The economic calculation debate

[DJP]

The O’Neil in that Rawls book is someone else, a Martin O’Neil.

[ZJW]

Unrelated to the Calculation Question a Neurath-Horkheimer dispute was mentioned in the interview, For anyone who may be interested, here is, by O’Neil and Thomas Uebel, ‘Horkheimer and Neurath: Restarting a Disrupted Debate:
https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/horkheimer-neurath.pdf

(Korsch’s name does not come up in this paper, though it did in the interview (as being on Neurath’s, side).

[robbo203]

This bit in the article ZJW linked to caught my eye:

By contrast, the work of Neurath is explicit in its criticism of a technocratic politics. Thus he opposed ‘what is called the ‘‘technocratic’’ movement’ which assumes there exists ‘one best solution with its ‘‘optimum happiness’’, with its ‘‘optimum population’’, with its ‘‘optimum health’’, with its ‘‘optimum working
week’’, with its ‘‘optimum productivity’’ or something else of this kind’ and
which asks ‘for a particular authority which should be exercised by technicians
and other experts in selecting ‘‘big plans’’ ’ (1942 [1973, 426–7]). The basis for Neurath’s scepticism about the technocratic movement can also be found in both of the key papers in Neurath’s engagement with the Frankfurt school, in
‘Inventory’ and in his unpublished reply to Horkheimer. In the first Neurath
develops a theme that was central to his contributions to the socialist calculation
debate, the rejection of any single measure, monetary or non-monetary, through
which one could arrive at a technically optimal social outcome.44 No such single
measure could adequately capture the multidimensional nature of welfare
concepts, such as standard of living: ‘The attempts to characterize the standard of
living are like those which try to characterize the ‘‘state of health’’. Both are multidimensional structures’

I’m currently debating the question of democracy with some people on FB who are clearly sympathetic towards the ideals of technocracy (the Technocracy movement, which reached its peak in the 1930s, is still around, apparently, but contributed to the rise of other bodies like the Venus Project and the Zeitgeist movement). For such people, democracy is clearly an anathema, and the assumption seems to be that for any given problem, there is one universally agreeable solution that can best be left to the technocrats to arrive at, thus rendering democratic discourse redundant.

This, of course, presupposes a perfect world in which there are no conflicting views or interests to concern ourselves with – something that strikes me as completely implausible even in a socialist society (despite the elimination of class conflict and national rivalries).

There are still going to be issues to contend with, likely to generate disagreement (“should we build a hydroelectric dam and what is to become of the people living in the valley that will be flooded”, for example). Democratic decision-making provides the framework most conducive to conflict resolution and compromise. Technocratic top-down decision-making, though quicker, is likely to lead to the exact opposite outcome

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by robbo203.

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