Agreed, but separated from an actual movement the 'debate' will decline
into the usual academic chit chat. Actual efforts by workers eg in
Cuba and Venezuela are simply dismissed, or gratuitously abused, rather
than studied. There is remarkably little written on what happened over
the 70 or so years from 1917 to 1990, and what is written is still
swamped by waves of anti soviet propaganda. Neither do there seem to be
any studies of the break down of the USSR and the subsequent wars and
disasters on its territory, the loss of rights for women in eastern
europe, the growth of homelessness, unemployment, charges for education,
wholesale purchases of propoerty by the western financiers, acceleration
in criminality, etc etc etc... etc.. to contrast progressive and
regressive social design and rescue the gains of the past.
On 02/05/2011 17:30, GERALD LEVY wrote:
> > The point to remember is that capitalist societies will have a common
> > structure of exploitation and reproduction. Socialist societies that
> are
> > this able to run the show , ratehr than having the show run them, will
> > show a very great variation in structure and experiment,
>
> Paul B:
>
> I agree. I'm not in principle opposed to a limited role for market
> activity
> in socialist societies, but I think it is good to examine the
> historical record
> to see what happened when this was attempted in different so-called
> 'actually existing' socialist societies and some of the premises of the
> _theory_ of market socialism. While some ideas related to market
> socialism
> can be traced as far back as the NEP (and before), the theory of
> market socialism
> - especially the Lange model - has always had marginalist assumptions
> and principles which, imo, need to be challenged.
>
> But, yes, whether there should be markets, where, by whom, and how
> they will
> operate and be regulated will be decided (hopefully) in practice by
> workers
> themselves (rather than by bureaucratic elites). Still, socialists
> would be well
> served to study both theories of socialism and the historical
> experience because
> there is much that can be learned from such a study.
>
> In solidarity, Jerry
>
>
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Received on Mon May 2 13:00:25 2011
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