Why Centralization?

[autotrophic]

Trotskyists, Leninists, and many communists in general seem to support the idea of centralization within the state. One problem I see with this...

If the goal (which many anarchists and communists share) is classless and stateless society, where no person is in authority over another, then people should be free to choose the economic system in which they live. This would be a consequence of worker-controlled industry. They could choose to organize collectively, individualy, with money, without money, choose their own banking system, etc. etc.

Centralization within the state, on the other hand, generally takes one policy, reform, law, etc. and enforces it as a cover all solution on an entire society. Why should the entire society be organized the same way?

Several regions within a decentralized economy may have similar interests, and therefore decide to align and cooperate, but it is entirely from the ground up, so to speak, whereas a centralized economy is forced down onto people by the state.

[mikelepore]

Whenever people say they want socialism without centralization, I always have only one question -- how would industries acquire their supplies? How would a factory get sheet metal, chemicals, paper, furniture, tools, machines, fuel, etc. If the workplace buys these resources by spending revenue that was taken in by selling products, that is, if the workplace is a "company", then you have capitalism, nothing significant has changed, and there was no reason for us to start a social movement in the first place. If workplaces acquire these things by using a common plan for interdepartment transfers, specifications and scheduling, then you have centralization.

[Rangi]

When people talk about a decentralized state I simply cannot imagine how this would work or what it would look like.

[Diagoras]

@mikelepore:

Not quite. I would imagine that we are simply operating on differing understandings of what "centralization" implies (most likely as a result of our different understanding of what a "state" is, as Marxist and anarchist), though I will attempt to clarify as well as I can. When centralization is attacked from a social anarchist perspective, it is the centralization of the decision making process in the hands of a few that is criticized. This is not a criticism of making collective decisions, or agreeing upon a common plan of action for issues that affect a wide range of communities. It is a matter of access. As long as said decisions are done democratically, and the communities involved are freely federated from the bottom up with industrial and community councils and recallable delegates to discuss and agree upon patterns of resource distribution, then this mode of economic and political organization is not centralized (in fact, is not a "state" at all by the anarchist definition).

@Rangi:

I was not aware of the possibility of a decentralized "state". You are right in that such a thing seems unimaginable. On the other hand, the conflation of "state" with any form of "social organization" is precisely one of the problems in reaching a common understanding between anarchists and Marxists, resting again upon our different definitions and theoretical assumptions and foundations.

[Psy]

Without centralization what are you going to do about workers moving about? Think about it, after the revolution workers will be free to go where ever they want, decentralized production would have the problem of people coming and going long before they finish their production cycle thus you'd need centralized production planning so regardless how much workers roam around the Earth their needs are met.

[swirling_vortex]

Whenever people say they want socialism without centralization, I always have only one question -- how would industries acquire their supplies? How would a factory get sheet metal, chemicals, paper, furniture, tools, machines, fuel, etc. If the workplace buys these resources by spending revenue that was taken in by selling products, that is, if the workplace is a "company", then you have capitalism, nothing significant has changed, and there was no reason for us to start a social movement in the first place. If workplaces acquire these things by using a common plan for interdepartment transfers, specifications and scheduling, then you have centralization.
In addition, you also run into problems such as mobilizing resources and providing public services. One of the things that governments have been good at for thousands of years is the ability to move something from one place to another in a quick period of time. You also have to give oversight for the country in terms of providing defense & regulation, something that doesn't seem to be possible under a completely decentralized system.

On the other hand, if the state isn't acting in a democratic fashion, then you run into problems.

[Diagoras]

@swirling vortex:

Simply because the nation-state has assumed the roles of collective defense and social services does not mean that such things could not be successfully administered otherwise. Again, it depends on what you mean when you say "completely decentralized system", but at least in the manner that I described, I see no reason why any social services could not be handled, with the federated scale of cooperating communities engaged in the task widening depending on the need and scope of the issue.

@Psy:

I don't think that even given the freedom to move anywhere without borders, most people would opt (with the exception of my wife... as long as she could keep her laptop and WiFi access) to become drifting nomads. People will still have ties to family, to a sense of "home", and I don't think such things should be underestimated in the role of community formation. In the same vein, I would hope that if a society had enough sense of solidarity to overthrow capitalism, it would possess at least a general sense of responsibility towards others... enough to give a two weeks notice, so to speak, so that production plans/responsibilities can be altered to accommodate locally. If someone is taking personal travel/vacation time, and especially that is included in the production/consumption calculations of the future (I'm certain a socialist society will have vacation time ;)), then I do not see what the issue is.


...thus you'd need centralized production planning so regardless how much workers roam around the Earth their needs are met.I don't see how this either follows or could not be met otherwise. Again, perhaps our understandings of the term are the obstruction.

[KC]

"Centralization" isn't a concept in itself. In general, all it really means is "the act of centralizing" and doesn't imply or presume a discussion of government, production, society or really anything. So to use centralization in itself is incorrect; you are making presumptions used to define the context in which you use the term, and without stating those presumptions we cannot have a discussion on the matter, as there is no basis for discussion without defining what "centralization" actually means.

Hence when anarchists that attack "centralization" itself, they make certain presumptions (i.e. centralization = centralization of power = undemocratic, etc...), and then when "centralization" is discussed in a broader perspective (i.e. the centralization of production, for example) they apply their presumptions and conclusions from their own "analysis" of what "centralization is".

Which is why we have many anarchists in here applying their feelings ("conclusions") towards "centralization in a state" (whatever that means) to centralization of production.

[robbo203]

A communist economy has to be - needs to be! - a largely decentralised one. Communism means a society in which there is no money , no wage labour, no buying and selling, and no state. Instead people would freely take from the common store(s) without payment and freely - voluntarily - contribute their labour for the benefit of all including themselves.

One of the great difficulties encountered by communists in terms of getting their ideas across is the notion that communism entails central planning. This derives from the mistaken association of state capitalist command economies , like the ex Soviet Union, with communism.

People who talk about communism or socialism being a centrally planned economy need to consider what this means in practice. In its classical sense , a centrally planned society means a society in which all decisions relating to the economic inputs and outputs of the economy are made from a single centre and are incorporated with a single societywide plan . Taken literally, what this means is that the central planners have to construct an unimaginably huge matrix or Leontief-type table to cover millions upon millions of sumultaneous equations. If you are going to produce, let us say, 1000 tractors for the whole of society then what are you are going to need for that? Think of all the mechanical parts that make a tractor. Each of these parts also need to be manufactured so you have to work the relevant quanitites of inputs for this as well and so on - not to mention the energy and labour requirements. We are only talking here of what it takes to produce one kind of finished good - namely a tractor - but there are countless other kinds of finished goods not to mention different versions of tractors, each requiring different kinds or quantities of inputs.

I dont have to labour the point. Central planning in this classical sense of the word is an absolute impossiblity. Even assuming you could work out all of the relevant equations for all of the goods in society what use would that be? If there was , say , a bad harvest somewhere or if consumer preferences changed for a certain good or if a certain technological innovation meant you could use less of certain materials but required more of others to produce a particular good, this would have consequences which would require you to rewrite the whole plan from scratch . This is because eveything is interconnected in reality and in the plan. Using more of a particular resource for one purpose means there is less of that resource available for some other purpose and this is becuase the plan itself had predetermined the specific overall quantity of the resoruce in question. In other words for the plan to "work" there cannot be any changes whatosever in the quantities of millions of inputs or outputs that are linked togther into a coherent pattern within the plan itself. The plan has to be inflexibly followed down to the last letter or else it has to be rewritten from scratch. But change happens all the time and this in itself makes makes the whole idea of a centrally plabnned economy totally impracticable.

This subject is dealt with in an article http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm The alternative to central planning is - obviously - a system of decentraliised planning. This requuires that the millions of separate plans mesh together spontaneously or anarchically rather than in a planned fashion. There is a mechanism that allows this to happen . It is called a self regulating system of stock control.

In a communist society then you will basically have numerous production and distribution units communicating with each other about their requirements. When a particular a good in a store - let us say, cans of baked beans - starts to run out, this information is registered in the store through its normal stock control procedures and the demand for more baked beans is transmitted to the relevant supplier, That supplier might in turn need to transmit requests to other suppliers further down the productin chain and so on. But the end result is that a fresh batch of baked beans arrives at the store. There is no overall predesigned plan which allocates in advance inputs to each of these units along the production chain.

This is how a communist society will work using calculation in kind (Otto Neurath) rather monetray calculation. IN fact, the basis of such an operational system already exists within capitalism. Supermarkets have to use calculation in kind alongside their system of monetary calculation.

I do not deny that there may well be a degree of centralisation in communism There will be a kind of spatial hierachy of decionmaking at several different levels - local , regional and even global. But overwhelmingly, decisionmaking in a communist will be necessarily local. There simply is no practical alternative to that

[Cumannach]

If the goal (which many anarchists and communists share) is classless and stateless society, where no person is in authority over another,...

The goal is a society where no one is exploiting another. If the air traffic controller doesn't have authority over the pilots the planes crash into the airport terminal.

[Psy]

@Psy:

I don't think that even given the freedom to move anywhere without borders, most people would opt (with the exception of my wife... as long as she could keep her laptop and WiFi access) to become drifting nomads. People will still have ties to family, to a sense of "home", and I don't think such things should be underestimated in the role of community formation. In the same vein, I would hope that if a society had enough sense of solidarity to overthrow capitalism, it would possess at least a general sense of responsibility towards others... enough to give a two weeks notice, so to speak, so that production plans/responsibilities can be altered to accommodate locally. If someone is taking personal travel/vacation time, and especially that is included in the production/consumption calculations of the future (I'm certain a socialist society will have vacation time ;)), then I do not see what the issue is.

After capitalism is overthrow for the first time in history humans would be free to roam the world, the technology now exists from them to roam the world and still stay in touch with their family and friends plus they can still return home, all that is missing is the freedom for workers to move around.



I don't see how this either follows or could not be met otherwise. Again, perhaps our understandings of the term are the obstruction.
With centralized plans it means a person can have access to the products of society anywhere these products are distributed on Earth due a centralized pool of products. For example if a worker pickups a MP3 player on the other side of the world from where they currently live and work it doesn't matter as there would be a global stock of MP3 players.

[Black Sheep]

A decentralized economy means an inevitable drop of human needs' satisfaction.Local economies cannot hope to produce the excpected quality and uantity that modern human needs express.
Now if your local economy cooperates with others for supplies,mutual aid, trade,and organized production in order to serve as a supplement for each other,then you have a centralized economy.

It is not something subjective, ffs.

[apathy maybe]

The old style "commend economies" fail. The reason for this has been outlined above, in brief, plans will constantly need modifying based on new information. Not only that, historically, these command economies have consistently provided deficits in certain goods. That is, people don't get what they want.

The solution is simple, let people choice what they want. This will, again, as outlined above, filter back through the supply chain.

Oh, and make sure that there is a surplus. This would be kept to a minimum, through a combination of just in time production (e.g. rather than printing thousands of copies of a book that isn't predicted to be so popular, print a few copies as asked for), analysis of trends (i.e. statistics), and the use of surveys (i.e. more statistics). Any excess product, not used, can simply be recycled.

To address some points raised:

how would industries acquire their supplies?
The same way it happens now, except without monetary transfer. (One possible option.)

If workplaces acquire these things by using a common plan for interdepartment transfers, specifications and scheduling, then you have centralization.
Why are you talking departments? Do you want a bureaucracy? What about just letting people do what they want, ask for what they need?

I go into the storehouse, I get some bread. The folks in the place contact the bakery and say that they'll be needing a couple of extra loaves tomorrow (doesn't happen today, that's why there is more waste under capitalism, they always order too much). The bakery looks at their flour stock, says "Ummm", contacts the mill, who contacts the granaries, who may or may not contact the farmers (granaries can store wheat a while, see).

No plan needed. No centralisation needed. Heck, the bakery might distribute the bread, and the granary might mill the floor.

Organic is better. (I also don't like formalised federations, ad hoc are much nicer.)

Without centralization what are you going to do about workers moving about? Think about it, after the revolution workers will be free to go where ever they want, decentralized production would have the problem of people coming and going long before they finish their production cycle thus you'd need centralized production planning so regardless how much workers roam around the Earth their needs are met.
WTF? Seriously dude, we are talking about a system where a, people will be working a lot less than now, and b, where people won't start being anti-social bastards and up and leave before their shift, just because they feel like it.

Not going to be a problem.


The goal is a society where no one is exploiting another. If the air traffic controller doesn't have authority over the pilots the planes crash into the airport terminal.
Two sorts of authority. Anarchists obey traffic lights. (Well, sometimes anyway, but the reason is not because they are forced to do so, but because it is logical and reasonable that they do.)

With centralized plans it means a person can have access to the products of society anywhere these products are distributed on Earth due a centralized pool of products. For example if a worker pickups a MP3 player on the other side of the world from where they currently live and work it doesn't matter as there would be a global stock of MP3 players.
How does this work though? Are you going to introduce a huge bureaucracy to manage this centralised fucking pool of products? Why not just have multiple music player factories around the world? Wouldn't that make slightly more sense? Why does it matter if a person is on the other side of the world anyway? It doesn't matter in capitalism, why should it matter in a more advanced economic system?

[robbo203]

A decentralized economy means an inevitable drop of human needs' satisfaction.Local economies cannot hope to produce the excpected quality and uantity that modern human needs express.
Now if your local economy cooperates with others for supplies,mutual aid, trade,and organized production in order to serve as a supplement for each other,then you have a centralized economy.

It is not something subjective, ffs.


I think you are confusing a decentralised economy with an autarkic economy. Decentralisation of economic decisionmaking does not necessarily entail self sufficiency (though personally I favour a greater degree of self reliance in local economies and less of the kind of wasteful "coal to Newcastle" phenomena ). Decentralisation is quite compatible with a high degree of ineraction and mutural dependence between local communities. A centralised economy is something quite different and is unworkable for the reasons I explained in my previous post

[Cumannach]

The old style "commend economies" fail. The reason for this has been outlined above, in brief, plans will constantly need modifying based on new information. Not only that, historically, these command economies have consistently provided deficits in certain goods. That is, people don't get what they want.



Comrade this is incorrect. The prototypical 'command' economy was the Soviet Union. In it's most centralized phase, when Stalin was at the leadership of CPSU, the Soviet 'command' economy was the most dazzling success in all of history. Later reformists that broke down the centralization of economic planning weakened it considerably, but even after three decades of mismanagement, the Soviet economy certainly hadn't 'failed' by any usual measure. In fact there wasn't a single year of negative economic growth until the very last years of Gorbachev. It wasn't perfect and there were significant commodity shortages at times, but nothing approaching failure, until the capitalist restoration which abolished all central planning. Immediately after that the Soviet economy practically collapsed. Failed, indeed.

[apathy maybe]

...

Yeah, I would suggest that the economy in the Soviet Union was just as shit as the economy in the capitalist world. We want communism is not command economics.

Besides, by your definition, capitalism hasn't failed in most countries either...

Well fuck that, I don't want capitalism, or command economics that can't get people want they want (or were the bread lines an evil capitalist myth?).

(Oh, and do you want a command economy? To jump on a bandwagon, I'm not sure if that actually makes me your comrade...)

[autotrophic]

So the main question had to do with centralization within the state. Diagoras was essentially correct.'Centralization' or 'centralized decision making' within a soviet, labour union, workers council, etc. is fine, according to anarchists, in fact it is not even centralization at all. This is because these organizations are created freely by their own members, maintained by their own will, and don't coerce anyone to join. (At least in theory anyway)

As far as distribution goes, regional areas can still trade with each other extra goods and can still acquire a large variety of things. The whole point of decentralization is that nobody is forced to enter and people can operate the way they like, unlike the state which is exactly the opposite (even a 'workers state').

[Psy]

I go into the storehouse, I get some bread. The folks in the place contact the bakery and say that they'll be needing a couple of extra loaves tomorrow (doesn't happen today, that's why there is more waste under capitalism, they always order too much). The bakery looks at their flour stock, says "Ummm", contacts the mill, who contacts the granaries, who may or may not contact the farmers (granaries can store wheat a while, see).

No plan needed. No centralisation needed. Heck, the bakery might distribute the bread, and the granary might mill the floor.

Organic is better. (I also don't like formalised federations, ad hoc are much nicer.)

That is okay for small local production but how is that going to work for steel for example?



WTF? Seriously dude, we are talking about a system where a, people will be working a lot less than now, and b, where people won't start being anti-social bastards and up and leave before their shift, just because they feel like it.

I said production cycles not shifts, unless you expect workers to give a year's notice before leaving workers would be leaving far before many production cycles are complete, also why would the locals have to give notice to local worker councils they are moving? Think about a major population center like Tokyo Japan do you think everyone in the city would contact all the workers councils to say they are moving just so all these factories can update their planning? With stocks being global it doesn't matter as shortages in one local community can easily be fed from surpluses of another, making a global reserve of goods.



How does this work though? Are you going to introduce a huge bureaucracy to manage this centralised fucking pool of products? Why not just have multiple music player factories around the world? Wouldn't that make slightly more sense? Why does it matter if a person is on the other side of the world anyway? It doesn't matter in capitalism, why should it matter in a more advanced economic system?

It matters because of planning. If you have local decentralized producers they are going to plan locally, you won't have much standardization as each producer will think their standard is the best and only the marketplace to decide which standard is best yet with local producers it would be very possible for each region to have their own proprietary standards in equipment. For example before goverment standardization of electricity we didn't have a standard voltage for homes in the North America and all electric products had to built for each local power electrical grid. Another issue is local planners missing the big picture as they lack data to see global trends.

[apathy maybe]

I don't have a problem with a "global reserve of goods", but it isn't centralisation... The rest of the quote, I think you worry too much...

Yeah, you worry way to fucking much about this sort of stuff. You know the Internet? (Email and the World Wide Web are built on top of it.) This amazing technology lets people communicate. Also, scientists and technologists are great at coming up with standards that all can agree to use. Really, the whole standardisation thing isn't a problem, you don't have to worry about it.

----

Basically, you are saying that "centralisation" is needed, because of some reason, as if it actually matters. These things work themselves out, and they don't need a centralised bunch of bureaucrats to work them out for us.

(Steel? That's even easier than bread. You need iron, so you contact the iron ore miners or recycling places. That's it. No need to fuck around. It isn't hard to contact the people who produce stuff directly, rather than put a request through to a central bureaucracy which then has to process it (which takes a couple of weeks), and then put the request through to the people who mine the stuff. Or, more likely, there will be stocks of iron ore around the place, equi-distance from where it is used, they have a better idea of how much is needed, and when their stocks are high, they can just say, hey iron ore miners, have a month off. The miners go, cool! Not having to worry about getting paid, they go to the beach (or the mountains depending on what they like). The steel producers, they probably produce like four months worth of steel in one month, because everything is automated. So they have a lot of time off too. But none of this requires any level of centralisation in the political or power sense. It just requires there to be chains of supply, which are already established, and for which (as pointed out by robbo203) all the tech. exist.)

[mikelepore]

Why are you talking departments? Do you want a bureaucracy? What about just letting people do what they want, ask for what they need?

If organization into departments is your definition of bureaucracy, then we'll just have to have bureaucracy.

Industries are, and always will be, thousands of departments that have specialized roles which need to fit together by means of careful planning.

Industry isn't a playground of spontaneity. The people who make a bolt publish a formal specification document, and the people somewhere else who make the hole that the bolt has to fit through publish another formal specification document, and they each send representatives to meetings to hold negotiations to make sure that the bolt will fit through the hole. Sorry, but industry is very complicated.

It's going to have some highly centralized aspects whether we like it or not. The only choice will be between oligarchic planning, which is minority rule, such as capitalism, versus democratic planning, which is majority rule, such as socialism.

Industry will always be a vastly complex set of interrelationships. It's nothing but confusion to be concerned about how "centralized" it is. The real issue is to make it democratic.

[Niccolò Rossi]

Before I respond I'd like to point out that KC hit the nail on the head with his post. Anarchism's (here I do not refer to all anarchists) abstract criticism of "centralisation" is nothing more than a childish and redundant carry over from it's petit-bourgeois roots in the likes of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin.

Now to respond to the OP:


the idea of centralization within the state.
Alone this statement is meaningless. How do we define the "state"? What is specificfally meant by the statement "centralisation within the state"?


If the goal (which many anarchists and communists share) is classless and stateless society, where no person is in authority over another

The goal for socialists is not the abolition of "authority". This is an abstract, idealist and moralistic position.


then people should be free to choose the economic system in which they live

This is once again idealism. Men can not choose the economic system which they inhabitat anymore than they can choose to escape the realities of the material world.

Marx mentions this in his Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, a text I would recommend you read very closely:


In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. - Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm) (1859)

[autotrophic]

Alone this statement is meaningless. How do we define the "state"? What is specificfally meant by the statement "centralisation within the state"?

OK, one thing that I think should be cleared up:

The original question was not about 'centralization' in a broad, abstract sense, but specificly to do with 'centralization within the state.' What I mean by the state is that it is a coercive institution. It claims a monopoly of legitimate coercive power onto the society large. So essentially, centralization within the state would mean that more and more decision making power becomes controlled by the state (or any coercive institution). So nationalization would be an example of this
So, that said, 'centralization' of decision making in a labour union, workers co-op, voluntary commune, etc. would not be centralized because the members of those organizations would be able freely join or quit. I do not advocate decentralization in the sense that there should be votes on every issue as much as possible all the time.


The goal for socialists is not the abolition of "authority". This is an abstract, idealist and moralistic position.
When I say authority, I mean in a coercive sense. Like the state enforcing its laws on society at large. What do you think the goals of socialists are?


This is once again idealism. Men can not choose the economic system which they inhabitat anymore than they can choose to escape the realities of the material world.Isn't that what the point of revolutions are? To change the material conditions of peoples lives? Granted, people are limited by the available technology, but that doesn't mean they can't organize themselves they the way they wish


Marx mentions this in his Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, a text I would recommend you read very closelyAlready on it :)

[robbo203]

Industries are, and always will be, thousands of departments that have specialized roles which need to fit together by means of careful planning.

Industry isn't a playground of spontaneity. The people who make a bolt publish a formal specification document, and the people somewhere else who make the hole that the bolt has to fit through publish another formal specification document, and they each send representatives to meetings to hold negotiations to make sure that the bolt will fit through the hole. Sorry, but industry is very complicated.

It's going to have some highly centralized aspects whether we like it or not. The only choice will be between oligarchic planning, which is minority rule, such as capitalism, versus democratic planning, which is majority rule, such as socialism.

Industry will always be a vastly complex set of interrelationships. It's nothing but confusion to be concerned about how "centralized" it is. The real issue is to make it democratic.


Yes industry is a vastly complex set of relationships but it is precisely because it is that that this overall pattern of relationships cannot be planned; it has to be arrived at spontaneously via a self regulation system of stock control. And that definitely does require a marked degree of decentralisation.

I would go further . Not only does modern industry require a largely decentralised system of decisionmaking in which millions of plans are able to mesh together spontaneuously but democratic control over the planning process makes this even more urgent! How are the citizens of a communist New York going to be able to participate in decisions about refuse disposal in communist New Delhi? They cannot. Purely logistical considerations rule this out. Democracy to function has to be informed. But there is only so much information the human brain can accommodate.

There are millions of decisions that have to be made throughout the world every day. But even if we discount the little decisions, and look only at the large scale decisions that would affect large numbers of people, there are far too many of those for everyone to be meaningfully involved in making them.

On this point and this point only the anarcho-capitalists are right. Hayek talked about the problem of information overload and the need for information dispersal in a modern industrial society. This is correct but of course where he and others go wrong is in assuming uncritically that socialism or communism would be a centrally planned economy. Once you approach the idea of communism from a decentralised perspective the whole of their argument collapses including the so called economic calculation argument

So contrary to Mike's argument I would assert that thousands of departments of industry definitely do need to interrelate with each on a spontaneous basis. By that I mean that their interactions are not, and cannot be, planned in advanced which would effectively disssolve all of these millions of plans and consolidate them into one single plan. Rather each production or distribution unit would response to the needs of other production and distribution units through an automatic feedback process - a self regulating system of stock control. That is the only way in which any kind of complexity can be handled at all.

That is why we need to acknowlege that a communist society can only be a relative decentralised one. This is not to rule out degrees of centralisations via a spatial hierarchy of decisionmaking at the local regional and global levels. But we have to acknowlege that the overwhelming bulk of all such decisions would be made at the local level. There is simply no other alternative available if you want to operate a complex industrial society

[apathy maybe]

Originally posted: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1335864&postcount=8

I was going to write at some length on railways. Except that it's already been done for me!
The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/kropotkin/conquest/ch11.html).

We know that Europe has a system of railways, 175,000 miles long, and that on this network you can nowadays travel from north to south, from east to west, from Madrid to Petersburg, and from Calais to Constantinople, without stoppages, without even changing carriages (when you travel by express). More than that: a parcel thrown into a station will find its addressee anywhere, in Turkey or in Central Asia, without more formality needed for sending it than writing its destination on a bit of paper.

This result might have been obtained in two ways. A Napoleon, a Bismarck, or some potentate having conquered Europe, would from Paris, Berlin, or Rome, draw a railway map and regulate the hours of the trains. The Russian Tsar Nicholas I dreamt of taking such action. When he was shown rough drafts of railways between Moscow and Petersburg, he seized a ruler and drew on the map of Russia a straight line between these two capitals, saying, “Here is the plan.” And the road ad was built in a straight line, filling in deep ravines, building bridges of a giddy height, which had to be abandoned a few years later, at a cost of about £120,000 to £150,000 per English mile.

This is one way, but happily things were managed differently. Railways were constructed piece by piece, the pieces were joined together, and the hundred divers companies, to whom these pieces belonged, came to an understanding concerning the arrival and departure of their trains, and the running of carriages on their rails, from all countries, without unloading merchandise as it passes from one network to another.

All this was done by free agreement, by exchange of letters and proposals, by congresses at which relegates met to discuss certain special subjects, but not to make laws; after the congress, the delegates returned to their companies, not with a law, but with the draft of a contract to be accepted or rejected.

There were certainly obstinate men who would not he convinced. But a common interest compelled them to agree without invoking the help of armies against the refractory members.

This immense network of railways connected together, and the enormous traffic it has given rise to, no doubt constitutes the most striking trait of our century; and it is the result of free agreement. If a man had foreseen or predicted it fifty years ago, our grandfathers would have thought him idiotic or mad. They would have said: “Never will you be able to make the shareholders of a hundred companies listen to reason ! It is a Utopia, a fairy tale. A central Government, with an ‘iron’ director, can alone enforce it.”

And the most interesting thing in this organization is, that there is no European Central Government of Railways! Nothing! No minister of railways, no dictator, not even a continental parliament, not even a directing committee! Everything is done by contract.

----

If that's centralisation, then I guess I don't mind it, but the point is that it is not enforced, it is voluntary, and anyone can opt-out at any time. Anarchy baby, it's what I want. (Anarchy and freedom is wot I want.)

[ComradeOm]

If that's centralisation, then I guess I don't mind it, but the point is that it is not enforced, it is voluntary, and anyone can opt-out at any time. Anarchy baby, it's what I want. (Anarchy and freedom is wot I want.)So yourself and Kropotkin are advocating a market structure?

And, as an aside, Kropotkin might have revised this particular example had he lived another decade or two. The sheer cost of maintaining track and rolling stock rapidly drove most small scale rail companies out of business and saw an oligarchic cartel assume control of the rail in most nations. This finally gave way to fully nationalised monopolies in Europe while passenger transit in the US (where the state would not assume the burden) effectively died. But hey, that's the market for you


Yes industry is a vastly complex set of relationships but it is precisely because it is that that this overall pattern of relationships cannot be planned; it has to be arrived at spontaneously via a self regulation system of stock controlIn contrast the past century has shown that such activity can be planned and coordinated. Obviously there were many flaws in Soviet planning processes (I posted an interesting summary here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/command-economy-t62485/index.html?t=62485)) but that should not distract from the fact that Soviet planners have left us with a multitude of tools specifically designed to do what you deny is possible. There is literally a whole field of mathematics out there geared towards industrial planning. Information technology makes those hideously unwieldy calculations not only doable but many of them are used by bourgeois economists today!

[Psy]

I don't have a problem with a "global reserve of goods", but it isn't centralisation... The rest of the quote, I think you worry too much...

Yeah, you worry way to fucking much about this sort of stuff. You know the Internet? (Email and the World Wide Web are built on top of it.) This amazing technology lets people communicate. Also, scientists and technologists are great at coming up with standards that all can agree to use. Really, the whole standardisation thing isn't a problem, you don't have to worry about it.

Yes just look at the standardization in the Linux community oh wait there is little standardization in the Linux community due to a lack of central planning. Image if physical products were made like Linux were you had dozens of TV standards thus equipment that plugged into TVs had to work will all the TV standards making all equipment overly complex.



Basically, you are saying that "centralisation" is needed, because of some reason, as if it actually matters. These things work themselves out, and they don't need a centralised bunch of bureaucrats to work them out for us.

Why do you think centralized planning equal bureaucrats, BSD is centrally planned by the core programmers does that make them bureaucrats?



(Steel? That's even easier than bread. You need iron, so you contact the iron ore miners or recycling places. That's it. No need to fuck around. It isn't hard to contact the people who produce stuff directly, rather than put a request through to a central bureaucracy which then has to process it (which takes a couple of weeks), and then put the request through to the people who mine the stuff. Or, more likely, there will be stocks of iron ore around the place, equi-distance from where it is used, they have a better idea of how much is needed, and when their stocks are high, they can just say, hey iron ore miners, have a month off. The miners go, cool! Not having to worry about getting paid, they go to the beach (or the mountains depending on what they like). The steel producers, they probably produce like four months worth of steel in one month, because everything is automated. So they have a lot of time off too. But none of this requires any level of centralisation in the political or power sense. It just requires there to be chains of supply, which are already established, and for which (as pointed out by robbo203) all the tech. exist.)
You are forgetting production cycles, new means of production takes years to build (as does upgrading existing means of production) and products take some time to go through the entire production process.

[mikelepore]

How are the citizens of a communist New York going to be able to participate in decisions about refuse disposal in communist New Delhi? They cannot.

Of course you're right, if you select an example of an activity in which decentralization is the most appropriate policy. But we could also pick other examples in which centralization is most appropriate. We wouldn't want each neighborhood to have its own plant for manufacuring railroad trains -- we might make them in just a few cities in the world. If we need to do biology experiments in zero gravity, we wouldn't want each neighborhood college to have to launch its own space station into orbit; we would have it done in just one place for the good of all. If people realize that much, but they still hesitate to call it centralization, then they're needlessly avoiding a perfectly good word and concept due to some "political correctness" fad.

[mikelepore]

Yes just look at the standardization in the Linux community oh wait there is little standardization in the Linux community due to a lack of central planning. Image if physical products were made like Linux were you had dozens of TV standards thus equipment that plugged into TVs had to work will all the TV standards making all equipment overly complex.

Here's an interesting fact that I learned. The movement to adopt technical standards took off a bit faster after much of the city of Baltimore, Maryland burned down in 1904. The fire was so large that many other cities sent their fire trucks there to help. When the other cities' trucks arrived, they we unable to help at all. No other city's hose couplings could be screwed into Baltimore's hydrants. That experience convinced a lot of people, but not everyone.

[Charles Xavier]

We would hardly be communists if we decentralized everything, Workers in This state will have different rights than the workers in that state? Workers in that state are covered all operations in medicine, while others in this state are only covered for Heart Surgery?

And whats wrong with centrally planning the economy, its much better than no plan at all which happens under capitalism. Or competing plans which contradict themselves.

[bobroberts]

Yes just look at the standardization in the Linux community oh wait there is little standardization in the Linux community due to a lack of central planning. Image if physical products were made like Linux were you had dozens of TV standards thus equipment that plugged into TVs had to work will all the TV standards making all equipment overly complex.

There are plenty of standards in the linux community, and they are adopted and followed based on the needs of any particular distribution. Standards are always adopted, eventually, because they are useful. The linux kernel can run on pretty much any computer ever designed, or can be adapted to do so if the information is available. Problems with compatibility are almost always a result of proprietary technology and closed source software. In other words, problems arise from companies developing a technology and trying to force the adoption of the technology while artificially limiting people's ability to use it for monetary reasons.

The same has applied to TV technology over the years. More often than not problems arise because certain powerful companies try to force a standard on people, not because it is practical or even an advancement, but because it allows them to control and profit when people use it.

Similar problems arise when a central authority try to impose their will on the rest of society. The decisions they make may make perfect sense and benefit society, but that authority is often abused and used to benefit the people in control and whoever is in their favor, instead of the people they are supposedly "serving".

[KC]

We would hardly be communists if we decentralized everything, Workers in This state will have different rights than the workers in that state?

States and rights don't exist in communism.

[Psy]

There are plenty of standards in the linux community, and they are adopted and followed based on the needs of any particular distribution. Standards are always adopted, eventually, because they are useful. The linux kernel can run on pretty much any computer ever designed, or can be adapted to do so if the information is available. Problems with compatibility are almost always a result of proprietary technology and closed source software. In other words, problems arise from companies developing a technology and trying to force the adoption of the technology while artificially limiting people's ability to use it for monetary reasons.

Compared to the more to the more centrally planned BSDs Linux has fewer standard and most software has to written specifically for a Linux distribution.



The same has applied to TV technology over the years. More often than not problems arise because certain powerful companies try to force a standard on people, not because it is practical or even an advancement, but because it allows them to control and profit when people use it.

Actually the problem is lack of authority. If there is no universal standard due to lack of central planning then the best engineers can do is add some compatibility with the other standards. Just look at the many video standards on the Internet with the solution just to have media players supporting all these standards. Also once standards are agreed on they are hard to improve without a central authority due to the momentum of established standards.



Similar problems arise when a central authority try to impose their will on the rest of society. The decisions they make may make perfect sense and benefit society, but that authority is often abused and used to benefit the people in control and whoever is in their favor, instead of the people they are supposedly "serving".
Same can be said for local planners.

[apathy maybe]

Psy, your software argument is rubbish. People don't write software for "Linux", they write it to POSIX, a technical standard. It will then run on Linux (with or without GNU), BSD or any other POSIX compliant OS.

OK, sure it will need to be recompiled all the time, but the same thing happens when you move to another processor anyway. (NetBSD supports heaps of architectures, which requires re-compilation for each one.)

Besides, there are voluntary standards bodies for "Linux". There is the commonly accepted Linux branch that is maintained by Linus, there is the Free Desktop folks, there is the Linux Foundation, etc. etc.

Yes, they are centralised things, except that at any moment, everyone can just up and leave! There is no compulsion! (Witness the birth of X.org from XFree86.)

See, no one (at least around here that I can tell), has a problem with voluntary groups, and standards.

It is when we can't leave, when there isn't any choice, that's what pisses me off.

[Charles Xavier]

States and rights don't exist in communism.

Did I say that? I said as communists under socialism.

[Psy]

Psy, your software argument is rubbish. People don't write software for "Linux", they write it to POSIX, a technical standard. It will then run on Linux (with or without GNU), BSD or any other POSIX compliant OS.

Actually they do write for Linux as most software is not simply written for POSIX (meaning it is not compatible with all POSIX systems)



OK, sure it will need to be recompiled all the time, but the same thing happens when you move to another processor anyway. (NetBSD supports heaps of architectures, which requires re-compilation for each one.)

No talking hardware architectures I'm talking dependencies.



Besides, there are voluntary standards bodies for "Linux". There is the commonly accepted Linux branch that is maintained by Linus, there is the Free Desktop folks, there is the Linux Foundation, etc. etc.

Yes, they are centralised things, except that at any moment, everyone can just up and leave! There is no compulsion! (Witness the birth of X.org from XFree86.)

See, no one (at least around here that I can tell), has a problem with voluntary groups, and standards.

It is when we can't leave, when there isn't any choice, that's what pisses me off.
And Linux still has issues with software dependencies.

[mikelepore]

It is when we can't leave, when there isn't any choice, that's what pisses me off.

No one has shown any incompatability between a high degree of centralization and a high degree of personal choice. It could be the one central and global policy that there shall be ten thousand models of TV sets, a million styles of clothing, a hundred different ways to travel, and everyone being secure in their ability to select any places of residence, jobs and recreation. But if it's that way because the seventy percent of the people of the world voted for the policy of having such great variety, outvoting the thirty percent of the people of the world who voted not to have much variety, then that's centralization. In that case, you wanted a lot of choices, and centralization is what came to your rescue.

That is not a wild example. We just went through a long history in which abortion was a crime in one city but legal in another city, free speech is allowed here but not there, child abuse is allowed in another city, rape is legal is another place, racial discrimination is allowed in some other place, children have the opportunity to go to school in one place but not in another, you can obtain a certain book in one place but not in another place, and another place won't provide birth control devices. For a very long time, it has been the use of local decision making that has been associated with stepping on the individual, and the making of decisions at much higher levels that has been associated with defending individual rights. In 1957, nine black children were forbidden to go to school in Little Rock, Arkansas, until Eisenhower sent in 1,000 federal troops to change their local school registration policy for them. It's having separate decisions in separate communities that has been correlated with regimentation and oppression, and the uniformity of policy everywhere has been that is correlated with the freeing of the individual.

[bobroberts]

Compared to the more to the more centrally planned BSDs Linux has fewer standard and most software has to written specifically for a Linux distribution.

Actually the problem is lack of authority. If there is no universal standard due to lack of central planning then the best engineers can do is add some compatibility with the other standards. Just look at the many video standards on the Internet with the solution just to have media players supporting all these standards. Also once standards are agreed on they are hard to improve without a central authority due to the momentum of established standards.

Central planning is fine as long as it is voluntary. No one has a problem with BSD existing or letting them have their own development model. There would be a big problem if BSD developers used the force of government to outlaw all other software and force everyone to use BSD, because it is not suited for every application or computer.

There is nothing wrong with having many different formats, since there is a wide variety of needs and uses they seek to address. When the format is open there is absolutely no problem in having a media player play it. It is trivial. Users of the video formats will pick and choose which best suits their needs. Problems arise when private companies try to force everyone to adopt a closed standard which they control and don't allow other people or software to use. The inefficiency comes from private control of technologies. Of one group forcing their standards on others as a way to control the way we use our computers, and force us to use their products.


Same can be said for local planners.

If a local planner screws up, they only effect that locality and it is easier to solve the problem and undo the damage caused. If a central authority makes decisions for everyone and screws up, it affects a much larger number of people.

The internet, for example, is extremely decentralized. If all internet traffic was forced to go through one giant server it would be less efficient, prone to abuse, and if it went down it would take everything with it. As it now stands if a server fails, it only effects a few sites, and other servers pick up the slack until it is brought back online.

Human society should be arranged similarly, where no one point of failure results in catastrophe, and where workers and communities are empowered to choose what they feel is most appropriate for their own situations from the great wealth of human knowledge. If central planning works the methods developed by the central planning body don't need to be enforced on any one, they will be adopted by people out of practicality.

[apathy maybe]

It is not about choice of what to wear, or where to go, it is about who's in power. No one should be. Decisions should be taken by those that are affected by the outcome of the decision, no one else. That means, that for issues such as global warming, which are obviously global issues, everyone should get a say. But for something like whether the local school should have soccer goals or Australian rules goals on their football field, or both, that's obviously something that only affects the local community.

mikelepore, you give the example of Little Rock, Arkansas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine) (I had to look up the example you gave). Yes, that was an example of "centralisation" overruling racist policies. However, I would argue that the root cause of the problem was centralisation in the first place! (I.e. government.) Do you want a socialist world government to enforce anti-racist laws?

I sure as fuck don't. I don't want any government.


@Psy regarding software.
Take your Linux/BSD example, how would you suggest we force people to use BSD? If centralisation is so good, why isn't BSD more popular than Linux?

Here is something else for you to think upon.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/03/1555216
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090202#feature

I think multiple distributions aren't just a good thing, I think it's something absolutely required! We have hundreds of distros, and a lot of them are really for niche markets. And you need that - simply because different markets simply have different requirements, and no single distro will take care of them all.

Of course, people then often say "well, do you need multiple distros for the same market" when they think about the normal desktop market and just look at the whole issue of having openSUSE/Fedora/Ubuntu all in that same space. But it really isn't that different - you still have the distributions looking at and concentrating on specific issues, and you do want the competition - and letting the markets decide which issues are the ones that really dominate.

In addition, having multiple players just keeps everybody honest, and allows you to compare them. It may all look a bit messy and complex, but I'd much rather have a multi-party system over a single-party one. Even if it's more complicated.

[Black Sheep]

robbo

I think you are confusing a decentralised economy with an autarkic economy. Decentralisation of economic decisionmaking does not necessarily entail self sufficiency (though personally I favour a greater degree of self reliance in local economies and less of the kind of wasteful "coal to Newcastle" phenomena ). Decentralisation is quite compatible with a high degree of ineraction and mutural dependence between local communities. A centralised economy is something quite different and is unworkable for the reasons I explained in my previous postI read your post and i was kinda lost...I didnt get what you are exactly proposing instead of central planing and how that would work


This requuires that the millions of separate plans mesh together spontaneously or anarchically rather than in a planned fashion.Which would randomly create the problems that might occur if,in a centrally planned economy, the central plan was not followed.


When a particular a good in a store - let us say, cans of baked beans - starts to run out, this information is registered in the store through its normal stock control procedures and the demand for more baked beans is transmitted to the relevant supplier, That supplier might in turn need to transmit requests to other suppliers further down the productin chain and so on. But the end result is that a fresh batch of baked beans arrives at the store. There is no overall predesigned plan which allocates in advance inputs to each of these units along the production chain.Sure.But the baked beans producers do not produce quantities according to plan.If they did, if they had data about the amount of baked beans needed,then they would be a branch of the central planning tree.

Plz give me all the info u can comrade,this is one of the most crucial matters in prol. revolution.

:confused:

[revolution inaction]

There's not one BSD anyway, there's at least 3 and mac os x is bsd based as well, the fact that there are not as many as there are of linux is probable more to do with the popularity of the different licenses the code is distributed under than centralism.

[Psy]

Central planning is fine as long as it is voluntary. No one has a problem with BSD existing or letting them have their own development model. There would be a big problem if BSD developers used the force of government to outlaw all other software and force everyone to use BSD, because it is not suited for every application or computer.

There is nothing wrong with having many different formats, since there is a wide variety of needs and uses they seek to address. When the format is open there is absolutely no problem in having a media player play it. It is trivial. Users of the video formats will pick and choose which best suits their needs. Problems arise when private companies try to force everyone to adopt a closed standard which they control and don't allow other people or software to use. The inefficiency comes from private control of technologies. Of one group forcing their standards on others as a way to control the way we use our computers, and force us to use their products.

The problem also comes with standards not having a clear upgrade path because it is abandoned for one of the other many standards. Then there is the problem of old standards not being phased out causing legacy issues.



If a local planner screws up, they only effect that locality and it is easier to solve the problem and undo the damage caused. If a central authority makes decisions for everyone and screws up, it affects a much larger number of people.

The internet, for example, is extremely decentralized. If all internet traffic was forced to go through one giant server it would be less efficient, prone to abuse, and if it went down it would take everything with it. As it now stands if a server fails, it only effects a few sites, and other servers pick up the slack until it is brought back online.

Human society should be arranged similarly, where no one point of failure results in catastrophe, and where workers and communities are empowered to choose what they feel is most appropriate for their own situations from the great wealth of human knowledge. If central planning works the methods developed by the central planning body don't need to be enforced on any one, they will be adopted by people out of practicality.
Yet the Internet was centrally engineered (planned) for military purposes.


There's not one BSD anyway, there's at least 3 and mac os x is bsd based as well, the fact that there are not as many as there are of linux is probable more to do with the popularity of the different licenses the code is distributed under than centralism.
The different BSDs are do to forks in devlopment, since each BSD is planned it means to have a BSD that differ from the plan requires another BSD for example OpenBSD is a branch from NetBSD as OpenBSD focuses more on security

[revolution inaction]

Yet the Internet was centrally engineered (planned) for military purposes.


Using central as a equivalent to planned is kind of ridicules.

[apathy maybe]

Yet the Internet was centrally engineered (planned) for military purposes.
A lovely myth, but not really true.

One part of what become the Internet originated as an ARPA project. Universities in the USA played a large part as well. So did other countries.

Yes, TCP/IP originated from a military project. The fact is though, it didn't have to.

TCP/IP "won" against other possibilities, not because of "centralisation", but because it was an accepted by the community (at that time, scientists and academics mainly) at large. It was open, anyone could implement it, it was simple, etc.

And, more to the point, the Internet isn't centralised. There is only two thing on the Internet today that is potentially problematic (that I can think of). That is DNS which is by nature a "centralising" standard (though technically, it is very easy to set up alternative "root" servers for the DNS).

Everything else, open, and people and organisations voluntarily abide by the standards (except Microsoft, which, due to their monopoly role (centralisation of power in a single organisation), doesn't have to).


The different BSDs are do to forks in devlopment, since each BSD is planned it means to have a BSD that differ from the plan requires another BSD for example OpenBSD is a branch from NetBSD as OpenBSD focuses more on security
When talking about *BSD and Linux, you are talking about the same thing. When talking about NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD etc., and Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora etc., you are talking about the same thing. See what I mean?

There is nothing stopping anyone at all from taking any BSD code and developing a new fork. Just like nothing stops anyone from taking GNU/Linux code.

Your analogy just doesn't hold up.

[Psy]

Using central as a equivalent to planned is kind of ridicules.
Decentralized planning is by nature small scale planning, a single factory on its own can't plan a space program.


A lovely myth, but not really true.

One part of what become the Internet originated as an ARPA project. Universities in the USA played a large part as well. So did other countries.

Yes, TCP/IP originated from a military project. The fact is though, it didn't have to.

TCP/IP "won" against other possibilities, not because of "centralisation", but because it was an accepted by the community (at that time, scientists and academics mainly) at large. It was open, anyone could implement it, it was simple, etc.

And the other system of the time FidoNet while a decentralized system (each system required to have its own nodelist of the entire FidoNet) was centrally planned and administered.




When talking about *BSD and Linux, you are talking about the same thing. When talking about NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD etc., and Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora etc., you are talking about the same thing. See what I mean?

There is nothing stopping anyone at all from taking any BSD code and developing a new fork. Just like nothing stops anyone from taking GNU/Linux code.

Your analogy just doesn't hold up.
No, BSD is a branch of AT&T Unix while the Linux kernel was written from scratch that is only Unix like with GNU slapped on, GNU was a attempt to make a open OS that decided to leave the kernel to last then when Linux was released used it. BSD developed through plans while GNU/Linux developed haphazardly with no central plan for all parties involved.

[SocialDemocracy19]

Without centralization there is now organization, and with no organization there is no workers party or state or any progression what soever. Therefore what decentralization brings is freedom politically, however its an unorganized form of freedom with no organization, which would bring chaos. The main point is that before the workers themselves take over a society they need a group of intelectual revolutinaires to organize the means of how it will get done.:cool:

[apathy maybe]

And the other system of the time FidoNet while a decentralized system (each system required to have its own nodelist of the entire FidoNet) was centrally planned and administered.
:laugh:
Heard of JANET? (There were others, I just can't remember all the names.)




No, BSD is a branch of AT&T Unix while the Linux kernel was written from scratch that is only Unix like with GNU slapped on, GNU was a attempt to make a open OS that decided to leave the kernel to last then when Linux was released used it. BSD developed through plans while GNU/Linux developed haphazardly with no central plan for all parties involved.
*BSD is Free Software, which means that anyone can take the source code and run with it. The fact of its origin, and the origin of Linux are irrelevant.

You say that BSD developed through plans, and that GNU/Linux developed haphazardly. Heh. Got any, perhaps, evidence?

BSD developed through plans really well! It split...

But there is still only one widely accepted source for the Linux kernel (Linus), and the GNU tools (FSF). Whoops, looks like you got your centralisation crap mixed up! GNU/Linux is more successful! Maybe it was because of centralisation... (No, it is for a number of reasons, one is the choice of licence, the GPL is preferred by most free software developers, and another is the legal issues that dogged *BSD when Linus started producing Linux.)

There are three widely used (relative to each other) BSD kernels, there is only one Linux kernel that is widely used.

But, all that is irrelevant! Because free software isn't a good example of centralisation is good.

Want centralisation in the software industry? Look at Microsoft and MS Windows. That's what centralisation is. Microsoft controls MS Windows, and look at all the bugs.

For GNU, Linux or *BSD, though, anyone can take the code and run. Any centralisation that occurs is voluntary and will only last as long as it is useful. (Again, the example of XFree86 comes to mind. They stopped being useful, everyone up and left.)

[robbo203]

In contrast the past century has shown that such activity can be planned and coordinated. Obviously there were many flaws in Soviet planning processes (I posted an interesting summary here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/command-economy-t62485/index.html?t=62485)) but that should not distract from the fact that Soviet planners have left us with a multitude of tools specifically designed to do what you deny is possible. There is literally a whole field of mathematics out there geared towards industrial planning. Information technology makes those hideously unwieldy calculations not only doable but many of them are used by bourgeois economists today!



I invite you to demonstrate to me precisely how these tools can do what you claim they can. I dont think you quite realise what is being discussed here. Classical central planning means quite literarally that there is just one single plan to cover everything - the configuration all the inputs and outputs of the entire economy in advance. In other worlds, society wide plan. Even if the mathematics were available to make such calculations for the millions upon millions of equations, this is not simply a question of mathematics but empirical investigation . More devasting still from your point of view is the fact even if the planners somehow managed to devise such a society wide plan , how could it possibly cope with any kind of change and the ripple effects this would have in the real world in terms of the availability of inputs and outputs of economy. You would have to recalculate everything - and I mean literally everything !- from scratch if the plan was to faithfully reflect what was
happening in the real world.

Besides which, Soviet state capitalism was not really a centrally planned economy in this sense - no society could ever be a centrally planned economy in this sense! It was a highly centralised economy , yes, but the practical exgencies of running such an economy required a significant degree of devolution of responsiblity to fall on state managers to make their own plans . As Buick and Crump point out in their book "State Capitalism: The wages System under New Management", they made considerable use of market mechanisms to that end despite Soviet propaganda to the contrary.

Real socialism would dispense with the market altogether and be a largely decentralised economy

[ComradeOm]

I invite you to demonstrate to me precisely how these tools can do what you claim they canHave you ever heard of operational research? Its quite a broad field of mathematics and one to which the Soviet planners made some hugely impressive contributions to. Kantorovich in particular made extensive use of linear programming techniques (for which he won a Nobel prize) in order to determine optimal resource allocations in Soviet industry. And this is before people even had calculators! Since then the field, and particularly the subsection of optimisation (and related combinatorial optimisation), has seen extensive use by both engineers and economists in both the West and USSR. By this stage there are a huge number of algorithms designed for specific problems (many unique to the Soviet planning environment) and the recent advances in computational power has rendered them even more useful. To give an example from that link I posted:

"According the Nove, [the yearly plan] was broken down into quarters & months, and involved projecting inputs and outputs for 48,000 'products' (each of these 'products' actually represents an aggregate of 250 or so sub-products that was to be left for the sub-plans). For a modern computer, that'll take all of five seconds to figure out. Back then, it was a monstrosity"

Having dealt with such OR models (on a vastly smaller scale of course) I can only sympathise with the Soviet planners. You ask for the tools, I literally have textbooks full of them


I dont think you quite realise what is being discussed here. Classical central planning means quite literarally that there is just one single plan to cover everything - the configuration all the inputs and outputs of the entire economy in advance. In other worlds, society wide planEh.... no. Just no. You completely misunderstand the nature of central planning. There was not one single great plan but a multitude of smaller plans that were broken down by sector and timeframe. The only difference with what factories do today - a long term forecast with immediate monthly and daily production plans - is the scale


More devasting still from your point of view is the fact even if the planners somehow managed to devise such a society wide plan , how could it possibly cope with any kind of change and the ripple effects this would have in the real world in terms of the availability of inputs and outputs of economy. You would have to recalculate everything - and I mean literally everything !- from scratch if the plan was to faithfully reflect what was happening in the real worldAh, I take it you've not hear of stochastic simulation models either? Let's just say that they are designed to deal with exactly the problem that you describe


Real socialism would dispense with the market altogether and be a largely decentralised economyWell that's very nice. Perhaps you'll invite elves to help maintain production? Do tell, what economic structure will his decentralised non-market utilise?

[Psy]

:laugh:
Heard of JANET? (There were others, I just can't remember all the names.)

No



*BSD is Free Software, which means that anyone can take the source code and run with it. The fact of its origin, and the origin of Linux are irrelevant.

You say that BSD developed through plans, and that GNU/Linux developed haphazardly. Heh. Got any, perhaps, evidence?

GNU was built without Linux in mind in fact the leaders of the GNU and Linux community fight with each other, Richard Stallman thinks Linus Torvalds doesn't take the free software movement seriously and Linus Torvalds thinks Richard Stallman is too idealistic



BSD developed through plans really well! It split...

But there is still only one widely accepted source for the Linux kernel (Linus), and the GNU tools (FSF). Whoops, looks like you got your centralisation crap mixed up! GNU/Linux is more successful! Maybe it was because of centralisation... (No, it is for a number of reasons, one is the choice of licence, the GPL is preferred by most free software developers, and another is the legal issues that dogged *BSD when Linus started producing Linux.)

There are three widely used (relative to each other) BSD kernels, there is only one Linux kernel that is widely used.

The BSDs are far more compatible with each other then the different distributions of Linux as the BSD developers are fully aware what the other BSD forks are doing.



But, all that is irrelevant! Because free software isn't a good example of centralisation is good.

Want centralisation in the software industry? Look at Microsoft and MS Windows. That's what centralisation is. Microsoft controls MS Windows, and look at all the bugs.

Windows is not centrally planned as Microsoft had no long term devlopment plan for Windows, Microsoft didn't plan to steal OS/2 code ahead of time for Windows NT nor did MS plan to copy features from MacOS prior to MacOS releasing them.

[mikelepore]

Yes industry is a vastly complex set of relationships but it is precisely because it is that that this overall pattern of relationships cannot be planned; it has to be arrived at spontaneously via a self regulation system of stock control. And that definitely does require a marked degree of decentralisation.

For several years I have read your articles about a system of stock control, and I find your idea about this to be similar to my own. However, our habits of terminology impede us here, because such a system is just what I call being planned, and which you call not being planned. I also assume that self-regulating stock control will require that, for example, the computer in the place that makes pencils will be linked to the computers in the place that makes the wood, the graphite, and the rubber erasers. This is what I call being centralized, and what you call being decentralized.

[robbo203]

Eh.... no. Just no. You completely misunderstand the nature of central planning. There was not one single great plan but a multitude of smaller plans that were broken down by sector and timeframe. The only difference with what factories do today - a long term forecast with immediate monthly and daily production plans - is the scale...
Well that's very nice. Perhaps you'll invite elves to help maintain production? Do tell, what economic structure will his decentralised non-market utilise?

Have I misunderstood the nature of central planning? I think not. Central planning is the proposal to replace many plans by one single vast plan covering the whole of society. That rules out any kind of spontaneous ordering or meshing together of multitudinous plans through a feedback process.

What you are talking about is NOT central planning in the classical sense of society wide planning. You admit as much. You say there was not "one single great plan but a multitude of smaller plans". In other words you are talking about polycentric planning. Something completely different. Central planning by definition means there is only one centre.

In other words, all that seems to be at issue here is the degree of centralisation of economic decisionmaking or, to put it another way , the degree of decentralisation. If what you want is a large degree of centralisation and a bloated bureaucracy to go with that then I vouch my elves will probably be a lot more efficient at their job than yours.

You still dont seem to realise that this is not just a question of mathematical modelling; it is about the relationship between planning and the real world out there. It matters not how sophisticated your mathematical tools are ; it is the real world that calls the tune. Plans are propositions to act on the real world in certain ways and towards certain desire ends. Planning is absolutely necessary I agree but so is the ability to respond flexibly to an ever changing situation. The wider and more far reaching the scope of the plan the less flexible it is in that regard until we reach the point of society-wide planning which has absolutely no flexibility at all and is completely unable to cope with any kind of change at all.

It is obvious that there needs to be some kind of optimum balance between the demands for planning and the demands for flexiblity and spontaneity. Unavoidably that requires a significant degree of decentralisation or polycentric planning in which production units in a non-market system interact via a self regulating system of stock control, a system which lies at the very heart of the feedback process without which no modern society in any shape or form can possibly function

[robbo203]

For several years I have read your articles about a system of stock control, and I find your idea about this to be similar to my own. However, our habits of terminology impede us here, because such a system is just what I call being planned, and which you call not being planned. I also assume that self-regulating stock control will require that, for example, the computer in the place that makes pencils will be linked to the computers in the place that makes the wood, the graphite, and the rubber erasers. This is what I call being centralized, and what you call being decentralized.

Central planning is the proposal to replace many plans by one plan. A plan as I said in my previous post is a statement of intent, specifying a course of action to be carried out towards a predetermined end. Central planning in its classical sense involves specifying in advance all of the input-output ratios covering the entire economy. It is a non starter for all of the reasons I touched upon

The fact that a unit that makes pencils is linked up (via a computer) with other units that make the wood , graphite and rubber erasers etc does not mean this is a centralised system of planning. You are confusing the idea of a distributed network with (central) planning. A centralised system of planning would involve specifying the quantities of pencils to be produced as well as the amount of graphite etc using known technical ratios and imposing these targets in top down fashion on all of the production units concerned. In fact, in a centrally planned economy strictly speaking this would appliy to literally everything. Every production unit would have to sing from the same hymn sheet so to speak (which amongst other things, means once the period of the plan commences you cannot alter something like a technical ratio of graphite to pencil becuase that would upset all the careful calculations made in advance regarding inputs and outputs).

What makes the system a decentralised one is the fact that the demand for more pencils comes from the unit producing pencils ( which in turn responds to consumer demand at the point of distribution). The demand is not written into come overall centralised plan and specified in advance. It is REACTIVE in other words and that is the crucial distinction to be born in mind and what makes decentralised planning qualitatively different from central planning

[apathy maybe]

@Psy

I'm sorry, but your arguments fail to convince me. BSD and Linux are no more or less centralised then each other.

The fact that the "leaders" of Linux and the "leaders" of the GNU project don't agree on things, doesn't mean Linux isn't centralised. Indeed, Linux doesn't even need the GNU project, and vis versa. Linux is often put together with BusyBox (instead of the GNU tools), and the GNU tools can be used with BSD, and is often used with other Unixes (e.g. Solaris).

Besides, simply having "plans" doesn't make something centralised, and not having plans doesn't make something not centralised.

MS Windows is controlled from a centre, Microsoft. Free software, while often having a de facto centre (e.g. Linus with Linux, and Theo with OpenBSD), is not controlled by the centre. Anyone is free to up and fork the code (as I keep pointing out, X.org from XFree86).

Anyway, I'm not going to respond to this argument any more, I'm not really arguing anything anyway now. I've stated my case (that voluntary centralisation, e.g. with Free Software), is fine.

And you keep on trying to draw parallels between BSD and centralisation, and Linux and decentralisation that simply aren't there. You still haven't even provided any evidence for your argument, except "BSD has plans and is binary compatible!" (or something like that). Ignoring the fact that Ubuntu and FreeBSD make a better comparison then *BSD and Linux.

Meh, I can't be fucked any more basically.

[ComradeOm]

Have I misunderstood the nature of central planning? I think not. Central planning is the proposal to replace many plans by one single vast plan covering the whole of society. That rules out any kind of spontaneous ordering or meshing together of multitudinous plans through a feedback processRight, I see what you've done here. You've taken the definition of 'central planning' that everybody else uses, certainly that used by economists, and substituted it for a definition of your own creation

As an exercise in strawman construction that's quite brazen. I mean, I didn't even use the phrase "central planning" in my original post! The only economic system that you are knocking is the theoretical one that you have constructed in your own head

[robbo203]

Right, I see what you've done here. You've taken the definition of 'central planning' that everybody else uses, certainly that used by economists, and substituted it for a definition of your own creation

As an exercise in strawman construction that's quite brazen. I mean, I didn't even use the phrase "central planning" in my original post! The only economic system that you are knocking is the theoretical one that you have constructed in your own head


You are grossly misinformed! I am well aware that the term central planning has been used in ways that cannot be squared with the idea of society-wide planning. That is why I qualified my remarks by talking about central planning in "its classic sense". However, what you are talking about is a sloppy use of term "central planning" in my opinion; it is really indicative only of a greater degree of centralisation in the economy but not properly speaking a central planned economy as such. As for the economists' use of the term, well, 99% of them talk of the ex- state capitalist regime of the Soviet Union as having been a failed example of "socialism", so frankly I dont particularly set much store by what they have to say on the matter.

I certainly did not invent this notion of central planning as you claim - what an absurd idea! It actually goes back a long way. Here for example is what Lenin said:

When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of raw materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three fourths, of all that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when raw materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of production, sometimes situated hundreds of thousands of miles from each other; when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the materials right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished articles; when the products are distributed according to a single plan among tens of millions of customers.

....then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production, and not mere 'interlocking'; that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period ...but which will inevitably be removed Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.22, page 303.

Lenin in The State and Revolution talked about society becoming a single office and a single factory. This whole line of argument stems from the mistaken belief that the tendency towards concentration and centralisation of capital would somehow automatically undermine capitalism and that the culmination of this development in a centrally planned economy (in the classic sense) would spell the complete destruction of market relations altogther (as indeed it would , theoretically speaking, if such a centrally planned economy were ever possible)

The economic calculation debate initiated by Lugwig von Mises & co was conducted on the explicit assumption that socialism would be a centrally planned economy in this sense - society wide planning. You obviously are not familiar with the literature if you think otherwise. Hayek addressed one aspect of this debate - namely the knowlege problem - arguing (rightly) that it is simply impossible for one single mind (or statistical planning office) to accommodate the enormous amount of information that is despersed through the economy. D R Steele's book "From Marx to Mises" (1992) uses "central planning" in precisely the same sense that I have used in order to attack socialism but like other free market exponents, Steele overlooks that the decisive answer to the so called economic calculation argument (ECA)stems from recognising precisely that socialism/communism would NOT be a centrally planned economy but a largely decentralised economy and that it is the feedback mechanism within a decentralised economy (alone) that will allow socialism to overcome the objections raised by the ECA.

THIS is why I oppose talk of socialism being a centrally planned economy. BY calling it this, you play into the hands of the pro-capitalist anarcho-capitalists. It is you who give them a strawman argument to beat you with - not me! I am suggesting to you - dont use the term central planning - for precisely that reason.

One final point. Contrary to what you seem to be suggesting I did not imagine you were advocating classic central planning. However, the arguments against central planning on informational grounds apply also to your version of "central planning" too. To wit, the larger the scope of the plan, the great the degree of inflexibily and the less its ability to react swiftly to changes in the real world - leading to more and more ineffiencies

There are not only political or rhetorical advantages to emphasising the need for a marked degree of decentralisation in socialism - there are practical advantages too!

[ckaihatsu]

Human society should be arranged similarly [to the level topology of the logical interconnections of the Internet], where no one point of failure results in catastrophe, and where workers and communities are empowered to choose what they feel is most appropriate for their own situations from the great wealth of human knowledge. If central planning works the methods developed by the central planning body don't need to be enforced on any one, they will be adopted by people out of practicality.


It's absolutely inappropriate to compare the topology of political decision-making to the topology of information flows over the Internet. *Nothing* in the material world can come close to the flexibility of information flows on the Internet -- *digital-based* goods and services are unique in that they feature perfect robustness over time, can travel *any* distance without incurring additional costs, can be >>> multiplied in number <<< *infinitely*, also without significant additional cost, can be received effortlessly, anywhere, anytime, and at a constantly-changing destination -- no problem.

Fuck, it's *great* to be living in this period where we have this mind-blowing informational infrastructure at our disposal -- for building the revolution, and then for administering all aspects of running a post-revolution society -- but it does not *automate* or *replace* the *actual politics* of doing the same. Politics is inevitably going to be anchored to geographical-based factors.

Central planning in an entirely worker-run, post-capitalist society would still exhibit the complexities of being in a gray area, and of always being in a dynamic, transitional state, no matter how well-received and successful it is -- this is mostly because of the majority-minority thing -- can we really say that no one would get their feelings hurt or their workers' pride singed when the decision-making doesn't go their way? (I'll take up the issue of authority in a moment here.)



This is correct but of course where he and others go wrong is in assuming uncritically that socialism or communism would be a centrally planned economy.



By that I mean that their interactions are not, and cannot be, planned in advanced which would effectively disssolve all of these millions of plans and consolidate them into one single plan. Rather each production or distribution unit would response to the needs of other production and distribution units through an automatic feedback process - a self regulating system of stock control. That is the only way in which any kind of complexity can be handled at all.

That is why we need to acknowlege that a communist society can only be a relative decentralised one. This is not to rule out degrees of centralisations via a spatial hierarchy of decisionmaking at the local regional and global levels. But we have to acknowlege that the overwhelming bulk of all such decisions would be made at the local level. There is simply no other alternative available if you want to operate a complex industrial society


I think you're describing more of a socialist-transitional state of society here, during the time in which the proletariat would still be battling against the forces of capital. I say this because you're describing a great deal of complexity and flux, which is the feature of transitional states (of anything).

That said, I also have to say that I think you're blending / confusing politics with logistics -- *any* digital information system can be used for the logistics, like the stock control thing you keep bringing up, but what's separate from that is the *politics*, or *policy-making* aspect, which would handle *what products to stock*, and could range from being relatively decentralized to more-centralized.

I'm going to advance the argument that central planning is both necessary, and inevitable, in a moment here....



The original question was not about 'centralization' in a broad, abstract sense, but specificly to do with 'centralization within the state.' What I mean by the state is that it is a coercive institution. It claims a monopoly of legitimate coercive power onto the society large. So essentially, centralization within the state would mean that more and more decision making power becomes controlled by the state (or any coercive institution). So nationalization would be an example of this



When I say authority, I mean in a coercive sense. Like the state enforcing its laws on society at large.



We would hardly be communists if we decentralized everything, Workers in This state will have different rights than the workers in that state? Workers in that state are covered all operations in medicine, while others in this state are only covered for Heart Surgery?


Gee, it's fun as hell to intellectualize about how cool it'll be to turn the entire world into a slacker's paradise version of Santa's workshop, but the tough issue is about the dark side of social organization, which is about the use of force / authority.

Historical development has given us increased centralization of the use of force, and it is generally a good thing -- imperialism is preferable to endless civil wars (think England vs. France) because it establishes a *standard*, bureaucratic system (more or less) for the use of force. The downside, of course, is that it then must use that force, and violence, actively, in order to demonstrate its dominance while the dynamics that drive its production push it to seek out new territory for expanding markets.

I *do not* want to see the *decentralization* of the use of force for a finalized post-capitalist (communist) society. I *do not* want to see localities tempted into resource wars with their neighbors, thereby bringing back private property interests. Centralization is all about recognizing what * policy * (say the word with me) is applicable to broad areas of the population, without controversy -- the traffic lights example is always a good one.

Another good example is Mike's bringing up of anti-segregation civil rights laws (and enforcement) in Little Rock, Arkansas. Also Georgi's health care reference is as critical a social issue as the use of force. The alternative to centralization for these unavoidable, life-critical social policy issues is to rely on a patchwork of local initiatives which may or may not be compatible, thus exposing the whole society to the risks inherent in balkanization -- will they agree and work together? Will they not? It brings back an eternity of bickering and flux-ridden politics, through no one's fault of their own.

I would *rather* see federal enforcement of anti-harassment laws that protect abortion clinics so that >>> the rest of us <<< *don't* have to do it on an ad-hoc, decentralized basis. Ditto for the use of confinement -- what if one post-revolution locality implements grounds for imprisonment, for some strange reason? Would they have the *decentralized* authority to continue the practice, or could we (please) have a centralized authority that would invade the fucks and put an end to that barbaric practice?


Chris





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[robbo203]

I think you're describing more of a socialist-transitional state of society here, during the time in which the proletariat would still be battling against the forces of capital. I say this because you're describing a great deal of complexity and flux, which is the feature of transitional states (of anything). --

There is always going to a degree of flux in any society, transitional or otherwise but that is not my main point. My main point is that it is the sheer complexity of modern society that makes central planning in the classic sense impossible (I feel I need to emphasise this again because people here are using the term "central planning" in different ways. I use it in its classic sense to mean societywide planning by a single agency developing a single integrated plan for all inputs and outputs of that society to the exclusion of any other plans)


That said, I also have to say that I think you're blending / confusing politics with logistics -- *any* digital information system can be used for the logistics, like the stock control thing you keep bringing up, but what's separate from that is the *politics*, or *policy-making* aspect, which would handle *what products to stock*, and could range from being relatively decentralized to more-centralized. --

Not at all. Im not confusing logistics and politics. I am asserting this is a logistical problem not a political problem. Central planning in the classical sense is logistically totally impossible. It is simply not logistically speaking to gather together and accommodate all of the dispersed economic knowlege of society into one single plan implemented by one single auithority on behalf of the whole of society. It can't be done. Forget about it. In fact, since youve introduced the subject of politics, trying to democratise the whole process would make it even more impossible (yeah I know - when something is impossible its impossible but you follow my drift) . There are millions upon millions of decisions to make. How can these decisions possibly be made democratically if you suppose central planning? They simply cannot. Real democracy depends on information and there is no way all the relevant information could possibly be accommodated within one single godlike mind. By it very nature it such information is dispered.

That said, I do think there is a role for democratic decision-making in terms of establishing a hierarchy of production goals. I have tried to show how this feature of a communist economy links up with other features such as the self regulating system of stock control in this article which I wrote some time ago http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm There are few problems with the article but I think it is basically along the right lines

Just one final point - regarding what products to stock I think this would largely be a matter of individual preferences expressed via the self regulating system of stock control referred to above. Collective decisionmaking refers to the hierarchy of broad productions goals but it is a bit pointless and ritualistic if the citizens of a communist community came together to discuss such burning issue of the day like what kind of cereals their local distribution centre should stock - bran flakes or porridge oats!

[Psy]

@Psy

I'm sorry, but your arguments fail to convince me. BSD and Linux are no more or less centralised then each other.

The fact that the "leaders" of Linux and the "leaders" of the GNU project don't agree on things, doesn't mean Linux isn't centralised. Indeed, Linux doesn't even need the GNU project, and vis versa. Linux is often put together with BusyBox (instead of the GNU tools), and the GNU tools can be used with BSD, and is often used with other Unixes (e.g. Solaris).

My point is that there was no overall plan for both GNU and Linux while BSD on average has had more overall planning.



Besides, simply having "plans" doesn't make something centralised, and not having plans doesn't make something not centralised.

I didn't say that, I'm saying that centralized plans incorporates all parties involved while decentralized planning doesn't. Thus a decentralized planned economy would have no master plan as there would be no plan made for all parties involved. Instead each party with their own plan compete with other, in the communist world mean inefficiencies as production would not be coordinated and too much time would be wasted in changing trillions of plans then a few large plans. You seem to think central plans are rigged when they don't have to be.



MS Windows is controlled from a centre, Microsoft. Free software, while often having a de facto centre (e.g. Linus with Linux, and Theo with OpenBSD), is not controlled by the centre. Anyone is free to up and fork the code (as I keep pointing out, X.org from XFree86).

It is controlled from a center but it not centrally planned because Windows is not planned instead Windows devlopment is purely reactionary.



Anyway, I'm not going to respond to this argument any more, I'm not really arguing anything anyway now. I've stated my case (that voluntary centralisation, e.g. with Free Software), is fine.

And you keep on trying to draw parallels between BSD and centralisation, and Linux and decentralisation that simply aren't there. You still haven't even provided any evidence for your argument, except "BSD has plans and is binary compatible!" (or something like that). Ignoring the fact that Ubuntu and FreeBSD make a better comparison then *BSD and Linux.

Meh, I can't be fucked any more basically.
My point is that BSD has actually coordination while Linux/GNU doesn't.

[Psy]

There is always going to a degree of flux in any society, transitional or otherwise but that is not my main point. My main point is that it is the sheer complexity of modern society that makes central planning in the classic sense impossible (I feel I need to emphasise this again because people here are using the term "central planning" in different ways. I use it in its classic sense to mean societywide planning by a single agency developing a single integrated plan for all inputs and outputs of that society to the exclusion of any other plans)


Not at all. Im not confusing logistics and politics. I am asserting this is a logistical problem not a political problem. Central planning in the classical sense is logistically totally impossible. It is simply not logistically speaking to gather together and accommodate all of the dispersed economic knowlege of society into one single plan implemented by one single auithority on behalf of the whole of society. It can't be done. Forget about it. In fact, since youve introduced the subject of politics, trying to democratise the whole process would make it even more impossible (yeah I know - when something is impossible its impossible but you follow my drift) . There are millions upon millions of decisions to make. How can these decisions possibly be made democratically if you suppose central planning? They simply cannot. Real democracy depends on information and there is no way all the relevant information could possibly be accommodated within one single godlike mind. By it very nature it such information is dispered.

That said, I do think there is a role for democratic decision-making in terms of establishing a hierarchy of production goals. I have tried to show how this feature of a communist economy links up with other features such as the self regulating system of stock control in this article which I wrote some time ago http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm There are few problems with the article but I think it is basically along the right lines

Just one final point - regarding what products to stock I think this would largely be a matter of individual preferences expressed via the self regulating system of stock control referred to above. Collective decisionmaking refers to the hierarchy of broad productions goals but it is a bit pointless and ritualistic if the citizens of a communist community came together to discuss such burning issue of the day like what kind of cereals their local distribution centre should stock - bran flakes or porridge oats!

How can one democratize decentralized planning? Production doesn't exist in a vacume, the smaller plans would effect the plans of others so how would you have a democratic system were people just decide on a small plan and not decide on the big picture? If there is a decision to make a dam would the plan just be what would happen in the area? Would the effects farther up and down river not matter? Would the production of construction material not matter? Would the needed construction equipment not matter? Would other projects that could interfere with production (like a railway trying to build a bridge over the river) not matter? Or how about projects that would fulfill that same need
(like workers building more high tension wires into the community so they can get electricity from a existing power plant) would they matter?


Without coordination of efforts workers would even be working against each other and every community having their own plan actually makes it harder to coordinate efforts then when you have larger plans.

[robbo203]

How can one democratize decentralized planning? Production doesn't exist in a vacume, the smaller plans would effect the plans of others so how would you have a democratic system were people just decide on a small plan and not decide on the big picture? If there is a decision to make a dam would the plan just be what would happen in the area? Would the effects farther up and down river not matter? Would the production of construction material not matter? Would the needed construction equipment not matter? Would other projects that could interfere with production (like a railway trying to build a bridge over the river) not matter? Or how about projects that would fulfill that same need
(like workers building more high tension wires into the community so they can get electricity from a existing power plant) would they matter?
Without coordination of efforts workers would even be working against each other and every community having their own plan actually makes it harder to coordinate efforts then when you have larger plans.

This is a reasonable question. Let me try to answer it

To being with I am not recommending autarky. The world we live in is an interconnected social reality. What goes on in one part of the world affects others. That cup of tea or coffee that you have in the morning comes from some other part of the world many thousands of kilometres away; production is a socialised process - and a globalised process - to a great extent.

However although we are affected by what goes on elsewhere in the world, the reality is that there is a sliding scale in terms of how we practically can - or, indeed, should - get involved in decisions made elsewhere. If a local community wants to build a community school or a village hall who do you think should be involved in this decison? Essentially, I would say, the local community and not some other community . You make the suggestion of building a dam. Well,depending on the size of the dam this could have regional or provincial implications so thar we might be talking about several communities needing to get togtherv to decide. And then there are global issues such as combating climate change which call for a global repsonse.

In other words,there is a spatial hierarchy of decisionmaking - local regional and global. But what I am saying is that of necessity the vast bulk of decionmaking would have to be local since the most obvious effects of this are local. Of course, ultimately since everyhting is interconnected we all feel the effects but, like ripples caused by throwing a stone in a lake the intensity of such effects diminish rapidly the further away from the source it moves.

What I am saying is that you have to draw the line somewhere. You cannot participate in each and every decision there is to be made in the world. The spatial hierarchy concept provides a convenient model for structuring the way we approach decisionmaking in a future communist society. We coordinate in decisionmaking to an extent that reflects the level of the problem or issue within this spatial hierarchy about which we need to make a decision

[Psy]

This is a reasonable question. Let me try to answer it

To being with I am not recommending autarky. The world we live in is an interconnected social reality. What goes on in one part of the world affects others. That cup of tea or coffee that you have in the morning comes from some other part of the world many thousands of kilometres away; production is a socialised process - and a globalised process - to a great extent.

However although we are affected by what goes on elsewhere in the world, the reality is that there is a sliding scale in terms of how we practically can - or, indeed, should - get involved in decisions made elsewhere. If a local community wants to build a community school or a village hall who do you think should be involved in this decison? Essentially, I would say, the local community and not some other community . You make the suggestion of building a dam. Well,depending on the size of the dam this could have regional or provincial implications so thar we might be talking about several communities needing to get togtherv to decide. And then there are global issues such as combating climate change which call for a global repsonse.

In other words,there is a spatial hierarchy of decisionmaking - local regional and global. But what I am saying is that of necessity the vast bulk of decionmaking would have to be local since the most obvious effects of this are local. Of course, ultimately since everyhting is interconnected we all feel the effects but, like ripples caused by throwing a stone in a lake the intensity of such effects diminish rapidly the further away from the source it moves.

What I am saying is that you have to draw the line somewhere. You cannot participate in each and every decision there is to be made in the world. The spatial hierarchy concept provides a convenient model for structuring the way we approach decisionmaking in a future communist society. We coordinate in decisionmaking to an extent that reflects the level of the problem or issue within this spatial hierarchy about which we need to make a decision
Sure there are local decisions, yet there are more global decisions. For example the decisions for distribution of media on optical devices or moving over to Internet distribution or both (and if both is the plan to ween people off one towards another and if so at what rate). Within this decision there is the decision of how would people locally store media distributed over the Internet (blank optical discs, hard drives, memory cards or would we focus on bandwidth so people wouldn't have to store locally) and even when we have made a decision then there is deciding the rate of which we move towards that goal.

[ckaihatsu]

There is always going to a degree of flux in any society, transitional or otherwise but that is not my main point. My main point is that it is the sheer complexity of modern society that makes central planning in the classic sense impossible (I feel I need to emphasise this again because people here are using the term "central planning" in different ways. I use it in its classic sense to mean societywide planning by a single agency developing a single integrated plan for all inputs and outputs of that society to the exclusion of any other plans)


Just as much as you're skeptical of central planning, in the classical sense, I have to express a skepticism of *decentralized* planning. Let me first try to define both as well as possible, so that we can at least make sure we're on the same page here when we use these terms.

- central planning (classical) -- An elite layer of administrative managers take up the full-time, full duties of looking through all data that describe the comings and goings of goods and services. They meet to decide policy for what products and services will be manufactured, and where, and to what quantities, and for what localities. As a result of their positions they are subject to constant attempts at corruption from one factory manager or another who will offer "incentives" in return for preferred treatment for their locality. The centralization of inputs and outputs leads to a significant scale of efficiency over the market system, despite the endemic corruption and elitism.

- central planning (bottom-up, nested policies) -- A number of localities in a region have determined an array of policies that cover all of their concerns for their respective localities. Seeking economies of scale and mutual cooperation they form agreements across several neighboring localities that take from existing policies, generalizing them upwards to create blanket policies that are agreeable to many localities in the same region. The membership in these blanet policies is entirely voluntary, is based on self-determining autonomy from each locality, and can be immediately withdrawn. For production / economic purposes the scaling-up is helpful and people in many localities have access to a larger overall economy than when they remained autarkic. The political overhead for the upkeep of the blanket policies can be demanding and messy at times, but can also be fairly self-maintaining. Some major disputes erupt here and there and the umbrella network reconfigures.

- central planning (party-led) -- An anti-capitalist revolutionary sentiment blooms all over the world within a short period of time. Declaring that the emperor has no clothes the people find themselves with the task of societal self-management on their hands. Existing revolutionary parties publish their platforms and economic policies and vie for mass popular acceptance against other, similar revolutionary parties. A groundswell is gradually perceived to be behind a particular revolutionary party that seems more responsive and astute than the others. The party takes the reins of the existing economic and political infrastructure as a whole and formulates new policy for the administration thereof. Society's politics re-orient to backing one policy faction or another within the party, with other parties floating around nearby in hopes of opportunities to take power with their own platforms.

Many people are stunned by the transformation in society, as it seems more able-bodied and rosy-cheeked than just the other day, while many localities are disgruntled that everything now revolves around the party, while they can't seem to get a hearing for their particular local demands.



Not at all. Im not confusing logistics and politics. I am asserting this is a logistical problem not a political problem. Central planning in the classical sense is logistically totally impossible. It is simply not logistically speaking to gather together and accommodate all of the dispersed economic knowlege of society into one single plan implemented by one single auithority on behalf of the whole of society. It can't be done. Forget about it.


So, in short, you're saying that * unanimity * is impossible, right? But would it be possible to re-construct an economic network of production and distribution from the bottom up based on workers' ownership of the means of mass production? This *isn't* to say that *existing*, capitalism-based patterns of productivity must be carried over -- would _this_ scenario be possible, according to you?



In fact, since youve introduced the subject of politics, trying to democratise the whole process would make it even more impossible (yeah I know - when something is impossible its impossible but you follow my drift) . There are millions upon millions of decisions to make. How can these decisions possibly be made democratically if you suppose central planning? They simply cannot.


Please see my "central planning (bottom-up, nested policies)" definition above.



Real democracy depends on information and there is no way all the relevant information could possibly be accommodated within one single godlike mind. By it very nature it such information is dispered.


More to the point, though, is whether each decision-making body would have the *relevant* information it needed to make an adequate, informed decision about *its own* material sphere of assets and resources, labor, and goods and services that it would be administering.



That said, I do think there is a role for democratic decision-making in terms of establishing a hierarchy of production goals.


"Production goals" sounds very top-heavy and Stalinistic. Please keep in mind that the world's economies are mostly *not* in a period of industrialization, nor would they have to fund competitive campaigns against other factories if they were under mass workers' control.

I favor a social service, human-needs prioritization for the socialist transitional economy. This means that production and supply would orient towards fulfilling the (politically determined) unmet human needs in a locality, and globally. Please see this one-page diagram:


Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

http://tinyurl.com/5mjhhh



Just one final point - regarding what products to stock I think this would largely be a matter of individual preferences expressed via the self regulating system of stock control referred to above.


Okay, this seems agreeable, and compatible with my "Supply prioritization" model, above.



Collective decisionmaking refers to the hierarchy of broad productions goals


Yes, absolutely -- I agree.



but it is a bit pointless and ritualistic if the citizens of a communist community came together to discuss such burning issue of the day like what kind of cereals their local distribution centre should stock - bran flakes or porridge oats!


Well, collective decision-making would *not preclude* this kind of discussion. Perhaps there could be a forum on a board like RevLeft (or RevLeft itself -- whoo-hoo!) on which those who cared most about this issue would discuss * what kind of cereals * their local distribution center should stock. By default anyone who didn't participate in the discussion and decision-making process would have to go along with the decisions made by those who did. (This is the nature of politics, by the way.)

Also:



It's inconceivable how *any* remnant of the bourgeois state machinery could be retained in the midst of the coming to power of the workers over all assets and resources.

A communist government would just be the outgrowth of worker control of local assets and resources, from local levels up to the global level. I think violent crime would be the least of its worries since all workers would have a direct stake in the healthy functioning of the local labor collectives they're in, and, during the socialist transition period the workers would be *fighting* collectively to beat back the forces of private capital. This would *necessarily* mean dispossessing the capitalist-allied politicians, and personnel of all types, from their positions -- the proletariat would have to decide, on a case-by-case basis, what treatment each individual person from the bourgeois machinery might receive in the interests of revolution.

Overall, I'd imagine that social policies under communism might be *nested*, roughly analogous to classroom policy within school policy, within district policy, today. As long as there weren't glaring contradictions from one level to the next it would probably work out fine and allow for the continuation of local traditional cultural practices within larger frameworks of work policy and economic exchanges.

[robbo203]

Just as much as you're skeptical of central planning, in the classical sense, I have to express a skepticism of *decentralized* planning. Let me first try to define both as well as possible, so that we can at least make sure we're on the same page here when we use these terms.:

But remember when I am talking about "decentralisation" this can range from anything just short of central planning in the classical sense - one single integrated plan for the totality of production - right down to complete local autonomy. Your skepticism therefore puts you in a position of actually supporting classical central planning in the above sense but I am not sure that you have fully understood the implications of what you are saying so I will be charitable and interpret this as meaning you support instead only a high degree of centralisation or conversely a low degree of decentralisation, not classical central planning as such. That being so , my position would be the opposite. I support a high degree of decentralisation (not to be confused with autarky) and a lower degree of centralisation. In other words most planning is done at the local level on the ground so to speak in my book


- central planning (classical) -- An elite layer of administrative managers take up the full-time, full duties of looking through all data that describe the comings and goings of goods and services. They meet to decide policy for what products and services will be manufactured, and where, and to what quantities, and for what localities. As a result of their positions they are subject to constant attempts at corruption from one factory manager or another who will offer "incentives" in return for preferred treatment for their locality. The centralization of inputs and outputs leads to a significant scale of efficiency over the market system, despite the endemic corruption and elitism.:

You have seriously got to be kidding. Are you aware of what you are saying here? A significant scale of efficiency over the market system? I mean, come on, the market system is grossly inefficient for all sorts of reasons but central planning in the classical sense would be totally inept at delivering anything. In fact , it would be a complete non starter anyway. How pray is an elite going to decide policy "for what products and services will be manufactured, and where, and to what quantities, and for what localities.". There are literally millions of different products and services. These require inputs. The inputs have to be matched up with outputs using known but constantly changing technical ratios, the relevant supplies sourced , the specifications scrutinised and so on and so forth. And that is only for starters. How much of these goods and services are to be produced and where they should be delivered to is an absolutely phenomenal undertaking. I say nothing of the huge problem this presents should one community feel miffed at being undersupplied compared with another as a result of the decisions arbitrarily imposed by this ruling class...er ..elite in the central statistical office. In any case how does any of this square with communism? Communism does not mean some elite telling you how much you should consume (and of what) or how long you should work (and at what). A central plan in the classical sense, on the other hand, definitely does require this if the plan is to be implemented. It requires the most strict totalitarian control over labour and consumption since every part of the plan is connected with every other part interdependently. If workers in a factory go on strike in this new totalitarian class system and fail to meet their targets that will screw up the plan wont it? So the elite will have to sit down at their cosy desks and draw up yet another worldwide single plan which will take another 5 years to do and in the meanwhile the rest of us will be doing precisely what?

No central planning in the classical sense is only what Weber called an ideal type. It is not literally a practical proposition. But is has heuristic value in showing up the problems of increasing centralisation of decisionmaking. Beyond a certain point increasing centralisation starts encountering diseconomics of scale . The point is to establish where precisely this point is.


- central planning (bottom-up, nested policies) -- A number of localities in a region have determined an array of policies that cover all of their concerns for their respective localities. Seeking economies of scale and mutual cooperation they form agreements across several neighboring localities that take from existing policies, generalizing them upwards to create blanket policies that are agreeable to many localities in the same region. The membership in these blanet policies is entirely voluntary, is based on self-determining autonomy from each locality, and can be immediately withdrawn. For production / economic purposes the scaling-up is helpful and people in many localities have access to a larger overall economy than when they remained autarkic. The political overhead for the upkeep of the blanket policies can be demanding and messy at times, but can also be fairly self-maintaining. Some major disputes erupt here and there and the umbrella network reconfigures.:

Yes this all sounds very nice and hunky dory but I am wondering how in practical terms this connects with what we are talking about. Briefly I think you have to make a distinction between two kinds of decisions. One is what I call collective decisionmaking which requires some kind of democratic input by the people affected. The other is automatic decisionmnaking in response to requests or demands. A factory in a communist society which receives a request or demand for a fresh supply of baked beans form the local distribution point doesnt have to organise a committee to sit down and democratically discuss this request. That would be plain stupid and pointless. It merely responds by organising the production of more baked beans or transporting some from its buffer stocks (or the communist equivalent of the wholesaler) to the distribution point in question. This simple direct and highly efficient way of responding to human needs derives from the very way in which communism is organised; commubnism is the taken-for-granted insitituional context in which such decisions are made - automatically. What you seem to be talking about is something else - collective decisionmaking. Yes there is a place for that and yes this can involve cooperation between communities when the impact of such decisions have wider spatial consequences. I dont disagree with any of this and it is entirely consistent with the idea I put forward of a spatial hierarchy of decisionmaking - local, regional and global





More to the point, though, is whether each decision-making body would have the *relevant* information it needed to make an adequate, informed decision about *its own* material sphere of assets and resources, labor, and goods and services that it would be administering.:

All things being equal I would say a local-decision making body would tend to be the best judge in these matters insofar as the relate to the locality in question, wouldnt you?




"Production goals" sounds very top-heavy and Stalinistic. Please keep in mind that the world's economies are mostly *not* in a period of industrialization, nor would they have to fund competitive campaigns against other factories if they were under mass workers' control.:

No you misunderstand. By a hierarchy of production goals I mean simply an ordinal ranking of what a communist society wants to achieve (perhaps even concretised in the form of specific projects like the construction of an important peice of infrastructure ) as a reflection of its value system. This is unavoidable but its got nothing to do with setting targets in Stalinist style fashion or anything like that. For example, one of the priorities of a communist society will be , I am sure, the elimination of global hunger. Communist production units will have at their disposal a set of guidelines concerning the prioritisation of production goals which will impact on the way they allocate resources with priority obviously being given to end uses that figure high up in the scale of production priorities. As I said in the article I provided a link to earlier this is the way in which aspect of a communist - collective decisionmaking - interacts or meshes with another -namely, the self regulating system of stock control at its disposal which lies at the heart of a largely decentralised economy

[ckaihatsu]

I'd be remiss if I didn't put forth a model of centralization that conformed to my global syndicalist currency model. Here it is:


- central planning (global syndicalist currency) -- Workers from increasing numbers of factories organize and assert compensation for the full value of what their labor is worth to business. They collectivize dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, of factories all over the world, receiving revolutionary political support from the population of the world which has gotten fed up with capitalism's crises and wars. The daily news fills with reports of clashes all over the world where factories are pitted against police and judges, while society's mainstream increasingly discusses the issue and supports siding with the workers' demands.

The network of worker collectivized factories uses openly published transcripts and account ledgers from their respective workers' collective meetings, and the economics of their network uses a global syndicalist currency that is not convertible to any other currency. The workers tout the full labor value of their new currency and attract new layers of people to work and consume on the basis of this global network and currency.

Based on their status as labor-value-contributing people, or workers, a system of political initiatives relating to economic and political (social living) issues emerges as a bottom-up dynamic. These initiatives are finalized, agreed-upon, and eventually combined among geographically close factories to create larger, stable policies that yield economies of scale.

The workers collectives fund and empower a central authority to serve as an instantly recallable administration over each respective factory, and a multi-factory meta-administration over the network as a whole. Each central authority enforces policy while the overall meta-administration enables a greater level of generalization, efficiency throughout the network, and economies of scale.


Syndicalism - Socialism - Communism Transition Diagram

http://tinyurl.com/bgqgjw


communist economy diagram

http://tinyurl.com/bom9ca


Also:





In a post-capitalist, post-private-property mode the entire wealth of the world's society would, by definition, be opened up to political debate -- this would be instead of private claims to this-or-that parcel of land, factory, business, or vault. While not everyone would decide to necessarily be actively political in this mode, not everyone would *have* to be. The *political* objective then, as now, would be paramount -- are all assets and resources accounted for and under public administration? In other words, think of it as Wikipedia for the outside world.

In a fairly short span of time every asset and resource *could* be catalogued and administered in common by those who feel most motivated to participate as such. In this way the world would indeed soon have *complete knowledge* of the material world, including what consumers want, because every person on earth could have their own Wikipedia-type page.

I maintain that every person on the planet would just need to provide an updated, linear list of what items they are currently requesting -- a *demand* list, as opposed to a "wishlist" -- that would be fulfilled by available supply according to workers' councils / planning boards.

[...]

We should not get muddle-headed in trying to *think* our way through the middle part -- there is only supply and demand, and we would have to find priorities on both sides -- assets, labor, and resources - to - individualized, prioritized lists of demands.

This does not require a *mathematical* solution, as many people tend to imagine it. It is *always* a material political issue, and should always be discussed as such. Given our current state of information technology the logistics for this are currently available.

[...]

This organizational issue was recently resolved (as far as I'm concerned) by mikelepore, rather deftly:



You don't have to start out producing millions of units. You make a few thousand prototypes and measure how rapidly consumers take them from the store. Whether the individuals whose job is to develop new products (chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc.) can decide on their own to submit the requision to the manufacturing line, or whether some degree of management signoff is also needed, will be society's policy choice.

From that point on, it shouldn't be the workers' choice whether or not they want to make them. It should be part of their job requirements to make the quantity needed to keep the orders filled. You can choose your career, but, within each career, you have to do the job that was socially planned. If you don't, you get no credit for showing up at work and you have no income.

You can't have the problem of investing in a new product. If all socially owned industries are subdepartments of one organization, resources would come from interdepartment transfers, not investment. The number of people needed in each department would fluctuate when something new is invented, but then the problem becomes one of how to attract more people to work in the sectors where they are needed most, not a problem of investments.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1294605&postcount=3





accounting / logistics

A side benefit of a socialist revolution is that it would mark a definitive starting point of workers' rule. This point on the timeline would allow us to clearly separate, for the purposes of running a socialist economy, that which are *assets* from that which are *resources*.

The only definition that might be a little tricky would be the delineation of that specific labor time which is used to reproduce the labor force, or "socially necessary labor time". Once we have defined this as a baseline, any extra labor hours put in would be officially considered as a surplus, producing surplus goods and services. These could either be consumed in leisure / pleasure, or else they would go into the *assets* (or possibly *resources*) category, as additions to the infrastructure of the communist economy.


[...]


If, by an "accounting algorithm" you mean use of a spreadsheet -- or of a series of nesting spreadsheets, from local to regional to global -- then I agree with you. We don't need *mathematical* sophistication -- we just need to keep track of shit, that's all.

All labor hours can be tracked as inputs into specific production runs that have specific outputs of goods and services. The goods and services can be defined by the number of labor hours ("man-hours" in the current, questionable terminology) that go into producing them. So in this way, each tangible good or minutes of customer-consumed service can be specifically, definitively quantified.

We can also account for the use of specific assets / equipment, and resources, and attach this information to each good or service from each production run.

Obviously certain locales will have better infrastructure (factories) than other locales for the production of the same goods or services -- this means that efficiencies in production will vary, and will not necessarily correspond appropriately to outstanding human need in the nearby area. The workers will have to coordinate outputs from a generalized regional to figure out the logistics of redistributing the outputs from various production runs, from various locales, so as to best supply the most pressing human needs. (On the flipside similar logistics will have to be calculated for obtaining resources to supply the production runs.)

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1325703&postcount=61



[G]iven the years of schooling and preparation needed to produce a qualified surgeon, those labor hours -- or labor minutes -- would have a *much* higher multiplier on them than for that of a carpenter (no offense).

So maybe our table would look something like this:


OCCUPATION_______%_OF_POPULATION_______MULTIPLIER_ _____LABOR_HOURS______LABOR_CREDITS

surgeon________________2%_(guessing)__________300X ________0.25_per_minor_surgery____75_credit-hours
carpenter_______________5%_(guessing)__________1X_ (sorry)____75_per_month,_part-time____75_credit-hours


I'd like to emphasize, as I noted before, that in a planned economy, this labor could *not* be done on a strictly self-motivated basis, because if there's no actual *demand* for it in the economy then it's a hobby.



My concern with your insistence on a leveling of labor rates across the board is that it might very well be too top-down, or bureaucratic, and miss out on the particulars of this-or-that local economy. Perhaps being a firefighter in a city is a much more demanding position than being one in the suburbs. Production of shoes at one plant may be much more efficient than the same shoes at a smaller, less advanced factory with resources spread further out.

I agree with the rest of what you're saying, but I do think that we might want to have a floating system of labor rates, *after* the world's assets have been collectivized and put under workers' control (no private property). Keep in mind that in this kind of economy all of labor's claims to certain labor rates would implicitly be political demands against the communist state, so it would play out politically anyway.

If one particular city seemed to have extraordinarily high labor rates, due to successful political demands, that might play at the local level, but when it came to larger projects that city might get passed over by central planning in favor of a group with relatively lower labor rates. (This *is* still materialism, after all...!)

The overall administration (central planning) would be bottom-up, in terms of pooling workers' political initiatives together into an overarching, societal policy.

The overall *execution* of that administration would be top-down, in terms of coordinating among the industries into a single network of social planning, by project, tapping local assets in a rational manner to effect policy.

[mikelepore]

I would encourage everyone not to underemphasize the issues that cannot be handled by means of local ideas that get "generalized upwards", to borrow Chris's term. Consider those issues that have to be announced by some kind of public representation for their simultaneous implementation everywhere.

For example, consider the decision to phase out the transmission of electronic communication among the continents by installing giant cables on the ocean floor and to convert to the use of satellites. This new approach involved people working in so many different jobs, in so many different locations, such a policy cannot be the result of autonomous localities discovering themselves happening to point in similar directions. The plan has to be announced and then caused to ripple through everything else.

Some decisions are based on efficient use. In another forum someone suggested mining the asteroids and bringing the minerals back to the earth. I argued against it because the fuel requirement is too large compared to the fact that all you would get back is common iron and silica. Whatever society may do later, the issue is too big for any part of humankind either to decide on the policy or to undertake the effort. All of humankind may do it, but no smaller group reasonably can.

Some of the most generalized decisions are value judgments. If society wants a different syllabus should be taught to school children, it should be carried out homogeneously. We don't want some children to find themselves handicapped in the form of "When I got to college I was the only one there who didn't know geometry. I had never learned that because they omitted that in my home town."

Some of these value judgements are based on health and safety. We would like discovery of the health dangers imposed by the pesticide DDT, mercury, lead, etc., to be followed immediately by industrial modifications everywhere. There is no such thing as locality in environmental issues. The dioxins in your region's ground water table will soon diffuse into my region's water table. I have to breathe the oxygen that's produced by "your" trees.

Some of these value judgements are based on ethics or morals, or whatever terminology you prefer for this. Genetic technology may soon make it possible to produce babies who are monsters, one-third human, one-third beast, and one-third robot. When anything becomes technically possible, then there will be someone, somewhere who will do it. Anyone with a degree in physics now knows how to make an atomic bomb, and the only remaining obstacles to doing that are a few practical skills such as the purification of U-235 from U-238. People who have strong feeling about the ethical considerations will want society's new corrective policies to be as universal as possible.

I also know that many socialists like their pipedream about the "stateless" future, and they hate to discuss the enacting and enforcement of laws, but the problem of antisocial individual behavior has to be handled. No one would be satisfied if it were legal for parents to beat their children in in one place, or if kidnappers could hide behind a legal loophole in another place, and if rape were treated lightly in another place. Society's laws of behavior cannot be just unless they are universalized.

Decentralization is fine for planting and distributing corn and potatoes. But there are some issues for which it's inappropriate, and I expect the number of these to increase as technology further develops.

Some kind of central public authority is necessary. We might debate that one form of it would be more democratic than another form, but the necessity of having one is the first thing that becomes apparent to me. The need for a central authority already being obvious, to discuss the relative advantages of various democratic methods comes afterwards.

---------

"All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate one." --- Karl Marx, Capital, Chapter 13

[robbo203]

I would encourage everyone not to underemphasize the issues that cannot be handled by means of local ideas that get "generalized upwards", to borrow Chris's term. Consider those issues that have to be announced by some kind of public representation for their simultaneous implementation everywhere.

I also know that many socialists like their pipedream about the "stateless" future, and they hate to discuss the enacting and enforcement of laws, but the problem of antisocial individual behavior has to be handled. No one would be satisfied if it were legal for parents to beat their children in in one place, or if kidnappers could hide behind a legal loophole in another place, and if rape were treated lightly in another place. Society's laws of behavior cannot be just unless they are universalized.

Decentralization is fine for planting and distributing corn and potatoes. But there are some issues for which it's inappropriate, and I expect the number of these to increase as technology further develops.

Some kind of central public authority is necessary. We might debate that one form of it would be more democratic than another form, but the necessity of having one is the first thing that becomes apparent to me. The need for a central authority already being obvious, to discuss the relative advantages of various democratic methods comes afterwards.



Mike, like I said earlier, I dont have a problem with the notion of "generalising upwards". I have always accepted that there must be a degree of centralisation which will vary according to the issue or problem being addressed. The example you give of laying intercontinental cables will obviously require large scale coordination and a high degree of centralisation.

However, my concern was to stress the limits of centralisation and it is important to recognise these. The extrapolation of centralising tends to the ultimate point of society wide planning - a single plan for the whole of society - has been what I have been focussing on. It is of course as I have said a purely hypothetical abstraction which can never be realised for the reasons stated but I use this concept as a heuristic tool to show where the "generalising upwards" approach ultimately leads to and to get people to see that at some point this process has to stop. Beyond that point , more centralisation becomes more and more problematic and more importantly still, starts to seriously erode the very foundations of a communist society. It smply cannot be squared with any kind of democratic control, for instance, becuase the logistics of it makes the exercise of democratic decion-making more and more difficult the more centralised society become

There is a further point that you make about inconsistencies across communities in their moral codes, educational opportunities and so on. This, you seem to think. necessitates standardisation via centralisation. I think lurking behind this suggestion is assumption that decentralisation equals autarky and splendid isolationism. I think that is wrong. A largely decentralised collection of communities does not at all mean they do not closely interact with each and are open to reciprical influence. To the contrary , I suspect a communist society will be one in which there will be a great deal of movement of people, ideas and goods between communities. This is a force for uniformity which will come into some kind of dynamic balance with the opposite tendency of creative diferentiation. We need both these tendencies in communism - both at the level of communities and individuals

The issue is really one of proximate control. The question of the state is irrelevant. There wont be a state in communism - there cannot be - becuase by definition a state is an institutional tool used by one class to rule over another and there wont be any classes in a communist society. That said, there will be "laws", regulations call it what you like. While I dont expect there will be much difference in the way communties treat offending individuals, the notion that offenders might migrate from one community to another in search of a legal loopholle that would provide them with a safe haven seems far fetched. The interdependence of communities and individuals within a largely decentralised communist world would I think put paid to that. If there was a significant difference in the way communties treated a particular crime and I am highly skeptical about the possibility of this, I think the maintenance of cordial relationships between communties would ensure that the criminal in question would be repatriated to face justice.

The alternative is what? Some anonymous impersonal global police force permamently on patrol and ever ready to swoop down from on high and whisk the miscreant off to some remote court to face trial by judges appointed by a some centralised global authority. I think not. Crime and punishment needs to be considered and dealt with in context and that very much means in the local context where individuals understand the situation far better than any outside agency.

Communism is a society in which we will be - and feel - empowered. This is one of the ways in which this will happen - having some say over things that directly and proximately affect us. Handing that over responsibility to some remote authority would seem to me to undermine this sense of empowerment.

[Psy]

There is a further point that you make about inconsistencies across communities in their moral codes, educational opportunities and so on. This, you seem to think. necessitates standardisation via centralisation. I think lurking behind this suggestion is assumption that decentralisation equals autarky and splendid isolationism. I think that is wrong. A largely decentralised collection of communities does not at all mean they do not closely interact with each and are open to reciprical influence. To the contrary , I suspect a communist society will be one in which there will be a great deal of movement of people, ideas and goods between communities. This is a force for uniformity which will come into some kind of dynamic balance with the opposite tendency of creative diferentiation. We need both these tendencies in communism - both at the level of communities and individuals

That problem is communities holding onto their own standards thus causing problems with workers from outside the community. Even something as basic as system of measurement would cause problem if not standardized across the globe for a communist world where workers are not even rooted into regions as nations would no longer exist anymore, there would no longer be borders that stops workers from one region from working in another region.

[ckaihatsu]

Okay, as a suggestion for a case study, how about the instance of a capitalist politician who's been on the lam for about 5 years after the revolution and the ending of major trials. He's not a top-level type, nor small potatos either -- maybe a Karl Rove type who's been a solid fixture of the capitalist establishment over several administrations.

Perhaps some *communities* in a decentralized, anarchistic society would actually decide to have mercy on this individual when he came out of hiding. Maybe the *majority* of other communities would be on the side of bringing him to trial.

I'd like to contrast this anarchistic scenario with a more *industrial*, workplace- and worker-based framework, in which the factories / workplaces serve as the main conduits for the communist economy, *and* for all political / social dynamics, which all center around the same. In this arrangement *all* material quantities would be tracked and accounted for, and one's claim to a share of the production would be based on one's work status, and, more broadly, one's social standing ("legal status") within the same.

A capitalist politician on the lam would be wholly outside of this closed system, and would not even be able to use (anonymous) cash, since that wouldn't exist. At *most* he might find a route to an agrarian, subsistence-type existence if he was somehow able to escape capture, but the existence would almost fit the crime since he would be entirely outside of mainstream, industrial society.

In general I think that anarchism doesn't posit the grounding of a communist society in the factory well enough. If workers are truly going to own and control the means of mass production, then that's where they're going to be, 24 / 7 / 365, with exceptions. By dint of this existence all else that is political and societal follows, including the need for centralized administrations and centralized authority -- in a strictly functional, recallable, non-elitist way.

[mikelepore]

Robbo203, the hyperbole in your post doesn't really clarify things. I don't consider the human race as a whole to be an "outside agency" nor a "some remote authority." I don't see how policy enforcement organized by a world government would be any more of a "swoop down from on high" than policy enforcement organized by a village government. I don't see how a "some anonymous impersonal global police force permanently on patrol" would be any more restrictive than an anonymous, impersonal city police force. I don't see why people should "feel empowered" when the outvoted minority has to abide by the decisions of the majority at the village level, but then not "feel empowered" when the outvoted minority has to abide by the decisions of the majority at the global level.

You cited the importance of "having some say over things that directly and proximately affect us." This in reply to my post that was filled with specific examples of public issues where everyone in the world is affected at the same time.

You said, "A largely decentralised collection of communities does not at all mean they do not closely interact with each and are open to reciprical influence." But if they MAY decide to interact, then they may also decide NOT to interact. My post was all about the types of public issues where it isn't even tolerable for various commmunities to operate by different procedures, so to point out that they may decide to cooperate if they choose to doesn't address it.

Without specific examples, this subject can't be discussed effectively . You can bake pies according to local attitudes, but you can't construct or operate aircraft according to local attitudes. You can have local traditions for printing a neighborhood newspaper, but allocation of the radio frequencies requires common definitions announced by a central office. I didn't assert that centralization is appropriate for everything; I asserted is that centralization is appropriate for some things -- and, amazingly, I don't even hear agreement with that easier assertion.

[robbo203]

Robbo203, the hyperbole in your post doesn't really clarify things. I don't consider the human race as a whole to be an "outside agency" nor a "some remote authority." I don't see how policy enforcement organized by a world government would be any more of a "swoop down from on high" than policy enforcement organized by a village government. I don't see how a "some anonymous impersonal global police force permanently on patrol" would be any more restrictive than an anonymous, impersonal city police force. I don't see why people should "feel empowered" when the outvoted minority has to abide by the decisions of the majority at the village level, but then not "feel empowered" when the outvoted minority has to abide by the decisions of the majority at the global level. .

I take your last point here although I feel there would still nevertheless be an important difference of degree if not kind. Face to face democracy at the village level has a potency that attenuates rapidly the higher up the level of spatial organisation you go if only becuase you are living among the people with whom you are jointly making decisions. I suggest that makes easy to accept decisions that go against you. And there is a further point - that, inevitably, as far as relatively local matters are concerned, the locals are obvious going to be the best judges of what is appropriate. One can imagine a blanket policy decision being made at a higher level and imposed on a local community which might be totally inappropriate to that local community and thus give rise to unecessary tensions and frictions. Why risk intecommunal cooperation, colloboration and goodwill over something that is relatively trivial?

Let me state again - I am not opposed to decisionmaking at a higher level; my point is simply that we have to differentiate between the kinds of decisions that need to be made. Some have to be made at the higher level becuase they have regional or even global ramifications; many others have a much more restricted impact so it is wholly appropriate in these cases that decisionmaking should reflect the localised nature of the issue concerned



You cited the importance of "having some say over things that directly and proximately affect us." This in reply to my post that was filled with specific examples of public issues where everyone in the world is affected at the same time..

Yes but for every one of these examples you could probably provide a hundred counter examples of issues that manifestly do not affect everyone in the world at the same time. To this you might respond that everything is connected as in chaos theory. That may be true abstractly speaking but besides the point. There are degrees of significance or relevance that range from the absolutely vital to the infinitesmally small and you have have to make allowance for this. It is logistically impossible to do otherwise, anyway.. No centralised world authority could possibly make decisions on any more than a relatively small number of admittedly highly significant issues. The more decisions it takes it upon itself to effect, the more difficult its task and the more undemocratic the nature of the decisionmaking process itself comes becuase of the sheer impracticability of everyone being involved in such decisionmaking. Inevitably, the power to make such decisions will concntrate in the hands of a small elite. As in all things we need to strike a balance. The principle of subsidiarity springs to mind - it would be an excellent one for a comunist society to follow



You said, "A largely decentralised collection of communities does not at all mean they do not closely interact with each and are open to reciprical influence." But if they MAY decide to interact, then they may also decide NOT to interact. My post was all about the types of public issues where it isn't even tolerable for various commmunities to operate by different procedures, so to point out that they may decide to cooperate if they choose to doesn't address it.
Without specific examples, this subject can't be discussed effectively . You can bake pies according to local attitudes, but you can't construct or operate aircraft according to local attitudes. You can have local traditions for printing a neighborhood newspaper, but allocation of the radio frequencies requires common definitions announced by a central office. I didn't assert that centralization is appropriate for everything; I asserted is that centralization is appropriate for some things -- and, amazingly, I don't even hear agreement with that easier assertion.

Perhaps then you werent listening sufficiently closely! I repeat - there are things that I agree require require regional and even global cooperation. I have never denied this. What I have been trying to do all along is to put these into the context of the vast range of decisions of EVERY KIND that need to be made. The huge bulk of these necessarily are and would have to be local. That is the nature of things.

One final point. Reference has been made to the idea of cultural variation in a communist society. Im going to stick my neck out here and assert that there will be rather more of this in a communist society than there is in a capitalist society. Capitalism is a force for homogenisation and standardisation. Those naive liberals who criticise the state capitalist dictatorships of eastern europe et al for their grey dreary monotony, fail to see this same depressing dullness duplicated in western capitalism. Every High st of every major city is becoming more and more similar to every other with the same predictale range of chainstores. Local and regional cultures are giving way to a global culture with an insistent sameness about it - whether we are talking about musical tastes or cuisine. Underlying this is the relentless drive towards cost effectiveness imposed by economic competition which dumbs everything down to a uniform standard of mediocracy. Centralisation and concentration help on this process by weeding out the uncompetitive and the unprofitable- things that stand out as different and unique.

Communism by contrast will , I am certain, be a much more culturally diverse society becuase it will not be subject to these kinds of pressures. There will also be a much large degree of freedom of movement. People will tend to "vote with their feet" more and gravitate towards communities that suit their outlook and way of life. That will further accentuate the trend towards diversification.

But also, and this is the point I want to end with, it will be a much more interactive society. More open to outsiders and outside influences. The underlying recognition of a communality of interests and mutual interdependence upon which communism will be predicated will tend towards a more simiar set of values across the world even as communities will diverge in other ways far more than is the case today.

So we will have a kind of paradoxical development of convergence and divergence which in itself will have important consequences for the nature and scope of decisionmaking in a communist society

[ckaihatsu]

One can imagine a blanket policy decision being made at a higher level and imposed on a local community which might be totally inappropriate to that local community and thus give rise to unecessary tensions and frictions.


Considering that a worker-run, communist society would be free of class oppression and all of the shit-rolls-downhill stress that accompanies it, I think we really need to re-think, or re-conceptualize, the overall *context* in which political representation would be taking place.

I will suggest that all administrative personnel should be thought of as glorified gofers (go-fer this, go-fer that), instead of as Stalinistic, power-mad, faceless bureaucrats.

This is because administrators in a worker-run society could only carry out their duties in a strictly *functional* way, with many limits to their use of representation, or power:





What do we put in place of the old rotten and corrupt bourgeois state? The answer was given long ago in Lenin's “State and revolution”. He outlined a model based on the following principles:

1. Free and democratic elections of all state functionaries with right of recall.

2. No official to receive a wage higher than that of a skilled worker.

3. No standing army or police but the armed people.

4. Gradually, all the tasks of administration should be done by everyone in turn: when everyone is a bureaucrat in turn, nobody is a bureaucrat.

http://www.marxist.com/venezuela-vote-yes-in-the-referendum-and-complete-the-revolution.htm


Also, I would add:

- All correspondence and dealings of the administrator must be relayed to all workers represented.

- The administrator can take on the role of a proxy at one level up, but the same rules apply, including policy-from-below, scheduled turn-taking according to rotation, and immediate recallability.

[Rousedruminations]

bottom line for me is that decentralization promotes exploitation,greed and indulgence by those who become affluent. Complete centralization prevents that from happening.....:rolleyes:

[robbo203]

bottom line for me is that decentralization promotes exploitation,greed and indulgence by those who become affluent. Complete centralization prevents that from happening.....:rolleyes:

It totally depends on what context you are talking about. We are, or I thought we were , talking about a communist society and the degree of centralisation possible within it. I take the view that there will be some centralisation in respect of some matters but the bulk of decisionmaking would be and (given the logoistics of the decsionmaking process itself) could only be, largely decentralised. Since in a communist society, goods and services would be freely available to all and labour would be entirely voluntary - "from each according to ability to each according to need" - the question of exploitation, greed, relative affluence and so on and so forth doesnt arise.

If you are talking about capitalist society and the role of centralisation within it, then I think you are wrong. The Soviet Union was one of the most highly centralised capitalist staes of all and to suggest that it prevented exploitation greed and so on is just plain nonsense. It was a very exploitative system with a high degree of economic inequality. The privileged lifestyles of those in power mirrored those of their counterparts elsewhere in the world and this went with a high degree of centralisation and concentration of power

[Rousedruminations]

yes i was talking about the first context and not the 2nd context.

" but the decision making would be and could be, largely decentralized ".....

No, even though it could or would be decentralized the state would govern, control the logistics with in a country...... constant monitoring, no matter what the enterprise or corporation was IS or will be...

In a communist society if decentralization did occur, this woud allow for the more room to move 'notion' and thus some degree of liberalization, which can later potentially feed on the masses and in the long-term manifest itself into exploitation... and the likelihood of that happening, is questionable ?

[Psy]

Let me state again - I am not opposed to decisionmaking at a higher level; my point is simply that we have to differentiate between the kinds of decisions that need to be made. Some have to be made at the higher level becuase they have regional or even global ramifications; many others have a much more restricted impact so it is wholly appropriate in these cases that decisionmaking should reflect the localised nature of the issue concerned

The issue is that many production issues are global in nature when you have a global pool of products. If you have a system where a pickup truck built and engineered in Detroit Michigan could end up working anywhere from Argentina to Alaska what is the point of locally deciding on the design specs of the pickup?



Perhaps then you werent listening sufficiently closely! I repeat - there are things that I agree require require regional and even global cooperation. I have never denied this. What I have been trying to do all along is to put these into the context of the vast range of decisions of EVERY KIND that need to be made. The huge bulk of these necessarily are and would have to be local. That is the nature of things.

Most decisions are regarding production and most production probably wouldn't be limited to the local community.



One final point. Reference has been made to the idea of cultural variation in a communist society. Im going to stick my neck out here and assert that there will be rather more of this in a communist society than there is in a capitalist society. Capitalism is a force for homogenisation and standardisation. Those naive liberals who criticise the state capitalist dictatorships of eastern europe et al for their grey dreary monotony, fail to see this same depressing dullness duplicated in western capitalism. Every High st of every major city is becoming more and more similar to every other with the same predictale range of chainstores. Local and regional cultures are giving way to a global culture with an insistent sameness about it - whether we are talking about musical tastes or cuisine. Underlying this is the relentless drive towards cost effectiveness imposed by economic competition which dumbs everything down to a uniform standard of mediocracy. Centralisation and concentration help on this process by weeding out the uncompetitive and the unprofitable- things that stand out as different and unique.

Communism by contrast will , I am certain, be a much more culturally diverse society becuase it will not be subject to these kinds of pressures. There will also be a much large degree of freedom of movement. People will tend to "vote with their feet" more and gravitate towards communities that suit their outlook and way of life. That will further accentuate the trend towards diversification.

But also, and this is the point I want to end with, it will be a much more interactive society. More open to outsiders and outside influences. The underlying recognition of a communality of interests and mutual interdependence upon which communism will be predicated will tend towards a more simiar set of values across the world even as communities will diverge in other ways far more than is the case today.

So we will have a kind of paradoxical development of convergence and divergence which in itself will have important consequences for the nature and scope of decisionmaking in a communist society

Since communism wouldn't require workers to take roots anywhere (even families could easily travel the world while working) would create a overlying Earth culture as people would want to explore their world thus workers from around the would come into contact with each other turning the entire world in a melting pot of different cultures.

[robbo203]

yes i was talking about the first context and not the 2nd context.

" but the decision making would be and could be, largely decentralized ".....

No, even though it could or would be decentralized the state would govern, control the logistics with in a country...... constant monitoring, no matter what the enterprise or corporation was IS or will be...

In a communist society if decentralization did occur, this woud allow for the more room to move 'notion' and thus some degree of liberalization, which can later potentially feed on the masses and in the long-term manifest itself into exploitation... and the likelihood of that happening, is questionable ?

I am not quite sure that I understand what you are saying here. In a communist society there is no state. Monitoring in any case does not require centralisation; it can be done perfectly well through a distributed network. Some degree of centralisation is necessary, I accept, for a relatively small number of large scale decisions but that is a different matter...

[robbo203]

The issue is that many production issues are global in nature when you have a global pool of products. If you have a system where a pickup truck built and engineered in Detroit Michigan could end up working anywhere from Argentina to Alaska what is the point of locally deciding on the design specs of the pickup? .

You are confusing two things here. Socialisation of production on global scale does not rule out decentralisation of production decisions via a self regulating system of stock control. If you cannot accept that then that seems to commit you to the idea of classical central planning and I remind you again what that is - society wide planning and coordination of the totality of inputs and outputs of an entire economy in advance within an impossibly large matrix covering millions upon millions of equations. It is simply an impossible undertaking even with the most sophisticated mathetical tools at your disposal since, to begin with, this is not simply a matter of mathematical calculation but data collection as I have explained in another post. Then you would still have to deal with the problem of change which the rigidities of such a hypothetical plan would simply not be able to cope with; the plan would have to be constantly rewritten in toto to keep up with constant changes and will never even get a chance to be implemented anyway. By a process of reducio ad absurdum central planning in this sense has surely to be completely rejected.



Since communism wouldn't require workers to take roots anywhere (even families could easily travel the world while working) would create a overlying Earth culture as people would want to explore their world thus workers from around the would come into contact with each other turning the entire world in a melting pot of different cultures.

Would it though? You see, capitalism is able to turn the world into one giant melting pot concocting a bland commercialised soup based on cultural appropriation and adaptation to the whims of the market of aspects of different cultures ripped out of their original context. Is communism really going to do the same? I dont think so. I think a communist society will want to cherish differnet cultures and uphold variety and you dont do that by throwing them all in one big melting pot. Benedict Anderson has written of nationalism and the imaginary community of the nation. But this was achieved by steamrolling over local cultures and dialects. This process of the destruction of the local and the unique was linked to a wider process of capital accumulation and nation building which in turn reached the point where the nation-state began to become a straitjacket to capital accumulation. In an age of imperialism, the idea of a world culture gained ground based on precisely the kind of melting pot concept you talk about in which so called national cultures provided the ingredients to blend in with the basic ideological stock of capitalism.

As I see it communism will allow diversity to flourish becuase it will decouple culture from the kind of underlying ideological and economic imperatives of this kind. I am not suggesting a static notion of culture; cultures will adapt obviously as cultures always do (or else perish). But just as individuals will be able to express their individuality far more fully in a communist society so too will cultures. The movements of peoples will not have so much as a melting pot effect on cultures as the opposite - the sifting out and gravitation of individuals towards different cultures which will reinforce rather than undermine differences. But it will be a movement that will enhance tolerance, mutual respect and the recognition that in diversity there is a basic unity that is our common humanity

[Psy]

You are confusing two things here. Socialisation of production on global scale does not rule out decentralisation of production decisions via a self regulating system of stock control. If you cannot accept that then that seems to commit you to the idea of classical central planning and I remind you again what that is - society wide planning and coordination of the totality of inputs and outputs of an entire economy in advance within an impossibly large matrix covering millions upon millions of equations. It is simply an impossible undertaking even with the most sophisticated mathetical tools at your disposal since, to begin with, this is not simply a matter of mathematical calculation but data collection as I have explained in another post. Then you would still have to deal with the problem of change which the rigidities of such a hypothetical plan would simply not be able to cope with; the plan would have to be constantly rewritten in toto to keep up with constant changes and will never even get a chance to be implemented anyway. By a process of reducio ad absurdum central planning in this sense has surely to be completely rejected.

The U.S.S.R central plans actually worked for the U.S.S.R ruling classes priorities, see the ruling class of the U.S.S.R didn't really care much about consumer goods as the U.S.S.R didn't really export consumer goods so they were for the most part starved for resources thus the U.S.S.R haf uneven production and devlopment not because of mistakes in planning but because of the priorities of the ruling class.

Also I'm talking about a rigid plan, I'm talking about a plan that allows changes in the future as planner plan that things might change.



Would it though? You see, capitalism is able to turn the world into one giant melting pot concocting a bland commercialised soup based on cultural appropriation and adaptation to the whims of the market of aspects of different cultures ripped out of their original context. Is communism really going to do the same? I dont think so. I think a communist society will want to cherish differnet cultures and uphold variety and you dont do that by throwing them all in one big melting pot. Benedict Anderson has written of nationalism and the imaginary community of the nation. But this was achieved by steamrolling over local cultures and dialects. This process of the destruction of the local and the unique was linked to a wider process of capital accumulation and nation building which in turn reached the point where the nation-state began to become a straitjacket to capital accumulation. In an age of imperialism, the idea of a world culture gained ground based on precisely the kind of melting pot concept you talk about in which so called national cultures provided the ingredients to blend in with the basic ideological stock of capitalism.

As I see it communism will allow diversity to flourish becuase it will decouple culture from the kind of underlying ideological and economic imperatives of this kind. I am not suggesting a static notion of culture; cultures will adapt obviously as cultures always do (or else perish). But just as individuals will be able to express their individuality far more fully in a communist society so too will cultures. The movements of peoples will not have so much as a melting pot effect on cultures as the opposite - the sifting out and gravitation of individuals towards different cultures which will reinforce rather than undermine differences. But it will be a movement that will enhance tolerance, mutual respect and the recognition that in diversity there is a basic unity that is our common humanity
Why would culture have to be holden to geographical bounds? Why would we still be holden to borders? Why we want natives to have to stay on their reservations if they want to maintain their culture?

[robbo203]

The U.S.S.R central plans actually worked for the U.S.S.R ruling classes priorities, see the ruling class of the U.S.S.R didn't really care much about consumer goods as the U.S.S.R didn't really export consumer goods so they were for the most part starved for resources thus the U.S.S.R haf uneven production and devlopment not because of mistakes in planning but because of the priorities of the ruling class. ?
Also I'm talking about a rigid plan, I'm talking about a plan that allows changes in the future as planner plan that things might change.



Yes but remember the USSR did NOT have a system of central planning in the classical sense Ive been at pains to outline. There WAS a degree of devolution and scope for state managers to take intiatives and they did indeed use market mechanism to that end (see Buick and Crumps book on this) What you had in the Soviet Union was closer to what might called "indicative planning" than the ideal type (to use Weberian terminology) of classical "central planning". The latter is simply not practical in the real world but is, if you like, a heuristic concept pointing to the restraints that would increasingly come into play the more centralised your system of planning became. Indeed this is amply illustrated by the economic history of the Soviet Union itself. As its economy become more diversified and complex, pressure built up on the removal of central controls to allow greater mobility of capital to find its most profitable destinations. Ultimately this trend contributed to the overthrow of the old fahioned Soviet Union style of ecopnomixc management and as such reflected the growing incorporation of Russian capitalism into the global market



Why would culture have to be holden to geographical bounds? Why would we still be holden to borders? Why we want natives to have to stay on their reservations if they want to maintain their culture?


Boundaries are not the issue. Boundaries belong to the era of capitalism and the nation state. Communism abolishes boundaries and nation states. Its not a question of anyone having to stay anywhere not could that happen. Its a question of people choosing to express themselves in differnet ways through diffierent cultures

[Psy]

Yes but remember the USSR did NOT have a system of central planning in the classical sense Ive been at pains to outline. There WAS a degree of devolution and scope for state managers to take intiatives and they did indeed use market mechanism to that end (see Buick and Crumps book on this) What you had in the Soviet Union was closer to what might called "indicative planning" than the ideal type (to use Weberian terminology) of classical "central planning". The latter is simply not practical in the real world but is, if you like, a heuristic concept pointing to the restraints that would increasingly come into play the more centralised your system of planning became. Indeed this is amply illustrated by the economic history of the Soviet Union itself. As its economy become more diversified and complex, pressure built up on the removal of central controls to allow greater mobility of capital to find its most profitable destinations. Ultimately this trend contributed to the overthrow of the old fahioned Soviet Union style of ecopnomixc management and as such reflected the growing incorporation of Russian capitalism into the global market

The U.S.S.R planning system didn't run into problems of planning a complex economy, Moscow University in 1967 held a conference on Gosplan from a scientific point of view, out of the conference was the conclusion the solution was a integrated computer system were you has a central planning computer that would be tied into production and distribution computers, which is what capitalist do now (except each capitalist has their own planning computer and generate their own little plan isolated from the plans of other capitalists).




Boundaries are not the issue. Boundaries belong to the era of capitalism and the nation state. Communism abolishes boundaries and nation states. Its not a question of anyone having to stay anywhere not could that happen. Its a question of people choosing to express themselves in differnet ways through diffierent cultures
Yet you are holden to the idea of decentralized power based on areas where physical communities would be centers of power and culture. I see communism creating global communities were most workers have personally seen a good chunk of the world.

[robbo203]

The U.S.S.R planning system didn't run into problems of planning a complex economy, Moscow University in 1967 held a conference on Gosplan from a scientific point of view, out of the conference was the conclusion the solution was a integrated computer system were you has a central planning computer that would be tied into production and distribution computers, which is what capitalist do now (except each capitalist has their own planning computer and generate their own little plan isolated from the plans of other capitalists). .

This is more than a problem of computer technology. Its a problem of empirical data and the collecting of it. The point I was making is that the soviet system was obliged to relax its approach to centralised planning becuase the economy itself was becoming more diversified , more complex




Yet you are holden to the idea of decentralized power based on areas where physical communities would be centers of power and culture. I see communism creating global communities were most workers have personally seen a good chunk of the world .

I too like that idea but the pleasure of seeing the world is in experiencing its diversity including its cultural diversity. I dont advocate cultural areas with power bases. What I am talking about is culture divorced from nationalism and nation states. If you dont have cultural diversity you have a global monoculture. Surely this is not what you want

[Psy]

This is more than a problem of computer technology. Its a problem of empirical data and the collecting of it.

Which capitalists solved with computer and telecommunications, we would be inheriting a the infrastructure of planning systems that are already fairly centralized due to ever greater concentration of the means of production.



The point I was making is that the soviet system was obliged to relax its approach to centralised planning becuase the economy itself was becoming more diversified , more complex

No, the soviet system was obliged to relax its approach to centralized planning not due to the economy becoming more diversified and more complex but because the Russian ruling class was becoming less homogeneous due to falling rate of profit world wide. In other words the global capitalist crisis of the 1970's weakened the Russian ruling class to the point they no longer could exert such authority of the economy.



I too like that idea but the pleasure of seeing the world is in experiencing its diversity including its cultural diversity. I dont advocate cultural areas with power bases. What I am talking about is culture divorced from nationalism and nation states. If you dont have cultural diversity you have a global monoculture. Surely this is not what you want
Does the Internet have a monoculture? Just because you have a global community doesn't mean you have monoculture.

[robbo203]

No, the soviet system was obliged to relax its approach to centralized planning not due to the economy becoming more diversified and more complex but because the Russian ruling class was becoming less homogeneous due to falling rate of profit world wide. In other words the global capitalist crisis of the 1970's weakened the Russian ruling class to the point they no longer could exert such authority of the economy. .

I would have to disagree with you here not in order too rule out what you saying - Im sure the factors you mentioned did play a role. However, it is also clear that increasing diversification of the economy - the growth of light manufacturing and particularly the growth of the service sector - made it more and more difficult to apply the traditional centralised aporach to planning. It had become just to cumbersome and unwieldy. That stands to reason when you think about since with a more diversified economy and moreover one that is more integrated into the global capitalist economy - you mention that global capitalist crisis of the 1970s - you have more variables to deal with in your planning process. This is not a matter of great controversy. It is generally accepted by economic historians that the shift from heavy industry and the primary sector did but an increasing strain on the whole central planning apparatus.



Does the Internet have a monoculture? Just because you have a global community doesn't mean you have monoculture.

But you are misundrstanding my position. You are pushing against an open door. I am not opposed to the notion of global comunity in that sense. But I also value cultural diversity. I think this is implicit in what you are saying too. This is not an either/or situation

[Psy]

I would have to disagree with you here not in order too rule out what you saying - Im sure the factors you mentioned did play a role. However, it is also clear that increasing diversification of the economy - the growth of light manufacturing and particularly the growth of the service sector - made it more and more difficult to apply the traditional centralised aporach to planning. It had become just to cumbersome and unwieldy. That stands to reason when you think about since with a more diversified economy and moreover one that is more integrated into the global capitalist economy - you mention that global capitalist crisis of the 1970s - you have more variables to deal with in your planning process. This is not a matter of great controversy. It is generally accepted by economic historians that the shift from heavy industry and the primary sector did but an increasing strain on the whole central planning apparatus.

Yet at the same time the economy was getting more complex computer and telecommunication technology was starting to boom, thus why in 1968 Russian scientists were pushing for a automated system of planning calculations, their recommendations would have turned Russian production and logical planning into something like the logical planning of Wal-Mart now (except with the technology Russia had in 1968), where computers would monitor every step of the production process thus taking managers out of the loop for gathering data thus ensuring that the planners have up to date and accurate data that would be crunched into a form easily readable to planers.

If the problem of the gosplan was complexity then one has to ask how come large corperations that have to manage economies far more complex the the U.S.S.R's in 1968 can plan their economy? The answer is computers, with computers it is possible for large corperations to coordinate all their production and distribution.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

bottom line for me is that decentralization promotes exploitation,greed and indulgence by those who become affluent. Complete centralization prevents that from happening.....:rolleyes:

This is the same reason that I support centralization if I'm understanding your argument correctly. Anarchist-like decentralization would create situations that are, in my opinion, very similar to capitalism. I want socialized production. This should mean that the means of production are owned by society, not 90000 autonomous communes that can do whatever they want. If the communes have high levels of autonomy and can ultimately decide to go against society and restrict use of the communes means of production, then we might as well just be replacing single capitalists with large groupings of capitalists. Development among different areas is unbalanced, and this isn't the 1870s. The material conditions make a high level of decentralization implausible in relation to todays industrialized economy. The means of production are much more advanced and globalization has rendered any sort of self sufficiency impossible. If we have communes or groups of commune with means of production that are much more vital than those possessed by other communes, then this is opening up the possibility of exploitative relationships. For example, a commune in possession of a dam that provides power to 10 nearby communes would have a lot more 'bargaining power' than a commune with only a few small plots of land and a basket factory. So would a group of communes that possess an important natural resource, such as oil. With this kind of situation we would undoubtedly have competition between different communes and groups of communes and the possibility of armed conflicts, and utopian assertions such as "people will be peaceful and love each other after the revolution" do not change this. This would also creats market conditions as certain communes that are not able to innovate as much as other communes would also have a harder time making good trade agreements. Centralization gets rid of all of these problems. Engels' "On Authority" couldn't describe these problems any better in relation to todays conditions. I don't think he could have ever imagined just how relevant to future conditions that piece would end up.

[ckaihatsu]

If you cannot accept that then that seems to commit you to the idea of classical central planning and I remind you again what that is - society wide planning and coordination of the totality of inputs and outputs of an entire economy in advance within an impossibly large matrix covering millions upon millions of equations.


Robbo, you're still sticking to this conception of a central planning system that is perfect-right-out-of-the-box. I'd like to encourage you to leave this construction, because it is too *idealistic* and *unrealistic*.

Why would a centralized, planned economy have to be * algorithmic * -- ? Why would it have to be * pre-planned * -- ? I think you're wedded to the concept of *decentralization* for a post-capitalist society, but to *pre-programmed centralization* for its economy.

What we really need is the * reverse * -- we need a "pre-programmed" plan for revolutionary solidarity and socialist revolution, while we need a * decentralized computer system * to handle the complexities of integrating vast numbers of factories and workplaces into a planned, centralized economy to meet human need.

In short, you're flip-flopping politics with logistics -- once the *politics* of material production and distribution are hammered out, post-revolution, the *logistics* of maintaining those economic relationships will be easy and self-maintaining, due to computer technology.

Here's a short excerpt, from earlier in the thread:



We should not get muddle-headed in trying to *think* our way through the middle part -- there is only supply and demand, and we would have to find priorities on both sides -- assets, labor, and resources - to - individualized, prioritized lists of demands.

This does not require a *mathematical* solution, as many people tend to imagine it. It is *always* a material political issue, and should always be discussed as such. Given our current state of information technology the logistics for this are currently available.



As I see it communism will allow diversity to flourish becuase it will decouple culture from the kind of underlying ideological and economic imperatives of this kind. I am not suggesting a static notion of culture; cultures will adapt obviously as cultures always do (or else perish). But just as individuals will be able to express their individuality far more fully in a communist society so too will cultures.


I agree with this.


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I'm still trying to figure out why (many) anarchists are so stuck on the conceptualization of a post-capitalist society that centers around communes and communities, *instead* of around * industrial factories * and workplaces. Is the industrialism meant to be *implicit* in "commune" and "community"? Is there some sort of an underlying disgust or reticence about industrial production itself? Doesn't it make sense that * industrial production * should be emphasized when we talk of controlling the means of mass production? (There's been no major development in production -- unless you include *digital* goods and services -- that has surpassed humanity's leading-edge technology of * mass industrial production *.)

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe this anarchistic thought is more concerned with the *distribution* of an abundance of existing, mass-produced items -- I appreciate the anti-capitalist grounding, but without a *political* centralization you're just inviting competition from anyone who's adventurous (in a reactionary kind of way) and asks, "Who's in charge here?"


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Finally, the issue in front of all of us -- related to the unresolved question of globalization -- is the distribution of the *bounty* and *abundance* of surplus goods and services -- (secondary to the control of the means of mass production).

A system of competition, like the one that's inherent to capitalism, is *arguably* well-suited to an environment in which there is true scarcity -- arguably that's *never* been the case, and so there's *never* been an objective, good reason to have *ever* had capitalism *at all* -- the rise of finance, imperialist capitalism grew out of mercantilism, and we've never been able to throw it off so far.

In the 1200s in Europe there was an argricultural technological revolution that created such a surplus that people were able to liberate themselves away from their cradle-to-grave toilings on feudal lands, and out to the emerging cities. This was the beginning of the modern age, with its ever-growing material surplus -- with capitalism we've had the problem of * over-production * thus begging the question of how to distribute the *bounty* and *abundance* of goods and services.

In my mind this reality should immediately dispel *any* need for economic competition, nation-states, militaries, empires, security apparatuses, and so on. But until capitalism is overthrown we're still stuck with the barbarism of oppression while warehouse surpluses rot and go to waste.

We need a centralization of revolutionary solidarity *** if only *** to address the *weapons* and *armaments* issue -- *who* gets to use industrial production to build an army, and *who* gets to use deadly force? There's no turning away from these intertwined factors...!