WITH A WORD FROM

...The many difficulties and contradictions that could certainly exist, and have been mentioned in this book, would be strongly emphasized, particularly the problems of risk capital, of reward for success and penalizing of failure...

...There would be little enterprise, innovation would be resisted...

...So be it...

...There should be, there would have to be, a socialist organization theory, concerned with the process of decisionmaking at various levels...

...No, my imaginary critic will assert, this shows lack of understanding of industrial democracy...

...Inconceivable and undesirable...

...The trouble is that there is a R. Selucky, Marxism, Socialism and Freedom (London: Macmillan, 1979), p. 39...

...At all levels the relationship between the organizers and the organized is indeed to be as democratic as the real situation allows...

...As for the behavior of the labor force, and of trade unions, this is indeed a vitally important question, but the evidence is not all one way...

...Surely the answer in both cases must be "no...

...That Soviet-type planning is associated with such a hierarchy, and that it is both inefficient and undesirable, would be accepted, indeed stressed by Sweezy, Bettelheim, and Mandel.' So my disagreement with their position rests on the view, defended at length in the preceding pages, that no way exists to avoid the dominant role of the "bureaucracy" unless one reduces the functions that give it power...

...The critic may resurrect the notion of a New Man or New Woman, socialized, devoted to the common good...

...Of course, it is possible to assume that under socialism there will be no gaps...

...Workers' self-management would be seen as ineffective, with references to Yugoslav experience and also to the attitudes and behavior of trade unions, in Great Britain especially, where their negative attitude to technical progress and productivity is notorious...

...I am not by nature a religious man, and interpret "praxis" as having a great deal to do with practice...

...This is no more (and no less) farfetched than some other assumptions made in orthodox economics...

...Macro plans would be approved by the elected parliament or assembly, and there would be self-management at micro level, though competition is needed to ensure "automatic" responsibility to customers, to avoid the otherwise dangerous pursuit of sectional interest by abuse of monopoly power, and to ensure consumer choice...

...Again and again one must stress that three conditions must be met before anything can be done: information (what it is best to do, and how best to do it), motivation (why bother to do it) and means...

...He may say that they will be uneconomic, and point to the elimination of small corner shops by supermarkets in the U.S.A., plus other instances of the concentration of capital...

...Are there some alternatives that are more attractive, and are not utopian...

...There is indeed no need to consider how to identify and correct error, if error can be removed from the scene by assumption...

...They do not know, and seem to have no particular interest in finding out...

...A shipping group, with someone in charge of it, would have the information about cargoes and the movements of other ships...

...Inflation and unemployment are not conducive to efficient resource utilization...

...Praise for private enterprise would be accompanied by warnings of dire consequences of an enlargement of the role of the state...

...Of course, they do not agree in their evaluation of other aspects of Soviet experience...

...The three last-named are willing to admit that market relations and money cannot just be "abolished...

...Equally surely some responsible individual (who will not "rotate" annually) will be in charge of the electricity grid, and someone will have to plan the construction and replacement of power stations, consider alternative locations and generation techniques, and so on...

...In any case, what is here advocated is not an untrammeled free market...

...I can only continue to deplore the use of ' See Paul Sweezy and Charles Bettelheim's discussion in numerous issues of Monthly Review and their other works, and the last chapters of E. Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory (London: Ink Links, 1968...

...I replied that they would, in my view, be still there after the morrow too...

...It may well be so...

...Abuses of power would be publicized by a free press...

...It is here reprinted with the kind permission of the publishers...

...Socialism is to be rejected, and a reasonable-sounding version is to be more vigorously condemned, since (it will be argued) it would surely degenerate into centralized tyranny, would in the end be "the road to serfdom," as Hayek would certainly say, even though I would be credited with the good intention of avoiding such an outcome...

...Yet a likely critical line of attack would be to denounce me for imagining a socialism with a continuing distinction between rulers and ruled, that is, a vertical division of labor...

...But in the last analysis the intelligent dogmatist reviewer would simply have to rely on faith, faith in the ultimate realization of Marx's dream of a just, conflictless, worldwide society of equal citizens, who have conquered scarcity and who build the good life together without money, acquisitiveness, or rivalry...

...I would then return to the sort of arguments with which this book began...

...Perhaps demands for higher wages would be less insistent if there were not constantly before the public eye some very rich individuals who did no work, or whose earnings were offensively disproportionate to the work they did do...

...Copyright © 1983 by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd...

...The "associated producers" will decide...

...In the centralized marketless economy, "since every working man is simultaneously both a producer and a consumer, his economic essence is split in two parts...

...What is being described here is a possible transitional society, but socialism it is not...

...Equally impossible is to envisage participation, selfmanagement in any meaningful form, unless this is linked with autonomy of the production units in which people work...

...We might be reminded— and correctly reminded—of how the dockers succeeded in wrecking the port of London (and they are well on the way to destroying Liverpool too...

...Indeed, the socialists' very proper aim to improve the quality of life sets up additional demands for resources...

...Opinions are bound to differ on this...

...One must also envisage an attack from a quite different quarter...

...The notion of scarcity also might be attacked, and the possibility of meaningful abundance defended...

...Hence my concern with feasible socialism, and the constraint of feasibility predetermines one's definition of socialism and leads to a conscious rejection of romantic utopias...

...Wants do expand, and not only because of advertising...

...The existence of levels, and so of the need for some hierarchy, are simple facts of life...

...But one should not send the police to arrest the corner shopkeeper for trading, if he is filling gaps in state and socialized trade (and finds this profitable because these gaps exist...

...Yes, the producer is also the consumer...

...He would note the growth of large corporations in capitalist countries, within which market relations are replaced by administrative subordination...

...link between this concept and that of abundance...

...The dogmatist-critic must also clarify his attitude to autonomous small-scale activities...

...In making choices between mutually exclusive alternatives, an unambiguous common good is operationally undefinable...

...Such a world appears to me inconceivable even beyond the time scale set here...

...Did they arise in the U.S.S.R., would they arise elsewhere, because of relative backwardness...

...One must anticipate a major criticism: socialism and the market are incompatible...

...Markets mean competition, and its negative features are there for all to see...

...Socialist supermarkets might do the same...

...The mix between plan and market, the limitations on the latter, would not work, would be inconsistent with efficiency...

...For I could sing Wotan, though very badly...

...Private enterprise would be extolled, its absence deplored...

...Policy with regard to income differentials, privileges, and tax rates would be determined by democratic voting procedures, as would pensions and other social-service expenditures...

...Let us now imagine the reaction of a reviewer, writing in an imaginary journal that we will call the Revolutionary Worker...

...He would refer to dangers of unemployment, of cyclical fluctuations, of excessive inequalities of income...

...You have nothing to lose but the chains that bind you to conventional thinking...

...Nor is there any approach along this line to the question of how to calculate, how to measure cost, how to relate it to result...

...Let us further imagine that the reviewer is a serious, committed, intelligent dogmatist, and that he would not be satisfied with mere denunciation: he will not speculate on how much the author was paid by the CIA, or assert that the ideas expressed are indistinguishable from those of the Chicago school...

...Because of the many complexities and contradictions inherent in the marketless system, "if as a producer he meets effective demand expressed by him as a consumer, he would behave against his interest as a producer...

...Supermarkets did indeed displace the American corner shop, through competition...

...He might note the advances and great potentialities of computerization, the micro chip...

...as a producer he reacts through his material interest in the targets of the plan, while as a consumer he tries to satisfy his material needs and interests through his effective demand...

...To me this smacks of religion, a kind of sophisticated cargo-cult...

...It is possible that the blind pursuit of sectional interest will wreck a socialist economy, but it could wreck a capitalist economy too...

...The nonmarket system advocated by the leftwing critic is more hierarchical, more bureaucratic, more dangerous in the power it gives to the state and its high officials, than almost any conceivable alternative...

...What boredom, if we never argued...

...They are the consumers too, so of course they will decide with the needs of fellow-citizens in mind...

...Actually, this is a poor parallel...

...It still remains farfetched and question-begging...

...That the present world wastes resources, not least on piling up armaments, is undeniable...

...To do so without granting autonomy to productive units, and therefore without "commodity production" and markets, is impossible...

...Many effective critical points can be made along this line, without, unfortunately, grappling with the real question, which is: what alternative is there, what is being proposed...

...The intelligent dogmatist would then direct his fire on weaknesses and inadequacies that certainly do exist in the market mechanism...

...The slogan-statement that they can do so is quite literally meaningless, and this has nothing to do with the intelligence or motives of individuals...

...Critics, forward...

...One might see Lord Harris sharpening his sword at the Institute of Economic Affairs...

...This view was that of Marx himself, and of Kautsky, Lenin, and Bukharin...

...In other words, he proposes to launch a serious attack...

...It may well be that, in the scheme here put forward, their number will actually increase...

...And so on...

...But not (as a rule) of his or her own products...

...One could be called definitional...

...q...

...But can anyone seriously assume the elimination of opportunity-cost, the unrestricted availability of all that people can reasonably want at zero price...

...Political theory would naturally drop the inherently incorrect notion of the "withering away of the state," and devote attention to the necessary "separation of powers," checks and balances, countervailing powers, since eternal vigilance would indeed be necessary to minimize abuses that power over others makes possible...

...The following item appears as Appendix Two in Alec Nove's book The Economics of Feasible Socialism, published this year by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, and Allen & Unwin, Inc., Winchester, Mass...

...Soviet experience (he may say) is irrelevant, because of the existence of an "exploiting" elite, lack of true democracy, and so on...

...Limitations on higher incomes would destroy incentives, discourage initiative, cause talent to emigrate...

...Along what lines...

...What I have tried to set out is a system in which the greatest possible amount of decisionmaking authority is devolved from the center, in which hierarchies are multiple and so not allpervasive, in which individuals or groups can opt out of the nationalized sector if they prefer it, ensuring a reasonable degree of choice for people both as consumers and as producers...

...loose slogan-phraseology as a substitute for serious analysis...

...If one were to define socialism in such a way that these conflicts and contradictions would not, could not, exist, then we are (in my opinion) back to utopia...

...Radoslav Selucky pointed out the dilemma...

...that for a time they are needed, but this would be a time of transition...

...The combination of monetarism, powerful interest groups (among employers and unions) and modern technology could soon put a quarter of the labor force on the streets...

...Perhaps a genuine private-enterprise competitive economy does have some advantages over this so-called feasible socialism, but what we actually have is very far removed from such an economy, for reasons that lie deep within the nature of the system...

...The real dogmatists would reject this reference to "serious analysis" as unimaginative empiricism: "revolutionary praxis" will show the way...

...True, dockers did very seriously damage British ports, to the benefit of Rotterdam and Hamburg, but there were unions also in Rotterdam and Hamburg, proving that not all need be as myopic (and, frankly, stupidly conservative) as the British variety...

...What way...

...With the best of motives, we cannot act unless the means to do so can be acquired...

...The disagreement here would center on the possibility of overcoming the obstacles to the elimination of market relations without creating in the process a large, powerful, economically inefficient and socially dangerous bureaucratic hierarchy...

...The Marxist vision is not more utopian than "perfect competition...

...Thus while a cargo ship will have within it a division of labor, which includes a captain and a chief engineer, it is evident that neither of these skilled individuals, or the crew, can possibly know where their ship should go...

...My reply would be along the following lines...

...The people," or "the associated workers," can no more do this than I can sing Wotan in Wagner's Ring...

...I could anticipate that this would be [Charles] Bettelheim's position, for instance...

...None of us, however well-meaning and however much we love our fellow citizens, can have more than a fraction of the vast range of information about economic and technological alternative courses of action...

...I would reply: Yes, it may be so, but it is not a matter of legislation, or of extra-economic coercion...

...My critic will disagree...

...a major role exists for planning...

...In an age of giant corporations, the number of individuals who have the opportunity of showing enterprise, of participating in decisionmaking, is modest and declining...

...and no attempt ever seems to be made to consider who is to perform these very necessary tasks, or how a decision once made is to be implemented...

...Is the world of "feasible socialism," even if feasible, in fact desirable...

...Or because the class struggle was not waged with sufficient vigor...

...Economic development, industrial growth lead to a big increase in complexity, in the number of interconnections, in the range of products, in specialization, in division of labor...

...That strains and contradictions would arise on the boundary line between plan and market, between central and local decisions, is indeed predictable, and quite unavoidable— as unavoidable as the fact that the interest and desires of one individual or group might conflict with those of others...

...Z How, in practical terms, can one overcome this contradiction, in the absence of a market...

...ex ante planning with perfect information and perfect motivation will take care of all needs...

...He was present when I read a paper in Paris putting forward some of the ideas expressed here, and his comment was: "Yes, indeed, the problems described would certainly arise on the morrow of the seizure of power...

...I have never heard of one with that title, and hastily apologize to its editor if by any chance it exists...

...It is the opinion of Sweezy, Bettelheim, and Mandel...

...These could have alternative uses, and in a nonmarket system they would have to be administratively allocated by some body (somebody) aware of what these might be...

...The tendency toward mergers, toward huge and potentially irresponsible multinationals, is as strong as ever, antitrust legislation notwithstanding...

...The danger of some sort of populist tyranny cannot be ruled out, but Hitler rose to power in a capitalist state, and the economic system here proposed is far removed from the one that facilitated the rise of Stalinism...