Neal Lawson: purveyor of middle class guilt
I’ve seen this article recommended several times now on Facebook; in it, Neal Lawson attacks the practices of consumerism from several angles. All of these deserve some deconstruction. The biggest dangers in placing emphasis on the ills of consumerist society are that a) a large chunk of society can’t be identified with the stereotypes on which Lawson’s thesis is predicated and b) we lend credence to the idea that by acting ‘ethically’ in the market place, we can create lasting change to the harmful effects that market-driven consumption has on us and on the world. So, what does Lawson actually say?
Lawson’s first thesis is that consumption used to be for survival, now it is part of the replication of a social system where even what we consume is replete with its own semiotics. He is obviously wrong. The difference between consumption today, in Western Europe, and consumption throughout our history is that a much greater percentage of the people around us can indulge in a consumption that stretches beyond mere survival. Whereas in the past, only the wealthy had telephones, now there are a hundred and twenty mobile phones per one hundred people in the UK at the moment.
This is one of the historical successes of industrial capitalism. Even though workers work for less than they produce, and even though they might be rewarded with a shrinking percentage of the value they produce, this is still more than has existed at most times in the history of Western civilization. Whatever Lawson may say about how the market creates ever new wants, the truth is that people have a right to these goods. They are, after all, in a very real sense, the fruits of our labour. Our class, the working class, produces these goods. There is no reason why our class should not possess them.
But not everyone can, or does possess them. This is Lawson’s first mistake. He assumes that his average reader is middle class, and is locked into the never ending struggle for further consumer goods. In reality, though consumerism exists at all levels of capitalist society, the working class are paying the highest price for it. The number of working age adults in the UK living in poverty has increased by 200,000 to 7.5 million just this year. Lawson treats as normal consumerist behaviour (while donning a cilice) that comes at the price of increasing wealth disparity and increasing poverty – which renders such consumerism the preserve of a global minority.
For this reason, Lawson’s picture of the MP3 listening, iPhone using, Levi-jeans wearing, Molton Brown scented individual rings false. Worse still is the trumpet call Lawson sounds, that, “Millions of people are deciding to shop ethically and shop less. About 25% of 29- to 59-year-olds have downsized by 40% of their income, swapping money for time, drudgery for creativity, and the freedom to choose in the shops for the freedom to choose a different life.” Except that none of this enables people to choose a different life, and moreover, this is an option only open to the minority who aren’t compelled of necessity to work every hour they are given.
I don’t shop ethically because I can’t afford to. I won’t be ‘downsizing’ because I can’t afford to. Lawson’s vision is the liberal obverse to old capitalist idiom that if we work hard, and defer sumptuary pleasures, we too can accumulate capital. Lawson has simply replaced ‘capital’ with ‘identity’ or ‘creativity’ or any other of half a dozen buzzwords that are only of especial relevance to a certain type and status of city-living consumer. I, on the other hand, intend to have my cake and eat it: democratic control of the full value of my labour, and expenditure of the surplus exactly how I see fit.
Throughout his article, Lawson’s only valid point is that we seem to have forgotten that to be a consumer is to be passive. That passivity, whether it is choosing between two pay-as-you-go recreational pursuits rather than demanding restribution of the surplus more equitably, to pay for such pursuits, is dangerous – and Lawson is right to point that out. We face the same problem in every walk of life. Even in education, where Tory and New Labour rhetoric on choice is cover for the fact that this ‘choice’ replaces hands-on, democratic control of education and actually represents increased centralization: if not to the State bureaucracy, then to private bureaucracy.
Of course, Lawson offers no solution except that we should consume less. We should, but that can’t be all. Too many people on the planet live in poverty, even the relatively civilized British version of poverty, for us to dilute our demands of their proper class content. The consumption of the ruling class should be curbed; the surplus produced by our labour should come under democratic control and be distributed equitably – and we should democratically decide how best to devote some of that surplus away from having six supermarkets in one town, or unsustainable housing, rather than maintaining the passive, individualist stance of Lawson’s choice to consume less.
What we actually need, instead of this guilt about how much we’re individually consuming, is socialism.
Thank you for posting this. This post and the article it refers to have stimulated more interest in myself than anything blog based has done in some considerable time.
I’m not a socialist, either by education or by instint, so I have a rather hazy grasp of many of the concepts you have used and the arguments you make.
The first question I have concerns your discussion in the third paragraph of the nature of value and workers’ production. I find it interesting that you say that the working class creates consumer goods. In terms of the physical inputs, yes; in terms of the intellectual inputs, both of design and financing, no. That distinction obviously raises the question of whose work adds more value, and the related point of whose work is more valuable. This brings me to a previous point you make: that the working class earn less than they produce. Are you invoking some kind of labour theory of value here? If not could you elucidate how you apportion value to labour and goods.
As much as I would like to keep my questions to the theoretical, I feel compelled to question your empirical assertions as to the composition of modern society. The idea that the majority of people are compelled to work every hour given them is, so far as I can see, clearly fallacious. The average working week in the UK is something like 35 hours. If one compares that to, say, a high earning professional, such as a lawyer, doctor, banker etc etc, they will frequently work 60 hour weeks, and often longer. A friend of mine regularly puts in 70-80 hour weeks and occassionally even 90 hours. Her idea of a week off is 30 hours. The second quibble I’d have is with the classification of poverty that allows 7.5 million people in this country to be poor. Relative poverty is an important measure: I accept that inequality can be a significant social ill, however, I think that to term the vast majority of those 7.5 million “poor” does something of an injustice to the vast majority of those living in the world today and who have come before.
Perhaps that last disagreement raises a difference in how we see poverty. I tend to see it more as an inability to determine one’s life and to make choices. Do you see it more as relating to equality? As a coda, I would except there may well be significant overlap between those two conceptions.
Finally, I would like to question your talk of democratic control of surplus produced by labour and the equitable distribution of this surplus. What precisely do you mean by this? Again this goes back, I assume, to the theory of value which you believe to be correct.
I’m sorry this post is so long, and that I am bothering you with questions that are probably relatively basic to the dialogue that you are trying to have with your fellows. However, I would be very grateful if you could reply to at least some of my questions, and hope that you may gain some value out so doing.
No need to be so formal Barney; this is not Oxford, and I am not a Professor handing out knowledge to the masses. I’m an amateur and we’re acquaintances, not lecturer and student.
To answer your first question, yes I am referring to the Marxist theory of surplus value. The issue you raise (i.e. the value of superintendance, finance etc) is dealt with by Marx himself, Capital Vol. I, (1983) p187 and following.
To the second, my sentiment regarding working hours is badly phrased. Lawson portrays the decline in average working hours as a conscious decision to opt out of the rat race. I think this is nonsense.
Where the statistics are concerned, the issue of working hours per week is a mess. I’ve yet to see a comprehensive analysis which takes into account the changing structure of the UK economy; e.g. blue collar workers continue to work longer hours than white collar (source on that was the Federation of European Employers) but the number of blue collar workers is decreasing overall – so the figures are skewed.
This doesn’t absolve me of my point that most people are working every hour they are sent – they aren’t. But if I might recalibrate it. From my own experience and that of Union colleagues and just talking to people, more work is being packed into less time – and the procedures that ensure this, flying under the euphemism ‘performance management’, are detrimental to health. While we may be working around the same length of time, work is becoming ever more stressful.
Additionally, for an increased or stationary amount of work, many of us are earning stationary or less wages. I can list several examples where newer staff are being given intermittent, insecure contracts to drive down wages, or are being offered lesser terms and conditions (same regular wage, but less ‘perks’) to do the same job. Basically all of this supports the point that I should have made: Lawson can say what he likes about working hours and ethical shopping but exploitation at work is more, not less, rife, and the country is more, not less, stressed.
I’d say this is a more apposite point to make, when complaining that we’re all far too consumer-driven, because it raises alternative possibilities to Lawson’s simplistic notion that ‘choice’ determines how ethical we can be as a society.
Continuing with the second quibble of your second disagreement, you’ll note that I commented upon the difference between “civilized British” (i.e. relative) poverty and the poverty elsewhere in the world. But I don’t see that classifying 7.5 million people as poor is any sort of injustice to however many other millions of people we classify as poor in the rest of the world.
‘Poor’ and ‘poverty’ are subjective terms, of course – and actually I’m not much interested in using either (because all workers are exploited to one degree or another). But my point in this context was that Lawson is quite glib about the prevalence of high-end consumer goods and this glibness doesn’t reflect the experience of many people in the UK who are going to bed hungry trying to feed their kids or, and freezing to death because they can’t afford to turn the heating on.
Speaking of poverty, I come to your third query. As I said, I’m not one for speaking in emotive tones about poverty beyond the recognition that there are many people in the country who are materially disadvantaged as compared with you or me.
That disadvantage can come in the form of not possessing some elements of what most of us consider necessary to live: shelter, clothing, food, heating etc. Or it can come in the form of social deprivation: poor schools, high crime levels, and so on. What I’m describing here isn’t exactly about equality, though it is worth pointing out that more equal societies experience less of these things and there is definitely an overlap between these and the inability to determine one’s life.
Finally, on democratic control of surplus production. Yes, this goes back to the surplus theory of value: there is a use value of workers’ work and an exchange value. The difference between the two is the value which the capitalist extracts from labour. This is the transition from money to capital, and it is this capital which I would like to see appropriated by workers from the capitalist. The decision as to what to do with it (obviously it would never be quite this abstract) would then be taken by workers’ soviets – the democratic representative bodies of workers.
Barney, you say
“I find it interesting that you say that the working class creates consumer goods. In terms of the physical inputs, yes; in terms of the intellectual inputs, both of design and financing, no.”
But the intellectual inputs are in most cases by wage workers, so David is correct in this sense.
Concrete examples of democratically controlled production can be found in situations where individuals work together as equals rather than an employee-employer divide either in person or in role.
Dave, thank you for your answers. Viz. my style, I am under no illusions that you are tutoring me, nor, sadly, that I am still at Oxford. However, there is something to be said for a more formal style. Turning to substantive matters; I think on the issue of poverty we are probably in some form of agreement, though we’d classify it in different ways and stress different points. On the labour theory of value, I’ll have to have a read through and think about that. I would say as a preliminary though, that I am somewhat sceptical of the idea of “use value” as distinct from “exchange value”. How is the value determined and how (if this isn’t the same question) do we have epistemological access to this value, if not through market exchange?
Charlie, that’s an interesting point that I hadn’t considered. There are two points that I would bring up in response.
First, I think to call any wage earner a member of the working class, renders that term disconnected from common usage, and turns it into a technical phrase. That isn’t necessarily an objection if that technical usage identifies the relevant facts. But I’m not sure that in the context of Mr Lawson’s article it does – certainly many of the working class, as you would define them, would be guilty of conspicous consumerism – if indeed guilty is the rigjht word.
Secondly, and perhaps more important to the use of the technical phrase more generally. I find it stretching credulity to consider any wage relation a relationship of exploitation, which is, I guess, what underlies your point. There are many people who like the wage relationship. They consider it to give them more security than self-employment; they may get on with their employers and not consider themselves significantly less than equals. I think this is certainly true of many members of the intellectual imput class. But maybe there I am overstating the case. Obviously many lawyers and bankers are tyrannised by their partners.
However, many slef-employed people are tyrannised by their clients and their brokers. It is well said that clerks have real power over their ostensible masters, the barristers. What matters is not just who is paying the wage, but who controls the access to future funds and work, and, at base the idiosyncraticies of the individual relationships.
I suppose the point I have been developing, rather confusedly, is that the use of “wage-earning/not wage-earning” as the sole variable in explaining exploitation is rather simplistic and fails to capture a rather more sophisticated relationship, whilst also stretching the meaning of exploitation (I take it you aren’t going to retreat to some kind of false conciousness/metaphysical realism analysis).
I’m sure you’re aware of these criticisms and that your position is not so simplified as I have made it out, but I would be grateful to hear your replies to the points I’ve made.
Ah, exploitation. Obviously there’s a great deal of subjectivity in this regard, which is why I prefer to talk about the democratic rights of workers to consultation and negotiation with their employers. So, I’m making the case that the best form of ownership and control for guaranteeing these rights will be one in which they are recognised as stakeholders.
As regards value – I need a drink, I’m thirsty (use value). In one store a cup of coffee costs X for me to buy (exchange value), but Y much of that is profit which will go to shareholders.
The economist Pat Devine has long made the point that there’s a distinction to be made between market forces and market exchange. Market exchange is what goes on between buyers and sellers, market forces are the pressures that are generated by profit-maximisation being the goal of enterprise.
From what I understand of your comment on value, the labour theory of value would deem the true value of the cup of coffee to be X – Y? (presumably =z)
Were one to approriate z it appears to me to fail to value capital. But capital is, ultimately, the fruit of someone’s labour, converted into money.
Moreover, capital, like any other economic resource is scarce and therefore needs allocation. For the benefit of humankind, this allocation needs to be good, which requires considerable work. It also involves a degree of risk, as no one knows the future. The shareholder receives profit as a reward (and therefore incentive) for shouldering this risk and for putting in the effort to allocate capital well. In short he recieves it for his labour, though not in the physical terms in which that is typically conceived.
The mechanical point at base is that the appropriation of z means that for private individuals there is no incentive to engage in investment. And as any Econ 101 will tell you, in rather simplified mathemtaical form: National Income = f(investment).
I think it would be difficult to accept a theory where designing a product was not labour but investing capital in it was…
If you begin by saying capitalism is inevitable (or inseparable from ‘national wealth’) then there is nowhere really to go with the discussion. We could get into a chicken and egg situation – where did that capital come from in order to be invested? As a Marxist I would argue it came from labour, from surplus value and therefore it only comes into the hands of capitalists through theft. (I accept there might be other origins of capital, through property and rent, etc. but I would reach similar conclusions about the rights to such property).
I think you miss my point, Barney. Do we invest to meet our needs, or do we invest to maximise our return?
The structure of the joint-stock corporation means that maxismising return on investment is the sole motive. This leads to a rather short-term approach to investment – the environment, the health and well-being of workers and the wider community are extenalities (costs which other people will meet).
Charlie: I don’t think I was missing your point. I chose to continue to look at the conception of value that you were describing. The issues you raise of myopic investment and externalities are valid concerns, but not directly relevant to the discussion of conceptions of value that we were having. They are points that come later, when discussing the mechanical implications of each system.
Secondly, you make the point in the first paragraph that workers need to be recognised as stakeholders. Give them stock options. That way they have a vote on important company matters, and can share some of the benefit of the profits made by the firm.
Duncan: My starting point is not that capitalism is inevitable. As for the chicken and egg situation, I am inclined to disagree. Capital need not come from either property or from other people’s labour. It can come from your own. You may decide not to buy certain goods which your fellow workers do (holidays abroad, pints down the pub etc) which could be considered luxuries (in the sense that they are not necessary to survival). The money saved can then be used as capital.
Barney: you assumed that there would be no surplus in the pricing of goods and services (x-y) and that this would compromise investment.
You say “The issues you raise of myopic investment and externalities are valid concerns, but not directly relevant to the discussion of conceptions of value that we were having.”
But these stem from the capitalist theory of value, and so are directly relevant.
“Give them stock options. That way they have a vote on important company matters, and can share some of the benefit of the profits made by the firm.”
But still we are trapped in a profit-maximization model which is unsuitable for workers – outside investors and speculators will continue to dominate and day-to-day running of the company will remain hierarchical, geared towards maximizing shareholder value.
Charlie:
“10.Barney: you assumed that there would be no surplus in the pricing of goods and services (x-y) and that this would compromise investment.”
I have to be honest, this is sufficiently compressed that I’m not entirely sure what your point is.
Re: Myopia. Myopia does not follow from capitalism per se, but from human psychology. People will always make myopic decisions, regardless of the system they are in, because they place greater value on present utility than future utility. This effect is furthered by the uncertainty of future utility compared to present utility. These psychological effects are well established in the literature.
Re: Externalities. These are the result of people being selfish and failing to take into account others’ utilities. Do you think this would change in a communist society?
Perhaps I should decompress my original point. All the ideas we are discussing are labyrinthine and interconnected with a multitude of other concepts. We could dance around forever by pursuing related points that we can argue flow from conceptions of value. For example I could argue that the Soviet Union demonstrates externalities to be alive and kicking in communist societies. You can reply that it wasn’t really communist. I can argue that what happened there directly followed from communist theories and human nature: and so we dissappear down another garden path. Very interesting and emotive but not really very helpful.
What I was trying to do is pursue a very narrow debate on the idea of surplus and reward for capital in the pricing structure. I am entirely prepared to admit to oversights in my arguments and assumptions I have missed. But is is difficult to do so when the discussion ranges so broadly over topics, causing each individual point to become compressed to the point where serious ambiguity can emerge. I think this latter danger is particularly apparent here, as we are coming from very different conceptual backgrounds and so a lot of terms we use and methods of thinking are dissimilar.
Investment-myopia *is* worse in an unco-ordinated market system, for a structural reason – namely that before deciding to invest, one must look around to what other investors are doing, what rival companies are doing, etc.
I apologise for not arguing this point better.
Yes, there are externalities under socialism – as the actually-existing socialist countries have shown.
About the confusion around terms, that’s very true.
Back to the OP (though the comment discussion is interesting):
Another thing that Lawson doesn’t appreciate is the extent to which modern consumerism did not simply spontanesouly evolve through the logic of production and demand, but was in fact invented (to a large extent) by Alfred Bernays.
And this matters because it supports your class-based analysis: Bernays was very much and very consciously the agent of the forces of capital. He saw the masses as something to be controlled and managed, and had an extraordinary ability to do just that, on behalf of the class that had – and retains – control over the means of production.
You can’t talk about modern consumer capitalism without appreciating its historic roots and how that is based, very much, in class antagonism (or better: the attempted neutralisation of class antagonism by the dominant class for its own benefit).
Paul: good point – we have strayed rather far from the thread’s initial point. However, I’d have to take issue with the point you make. To a non-Marxist this strikes me as a pretty typical Marxist analysis, in that it reduces everything to relatively simple class divisions and the inter-relationships between them.
Using these concepts as the basis for a fundamental analysis of societal functionnings seems odd. We now have a science (psychology) capable of analysis and description on a far more fundamental and nuanced level. Using classes as the primitive notions in an analysis of social change seems a little like using atoms in an analysis of chemical reactions.
I’m not saying your analysis is wrong. Rather I’d be interested to hear whether there is a story you could tell to explain why class analysis is the correct starting point.
Charlie: I guess I’ll give up on trying to understand what the capitalist gets for his risk in your sytem. Re mypoia I take your point. Competitive pressures can force people to adopt sub-rational policies in order to survive in the short term. A topical example would be the ability of irrational bubble investors to overrun hypothetical rational traders who were shorting bank stocks in the years running up to Bear Stearns.
I would say, however, that I think myopia would still be pretty prevalent. Moreover, I would venture to say that co-ordinated economies have rather serious problems which probably surpass the myopia induced by capitalism. How do you envisage a co-ordinated economy allocating resources?
Barney; class is one category in Marxist analysis. There are many, many others. I do not see, however, why you counterpose psychology to class.
There are two elements to the Marxist concept of the working class. First, the class of itself. That is, the objective existence of a group of people bearing a particular relationship to the means of production (and therefore, also to each other). By formulating this idea, Marx was not commenting on the opinions of any individual member of the working class.
Secondly, the class for itself – that is, that element of the working class which recognizes its own objective, mutual interest and works towards it. Though this might seem more promising, in that Marx would seem to be making comment on the opinions of the individual, I think that is illusory. No two individuals are exactly alike, and no two individuals need share the same rationale for their political orientation (whether that orientation is explicit or – as in many cases – implicit).
My point here is that Marx’s category of class is not a means whereby to determine the opinions of any individual – of whatever class they may be. It merely describes an underlying political reality, and points towards how we can successfully interact and engage with the reality – much like the idea of gravity explains why we can’t make water flow up hill. Trying to read off a person’s opinions from their class designation is like suggesting that the beginning and end of psychology is the study of the shape and function of the brain.
Finally, to wrap up, science is not a neutral tool. You ask a certain question, and you can answer it – but the shape of the question asked is ideologically determined. The application of these findings to practical (i.e. clinical psychology) is very definitely ideological, in that it promotes a subjective notion of well-being, and diagnoses illness according to the same function. I am sorry I am not at home in NI, for at least then I’d have the relevant textbooks (my sister studied psychology) to explain what I mean more clearly – but I hope you get the gist.
Hello, sorry I’m late.
Good post Dave, and interesting commentary from Barnably, Charlie, Paul et al.
For myself, I took the plunge a while back and got his book ‘All Consuming’ on the same subject. I couldn’t bring myself to read it all as it was such ‘jolly good humoured journalistic writing-b-joining-the-dots’ tosh in places, but I assume the article (which I can’t bring myself to read having read most of the book) is in a similar vein.
Like you, I thought the only valid bit of the analysis was around the way ‘consumerism’ is an entirely passive thing, but even this he doesn’t develop satisfactorily.
There’s actually a good deal that could be said (following Lacan) about expanding the concept of surplus value to include what Lacan terms ‘jouissance’ and how any social enjoyment we do get through leisure, consumption etc. comes at at cost, and is mediated through some bureaucratic agency, and intensified through the subject’s own compulsion to enjoy; such enjoyment can never be fully realised because it is mediated through these agencies, which ‘skim’ off ever greater surpluses, leaving only enough enjoyment to engender further (obsessive) compulsions, to further consume and enjoy (and yes, I did shamelessly copy and paste that bit in from a previous post of mine on this stuff.
But he doesn’t, and it’s all just shallow, ‘ethical consumer’ nonsense, which, as you say, offers no way forward. The book offers, in a Compass-style way, a number of public policy prescriptions such as restriction on advertising and ‘ending privatisation’ (yeag, really) but no way of getting to this other than some Fabianist notion that if we speak nicely enough to those in power they’ll be convinced of the moral case for same.
Frankly, it’s alarming that John Harris is being flagged up as one of the leading intellectual lights of the Left – I’m no Zizek but even I can see how poorly thought out it all is.
In fact you’ve beaten me to it with this post, as I have in mind a post tying in George Monbiot’s latest Guardian self-glorification (which Bob Piper picks up and rails against), to this ungrounded ‘ethical socialism’of Harris and on to the recent green paper on social care, which I think the blogosphere ignored pretty well, and its wholescale acceptance of a paradigm in which people, so stressed out (I concur with much of your secondary commentary to Barnaby on this area)leave their nearest and dearest to die in misery because that is commonsense – all the green paper does is put forward proposals for people to die in a better standard of misery.
But that post’ll be a couple of days in the working up.
“How do you envisage a co-ordinated economy allocating resources?”
If I might quote from a book by Feldman and Lotz called A World To Win, they say of a participatory economy:
“Methods of measuring consumption developed further from the most sophisticated existing loyalty card plus market information databases will be deployed to ensure that short-term production and distribution is responsive to individual wants, within the limits of possibility agreed collectively.”
Paul – glad you brought up the Lacanian perspective, as popularised (!) by Slavoj Zizek. As for Compass being Fabianist – Lawson’s work for Unison on co-production in public services (involving workers and service-users in the provision/delivery of services) suggests the opposite of top-down gradualism…
Charlie
I appreciate he may come over all co-production/unions are important, honest, in other things he’s written, but none of this gets a mention in his ‘All Consuming’ book (well at least the bits I could bear to read.
And that suggests to me a lack of intellectual coherence masked by a decent understanding of his readership and an ability to market himself as a thinker. Nothing wrong with that in itself – I just don’t want to buy him. I’d rather have Jacques any day.
As with most senior Compass figures, Lawson seems to say one thing to one group, another to a different group. Whereas Paul charitably describes that as knowing his audience, I think – judging by his ethical socialism crap, and the tendencies that often occur alongside such a thing – that it should more accurately be described as being a self-publicizing twunt, easily swallowed by the Guardian reading type and easily dismissed by anyone else.
Hang on, Dave, it’s not as if All Consuming contains a chapter where Lawson praises anti-union legislation and the markisation of public services…
No, Charlie, but the idea that consumers need only withdraw their consent to make things better is an idea that has plagued the liberal echelons of the anti-globalisation movement since it began. And surprisingly, it always comes from the same sort of people: what I might refer to as the liberal intelligentsia. Those men and women who make their meat through their confused mutterings, but who are trendy to a certain type of person.
The same sort of people who organised and attended the Convention on Modern Liberties, and its successor, and any number of other pointless talking shops for their co-intellectuals, to flatter themselves. I’m just tired of their showboating – and every time Lawson has an article published in the Guardian, that’s what it is.
In my earlier comment I referred to John Harris when I meant Neal Lawson. Sorry about that. They are kind of intertchangeable in my head.
I remain charitable about Neal Lawson’s intentions, and I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke, with a real sense of commitment. But he’s not helping much.
Dave: your comments on psychology and class present a number of issues that require real thought. When I have the time I’ll try and work out how to express the worries that I, and I suspect many other non-Marxists, feel when confronted by class analysis.
Charlie: thank you for the book reference. But the question still remains: how on earth can one group of planners process all that information? And how do you get information as good as through market determined prices?
Barney: of course. I would also point out that my own explanations could probably do with being refined – so don’t judge Marxism too harshly for my own shortcomings.
To add an interesting note to your conversation with Charlie, however, I’ve always been interested by the idea that a post-capitalist economic system could still involve money, without involving private capital. I remember reading a good book on the subject which I shall have to dig out and get back to you on…
“the question still remains: how on earth can one group of planners process all that information?”
There wouldn’t necessarily be a split between workers and planners.
“how do you get information as good as through market determined prices”
Market determined prices externalise costs to the environment, third parties, etc – so the information isn’t always correct.
A few interesting bits and pieces on my blog about this: http://charliemarks.wordpress.com/reading-material/
Charlie: cheers for the reading list, will have a look when I get the time.
Re planners and information. The absence of a split between workers and planners. Two points: division of labour happened for a reason, and it was nothing to do with class or capitalism, and second, are you saying that oil refiners will work out how much oil will go where?
Re The failure of prices to convey perfect knowledge. Yes, but without prices you do a lot worse. How do you know how much people value different goods?
I wasn’t arguing against prices – I was arguing that prices could (and should) reflect social and environmental costs. Socialist economies, notional or actual, have money, prices, and markets.
Regarding planning – again I haven’t been clear in what I’ve said. New technologies mean the process of decision-making is shortened information is more widely diffused.
Also there’s the question of division of labour and it is very relevant to classes. Nothing to do with capitalism, because it far predates it.
Dave: sorry, I simply meant that there are good practical reasons why planners and workers are separate. As for division of labour coming about through class politics: I really think that is pushing it a bit far, though I will not deny it has greatly influenced the class system.
Charlie: sorry, reading back what I said it was unclear. Obviously you would have prices; what I should and meant to have said was that I fail to understand the mechanism whereby prices are set in the planned economy. Is there an element of market interaction, or are they wholly determined by planners?
By my lights, prices that are set by planners rather than through supply and demand are inherently lacking in two ways. They fail to tell suppliers what consumers want, and they fail to imbue all the information that the multitude of different sources that feed in to the free market provide.
As for prices reflecting social and external costs: yes of course. That is what many people argue is the job of the indirect tax system, imperfectly though it achieves that goal. I am by no means an Austrian.
First and foremost, I agree with Marx that only some forms of division of labour are actually technically necessary; the remainder are socially constructed. Such socially constructed divisions are attested very well in Archaic, Classical and Roman-era societies and – though my own expertise doesn’t extend beyond the aforesaid in time – even before. To take Classical Greece, the ‘banausic’ activities are one such example.
This type of stereotype is both the result of and a reinforcement of class divisions – which is why, in societies such as Athens, where unprecedentedly the landless, manual labourers could vote and be citizens – the Athenian way out of the class struggle (stasis) that afflicted so many Greek city states, striking slaves was uncommon. There was so little difference between thete and slave that you might actually hit a citizen by mistake and be subject to a legal charge of hybris.
Barney: “Is there an element of market interaction, or are they wholly determined by planners?”
I think that it depends on the sector of the economy and what is most appropriate. Following Pat Devine, I’d say that decentralisation of decision-making is the way to go (market exchange) but only if there can be democratic intervention to resolve imbalances and perverse outcomes (which are then referred to as “market forces” that we should not attempt to correct).
I’d argue that price controls can be more effective than indirect taxation (which usually has regressive effects). For example, consider the following problem: supermarkets are selling cheap alcoholic beverages as loss-leaders, which has implications for pubs and for public health and safety (underage and excessive drinking, anti-social behaviour, etc.). Some doctors and councils are arguing for a minimum price per unit of alchohol, or legal powers to allow public authorities to stop supermarkets loss-leading booze.
Charlie: thanks for that last post, it clarified things quite a lot. We on the outside sometimes have visions of Marxists wanting to have all prices and quantities determined by a group of badly suited men in windowless offices…
It seems to me that the system you propose is, at least in price determination, not a million miles from where we are now, or from where I would like us to be. The major line of controversy would be the use of price controls rather than indirect taxation.
I accept that indirect taxation has nasty regressive effects. That is something that needs to be addressed through the rest of the tax and benefits systems. I don’t think it is done optimally currently, but I think piecemeal reform is the way to go on that, and that can rectify the system, though it will of course never be perfect.
The problem with price controls is that the state is a pretty poor setter of these prices. It lacks the information, but also the flexibility. Bureaucracies simply don’t have the time to adjust their price controls to ever changing economic circumstances.
Furthermore, history does not make happy reading for advocates of price controls. They notoriously lead to shortages and gluts, and were arguably in part responsible for the stagflation of the ’70s. They also have a habit of becoming controlled by special interests, rather than being responsive to the democratic will (although that probably applies to most government intervention, including my beloved carbon tax).
Those are some of the stock and standard criticisms we free-marketers roll out whenever anyone suggests price controls. I guess we get pretty lazy with them. I’m sure you have thought about these and have some interesting responses, I’d be interested to hear them.
Dave: I’m afraid I just don’t know anything about that area, so I must concede the ground to you.
Barney, glad that this exchange has been constructive – I have certainly found it useful.
On price controls, one that we currently have is the national minimum wage, changes to which are set by the Low Pay Commission which receives input from all special interest groups – trade unions and employers’ groups like the FSB and the CBI.
Comrades will have different views on the NMW – at the time I thought it was a welcome development. It’s no substitute for workplace organisation, of course. And I find it obscene that the NMW for younger workers is different than for those over the age of 21.
And there are indirect price controls to limit increases in the share of the national income going to workers – namely, the anti-union laws.
Charlie: I agree. Rare to have a conversation about these things which isn’t just a points scoring battle.
The minimum wage is an interesting example. I would argue that it isn’t a particularly useful case from which to generalise, as wages are “sticky” – they tend not to go down. That at least is one explanation for unemployment in recessions: as falling demand causes the market value of goods produced by workers to fall, the market value of labour temporarily falls. However, the wage level stays too high to clear the market, so we get a temporary spike in unemployment, that is only relieved when either a) demand recovers, or b) eventually real wages fall to the market clearing level.
However, for most goods prices are not particularly sticky -quasi-rational producers are faily quick to adjust their prices towards the price that the market will now bear. Obviously this process is imperfect, but it is a decent enough simplified account of what happens.
This increased downwards flexibility means that lower bound price controls are much more likely to generate gluts of goods. Conversely upper price bounds are likely to create shortages.
My second point is not against the use of minimum wage as an example, but against it in practice. I should say before I start that I have mixed feelings about the minimum wage. Part of me feels that it prevents employers working people at ridiculously low wages. On this basis it obviously has great value.
However, there is a part of me which subscribes to the argument that it just serves to increase unemployment. I heard this argument put most persausively by a man I imagine to be a bete noire of most readers of this page: Milton Friedman. He put it something like this:
“Suppose you have a man, the [market] value of whose labour is $2. You want to employ this man, but the state says to you ‘Stop. You can’t do that’, you may only employ someone whose labour is worth more than $2.50′. To employ this man would be an act of charity. Charity is very commendable, but for the vast majority of small businesses in this country it is also unfeasible.”
We can agree to disagree about the feasibility of charity in this argument. The relevant point is that people generally aren’t charitable in this way.
This excursus into Friedman brings me nicely to your point about the age differences in the minimum wage. Friedman makes an interesting point, which is that teenagers are generally less skilled than their elders, and that their labour is therefore on average worth less (as he was speaking in 1950s-60s America he makes a similar point about the black population, he argues the minimum wage to be the most racially discriminatory law on the statute book at that time). From this it follows that the minimum wage, unadjusted for age, will particularly hurt recent the younger age groups.
Finally, I’ll turn to your point about the anti-union laws. I think this is something of a red herring. I don’t think these are tantamount to price controls, though they do have a dflationary effect on wages. I think they work in a very different way, so from the purposes of observing mechanical processes, can’t really be lumped together with stipulative price controls, as I would tak about them. Though I guess that depends on how you define price controls – I think of them as things which set specific prices either as the given price, or as maxima or minima.
Anti-union laws I would say are more like anti-monopoly laws – they stop certain agents in the marketplace from colluding together to the disadvantage of everyone else. I realise I am stepping into controversy here, but this I would say was the effect of strong unions pre-Thatcher. The coal miners’ power didn’t just hurt the upper income groups – the ordinary shopworker had to pay more in tax to pay the miners’ wages, and then more for their electricity. I am not condoning Thatcher’s actions; I am merely saying that strong unions hurt the worse off as well as the rich. As far as I can see they can become instruments of selfishness and greed and social harm as much as unfettered corporations. (And yes I realise I may just have thrown a bomb).
Sorry forgot to edit paragraph 3. It should say something like “price controls in goods markets make them appear more like labour markets, with massive gluts at times of low demand.” As a result the challenge to the minimum wage as an analogy should be altered, to “yes – it helps show why they are bad – they simulate the imperfections in this market” though I still feel that wages are a special case due to the particular importance of this commodity, and the need for relative stability in wages.
boom!
But without strong unions, all workers are – to put it bluntly – fucked. Especially those on low incomes.
The difference between a trade union and a corporation is solidarity. Organised workers have traditionally acted in solidarity with others.
When we had strong unions there was no mass unemployment or offshore-outsourcing. Pay in the 70s was much better for the poorest workers than today.
Charlie: It has taken me a while to drum up a reply to that last post because some of the points you make go to the heart of the concerns that I and many other free-marketers have about the model we recommend. There is increasing data showing that inequality is significantly increased in deregulated economies, and perhaps more worryingly, that lower-middle and lower income groups have seen barely any income growth as a result of the strong economic growth deregulation has enabled.
That said, I think the system we have now is a lesser evil than the system before the unions were weakened and deregulation took place (I realise that as the two came more or less together, the historical example is hardly scientific).
There are different opinions as to why the economic magic of the ’50s and ’60s came to an end in the ’70s; I am not an expert on long run growth in economics. However, it is pretty obvious that in the UK at least, the ’70s were an economic catastrophe: stagflation culminating in an IMF bailout.
The fact is that the unions continued to demand unrealistic pay rises, and essentially shut down the economy to force them through. While it does not prove causation, the fact that Thatcher’s breaking of the unions and deregulation of the wider economy was followed by strong economic growth, which has continued since, albeit subject to the fluctuations of the business cycle, is strong evidence that the unions had a fairly malign effect on the economy.
Re pay for the poorest workers being better in the ’70s, I have tried to look at some stats for that but I can’t find any dealing with real wages per se. Most that I found looked at relative incomes.
Re mass unemployment. Check out France. Has about 9-10% structural unemployment because wages are too high and labour conditions are inflexible. France is a great place to work, but at quite a cost.
Re offshore-outsourcing. I don’t really have a problem if jobs go to workers overseas who charge less for their labour. I don’t see why the fact they’re from a different country should come into it. There is a role for government in this though: they should provide better training and re-training facilities to help people find new jobs in the areas where the UK has a competitive advantage that is likely to last into the medium term, to help these people get back to work.
I actually find the opposition to offshoring rather difficult. It doesn’t particularly seem to chime well with the idea of an international community of workers, if unions in the UK act to prevent workers in the third world getting better paid jobs. That seems to me to be very similar to the ethic of greed which company directors are so frequently accused of.
As part of the international community of workers, I recognize that it is not in my interest or in the interest of any other worker to allow wages to be depressed. It isn’t even in the interest of the workers who may temporarily benefit from offering labour for cheaper than others.
That is surely proven time and again every time companies find blacklegs to break strikes – only for the blacklegs themselves to end up out of work. The NUM/UDM division is a case in point. Thatcher recruited a splinter miners’ union to her side, to continue working, and in the end they all wound up unemployed too.
To say, however, that this community of interest is ‘very similar to the ethic of greed which company directors are so frequently accused of’ is frighteningly callous.
A worker who gets laid off can face serious deprivation whether he’s the highest paid of the unionised work force or not. The sort of bosses who face criticism for greed could survive for the rest of their lives – in greater comfort than most workers ever experience – on one year’s bonus salary. There’s the difference.
The second frighteningly callous point you make is that Unions breach their nominal internationalist solidarity by preventing “workers in the third world getting better paid jobs”. Except you neglect that Unions are not the arbiters of the economy, they do not determine the allocation of resources – and the people who do couldn’t be less interested in ensuring any group of people get “better paid jobs”. They are simply interested in getting the job done to the highest possible standard for the lowest possible price.
The international element is irrelevant, because it happens just as much within nations as between them. Generation 1 gets X salary plus Y overtime per hour. Generation 2 gets X salary plus 1/2 Y overtime per hour. Generation 3 gets X salary plus 1/4 Y overtime per hour and so on, where each generation represents successive intakes in employment. And none of it is to do with race, gender, age or nationality.
The purpose of Unions is to prevent that drift. Could Unions work more effectively if they worked across national borders? Absolutely, and I’m all for that – though if they did, you’d change tack from “Unions are biased against poor third worlders trying to better themselves” to “Unions are out of control” or some such, no doubt.
But therein lies one of the great truths of free market capitalism; it is a myth. Some of the greatest global capitalist successes of the last 30 years have relied upon State machines willing to suppress the democratic and organisational rights of free human beings. China, India, Indonesia and so on; countries where Unions can be terrorized out of existence.
And still people come off with this trite nonsense about how Unions in the 1970s were out of control.
In pay deals in the 70s unions were able to win bigger increases for the poorest workers, who were most affected by inflation. Pay claims in the 70s were not unrealistic for workers facing massive increases in the cost of living. The choice was: demand that their wages increase to meet the cost, or else put up with a decline in living standards.
Strong economic growth, you say, Barney, but only after admitting that this has not “trickled down” to middle and low income workers…
This is a killer:
“It doesn’t particularly seem to chime well with the idea of an international community of workers, if unions in the UK act to prevent workers in the third world getting better paid jobs. That seems to me to be very similar to the ethic of greed which company directors are so frequently accused of.”
The motive for the corporations is to go where the wages are lowest. So we have the spectacle of Indian call centre workers protesting because their jobs are going to be outsourced to somewhere where wages are even lower…
Workers globally understand what the trans-national corporations are playing at. We aren’t being greedy when we are opposing offshoring – we’re just trying to hold on to what we have.
I thought my post would cause something of a fire storm.
Dave: First up I apologise if you took me to make an equivalence between workers and managers in terms of the costs of respective unemployment. Reading my comment back it can be easily read that way, which was not at all what I intended. Rather I meant that in opposing offshoring I believe workers to be operating on self-interest, rather than for the collective betterment of society – hence the analogy to managers. Whether this self-interest is legitimate or not is another point.
Re “As part of the international community of workers, I recognize that it is not in my interest or in the interest of any other worker to allow wages to be depressed. It isn’t even in the interest of the workers who may temporarily benefit from offering labour for cheaper than others.”
I really think it is in those people’s interests. Living standards have reason incredibly quickly in those nations which have moved towards a capitalistic arrangment. The Asian Tigers for example, as well as the recent growth in China. Now this growth has been imperfect I admit; China still suffers from staggering inequality (worse, interestingly, than the USA – as a sidenote, their are many who believe this is due to a lack of property rights amongst the poorer classes). But the general standard of living in all these countries has risen since they embraced free markets.
“The second frighteningly callous point you make is that Unions breach their nominal internationalist solidarity by preventing “workers in the third world getting better paid jobs”. ”
I find it odd you call that callous. It is a technical point rather than a moral one – I may be wrong but I don’t see how it makes me callous. I also think that your argument underneath – that workers do not control the economy or the allocation of resources, but that the people who do don’t give a damn – perhaps highlights two rather major differences between us. Firstly, I think that many employers do give a damn, though I will admit many do not, and I have no problem at all with people refusing to buy from those companies who have poor labour conditions.
Secondly, I disagree with the idea that anyone determines the economy and the allocation of resources. At most individuals control tiny fractions of the resources. The lack of centralised control is, I believe, the beauty, both technical and moral of the free market system.
I agree with you that the international element is irrelevent – that is the point I was trying to make about the opposition to international outsourcing. The fact that there is considerably less resistance to factories moving within countries perhaps says something about the nationalist character of the belief of some unions and workers.
I find it interesting that you refer to the great capitalist successes of the last thirty years as relying on state apparatus. I would point out that all the examples you gave came from countries that for a long time used what are commonly termed socialist or communist models, though I imagine you may disagree with that nomenclature. I would also point out that in all these societies the rise of capitalism has coincided with an increase in civil liberties. A similar point could be made with respect to the successes of capitalism in the West, where social control, which started from a much lower base, has fallen considerably, as living standards improved.
Finally, and I apologise before I say this, I am rather unimpressed with your assertion that:
“And still people come off with this trite nonsense about how Unions in the 1970s were out of control.”
As if somehow no one else’s opinion is valid. I fail to even see how your arguments, which were theoretical and general, could possibly show anything about the unions in the ’70s. Even were one to accept your arguments (and though I disagree with them, I accept that many of them have a lot of force) it would still hardly follow that all unions, at all times, behaved legitimately and for the social good.
The economy of the United Kingdom in the 1970s was a basket case. Growth was minimal, inflation high, and acquiescing to the unions’ demands would have only exacerbated the problems. So at least is the conventional story, believed by many who have studied the situation. There is of course room for disagreement – I would not deny the possibilty that you may even be right – but it is certainly not ‘trite nonsense’.
Charlie: Re inflation. I should have put my point better. When I said ‘unrealistic’ I did not mean ‘unreasonable’ or to say that the workers should have not made those demands. Of course they should, they were, as you say, taking a shoeing from inflation. Rather, my point was that meeting these wage demands would have only made the problem worse, so although it caused temporary pain, it was the right decision for the Government to ultimately reject them. My point is that the powerful unions (and indeed the nationalisation of coal) made these necessary adjustments extremely hard to achieve and resulted in considerable misery for many millions of people.
Re the trickle down effect. Yes, it is a problem, and no, I don’t know how to solve it. But two points can be made: first, that it may well be being caused by the process of internationalisation – as workers around the world see their wages rise, so the dampening effect this has on developed world wages for the working class should level off. I don’t know if that is correct, but it sounds plausible. Second, just because a particular instantiation of capitalism has problems, it doesn’t mean the alternatives are better. First, because you need to show how alternatives would improve it. Second, because at the moment, the historical record rather favours capitalism over (nominal) socialism and communism.
And finally… “Workers globally understand what the trans-national corporations are playing at. We aren’t being greedy when we are opposing offshoring – we’re just trying to hold on to what we have.” Everyone is motivated by greed. The majority of workers are not opposing offshoring for the sake of their brothers in East Asia, who, it seems very likely, will actually see a dramatic increase in their living standards. They do it for their own (entirely legitimate) self interest (in which I include the interests of their families). Their is nothing wrong with this, and actually, I have a lot of sympathy for them. The answer that I would propose is not prohiting offshoring, thus harming the workers in the Third World (as presumably the potential ofshore would be the best paid job they could get – otherwise they wouldn’t take it), and harming all the workers who consume the goods, which will now be priced higher, due to greater wages. Instead I think the government should act to help these people back into work in areas that aren’t so vulnerable to foreign competition e.g. those areas which rely on higher skills, better educated workforce etc.
There isn’t less resistance to factories moving within nations, at least proportionately, compared with resistance to the number of factories which move between nations. The more common practice is for the employer to remain in the same place and to outsource or to change the contracts of new intakes. A corollary of both options being to employ immigrants or other workers who are compelled by economic necessity to accept the lower wages, thus circumventing union opposition.
It’s not that the character of unions or workers is particularly ‘nationalist’, it’s just that without being sufficiently socialist (i.e. in favour of global socialist revolution) the quickest way to stop this sort of behaviour – the path of least resistance – is to attack symptoms of a broader problem: i.e. exporting jobs, immigrant labour etc. None of this is built on a nationalist or prejudiced outlook. It’s just what seems ‘common sense’ in the absence of a Marxist critique.
I call it callous because since capitalism began, trades unions and the wider labour and socialist movements have critiqued the imperial and neo-imperial depredations of Western governments and the private investments those governments defended through their various wars. Meanwhile business leaders acted either indifferently or were cheerleaders for this sort of behaviour.
Your argument that Unions or workers were indifferent to the treatment of workers in the Third World turns that history on its head and itself seems thoroughly unsympathetic to the fact that the peripheral structural locations of many of these Third World countries are a function of global capitalism, rather than a result of Unions and workers trying to stop them getting good jobs.
Moving on from this to your contention that workers don’t operate for the betterment of society (and specifically that not all unions at all times in the 1970s did so), I am not disagreeing with your contention – but have a few extra things to add. First, what is society? If we’re talking about all the people within the nation then no one works for the good of society – not business, not the government, not workers.
There are elements of society which have ultimately competing interests – and even the classic State, supposedly neutral arbiter of these competing interests, cannot therefore work in the interest of all society. It can keep the peace between them, by monopolizing the legitimate use of force, but whether or not that is in the interest of society is entirely subjective.
I would simply say that we’re on different sides with irreconcilable interests – and that the collective self-interest and democracy of workers, if followed to its conclusion, will be healthier for the planet and fairer for the world population than to continue with the tyranny of bosses, backed when necessary by the forces of the State.
When you say that some business leaders do give a damn about the allocation of resources, I’m at pains to name one. Sure, there are philanthropists – but on the other hand, these self-same philanthropists can give their money away as they choose whilst with the other hand endorsing Jim Crow laws, Pinkertons, strike-breaking and union-busting. Even the handful who we can all agree pay handsome wages are only paying good wages relative to the rest of the market – this is not the same thing as allowing workers control of their own produce or its surplus value. Structurally, the capitalist remains superior – even on an ethical model.
As for ethical consumers, that’s mighty nice of you to concede that people have the right to boycott what they want – but this still doesn’t change the basic structural relations of capitalism. It just means a certain group of workers might be better off – but I suspect that if ethical consumerism was taken to its logical conclusion, resulting in higher wages across the board, inflation would kick in, wages would be attacked and people wouldn’t be able to afford to shop ethically. Just a thought.
As for China, democracy and capitalism, Marx himself examined the link between democracy and capitalism – and I see nothing else to add. However, it should be noted that often to allow capitalism to take its course, the civil liberties and rights of a people must oft be suspended. Whether in Britain when Thatcher reined in the Unions – a complete and total violation of the principle of free association – or in Chilé when Pinochet had all the socialists executed so that Friedman’s disciples could work their economic miracle. It’s not just about China – and any government can extend civil liberties when the practical opposition is nil, and when such as there is can be dealt with by the Red Army.
You are correct to assume, of course that I do not consider China to be socialist / communist / whatever. I can’t see how anyone familiar with the writings of Marx and Engels could but see China as capitalist. You’ll notice that I haven’t challenged your assertions on increased civil liberties in China – I think there are grounds for some (not total) disagreement but there is no need for me to go down that road.
Dave: we have moved away from debating unionism per se to capitalism versus communism. In regards to debating the minutae you are probably correct in that we come from irreconcilable positions, at least in the short term.
However, I find the way you describe this troubling. You say that we are on different sides with irreconcilable interests. That may be true, if the Marxist interpretation of the world is correct. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t reach agreement on this.
I would argue that capitalism is the best for all concerned. Yes, of course I am biased. I and most of my friends would, I imagine, lose a lot in the communist world. But I think most other people would as well, most of all those in generations to come.
Aside from the economic efficiency point, which I made earlier, and although Charlie has gone some way to addressing I would need to hear more about to be convinced, there is also the moral point.
Collective ownership of resources seems to me to extend the will of the majority decisively into peoples’ personal lives. I can’t be specific with this concern, unless the system you would like to see implemented is laid out in more detail. However at base my worry (fear/horror) is that without property rights people seem to me to be greatly under the controlled by the will of the majority. There is no guarantee that this majority will be benign. As a liberal this troubles me.
I’ll take my chances with the will of the majority and no property rights, rather than with property rights – zero actual property – and the will of an extreme minority.
You say that you worry about how the will of a malignant majority might threaten people’s personal lives. Yet I don’t see how that is different to the reality of capitalist democracy up until fairly recently: sodomy laws, institutional racism and so forth.
As I have contended elsewhere, the capitalist is only concerned with what people do outside of the marketplace insofar as their activities threaten those of the capitalist. Things like sexual orientation do not threaten this, and so the political Right has conceded them. Why would a socialist world see things any different? What is being changed is simply how exchange and property is organised: why should others’ personal lives be of concern to the elected managers etc when it does not affect this reorganisation of society?
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding how you are defining ‘personal life’, because I don’t see how any of this is influenced by (what are for the majority at best nominal) property rights.
As I said it’s impossible to be specific without details of how the Marxist society would go about organising production. But I think it is pretty obvious how they could be abused by the majority e.g. “that’s where you live? sorry mate, we need that for the new swimming baths. Don’t worry, we’ll re-house you somewhere else” or “So you have a dream of providing a new service for people in looking after their houses when they’re at work – getting in the plumbers etc. Sorry mate, but that isn’t what society thinks should be done with these resources – end of dream. Why? Because general society who don’t know who you are or what you want to do didn’t consider this option when they voted.”
I’m sure you can answer both of these. But unless you can provide a detailed account of how production is organised we can chat examples all day with no progress on either side.
Re the majority have no property rights. Really? Well that may be true in the most deprived nations, but certainly not where capitalism has been implemented successfully and for a sustained period of time. Almost everybody in Western Europe has decent tangible property (though not necessarily land). The drive to increase real estate ownership in the US was a feature of the 10-15 years. Both American presidents and the public at large saw this as something which would empower citizens.
Finally the social restrictions that you mentioned (which it must be noted, tend to be thrown off first in successful free market systems, and in inception have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism, but religion) are precisely why I believe in legal protection from the will of the majority. History shows the majority to be often fickle, reactionary and dangerous to minorities. To my mind the whole point of liberalism is to secure man against the will of the majority.
Of course I can answer both of those – but really your concern there is democracy of any sort, not communism. The majority of people are subject to the decisions of elected representatives. If they are rich, they can wall themselves off – perhaps that’s where this stuff about property rights empowering people comes into it – but most people aren’t rich.
As for the majority having no property rights, you mean owning a house? Sure, people can own a house – I was thinking in the more meaningful sense of direct access to the means of production – but how does that ‘empower’ them? They still get one vote in elections, they still have the same job, their kids go to the same schools. And they are still excluded from most of the meaningful decision making processes.
Finally, on the social restrictions, I think you have a jaundiced view of ‘the majority’ – and no appreciation for the link between people who become successful capitalists and those who are senior in religions, political parties etc. I already said that such prejudices are not intrinsic to the workings of the free market – or any market – but on the other hand, capitalists find uses for religion: witness the marriage between corporate America and the religious Right. It’s not like that is anything new, either.
I find it interesting Barney that you argue against democratic control in the economy assuming that there would be no property rights. Wrong! In fact it is capitalism that deprives workers of their property with its cycle of boom and bust.
The property rights that Marxists are concerned with are the rights to productive property – we can own our own homes, but bricks and mortar can only provide us with a living if we become landlords… In actually existing socialist countries there have been forms of ownership, state, municipal and cooperative, which have guaranteed full employment, low inflation, universal healthcare, free university education, subsidized prices for essential items, and housing for all and have given workers the chance to participate in the management of enterprises, albeit often to a limited extent.
In many countries in Eastern Europe that had “socialist” systems, the agricultural sector was dominated by agricultural cooperatives which were often effectively family farms. The restoration of capitalism led to privatization of cooperatives and state lands which they used, and there was sudden competition from overseas as transnational companies flooded the markets with imports.
The nationalised industries and utilities which workers had spent years building up with their labour or taxes were sold off to big business at knock-down prices, helping to keep the capitalists going for a few more years. Research has documented that the poorest were hit hardest by this loss of property rights…
And what good are property rights for working people if you can’t compete with the big corporations and are either forced to sell up or go bust? Being able to own your home is not empowering. To start with you have to get into debt! Then spend years paying off that debt plus interest. All of this is to say nothing of the difficulty that small businesses have in getting credit…
Dave: Can I ask why you haven’t chosen to outline a brief summary of your preferred version of Marxist organisation? I know a full account is too complex for this kind of forum, and would take a long time, but a small summary surely isn’t too much to ask. It at least gives me a view of what I’m supposed to be engaging with.
Which leads me on to your assertion that you can answer my examples – but you don’t. Forgive me if I don’t find that very persuasive. I assume it is because you don’t think it worth your while to try and persuade me. I must admit I struggle to see how Marxism is going to be furthered by not bothering to engage with those of different views. While I grant that you are unlikely to change my opinions dramatically, you may open me up to further persuasion in the future.
Next, democracy. Do I have a problem with it. Yes, of course. I have a problem with any system which brings coercive power to bear on someone’s decision making process. Unfortunately the existence of that power is a fact of life. Democracy is so far as I can see the best way to manage that coercive power, so I am a full supporter of democracy. But I still want to limit the ability of others to coerce individuals as much as is possible within a society that gives people an opportunity to flourish. It’s a balancing act.
Finally, I turn to your belief that access to the modes of production empower people. I don’t see how. Do you, in a democracy, feel empowered over the decisions of the state to do x or y? You are still just one vote. Being able to vote as to the allocation of resources will not empower anyone one inch. I presume that you envisage workers’ collectives deciding how to use a certain amount of capital allocated by the democratic decision making process. Suppose democracy decides to shut down your factory by not allocating it any future capital. Is being exposed to the whims of the will of the majority any better than the whims of economic forces?
Furthermore, where is the room for starting a new business? Do you apply to a central committee for some resources out of the new business pot? And what would that committee base its decision on? (but here I enter a different line of criticism – the inability of planned economies to access information. So let me turn aside from that).
Coda: I should write briefly on why I believe house ownership empowers. Many reasons, but put simply, collateral. If you don’t have a home for me to repossess, I’m not gonna give you a loan to rent that workshop/develop that product. In the land of start up businesses collateral is key. Of course homes aren’t the only option – fields if you are a farmer etc. But collateral is key.
Charlie: I’d write separately but I think the comments from you and Dave are relatively similar, so I’d refer you to the above, to avoid wasting everyones’ time. However, on the socialist utopia you describe: where did that exist?
Barney: I do apologize, I didn’t realise you were actually asking for one. Similarly, when you said “I’m sure you can answer these”, the problems not being difficult ones, I simply took it as read that we could leave them be. Allow me to attempt to synthesize all of the points into a cogent answer, and you can pull me up if I leave anything off.
As I see it, our arguments have coalesced around two points. First, tyranny by majority. I don’t know what has given you the idea that communists are in favour of some sort of mob rule. We aren’t. We recognize a private sphere and a public sphere: it is only in the public sphere that the wishes of an individual must be reconciled to the wishes of the majority. And I see this as fair, because in the public sphere, the actions of the individual impact on other people – and therefore those people have the right to a say. Communism from its very inception is democratic.
In the examples you gave, the ‘private sphere’, i.e. what someone does with their leisure time or in their own home is not infringed in these hypothetical situations – both are examples where the voice of others should be heard. In both examples, as a matter of fact, the voices of others are also heard in society today, one way or another.
In the first, people in Britain can be moved out of their homes, either pressured out of them or forced through Compulsory Purchase Orders. In the second, the idea faces many other ‘voices’ which must be heard: the economy of the idea from the point of view of the provider, the economy of the idea from the point of view of those who might benefit etc. So before we begin, let’s not pretend that in capitalist society, these things don’t happen or can happen simply based on a good idea randomly had by someone one day.
To return to your first example, in a communist society I suspect that the same as happens now would happen then. If the project needed to be located on the site of a residence, then remove the residence and rehouse the individual or family. I don’t see much of a problem there – maybe you do – but it’s certainly not an issue which is alleviated by private property. On the other hand, being in favour of subsidiarity, bulldozing a bunch of houses would have to be scrutinized at a local democratic level – and not just by bureaucrats interpreting planning laws written by people who are good friends with the construction lobby, there being no construction lobby.
On the second issue, there’s nothing inherent to Marxism which dictates how such a thing (or other businesses) would be organised. Again, were it my choice, bearing in mind the theorized decline in division of labour and massively increased leisure time, such unskilled tasks could easily be provided or not provided on the basis of democratic vote or simply a bunch of individuals deciding that this is what they want to do with their time, in the interests of the wider community.
We all have needs, and we all have wants. If our needs are satisfied, it leaves us with time to attend to our wants – and people can do that without the need for organising themselves into a business. Research and development of high-end technology, including consumer goods, would no doubt be directed by experts but funded according to democratic choice, which at the very least provides no constraint that is different in practical effect to those of the market.
What I would point out is that home ownership changes none of this for the vast majority of people. Most people don’t use their homes as collateral; many of those who do live to regret it – my mother, being an ethical individual and a bank manager in charge of small business lending in Northern Ireland is forever telling me of the people she has warned off using their homes as collateral simply because so many of them end up losing the roof over their families’ heads.
There’s a lot to consider here – and it can’t be answered on a blog. My foremost interest in Marxism comes from my use of historical materialism in my primary field, which is history. Discussing a future communist society stretches beyond what I know in intimate detail. Not to say I am wilfully ignorant: I have read texts such as Lenin’s State and Revolution, which attempt to discuss the progress of a hypothetical communist society, but it would take me months if not years to write down and systematize many of the vague notions I have about how a communist society would play out – and then to match these against the different laws of social change that Marx et al have laid out over the last century and a half.
Barney, I did not outline any utopia.
I merely stated that “forms of ownership, state, municipal and cooperative, which have guaranteed full employment, low inflation, universal healthcare, free university education, subsidized prices for essential items, and housing for all and have given workers the chance to participate in the management of enterprises, albeit often to a limited extent.”
So my argument was utilitarian. Versus private ownership of the means of production and an uncoordinated economy, public and cooperative forms of ownership and a coordinated economy are more able to guarantee empowerment for working people.
Consider how the postwar consensus was able – through strong trades unions and public ownership of industries and utilities – to guarantee a sustained increase in living standards, lifting my grandparents out of poverty.
Free market capitalism would not have done anything in this direction. And you yourself are unable to account for growing inequalities following the neoliberal reforms of the 80s…
Dave: I’m working myself up to a post that responds to your last post and the one sometime ago I said would need some time. Sorry, but weekdays don’t give much time for proper reflection.
Charlie: Yes the postwar economy lifted a lot of people out of poverty and did so with full(ish) employment and low inflation. I’m not an expert on long term growth theory, as I said before; my (somewhat limited) econ training is primarily based on business cycles and financical markets.
Rather than set out a mechanism which explains the postwar growth, which I am ill-qualified to do, I’d point out some problems with the idea that this evidence shows statism/unionism to have been responsible.
Firstly, the intractable emergence of stagflation during the ’70s. The oil shocks just didn’t raise prices enough to explain it – I don’t have the maths to hand, but its broadly agreed that oil prices were insufficient on their own to cause all the problems western economies faced in that decade.
Secondly, the extraordinary growth of the US and UK once they deregulated. Admittedly this has come at the cost of rising inequality, though I would dispute it has led to falling incomes for lower income groups – I have never seen any evidence to suggest anything worse than a temporary stagnation.
Thirdly: Considering that the period you refer to was a postwar period, and therefore highly atypical, it is not great evidence on which to generalise that all state systems are good.
Fourthly: France had very similar growth, didn’t change model and has lagged ever since, with very high levels of unemployment (seldom below 8-10% for quite some time now).
Fifthly: the Japanese experience. Commonly cited as the magic counterexample to free markets. A state run system that produced steady levels of high growth and employment for close to forty years. However, the growth ended when they caught up with the west i.e. when they could no longer allocate resources to technologies knowing what would be successful because the US had already done it. Since then Japan has been sunk in a mire of low growth (though still high employment, I admit) which has led to fantastic levels of government debt and a looming pensions crisis, far more severe in nature than faced elsewhere in the developed world.
Sixth: the miserable failure of the Eastern bloc and USSR. I don’t really need to elaborate. Except I will say that the USSR is a relevant counterexample. It is a bad outlier of what can happen in communist systems. If not accepted then I’ll feel free to ignore Latin America as a relevant attack on capitalism (which, of course, it is).
Sorry three should read ” generalise to ‘state systems generate good economies’”
I’m not sure what we are now debating, Barney, but my response is this: shared risk and reward give us greater stability. Though the last three decades have seen huge economic growth in this country, it has been shown to be built on sand.
Charlie: I must admit I’d slightly given up on the idea of focused debate. Nevertheless I thought our continuation relatively logical: we progressed from our earlier conversation on the organisation of production, through unionism and into generalised comments on the benefits of organised and free market economies. We have never really stayed anywhere long enough, but I have found it interesting. I have no Marxist friends, so I know very little about contemporary thought in this area, neither popular nor academic (on which note – could you recommend a Zizek and a Cohen as intros to their thought?). I think before one can drill down into one specific area it is good to get a feeling for the general lay of the land.
To cap off the last few posts: I really don’t see the empirical evidence to be in favour of planned economies. I think to see it is, with all due respect, to be very selective with how one views the evidence.
That is not to say that the evidence is all one way. As you have rightly pointed out the growth of the last thirty years has been very ‘top-heavy’. I suspect that is due to wage deflation caused by vast amounts of unskilled labour coming online in the developing world, and that therefore this is a temporary effect. It will not be long before those nations start producing large quantities of highly talented tertiary sector workers, exerting a serious deflationary effect on wages in that sector as well. This will push incomes back towards equality. In this it will be aided by the decreasing rate of inflow to the stock of low-skilled workers, which will allow these wages to inflate.
Having said that I am not unconcerned by this temporary effect – steps should be taken to mitigate it, but these steps should not be allowed to compromise long term growth, which will raise all to a better standard of living.
It is a question of profound importance whether or not the growth we have seen has been built on sand. I suspect not, but it is far too early to tell. We may yet turn into Japonica, with double dippers, u-shapes and alike.
Yet this would not be a failure of capitalism per se, but of the particular conception which has been actualised in the Western financial markets. The so-called Greenspan consensus has been proven wrong; his faith in the resiliance of markets was certainly misplaced, as was his belief that markets sufficiently self-regulate. That the recession shows capitalism itself to be fundamentally flawed – I think we need to at least wait to see if this is just a blip or something more serious before we start stretching that far.
Dave: I want to pull together a few points from previous posts, so forgive me if I seem to be wondering around a bit.
Firstly, a few posts ago you accused me of lacking an appreciation of the link between religion and capitalism. I am aware of theories that explain religion in terms of economic self-interest (either directly or indirectly). I must admit I have never bothered to study them, because it seems to me that the content of religious beliefs is very poorly explained by something (forgive me) as clumsy as class relations. These are far better explained by analysis of the minutiae of the history and texts of which a religion is composed. These are simply too contingent and ideas based to be explicable by class.
Which brings me to an argument I pondered a while over in response to your post concerning the opposition of psychology and class analysis, which you took to be a curious opposition. Perhaps I was basing my comments on a rather simplistic understanding of Marxist thought. But your responses have done nothing but strengthen my worries about Marxist analysis, namely that it has dogmatic and idealist tendencies.
I am at heart an empiricist – I never really got on with the Leibnizs and Hegels of this world. So when I hear you say things such as ‘underlying political reality’ I wince, particularly as those words have, in this context, a Hegelian ancestry. I start to wonder at the metaphysical status of this sentence – is it merely metaphorical, or is it actually meant to refer to some additional ontological layer? If the former, then I take phrase to be referring to a model which boils things down to class. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this per se. I am sure there are many areas where this is plausible and instructive. What I object to is the seeming tendency to use class to explain every macro level phenomenon, be it social change, religion or discourse.
When I introduced the opposition between psychology and class I was doing so within the specific reference of explaining consumerism. In terms of explaining this set of phenomena I would argue that the models of psychology are to be preferred. The class explanation – that consumerism was thrust on the working class by a capitalist class intent on neutralising antagonism – isn’t as plausible mechanically. Obviously thoughts of class war were not running through Mr Bernays head – we would all accept that. He was just a man trying to earn money, and he hit on a very successful way of doing so. But why was it successful? As far as I can see class cannot answer that: psychology can. Ultimately ideas of human greed, competitiveness and dissatisfaction must be invoked. Of course class can appeal to psychology. Indeed it surely must for its foundations. But having made the descent why climb back up the chain to class for the explanation? You can analyse the effects in class terms of course – it is eminently plausible that is had the effect of reducing and transforming class antagonism. But I fail to see why one needs to make class the describing language for cause and effect. After all, one uses quantum mechanics to explain the movement of the quarks in a cricket ball, and classical mechanics to explain the cricket ball’s motion.
To me this over-use of class sheds some light as to why you and the author of the original article seem to be in such disagreement.
I must confess to being slightly unsure as to the intent of your original post. Is it an attack on the relevance of Lawson’s vision to the problems Marxism is meant to address, or is it an attack on Lawson per se? It seems to me you do both. In so far as you address the former point I am entirely in agreement with you: ethical consumerism will not make the poor richer.
But your attack Lawson directly is misguided. First you say he is wrong in his depiction of society, and then you say his solutions are inadequate. In other words you treat him as if he were writing for the whole of society about the problems of inequality.
But he is patently not. One would have to credit Lawson with a staggering level of naivety to subscribe to either the belief that all people are consumerist middle class, or that ethical consumerism will solve the problems of poverty. He addresses in his article the dehumanising effect of consumerism, he never claims that we should focus on this to the exclusion of all else – as you seem to imply with much of your criticism.
I find the next point very interesting. You argue that workers have the right to consume the fruits of their labour. To quote you: “there is no reason why our class should not possess them”. You reformulate this point later “I intend to have my cake and eat it.” There is an interesting ambiguity in the former sentence. You intend, I imagine, the rather narrow idea that workers are entitled to be able to have these goods if they should so want. But I think Lawson would rebut you. He would read the sentence more broadly and argue that there is a very good reason the working class shouldn’t choose to possess them – because these goods won’t make them happy.
In terms of engaging with Lawson’s actual argument, you basically just beg the question. “Except that none of this enables people to choose a different life.” Why? Well I guess because they’ll still be exploited by the wage relation etc etc etc. This may be true to some degree – but it is a different debate. The argument Lawson is implicitly limiting his argument to being that within a capitalist society there are things which can be done to make the self more autonomous and happier. I see no reason to suppose that Lawson is wrong in his recommendations.
You say that the true answer is socialism. But this raises a point I have never really understood. If I were to refuse to work my allotted number of hours within a socialist society, what would happen to me? I presume I would ultimately be punished in some way. How, in terms of my autonomy am I so different? I still have a boss in reality. I suppose you will claim that, with the exception of the super rich, we will all be better off (both in time and money) than in a capitalist society. That is possible, but absent your ability to provide a coherent view of how a socialist society would be organised, and given the dismal record of planned economies alluded to above, I would say you are on the wrong side of the argument.
Barney; I am going to print out your last comment directed to me, instead of answering it. I don’t think I could do justice to such wide-ranging queries in one answer anyway. I will have separate blog-posts on each area, and no doubt in so writing them will clarify my own thinking.
Not to say I don’t have off-the-cuff thoughts right now. For example, on capitalism and religion, you seem to view everything about Marxism so mechanistically, and you catch yourself out too. For example, you say that the content of a religion can be explained more by the founding documents and historical minutiae: but what determines the founding documents and historical minutiae? It can be argued that these are merely contingent – indeed that it the whole raison d’etre of postmodernist thinking: but if you are indeed as empiricist as you say, then there’s a whole series of other ontological and epistemological ball games to play.
Anyway, as I say, there’s a lot in your most recent reply to come back to – and these sort of things I deal with not irregularly anyway, so I am happy to find an excuse to write about them in due course.
Barney,
You say: “That the recession shows capitalism itself to be fundamentally flawed – I think we need to at least wait to see if this is just a blip or something more serious before we start stretching that far.”
The flaw is in legitimacy – the triumphalism that followed the restoration of capitalist rule in central and eastern europe (and the restoration of mass unemployment, homelessness, and prostitution) was enough to convince a great many people that, as thatcher said “there is no alternative”.
The lies we have been told – that if we leave the capitalists to organise our economy, if we just do as they say we’ll be okay – they are now recognised as lies. I mean, the anti-recessionary measures have been planned incursions into the free market, after all…
I have relatives in eastern europe who would query your description of planned economies as having a dismal record. They cannot easily forget a time when full employment and affordable housing were considered important markers of economic success.
I’m guessing, Barney, that there’s never been a time in your life when you have been unable to find work, would I be right?
On Eastern Europe: you just have to look at the rise in living standards post liberalisation to see the benefits. I think the shocking disparity between East and West Germany when the wall came down is a pretty good indication of the differences. As for the full employment they managed, it was unsustainable – the Soviet system collapsed from the inside, as an ever decreasing ability to meet people’s needs was met with political unrest. Just look at the bread queues that formed.
While I except unemployment was lower in those economies the fact is that it isn’t the only measure of success. Living standards are important – and in the Eastern bloc the living standards of millions upon millions were held in check.
As for me never being out of work. No, you are right. I have been very lucky so far. But many people I know lost their jobs in the recent crash. No one, save politicians making speeches, is pretending that capitalism comes without costs. Of course there is the insecurity that comes with flexible labour markets; I am not denying the dislocation that can be caused by the creative destruction of capitalism. It is for societies to choose how much they are prepared to accept lower living standards to reduce this effect.
In terms of the stimulus efforts being planned interventions. Indeed they are, but unless people are Austrian in your economics they will accept some need for government to be able to manage the cycle, to take the edges off the path of the invisible hand. Many economists believe that such policy initiatives are long-run sub-optimal (i.e. in the long run fail to maximise national income), but necessary short run in order to mitigate the negative effects of the downturn.
This isn’t inconsistency – it is an appreciation that the world isn’t perfect. So to is a proper understanding of capitalism. It is a realisation that it does have drawbacks, but that these are outweighed by the benefits. Though there are those who take it to laissez faire extremes, it is at heart, I believe, a pragmatic doctrine.
“Just look at the bread queues that formed.”
You will note that these occurred largely after the restoration of capitalism. As mass privatisation, exposure to foreign competition, led to the collapse of production in many countries, so too did living standards collapse…
How do your living standards increase if you face unemployment or even homelessness where before there was none? If the factory you worked in is shut down because it’s produce is deemed not profitable enough, if the farm you worked on is denied credit and the land sold from under you? If you have to move to another country to find work?
It’s hardly a step forward in terms of living standards.
I’d just have to dispute that queues mainly arrived after markets were liberalised. True, there was an immediate increase, as the removal of price controls allowed prices to rocket, but after an adjustment period as wages and prices found equilibrium these queues melted away.
In contrast queues were a renowned feature of those nations under the socialist system. That just is fact. It is well know that there significant shortages in goods across the old Eastern bloc.
It is very interesting that many Soviet planners were actually starting to study and analyse capitalist theories prior to the break-up of the Soviet Union.
As for unemployment: I’m very sorry but your point, whilst a good one, misses the point I was making. Yes, for those people at the bottom of society, socialism was good. They were much more likely to have a job and basic housing. But everyone else suffered. The 90% of the workforce who have jobs are so much better off – they are no longer working hard to subsidise others with little gain to show for it themselves.
I’m not a fan of what capitalism has done to the bottom 10% in these societies – and in more developed economies the bottom 1-2% who are in permanent unemployment. It may be that they were catered for better under socialism. But there are ways of solving these problems within capitalism – through redistributive tax, education and training and charity. It is by no means the case that enough is being done, and things need to change. But to me socialism seems to say to the vast majority: you must sacrifice a lot, an awful lot, for the marginal benefit of a tiny minority.
Of course, economists in most of the former socialist countries looked at how markets function and introduced market reforms to a greater or lesser extent – and those self-declared socialist countries remaining have adopted market mechanisms, have opened up sectors of the economy to foreign and domestic capitalist enterprise in order to survive and develop.
Accepting all of this, it is not the same as insisting that rule by capitalists – by definition a minority – is more desirable. For sure, actually existing socialism was bureaucratic – the “social market economies” of China, Vietnam, etc. have a long way to go in guaranteeing full workers rights, open dissemination of information, and participation in decision-making. That is a struggle for the working class in those countries – they are not likely to want to emulate the experiences of eastern europe, after all…
For it was/is more than the bottom 10% who benefited from socialism and who lost out under capitalism, Barney – and I find it hard to believe you could consider it in such an upside down fashion. The “new middle class” created in many of the former socialist countries in Europe is being hammered by the current crisis – those who believed that the capitalists would give them a better deal are finding that there is now no safety net. (We might well say that the NHS is of no use to middle class people in this country and they are being held back by having to fund the police out of taxation rather than being able to choose their own private defence contractors…)
Very few people have benefited from the restoration of capitalist rule – particularly as the capitalists now have a system which allows rapid transfers of wealth in search of lower labour costs. The number of wage workers available to capital has doubled in the past two decades as India, China and Central and Eastern Europe have opened their economies to FDI and as around the world more and more people have been driven from the land into towns and cities. This has had a negative effect in this country, too – witness the exiting of a million manufacturing jobs in the last decade alone.
Remember, most people are wage-workers – they sell their time and energy in order to go on living and hopefully living better. But the capitalist must keep labour costs as low as possible. This tension leads to instability – and the power of the capitalists to interfere in the democratic process through lobbying, media monopolisation, and campaign financing, prevents this instability being prevented from getting out of hand.
Perhaps we should attempt to draw this discussion to a close. Perhaps we could end with the agreement that would be desirable if more workers able to enjoy the benefits of self-employment as part of cooperatives, partnerships, etc.?
I agree with you that we should draw to a close – I feel we have reached the point of diminishing returns. I guess the last few posts are mainly just the two of us contradicting the other without really going anywhere.
I take on board a lot of the criticisms that you make of capitalism. It is by no means perfect, and apart from it’s theoretical elegance I find it somewhat depressing that it is, so far as I can see, the best system we have. At the same time, I think socialists have a long way to go to persuade people that their conceptions have something to offer. I have often found that socialists tend to focus on the weaknesses of capitalism, rather than constructing arguments to defend the flaws in their own system. I think more work in that direction would improve the socialist cause immeasurably. I’m sure there are many clever people out there who have developed responses to the problems of planned economies – tell us about them!
I’m glad we’ve had this debate in a amicable manner. Too often these debates degenerate into what are essentially name calling exercises. I think that one of the most important breakthroughs that could be made would be for everyone to recognise that the vast majority of people in the debate want to see the best things done – they just have different ideas of what that is. Apart from super hardcore libertarians most people think that what they advocating is for the general good. As soon as people stop throwing around shrill accusations of “evil” we might have more reasoned debates. Hopefully the above has been a tentative movement in that direction.
Last but not least: reading exchange! I’d like to learn more about modern day ideas of socialist economics, but no idea where to look. Would appreciate direction. In return, you may have read it already, and will certainly have heard of it, but Greenspan’s “Age of Turbulence” is an excellent exposition of free market thinking, and interesting historically as well. If you can get past the overly US focus, and the rather too great faith in markets, then it is really very interesting.
The three most significant books, in my opinion are:
“Democracy and Economic Planning” by Pat Devine,
“Socialist Planning: Some Problems” by Maurice Dobb,
“Build it now” by Michael A. Lebowitz.
http://charliemarks.wordpress.com/reading-material/ has some essays that relate to the issue of markets and socialist economics.
http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/ has articles on planning, computers, and socialism by Cockshott and Cottrell