- Here is a post from a blog devoted to cybercommunism. The blogger is glowing about Paul Cockshoot's work on refuting Hayek's supposed refutation of the possibility of a post-capitalist society.
- William Milberg writes about how it is becoming more common to use the word "capitalism", a word mainstream economists had mostly stopped using.
- Herbert Giants and Rakesh Khurana write about the corrupting effects of neoclassical economics on what is taught in business school and then practiced by corporate elites.
- Osita Nwanevu writes, in The New Republic, about the enthusiasts that showed up at last weekend's Third MMT Conference.
- Lisa Schweitzer studies urban environments. In a blog post, she expresses irritation at Paul Romer's arrogance, admittedly filtered through a glowing New York Times article.
- A long time ago, Connie Bruck profiled George Soros in the New Yorker. Soros consciously thinks of himself as building on Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies.
Posts
12 years ago
2 comments:
Well, in terms of "cybercommunism" and Paul Cockshott, I'm surprised that the review is so positive given that Cockshott's vision of socialism retains money (in the shape of "labour-notes") and so is not communist at all (whether libertarian or authoritarian).
I must also note that Geoffrey M. Hodgson critiques Cockshott's arguments in "Socialism Against Markets? A Critique of Two Recent Proposals" (Economy and Society, 27:4, November 1998) -- http://www.geoffrey-hodgson.info/user/image/socagmkt.pdf ). I think overall Hodgson is right, in-so-far as Cockshott really does not understand the difficulties involved in centralisation -- but, then, Marxists rarely do (Hodgson used to be a Trotskyist, before looking into the issue of centralised economies in more detail... although he seems to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater by rejecting socialism as well).
Ultimately, communism needs to be libertarian (decentralised, federalist, bottom-up) if there is any chance of it being viable (as Kropotkin argued long ago). Not that von Mises addressed that, he concentrated purely on central planning -- nor did he "refute" mutualism (market socialism)...
Iain
An Anarchist FAQ
http://www.anarchistfaq.org
I thought, when I read Cockshott and Cottrell long ago that they did not give enough emphasis to Hayek's points about implicit tacit knowledge. Nevertheless, I thought it of interest how they brought computer science concepts of scarce matrices and computation complexity to bear on the question of social planning.
I think I have on my bookshelf a book arguing that Marx was inconsistent on labour notes.
I think syndicates still need some coordination outside the market. One still has issues with externalities, how to get resources for new ones to start up, what to do with those that fail, people to young, old, or disabled to work.
Post a Comment