Cooperative Enterprise and Market Economy: Chapter 18

Introduction & Preface | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17

Translator’s note:

In this chapter, Luis Razeto identifies the key to the democratic transformation of the market – “the formation of a new social block, a subject of transformational action, the bearer of a new structure of social action” – and analyzes the various theoretical and practical obstacles that must be overcome in order for it to occur.

Starting with the opposing viewpoints of “neo-liberals” and “socialists,” Razeto reviews the critiques of free market and centralized planning approaches, using the concept of the “economic category” introduced in Chapter 1 to de-center the binary opposition between economies organized by Capital and those organized by the State.1 Any economic factor, he reminds us, can play the role of the “organizing category.”2 In a cooperative enterprise, that role is played neither by the State, nor by Capital, but by Labor and C Factor.

One challenge posed to the reader of this chapter is the changing list of factors and categories. Razeto adds Consumption and the State to the economic categories derived from the six factors of production – Labor Power, Finance, Technology, Management, Material Means of Production, and C Factor. It could be argued that Consumption is a sub-category of C Factor, which he often associates with Community. Likewise, the State could be considered a special case of the Management factor.

The reader might also wonder why Ecology, or Planet, is not included as a factor and category, as is increasingly done in analyses of solidarity economy and buen vivir. Land has long been considered a factor of production and recent arguments for the legal rights of non-human, natural beings, such as rivers and forests reflect the idea of these “factors” as economic, social, political, and cultural subjects. Solidarity economy can be framed as an economic system organized around the needs of the Planet in conjunction with with Labor Power and C Factor.3

As Razeto notes, there are always multiple organizing categories at work. A democratic market would be one in which no one category is dominant, subordinating the others to it. We are used to a system in which Capital is the organizing category, to which all the other categories are subordinated. And Socialism has been understood to be a system in which Labor-Power is the dominant category, perhaps jointly with Community, whether represented by the State, or more directly, through some system of decentralized self-organization.

Razeto’s vision of the transformed market is radically pluralist or pluriversal, with multiple organizing categories operating at once and none in the dominant position. It might be tempting to think of this as a stable system, the way the “free market” is frequently presented. But, because capitalism requires the subordination of Labor-Power (just as cooperativism requires sovereignty of labor), the dynamics are inherently unstable. The determined economy is defined by a correlation of forces, so it is best to think of the democratic market as an unstable and inherently adversarial process.

- Matt Noyes

Chapter 18

Cooperativism, Crisis, and Democratic Transformation of the Market

1. - In the face of the current economic crisis, various neo-liberal economists have focused their attention and critique on the so-called “Welfare State.” They have emphasized the ways in which policies and measures that were initially proposed as a way to invigorate the economy and mobilize unused resources have produced a situation characterized by bureaucratic rigidities and depersonalization of risk, leading to unaccountable behavior. Public policies that should favor the weakest sectors, they argue, have turned into so many mechanisms for an allocation of resources that benefits sectors with power and control. State intervention in the economy boosts the real economic power of those sectors, giving them greater leverage in politics and bargaining. As a result, State allocation of resources and redistribution of income, instead of contributing to social justice and equity, gives rise to new inequalities. When governments set prices of food, for example, their intervention disadvantages agricultural producers and unfairly redistributes resources to the cities.

This neo-liberal critique coincides to some extent with the judgment of those who denounce the “bourgeois State” as an instrument of the ruling classes, which typically acts on behalf of the powerful and only rarely in favor of the dispossessed. Naturally, the meaning of the critiques is different and they lead to opposite conclusions.

The conclusion neo-liberals draw from their critique is that the power of the State should be systematically reduced so as to let market forces operate freely, with no political interference in the economy. Economic actors should act as individuals, without forming pressure groups that might create monopolistic situations in which the mobility and the free play of factors is restricted. Socialist leaders, on the other hand, argue that the working classes should take over the State and convert it into an instrument for the general interests of society, expanding its economic functions to the point where the market can be replaced by central planning as the mechanism for allocation of resources and distribution of social wealth. To that end, they call for the progressive growth of State intervention in the economy, especially through the nationalization of the principal modes of production and credit, and the organization of workers in unions and political organizations that can build greater and greater leverage and negotiating power against the State itself.

Both neo-liberals and socialists, then, postulate a profound transformation of the relations between economy and politics, however different the transformations they propose. What is certain is that in contemporary capitalist societies the relation between economy and politics is in crisis, and this crisis has to do with the exhaustion of the welfare State and the undeniable problems in the ways governments exercise their functions of redistribution and allocation of resources.

Whether to reduce the size and functions of the State, and limit its globalizing tendencies, on the one hand, or to treat the State as the motor and regulator of the economy, on the other; these are the terms of the great economic and political debate of our times. The contradiction between the simultaneous operation of two different, and opposed, economic logics, resulted in a profound crisis in the serendipitous equilibrium that had characterized development for several decades, and the hardening of ideological positions.

We now face two opposite critiques of economic reality, alternative rationalities that are intellectually irreconcilable because they are unable to accept the hybrid or mixed composition of reality. When it comes to the problem of the optimal allocation of resources, the only options admitted are free trade or central planning; both perspectives see any intermediate solution as a distortion that implies inefficiency.

The overwhelmingly ideological character of the debate between these analyses and projects is obvious. They share the same totalizing pretension. Far from permitting us to face the crisis and develop an effective response, the preservation of their internal coherence requires us to exclude fundamental factors of reality from the models they propose.

The model of the capitalist free market, the system that is presumed to lead automatically to the optimal allocation of resources and the maximization of production, excludes two realities: the unequal distribution of rent that it generates reduces the potential productive efficiency of the economy, and the fact that economic resources, especially labor power, are not given, but must be actively created and cultivated. It is not just a problem of allocating resources but of creating and developing them.

As Branko Horvat wrote,

Adequate shelter, proper diet and medical attendance produce not only healthy bodies — an asset in itself — but (...) also foster the development of intellectual capacities. More equal distribution of income being likely to increase the standard of health, it is desirable, on economic grounds. If the market system is left to operate uncontrolled, it will cause a waste of talents, because not the most promising children but children of parents able to pay would get educated (...) Again, greater equality of income is conducive to building up [a] more efficient labour force and, conversely, inequality reduces social mobility which, from the economic viewpoint, is undesirable like any other reduced mobility of resources.4

The free play of the capitalist market generates profound social inequalities and creates rigidities that constrain both the optimal allocation of resources and their development, and, what is more, perpetuates the disuse of a certain quantity of existing resources that capital is not in a position to organize productively, especially, but not only, labor power.

Historical experience shows, moreover, that development in a free market economy without State intervention follows a cyclical process with periods of growth and expansion followed by moments of recession and depression, which implies periodic losses of previously developed resources. It was precisely one of these crises that lead to the reorganization of the market in a way that implied the growing participation of the State in the economy.

It should be noted, finally, that the assumptions of perfect competition (atomization of producers and consumers, perfect knowledge of the market, full mobility of economic factors) which are postulated by economic theory as preconditions for the optimal allocation of resources – as if such a reality ever existed – have been belied in practice by the operation of the capitalist market itself. The specific logic of capitalism leads to concentration of capital, on the one hand, and the organization of workers in unions, on the other. It also leads to concealment of information, manipulation of consumers through propaganda, and the rigidities in factor mobility that we have already described.

If the capitalist market does not lead to optimal allocation of resources and the maximization of production, nor does central planning of the economy based on State ownership of the means of production. A socialist economic system implies bureaucratic and hierarchical organization of the economy that reduces its potential efficiency, albeit for different reasons and in different forms than those seen in the capitalist market. Again, the problems concern the allocation, creation, and use of economic resources.5

The optimal allocation of existing resources through a conscious planning process implies the concentration of decisions in a body charged with general administration; but the complexity of modern economies and societies is such that it is unimaginable that any one body or group, as technically capable as it might be, could know and control all the variables at play, even more so when we are dealing with social and human realities in which the fundamental elements – aspirations, interests, callings, ideas, and wills – are subjective.

The more broad and molecularly pervasive the bureaucracy is across the social field, the harder it is to collect all the information needed for planning. It is harder still to transmit that information to the central decision-making bodies fully and without distortions, and it is truly impossible for the organizing bodies to adequately assimilate, elaborate, and synthesize it all. The truth is, the information involved is, by definition, distributed among all members of society; no single group can access all the information held by others, especially their direct experiences which are unrepeatable and can never be perfectly communicated.

Another key problem of central planning consists in the fact that, by definition, it concentrates decisions in a particular leadership group. However representative of society the group is, it inherently excludes the participation of multitudes of conscious minds, imaginations, intelligences, and wills. The insoluble problem of centralized planning is that of the participation of different individual and collective subjects in decision-making processes. In the moment in which the Plan is elaborated and defined, its is possible to organize a certain degree of relatively broad popular participation, but once the Plan has been established for a certain number of years, its continuing fulfillment implies that those in charge of its execution limit themselves to applying it in detail. Should any social or economic subject make new decisions with respect to what, how much, or in what way to produce and distribute, it would amount to an alteration of the previously approved Plan, leading inevitably to maladjustments, disequilibria, and dysfunctions that dissolve the coherence of the technically designed process. Thus, centralized planning implies social demobilization and depoliticization of the multitudes, at least with regards to everything having to do with economic processes. This in turn leads to passivity and the concomitant waste of human resources and creative talents.

As bureaucracy grows, so does its need to control the systematic execution of the plan. This leads to additional problems: the generation of economic rigidities and a slowing of the flow of resources. B. Horvat refers to this bureaucratic phenomenon as “office fetishism,” defining it in these terms:

Ideally, the bureaucratic apparatus is expected to carry out the commands of the authorities without questioning their validity. This makes for the calculability of results, which is one of the essential preconditions for the superior efficiency of a bureaucratic organization. In practice, however, bureaucracy does not operate in a social vacuum…

In order to ensure precision, impersonality and calculability, bureaucracy in action must be governed by rules which are, ideally, supposed to cover all possible cases. In practice, of course, no bureaucratic brain can anticipate and fix, by rules, the infinite diversity of life. Hence there is an inherent contradiction in the system... To cope with this defect those in authority tend to multiply rules whose sheer number and increasing inconsistency with each other have a strong negative effect on those who have to observe these rules and drives them to inactivity. If the number of rules is reduced, the situation is not better. Apart from the increased possibility of evasion, the typical functionary now feels less secure and hence consults the higher-ups more frequently. The behavioural effect of this contradiction is reflected in the tendency to avoid responsibility; by definition, bureaucracy is a-responsible, behaviourally it is non-responsible and irresponsible. The hierarchy of statuses amplifies this effect and adds a new one: not only responsibility, but also work is tended to be avoided; the former is passed upward, the latter downward. A considerable amount of intellectual and emotional energy is wasted in the process.6

It is not the objective of our theoretical critique, directed simultaneously at “free market” and “centralized planning” economic models, to postulate a supposed cooperative economic organization from which we can expect a mechanical optimal allocation of resources and maximization of production that the other models could not accomplish. Our proposal is different, as we shall explain.

2. – We started from the analysis of the crisis of the development model defined in terms of State monopoly capitalism and the Welfare State. This crisis is not solely conjunctural but also structural and theoretical (the model is unstable in its conceptual foundations). As such, the response it demands must involve a profound transformation of the economy. But, when submitted to analysis, the two principal existing theoretical answers – the “socialist” and the “neo-liberal” – demonstrate fundamental weaknesses and contradictions, both theoretical and practical, that lead us to conclude that fundamentally, they do not offer effective and real solutions to the problem.

There arises, then, the need for a re-framing of the economic question, which is where our redefined concept of the market comes in. Seen in the light of this concept, the opposition between market economy and State planned economy begins to dissolve. The two systems of organization and regulation of the economy show themselves to be determined markets. Both are determined correlations of social forces in a determinate system of production, correlations guaranteed by determinate political, juridical and ideological superstructures. In both economies, individual and social subjects and forces allocate and distribute resources and incomes through multiple actions and struggles that produce a determined composition of forces.

The difference between the two market models is nonetheless decisive, consisting basically in the fact that, while in the capitalist market, capital (and the social group that represents it) is the leading and organizing category, in the socialist market it is government, that is, the State.

In the capitalist economy, capital organizes and subordinates to itself the other productive factors that make up enterprises and productive units (labor, technology, administration, various resources), and exercises regulation and mediation between distinct economic subjects in society. In the socialist economy, it is the State or the government that organizes and subordinates to itself the remaining economic categories (capital, labor, technology, etc.) that make up economic units, and exercises regulation and mediation between the different economic subjects in society. (It isn’t able to do this totally, of course. Even in capitalism, other categories are economically active: the State, cooperatives, unions, etc., just as in socialism there remain cooperative enterprises and spaces of private property. The decisive thing, though, is that in capitalism the ruling economic category is capital and in socialism it is the State, while the other factors remain subordinated, and it is this difference that defines them as distinct and opposed economic systems.)

Now, at the outset of this study, when we posed the necessity of reformulating the concept of enterprise, we explicitly recognized the possibility that any one of the economic categories could constitute the organizing and leading factor in an economic unit, this being the basis of the concept of cooperative enterprise that we postulated. As should now be clear, that reformulation of the concept of enterprise is inextricably linked to the proposed reformulation of the concept of market, aligning the micro and macro economy. As we broadened the concept of enterprise to include cooperative and public enterprises alongside capitalist firms, so we broaden the concept of market such that it can contain socialist, capitalist, cooperative and other intermediary manifestations.

Just as an enterprise can be constituted under the direction of capital, labor, government, technology, community, so too the market can be organized under the direction of, and organized by, the different economic categories.

Theoretically, then, it is possible to postulate a cooperative market and economy, that is, a market directed and controlled by the Labor factor, a worker self-directed market, or in Horvat’s terms, an “associative socialism,” just as it is possible, from another point of view, to postulate a technocratic society or market.

Nonetheless, our critical analysis of the “free market” dominated by capital and the centrally planned market dominated by the State, puts us on guard against any solution that postulates one given economic category (whichever it may be) as the one that is dominant and totalizing.

In effect, the different critical arguments that we made with respect to the neo-liberal and socialist solutions coincide and can be synthesized in a fundamental thesis: where one economic category is dominant and subordinates the others to it, that factor will be hyperdeveloped and the others will be underutilized and limited in their growth and creative expansion, such that the allocation of resources ceases to be optimal, the maximization of production is not reached, and the potential of the economy is not achieved.

With such antecedents we can hypothesize a new type of answer: a profound transformation of the market in the direction of liberating the potential of every economic category and factor to autonomously organize economic activities and enterprises, such that the market does not operate under the sole domination of one of them, but with multiple centers of direction and operation.

This implies that economic factors like labor power, consumption, technology, and others, experience a process of autonomization with respect to capital and the State – the two factors that up to now have organized and subordinated them – and constitute themselves as economic forces endowed with organizing capacity, capable of constituting sectors that interact with the other categories on a basis of competition and equal opportunity, and that they apply all their forces in the market.

This necessarily implies a reduction of the relative size of the State as well as a contraction of capitalist economic activities, a reduction parallel to the progressive growth of other autonomous economic subjects that, having their own organizing capacity, will challenge the formerly dominant categories in the market, seeking to secure and make use of the economic resources available in a given society. Capital, labor, technology, consumption, etc. can present themselves and operate in the market as categories that play the role of the organizers as much as the organized. Labor power can just as well be the organizer of capital and the other factors, both in enterprises and in an integrated cooperative sector, as a factor organized by capital, and so it is with each of the factors.

The result would be a market of perfect competition and full employment of factors, in which the characteristic mission of a free market – to assure economic development and the optimal allocation of resources – would be made real. Competition – that is, the struggle between independent economic subjects – would be “perfected” insofar as it would not be limited to competition between economic units organized by capital, but between economic subjects organized by any factor of the economic system. In this way a new correlation of social forces would be formed, a new determined market.

3. – Such a transformation of the market would probably be the result of a long historical process, so before analyzing theoretically its mode of functioning it is important to understand the way in which the transformational process can be initiated.

With respect to this last point, we can imagine two divergent processes. In one, the autonomous economic organization of forces and resources – labor power, consumption, alternative technologies – that capital is not in a position to organize or is not interested in organizing become economic subjects with their own capacity to show up and participate in the market. In the other, economic activities and functions that are currently carried out by the State, and have become a source of deficits and fiscal crises, as well as inefficiency and excessive bureaucratization, are transferred not to the capitalist private sector, but to emerging forms of economic organization of factors that are currently subordinated; which would accomplish the specific objectives for which State intervention was originally proposed and that it has so poorly carried out – redistribution and full employment of factors of production.

To enact a process of democratic transformation of the market of this type, would require building a great social, intellectual, and moral force capable of taking on this project and adopting this objective as its own.

Where can we find the forces and subjects of this transformational action? It is obvious that, at least at the outset, they can only come from the social sectors that are currently subordinated and do not enjoy positions of privilege in the current state of things. It is logical to expect that the possessors of capital – with qualified exceptions – will take actions that contribute to its growth, as much to expand the capital they possess as to consolidate the dominance of capital in the market. Likewise, it is to be expected that those who hold political power – here, too, with qualified exceptions – will seek to expand the presence and importance of the State in the economy as much to increase their discretional power for the benefit of particular interests as to promote larger processes of redistribution and social support.

The fundamental energies of the transformational process that we propose are, then, the – socially personified – economic categories of labor power, community, and scientific and technological capacities, that are not subordinated to capital and power.

But they can only be mobilized in the indicated direction – that is toward their recognition as economic, social, political and cultural forces – if they themselves experience a process of redefinition of their own objectives and forms of action, a redefinition that, fundamentally, signifies a process of autonomization: self-affirmation and liberation of their own creative forces.

From the earliest days of industrialism and capitalism, people in subordinated social sectors have engaged in struggle and action aiming to change the social order and build a more just society. They have pursued two different directions: building organizations and activities that autonomously and directly address economic and social problems, that is, organizing their own forces to search for a “technical” way to confront and overcome them; and organizing social forces that take action against enterprises and institutions, especially against the State, pressuring them “politically” to meet the demands and adopt the programs of the affected social sectors. In the first case, the relevant social subject is cooperativism in its various expressions; in the second, it is unionism and popular political movements and parties.

Of the two paths of organization and action, it is the latter which has been most traveled, as much in terms of the social sectors directly involved as of the ideological orientations of the intellectuals committed to their cause. The reasons for this can be many and varied; among them two seem determinant.

The first is of an intellectual order; we can call it, using Gabriel Marcel’s term, the “spirit of abstraction.” The spirit of abstraction, which characterizes modern culture, basically consists of the effort to create global and definitive solutions on the basis of theories and practices that are simple and totalizing.7 In this conception of reality, it is more efficient to eradicate illiteracy, for example, by launching a struggle to change the educational system than to organize groups in which people develop literacy skills directly. This tendency, especially common among intellectuals, coincides with another characteristic of modern society which is the belief in politics as the correcting activity of civilization and history.

The second reason is of an economic-political order, and consists of the immense force of attraction generated by the triumph of socialism in the Soviet Union, China, and other countries. Socialism’s force of attraction is based on the theoretical affirmation of the “primacy of the political,” according to which the conquest of power by the oppressed classes is the start of a general transformation of the economic and social structures, and an economic conception based on centralized planning and State ownership of the means of production. On this basis, socialism has drawn to itself the greater part of the energies of transformation and the search for social justice on the part of intellectuals and the popular classes. The influence of socialist ideas on labor movements in the capitalist world has had differentiated effects. For example, those sectors which reject the ideological and political contents of the socialist project have nonetheless embraced the economic side the statist conception, attributing redistributive, programmatic, and economic and market regulating functions to the government, and have oriented their action to supporting the growth of the State as an economic actor, which they then pressure to meet the social demands of Labor.

The preponderance of this statist tendency in the labor movement has, to some degree, marginalized the autonomist orientation that seeks to confront problems directly and through the organization of its own forces of intervention.

But now, the theoretical crisis of socialism, the manifestation of problems and critical contradictions in its real experiences, and the weakening of the model of development based on the interventionist or service providing State, has reposed the problem and demands a redefinition of the forms of organization and struggle of the labor movement and of the subordinated classes in general.

This process is still incipient, vacillating as it feels its way, but it can be said that the conditions for its reorientation in the sense that we have indicated are emerging, that is, the conditions for a project of democratic transformation of the market through the autonomous organization of the economic-social capacities of the subordinated classes. This does not imply abandoning struggles and political action over demands, or limiting oneself to economic-technical direct action, but rather widening the field of action, so as to act on the entire system of relations of social forces guaranteed by the ideological, juridical, and political superstructure, that is, to alter the general relation of forces in a given society for the benefit of the subordinated classes.

4. – We have mentioned the three forces that seem fundamental in this process: labor power, community, and technology. In market economies these three categories are subordinated to capital and the State; but the situation in which they find themselves is not homogeneous. Each of them is incorporated into the market and participates in its benefits to the extent it has been organized by capital and the State: the work force is employed, consumer needs are satisfied, technologies are deployed. But elements of each category remain on the margins or are simply excluded from the market: unemployed workers, unsatisfied community needs, alternative technologies that develop without regard to the demands of capitalist production.

A strengthening of their position in the market would undoubtedly benefit those who have been incorporated in it as much as those who are marginalized, but it is only from the excluded parts that we can expect the subject of transformational action to emerge. The formation of worker self-organized enterprises according to a renewed cooperative model that is efficient and integrated; the organization of communities in associative forms that fortify their presence and bargaining power in the market; the systematic development of alternative and appropriate technologies as an integral part of a different type of development, centered on the needs of the popular sectors; these processes converge in the formation of a new social block, a subject of transformational action, the bearer of a new structure of social action, capable of initiating a general process of democratic transformation of the market.

We have indicated that the process of transformation of the market can also be accelerated and strengthened through the transfer of activities and functions currently realized by the State to these emerging forms of economic-social organization of subordinated categories. It is no longer possible to deny that the welfare State has been inefficient in the functions of redistribution and social justice that it has claimed as its own. Public spending intended to benefit social sectors who possess few resources or suffer extreme poverty seems to have a lesser effect than one would have expected given the sums utilized, because an important part of the resources is consumed by the institutional bodies and bureaucracies charged with the administration, and thus fails to reach the intended beneficiaries.

In response, some economists – among them Milton Friedman – have proposed the replacement of public welfare programs with direct subsidies to people in need, through a negative tax on rent. In theory this might seem to be an effective mode of alleviating poverty, but it presents significant problems. From the economic point of view, it does not develop the power and intellectual and labor capacities of the beneficiaries, contributing on the contrary to the passivity of a probably growing number of people on assistance who are dispersed and integrated into the economy only as consumers, not as subjects in creative and productive activity. From the ethical-social point of view, this approach favors irresponsibility, isolation, and dependency in social groups whose potential contributions to the economy are nullified.

Global reorganization of the State’s social spending in order to redirect much of it to the support of organizing by labor, communities, and creators of alternative technologies, with a view to their dynamic reinsertion into the market, could constitute an alternative that is simultaneously efficient and integrated, unleashes economic energies, and facilitates processes of autonomization. Once a certain point in this process is reached, continued assistance would become unnecessary, at least for some of the beneficiaries.

We have repeatedly noted that State subsidy of cooperatives contains elements that are harmful, in the medium or long term, to the autonomous and efficient development of this type of enterprise and the cooperative sector as a whole. Experience shows that these negative effects are associated with the passage of special laws that provide ongoing advantages to these organizations, such as training incentives, financial subsidies, etc.

If this is so, the harmful effect of public support for the sector can be eliminated if it is guided by a different philosophy, concentrating financial support on the development of cooperative, technological and other activities, creating the conditions for the constitution of cooperatives and their insertion in the market, then leaving them to operate in normal market conditions, each taking on the risks involved in its own operations. The State can provide decisive support: providing education and training for the necessary organizational and economic tasks, making available indispensable start-up capital and credit for activities that involve shared risk where private banks are not inclined to provide financing for various reasons, and supporting the creation of organizations for economic integration, the necessity and importance of which we have stressed. The State can provide this support without compromising the long run efficiency and autonomy of the new organizations. Combined with the autonomous development and empowerment of the subordinated economic categories and social groups through their own organizational efforts, State support can give rise to that process of democratic transformation of the market through which the organic crisis of contemporary society might be overcome. 

• 1

  A system dominated by the Management category could take the form either of the State system he analyzes here or one organized by something like the “managerial class” described by Gérard Duménil & Dominique Lévy in Managerial Capitalism: Ownership, Management, & the Coming New Mode of Production (London: Pluto Press, 2018)

• 2

  “The difference between these situations – autonomy or subordination – is decisive and has a deep significance that deserves precise terminology. We have reserved the term “economic factor” for the general elements of which the enterprise is formed, which contribute to the product and are necessarily productive, and the term “economic category” for the economic factor that plays the organizing role. We already mentioned Capital and Labor, economic categories based on the factors of finance and labor power in their roles as organizing factors of an enterprise. However, any of the six factors in an enterprise can play the role of organizing category.”

• 3

  A good initial guide to these conversations is Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Escobar et al. Eds., Tulika Books, 2019.

• 4

  Branko Horvat, Towards a Theory of Planned Economy, Yugoslav Institute of Economic Research, 1964, p. 2-3.

• 5

  We have left this chapter as it was in the first edition. Ten years ago [in 1984], the socialist mode of organization had not experienced the crisis that it now experiences. The analysis that follows, made when the socialist economies seemed solid and even growing on a global scale, remains valid insofar as it helps us understand the development of that economy and has been confirmed and validated by historical experience.

• 6

  Branko Horvat, Op. Cit. P 86-88

• 7

  See Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society. Henry Regnery, 1962. P. 155 “...the spirit of abstraction can in certain respects be regarded as a transposition of the attitudes of imperialism to the mental plane.” See also Louis Althusser’s concept of “expressive totality.” From Capital to Marx's Philosophy, Reading Capital. New Left Books, 1970.– MN