Conclusion
It must follow, from what we have been able to establish in our previous arguments,
that the protagonists of a socialist system of production claim preference for it on the ground
of greater rationality as against an economy so constituted as to depend on private ownership
of the means of production. We have no need to consider this opinion within the framework
of the present essay, insofar as it falls back on the assertion that rational economic
activity necessarily cannot be perfect because certain forces are operative which hinder
its pursuance. In this connection, we may only pay attention to the economic and technical
reason for this opinion, there hovers before the holders of this tenet a muddled conception
of Technical Rationality, which stands in antithesis to economic rationality on which
they are not very clear.
They are wont to overlook the fact that all technical rationality of production is identical
with a low level of specific expenditure in the processes of production.
They overlook the fact that technical calculation is not enough to realize the degree of general
and teleological expediency of an event, that it can only grade individual events according
to their significance, but that it can never guide us in those judgments which are demanded
by the economic complex as a whole.
Only because of the fact that technical considerations can be based on profitability can we overcome
The Difficulty arising from the complexity of the relations between the mighty system of present-day production on the one hand, and demand and the efficiency of enterprises and economic units on the other, and can we gain the complete picture of the situation in its totality, which rational economic activity requires.
These theories are dominated by a confused conception of the primacy of objective use-value.
In fact, so far as economic administration is concerned, objective use-value can only acquire significance for the economy through the influence it derives from subjective use-value on the formation of the exchange relations of economic goods.
A second confused idea is inexplicably involved. The observer's personal judgment of the utility of goods as opposed to the judgments of the people participating in economic transactions.
If anyone finds it irrational to spend as much as is expended in society on smoking, drinking, and similar enjoyments, then doubtless he is right from the point of view of his own personal scale of values.
But in so judging he is ignoring the fact that economy is a means, and that without
prejudice to the rational considerations influencing its pattern, the scale of ultimate ends is
a matter for conation and not for cognition.
The knowledge of the fact that rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth
cannot, of course, be used as an argument either for or against socialism.
Whoever has prepared himself to enter upon socialism on ethical grounds, on the supposition
that the provision of goods of a lower order for human beings under a system of common
ownership of the means of production is diminished, or whoever is guided by ascetic ideals in
his desire for socialism, will not allow himself to be influenced in his endeavors by what
we have said.
Still less will those culture socialists be deterred who, like Muckle, expect from socialism
primarily the dissolution of the most frightful of all barbarism's capitalist rationality.
But he who expects a rational economic system from socialism will be forced to reexamine
his views.