What then is the escape from capitalism?
What would be the essential features of a socialist economy, one the would be really achievable?Exactly the right question. It's not just about there but getting from here to there. The former is utopian, the latter involves being realistic. This is not primarily a theoretical question but a practical one.
Marx concluded that capitalism is based on a monetary production economy, and that monetary production economies tend toward capitalism, as China suggests after the introduction of "market socialism" and "socialism with Chinese characteristics."
What would a socialist economy look like then? Paul Cockshott explains Marx's view on this based on "labor credits" as the unit of account. He also explains why he believes that the economic calculation problem that Ludwig von Mises advanced no longer applies owing to technological innovation.
This also has interesting implications for the MMT job guarantee that anchors the value of a currency to an hour of unskilled labor based on governments' power to set the price it is willing to pay in a market, provided the government is sovereign in its currency and has a monopoly on currency issuance. Currency sovereigns have monopoly power, hence, are price setters rather than price takers, regardless of whether they chose to use it.
Paul Cockshott's Blog
What then is the escape from capitalism?
Paul Cockshott
1 comment:
The Chinese communist system is an odd form of socialism without a welfare state. I have come Chinese in some of the videos I have watched that see the European welfare state as its Achilles' heal, where they said it encouraged Europeans to be lazy. These are very conservative views. These very right-wing Chinese put lots of emphasis on authoritarianism abd hard work.
So, you have millions of Chinese Woking their nuts off for the state. A collective that doesn't share anything. I guess the state gives them security, and raises the standard of living of some of them through their hard work. It sounds as miserable as our capitalism.
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