What is today the economy and what should it be (original) (raw)
Manifesto for the foundational economy
This manifesto argues that industrial policy should be refocused in a kind of gestalt flip. The primary object of industrial policy should not be a few favoured high technology sectors. Instead it should support what we characterise in this paper as the foundational economy. This new category, the foundational economy, which employs 40% of the workforce and is both private and public, is the sector of the economy that provides goods and services taken for granted by all members of the population and is therefore territorially distributed. At the same time it depends on a kind of 'social franchise', either because it is directly or de-facto franchised by the state, or because household spending and tax revenue sustains its activities which are therefore sheltered. This reconceptualisation justifies a new kind of political intervention which would challenge public and private business models that privilege the point value of least cost and most profit and neglect the preconditions of national, regional and local economic security and social sustainability.
Solidary Economic Management – Against Profit-Obsessed Capitalist Oligarchies
This article advocates taking up the idea of 'solidary economic management, ensuring a better life for all – in Germany, the European Union and Europe, as well as worldwide'. It is somewhat more concrete than the term 'solidarity economy', though it does resemble how Marcos Arruda, for example, conceives the latter: a strategy to enforce the values and practices of rising ethical and humane quality within the public, private and social economic sphere. In this understanding, 'solidarity economy' would not be restricted to merely an 'island' within social economic life but understood more generally as a transformation problem: the sub-sector would grow as a result of social struggles and activities, simultaneously changing the public and private economic sectors. The values and principles of solidarity economy would increasingly have a stronger impact and alter the interrelations between both spheres. Ultimately, only the solidarity economy – based on common property – would remain. If the approach envisaged by Arruda, which essentially sums up an ongoing Brazilian debate but is far from achieving broad consensus in Western Europe, is to be implemented, capital oligarchies must successfully be antagonised. Doing so requires the critical application of the theoretical legacy of Marx, Engels and Luxemburg in particular. Disambiguation The term 'solidarity' is highly contested both in this country and beyond these days, while 'solidarity economy' has become a catchword: political opponents and adversaries speak of solidarity and 'practising solidarity'. This should not deter us from using these terms. We should, however, ensure that we consistently scrutinise who is seeking to imply what when speaking of 'solidarity'. With regard to academic discourse, three characteristic moments can be identified: Firstly, the reference to a plethora of interpretations and much attention to an explanatory as well as a normative, or rather imperative use of the term. Secondly, the term 'solidarity' serves to substantiate the stability of a given social context and its members' sense of belonging. Thirdly, the term represents the normative orientation towards that kind of behaviour and action by the members of such social cohesion which ensures its continued existence, or rather growth. 'Solidarity' is moreover seen as a 'fundamental value', similar to freedom, equality and justice (see, e.g., Bayertz, Boshammer). If conceived this way, 'solidarity' and 'practising solidarity' does not necessarily imply 'siding with the weak (and particularly the weakest) and fighting for a fundamental social change together with them'. Similarly, according to this academic notion, the desired changes would not automatically pursue the continuous structural improvement of the social position of the weakest and the weak. The authors of this article, then, grasp solidarity as a dual social relation: between the members of society in need of support and those coming to their aid on the one hand, and between them and the rulers on the other. Solidarity is thus both an appropriation of the problems of others and a critique of relations of power and dominance – the antithesis to competition, as it were. It symbolises the rejection of the enforcement of one's own interests through the realisation of, or acquiescence to the discrimination, oppression, exploitation, social exclusion of others, as well as the refusal to accept structural violence against people. The latter includes the destruction of people's natural conditions of existence. In this basic understanding, 'solidary economic management' implies the employment and use of one's own (as well as other available) resources in order to practice solidarity. It would not, then, be compatible with the blanket maxim of, 'we must first boost economic growth in order to be able
Political Economy in a Broad Sense: Elements of Institutionalism and Utopianism
Voprosy Ekonomiki, 2010
The paper deals with A. Bogdanovs and I. Stepanovs experience of elaborating political economy in a broad sense. The author focuses on their claim that economic formations develop historically in a non-linear way. Similarities and differences between Bogdanovs organisation theory and T. Veblens institutionalism in the analysis of capitalist society are shown. Historical and utopian roots of Bogdanovs socialist economy ideas are considered.
2022
What role should money play in a socialist society? Whether socialism is defined as an end in itself or as a transitional phase toward communism, it is essential to determine the role and dangers of utilizing money within this society. Lapavitsas (1998) argues that the question of money entails the role of markets as well, considering how money, according to Marx, is an emergent phenomenon of commodity exchange (Lapavitsas, 2017B). Lapavitsas (1998; 2003) posits that there are two broad possibilities for socialism. The first is a completely planned economy, in which money and markets have no part in the fundamental reproduction of society and may no longer exist at all. This, however, runs into the problem of calculation: it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to gather all the information necessary on the technical details for the production of millions of products and to then solve the resulting simultaneous equations. Lapavitsas (1998) points this out when discussing labor money in particular, or seeing the value of every commodity in terms of labor hours, but any standard would present the same problem. Even if these issues were solved somehow, that leaves two additional issues: first, that the surveillance technology necessary to gather this information has inherent risks in its use; and second, this leaves aside the problem of how to control and compel labor, as labor money or other tokens cannot do it alone (Bernes, 2020). The alternative is a market socialist economy, which would use some of the mechanisms within capitalism in a limited fashion in order to get around some of these difficulties inherent in a fully planned economy. This economy would entail a market sector consisting of worker-managed and owned firms, with production and distribution coordinated by market forces, and a planned sector that sells certain basic goods, like food, and provides other goods and services based on need, like healthcare and education. The calculations necessary to operate this planned sector would be more feasible considering its orientation toward essential goods. A market sector would allow for efficiency gains in production while the planned sector makes sure people’s basic needs are easily accessible. People would have to get a job to earn an income, but a strong welfare system would prevent poverty and homelessness. Money and markets would play a restricted role in this system, which would be made possible through the abolition of exploitation. For Lapavitsas (2003), this means eliminating the exclusive property rights held by capitalists over the means of production and final output; in other words, the capitalist class must be abolished. This abolition of capitalist class relations would also allow for the democratic control of markets and money, allowing them to act as coordinating mechanisms without dominating society. There are two major problems with this approach to market socialism. First, it is a mistake to locate capitalist class relations as the fundamental driver of exploitation and the subordination of society to markets; class relations contribute to the reproduction of capitalism, but it is widespread market dependence that leads to both class differentiation and the subjugation of human social relations to the market and money. Second, this proposal does not fully engage with its logical implications: if this system has a labor market and competition between firms on the market – i.e. market dependence – then it is still subject to the imperatives of value production. This implies that it will be subject to dynamics that either pull it back into capitalist social relations with the expansion of market dependence, class differentiation, and private accumulation, or result in crisis if the system is made unable to make this backward transition.
Socialism as a Utopia in the present
Bartsidis, Michalis & Costas Douzinas(ed), Living in dark times, 163-174, Vienna: Transform! Europe & Nicos Poulantzas Institute , 2022
We live in a suffocatingly strange and depressing condition, in fear, and surrounded by death. Mainstream politics seem to be left with limited possibilities of reaction unless our collective imaginary opens itself to the invention of an alternative present. I have chosen to use an old term, the name of socialism, and wonder if it is possible to redact this concept in a way that could actually prove useful. Others might opt for another term naming what may eventually come to be. Drawing on the hegelian tradition and the spinozian perspective, I believe we can start by elucidating theoretically the networks of negative forces that take advantage and hold of the collective imaginary, producing new dystopias, inventing “territories” of escape for the privileged and developing new states of emergency. We can then reflect on the conflict between the social forces in which the action of the death drive tends and is put to use for the purposes of domination, and those in which it is sublimated into resistance and revolt; between those inscribed in catastrophic negativity, and those in which it works for personal and social development. How do these two tendencies converge and diverge? Can we elaborate on dialectical links between them in order to allow the “restlessness of the negative” to play its positive historical part? The key concepts that can organize this type of theoretical and political debate and could release the internal dialectics of the negative’s versions, are certain bipolarities such as utopia/dystopia. The focus of this presentation will be on two ideas: first, negativity and how Althusser deals with this concept in his study of Machiavelli. Second, the dimension of the present in an ideal capable of mobilizing individuals and the masses in a positive direction.
The Economic Society: Market Results and Human Purposes – Karl Polanyi and Friedrich Hayek
Tenth Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET), Porto, 2006
Is modern society shaped primarily by man's will and wishes or is it the result of a development which is not the result of human intentions and, therefore, cannot be changed by conscious design? The answer which liberal economists offered at the beginning of the 20 th century is completely different, even contrary, to the answer which we got at the end of the century. The leading figures of economic liberalism at the end of the 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th century-the authors of the so-called subjective value theory-based their campaign against the naturalism of post-Ricardian classical theory on the idea of human capacities and abilities. Not only economic value was regarded as a subjective category expressing human desires, needs and wishes. The Economic Society-or Capitalism, if you prefer-as a whole was understood as the result of a historical progress which realized essentially human desires and aspirations. As Leon Walras had stated in his 'Elements of Pure Economics or the Theory of Social Wealth': "The appropriation of scarce things or of social wealth is a phenomenon of human contrivance and not a natural phenomenon. It has its origins in the exercise of the human will and in human behaviour and not in the play of natural forces … it is within our power to determine whether this appropriation shall be carried on in one way rather than in another. Obviously,
Economic Democracy: A Worthy Socialism That Would Really Work
1992
ARXISTS ARE SKEPTICAL OF BLUEPRINTS, always have been. We all remember Marx's polemic against Proudhon, the Manifesto's critique of "historical action [yielding] to personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual spontaneous class organizations of the proletariat to an organization of society specially contrived by these inventors" (Marx and Engels, 1986, 64), and the numerous other occasions when the fathers of "scientific socialism" went after the "utopians." In general this Marxian aversion to drawing up blueprints has been healthy, fueled at least in part by a respect for the concrete specificity of the revolutionary situation and for the agents engaged in revolutionary activity: it is not the business of Marxist intellectuals to tell the agents of revolution how they are to construct their postrevolutionary economy.