Production Modes, Marx’s Method and the Feasible Revolution

In Marx, the production mode is defined as a social organisation mode which is typified by one dominant production model which confers significance on the system at large. The prominence of production modes in his overall approach provides clues to the identification of the correct scientific method of Marxism and, probably, of Marx himself. The main aim of this paper is to define this method and to discuss a type of socialist revolution which appears feasible in this day and age

Is Socialism A Utopian Dream?

The idea that the establishment of a centrally planned system or the creation of a worker-controlled system amount to a socialist revolution is closely associated with the main contradictions that Marx highlighted in capitalism: the capital-labour conflict or the mismatch between planned production and anarchical distribution. Analysing these alternative forms of revolution, the author raises a number of questions: which of them fits human nature better? which of them is more closely associated with Darwinian evolutionism? is it correct to assume that democratic firm management tends to improve human nature

Competition in a Democratic Firm System: Failures and Constraints

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On Dialectics and the Basic Contradiction in Capitalism

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Marx, Marxism and the cooperative movement

This paper has a dual aim: first, to draw attention to a number of passages in which Marx explicitly extolled the cooperative movement and thereby confute the wrong but widely held assumption that Marx was inimical to the market and rejected cooperation as a production mode even for the transition period; second, to argue that the continuing neglect of Marxists both of the cooperative movement and of the passages from Marx (and Engels) that present a system of producer cooperatives as a new production mode can be traced back in part to the late emergence of an economic theory of producer cooperatives. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

A Few Advantages of Economic Democracy

The aim of this article is to discuss some of the main advantages of an employeemanaged system: a labour productivity edge on capitalistic businesses, the suppression of external firm control, slower monopoly-building and softer competition, the eclipse of the paramount role of economics in social evolution and a reduced need for state intervention into the economy. The author’s analysis sheds light on whether, and in what sense, economic democracy is a public good proper or just a "merit good". From the classification of cooperative as merit goods it follows that any government, regardless of political-economic orientation, should make it its task to support the growth of the democratic firm system by enforcing tax or credit benefits in its favour.

Sulla transizione dal capitalismo all'autogestione

A system of firms managed by the workers, if organized in the LMF form as suggested by Vanek, realizes a new method of production, one of the possible forms of a market based socialism. Thus, it is interesting to investigate the issue of a transition from capitalism to the new mode of production. This is the main aim of the present article. The economic literature on the transition to socialism deals with many issues, but for the most part it is based on the idea tha t socialism must necessarily imply centralized planning. However, the problems posed for a socialist system in which firms are managed by workers are not entirely different. Rather, in this case the difficulties turn out to be smaller. This is true for many reasons, but chiefly because the cooperative system is a market system.Cultura economica, Crisi finanziaria, Regole