Markets and socialism | Socialist Action 1983

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I HAVE BEEN invited to reply to John Harrison's The Economy.(i) John is an old friend of mine, but with that...

Seriously, reading his piece, it is difficult to know where to start. None of the ideas are dissected or criticised with the analytical would expect from John. Instead he launches off in a jokey style, pulling metaphors of the quoting Hayek there, DIEL coming to terms with my arguments until a few elliptic lines not quite at the end.

Let me start with matters on the home ground of Socialist Action. In the issue dated 4 May 1984 John Ross wrote of socialism as 'the radical extension of democracy into every SuLCre of life.. Such requires an economy which is socialisTine Lnte sense democratically planned and with a market in many fields to ensure the distribution o1 Its goods and the meeting of its people's many needs... an enormous extension of democracv' John Harrison accepts the need for markets 'under socialism' too. him it requires no elaboration. My little attempt to move the argument forward on this question is regarded as a 'screaming banality' (dictionary definition banal: commonplace, trite). Perhaps just a whisper would suffice: 'Markets, comrades. are now OK'. precision one nere, never Sacen HOMI For Trotsky, Stalin, Benn all reject murkets?

Marx 'the new home economics".

stitute of Economic Affairs.

distinguish between calculation which I hold, and I am not convinced it is an error. Yet John fails to answer a single argument in the book which is to sustain my 'mistake'. hesitate to use my index trick here -about half of the book is devoted to John simply asserts that democrac. and capitalism are 'increasingly in compatible'. What the hell does that mean? Either two things are incom. patible or they are not. 'Increasingly antagonistic', perhaps. But this raises the question of the rate of increase and the actual date of divorce. Is it close by, or decades away? Much hinges on this question. I actuall: discuss it in my book.