Critique from the Left

As supporters of Market Socialism we usually must battle capitalist arguments to prove that our system is morally superior (and convenient, efficient and more). It is repetitive and tiring, but we are doing grunt work for the better cause. Sometimes the person confronting us is not a pro-Jeff Bezos embarrassed millionaire. Sometimes he or she will be a progressive, even a socialist. Sometimes we get run from the left.

In "Market socialism as a form of life", Tully Rector sustains that market practices are opposed to the principle of community, thus making our system fundamentally inestable. Tully's basic thesis is that "socialism cannot endure as the political logic of a market society, in which subjection to market dynamics is the principal experience of most agents’ lives as individual producers and consumers". If this is true, then market socialism is an oxymoron. Is it necessarily so? 

Tully writes beautiful intellectual prose, and he is way more intelligent than myself. His preferred system seems to be "Council Democracy'' (Vrousalis, Wollner) where control over capital is realized by the workers but ownership is public, managed by councils in layers of authority, from the workplace to the highest level. I think that systems with central weak points as this one should be avoided. Any system that allows the creation of an encroached central elitist bureaucracy will in time have to deal with one. 

Tully's ideas of a market are taken from the perfect curves of the marginalist world. In reality workers experience the market as a series of oligopolies, a small number of companies offering dissimilar products and segmented markets for the same kind of articles. The level of worker autonomy that I support needs an economy not planned by a higher authority. I'm pushing for full worker ownership of their means of production. Only then will we get the benefits of workers' autonomy. Reading Polanyi (the usual influence is this kind of articles) one could be tempted to dismiss any system containing "Market Society" elements; however Polanyi wrote that human motives were mostly social (security, status) instead of economic. And one of the advantages of Free Market Socialism is that it protects workers from long-term unemployment and elevates their social position inside and outside the workplace. 

For a workplace to be democratic, ownership and control are paramount. Following orders can be liberating if the conditions are right, but more often than not it results in alienation. And this includes following planners' orders in a "socialist" state. "Free" market (or at least the illusion of one) is an essential part of life as play, as long as the game doesn't result in a spiral of quality degradation (a recent example is the "Boeing 737 Max Disaster", provoked by capitalists trying to maximise share value while competing with Airbus). 

The most common attacks from the left side are represented in the superb "Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialist", with Schweickart and Lawler on the side of the Market Socialists against Ticktin and Ollman as the Marxist "orthodoxy". Schweickart is the only practical of the four and explains his usual Economic Democracy system while berating the opposition for not presenting actual applications of their theories. The other three discuss proximity with what Marx really meant and for how long a temporary market socialist situation would or could exist in the process towards full communism. Sometimes it feels like a light version of Marx himself debating about the future with John Stuart Mill. 

The orthodox have a problem with the market mechanism itself. Ollman thinks that "market socialists don't realize just how much of capitalism, of its practises and ways of thinking and feeling, and of its problems, are contained in its market relations, and, consequently, how much retaining a market, any market, will interfere with the building of socialism." They have a problem with competition incentives, with workers deciding to not work or to work too much, with them becoming little capitalists of their own, or copying their logic. 

Luckily they also express in the same book that their academic privilege seeps into their opinions. They just don't know how the working daily life of the proletarian is. They don't. It is perfectly possible to theorize about it, as with anything subject to scientific inquiry, but absorbing the practice would certainly change their views. It has mine. Market Socialism would fundamentally alter for the better the reality of everyday toil. Work conditions are everything. They're the majority of the waking hours of most people. Market Socialism gives them a vote in the matter. 

Critics say that Market Socialism is fried ice, thus impossible. Well, fried ice cream actually exists, and it is delicious. 

RECTOR, Tully (2021): Market socialism as a form of life, Review of Social Economy, DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2021.1886319

OLLMAN, Bertell, SCHWEICKART, David, LAWLER, James, TICKTIN, Hillel (1997): "Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialist". Routledge; 1st edition. 

This week in "mom I discovered cooperatives-based market socialism and this is my review of the literature":

JERVIS, Robin (2022): Co-operatives and Socialism: The Promises and Contradictions of a System of Worker Ownership; in book "Thinking Beyond Neoliberalism" (2022), ed: Neal Harris & Onur Acaroğlu, Political Philosophy and Public Purpose, Palgrave MacMillan. 

Added to Accumulated Bibliography: (press to access)

Book review: Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism, Richard D. Wolff, 2012

Today, a non academic post. 

Twenty years ago I read Schweickart's "Against Capitalism" and it changed my life.  Not only because it was a rational and extended deliberation about a possible democratic socialist system, but mainly due to the technique that Schweickart used to defuse typical capitalist arguments about profit distribution. His approach was analytical and methodical. After demolishing the philosophical principles of capitalism he compared it to his model of market socialism, called "Economic Democracy". 

Richard Wolff hits differently.  He is one of the mainstream proponents of worker ownership and participation.  In a small book intended for general audiences he develops his system, but similarly to Schweickart the interesting part comes before the utopia.  Wolff utilizes at least half of his book to explain the fall from grace of the American working class.  Sadly he gets bogged down in adulation of the then fashionable "Occupy" movement (yes, we are old now), but his main points still stand: a confluence of progressive movements and capitalists scared of the Soviet menace allowed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to implement economic measures known as The New Deal. 

Schweickart used analytical and philosophical tools useful for debate, Wolff instead displayed socioeconomic and political history to prove how social movements coming together at the right time can change history.  From the late 1930s until the 1970s the American working class enjoyed unprecedented and continuous improvements in their quality of life, with Keynesian anti-cyclical measures, high taxation of the rich, and powerful worker unions. When the neocon finally defeated Keynesianism families found a temporary solution in the increase of the participation of women in the labor market. Two incomes instead of one. Gen X kids grew up by themselves, while mom and dad toiled at work. Nine to Five.  Two adults working meant the rise of other costs: two cars, more children who needed savings for future college, etc. And then, it was not even enough anymore.  Sadly the book stops there, but we know what many of these families did later in 2016: they voted for the right wing populist that promised to bring jobs back to the country, Donald Trump. 

The second part centers on his worker participation system, shortly explained. Since he addresses the general public he must separate his socialism from history; he defines 20th century "socialist" regimes as "State Capitalism". And I agree with him, for me socialism implies that the workers participate in the profits. His system is boilerplate (micro) market socialism, we all know the drill, but strangely he divides workers in two: the productive workers that are directly engaged in production of goods and services and "enabler" workers that are indirectly related to the production effort: the cleaners, managers, salesmen, etc. He considers the productive workers as the main constituency in workplace democracy. I think that he is wrong. Everybody adds value in the company. 

What conclusion can we take from Wolff? That change is political and depends on institutions implemented by the timely convergence of different movements with dissimilar interests.  That it can be done and that the consequences are significant and multi-generational.  And that certain changes, if not deep enough, are reversible in the span of a few years. 

The book is short, well written and direct. It is worth a read. 

Democracy at Work:

https://books.google.com/books/about/Democracy_at_Work.html?id=-QnzAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&redir_esc=y

Wolff's website: 

https://www.democracyatwork.info/

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