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Perhaps someone on this list can help me with leads on "socialization." Here's some background to my question: What should we understand by Marx's idea that the development of capitalism means progressive (cumulative) "socialization" of the forces of production, creating the material preconditions for socialism -- including (if I read him right) a working class (-in-itself) increasingly capable of becoming the bearers of society's general interests? What should we understand by this notion of "socialization"? What form does this socialization take over the (unbearably!) long history of capitalism? What forms are most important to an understanding of the last 50 or 100 years? Who has written on this topic? More concretely: I read Marx's famous Grundrisse passage about (socialization of production in the form of) the automatic system as suggesting that when real productive capability depends so much on society's overall stock of knowledge and so little on the production worker's efforts, then the market mechanism -- regulation by exchange-value based on labor time -- starts to lose "traction," and in this sense and as a direct consequence, capitalism becomes increasingly obsolete. I think I understand what this means when we talk in terms of "value," what does it mean when we look at the phenomenal world of "price"? For Marx's thesis (the one I impute to him) to be valid, it must surely mean that as capitalism advances, the price-formation system starts to fall apart: what would this mean? What evidence might we marshall to test this idea? Indeed we have lots of evidence of market failures for knowledge goods (due to public goods character): in particular, the growing importance of education and government sponsored R&D can surely be read as signs of socialization (under capitalism). Do any other "global" indicators of socialization seem probative here? But I wonder if we can also find evidence of this "loss of traction" within the functioning of the business sector. Presumably, if knowledge is such a problem for the market mechanism, we should be able to find evidence of this in some facet of the price-setting mechanisms at work in specific markets. But if you look at for example the pricing of R&D services by Battelle or AD Little, or the setting of prices for consulting services or technology licenses, I'm not sure I see any traction difficulties: these firms just look at their costs of production (mainly labor-power (in the form of the salaries paid to their "knowledge workers" and support staff) plus any equipment depreciation costs)...then tack on whatever margins "the market will bear." So where is the loss of traction or "obsoleteness" here? One hypothesis might be that such markets evidence a higher degree of price volatility: if the prices are set at levels that reflect social norms more than "real" production costs, then perhaps one might expect more volatility. But is this hypothesis a valid deduction? I can't make much sense of the distinction between prices set by norms and by economic factors. Can you? Any thoughts on these issues would be most welcome! Paul * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Prof. Paul S. Adler Management and Organization Dept, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-0808 USC office tel: (213) 740-0748 Home office tel: (818) 981-0115 Home office fax: (818) 981-0116 Email: [log in to unmask] List of publications and course outlines at: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~padler/ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%