Re: The Road to Serfdom

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

I don't want to get into defending Charlie Andrews' concepts (since I don't agree with them completely). But the idea involves not profit-max but minimization of costs, subject to constraints imposed by the democratically-run government and the system of enterprise governance that Charlie describes. If I were to point to an analogy, it wouldn't be China but to the non-profit foundation sector in the US. Obviously, that sector serves those who donate money, but in Charlie's scheme, that sector is different.
Jim

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Martin Hart-Landsberg [mailto:marty@xxxxxxxxxx] 
	Sent: Sat 8/9/2003 1:45 PM 
	To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Road to Serfdom
	
	

	Jim, the notion of competing enterprises was precisely at the heart of
	the Chinese position in the early days of reform.  But how do you
	promote competition, well you need some sort of profit inducement.  So,
	early on the Chinese encouraged firms to operate independently and
	pursue profits.  But, competition also means change and response to
	market needs.  Thus, critical to the entire process is labor market
	flexibility, or the freedom for management to hire and fire workers.
	In fact, the Chinese state encouraged foreign investment at each stage
	of the reform process, including joint ventures pretty early in the
	process, because it saw foreign capital as setting the basis for
	capitalist labor relations and encouraging profit maximizing in the
	state sector.
	
	In short, based on my study of the Chinese experience, while there were
	some in the state that just supported growing marketization for their
	own gain, there were many in the party that saw the need to overcome
	problems of imbalance and inefficiency from the Mao era and sought to
	do so by encouraging competition between firms and this lead step by
	step to promotion of profits, and the creation of a labor market and ...
	
	Marty
	
	Quoting "Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>:
	
	> 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
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