DMNC: beyond the calculation debate…//Dreams of National Capital: Market Socialism, Past and Present | The Brooklyn Rail
July 12th, 2018 •
A useful and interesting discussion of market socialism. We should insist that despite the resemblances our ‘democratic market neo-communism’ is something different altogether. The idea of Commons is not the same as ‘state ownership’ of anything. Next, despite the problems the idea of ‘socialism in one country’ is a vehicle at the starting point: it can invoke an international but at the same time allow a possibly crude but effective form of communism to function, day one. Its three sector structure can reconcile a triad of contradictions. Its market sector simply does an end run around the calculation debate which is in any case approaching obsolescence in an era of computational markets and AI approximations to markets.
The three sectors of markets, planned economics and a third lower threshold sector allows a lot of diversity in a system that we know can function if we know that market systems can function, a system that we know can function since planned economies (concealed from view in jargon) can function: witness the degree to which the American economy has planned elements, far more than we realize. Such a system requires a strong executive with powers solely to be a guardian of communism, with the larger economic power to be distributed through a parliamentary system rendered impregnable against monies, a set of economic and ecological courts, and in its lower threshold level a considerable diversity of ‘let go’ structures and potentials, from small shops, farms, light industries, etc…
The question of efficiency and the calculation debate remain yet are in practice bypassed as we envision a system that is not a utopian perfection but an evolving complex realizing increase stages of neo-communism. It will set all capital to the Commons but establish a constitutional foundation of a shared economy, but not dictate the actual form of the economy beyond its populist guarantees of jobs, education, etc, in a robust package of ‘economic rights’….
Source: Dreams of National Capital: Market Socialism, Past and Present | The Brooklyn Rail
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