ABSTRACT
Having dealt with the probable attacks from the right against a suggestion to revitalise the National Enterprise Board (NEB) or create an agency similar to it, this chapter deals with the various criticisms that the Marxist and socialist left would direct at such a proposal. One of these arguments would certainly be that a policy of government subsidies filtered through an agency such as the NEB would not effect any genuine transfer of power in society. Modern democratic Marxists, spotlight as well, e.g., the feud in welfare state capitalist democracies between the taxpayers and the recipients of government assistance; and feel that this ‘contradiction’ too cannot be resolved as long as capitalism remains in place. But it is far from clear that it should be stamped as a ‘fundamental’, and ‘insuperable’. contradiction that thus cannot be satisfactorily resolved within the framework of the democratic capitalist status quo.
