Brazzil

actualy , that is what some of these programs suggest.

hyper capitalism just doesnt work , and it makes the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

but , capitalism is closer to the ingrained survival instincts that go back to the animal part of our evolution. it is natural to our real nature.it just needs to have a concience with social programs.

the hyper capitalists rail against these programs, but, surly now we know they are wrong . all the hype about cutting social programs that we all got used to 8 years ago can now be officialy looked at as wrong.

and , surly we know that socialist programs that think people will barter for things and be told what to do by the state or tell people that no matter what they produce they will be paid the same hourly wage, go against human nature to compete and get ahead

that is the real problem with ideolouges , they make their theories and think they will force people to adhere to them , not taking into consideration how nature has programmed human beings.

also, do we really want someone to tell us what doctor we have to go to ? what store we have to get our rations ? surpress our natural desire to get ahead ?

this is the fundemental flaw of socialist thinking

i say capatilism with a concience

as you would get a because we say so company like we have in our governments .

to protect there jobs government would place there relatives in power as they do in brasil and soon you will get a top heavy company like we have in government today

The article has two mischaracterizations of Dietrich's view on socialism, inspired directly by Marx and Engels and not "orthodox Marxism."

First off, while goods and services would be exchanged as much as possible according to the number of labor hours it takes to produce them, supply and demand can have a distortive effect on this long-term equilibrium (which has been empirically proven, thus validating Marx's particular "socially necessary labour" theory of value). Prices would fluctuate only if S/D goes above a certain level or below a certain "safety stock" level. So there would still be a limited consumer goods and services market, just no markets in capital or labour.

Second, the notion that "the scheme is impossible without establishing a market in 'labor coupons' which would have the same defects as financial markets using dollars, pounds or euros" is absolute nonsense. There's a huge difference between labour money that circulates (Proudhon) and labour credits that don't. The latter, by the way, became the "means of exchange" suggestion of Marx and Engels in the 1870s.

In our book Towards a New Socialism ( 1993 ) we made it clear that whilst we advocate marking all goods with their actual labour content, some goods might have to be sold at a premium or a discount relative to their labour values in the event of shortage or excess. The deviation between selling price in hours and cost of production in hours would provide a planned economy with the demand feedback mechanism that was absent in the USSR.

Ted writes 'In such a system, there would be no material incentives to increase productivity or to respond to consumer demand because everyone would receive the same hourly wage no matter how much they produced or how much demand there was for their products.'
The same could be said of capitalism. Wages in a capitalist economy do not depend on the demand for the final product workers make, but on the supply and demand for labour power. If there is an excess of labour on the market wages will fall even if the product is selling well. This discrepancy lies at the heart of capitalist exploitation. What we propose is that workers get the full value that they create rather than only 30% or 50% as at present. This does mean the abolition of profit, and the abolition of class differences, but does not mean the abolition of incentives to work. There would be a bigger incentive to work for most people since they would be recieving a marginal return for effort of 100%.

Somewhat right !!!!!
Short memory that Brazil has one of the World Highest Social and Wealth...INEQUALITY ????????

what are you talking about? how many multinationals of European nationality operate in brazil? How many european transnationals open their plants and branches in brazil for cheap labor? How about european countries plagued the world with their oppressive colonialism? YOu being from Switzerland should know better? i guess not necessarily. Education sounds bad all over the world

oh chc i'm a Brazilian

EUROPEANS USE TO BE LIKE RATS IN BRAZIL.

THEY LEFT THEYR COUNTRY STARVING TO EAT BANANA & COFFEE IN BRAZIL.

Can anyone explain how Brazil's government is Socialist? From what I understand, Lula has become a neo-liberal and despite a few tiny attempts at assuaging hunger and standing up to the US, his government is hardly socialist.

I learn much more from the commentors on this blog than I do from the articles. Whic all seem to be written from one persepctive...

Which systems of governance allow for discovery and implementation of novel ideas rather than preconceived notions?

This is a terrible article, starting as it does with a massive distortion of the truth: the idea that the Credit Crunch was caused by capitalist. Of course Mr. Greenspan is going to blame anyone but himself, but those who really understand what has happened know that everything we have seen over the past year has come about as a result of not enoughcapitalism, and certainly not too much. The Federal Reserve with their artificially low interest rates combined with the governments refusal to allow failure in the market are the real culprits.

The answer is in a free market capitalism. But what Brazil, the US and several other countries, are doing is a socialist-capitalist economy and society, which is the biggest utopia I've ever come across. Education is # 1 in any society, and Brazil is not investing on that. With proper education the populace will realize that the only way any society will survive is with a free market economy, without the big, nasty hand of government influencing every single decision related to how people want to use THEIR own money.
There isn't such a thing as a new kind of socialism. The greed and power of the people on top will overcome any type of socialistic democracy. Let the people control their own money and the economy and society will survive.