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

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L] "Socialist command type economy in Iraq"????

Ian: >Maybe I've read to much legal theory, but I can't for the life of me get a
handle on the public/private distinction when it comes to how the State
delegates property and control rights over productive assets. What is
private about a grocery store, or a traffic jam or a lawsuit or a
credit/debt contract or a hospital emergency room, the list goes on and
on...........<

as Fred Engels noted, capitalism involves socialized production _and_ individualized appropriation of wealth (a unity of "opposites"). Thus, nothing is really totally individualized ("private") or totally socialized ("public").

------------------------
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Murray [mailto:seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 9:39 AM
> To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [PEN-L] "Socialist command type economy in Iraq"????
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "k hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>
>
> RE: [PEN-L] "Socialist command type economy in Iraq"????But
> usually the
> elite do not regard state ownership of the means of
> production as in the
> elite interest. The elite
> are capitalists and require capitalist institutions ,Production is
> privatised even to the point of privatising prisons,   school
> management,
> water supplies, other utilities.. Even in Iraq the schools
> will be run by
> a crisis management US firm and certainly reconstruction is
> not to be by
> publicly owned firms but by contract out to crony private
> capitalists who
> will then be responsible for trickle  down sub=contracts to
> other private
> firms in countries who were part of the coalition of the willing law
> breakers. No doubt the US will also privatise ownership of
> Iraqi oil if
> they can as well as having Shell executives run the present firm
> and all the Baath executives will probably be fired for the
> reason Chris
> Burford gave.
>
>
>    While free markets in capitalist countries are not the
> ideal markets of
> libertarians but markets tailor made to help those
> capitalists with most
> clout or groups such as farmers who are politically significant, the
> economies are primarily market economies and only a few
> sectors such as
> the military have large command aspects. And inputs are
> almost uniformly
> from private firms. The problem with state ownership of means of
> production is there is no direct link between ownership and sharing of
> profit by capitalists on the basis of invested capital.
> Public ownership
> will typically occur as hospitalisation to invest public
> money in failed
> private enterprise later returned to private ownership. Or it can
> socialise the costs of expensive infrastructure as happened
> with railways
> in some cases and public utilities, hospitals, roads...but
> more recently
> even this type of role of public ownership is being downgraded. We are
> returning to turnpikes with fees, private prisons,  and subsidies to
> private firms rather than public ownership. More and more
> areas are being
> opened to for profit investment.
>
> Cheers, Ken Hanly
>
> =====================
>
> Maybe I've read to much legal theory, but I can't for the
> life of me get a
> handle on the public/private distinction when it comes to how
> the State
> delegates property and control rights over productive assets. What is
> private about a grocery store, or a traffic jam or a lawsuit or a
> credit/debt contract or a hospital emergency room, the list
> goes on and
> on...........
>
>
> Ian
>