Computers and Alec Nove's Market Socialism

In an effort to better understand "market socialism", I just concluded Alec Nove's "The Economics of Feasible Socialism Revisited". I recommend this book for anybody who wants a lucid and generally wise presentation of all the arguments against planned socialism.

One of Nove's central premises is unacceptable to me, however.

For Nove, bureaucracy is a necessary consequence of trying to plan a vast economy like the former Soviet Union's. Bureaucrats must keep track of all of the intermediate steps involved in industrial production. Nove rejects Lenin's claim that "Capitalism has simplified the work of accounting and control, has reduced it to a comparatively simple system of bookkeeping, that any literate person can do." Nove's retorts to Lenin as follows: "A large factory, for instance, making cars or chemical machinery, is an assembly plant of parts and components which can be made in literally thousands of different factories, each of which, in turn, may depend on supplies of materials, fuel and machines, made by hundreds or more other production units. Introduce the further dimension of time (things need to be provided punctually and in sequence), add the importance of provision for repair, maintenance, replacement, investment in future productive capacity, the training and deployment of the labor force, its needs for housing, amenities, hairdressers, dry-cleaners, fuel, furniture...'Simple', indeed!"

I have worked as a systems analyst, database adminstrator and computer programmer since 1968 and am astonished that Nove does not recognize that these types of tasks have long since been relegated to large-scale automation. I have worked on systems that automate these tasks on and off since the early 1970's and can attest to the fact that bureaucrats are not necessary to keep track of anything in the production process. For example, a system which can automate the assembly and subassembly of parts and components is known in my trade as a "bill of materials" database application. It allows managers to keep track of what parts are required to put together an automobile, an aircraft engine, a mainframe computer, etc. With respect to "the further dimension of time", Nove doesn't seem to be aware that facilities management systems have been around for the longest time. These types of systems are responsible for the scheduled maintenance, upkeep and expansion of all sorts of industrial and non-industrial plants. I have been involved with a new facilities management system at Columbia University and confess that while it does not keep track of hairdressers, it does keep track of everything else on Nove's list.

Not only does my experience in the business world at odds with Nove's theories, I also have witnessed the impact automation can make in a revolutionary society. I was formerly the President of Tecnica, a technical aid project for Nicaragua. One of our volunteers wrote a database application that ran on a single PC which kept track of spare parts for private and government enterprises in Nicaragua at the height of the contra war. This modest little application had a MAJOR impact on Nicaragua's ability to keep key industries going during the war. Imagine what large-scale automation could have meant in a Nicaragua at peace.

Nove has surprisingly few words to say about automation. I started off reading the first edition of his work which dates from 1983 and switched to the newer edition on Boris Kargalitsky's recommendation. I expected the newer edition to cover computers in more detail, but was disappointed to find that no new insights appeared in second edition, dated 1991. This is after nearly 10 years worth of advances in personal computing, telecommunications, networking and databases.

I was won over to socialism in the same year I first became a computer programmer. I always used to stress to comrades that it seemed that computers (in those days, IBM 360's) made socialism objectively possible for the first time in history. If nothing else, this conviction has only deepened even while bureaucratic socialism has entered into crisis or disappeared.

I think that Lenin's claim is as true as ever if it is modified in the following manner: "Capitalism has simplified the work of accounting and control, has reduced it to a comparatively simple system of bookkeeping, that any literate person can do with a computer."