Marx to Market ofered an extended revision of an argument ofered by Brus in 1961 in The General Problems of the Functioning of the Socialist Economy. There, heavily influenced by the thinking of Kalecki, he argued that both democracy and market mechanisms were necessary in the transition to socialism.
This was expanded further in 1989 with Brus and Łaski claiming that under market socialism, publicly owned firms would have to be autonomous – much as they are in market capitalist systems – and that this would necessitate a socialised capital market. In the countries of actually existing socialism, even in 1989, this was as heretical as it had been in the early 1960s, with such thinking at odds with the top–down, nationally controlled industries that came to dominate the economic landscape not only of the USSR but other countries such as Cuba and North Korea.
Rather than industrial national monoliths being lauded as the archetype of economic eficiency, the authors argued for a completely diferent kind of socialism declaring, ‘The role of the owner-state should be separated from the state as an authority in charge of administration … (enterprises) have to become separated not only from the state in its wider role but also from one another.’ For their critics this was worryingly reminiscent of capitalism and production for profit.
Yet this is efectively what the cooperatives and worker-owned businesses, bootstrapped under the municipal protectionism outlined in the previous chapter, would look like. With the introduction of UBS and a historic intervention in decarbonising the economy, these kinds of enterprise could rapidly become the backbone of economies across the Global North and South. But worker ownership will need socialised finance, with credit explicitly favouring businesses and cooperatives whose objectives extend beyond just profit. As a result, national investment banks – alongside municipal banks and NEIBs – will need to be founded, their role being to specifically amplify extreme supply, underpin UBS and ameliorate the five crises.
Reforging the Capitalist State
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