On Mar 17, 2010, at 11:49 PM, GERALD LEVY wrote:
>
>> My reading of Marx suggests that we study capitalist firms for
>> insights into the future of socialist planning whatever form it will
>> take - centralized and decentralized
>
>
> Hi Paul A:
>
> Did Marx anticipate "planning" by capitalist firms? The only form that I can recall him referring to is cost accounting, especially as it relates to the depreciation of constant fixed capital (and much of what was written in _Capital_ on that topic was by Engels, not Marx). He never actually asserted that one can gain insights into the future of socialism through a study of capitalist corporate planning, did he?
>
> In solidarity, Jerry
> _______________________________________________
Jerry -- this seems to me rather clear in statements such as these:
Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Ch III
In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite — into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society.
Capital Vol 1:
"Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime."
*******
Prof. Paul S. Adler
Management and Organization Department
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California
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Received on Thu Mar 18 12:12:32 2010
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