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
Cheers, Ken Hanly
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 10:16
AM
Subject: Re: "Socialist command type
economy in Iraq"????
One thing this discussion misses is that the US elite isn't
really against state ownership of the means of production and control of the
economy. It's against state ownership of the means of production and control
of the economy that don't help the elite's own power and the greater glory
of US capital. Thus, they're in favor of US control of Iraq, at least for
now.
"Free markets" are convenient slogans -- attractive to many
people -- but _in practice_ the US government has constantly violated the
official principles that go with that slogan.
------------------------
Jim Devine
jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
> -----Original Message-----
>
From: Chris Burford [mailto:cburford@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 12:01 AM
> To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:
Re: [PEN-L] "Socialist command type economy in Iraq"????
>
>
> 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
>