Re: [OPE] market - and other kinds of - socialism

> now back to me: i take it that the discussion is really centering on
> the third of these ideas. however, i just do not understand the use of
> the noun, socialism, here. there is nothing socialist about china: the
> state is operating as a capitalist. like any capitalist, it has
> various uses for the surplus that its capitalist production generates:
> some is expended, some is accumulated. and like any capitalist, it
> seeks to use (other arms of) the state to advance its own interests:
> eg, infrastructure-building stimulus packages. i know that the term
> 'market socialism' is still used by the leadership, but that's
> placating the masses (especially those older folk who thought that on
> balance mao was pretty good for ordinary people).
 
 
Michael W:
 
Thanks for your clarifications via 'Wikipedia' of the different meanings of
market socialism.
 
In so far as China is concerned, I was specifically referring to the
Deng Xiaoping 'socialist market economy' experience - which had a lot of
similarities to the Right Opposition's proposals in the
industrialization debates in the USSR in the late 1920s (which were
advanced by Bukharin) and the proposals to restructure the Soviet
economy under Gorbachev (perestroika). One could similarly identify
similarities - and differences, of course - between what happened in
China under Deng and the Lange-Kalecki conception of market socialism
and the experiences with market socialism in Hungary under the NEM, the
former Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and other Eastern European nations
(especially those which were part of COMECON). [NB: AS I explicitly noted
in the last sentence, there are similarities *and differences* in these
experiences: e.g. there was workers' control of enterprises in Yugoslavia
under Tito whereas the managers who directed enterprises in the NEM in
Hungary were state-appointed. Some of the institutions and their role in
China, such as the influence of the PLA, were also distinct.]
 
In solidarity, Jerry

> That's why I originally in this thread raised the subject in terms of
> economic history (including the experience of market socialism in
> the former Yugoslavia, China under Deng Xiaoping, Hungary
> under the NEM beginning in 1968, etc.).
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Received on Mon May 2 09:25:30 2011