Welcome To The Socialist Economics Listserv

This is a public Listserv. However you have to join it in order to receive emails, or participate in its direction and support. The listserv is devoted to publishing and re-publishing resources and discussion of capitalism and what comes after it: Lets call it "socialism".

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More on what the listserv is about:

It turns out that Karl Marx was right that capitalism is not the end of history, but it MAY be the last economic system. Economies manage scarcity in the satisfaction of human wants, but our choices and options change as the division of labor and its associated relations change, hopefully for the better. Such choices and are in great measure (more than is apparent at times) historically determined by the character of production, capital, services, labor-skills and culture, technology, and geography, and the consequences of the choices made by the generations preceding us, in a given time and place.

Nothing brings to light the necessity of better understanding the economic forces better than the current extraordinary globalization underway. You will be hearing a lot about that on this blog!

The list is moderated by John Case. The mission is to improve economic literacy by posting articles reflecting the span of interests and views illuminating the path for working people to rising working and living conditions at home and across the world.

A couple of caveats on this listserv:

Anti-socialist and anti-democratic views will be seldom heard here, except as examples of such worth noting. In addition some (in the moderator's view) dogmatic trends in "Marxist" discourse will also be rarely heard from.
The line between economics and politics seems more ephemeral than ever as economic policy supersedes and subsumes almost all other political questions. Thus policy, especially economic policy, statements from organizations, influential academics, and spokespersons that bear on important economic debates will usually be re-published. In the category "democratic" I include official statements and positions of major institutions with authority over economic information and activity.

From a better understanding of capitalism as an economic system, what must arise from it becomes illuminated. Before us, in the span of less than a lifetime, capitalism has been transformed into a vastly globalized, yet increasingly volatile and unstable economic organization of nations and the world.

At the same time, advanced forms of both labor and production including services and intangibles now exist that do not fit comfortably into commodity relations, and look more like market failures than successes. The features and character of the society emerging -- are all around us, straining to be seen as they really are.

The socialist ideal for this era of human history rings as true as when Marx wrote it: a society where the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to their work" is realized. Marx once defined the socialist ideal as the ideals of the Enlightenment (embodied in our Declaration of Independence) realized for all who labor. We shall seek to spread enlightenment!

You do not have to be an "economist" to participate or comment upon the issues and analysis published here. A possibly apocryphal anecdote from Che Guevara and Fidel Castro may help:

Shortly after the Cuban revolution began constructing a government, Fidel called upon leaders assembled, including Che, to find an ECONOMIST to assist in building Cuban Socialism. Che famously rose to volunteer for the assignment. Fidel expressed surprise, confessing his knowledge of Che's medical, leadership, and other skills, yet unaware that he was also an economist. To which Che replied: "OH. I thought you said 'Communist'!!....but I can be an economist too"!!

That does NOT mean the subject can be mastered without study and application.

[The Washington Post]

John Case