Envisioning the Future Requires Knowing the Present

Carl,

Very sorry, I was away in Venezuela... and I had no chance to reply until now.

When you say, "In the sweep of history, markets are generally a positive achievement of human civilization" whether I would agree or disagree - in fact, I would do some of both, very cautiously, however as I make no claims to being a serious historian of distant past epochs - doesn't matter, because the assertion doesn't speak at all to the issues at hand, unless they mean to imply something other than I think you have in mind, that is.

For example, Marx said the same thing about capitalism, and did so in far more glowing terms than you use - but he was of course also aggressively and unremittingly anticapitalist. That he realized and even in some contexts glowingly reported that capitalism provoked and sustained historically crucial development compared to say, the incredibly static ancient Egyptian system or feudalism, is one thing. What capitalism is now relative to what we ought to be enjoying, is another thing. Your comment about markets in ancient history is like Marx's comment about capitalism in its early days. It is academic - and one I don't have any time for discussing now - but one which, regardless of views on it, implies virtually nothing about rejecting or accepting markets today.

So, yes, markets have some effects that in some contexts - particularly relative to what preceded them, but even relative to some other options currently available - are positive. That is true enough. But so does dictatorship, or private ownership, or corporate organization, and so on. The issue is, however, are markets in the large positive in their effects or are they horrendously negative vis a vis human potentials? Are markets as a means of allocation something we should celebrate, or something we should even just accept as inevitable, or are markets as a means of allocation something we should reject as abysmal even as we must of course operate in their context? Do we make demands and develop program and organization presuming that markets for allocation are desirable over the long haul, or at any rate unavoidable, and thus rarely if ever seeking to understand their delimiting impact on our efforts and rarely trying literally to overcome those impacts - or do we make demands and develop program and organization that aims to transcend markets by embodying new allocation relations as much as we can now, and seeking to move toward full new allocation relations as we are able, and at the very least seeking to ward off the reactionary impact of markets in the present? Should we be generating consciousness that accepts and even enshrines market logic, or should we be developing consciousness that seeks to escape market logic? And so on.

Honestly, there are moments I am not sure we are even talking about the same thing when using the term markets - markets in this discussion are not meeting places where exchange occurs. They are not exchange that occurs in light of valuations - prices. Both those attributes are, in one form or another, inevitable parts of allocation. Markets are instead a type of exchange in which each actor competes for private gain, buys and sells by trying to get the best terms they can, and valuations emerge from that and in turn provide the context for it.

I have suggested market allocation has certain attributes built into its logic and operations - in these comments quite briefly, in longer essays and books, more fully. Market allocation, that is, produces the worst sort of anti social individualism by forcing actors to advance themselves, or even just survive, in ways that ignore of overtly harm others - so that nice guys finish last. Markets distort valuations grossly in ways that systematically bias against collective goods production and consumption, ignore external (including environmental impacts), etc. That is, market prices do not register full personal, social,and environmental costs and benefits but, instead, routinely and systematically exaggerate some factors while leaving out other factors with horrendous ecological and social implications for the direction of production. Markets impose inequitable remuneration, including remunerating for property in the form of profits when there is private property, yes, but also, even without private ownership of means of production, remunerating for bargaining power and, as a part of determining bargaining power, for output and race and gender when hierarchies on those terms exist. And markets tend to also impose on production relations a corporate division of labor dividing actors into coordinators and workers insuring that he former rule over the latter. More, and indeed most central to our discussions here, these ills are not confined to markets in context of private ownership of property, much less to markets in context of runaway capitalist class power, but also exist with public ownership, with state ownership, or any other type ownership I have ever heard of, as well as when capitalist class power is less due to worker organization, say. Likewise, these ills exist not only when there is great industry, but even underdeveloped productive capacity, though this variable too of course affects the specific outcomes we can anticipate. The ills also exist as abiding and permanent pressures, so long as there are markets, against any efforts to reduce the harm done. The ills are, in other words, intrinsic to market operations and logic.

So yes, as you say, context of course matters. But the above intrinsic features of markets are built in tendencies which will, however, operate with greater or lesser impact depending on context - just as we can say the same for the built in tendencies of, say, dictatorship or any other substantial social structure. So the fact that context matters, which it certainly does, in no way answers the general criticisms.

When you, and Baker too, it seems, say that government intervention or the pressure of social movements directly or through government policies can impact market activity including somewhat ameliorating (or aggravating) its negative tendencies - that is true, and of course no one denies that claim, and certainly not me - so I really don't understand the need to keep making it.

Your observation holds as well, say, for any other social structure one might reject for the long run - such as patriarchy, or racism, or private profit seeking, or dictatorship, etc. The observation tells us that in context we can seek reforms to mitigate suffering from each of these, and that is quite true, of course. The observation is a non sequitor, however, to the claim that in seeking to bend, or delimit market operations (or patriarchy or racism or private profit seeking, or dictatorship) we ought not enshrine markets (or any of these other oppressive institutional systems) as eternal, or as desirable, or as neutral, but we ought to reveal that markets (and these other systems) are horrific and reveal why, and pose a positive alternative the seeds of which we try, by our efforts, to plant and nurture.

Just substitute the concept patriarchy or racism or authoritarianism, instead of markets, in your observations, and you will see how strange it would sound to a feminist or antiracist or antiauthoritarian for someone to reply to their views by saying, yes, but these relations can be better or worse depending on context. The observation is true - but it is not relevant to the overall stance. And the same holds for my stance toward markets, I believe, or capitalism, for that matter.

As far as your comments about the long run and the length of the working day approaching zero, and so on - I would rather just ignore that issue - I guess, feeling it has nothing to do with reality, now or ever, honestly. On the other hand, clarity about markets and understanding their implications for our efforts right now, and developing our current attitudes to markets, and our current demands regarding them and how we formulate and discuss these, is a matter of the very immediate present, and it will remain so, and will become even more so, to the extent we make serious progress toward a better economy - for example attitudes to markets are becoming paramount in Venezuela, already.

When you say: you "don't think `market abolitionism' makes much sense in the midterm" I think you are probably saying that you don't think markets will be eliminated in the midterm. I don't know when we will transcend markets for allocation, but the date on which that will happen isn't relevant to the stance that it needs to happen. If I say to you I am an abolitionist regarding capitalism, or dictatorship, or patriarchy, or many other things one might mention, for you to reply that you don't think we are going to replace these today, or next month, or next year - or even, if you happen to think it, next decade, or decades, would be non sequitors.

When you were saying, forty years ago in 1969, that you rejected capitalism, and you wanted to eliminate capitalism, and you sought to replace capitalism, some person then saying to you, quite correctly, that it wouldn't happen for fifty years or more so the stance was of no value - would have had zero impact on your abolitionist stance, and rightly so. My views of markets are equally immune to your pessimism regarding when the elimination of markets for allocation will be actively on the agenda, and when they will be more actively a focus (as they are now, say, in Venezuela).

If you said to me, wait, Michael, you are wrong, there is nothing about markets which intrinsically produces anti sociality, inequitable distribution, horribly systematic distortion of prices, and also class division - that would be a real argument against my abolitionism. But saying markets will be with us a long time, or that the harm they do will be less if we regulate them, has no such bearing.

When you say, "And I see any attempt to enforce an overall ban on markets in goods and services, apart from regulating them, as requiring more draconian measures than one would want and/or creating unregulated Black markets that would arise." You are entitled to your opinion, but it is no more than that, and barely that, honestly, in my view. To me it is like someone saying that same thing about getting rid of slavery (which required way more violence and imposition, I believe, than our task will require) or sexism or private property, or what have you. 

When you say, "I have a parallel argument with some prison abolitionists. Naturally, our prison system is in need of vast restructuring and change, including the release of a large majority of those incarerated. But the watchword here is "restorative justice," not abolition, since society will have a need of incarceration to defend itself from certain violent criminals and sociopaths for some time to come as well," I happen to agree, but I think your analogy is quite wrong. Allocation is very general and is analogous to dealing with crime... and saying we can do away with it would be silly. If I was saying let's dump allocation - that would be idiotic and your analogy would be relevant. Participatory planning is, however, analogous to what you call restorative justice - a different way of dealing with allocation comparable to a different way of dealing with crime - that might usefully be part of a vision for a new society, and might usefully inform, as well, current demands and practices, just as for restorative justice and other ideas about crime and adjudication, etc.

Dean,

Thanks for the reply...you have been writing up a storm on the current economic mess, and I know how busy you must be!

You wrote: "First, just as a matter of clarification, “moronic” was Michael’s word, not mine. I did not use this term to describe critics of the market."

I did not mean to suggest that you used the word yourself...rather that what you wrote seemed to me to imply the judgement...

You also wrote: "I would never say that there are not undesirable features that can be associated with the market. To return to my wheel analogy, there are almost 40,000 people killed in auto accidents in the United States each year. None of these deaths would have occurred without the wheel."

Yes, of course, but not one of those deaths is due to intrinsic qualities of wheels which, for that to be the case, would have to impel the outcome of squashing people.

If markets were like wheels, in your sense, then yes, I agree that saying they were abominable and should be rejected as a mode of allocation in a new economy would be like saying wheels are abominable and should be rejected in a new society. Ridiculous. And, honestly, anyone who said that about wheels would be, well, moronic... particularly had they said it carefully, with lots of effort expended in thinking about wheels, etc. etc.

Instead, critics of markets, at least like myself, don't say markets CAN be used in ways that hurt people - like wheels can - but that markets normal use inevitably makes a shambles of their purported purpose and as a matter of intrinsic implication horrendously hurts people.

Your rejoinder analogy could be levied at someone rejecting slavery by a slave owner on grounds that slaves being overworked is just a misuse of ownership rather than slavery being an inexorably despicable situation - or at someone rejecting dictatorship by someone thinking dictators aren't intrinsically problematic, rather bad decisions are misusing the power. Or the analogy could be levied as well, say, at someone rejecting wheels, say, on grounds one was used to kill someone. All of these CAN be used harmfully...slavery, dictatorship, and wheels - but only the first two have intrinsic to their very conception harmfulness...and are therefore not subject to the analogy. The same holds for markets, I believe...

You elaborate and refine the analogy point: "...four decades ago the historian E.P. Thompson wrote a great article explaining how lengthy factory hours came to be imposed on a pre-industrial workforce that was accustomed to having its work patterns determined by the sun. This article, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” noted how workers often came to focus their hostility on the factory clock, which determined when the workday and breaks began and ended."

Thompson was right, but your analogy to markets is not, because workers blaming the clock, like pedestrians blaming wheels, are mistaking the cause and are wrong, I agree, but not so for blaming markets.

That is, blaming markets for distorting human motivation and personality, imposing horrendously destructive motives, erring in the valuation of all goods with external and collective effects - which is all goods - and for propelling worker/coordinator class divisions, and remunerating unjustly mainly according to bargaining power, is all correct. Offering your analogies doesn't rebut such claims, and their underlying analysis, unless you also show that these ubiquitous ills of markets which seem inexorably caused by basic defining market features are in fact, instead, not an outgrowth of markets per se, but only of their misuse, as with your wheels rolling over pedestrians...

While you dismiss rejection of markets, I think you have said nothing so far that rebuts the harsh claims about them, which would certainly suggest that a different allocation system, which does what markets claim to do much better (determine full social ecological costs and benefits of all inputs and outputs and convey control over their amounts to workers and consumers) and, as well, creating a solidaritous and classless context, would surely be an improvement.

You write: "Clearly the clock played a pernicious role in these workers’ lives. In some ways, the patterns of life associated with modern time-keeping remain unpleasant. Still I would not argue for eliminating clocks and watches."

Neither would I, and indeed, one might say, I think reasonably, that only a moron would, or someone moved by something other than reason, supposing doing so occurred after ample evaluation. Your suggesting that those who reject markets after long thought are operating with comparable attention to their topic, to evidence, and to logic as EP Thompson's worker rejecting clocks - even for those who have given years to the issues - is, I think, unduly dismissive.

You write: "As a practical matter, I can imagine no possible state of the world in which we are not going to have markets play a very large role in organizing economic activity for very long into the future. For this reason, I was urging that progressives better start understanding them."

This too seems to me, at least, like a non seuquitor. Of course markets are not disappearing tomorrow, and of course we should understand them - but how long we will have them will depend on many factors, not least if we believe we should replace them.

You can say the same thing about private property, classes, etc. They are not disappearing tomorrow either - nor is racism, or sexism, or authoritarianism, and so on. And we should understand them too, I agree. But one can both seek to understand markets and other ills that aren't due to soon disappear - but also feel that they are a vile encumbrance upon humanity so that our efforts to create a new world - a classless economy - need to replace markets (and other horrible residues of the past) with a better system of allocation.

I wouldn't suggest for a minute we should forego understanding markets. Does anyone suggest that? On the contrary, I think it is critical to understand them...and it seems we may not agree about how markets work, or perhaps even about what they are.

You clarify: "In particular, I argued that many of the negative outcomes that progressives have attributed to markets are not intrinsic to markets, but rather result from the ways in which conservatives have used the government to structure markets. The extremes of wealth and poverty that we see are the result of rules that were designed to redistribute income upward, not the market per se."

I think you rightly indicated that many negative outcomes associated by market critics with markets also have other factors involved - such as conservative policies - which is true. Actually, if the analogy you use has any bite in this discussion at all, I think while I am pointing to the car or more accurately at the transportation system - markets - and beyond that the whole encompassing structure of relations at play (capitalism) - you are pointing at the equivalent of monster truck wheels instead of more typical wheels (conservative policies instead of more progressive options), or even thinner more light weight and maneuverable wheels (such as reforms we can win), instead of typical wheels.

Well those conservative policies or just plain old corporate and capitalist policies (like wheels) certainly do play a big role, I quite agree. But they manifest and intensify and derive from the relative power of capital over labor - or labor's power to resist - but market remuneration per se, is intrinsically about bargaining power, or, in what they think is the best case in the eyes of some market advocates, about output - and remunerating either or both power or output will generate huge differentials of income and power, these being, therefore, a product of markets intrinsic attributes. 

You add: "As I argued briefly in my essay and at greater length in The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Great Richer [], it is easy to design rules that will cause the market to redistribute income downward rather than upward."

Indeed, but it is not easy to win those reforms, or to implement them, because not only property relations, but all class demarcations generate power differentials - and the market itself inclines the economy toward the horrible outcomes even as it empowers those who will intensify that tendency.

Can workers organize and mitigate the pain somewhat? Yes. Is that good to do? Of course. But any such effort is not finding the truth of markets and freeing it, so to speak, from bad misuse, but is instead roping in the ills of markets a bit, against markets abiding tendencies - which will reassert in its worst forms most likely, if it is not eliminated, and will in any case corrupt outcomes even if the corruption is mitigated somewhat. The analogy with putting restraints on the ill effects of dictatorship is quite strong...it is good to do, but not enough.

Redistributive impositions on markets are good - we should seek them. But we should not seek them with the idea that markets are somehow neutral. I am curious to hear if you disagree...

Restricting, limiting, correcting for market ills is quite like doing the same for dictatorship, say - or patriarchy, or private ownership, and so on. It is better than not doing so, of course, but a new system would be vastly better still.

You expand to say, "On the environment, I pointed out that no one in this argument is a principled “market fundamentalist.” The wealthy have no problem putting in place zoning and other restrictions that ensure that the Hamptons and other enclaves of the wealthy remain clean and beautiful. The only issue between progressives and conservatives is whose right to a clean and healthy environment will be protected."

That might be the only ecological issue you have with conservatives - but for me the issue runs much deeper and isn't only with them, in any case.

An allocation system should convey to actors for their self managing oversight, accurate (and in any event not systematically inaccurate and snowballing away from accuracy) measures of the true social and ecological costs and benefits of economic activity, and we both know markets don't even get into the ballpark of achieving that, and will never do so...

By the by, additional ills of markets include their effects on motivations - production for surplus not social benefit - and their intrinsic creation of the worst sort of individualism via their bias against public goods, their logic of remuneration and zero sum benefit, and aggravate class difference when it exists and at least engender coordinator working class difference even where it is otherwise absent or trying to be eliminated.

You write: "The conservatives have learned how to use the market to further their ends. It’s long past time that progressives did the same. It’s as though Bill Gates, the financial industry, the drug industry and the rest have just deliberately run us over with their SUV, and we’re yelling at the wheels of the car. It’s not good strategy."

Maybe you are right, or perhaps what you are offering here is simply not good analysis. If there were people on the left who were rejecting only markets and I guess saying they like private ownership, profit seeking, etc., I would at least understand why you might say the things you seem to be saying. But I suspect there are no such people. Worse, winning things while markets exist is rather different than signing on to markets...

For me, the policies you seem to be focused on are the wheels of class oppression - policies. Sometimes they are worse other times better - though always important, of course. However the engine of class oppression is private ownership of productive assets, market allocation, remuneration for property, power, and or output, and corporate divisions of labor. Asserting these are simply perverted by bad choices and could be essentially good seems to me little different than saying the same thing about dictatorship or slavery...