Grace Blakeley
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Glad to see Grace Blakeley’s latest book reviewed in the latest Standard.
Here’s an interesting post from her on Instagram on why she is not an economist
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSKQzvSjAmO/?hl=en
She is doing good work at getting Marxian influenced persepectives further into the mainstream, though her politics are not the same as the Socilaist Party’s. She is a former Lexiteer and Coryinista and now a member of the Green Party.
Also see this review of Vulture Capitalism by Michael Roberts. As far as I know Blakeley never responded.
The key criticisms from Roberts being;
“Blakeley’s analysis of modern capitalism as one of ‘planned capitalism’ is confusing. Has the capitalist leopard that emerged as the globally dominant mode of production in the 19th century really changed its spots?”
“Capitalism has not overcome international crises through state monopoly planning. Crises continue to occur at regular intervals, caused by the contradiction between the striving for more profit and the increasing difficulty of realizing that profit. Crises are still inherent to the capitalist accumulation process and not the result of ‘bad choices’ made by politicians doing the bidding of monopolies. Only the ending of private capital and the law of value through public ownership and planning can stop such crises.”
“Blakeley says that “expanding” public ownership of firms—whether at a local or national level—is “another key element in the democratization of the economy, because it challenges capital’s power over investment”. But ending capitalist power (monopolistic or not) through public ownership is not just ‘another key element’ but the key element. Without it, democratic planning and control by workers of their economy and society is impossible. Blakeley puts ‘democracy’ before public ownership and planning – the cart before the horse. To travel towards socialism, we need both the horse and the cart together.”
I’d say Blakely is very much worth following and reading, but her ‘Marxism’ is a very erratic one.
I opted not to go in studs first over the monopoly thing, but it does take up a good chunk of my review. I could have gone on more about the ‘monopolies’ competing for investment so still being subject ultimately to market discipline, but I thought that would be too complex to deal with in a short review.
I think her point about planning is not that the market is defunct, but in many ways, even a free market is a result of planning and design, the the choice isn’t between a planned economy and a market economy, but democratic planning versus oligarchic, it’s more a tone/rhetoric thing than substantive analysis.
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