Re: "Socialist command type economy in Iraq"????

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2003-05-30 00:17 -0500, you wrote:

> In Iraq oil resources are nationalised and although it certainly was not
> socialist there was certainly considerable public ownership and planning not
> based upon market considerations but upon political policy command type
> features. The US will privatise all of this and make everything open to
> private investment and "competition"
> among crony capitalists. That is what I meant by remnants of a socialist
> command type economy. Perhaps publicly owned and non-market, non-capitalist
> elements would be less provocative. I didnt mean to suggest that Iraq was
> ever basically socialist.
>
> Cheers, Ken Hanly....

I agree with this argument.

One of the telling points is how the occupiers confirmed a policy of
deBaathification of perhaps some 30,000 people, immediately after the UN
resolution was passed. From a liberal imperialist point of view the
quickest way to stabilise the country would be to leave the previous regime
state structures and officials in place, most of whom would have had
nothing to do with brutal interrogation methods, public shocking
punishments, or summary execution of thousands of people in the mass
uprisings of 1991. But these people would have the attitudes of mind of a
centralised command economy and would not run an agressive competitive
style economy held together by the sort of finance capitalism favoured by
the neoconservatives.

It is similar to how East Germany was colonised with a whole stratum of the
intelligentsia  thrown to one side, with consequences that continue to this
day.

Chris Burford