PRU
tg interesting article in The Week (4th November, 1965) raises eS a which need wide discussion among pepe Meee far can socialists rely upon market mechanisms as indicators in 8 eet towards socialist forms of distribution? Does the ne oan R oi self-management in Yugoslav prove that the "orthodox" marxis sn the market was one-sided or erroneous? Is self-management impossible without decentralisation and the growth of differentials? On all these matters I think that the Yugoslav authors quoted by Andrew Miller are wrong. Todorovic, for instance, counterposes the model of a plan whichis "an inflexible programme, a 1id thatosers everything, based on force" to the system of self-management, But in fact there is no rigorous logic which demands such contradiction. Self-management and centralised planning, in the short to medium run, are independent variables. That is to say, you can have one without the other, but you equally well have both together. In the long run, of course, self-management demands a central flan, if it is not to evolve through syndicalism to an increasingly stratified and undemocratic situation: while central planning demands democracy as a basic ingredient if it is not to become stifling and self<frustrating, as indeed it appears already to have done in key sectors of the Soviet economye The key question is that of whether it is possible to combat the tendency to bureaucratic control of the economy simply be "decentralisation" and reliance on the market. It is very clear to me that you cannot, even in advanced. economies: while to imagine that it might be possible in relatively backward countries could even be suicidal. Reliance on market pressures, far frominhibiting the growth of bureaucratic powers, fosters such growth - both in the way it encourages the widening of differentials and in the way it produces the growth of working-class apathy, as the impalpable and uncontrolled force of the market poses increasingly strong demands on the political structure and creates a more and more fragmented working classe When Todorovic attacks bureaucratic centralism, he evokes all our sympathy. But market-dominated, decentralsing answers to this problem replace it, not by democracy, equality, and the optimisation of social control of the economy, but ty a more unpleasant phenomena altogether. Bureaucratic centralism becomes bureaucratic anarchy. Much of the former progress of Yugoslavia was underpinned by its central planning machineryg the conscious development of such "unprofitable" areas as Macedonia, the fostering of an industrial base, the stimulation of welfare services, would all be impossible without rigorous control over the play of market forces, and a firm central control, The growth of workers! self-management, to be consummated, would logically require that the determination of such priorities as these should be by a fully democratic decision, in which contenting interests would voice their claims, and in which decisions would then be truly popular ones, Such democratic planning requires as a precondition the establishment of an open and free political debate, within the framework of the institutions of a planned society. Instead, rather than make this political advance, the Yugoslavs have opted, up to now, for more market=control, for rampant growth of differentials and "incentives" , and have even moved to pay wages in the education and welfare services “by results", with what could only be baneful results,
Preobranshenski's ghost continued/
While this experience needs sympathetic study and discussion
one, I would suggest, is to be found in the Cuban debate on is aeecece
= sic gg Guevara and Mandel put the case for democratic central planning and .
moral" incentives against Mora's view that material incentives and market
stimuls should not be the centre of Cuba's development strategy (A
useful summary of this debate is to be found in De Santist article in IsJ
no. 10). In this context the extraordinarily valuable work of Eugeni
Preobrashenski "The New Economics", which has recently been published by
Oxford University Press in a most lucid translation by Brian Pearce, needs
careful study by everyone who is interested in these problemse ;
Preobrashenski's ghost has certainly been working overtime in Cuba in the
last year. When it walks in Belgrade, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union
we shall be at the beginning of a new humanist era. :