Re: The Road to Serfdom

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

JKS refers to > the well worn territory of how markets are BAD<

actually, my understanding is that (except for Mike B), the main trend of the anti-"market socialism" side was not  that markets are "BAD." (Could you name someone who says that markets are evil?) Rather, it was that real-world markets do not correspond to the textbook ideal of markets, which doesn't exist in reality, while real-world markets have a large number of imperfections that prevent them from serving socialist-democratic goals. It's the pro-"market socialism" side that puts forth that markets are good, or at least better than central planning, which is BAD. Frankly, I think that the whole plan vs. market discussion misses the point (i.e., the need for democracy as part of the abolition of class and to avoid the inequality-generating characteristics of both markets and central plans).

Rather than discussing "market socialism," I think it would be worth pen-l's while to discuss Charlie Andrews' proposal for competing not-for-profit enterprises (in his FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY). Maybe Charlie could be dragooned into participating.

Jim