by americandream » Sat 18 Oct 2008, 21:56:51
There seems to be some confusion on here about the distinctions between systemic economics and systemic processes.
Capitalism and socialism are essentially economic systems for the management of common resources. In capitalism we elect to manage resource allocation hierarchically. In communism, we elect to allocate along the lines of equality.
How we then systematise the decisionmaking process is where democracy and other modes comes in. We may choose more authoritarian processes over more democratic ones. Therefore it would be more correct to speak of capitalist democracy as well as socialist democracy in contrast to say fascism or communism.
However, lets be clear. The decisionmaking processes, notwithstanding they be democratic, always remain qualified by the contextual economic system and to a significant degree remain dictatorships of one or other class. Which is why Marx referred to socialism as the dictatorship of labour.
In democratic capitalism, the dictatorship is implicit in terms of the limits imposed on thinking by forces of capital intent on preserving the status quo. These might take the form of nationalism, racism, culture and gender, academic no-go areas, religion, societal givens, limits to progressive labour oriented discourse, implied threats in terms of career and such like, more overt threats such as witchhunts, linguistic and inter-generational forms, media..both privately funded as well as publicly funded dominated by capital's agenda, capital oriented historical discourses, etc, etc.
In democratic socialism, the dictatorship is implicit in terms of the limits imposed on thinking by forces of labour intent on preserving the status quo. These might take the form of limits to progressive capital oriented discourse, implied threats in terms of community disapproval and isolation, more overt threats such as witchhunts, linguistic forms, publicly funded media dominated by labour's agenda, labour oriented heroic historical discourses, etc, etc.
Consequently, to argue that collectivisation of the corporate variety such as fascism and or labour variety such as communism are of the same ilk is to miss the point that each is the pure dictatorial form of either labour or capital...at one end of the spectrum from the more democratic form. Transitional processes in other words.
We note how Fascism spawned the libertarian free market after the war. Libertarianism is the least regulated form of hierarchical resource allocation, it's failure though is that whilst it seeks to harness self interest in advancing the human project, it fails to recognise that self interest does have its contradictions in terms of excluding any notions of collective responsibilty and hence we have the periodic crises during which resort has to be made to the transitional fascist forms.
Socialism is the least regulated form of egalitarian resource use, what I term labour Libertarianism. One possible candidate for this collective exercise may well be Cuba. I am watching her with quiet interest.
Hopefully this will put Hayek in context.