Yarble-yarp.

Tristan, unless and until you understand the economic calculation argument, you are only demonstrating that you don't understand what you're talking about.

I've explained this to you before, so now you're only demonstrating that you don't care that what you say is untrue.

Anyone can write an article based on mindless slogans. All I have to do is say that what you propose would be unequal, discriminatory and exploitative, and you are hoist with your own petard.

Your claim that socialism is more physically productive than capitalism is just too stupid for words, as is your claim that it has to be forced at gunpoint onto people who benefit from it.

Actually *think* before writing an article, don't just yabble slogans.

JKJ I suggest you read 'Governomics' by Miriam Lyons and Ian McAuley. Therein they explain the role of government in stabilisation, distribution and allocation. Hence government intervention with fiscal and monetary policy - but also through the social wage and welfare. Allocation is also a rarely observed point - as it concerns countering the waste and corruption that arises with 'laissez faire'. Hence strategic socialisation re: natural monopolies and competitive government business enterprises etc.

The point is that capitalism fails and markets fail regardless of Ideology. Lyons and McAuley make it clear that its not necessarily just socialists who realise this. But these arguments are useful for socialists too.

But market failure goes deeper than most modern day social democrats realise. If you include distributive problems as a form of 'market failure' themselves.

I try and address these issues in the article - and it is much more than 'mere sloganeering.' PLS engage with the arguments. :-)

Thanks for the article Tristan. I enjoyed reading it.

I doubt the ALP left will defend the Socialist objective (which of course no Labor government has ever carried out anyway.)

The Left in the ALP is a poor shadow of what it used to be, as the debate it is having over accepting boat turn backs shows.

My own analysis of the ALP, as you would know, is that it has moved from being a capitlaist workers' party to a CAPITALIST workers' party on the road to being a Capitalist party.

Bowen's moves are part of that shift. My own view is that socialists should be in radical and revolutionary organisations like the small one I am a member of - Solidarity (http://www.solidarity.net.au/). There are other groups in Australia socialists could look at.

In part I think this is because there is no Parliamentary road to socialism. Rather there has to be a democratic road to socialism, namely workers setting up their own organs of political and economic governance to organsise production to satisfy human need.

We don't have to look back into history to find the failure time and time again of the project you are arguing for. Today, in my humble opinion, the idea of a mixed democratic economy has died on the shoals of austerity in Greece.

Democracy in the workplace challenges the rule of the boss and the extraction of surplus value from workers, the very exploitative essence of capitalism. Socialists should be about destroying that exploitaiton at the heart of capitalism, in other words capitalism itself, not accepting it.

I know that most socialists in the ALP today reject my approach, today. Events will determine who is correct. Again I look to Greece. The mobilised working class there, if that happens, has the potential to challenge austerity and with it the rule of capital. We shall see. I hope there is a time in the future when socialists in the ALP join with people like me and a mobilising Australian working class fighting tooth and nail for socialism.

Some things just do not go out of date! Like integrity in public officials.

We the people are not numbers in some ledger and or slaves to an economy!

Extreme capitalism and its alter ego extreme socialism need to be replaced with cooperative capitalism!

Cooperative capitalism would have seen Qantas turned into an employee owned co-op?

And most essential service either turned into competing for market share duopolies or employee owned co-ops rather than privatized!

And a possible solution for Ford, Holden, Australian ship and sub building, finally forced to stand on their own hind legs compete in the real world. As opposed to simply jettisoning our remaining manufacturing base and with it any semble of defense self reliance!

Always providing their endevour is supported by the cheapest possible power!

Given it is the power bill that destroys energy dependant enterprise not comparable wages?

Good ideas should never ever be rejected because they come from the wrong side of politics!

Seriously, some politicians become engaged in the endless sport of bagging the other side to the point where they lose sight of why they got into politics in the first place, allegedly to make a difference?

The so called "socialist objective" is just not a dry economic argument about big brother; and or, we know best elitist control, it's about real people who could follow Greece in a heartbeat if textbook reading numbskulls get their hopelessly incompetent paws on the levers of the economy!

People should get a real job in the real economy before they try politics; but only if they genuinely care about real people and real outcomes.

Labor has had a few turns in office in recent years yet we still have the highest median house prices in the english speaking world, and yes that has made a difference just not a good one, ditto more than a thousand homeless!

God save us from economic theorists!
Rhrosty.

The inflated property market actually suggests the usefulness of a big investment in public and social housing,. If done on a large-enough scale it could provide a correction by increasing supply. Invest perhaps $10 billion - perhaps much more. Whatever will do the job.

The socialist label came from unions fighting for across the board wage rises, and that was seen to be socialist from employer and liberal pollatitions. So nothing has changed and no change needs to take place.