Most Americans have believed since the founding of the country that there should be equality, fairness and opportunity for everyone who lives here. American activists have achieved many of their goals through a wide variety of social and political movements, ranging from the New Deal to the civil rights, feminist, environmental, living wage and anti-sweatshop movements. Average Americans have won these… return to article
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Reader Comments (15)Page 1 of 1 pagesIf you will pardon me for saying so, every non-market economy was not only undemocratic; it was also Marxist-leninist. If you want to say that non-market economies inevitably fail, you can’t do it based on a very narrow range of experience - even if went on for a long time.
Now there are theoretical obejections to non-market economies; but they may be met by theoretical answers.
One example can be found at http://www.parecon.org/ which outlines a non-market system that is also not centrally planned.
Posted by Gar Lipow on Mar 1, 2003 at 7:48 AM Domhoff envisions a more diversified market with state-owned businesses competing alongside collectives and privately-owned companies. However, current market manipulation by the state favors private business interests. A shift in politics from Right to Left in government won’t help. As Michael Moore notes, “Bill Clinton was one of the best Republican presidents we’ve ever had.” Our government is a closed system of two political parties, both beholden to corporate interests. In this country, the failure of effective social programs and the dissolution of individual liberty seem to be a political problem. Both parties support an economic system that depends on exploitation and the accumulation of power in the hands of a few.
My full response can be found at:
<http://home.earthlink.net/~swimdeep/>
Posted by Anthony R. Gutierrez on Mar 1, 2003 at 9:48 AM I thought the fundamental premise of this article was unsound. Markets, we are told, rather dogmatically, ‘expand opportunity for most people.’ But this is a static statement applied to a dynamic system. At times or under certain conditions, markets may very well expand opportunity for ‘most’ people, but at other times they diminish them. There are times and places when opportunities grow, but times and places when they contract. Nothing expands forever.
Admittedly, I am an historian, so that makes me extremely unsympathetic to the sorts of loose and ahistorical generalizations to which sociologists are greatly inclined.
But if you share my vice of thinking historically, the questions we find ourselves asking include the following:
-under what conditions do markets expand opportunity for most people?
-what in fact do we mean by ‘most people’?
-can a system that creates opportunities for ‘most’ people but which still leaves a great many living in intolerable conditions be justified?
-whose opportunities expand? At the moment, for instance, opportunities seem to be expanding for Chinese peasants, but contracting for just about everyone else.
-what do we do about periods when opportunities contract?
Posted by James Paterson on Mar 3, 2003 at 11:06 AM I’m so sick of all the crumbs we continue to throw ourselves. WHen is America going to wake up and realize we control this country. When all the employees and students and housewives and housedads, stand up and STOP. Stop work, stop production, stop the system. You can’t retain power nor stay rich if they no longer control the system. THis does not require a revolution, just alot of good hardhead, stubborness.
Posted by Wayne on Mar 4, 2003 at 3:41 AM Stripping away all the windbaggery here is what we are left with….
1. Mr, Domhoff argues that an egalitarian value system has been the moral basis of progressive social movements.
2. He then argues that our egalitarianism must be compromised because a centrally planned economy is not feasible.
3. According to Domhoff centrally planned allocation mechanisms are not feasible because of 1) the familiar problem of information processing in a complex and populous economy and 2) because it implies inefficient bureacratic structures needed to process and regulate information.
4. It is fair to say that Domhoff himself regards his advocacy of markets as a compromise. Even in a market system that is embedded in a political structure consonant with Domhoff’s compromised egalitarianism, competition is given primacy for allocating people and resources; and in competition there are winners and losers, and class structures will be generated with their anti-solidaritous, asocial, and inegalitarian structures and dynamics. The outcome is clearly a compromise of his own egalitarian inclinations.
5. IF some sort of planning were feasible and consonant with egalitarian norms then Domhoff would be obliged to accept it. Plannig that is based upon cooperation and democratic decision-making is, theoretically, inherently more conducive to egalitarian norms than is competition.
Strnage then that Domhoff restricts himself to such a narrow range of alternatives to the market and provides absolutely no reasons for his reduction of all competing alternatives to central planning. Domhoff is not consistent in applying the criteria of of plausibility. IF his arguments are to have a shred of plausibility for the egalitarian constituency he wants to convince-then he should provide reasonable arguments for making no distinction between centrally planned arrangemnts and arrangements based upon particpatory democratic planning.
See “Socialist Renewal: Lessons from the “Calculation” Debate” by Fikret Adaman and Pat Devine from Studies in Political Economy, 43, Spring 1994.
.
Posted by Bill Stokes on Mar 4, 2003 at 7:35 AM Mr. Domhoff’s words eloquently layed out the alternatives to our failing system in terms that can be understood by the majority of the electorate.
Posted by Jason Lentz on Mar 7, 2003 at 11:05 PM Jason
Jason, Domhoff laid out only a few of the alternatives. He did not say “non-market alternatives are too hard to understand”. He argued that they won’t work and are not compatible with democracy.
Posted by Gar Lipow on Mar 7, 2003 at 11:18 PM Richard Guseman said
>I like forced Triple Bottom Liners.
Say what? If it is a drink, I’m not familiar with it. And if it is a logical fallacy I’m not familiar with it either. I know it is frustrating to have to explain a joke, but in this case I wish you would.
Posted by Gar Lipow on Mar 8, 2003 at 11:21 PM The only way to stop these people, is a national strike. Lets organize one.
Posted by Dot Dedman on Mar 10, 2003 at 10:54 PM And ware is the power elite while any of this wishful thinking is going on. As long as one sits in the white house things will stay more or less as thay are. And all wishful thinking aside thay own that house.
Posted by A Howard on Mar 12, 2003 at 2:45 AM Thanks to all those who commented on the excerpts on markets from my new book. I meet some of the objections in the longer version in the book, but the historian is right, there can be times when markets hinder, but in general, and in this era, they give us more freedom than planning agencies, and they can be used with many patterns of ownership arrangements. The issue is getting and holding political power, as some critics note.
Posted by G. William Domhoff on Mar 22, 2003 at 8:28 AM To be brief, Americans believe in freedom, democracy and capitalism. As determined by our Constitution, freedom and democracy come first. The economic system is a variable. Capitalism does not need democracy, and democracy does not capitalism.
We realize though that capitalism and democracy create the maximal freedom.
Gross impediments to free markets are what ail us, both economically and politically. Forced to choose between one of two parties, many are disaffected and choose not to participate, or participate cynically and without heart.
Economic markets are greatly distorted by state strategy and large corporations who take advantage of escalating scales of self-interest to weight things in their favor.
We need to proceed consciously in assuring that we enable freedom and not hinder it. This means free markets, both political and economic.
Where distortions of self-interest and varying scales of power corrupt the system, the role of self-government becomes clear. Any other activity by government other than assuring a minimum condition of dignity and existence for its citizens, and providing for the defense of such citizenry, is superfluous and often malicious and/or dangerous.
Posted by freelixir on Apr 24, 2003 at 2:56 AM The fundamental dynamic of markets is to inequality. Domhoff is right that this can be countered by a strong state or a mobilized populace. But a strong state, which is generally based on a bureaucratic elite, it just another form of inequality, and a mobilized populace only stays mobilized for so long. At that point, the fundamental market dynamic reasserts itself. As we’re seeing, popular movements can win us Social Security, Medicare, &c, but when the balance of power returns to market forces, those gains are dismantled. And this doesn’t even begin to address the strict authoritarianism within businesses.
Perhaps Domhoff’s compromising acceptance of the market would be justified if all planning really were unworkable, but he fails to address the possibility of democratic planning, e.g. in the participatory economics vision (www.parecon.org). Parecon not only abolishes the fundamental pressures toward inequality, but institutionalizes their exact opposite. It seems like we should consider such a possibility before resigning ourselves to accepting the market.
Posted by Jake Werner on Jul 11, 2004 at 3:52 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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