|
The socialist calculation debate (sometimes known as the economic calculation debate) was a discourse on the subject of how a socialist economy would perform economic calculation given the absence of the law of value, money, financial prices for capital goods, and private ownership of the means of production. More specifically, the debate was centered on the application of economic planning for the allocation of the means of production as a substitute for capital markets, and whether or not such an arrangement would be superior to capitalism in terms of efficiency and productivity.〔Levy, David M. and Sandra J. Peart. "socialist calculation debate." The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Second Edition. Eds. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online. Palgrave Macmillan. 2 February 2013 doi:10.1057/9780230226203.1570〕 A central aspect of the debate concerned the role and scope of the law of value in a socialist economy. Although contributions to the question of economic coordination and calculation under socialism existed within the socialist movement prior to the 20th century, the phrase ''socialist calculation debate'' emerged in the 1920s beginning with Ludwig von Mises' critique of socialism.〔''A Companion to the History of Economic Thought'', Wiley-Blackwell by Biddle, Jeff and Samuels, Warren and Davis, John. 2006. (p. 319): "What became known as the socialist calculation debate started when von Mises (1935 ()) launched a critique of socialism."〕 The historical debate was cast between the Austrian school of economics, represented by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, who argued against the feasibility of socialism, and between neoclassical economists and Marxian economists, most notably Cläre Tisch (as a forerunner), Oskar Lange, Abba Lerner, Fred M. Taylor, Henry Douglas Dickinson and Maurice Dobb, who took the position that socialism was both feasible and superior to capitalism. The debate was popularly viewed as a debate between proponents of capitalism and proponents of socialism, but in reality a significant portion of the debate was between socialists who held differing views regarding the utilization of markets and money in a socialist system and to what degree the law of value would continue to operate in a hypothetical socialist economy.〔''Economic Calculation under Socialism: The Austrian Contribution'', by Vaughn, Karen. 2004. Economic Inquiry, vol. 18, issue 4, p. 537, 1980: Although it is conventional to treat the economic calculation controversy as a debate between those who favored socialism and those who opposed it, this is not descriptive of the actual course of events...by that time, the real debate, in so far as one took place in the journals, was among the socialists themselves..."〕 Socialists generally held one of three major positions regarding the unit of calculation, including the view that money would continue to be the unit of calculation under socialism; that labor-time would be a unit of calculation; or that socialism would be based on calculation in natura or calculation performed in-kind. Debate among socialists has existed since the emergence of the broader socialist movement between those advocating market socialism, centrally planned economies and decentralized economic planning. Recent contributions to the debate in the late 20th century and early 21st century involve proposals for market socialism and the use of information technology and distributed networking as a basis for decentralized economic planning. ==Foundations and early contributions== Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels held a broad characterization of socialism, characterized by some form of public or common ownership of the means of production and worker self-management within economic enterprises, and where production of economic value for profit would be replaced by an ''ex ante'' production directly for use, which implied some form of economic planning and ''planned'' growth in place of the dynamic of capital accumulation, and therefore the substitution of commodity-based production and market-based allocation of the factors of production with conscious planning.〔''The Rise and Fall of Socialist Planning'', Ellman, Michael. (p. 17): "Marx devoted most of his life to the analysis of capitalism and was notoriously opposed to attempts to design utopias. Nevertheless, from his scattered observations about socialism, and from those of his close comrade Engels, his followers drew the idea that in a socialist economy the market mechanism would be replaced by economic planning...Similarly, the superiority of planning, which would enable society as a whole to coordinate production ex ante, became a widespread view in the international Marxist movement."〕 Although Marx and Engels never elaborated on the specific institutions that would exist in socialism or on processes for conducting planning in a socialist system, their broad characterizations laid the foundation for the general conception of socialism as an economic system devoid of the law of value and law of accumulation, and principally, where the category of value was replaced by calculation in terms of natural or physical units so that resource allocation, production and distribution would be considered technical affairs to be undertaken by engineers and technical specialists. An alternative view of socialism prefiguring the neoclassical models of market socialism consisted of conceptions of market socialism based on classical economic theory and Ricardian socialism, where markets were utilized to allocate capital goods among worker-owned cooperatives in a free-market economy. The key characteristics of this system involved direct worker ownership of the means of production through producer and consumer cooperatives and the achievement of genuinely free markets by removing the distorting effects of private property, inequality arising from private appropriation of profits and interest to a rentier class, regulatory capture, and economic exploitation. This view was expounded by Mutualist philosophy and was severely criticized by Marxists for failing to address the fundamental issues of capitalism involving instability arising from the operation of the law of value, crises caused by over-accumulation of capital and lack of conscious control over the surplus product. As a result, this perspective played little to no role during the socialist calculation debate in the early 20th century. Early arguments against the utilization of central economic planning for a socialist economy were brought up by proponents of decentralized economic planning or market socialism, including Leon Trotsky, Peter Kropotkin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. In general, it was argued that centralized forms of economic planning that excluded participation by the workers involved in the industries would not be sufficient at capturing adequate amounts of information to coordinate an economy effectively, while also undermining socialism and the concept of worker's self-management and democratic decision-making central to socialism. However, no detailed outlines for decentralized economic planning were proposed by these thinkers at this time. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「socialist calculation debate」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|