ABOUT MARXISM |
Alec Nove's:
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Nove believes the main problem of the 'third way' to be the manner in which principles of the command and market economies are intergrated. He realized that the market can cause "...serious social and economic distortions, requires to be limited, and must coexist with important centrally exercised state planning functions" (Nove, p.60). He allows for the fact that tensions can arise between local or sectoral and the general interest, between plan and market and within the plan and market. Nove also believed that life without conflicts and tensions is not merely a utopian concept, it is also a very dull one. Equilibrium, as the admirable Hungarian economist Janos Kornai once reminded us, is not necessarily good; there is equilibrium between an impotent man and a frigid woman. Yet the search for the 'third way' must continue. It is not an easy matter to find a balance between centralization and decentralization, plan and market, freedom and discipline, short-term economic efficiency and other legitimate social objectives (i.e.- greater equality, conservation of exhaustible resources). |
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However, it is obvious that every thing Nove states about the reconcilitiation of the previously mentioned problems that exist in intergrating the two economic systems into a 'third way' is presupposed on the open rejection of the utopian elements of Marxism. Nove makes us all aware of the fact that neither Marx, Engels, nor Lenin appreciated or understood the inherent complexities of the problem, in its economic efficiency, social, or political dimensions. For them, everything would be 'simple'. Yet Nove makes us realize that we have "...no excuse for being unaware that it is all immensely complicated" (Nove, p.61). |
SOURCE: Nove, Alec. "Socialism, economics and Development: Marx, the market and feasible socialism". London : Allen & Unwin publishing, 1986. |
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