Re: The Road to Serfdom

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

Mike B writes:>China is richer these days because the wage-slaves are
more productive than ever. <
 
they're richer (per capita) partly because "richer" and "productivity" are measured in terms of GDP, which ignores non-market costs and benefits.
Jim

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Mike Ballard [mailto:swillsqueal@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
	Sent: Sat 8/9/2003 2:01 PM 
	To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Road to Serfdom
	
	

	--- Martin Hart-Landsberg <marty@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
	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
	...
	
	ta-da-doom........the coninuation of wage-slavery,
	classes, the State and all the undemocratic baggage
	that goes with that sort of political-economy.  Not
	that the more Mao inspired system of State controlled
	commodity production didn't result in much the same
	system with, of course, variations on all the
	abovementioned themes.
	
	China is richer these days because the wage-slaves are
	more productive than ever.  The same is true for the
	USA where according to the "New York Times", "The
	Labor Department reported that productivity -- the
	amount that an employee produces per hour of work --
	rose at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the April to
	June quarter. That was the best performance since the
	third quarter of 2002."  The question is, "Who
	controls and owns the social product of labour, the
	marketeers or the producers?"
	
	
	Best,
	Mike B)
	
	
	
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	Cognitive dissonance is the inner conflict produced when long-standing beliefs are contradicted by new evidence.
	
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