- Capitalism and Alternatives -

An explanation of my last point

In Reply to: It was, but that hardly matters to Market Maoists... posted by Samuel Day Fassbinder on July 28, 1999 at 17:36:51:

: Rather than create healthy economies, say Andor and Summers, through mechanisms that were obviously then available in the post-Soviet economies of eastern Europe, the Market Maoists rushed forward with fire-sale privatization and created destitute ones, merely because such privatization was ideologically mandated.

SDF: The state-capitalist regimes of eastern Europe had a huge number of assets (factories etc.) that weren't performing competitively under the corporate-capitalist regimes of competition. To preserve these assets, to keep them performing for their governments insofar as they fulfill real human needs, should have been a priority. Instead, these assets were sold cheaply to private entities which closed them down, creating huge reservoirs of unemployed:

Even more so than in Western economies unemployment in the East is simply irrational. Trapped in immobility, the unemployed rapidly become unemployable and a danger to themselves and others. Freed from the pressure to privatize at any price, remaining state-owned enterprises should be given operational incentives which take into account the social costs and benefits of employment.

p. 184

Thus people, factories, and whole countries were discarded and left to rot simply because, under the ideological regimes (both state and private) of Market Maoism, they couldn't produce an immediate profit for their new owners. More profit-worthy, apparently, were the crime syndicates heartily endorsed by the Market Maoists of eastern Europe.

Follow Ups:

• State owned factories are simply corporate welfare on max . . . DonS USA August 02 1999 (1)
  • Why couldnt they compete? Lark September 27 1999 (0)