RE: [OPE] the market and a classless society

>> Had the Polish government wanted to they could have increased the
>> supply of food even at prices below market value.
> How ? By a sheer act of will?

Hi Paul C:

By re-allocating resources into food production.

> Poland had private peasant agriculture. How was such small scale private
> agriculture, still largely using horses in the 80s, to greatly increase
> production?

You can think of no policies which would have helped to increase efficiency
in agriculture? There are no ways in which the government could have
assisted - had they wanted to?

>> what had come out of east Asian commune reports. But this learning by
> doing is not going to be an adequate answer to the problem of socialist
> calculation at a national level, especially in a developed industrial
> economy.>
> You really need to engage more seriously with the debate that Neurath
> started than just saying it is a matter of learning by doing.

You really need to consider more fully the ways in which planning
was done by elites in 'really existing socialism' and represented a
technocratic answer to building socialism. Economists performed an
important role in this undemocratic technocracy. My resistance to
ready made answers concerning the technical methods and formulas used for
calculations concerning efficiency in socialist society is rooted
in my understanding of the historical experiences of those countries
and a desire not to repeat the same mistakes and thereby reproduce
the same oppressive and bureaucratic relations. We don't need another
Kantorovich; we need workers controlling the decision-making process.

In solidarity, Jerry_______________________________________________
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Received on Wed May 6 09:07:10 2009