Marx and Market Socialism

...It represented a desire to achieve on a higher level the social solidarity, based on a commonly accepted social ethic, that had prevailed in simpler societies before the appearance of class divisions, the state, and the market (with its impersonal relations of commodity exchange...

...The expansion of a sector of worker-owned enterprises would in fact restrict the sense in which labor-power itself is a commodity (even though labor markets ought to be retained in order to ensure freedom of occupational choice and promote efficient use of human resources...

...The selection of those who perform the more important tasks and the methods by which this selection is accomplished necessarily become vital issues...

...little reward for attending to environmental considerations...

...358-373...

...Perhaps the most profound of Marx's objections to the market is an argument about the meaning of human freedom...

...Given present realities, embracing Marx's assumption of abundance seems naive at best and, if one takes into account ecological constraints on further industrialization, irresponsible...

...He spent a lifetime trying to analyze the market—did he really misunderstand it...

...Emphasis added...

...Of course, none of this will be easy...

...He exposed many of the defects of capitalist markets that will not just disappear with the establishment of market socialism...

...The movement toward the market is not without some real problems for socialists...

...While it is beyond the scope of this essay to lay out a detailed model of a market socialist economy, a few suggestions are in order to indicate how to counteract the undesirable tendencies of markets and promote socialist objectives...

...This can best be done by promoting worker self-management and strengthening those regulations and workers' rights that ensure healthy and humane working conditions...

...He failed to see that markets can also organize production in a way that allows FALL • 1992 • 513 resources to be used effectively to satisfy people's needs...

...In his view, wherever there are markets there will also be "commodity fetishism...

...Once people attribute "objective" reality to "the forces of supply and demand" (forgetting that they themselves set the process of exchange in motion, that it did not fall from the sky), the "market mechanism" becomes an autonomous power and people lose control over certain very important social decisions (for example, what is to be produced, by what methods, where, and for whom...

...It is only with the information provided by such prices that the citizens of highly complex modern societies can evaluate alternative public policies...

...One of Marx's most forceful criticisms is that capitalism exacerbates economic inequalities and necessarily pits people organized in social classes against each other...

...Thus, in Marx's view, communist society would not have to wrestle with "the economic problem" but could pursue its goals in an environment of plenty...

...With admiration they note that "during its rule of scarce one hundred years, the bourgeoisie has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together...

...I bequeath $ to the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas...

...As a result, a market economy will fail to utilize its human and material resources consistently over time and will not produce the amount of output that might otherwise be created and consumed...

...In order to grasp the complexity of his argument on this point, it is necessary to recall his theory of "commodity fetishism" in Capital...

...Certain goods and services should be provided "free" through the public sector either because citizens have a right to them (for example, police and fire protection, legal services, education, health care) or because they are socially desirable but not likely to be provided by the private sector (for example, infrastructure, job training, public amenities...

...resources tied up in obsolete investments...

...It seems obvious to me that Marx was right about the inherent tendency of markets to generate inequality...

...It is noteworthy that in the same sentence in the Critique of the Gotha Program in which Marx banished commodity exchange from communist society, he asserted that "now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but [exists] directly as a component part of the total labor...

...Under communism, "society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow .. . ." The problem is that Marx and Engels neglect to explain who is to represent "society" and how the "regulation of production" is to be accomplished in a way that allocates resources efficiently...

...Nevertheless, we would have a much better chance of achieving most of our objectives if we faced these problems within the context of market socialism rather than capitalism...

...Policies that rely entirely on income taxes and transfer programs often conflict with people's sense that they have a right to their income whether it derives from their property or from their labor...

...3 This appears to have been assumed in The Communist Manifesto, in which Marx and Engels observe that "the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production...

...10017 (212) 595-3084...

...Today, however, many democratic socialists are moving, both in theory and in practice, toward allowing markets a significant role...

...But can we really think of a complex economy in this way...

...At least one reason why the "socialism" instituted in Eastern Europe did not outperform capitalism was the mistaken idea, inspired by Marx, that the market could simply be abolished...

...This rather mysterious statement builds on the first chapter of Capital, where there is a rough sketch of the economic organization of "a community of free individuals carrying on their work with the means of production in common...

...Within the cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of production," he wrote in the Critique of the Gotha Program, "the producers do not exchange their products...

...There is, however, one aspect of Marx's analysis of alienation that has important implications for market socialism, namely, the one pertaining to the capitalist way of organizing the work process...

...2. You can leave a specific percentage of your estate...

...Marx's collaborator, Friedrich Engels, stated their position (in Anti-Diiring) even more bluntly: "The seizure of the means of production by society puts an end to commodity production . . . [and at that point the market is to be] replaced by conscious organization on a planned basis...

...The people who do the exchanging come to see it as something that is independent of and superior to themselves...

...In contrast, in large and complex societies, collection of essential information becomes more difficult...

...rather, they make it] under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past...

...Clearly, human labor does not need to be organized as it is under capitalism...

...This way of allowing consumers to express (and form) their preferences is available only in a market economy, and the validation of the allocation of social labor occurs only ex post...

...2 A market economy makes possible the decentralization of production decisions and it allows prices to be established that, however roughly and imperfectly, reflect the relative scarcities of the available resources both in relation to each other (for example, wood, coal, water power, land, labor, machinery) and in relation to consumer preferences...

...This is why we need to pay attention to Marx's critique...

...If we are to retain the socialist goal of a classless society, market socialists will have to devise institutional mechanisms to counteract these tendencies...

...Whatever its many deficiencies, a market economy provides consumers with choices and it can also give producers incentives to produce what consumers (or other producers) want...

...For Marx, freedom could not be achieved fully as long as markets dominate economic organization...

...In none of his discussions of a postcapitalist economy, however, does Marx ever take up the question of whether or not a centrally planned socialist economy—one that bans markets—actually can allocate the "different kinds of work to be done" in such a way as to provide effectively for the "various wants of the community...

...3-20...

...Impersonal mechanisms must be put in place to motivate people to perform the necessary tasks and to distribute the output of the economy...

...In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx asks, "What constitutes the alienation of labor...

...Indeed, one can judge the effectiveness of any economic system by asking how well it achieves this "proper proportion...

...In a relatively small and simple society (for example, an Israeli kibbutz), the political process can also be simple...

...Abolishing the market would seem to qualify as an effort by people to make history "just as they please...

...Here the young Marx presents his ethical critique of the market in The Poverty of Philosophy: [With the spread of markets] there came a time when everything that men had considered as inalienable became an object of exchange, of traffic, and could be alienated...

...goods and services in chronic short supply...

...518 • DISSENT...

...That would be simplistic and misleading...

...Marx's Critique of Markets Was Marx simply naive...

...Once the market is eliminated, the allocation of economic resources has to be accomplished through some form of political process...

...3. You can leave the remainder of your estate...

...For Marx, the freedom to change occupations was linked to the organization of the economy...

...prices unrelated to costs, hence distorted allocation of resources...

...Marx's criticisms of the inequality and instability of a market economy are primarily economic...

...Demonstrating our liberation from "commodity fetishism," we would institute an "industrial policy" that would reflect demoFALL • 1992 • 517 A LEGACY OF IDEAS A bequest of any size can be of lasting benefit to Dissent and help ensure that the ideas and beliefs you hold dear will continue to have a public forum...

...This leaves the economy vulnerable to swings in expectations about the future...

...Using an analogy to the process in which "primitive" people carve a tree into a totem pole and then turn it into an object of worship, Marx called the modern tendency to reify the market "commodity fetishism...

...Inevitably, a subset of the population is selected by some method to gather information and to make production and resource-allocation decisions...

...65-79...

...Macro-economic variables—total output, investment, employment, and the like—will tend to fluctuate because of the way in which the micro-economic decisions are made...

...Market socialism" is coming to be seen as a feasible way of implementing socialist values within an efficient economic system and, hence, as a chance to revive the socialist project in the face of nearly universal disenchantment with the orthodox model of central planning and state ownership...

...poor motivation and work discipline...

...That is the assumption of abundance...

...Motivation also becomes a problem, and the political process necessarily becomes more complex as direct democracy ceases to be an option...

...Anyone familiar with his analysis of the origins of capitalism will recall his account of how, in Britain, the division of society into capitalists and workers occurred as a result of the historical process of "primitive accumulation...

...For this reason, it is necessary to promote a form of social ownership of the means of production that can distribute pretax income more equitably while avoiding the negative consequences of state ownership of property...

...Similarly, one can imagine situations in which efficiency considerations (requiring competition and mobility of labor and capital) might conflict with workerowned enterprises or stable community life...

...However, as Nove points out, there are several fundamental problems with this conception of a planned economy...

...Despite his commitment to "scientific" socialism, he engaged in a profoundly utopian exercise, linking his critique of markets to his vision of how things ought to be in a future society...

...A question arises as to what social interests those selected—the planners, politicians, bureaucrats—will actually represent...

...While retaining sole responsibility for the views expressed here, the author wishes to thank Joanne Barkan, David Belkin, Samuel Bowles, Mitchell Cohen, Philip Harvey, Irving Howe, and Jinx Roosevelt for helpful comments on earlier drafts...

...Journal of Economic Issues 3 (4), December 1969, pp...

...Running through all of his critiques of capitalism is the idea that markets gradually turn everything into a commodity and, in the process, corrode social values and undermine community...

...Yet Marx does not seem to have thought this through...

...slow growth in real incomes...

...As he wrote in a celebrated passage, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please...

...Considering the widespread dissatisfaction today with centrally planned economies, this appears to have been an unwarranted assumption...

...It is the time of general corruption, of universal venality, or, to speak in terms of political economy, the time when everything, moral or physical, having become a marketable value, is brought to market to be assessed at its truest value...

...There is a strong possibility that markets will make it difficult or impossible to achieve some of the defining goals of socialism.' Although the market socialist critique of Marx must be taken seriously—I, for one, have come to reject This article is a revised version of an essay that is forthcoming in Economics as Worldly Philosophy: Essays on Political and Historical Economics in Honor of Robert Heilbroner, edited by Ronald Blackwell, Jaspal S. Chatha, and Edward J. Nell (London: Macmillan & Company, 1992...

...Not only is such a goal inappropriate to any society other than a very small and self-sufficient one, as Moore points out, it is not consistent with—or justified by —Marx's materialist conception of history since it does not grow out of any historical interaction between the forces and relations of production...

...Yet how realistic is this assumption in today's world—one in which most of the population is still poor, and in which the effort to bring everyone's standard of living up to that of the average person in the already industrialized countries is probably not ecologically feasible...

...After distributing the specific bequests listed above (to others in your will), I leave the remainder of my estate to the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas...

...Even if we could (somehow) start with an equal distribution of economic resources, the normal operation of markets themselves would lead, sooner or later, to increasing inequality, to class divisions, and to the well-known capitalist forms of domination and exploitation...

...Although we cannot expect to eliminate social alienation—because it is just not possible to organize most economic activities on the basis of "production for use" —we certainly can improve the quality of work experience for large numbers of people...

...To counteract the tendency of a market economy to turn everything into a commodity, conscious efforts would be required to slow down—and eventually reverse—the process of commodification...

...In other words, one can only know whether or not society's labor-time was allocated "properly" after consumers have made their purchasing decisions...

...We ask you to consider one of the following options: 1. You can leave a specific amount or a particular asset...

...Consequently, one of the most important questions for market socialists is whether—or to what degree—work can be humanized within enterprises that are competing with each other on the market...

...with collecting the necessary information from the population regarding, say, the preferred design and size of shoes, in advance of production...

...Indeed, in The German Ideology, which Marx wrote with Engels shortly before they wrote the Manifesto, there was an explicit reference to "a great increase of productive power, a high degree of its development" as a precondition for communist society: "[T]his development of [the] productive forces . . . is an absolutely necessary practical premise [for the communist revolution] because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced...

...But if Marx's critique of capitalist markets applies to markets per se, whatever their institutional setting, market socialists will have to find ways of counteracting those undesirable tendencies of markets that will persist even in a socialist framework...

...Rather, we could enjoy a state of affairs in which efficiency would be relatively unimportant and virtually all social needs could be easily satisfied...

...Marx's yearning for a marketless society (exemplified in the purest form by the Robinson Crusoe story) seems to have blinded him to the many difficulties involved in moving from the analysis of a 512 • DISSENT one-person economy to the modeling of a multifaceted socialist economy...

...4 For a more extended discussion of this topic, see my "Cambridge Economics as Commodity Fetishism," Review of Radical Political Economics, Winter 1975...

...This is the idea that the needs and wants of a community can somehow be determined before production takes place, thereby allowing production itself to be undertaken in a precise way to provide exactly the goods and services that the community wants...

...For more specifics on this or other information on gift planning, feel free to phone or write Dissent, 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...

...Much of Marx's well-known critique of alienation under capitalism is even more utopian than his analysis of commodification...

...In an unpublished paper, market socialist theorist David Belkin has recently offered a list of the more common problems that became pervasive in many of the former communist countries that tried to eliminate the market: bureaucratic domination of production and social life...

...One has to do (again...

...Inevitably, the shoes (or other items) that do not get purchased will represent wasted resources...

...There is, however, another argument in Capital that holds that "commodity production, in accordance with its own inherent laws, develops further [as soon as some people begin 514 • DISSENT selling their productive capacities to others] into capitalist production...

...An alternative approach would accept the continued presence of scarcity and would explore ways in which socialist societies might share its burdens while pursuing growth in ways that would be both equitable and ecologically sustainable...

...cratically determined priorities and give us some degree of control over the direction in which our society is moving...

...Explicit boundaries would be drawn around the sphere of the market in order to defend other realms and relationships against its encroachments...

...Even if market socialists do not accept this doctrine, we can learn from Marx not to be intimidated by markets...

...5 See David Miller, "A Vision of Market Socialism," Dissent, Summer 1991 and my comment on Miller, "Questions About Market Socialism," Dissent, Fall 1991...

...Emphasis added...

...Take, for example, the well-known passage in The German Ideology in which he and Engels criticize the capitalist division of labor and project a future communist society in which a person could "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticize after dinner...

...In Marx's view of history, it was the specific mission of the bourgeoisie to raise productivity to such a high level that an age of abundance could be inaugurated—an age in which scarcity and its attendant conflicts over goods and resources would be left behind...

...If market economies are inherently unstable, fluctuations in the rate of growth can at least be attenuated by using the kind of "indicative planning" that allows a multitude of economic actors to coordinate their decisions and set target rates of growth while avoiding the undesirable effects of central planning...

...He simply assumes that this will be possible...

...If things could actually be done this way, and done effectively, it would certainly eliminate a good deal of the waste that occurs in a market economy—where some resources are employed to produce things that nobody buys, and others are used just to persuade people to buy things that they may not need...

...The worker, therefore, feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless...

...when everything, in short, passed into commerce...

...Another perspective on this question is supplied by Alec Nove's discussion of "the ex ante illusion" in The Economics of Feasible Socialism...

...His work . . . is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs...

...acquired, but never bought—virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc...

...See Herbert Gintis, "The Power to Switch: On the Political Economy of Consumer Sovereignty," in Samuel Bowles, Richard C. Edwards, and William G. Shepherd, eds., Unconventional Wisdom: Essays in Honor of John Kenneth Galbraith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), pp...

...Information may be closely held or widely shared, and the procedures for making decisions at various levels may be more or less democratic...

...Marx arrived at his rejection of the market as the logical outcome of his critique of capitalism...

...Seeking the middle ground, we believe that, under the right conditions, markets can be used to achieve social objectives such as efficient allocation of resources, decentralization of decision making, and satisfaction of consumer needs...

...4 Not long after people begin to exchange their products (commodities) in markets, this process takes on a life of its own...

...Commensurate, simultaneous progress towards all of these goals is impossible simply because some of the goals actually conflict with each other.' For example, democratic decision making at the grass-roots level—say, within enterprises or local communities—may conflict with asserting control over the general direction of society, since achieving the latter objective would require either a society-wide consensus or centralized power...

...If not, how can the goals of socialism be achieved in a marketless society...

...I bequeath % of my estate to the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas...

...Promoting Socialist Objectives If market socialists such as myself reject the abolition of markets but find valid insights in Marx's critique of them, what practical conclusions can be drawn concerning the implementation of market socialism...

...In this way we would hope to achieve, among other things, a kind of economic progress that would be ecologically sustainable and supportive of less developed nations...

...Any socialism worthy of the name must humanize the work process...

...If market socialists are right, the major defects of our existing market economy can be remedied by altering its capitalist framework...

...While we do not seek to eliminate the play of supply and demand, we do refuse to hand over all power to "the market mechanism...

...If everything were plentiful (including natural resources and capital goods) and if—as a result of advances in technology—human labor were many times more productive than it is today, then we would not have to worry about social priorities or concern ourselves with allocating scarce resources effectively...

...Marx does allude (in the same passage) to one of the central problems of a socialist economy when he asserts that the "apportionment [of labor-time] in accordance with a definite social plan, maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done [on the one hand] and the various wants of the community [on the other...

...his abolitionist position—it is still necessary to pay careful attention to Marx's argument...

...Still the fact remains that, in a large and complex economy, not everything can be done by everybody...

...When there is an optimistic mood in the air, firms will tend to expand production, hire more workers, and use more inputs until, for one reason or another, the optimism is replaced by pessimism and output rates are cut, workers laid off, and so on...

...For Marx, individual 516 • DISSENT choice and expression do not give a person freedom if he or she has an "alien attitude" toward the market mechanism and is without any power to influence the important social decisions affecting his or her life...

...Accepting at least a few of the lessons of the past, we should try to find a way to incorporate the market within a framework that will allow us both to promote economic efficiency and to advance socialist values...

...To begin with, there is the inescapable fact that there are only two known ways, broadly speaking, in which the economic activities of a modern society can be organized and coordinated—one being the market, and the other, some form of political process (that is, planning...

...disguised unemployment, for example, people in unproductive jobs...

...Copyright 1992 by Frank Roosevelt...

...Examples of such choices might include the process and pace of urbanization, choices among alternative technologies, priorities for developing energy sources, and the degree of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth...

...3 For an appealing projection of such a state of affairs, see John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," Essays in Persuasion (New York: Norton and Company, 1963), pp...

...Before advocating the elimination of either option, one should be reasonably certain that the other will work...

...As Stanley Moore has argued in his important book, Marx on the Choice between Socialism and Communism, the project of overcoming social alienation requires a more radical change than the elimination of capitalist exploitation and is inseparable from Marx's commitment to the goal of a marketless communist society...

...With resources often idle at the same time as there are unfulfilled human needs, a market economy can be said to be both irrational and wasteful...

...Decisions about what to produce, how to produce it, and so on, can be arrived at without reference to market-determined prices because everyone involved in decision making can have direct knowledge of the relative costs of producing different things, and the preferences of the members of the community for various possible outputs will also be known...

...It is just not an effective way to organize and coordinate the economic activities of a large and complex nation—much less the whole world...

...Moreover, as Barnard College economist Deborah Milenkovitch has argued, market-determined prices are a necessary condition for popular sovereignty...

...The purpose of all these efforts to contain the market is ultimately to enable us to fashion and to preserve a social ethic, strengthen community life, and achieve a better balance between competition and cooperation...

...A great many writers over the years have pointed to the difficulty—or even impossibilFALL • 1992 • 511 ity —of effectively structuring a modern economy without relying on markets...

...Clearly, Marx's conception of freedom went beyond the classical liberal definition that focused on the rights of individuals to express themselves and to make choices without interference by the state...

...Some people (myself included) do not know exactly what style and size shoe they want until they actually enter a shoe store, look around, and try on a number of different pairs...

...So what is the problem...

...There is, however, one assumption that, if accurate, would permit us to ignore all of the problems entailed in Marx's proposal to abolish the market...

...Although many of these problems are also prominent in capitalist countries, the point is that they remained in societies that claimed to have found an economic system superior to capitalism...

...Marx argues that we can analyze the economic tasks of a socialist society in essentially the same way that we think about those of a single, isolated individual —Robinson Crusoe—only "with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual...

...and goes on to give the following response: First, that the work is external to the worker, .. . and that, consequently, he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery rather than well-being, does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally debased...

...If, for some reason, producers do not turn out precisely the quantity and quality of goods and services that the community wants, what recourse does the community have—either individually or collectively—to correct the production process...

...Indeed, people lose control over the direction of their society and allow crucial social choices to be made without deliberation (through representative bodies, for example) on them...

...When Marx looked at the market and its corresponding money relations, he primarily saw their negative and mystifying effects on people...

...The Critique of Marx The first task is to review the main criticisms lodged by market socialists against Marx...

...Notes For my earlier views on this point, see F. Roosevelt, "Market Socialism: A Humane Economy...

...Why is it not possible for a socialist economy to replace the market with planning...

...Is it likely that these "agents" will be able to, or even wish to, represent the interests of the "principals" —that is, the population as a whole...

...Furthermore, even if the vision of a marketless communist economy were applicable, it is only in a small and relatively simple society...

...Models that provide for worker- or community-owned enterprises might accomplish this objective...

...If markets, left to themselves, tend to generate inequality, what institutional mechanisms might counteract this tendency...

...An unalienated society could only be achieved if FALL • 1992 • 515 "production for exchange" were to be replaced entirely by "production for use...

...Assigning different tasks to specific people—achieving an acceptable "division of labor" —and motivating everyone to do their work well can also be accomplished...

...Why is the goal of abolishing markets simply not feasible...

...He believed that reliance upon the market to coordinate economic activities prevents a society—and the individuals in it—from achieving freedom in the fullest sense of the word...

...He argues that any market economy will be unstable as long as production decisions are made by individuals or firms without any social coordination...

...At the most basic level, Marx's antipathy towards the market was rooted in a profound communitarian impulse...

...Even if all of the necessary information about consumers' preferences could somehow be obtained in advance of production, it is far from sure that precisely the desired quantities and qualities of products will be produced...

...This is the time when the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged...

...The most important lesson we might learn from Marx would be to take seriously his "materialist conception of history...

...Our legal name is the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas...

...The greatest challenge is to devise a capital-providing mechanism that can foster the development of such enterprises, and it is especially important that this mechanism itself be socially owned, since private banks and capital markets are major generators of inequality and tend to exacerbate uneven development...

...If there is a workable degree of competition in the economy (that is, relatively little monopoly or monopsony power [where a single buyer confronts many small suppliers]), these prices can serve as signals that not only transmit information about relative scarcities, production possibilities, and consumer preferences but also provide incentives for efficient production...

...given, but never sold...

...Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism was first elaborated at length in Capital, but it was anticipated more than twenty years earlier in one striking sentence in The German Ideology : [As the market develops] . . . trade, which after all is nothing more than the exchange of products of various individuals and countries, rules the whole world through the relation of supply and demand—a relation which, as an English economist says, hovers over the earth like the fate of the ancients, and with invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men, sets up empires and wrecks empires, causes nations to rise and to disappear—whereas with the abolition of the basis [of trade], private property, with the communist regulation of production (and, implicit in this, the abolition of the alien attitude of men to their own product), the power of the relation of supply and demand is dissolved into nothing, and men once more gain control of exchange, production and the way they behave to one another...

...A second defect of market economies that Marx brings to our attention is that they are inherently unstable...

...However, his most powerful objections to the market were essentially moral arguments...

...2 As Herbert Gintis has pointed out, the "power to switch" is the basis of whatever "sovereignty" consumers have in any economic system...

...The same point was made in a famous passage in The Communist Manifesto in which Marx and Engels assert that capitalism "has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment.' " This posture is quite similar to that adopted by moral philosophers ranging from Immanuel Kant to Martin Buber, when they condemn any behavior which uses others in an instrumental fashion or treats human beings as means rather than as ends...