Why Marx Was Right Read Online Free PDF Page A

is unthinkable without market relations." 6 Along with the Soviet Left Opposition, he was a strong critic of the so-called
command economy.
    Market socialism does away
with private property, social classes and exploitation. It also places economic
power into the hands of the actual producers. In all of these ways, it is a
welcome advance on a capitalist economy. For some Marxists, however, it retains
too many features of that economy to be palatable. Under market socialism there
would still be commodity production, inequality, unemployment and the sway of
market forces beyond human control. How would workers not simply be transformed
into collective capitalists, maximizing their profits, cutting quality,
ignoring social needs and pandering to consumerism in the drive for constant
accumulation? How would one avoid the chronic short-termism of markets, their
habit of ignoring the overall social picture and the long-term antisocial
effects of their own fragmented decisions? Education and state monitoring might
diminish these dangers, but some Marxists look instead to an economy which
would be neither centrally planned nor market-governed. 7 On this
model, resources would be allocated by negotiations between producers,
consumers, environmentalists and other relevant parties, in networks of
workplace, neighbourhood and consumer councils. The broad parameters of the
economy, including decisions on the overall allocation of resources, rates of
growth and investment, energy, transport and ecological policies and the like,
would be set by representative assemblies at local, regional and national
level. These general decisions about, say, allocation would then be devolved
downwards to regional and local levels, where more detailed planning would be
progressively worked out. At every stage, public debate over alternative
economic plans and policies would be essential. In this way, what and how we
produce could be determined by social need rather than private profit. Under
capitalism, we are deprived of the power to decide whether we want to produce
more hospitals or more breakfast cereals. Under socialism, this freedom would
be regularly exercised.
    Power in such assemblies
would pass by democratic election from the bottom up rather than from the top
down. Democratically elected bodies representing each branch of commerce or
production would negotiate with a national economic commission to achieve an
agreed set of investment decisions. Prices would be determined not centrally,
but by production units on the basis of input from consumers, users, interest
groups and so on. Some champions of such so-called participatory economics
accept a kind of mixed socialist economy: goods which are of vital concern to
the community (food, health, pharmaceuticals, education, transport, energy, subsistence
products, financial institutions, the media and the like) need to be brought
under democratic public control, since those who run them tend to behave
antisocially if they sniff the chance of enlarged profits in doing so. Less
socially indispensable goods, however (consumer items, luxury products), could
be left to the operations of the market. Some market socialists find this whole
scheme too complex to be workable. As Oscar Wilde once remarked, the trouble
with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings. Yet one needs at least to
take account of the role of modern information technology in oiling the wheels
of such a system. Even the former vice-president of Procter & Gamble has
acknowledged that it makes workers' self-management a real pos-sibility. 8 Besides, Pat Devine reminds us of just how much time is currently consumed by
capitalist administration and organisation. 9 There is no obvious
reason why the amount of time taken up by a socialist alternative should be
greater.
    Some advocates of the
participatory model hold that everyone should be remunerated equally for the
same amount of work, despite differences of talent, training and