Re: the Soviet system and the w-s

Dear WSN and Ed,

I will quote and respond to parts of Ed's message that I have something to
say about.

On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Ed Weick wrote:

|>Except of course that there was no private capitalist class. That might be
|a
|>rather pedantic point, although perhaps crucial from another respect. The
|>bureaucracy, hungry and parasitic, tightly organized and resilient as it
|was,
|>was not a private *ownership* class. These differences do matter.
|
|I recognize that I'm equating control with ownership.  If one has absolute
|control, one has ownership. 

Not really. Think what you just said: by this principle, the army seargant
has ownership of his subordinates? The great thing about distinction is that
we don't have to confuse one thing with another.

BTW, there is of course a large literature on property as a bundle of
institutionalized rights, including, if I remember correctly, right to
dispose of, right to derive incomes from, right to give away, right to
control the operations of, etc. (At a certain point I even taught a class
with the title "Ownership and Control".)

|                                Private/public distinctions cease to 
|matter.

Or maybe not. I really don't know how to argue with this kind of conflation
of meanings. If what you mean is that under state socialism the private was
not different from the public, you are mistaken. 

|>Of course one can argue, as in essence the global perspective does, that
|>through the system of international linkages that reemerged with WWII and
|>onwards, there was a private ownership class, the only one that really
|>matters anywhere, the global one.
|>
|>That involves another twist though, the fact that that would of course
|>also include you and me (to the extent that we have some kind of a
|retirement
|>benefit system that invests our savings in global stocks).
|
|You'll have to come again on this one.  I'm not quite sure of the points
|you're making here.

Have you ever heard of pension funds? Where do you think all those 
retirement
savings are invested? Where were they invested during the cold war? Whos
earnings do you think financed the public external debt of the Soviet-bloc
states?

|>I beg to disagree. I live in the U.S. and see, hear, sense nothing but
|>ideology. My students come to class full of ideology. Most of my work with
|>undergraduates is all about undoing the ideology detritus they bring in.
|
|But I was referring to the capitalist as a stereotype, and not to your
|students.  I've met many people working for large corporations who are
|highly
|idealistic.  Out of whatever principles they hold, they want to change the
|world for the better.

So what? Your original claim was that there was no ideology in capitalism. I
think that is foolish. And now you agree with that also, with a different
example. I'm not sure what else to say.

|                Nevertheless, their textbook persona is one that has
|them driven purely by self interest.

Who cares about the persona of the capitalist? This is an entirely 
irrelevant
issue. The point about the analysis of capitalism as capitalism is that you
can *avoid* the pop-psychologizing and study the large structures.

|enormous
|>investments into collective consumption. 
|
|I do recognize this.  Much the same kind of investment is undertaken in all
|countries,

What saves this statement is that you say "much of the same kind" which is
extremely imprecise. If you say there was no difference b/w the Soviet 
system
of dealing with surplus and that in any capitalist country, you are 
factually
wrong. Other than that, I'm sure "much of the same is going on," I'm just 
not
sure what that means. 

Jozsef Borocz