GOVERNMENT AND PLANNING
| Published date | 01 February 1974 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1974.tb00180.x |
| Date | 01 February 1974 |
Scottish Journal of Political Economy
Vol. XXI,
No.
1,
February 1974
REVIEW SECTION
GOVERNMENT AND PLANNING
ALEC
NOVE
A.
E.
Papandreou,
Paternalistic Capita-
lism
(Oxford University Press, 1972. viii+
190 pp. €2.75 cloth).
J.
Wilczynski,
Socialist Economic De-
velopment and Reforms
(The Macmillan
Press,
London, 1972. xiii+350 pp. f5.W
cloth).
E.
Zaleski,
Planning for Economic Growth
in
the
Soviet
Union
1918-1932.
(Oxford
University Press, London, 1971. xxxviii
+
425 pp. f7.60 cloth).
S.
Holland
(ed.),
The State
as
Entrepre-
neur
(Weidenfeld
&
Nicolson, London,
1972. x
+
326 pp. f3.40 cloth).
All four books are about political
economy and touch upon problems of
planning. They have virtually nothing
else in common except that they were
given
to
me to review at one and the
same
time. This does, however, provide an op-
portunity to look at the issues raised in
these books and their relationship with
mainstream economic theory.
Indeed the relevance of modern theory
is one of the principal questions in Papan-
dreou’s stimulating and challenging book.
I
imagine that it is aimed at the American
undergraduate, but is none the worse for
that. The author challenges the assump-
tions on which orthodox teaching rests in
a chapter on
‘
The myth of market capi-
talism
’.
Occupying what might be called
an independent nw-Marxist position, he
explores the oligopolistic world of giant
corporations, their relations with each
other
and
with government, theirinfluence
on
foreign policy. He develops the con-
cept of
‘
the new mercantilism
’,
which he
sees
as affecting the behaviour both
of
the multinational corporations and of the
American government in the third world.
It is evident that Papandreou has some
strongly held political views, but
the
doc-
trines which he criticises, and which claim
to be value-free, also represent a view of
the world, and one should judge the
author by the academic quality
of
the
arguments he deploys in favour
of
his
own interpretations. Papandreou accepts
some ideas familiar to readers
of
Baran
and Sweezy, but rejects others. This is
not a conventional ‘radical’ text, though
it has some elements
of
one. Thus un-
like most of the present-day neo-Mrrlanrists
he denies that the contemporary capitalist
economy is’ basically a market economy.
To
quote a key passage: ‘Sovereign is
not the consumer but the corporate esta-
blishment, which participates in a super-
game with the labour establishment and
the state elite. Resources are allocated
through
the market and not
by
the mar-
ket. Thus planning is a feature of con-
temporary capitalism but it is not social
planning
’.
Describing it as paternalistic,
he has in mind not the benevolent father
but Big Brother. In presenting these
ideas Papandreou never goes particularly
deep, but for this reader at least the chal-
lenges to the conventional
view
seemed
worthwhile.
If
our undergraduates are to
be exposed to some thought-provoking
radical unorthodoxies, it is by no means a
bad idea to give them this
book
to read.
He raises one issue which deserves
closer attention from Marxists: this is
the
imprecision with which the concept of
’
surplus
’
is used. It could be
‘
surplus
value’ in its Marxist sense, i.e. the dif-
ference between the incomes of those who
work and the net national product, this
difference being seen as appropriated by
capitalists and landlords. Or else the sur-
plus might be held to consist of the above
plus a large part of state revenues ex-
pended on maintaining the military and
state machine. Some neo-Marxists use yet
another concept, bigger than either of the
above, representing the entire surplus over
and above the
necessary
level
of
consump-
tion. They would include luxuries
of
all
89
To continue reading
Request your trial