Showing papers on "Social ownership published in 1999"

Economics of the Public Sector

Abstract: * Introduction * Economic Rationales for the State * Equity and Efficiency * Public Goods * Externalities * Asymmetric Information * Benefit Analysis * Public Choice * Government Failure * Taxation * Tax Incidence and Efficiency * Intertemporal Issues * Taxes on Labour * Social Insurance and the Welfare State * Income Inequality * Poverty * Social Policy * Pensions and Ageing * Healthcare * Education and Training * Privatisation and Social Ownership * Regulation and Competition Policy * The Environment * Federal Issues and the European Union

Monetary Arrangements and Exchange Rate Regime in a Small Transitional Economy (Slovenia)

Abstract: The monetary arrangements, monetary policy, exchange rate regime and exchange rate policy that have been in existence in Slovenia since October 1991, when Slovenia became independent, had not been introduced in an empty space. There were very important left-overs, especially in the financial sector, of the market-planned economic system, that had to be replaced by the market economic system (or capitalism), and there were quite a few experiences with a kind of monetary integration. The replacement of the market-planned economic system means in the first place abolishment of the social ownership of business enterprises. As this has been done in the first place according to the wishes and whims of politicians, and contrary to the logic of economics and efficiency, the chosen method of the abolishment of the social ownership of business enterprises must figure at the same level as left-overs of the past and experiences with previous monetary arrangements, when monetary arrangements, monetary policy, exchange rate regime and exchange rate policy are analysed.

The Privatisation Debate and Labor Tradition

Abstract: The debate surrounding the ideological underpinning of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has been a constant companion to the development of policy both in government and in opposition since the Parties origins in the 1890s. The privatisation debate ofthe 1980s saw the Hawke governments come under sustained criticism for the shifting of the Party to the right and for the betrayal of the Labor tradition. This paper will examine the privatisation debate in the light ofthis concept of tradition, and its usefulness to historians in trying to gain an insight into the motivations of the protagonists of the time. The fundamental nature of the privatisation debate to the understanding of what the ALP actually stands for makes it an important and controversial subject for labour historians. Much previous work in this area, due not least to the closeness ofthe era to current writing, has been of a highly politicised and partisan nature. A more sober overview of this crucial debate within the Labor Party, focussing less on whether Hawke was right, and more on the impact of the debate on the positioning of 1980s Labor in relation to its past is necessary. This paper will argue that an awareness of the complexities and contradictions of the concept of tradition is essential to the study of this debate, and that an understanding of the evolutionary nature of this tradition is needed to link the Hawke governments of this era to Labor governments of the past. There are many competing views as to what constitutes the Labor tradition, and it will be argued in this paper that there is no one true tradition. However an example of some popular concepts of the Labor tradition will help clarity the argument. In Transforming Labor, Peter Beilharz argues that there are three main "golden ages" of Labor history focused on by different groups within the Party.' Some look to the Party's formation in the period of the Great Strikes of the 1890s as what Beilharz describes as a " ... foundation of fire" and the moment when Labor was closest to its working class origins. 2 Others look to the 1940s and the Curtin and Chifley governments as the "golden age" of full employment and opportunities of post-war reconstruction. Still others see the Whitlam era of the early 1970s as the benchmark. 4 These periods are idealised and romanticised and are then used to measure present incarnations. Eric Hobsbawm defines this as "inventing tradition" and suggests that, "[i]n short, they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition".5 The privatisation debate of the 1980s saw this concept of tradition mobilised by both sides in arguing for a more market oriented approach to the ownership of Government Business Enterprises (GBE), or in appealing to an interventionist past. That privatisation is now part of the Labor tradition is an example of the evolutionary nature of these "invented traditions", if one that many contemporary members feel uncomfortable with. In examining the Hawke governments relationship to any Labor tradition, an understanding of what the Party had committed itself to by the time of the 1983 Federal election, particularly in relation to public ownership, is essential. The 1982 ALP Platform began with the statement of the "Objectives", committing the Party to " ... the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation ambiguous, section two would appear to be more explicit, committing the Party to the "establishment and development of public enterprises, based upon federal, state and other forms of social ownership, in appropriate sectors of the economy".? The 1982 Conference that had developed this Platform had however passed a resolution that gave the incoming Hawke government some freedom. Policies geared toward producing a "sustained economic recovery" were to be given precedence over all other Platform commitments.8 This was to prove a significant caveat. The future arguments within the Party dealing with privatisation were to centre on this commitment to public ownership, both "traditionally" and explicitly in the Platform, and the need for those arguing for privatisation to convince the Party to change the Platform to allow for major enterprise sales. With the focus of the Hawke government's shortened first term being the deregulation of the finance and banking sector and the establishment of the Accord, it was during the second term that the privatisation debate emerged as a central and divisive issue. The Coalition had begun highlighting the potential for the privatisation of public enterprises such as Australian Airlines (orTAA in the early 1980s), Qantas and Medibank Private, with at least the deregulation of Telecom under consideration by the 1984 Federal election. In 1985 the Liberal Party committed itself to the sale of the Housing Loans Insurance Corporation, the Australian Industry Development Corporation and Medibank Private, and to examining other enterprises including the Commonwealth Bank.9 Labor attacked the Coalition's policy at this time, with senior figures including Hawke and Keating making strong statements reaffirming Labor's commitment to public ownership and opposition to any "Thatcherite" privatisation plans. In a quote that was to be consistently used against his later pro-privatisation arguments, Hawke stated in July 1985 that the proposed sale of assets by the Liberal Party would be" ... a one-offfire sale; a 'sale of the century' of your assets, the assets of the people of Australia. They would transfer them into the hands of a privileged few to the cost of every one of us".'o Keating also went on the record in May 1985 stating that: "No matter where one looks whether it be at TAA or the other authorities there is no case for the Opposition's argument in economics except simply to indulge ideologically in a Thatcherite vandalistic splurge to try and destroy these authorities"." By early 1986 however changes began to appear publicly at the top levels of the ALP in its attitude toward the privatisation issue. Minister for Finance Senator Peter Walsh made a speech to a seminar on the topic of privatisation organised by the Financial Review for February 26, 1986 in which he stated that" ... if its cheaper to put the control of operations of public enterprises into private hands, then I'd like to do it that way".'2 Walsh went on to suggest that he had no particular ideological preference for public or private ownership, and that he was disappointed that people were allowing the privatisation debate to become "politicised and polarised".13 "Those at the conservative end of the spectrum want to privatise everything that moves. Some at the progressive end s~em to favour

Introduction: conflicts and cooperation between public and private social services

Abstract: Creative destruction? The abolition of the one-party system and social ownership was viewed as an act of “creative destruction” (Schumpeter 1950) at the beginning of this decade. It has become clear, ten years later, that the transformation of a socialist into a post-socialist society has not been restricted to the above two instances of abolition but has been enlarged towards the non-creative destruction of almost all institutions. The most destructive has been the introduction of two laws which constitute the new post-socialist society: 1) the law on privatisation 2) the law on denationalisation. The main reason for their negative function was the legally-established domination of capital over work, which is in contradiction with the basic paradigm of modern societies in which symbiosis and cooperation between capital and labour prevail over conflict or the domination of one over the other.