Socialism from Above

...The defects of overcentralized and over-bureaucratized Soviet planning are conceded, yet are partly attributed to a "tainted government...

...Once he has established to his satisfaction that the existing options in these countries are incapable of resolving his long list of problems, he goes on to criticize various other scenarios that have been put forward as having the potential for bringing about constructive change...

...A more cogent analysis would address the issue of the great difference in wage levels in welfare capitalist countries as compared with poor ones, and the fact that this gap is not being adequately compensated for by a difference in the productive capacities of the respective workers...

...It is suggested, too, that Western governments might act as giant wholesalers who order "the quantities and types of consumer goods that they think are in consonance with overall priorities, and then resell them to consumers...

...Cochran writes with verve and flair...

...The Yugoslav experiment in employee-directed management is praised, and a "new morality of cooperation" is called for...

...his summaries are informative, even stimulating to the imagination...

...Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced that the capitalist economies have reached the stage where government takeover is an "inescapable need...

...Indeed, since under a controlled economy the government must have some mechanism for deciding who will earn how much, all economic choices would soon become political affairs...

...Cochran's vision of what tomorrow may bring, on the other hand, is limited...

...Responsibility for welfare payments could be transferred to the states, which could raise money through a Henry George-like real property tax—with a $100,000 individual exemption—rather than further burdening the income tax structure...

...President Reagan has not only been able to use the unemployment cure for inflation without engendering a mass uprising, he appears to have won wide approval...

...Ultimately, he maintains, this will prompt the elites of the advanced industrialized nations to support full-fledged government control of the economy...

...And while Marx attributed his predicted recurring troubles to the exhaustion of investment opportunities, leading to low aggregate demand, Cochran never mentions a demand deficiency...

...and second, that there is no evidence of the new ethos Bell thinks will unite the technocratic classes worldwide...

...Many more jobs for the poorly trained could be created, for instance, if the national government were to subsidize low-wage employment on the order of perhaps half of the first $500 of monthly earnings...

...There is no particular reason, however, why a market made up of many small- and moderate-sized investors/speculators would not be unsteady...

...presiding over an inept, corrupt bureaucracy that does not dare permit the rank and file a voice in managing the economy...

...The book is extremely vague, though, when it comes to describing the probable form of economic control and planning that Cochran himself sees as inevitable...

...Banks could be required to maintain 100 per cent reserves on checking accounts, thus allowing the government to match the national debt with new currency and avoid raising taxes to pay interest...

...The catalysts he cites are persistent inflation, the movement of industrial j obs to Third World countries, the likelihood that they will default on their debts, political difficulty raising enough taxes to pay for a welfare system that will keep the poor from becoming severely disaffected, the depletion of natural resources, and chronic unemployment...

...Instead of a proletarian revolution eliminating private property, he envisions a reshuffling of existing power groups with the preservation of at least a rentier class...

...The Michel Crozier-Sam-uel Huntington-Joji Watanuki contention that people must learn to expect less from their government is dismissed as an attempt to create solutions out of "school masterish exhortations...

...To the extent that this is true even now, it is not insignificant that theU.S...

...One could go on, but the point should be clear...

...Daniel Bell's view that technocrats will provide the leadership and the economic plans in postindustrial society is rejected on two counts: First, that those in power would never allow the technocrats to displace them...

...Moreover, the citizenry's expectations of government have decreased...

...The violent lurching of funds across exchanges in response to small changes in the cost of loans in different countries, or in anticipation of changes in currency parities," he says, "demonstrates that the financial and industrial mastodons have brought not stability, but unruliness, to the international economic scene...

...Welfare Capitalism—and After gives us a useful description of the development of our present system...

...Reviewed by John S. Pettengill Professor of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Bert Cochran, a senior associate at Columbia University's Research Institute on International Change, seeks to convince us that "welfare capitalism" has generated, and will continue to generate, increasingly severe economic crises...

...Worker bargaining leverage could be enhanced by compelling employers to pay an automatic exit bonus equal to 10 per cent of past earnings to those who quit or are fired...

...To those who see multinationals developing a social conscience, for example, he points out that the type of person they tend to hire and promote today is no less conventional and money-oriented than ever...

...Although Cochran spent several years producing his book, he has failed to provide any specific details, thereby underlining what I am persuaded is a generic problem for would-be controllers and their enthusiasts: No central planning system has thus far been devised that cannot be demolished by sensible criticism or is not overly destructive of individual liberties...

...In any case, I believe we have enough common sense as a nation not to leap into government control of the economy without knowing exactly how it would function...

...To begin with, he puts excessive blame on the multinationals for unstable financial markets...

...seems especially uninterested in Cochran's direction...

...But his model is quite different from the 19th-century one...

...Curiously, and to its detriment, this book does not bother to examine possible reforms within our current mixed public and private economic arrangements...

...Similarly, I think the "mastodons" are falsely charged with having a "baleful" impact at home because of their shifting industrial jobs to the underdeveloped nations...

...Like Karl Marx, Cochran sees in capitalism the seeds of its own destruction...

...In making his case, the author traces the evolution of international corporations, the service sector (including government) and overall economic policy since World War II primarily in the United Kingdom, France and the United States...