Marxist-Leninist economic policy?

[Robocommie]

What economic policies do most Marxist-Leninists want to see? That is to say, in a post-revolutionary, socialist worker's state, how do modern Marxist-Leninists want to see factories, farms, and stores handled, organized and regulated? How would international trade, like imports and exports, be approached?

I ask mainly out of a desire to understand the Marxist-Leninist tendency beyond it's historical context, to understand their vision for the future, in part to try and figure out where I stand in relation to it. All this arguing about socialism from below or socialism from above, vanguardism, whose tendency was on the right side of history, it's all nearly meaningless bullshit to me. What I am most interested in, is the raw meat and potatoes of how a worker's state will see that the interests of both rural workers and urban workers are served. I'm starting right now by asking about Marxist-Leninists.

[NecroCommie]

Personally I can say that I am a strict supporter of participatory economy, as described by Engels. (as far as I understand :confused:) Meaning that instead of money, workers receive work proofs... or something (someone help me with the english vocabulary!)

In short, the local community decides how much work is one's share of the total work in community. Once a worker has completed his/her share of work in the community, he/she receives an authentification from the council that he/she has done his/her share. With this document/card/whatevah one may receive one's predetermined portion of goods from the local distribution point. For extra work, one may receive extra luxuries, but such beyond-necessary jobs are voluntary.

That's just a brief and confusing description, but if something is unclear, do ask. The point is, that we are marxists still. Different forms of leninism concentrate heavily on how to reach such society, instead of having their own ideas of what is communism.

[Comrade_Stalin]

What economic policies do most Marxist-Leninists want to see? That is to say, in a post-revolutionary, socialist worker's state, how do modern Marxist-Leninists want to see factories, farms, and stores handled, organized and regulated? How would international trade, like imports and exports, be approached?


I ask mainly out of a desire to understand the Marxist-Leninist tendency beyond it's historical context, to understand their vision for the future, in part to try and figure out where I stand in relation to it. All this arguing about socialism from below or socialism from above, vanguardism, whose tendency was on the right side of history, it's all nearly meaningless bullshit to me. What I am most interested in, is the raw meat and potatoes of how a worker's state will see that the interests of both rural workers and urban workers are served. I'm starting right now by asking about Marxist-Leninists.

Understand that I can't speak for all Marxist-Leninists, as even we have different view on the question you have asked. I can only give my views as a Marxist-Leninists. In fact, this is one of the very questions I think that the Marxist-Leninists tendency should answer and get behind. My answers come from modeling communism in video games, as they are one of the few sources of modeling that has a rule that works for everyone. No food grows out of no were, if you are a communist, or money grows out of trees if you are a capitalist. So my answers are related to what happen in those models as I moved to the goal of communism. The games I used, where Tropico 3 and Startopia.

Here How I see it. Communism to me will be a comb of labor time vouchers, with something being free. The things that are free are the things that you need to live. So under my system of communism, you will still be rewarded for working, but one of those rewards is not the right to live. So think of it this way. You are an 11 year old kid on your dead bed, which needs a new heart. Under my system you would get free health care and food, or be given the right to live. So you would get that free heart. But because other people had to work to support you, framers to make the food, and doctor to do the operation, you should not be given a new xbox, for being in bed, and doing nothing. Under capitalism, you are reward, thought wage, with the right to live, thought food and health care, housing, and you are also give the reward of entertainment as well. So under my system the reason you work is not to live, but to be rewarded thought wages to be entertained. So you don’t have to work to eat, or get health care, but work, to get that new PS3 you have been eyeing. I believe that this system, works better with Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism (you do things for material reasons), as you do things for material reasons, with no bias against those that get a bad hand in live(those that are born with a defect or something else making their lives harder).

I have found five goals that need to be reached in order for us to move from socialism (lower communism to me) to communism (advance communism to me).

Free food and ample food supply
Free housing and adequate housing
Free and good healthcare
Free and necessary educations
0% unemployment and low economic disparity

In many of my models I reached all five goals and found out what problems my children would have to solve if they had to live under advance communism.

[ckaihatsu]

But because other people had to work to support you, framers to make the food, and doctor to do the operation, you should not be given a new xbox, for being in bed, and doing nothing. Under capitalism, you are reward, thought wage, with the right to live, thought food and health care, housing, and you are also give the reward of entertainment as well. So under my system the reason you work is not to live, but to be rewarded thought wages to be entertained. So you don’t have to work to eat, or get health care, but work, to get that new PS3 you have been eyeing.


Speaking for myself, *personally*, I find this approach -- along the lines of the _Communist Manifesto_'s "from each according to his means, to each according to his need" -- to be on the *moralistic* side of things.

I'm of the stance that there should be a *minimum* of value judgments made over a person's social identity (within a workers'-collective administration), over definitions of "deserving", "leisure", "responsibility", and so on.

I don't condone an invisible-hand "market" system whatsoever, either -- rather, the matching up of labor to human demand can be done politically / societally. There can be no question about the *capacity* of contemporary factory production to mechanically produce a *bounty* of the goods to fulfill basic living requirements *and* most of the more-leisurely pursuits that people may have, with a *minimum* of labor input. If better qualities of goods are desired then that would be a *political* issue to be publicized and fought for in the political arena of liberated labor.





Free food and ample food supply
Free housing and adequate housing
Free and good healthcare
Free and necessary educations
0% unemployment and low economic disparity


Even *this* relatively humane public policy sounds retrograde today, because in our current technological state of material productive ability this kind of policy actually bumps up against *existential* / personal life-living issues.

Perhaps once the first three conditions are achieved the final two would become much more discretionary to the individual -- some would live moreso for learning while others might live moreso for a solid life's history of work, while others would choose neither.


Chris



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[Comrade_Stalin]

Speaking for myself, *personally*, I find this approach -- along the lines of the _Communist Manifesto_'s "from each according to his means, to each according to his need" -- to be on the *moralistic* side of things.

I'm of the stance that there should be a *minimum* of value judgments made over a person's social identity (within a workers'-collective administration), over definitions of "deserving", "leisure", "responsibility", and so on.

I don't condone an invisible-hand "market" system whatsoever, either -- rather, the matching up of labor to human demand can be done politically / societally. There can be no question about the *capacity* of contemporary factory production to mechanically produce a *bounty* of the goods to fulfill basic living requirements *and* most of the more-leisurely pursuits that people may have, with a *minimum* of labor input. If better qualities of goods are desired then that would be a *political* issue to be publicized and fought for in the political arena of liberated labor.





Even *this* relatively humane public policy sounds retrograde today, because in our current technological state of material productive ability this kind of policy actually bumps up against *existential* / personal life-living issues.

Perhaps once the first three conditions are achieved the final two would become much more discretionary to the individual -- some would live moreso for learning while others might live moreso for a solid life's history of work, while others would choose neither.


Chris



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Photoillustrations, Political Diagrams by Chris Kaihatsu
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tinypic.com/ckaihatsu

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ckaihatsu.elance.com

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Well yes, we can all ways set the supply to meet the demands that we require. I was just listing the demands or goals of you will that we need to supply for.

I do not see my goals along the line fo the communist Manifesto, as I still have a form of money in the form of time vouchers. I also do not see, how my "relatively humane public policy sound retrograde today". Yes we have ample food for everone, but none of it is free. In some cases, we don't have adegate housing, let alone free, and lets not even go into healthcare. No it will take some time, in order for each of those 5 policy not to conflect with each other. If it didn't then we would move from socialism (lower communism to me) to communism (advance communism to me) over night.

[ckaihatsu]

Well yes, we can all ways set the supply to meet the demands that we require. I was just listing the demands or goals of you will that we need to supply for.


Okay.





I do not see my goals along the line fo the communist Manifesto, as I still have a form of money in the form of time vouchers.


Okay, this is important, because as a materialist I have some issues with *anything*, including the _CM_, that may deliberately or inadvertently sneak in a condition of *moralism* into the collective workers' administration.

I, too, advocate the use of time vouchers, as a way of legitimizing and recognizing liberated labor hazards, difficulties, effort, and time. The system of hazard/difficulty-weighted labor-hour credits that I've developed is available at this RevLeft thread:

'Hours as a measure of labor'

tinyurl.com/yh3jr9x





I also do not see, how my "relatively humane public policy sound retrograde today".


I wasn't speaking about what *you* had said, I was directing my comments at the _Communist Manifesto_.





Yes we have ample food for everone, but none of it is free.


True.





In some cases, we don't have adegate housing, let alone free, and lets not even go into healthcare. No it will take some time, in order for each of those 5 policy not to conflect with each other. If it didn't then we would move from socialism (lower communism to me) to communism (advance communism to me) over night.


Yup...!

[Comrade_Stalin]

It seems that we think a lot a like. The Communist Manifesto is just a plain embarrasing with somethings, and wrong on other, which makes us all look bad.

[ckaihatsu]

It seems that we think a lot a like.


Yes, given our agreement on the critique here of the _Communist Manifesto_.





The Communist Manifesto is just a plain embarrasing with somethings, and wrong on other, which makes us all look bad.


Well, I don't think we should "throw out the baby with the bathwater", as the saying goes.

My *general* critique with comrades is that we need to make sure we're addressing *present* conditions. Certainly the dynamics of industrial capitalism and workers' power originated a century or two ago and have been well studied and written about by the Marxist authors of the time, and those dynamics remain in effect today.

But some other characteristics *have* changed -- like an intense, globally integrated proletarianization of the world's population -- and so we should make sure to update our understandings *and* provide valid critiques of the "classics" if possible, as with the case here about moralism.

[Uppercut]

Well, Post-revolution, I would want to see all land nationalized and given to the people, as administered by the state. You can still have your house as long as it's not a mansion, but the land it sits on belongs to everybody in the community.
Smaller businesses will be transformed into something more substantial and useful to the community, maybe small rest stations or med-express outlets..Workers will elect their managers, and will be recallable if they are incompetent with them. A work-point system would work better than paper currency, IMO, because inflation and debt would not be a problem, and points would be awarded in proportion to that worker's hours of production, making all work equal.
Workers will seek state representation through their local soviet, following the principles of soviet democracy and proletarian dictatorship.

I think this is a pretty substantial system, If I do say so. However, what I've stated is pretty much what most Marxists already want.