Left 'Think Tank without Walls' -- Check out SolidarityEconomy.Net

[The editors--Carl Davidson, Jerry Harris, David Schweickart--are based in Chicago.]

If you haven't viewed SolidarityEconomy.Net recently, check out our new format and content.

It's interactive--you can comment of all articles. Latest articles include worker-controlled factories in Venezuela and Sy Hersh an others on growing war danger with Iran.

We're a 'think tank without walls' that brings a fresh approach to the left. Marxists who appreciate the market, the socialist market economy, a global perspective, the tradition of Bukharin, Gramsci, and Gorz, as well as the importance of the information revolution, will feel right at home. Others are likely to be intrigued, and bound to learn something new. solidarityeconomy.net

If you like what you see and want to help out, hit the 'donate' button

Carl Davidson, Chicago

http://solidarityeconomy.net

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19 Sep 2006
by Anonymous Poster

"Marxists who appreciate the market"

Isn't that an oxymoron?

Why bother calling yourselves Marxists?

Christians who appreciate Witchcraft

Anarchists who appreciate hierarchy

Sydicalists who appreciate Stalinism

Marxists who appreciate the Market

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19 Sep 2006
by Anonymous Poster

Anonymous: that's a misinterpretation of Marx, who viewed the market as a necessary step towards a better society. Moreover, Marx didn't have a problem with the market, persay, since the market is not a trait inherent to capital. It is perfectly plausible to see a socialist, cooperative - or maybe even a communist - society operating within market exchange (whereby supply and demand would still affect prices) while eschewing the exploitative exchange-relation between capital and labor.

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19 Sep 2006
by Carl Davidson

I agree with AP.

The Communist Manifesto starts off with an appreciation of how the market was transforming the world.

Besides, a careful reading of Marx reveals three markets: a labor market, a capital market, and a market in goods and services.

The market socialism we advocate does away with the labor and capital markets--workers runs their factories and divide the profits among themselves as they see fit, ie, no wages. Factories are leased and the payment is a capital assetts tax, then distributed to community-owned and run banks for grants to innovative or needed projects. The only old-fashioned buyer-seller market left is for comsumer goods, which is much more efficient, and even democratic, than a 'central plan.'

Read David Schweickart's 'After Capitalism' for detailed explanations.

Markets preceded capitalism and will be around for a good while afterwards. Prior to markets, plunder and pillage, and sometimes barter, were the main means of exchange. That's why markets are an achievement of human civilization, although certainly not the pinnacle or end. They persist as long as scarcity persist over abundance. When abundance is the norm, then markets, states, hierarchies, classes have the means to fade into history.

But if you abolish consumer markets now, under socialism or capitalism, you only do it a the point of a gun, a la Pol Pot or Stalin, and give birth to a 'black' market at the same time.

So, no it's not an oxymoron. A number of folks ASSERT that it is, but the assertions unravel with a little argument, reason and practice.

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by Kurt

Carl,

So you advocate 'doing away with the labor and capital markets' by nationalizing and collectivizing the means of production and distribution. Of course you are aware that this complete violation of property and individual rights can only take place by mob rule (as proposed by our anarchist friends) or state-sanctioned expropriation (as proposed by our Marxist friends). Both are exercises of violence that only and always lead to a radically inefficient, brutally corrupted and antagonizing central economy. Most of us want to keep an economic system based on private property rights, accumulation of wealth and voluntary exchanges of goods and services. Yet, there’s no contradiction with free-market Capitalism if a number of law-abiding individuals voluntarily merge capital and skills in order to form a collective (e.g. Kibbutz). In other words, try your social and economic engineering experiments on yourself, Carl.

See, I am not surprised that you advocate the elimination of capital and labor markets and, thus, replace demand and supply with fixed prices. Do you really think that the perpetually failing planned economy will finally work? Are you that naïve?

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20 Sep 2006
by Carl Davidson

Set aside the old mindset, Kurt. As they say where I come from, 'there's more than one way to skin a rabbit.'

First, enable and assist workers to take over abandoned factories, bankrupt factories, and factories seized for violations of the law or the tax code. You can get trucks and other capital equipment this way at the police pound auction every week, why not factories?

Second, assist worker coops in having first dibs buying out factories with aging owners with no successors, but no offspring interested in taking them over. You'd be surprised how many of these are out there.

Third, a huge portion of the Fortune 500 are already owned in large part by union pension funds, which, in turn, means, legally speaking, owned titulary by the workers themselves. Now a law transforming union pension fund ownership into public ownership with a proviso the firms be leased locally, with the workers that work them first in line--that's not too far a stretch, is it? Especially if a majority of stockholders approve it?

Finally, set an inheritance tax code whereby its more in an owners interest to have the workers buy him out than to pass it directly to his or her heirs.

Now when workers are owners, and divide profits among themselves, there's no wage labor, and hence, save for very minor things like hiring babysitters, no labor market. Now the lease payment for their factors--call it a capital assets tax--goes to locally publically owned banks , save that needed for national and global infrastructure, which even then is contracted locally. The principle of subsidiarty is employed. No centralized 'GOSPLANs', here, for sure, but captial markets are radically transformed.

But there's no 'fixed prices' at all, not even guidelines, for consumer goods. The workers at each firm charge what they think is best, and compete with other firms, worker-owned or otherwise.

Under Economic Democracy, Worker-owned factories sink or swim on their ability to hold market share, make a quality product that people want to buy, and keep happy customers. There's no 'they pretend to pay us, so we pretent to work.' But there's also no 'expand or die' pressure. Adding more workers to a firm to make more profit just means the profit pie is sliced into more slices-- no pressing reason to expand into 'Giantism' wrecking the environment.

Read the book, then tell me what you think.

Now, of course, these are options. Should an old-fashioned insurrectionary crisis be thrust upon us by fascist-minded warmongers who abandon the law and start a civil war against ordinary folks, then, as a matter of self-defense and survival, things may be resolved another, more direct way, where the old state order crumbles and a new one has to emerge with a 'radical rupture,' as the Old Mole warned.

But I'm sure you'd never resort to those sorts of law-breaking means to defend a dying order, would you?

The founders originally considered 'life, liberty and property' in the first draft, but wisely thought better to amend it, in the fnal draft, to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'

Interesting foresight on their part, don't you think?

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20 Sep 2006
by Anon

I think the ParEcon's got ya both beat.

Side-note to Kurt - the planet is dying.

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21 Sep 2006
by Carl Davidson

To 'PareEcon' believers, go to either Z-Net, for the four part debate between Albert and Schweickart on PareEcon vs Economic Democracy, or read Schweickart's stuff on our site, and see if you still think the same way. Better yet, read 'After Capitalism' by Schweickart. Even if you don't agree with it, it's the one you have to deal with these days.

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21 Sep 2006
by Anonymous Poster

Carl, thank you for the clarifications.

"Of course you are aware that this complete violation of property and individual rights can only take place by mob rule (as proposed by our anarchist friends) or state-sanctioned expropriation (as proposed by our Marxist friends)."

Kurt you are such dweeb...

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