From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sun May 06 2007 - 09:15:55 EDT
Hi David, Simplification yes - I cannot instantly churn out a whole thesis on the subject, but sloganising no - I could expand on those topics. Thanks for the reference though. I haven't written much about socialist economics, both because my way of thinking about it is very different from Marxist political economy, and because there are still things which I want to study and experience more, before writing on it. However my view is that most of the important theoretical problems have - at least in outline - already been solved. It is mainly a question of gathering and ordering the solutions offered by different theorists, and presenting them in an adequate new framework showing what the relevance of different discoveries, is and why they are important. To my way of thinking, Stalinism (or Marxism-Leninism) is not simply a swearword, but a shorthand for a comprehensive theory of building socialism, much of which I disagree with, although some parts of it are sensible enough and would be shared by most socialists. If Che was in favour of replacing money with calculation directly in terms of value - I doubt whether he was - what could it mean? Economic value can only be expressed in such things as labour-time, money, trading-ratios, relative scarcity and so on. What would be the unit of measurement of value? The only thing it could mean I think is a reshaping of social relationships so that they reflect particular valuations, i.e. a change in subjective orientation. Jurriaan
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