an anachronism. The point being the need to direct production for social needs and perhaps in areas this means it could be in the workers interest to re-introduce free markets in areas where monopolies dictate markets, just as much as to abolish some other forms of markets.

I will try and reply to some of your other points in another posting (in order to keep things readable).  Fred, I concede without qualification that the way of previously expressed the thought was inadequate and misleading, I hope the above does resolve some of the points you quite properly raised.


Greg Schofield
Perth Australia



--- Message Received ---
From: Frederick Guy <f_d_guy@xxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 08:12:59 -0800 (PST)
>Subject: [PEN-L:19698] Re: Re: Socialism Now

Just because companies have monopoly power and owe
their power (property rights and all) to the state,
doesn't mean that market mechanisms have become
unimportant. Markets serve as a serious constraint on
the choices open to the directors of almost any
company. This is why I ask what you mean by
'socialism': to many, this means doing away with
markets, and if this is what you mean I think you
seriously underestimate the role of markets in making
the current system function, when you say that the
current system is already substantially socialised.
Fred