Don't "labour notes" require a central government?

[ContrarianLemming]

does post revolution communism which uses "labour notes" (to each according to word done) requires a central agency determining job value? It creates a council with economic influence over workers, leading to the potential of corruption and abuse?

any post revolution currency advocates know how to get past that?

[Tablo]

This is one of the reasons I'm skeptical of the use of anything resembling currency. It seems to have a great deal of abuse potential..

[ckaihatsu]

---








So let me see if I have got this straight. You envisage a rolling schedule of public surveys to determine what people felt about the different ratios of remuneration in terms of labour vouchers attaching to different categories of work. First of all as you must be aware there are thousands upon thousands of different occupational categories - I say nothing of different levels of aplication or skill within the same category. To gather together public opnion on these matters would be a stupendously enormous bureaucratic exercise which does not recommend itself. Secondly you talk reaching a "mass average consensus" by such means. But this hardly constitutes an adequate way of preventing the "possible emergence of unfairness, sore feelings, and resentments". JUst because you arrive at an average notion of what is acceptable does not prevent individuals vehemently disagreeing with this notion. This is my point - you are always going to have this under any system of remuneration and this is part of the reason why I am so insistent on the need to do with the whole notion of remuneration in communism altogether





The *standards* of multiplier rates set to convert labor *hours* into *labor credits* would be *separate* from the actual functioning of the economy.

Think of the thousands of different occupational categories as being like *college courses* *rated* by college students as they finish the semester. Besides gathering up qualitative *descriptions* -- easily posted by the individuals to a website, thus reducing the overhead / administration / bureaucracy to near-zero, the cumulative opinions of each job role could be gathered in the form of a *quantified* *rating* -- a *universal* measure of 1 to 10. These collected ratings could be calibrated and re-scaled so that the *absolutely* *most difficult or distasteful* work roles that consistently received high-scoring survey returns would be considered to be the "ceiling" of difficulty in the work-role jobs ecosystem. These *massively cumulative*, averaged survey ratings would represent *thousands and millions* of survey returns, indicating mass sentiment -- all statistics could be kept anonymous but be made transparent so that everyone could see the distribution of data for each particular work role, rated by those who actually worked them, and sortable by general area, time-frame, and industry / occupation.

These ratings would be the basis for *multiplier ratios* to convert labor hours at each respective position into appropriately compensated *labor credit* pay rates.

[Crusade]

What corruption would come from labor credits?

[CartCollector]

Labor credits are, in essence, overvalued in the same way that dollars are. No one has any real use for labor credits other than what they can get in exchange for something else. So they're not really useful. Remember, communism produces goods for their use value, not their exchange value, so labor credits are at best a necessary evil in getting to communism.

Also, there is potential for abuse- that someone could just print themselves more labor credits then they've worked. The labor credit mint workers might even do this themselves! Now how will you prevent this sort of abuse and devaluation without a state?

[syndicat]

does post revolution communism which uses "labour notes" (to each according to word done) requires a central agency determining job value?

if people are remunerated for the value of the work rather than the work effort that will lead to inequality. value of the work depends on the complexity of the product, or the amount of skill involved in creating it. why should people be remunerated for the value of the work if that value depends on the equipment, the people you're working with, social investment in your training...?

There doesn't need to be a central agency controlling everything if allocation of resources, including effort wages, to work groups depends upon a decentralized planning process in which allocation depends on benefits and costs, as worked out in interaction with other groups.

[Tablo]

Labor credits are at most temporary in the transition to Communism. I never EVER will support the continuation of currency. It is a feature of Market economies, not gift economies.

[syndicat]

well, people could be paid a consumption credit on a debit card. no need for currency.

[Tablo]

well, people could be paid a consumption credit on a debit card. no need for currency.
Do you mean simply some kind of verification that you are a working member of society? I can see the use for that in some of the larger communes where people don't necessary know each other..

[syndicat]

Do you mean simply some kind of verification that you are a working member of society? I can see the use for that in some of the larger communes where people don't necessary know each other..

No. I mean that each able-bodied adult person earns a certain consumption entitlement thru their work effort. We could, for example, allow people to work more hours to earn more, or work fewer hours to earn less, if they want.

What do you mean by "communes"? Do you mean communities, municipalities? And why is that relevant?

[Tablo]

No. I mean that each able-bodied adult person earns a certain consumption entitlement thru their work effort. We could, for example, allow people to work more hours to earn more, or work fewer hours to earn less, if they want.

What do you mean by "communes"? Do you mean communities, municipalities? And why is that relevant?
I disagree with that. I feel that people should take however much they feel is necessary without having to deal with currency. The way you explain it suggests currency, which I am opposed to. In a democratic workplace and economy it isn't like the people would tolerate laziness.

When I say communes I mean communes. Not ridiculous hippy communes though. I think communes are relevant as I see them as a feature of Communism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I feel the general idea is that a 'labour credits' based economy could only work on a world scale, or failing that, in a geographical area that was large enough to be fully autarkical, i.e. it did not need to trade, at all, with outside its own commonwealth.

Thus, currency valuation would be eliminated (as there would firstly be no speculation on the currency, and no pressure on it from external forces), and it would be a far simpler task for perhaps a central council to peg the value of these labour credits to say, a randomly assorted basket of basic, normal and luxury goods.

[Zanthorus]

Labor credits are at most temporary in the transition to Communism. I never EVER will support the continuation of currency. It is a feature of Market economies, not gift economies.

Technically speaking the schemes for "currency" in communism aren't really "currency" because currency implies exchange between reciprocating autonomous producers whereas in communism all means of production are owned in common so the idea "currency" becomes obsolete because there is only one producing unit and it doesn't make sense for it to trade with itself. "Labour certificate" schemes are simply ways of distributing the part of the total social product destined for consumption.

I don't like the idea of a "gift economy". "Gift" implies someone else owning something and then giving it to you. I thought the point was to abolish private property as such?


I feel that people should take however much they feel is necessary without having to deal with currency.

With the current state of productive forces people taking however much they feel is necessary doesn't sound like the most brilliant of ideas.


When I say communes I mean communes. Not ridiculous hippy communes though. I think communes are relevant as I see them as a feature of Communism.

"Commune" can refer to the lowest level of administration in france or sometimes just municipal governing bodies in general. In popular usage it refers to the type of hippie commune you mention with people dropping out of society and owning everything in common in a kind of mini-communism. In the second sense the "commune" is a feature of communism in the sense that a communist society would be one big commune. But having autonomous, seperate communes each with it's own schemes of common ownership doesn't sound like a recipe for communism. If anything it would require a return to currency for trade between them.

[Tablo]

Technically speaking the schemes for "currency" in communism aren't really "currency" because currency implies exchange between reciprocating autonomous producers whereas in communism all means of production are owned in common so the idea "currency" becomes obsolete because there is only one producing unit and it doesn't make sense for it to trade with itself. "Labour certificate" schemes are simply ways of distributing the part of the total social product destined for consumption.There is no problem with providing verification you are a working member of society, but consumption based on the time worked is not Communist. From each according to ability, to each according to need.



I don't like the idea of a "gift economy". "Gift" implies someone else owning something and then giving it to you. I thought the point was to abolish private property as such?Private property is abolished, but that doesn't mean we get rid of personal property. You should read up a bit on it.



With the current state of productive forces people taking however much they feel is necessary doesn't sound like the most brilliant of ideas.
From each according to ability, to each according to need.


"Commune" can refer to the lowest level of administration in france or sometimes just municipal governing bodies in general. In popular usage it refers to the type of hippie commune you mention with people dropping out of society and owning everything in common in a kind of mini-communism. In the second sense the "commune" is a feature of communism in the sense that a communist society would be one big commune. But having autonomous, seperate communes each with it's own schemes of common ownership doesn't sound like a recipe for communism. If anything it would require a return to currency for trade between them.There would be no currency. Period. Saying we would have separate communes does not mean we can't intermingle or can't provide for people outside our commune. How can we all be one giant commune? We aren't one giant city are we? All decision making should be brought down to the lowest level so as to best meet the needs of the local populace. We can still provide for others globally, but it isn't the best idea to send resources all the way around the globe when they are available with in the general region as it is a waste of fuel and labor.

[ZeroNowhere]

There is no problem with providing verification you are a working member of society, but consumption based on the time worked is not Communist. From each according to ability, to each according to need.
Perhaps you ought to inform the guy who made that quote famous. And I don't mean Louis Blanc.

[syndicat]

I feel that people should take however much they feel is necessary without having to deal with currency.

That will simply encourage an aggressively individualistic mentality because the more aggressive someone is about taking, the more they get. ALso, unless you know the social costs of items you can't be socially responsible in consumption even if you wanted to be. And you have no way of measuring social cost unless you have a numeric scale of cost.



The way you explain it suggests currency, which I am opposed to. In a democratic workplace and economy it isn't like the people would tolerate laziness.

If people can just take what they want, as you say, while will they work? and how would anyone know they are working or not?



When I say communes I mean communes. Not ridiculous hippy communes though. I think communes are relevant as I see them as a feature of Communism.

You've not defined what "commune" is. In this country people think of "communes" is collective living arrangements. I see no reason to promote that. People should be free to live together or not as they see fit.

[Zanthorus]

There is no problem with providing verification you are a working member of society, but consumption based on the time worked is not Communist. From each according to ability, to each according to need.

[...]

From each according to ability, to each according to need.

I like how I'm being told to "read up a bit" then having slogans from the Critique of the Gotha Program thrown at me by someone who obviously hasn't read it:


What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

I also like how you repeat that statement as if it were some fundamental moral principle when the man who popularised it would have laughed off the idea of any "eternal" principle of wealth distribution.


Private property is abolished, but that doesn't mean we get rid of personal property. You should read up a bit on it.

Already have thanks. We abolish private property in the means of production and make all labour directly social labour. That means that the product is a social product with a social distribution. "Gift economy" on the contrary implies reciprocal autonomous producers "gifting" to each other.


There would be no currency. Period. Saying we would have separate communes does not mean we can't intermingle or can't provide for people outside our commune. How can we all be one giant commune? We aren't one giant city are we? All decision making should be brought down to the lowest level so as to best meet the needs of the local populace. We can still provide for others globally, but it isn't the best idea to send resources all the way around the globe when they are available with in the general region as it is a waste of fuel and labor.

When I said "one big commune" I mean everyone globally owns the MoP in common. Obviously distribution would be tailored to geographical considerations but if we reintroduce autonomous production units to communism then it won't be communism for too long. I don't see what being one big city has to do with anything. You seem to be confusing commune the municipal authority and commune the thing where people own stuff in common. Although I'm not really fond of the word "commune". I think the only reason people use that is because of the Paris Commune and because it sort of sounds like it should be something central to an ideology called communism. It has overtones of hippy culture and dropping out of the system.

[mikelepore]

does post revolution communism which uses "labour notes" (to each according to word done) requires a central agency determining job value?

I don't know about an agency, but it would require a centralized accounting formula, with the computers in the various industries and services all programmed to follow a common method. What they all have to be programmed to do is easy to visualize.

(1) The central computer adds up an inventory of all the goods and services that can be produced in the whole society in a given time period.

(2) Out of that total, you have goods delivered for the uses that are common among all people, and not individual, such as building, maintaining and developing industries, responding to natural disasters, and any kinds of personal consumption that society wants to be free, such as medicine. Each unit of goods and services that is delivered for those common purposes is subtracted from the total inventory.

(3) Whatever remains in the total inventory is for individual consumers, and will be charged to their individual accounts. You mathematically divide it up according to the total number of hours that the whole population works in that same time period, and that calculation tells us the amount of goods that one individual hour of labor will buy.

(4) Whatever adjustments to the accounting method that are to be made due to social policy, such as unearned incomes given to disabled people, or bonuses for people who take dangerous jobs, etc., are worked into the formula and therefore affect the calculation of the final prices of consumer goods.


It creates a council with economic influence over workers, leading to the potential of corruption and abuse?

Sorry, I don't sympathize at all with the anarchist concern about that. Every human grouping needs its councils, and another council for every purpose. Even a club with fifty members needs its coordinators and committees, so there is no doubt at all that a lot of huge projects like power plants, assembly plants, etc. will need even more, not fewer, of them.


any post revolution currency advocates know how to get past that?

I don't see anything desirable in getting past such a system. In a future classless society, those who wish to consume more luxuries than the average should be allowed to have them, if they will also be on record as having worked more hours than the average. Those who wish to work fewer hours than the average should be left alone to do so, as long as they understand that their limits on material consumption will be reduced accordingly. I consider those guidelines to be ultimate goals for a classless society. Therefore I don't believe that the work credit system would be a transition to anything that would necessarily come later. Hundreds of years in the future, perhaps, but that shouldn't be the present concern.

[syndicat]

This is one of those cases where i'm in agreement with mike lepore.

There is nothing in social anarchism against the existence of a federation, congress and elected coordinating committee for the entire revolutionary territory, and a militia that it directs. So there will be something akin to a central government

In the Spanish revolution in Sept 1936 the anarcho-syndicalists proposed replacing the old state with a national workers congress and a Defense Council and an Economics Council, with planning being under the control of the Workers Congress and coordinated by the Economics Council, and the police, military and judicial function (popular tribunals) under the Defense Council, both of which would be made up of delegates elected from the base, and each industry would be managed by the workers, but adhering to its responsibilities under the plans it has helped to create, and with input from "free municipalities" in regard to requests from the population for things like housing, education, health care.

So, in principle, all you need is a worker organization that is responsible for collecting information about the total set of proposals for production from all worker organizations, and the total set of requests from the national, regional, local bodies for public goods and services, including all areas of social provision for things like chilidren, retired, people between jobs, housing provision, education, health care, etc. There could also be an interactive process of mutual adjustment of budgets so that the totals of requests and projected production match up. but the worker organization that collects the info doesn't set the rules. Those would be set through the process of particiipatory democracy.

What social anarchism is opposed to is a state, a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus not effectively controllable by the mass of the people.

[TheJungle]

That's why in post revolutionary Communism, there won't be any labor credits. There won't be any money or currency, people will take what they need and hopefully give back an equal amount.

We may need these credits before Communism, during the Socialist phase, but eventually they'll disappear.

[Crusade]

That's why in post revolutionary Communism, there won't be any labor credits. There won't be any money or currency, people will take what they need and hopefully give back an equal amount.

We may need these credits before Communism, during the Socialist phase, but eventually they'll disappear.

Why we need labor credits.

[Tablo]

Perhaps you ought to inform the guy who made that quote famous. And I don't mean Louis Blanc.
Karl Marx


That will simply encourage an aggressively individualistic mentality because the more aggressive someone is about taking, the more they get. ALso, unless you know the social costs of items you can't be socially responsible in consumption even if you wanted to be. And you have no way of measuring social cost unless you have a numeric scale of cost.
To limit consumption in that way is ridiculous. If someone walks into a store and asks for 2000 eggs then he isn't going to get them. That is common sense.



If people can just take what they want, as you say, while will they work? and how would anyone know they are working or not?Communities would be much more localized and due to the social nature promoted by our ideological perspective people would know each other better and recognize the individuals who work as those who don't would be looked poorly on and not provided goods and services. This would obviously be more difficult in larger communities in which case we could provide some form of verification that an individual is a working member of society. That does not mean we have to set strict limits on consumption.


You've not defined what "commune" is. In this country people think of "communes" is collective living arrangements. I see no reason to promote that. People should be free to live together or not as they see fit.When I use the term commune I mean it in reference to a local community. We wouldn't have suburbs or anything where people are forced to travel long distances to work. It would be eliminated as it is unsustainable and environmentally destructive.


I like how I'm being told to "read up a bit" then having slogans from the Critique of the Gotha Program thrown at me by someone who obviously hasn't read it:
What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Critique of the Gotha Programme is a critique of the draft programme of the United Workers' Party of Germany. In this document Marx address the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the two phases of communist society, the production and distribution of the social goods, proletarian internationalism, and the party of the working class.

It is referring to the stage that is "From each according to his contribution". You know, the dictatorship of the proletariat which is PRIOR to Communism in Marxist thought



I also like how you repeat that statement as if it were some fundamental moral principle when the man who popularised it would have laughed off the idea of any "eternal" principle of wealth distribution.I think it is valid and based off of my own time spent researching these things I find it still applicable.




Already have thanks. We abolish private property in the means of production and make all labour directly social labour. That means that the product is a social product with a social distribution. "Gift economy" on the contrary implies reciprocal autonomous producers "gifting" to each other.And you think this because you have no understanding of the term to begin with. All goods produced from the factory or the fields is a social good, of course.




When I said "one big commune" I mean everyone globally owns the MoP in common. Obviously distribution would be tailored to geographical considerations but if we reintroduce autonomous production units to communism then it won't be communism for too long. I don't see what being one big city has to do with anything. You seem to be confusing commune the municipal authority and commune the thing where people own stuff in common. Although I'm not really fond of the word "commune". I think the only reason people use that is because of the Paris Commune and because it sort of sounds like it should be something central to an ideology called communism. It has overtones of hippy culture and dropping out of the system.
I'm sorry you do not like the word commune.

[syndicat]

To limit consumption in that way is ridiculous. If someone walks into a store and asks for 2000 eggs then he isn't going to get them. That is common sense.



That doesn't answer the objection. If people have to keep their consumption requests in a finite budget, they will be more careful about what they request. Even now we have problems of doing compulsive shopping where things are not used.


That does not mean we have to set strict limits on consumption.



so it's okay with you that someone consumes more because they're more aggressive and selfish. I'd say that is hardly a solidaristic mentality. Getting people to reflect on the social costs of their consumption is more likely to encourage a solidaristic mentality.


Communities would be much more localized and due to the social nature promoted by our ideological perspective people would know each other better and recognize the individuals who work as those who don't would be looked poorly on and not provided goods and services.

How do you know what sort of community people will want to live in? Are you a mind-reader?

Without autonomy in work, you'll essentially have workers once again subordinated to some bureaucracy.

[Tablo]

That doesn't answer the objection. If people have to keep their consumption requests in a finite budget, they will be more careful about what they request. Even now we have problems of doing compulsive shopping where things are not used.
Compulsive shopping is a mental problem that will be treated as best as we are capable. I think it is much more prevalent in our society since we are constantly told to consume by ads most of the time our eyes are open.



so it's okay with you that someone consumes more because they're more aggressive and selfish. I'd say that is hardly a solidaristic mentality. Getting people to reflect on the social costs of their consumption is more likely to encourage a solidaristic mentality. Of course we will always have people that will be selfish, but that type of mentality will whither away and I don't see it being a major issue post revolution. Even so, it isn't like they can walk into a store and demand ridiculous quantities of goods. We will have a world with a relatively larger productive labor force and a more efficient use of resources so it isn't terrible if a few people take a bit more than necessary. We do not need to restrict people to a certain strict limit. Putting such rules in place seems bureaucratic.



How do you know what sort of community people will want to live in? Are you a mind-reader?I don't know, but I know NO ONE except a small minority on the radical left want Communism. Does that make our desires evil? We do not know 100% what Communism will look like, but we can theorize and think of the best ways to organize. All we know for sure is we want democratic control and a complete lack of social hierarchy.


Without autonomy in work, you'll essentially have workers once again subordinated to some bureaucracy.I'm in no way arguing against autonomy or in favor of bureaucracy. As a matter of fact I am arguing against bureaucracy and in favor of autonomy.

Edit: It seems to me you are arguing in favor more so for collectivist Anarchism of the Bakunin variety than Communism.

[syndicat]

You're not really answering the arguments. You're basically just engaging in hand-waving. You assume that somehow "communism" has the answers. But why is this "communism" desireable or workable? How are you going to persuade people you have a viable solution worth fighting for if you can't answer objections?

[Tablo]

You're not really answering the arguments. You're basically just engaging in hand-waving. You assume that somehow "communism" has the answers. But why is this "communism" desireable or workable? How are you going to persuade people you have a viable solution worth fighting for if you can't answer objections?
Hand waving? You have yet to provide any serious flaws in this arrangement. I think you seriously need to read some Kropotkin and Bookchin. Also you didn't respond to anything i actually said....

[ZeroNowhere]

It is referring to the stage that is "From each according to his contribution". You know, the dictatorship of the proletariat which is PRIOR to Communism in Marxist thoughtHe never called that stage the dictatorship of the proletariat. He did, however, call it a stage of communism. Indeed, he also referred to production as being directly social, and classes as not being existent, so it's certainly not a capitalist society, as the dictatorship of the proletariat is. In fact, in his example of communism in 'Capital', he mentions labour credits as a possibility, and also points out that Owen's labour credit ideas did not involve commodity production, and were as much money as film tickets, whereas commodity production would exist if there were a proletariat to dictate things, and there is no need for the use of political power to enforce the expropriation of the expropriators when it is done.

When it says that he deals with the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Critique of the Gotha Program, it's when he's talking about the revolutionary transformation of society from capitalism to communism, which is in a different place to him talking about the lower and higher phases of communist society.

[mikelepore]

I will copy below from another thread in June 2009 my comment where I had to disappoint my friend robbo209, who derives from the World Socialist movement, a group that advocates "free access to all that is produced," and regards labor credits as unnecessary and unliberating. I have to protest that a system of free access to goods is unworkable, because it would induce people to stop performing work, unless by coincidence their occupation is also a hobby. As consumption approaches infinity and production approaches zero, the system would quickly crash.





Since I dont believe what you are saying is that free access is unworkable becuase it is againt human nature then I take it you mean that it is unworkable in the immeidate aftermath of a socialist revolution purely for technical reasons - the level of output wopuld be insiffucient.

I believe that free access is unworkable in principle, even many years after the revolution has occurred. It's unworkable because all animal brains, including that of Homo sapiens, operate according to the psychological principle that a behavior for which the individual gets rewarded is the behavior that tends to get repeated. A system of free access would reward the individual for never showing up at work. The system would do this by informing the individual that your personal standard of living won't depend marginally on whether you showing up for work. On the contrary, the more frequently you fail to show up for work, the more frequently you will have available to you and your family all imaginable hobby and recreational activities, including transportation to every beautiful location in the world. As a consequence, in occupations that ordinarily overlap with hobbies, such as poets and musicians, there would be plenty of people available to volunteer, but, in occupations that have never been known to be anyone's hobbies, such as operating mines, refineries, mills and factories, the necessary number of people would not be available.

[ckaihatsu]

Remember, communism produces goods for their use value, not their exchange value, so labor credits are at best a necessary evil in getting to communism.


By the general principles of communism itself this thread shouldn't even be necessary at all.

But the core, unavoidable issue here is providing for the receipt of *some* kind of material compensation for the taking on of more difficult and/or hazardous work roles, for longer periods of work time, in a society in which everything would be for the taking regardless of whether one worked or not.

- *Without* freely available mass produced goods the entire "ownership" / administration of the means of mass production would be called into question all over again, leading to questions of how certain goods would be valuated over others.

- But, on the converse, some might question how there *could* be freely available mass produced goods with no societal work policy in place to enforce equitable labor input from everyone. Greed, hoarding, and slothfulness would seem to be irresistible to all.

Fortunately there are some hyper-progressive qualities to communism that would *inherently* obviate these concerns altogether:

In the absence of private property an individual could *only* consume on a *personal* basis and would not even *be able* to inconvenience, much less harm, others with their own personal consumption -- even a gross example of a wantonly over-eating, sexually indulgent, fuel-wasting, obsessively acquisitive person could *only* dedicate their person-limited attention to so many things at once. After a certain period of time the things they have left unattended would fall into disuse and could be reclaimed by others since no one could "fence off" possessions on a permanent basis as we're used to seeing with private property.

Also, with the one-time implementation of automation / computerization many major industrial processes could very well become "self-serve", meaning that small groups and even individuals would be more enabled than ever to provide for their *personal* needs and wants on an ad-hoc, as-needed basis. Specialized workforces could become a thing of the past as the consumer-producer-production-consumption loop could rapidly shrink down, approaching the scale of one person, even for finished goods produced from complex supply chains.

(All that would be needed would be a slight surplus of inventory at each point / node in the supply chain, to be set into motion upon a person's whim, for the cascading production process to kick in again and produce the finished product(s). For larger-scale production runs, or to upgrade or add on additional capacity, a political movement might take shape to motivate a longer-term labor force at the required points of production.)





Labor credits are at most temporary in the transition to Communism. I never EVER will support the continuation of currency. It is a feature of Market economies, not gift economies.


I think we're all in agreement that material-value-representing currency is incredibly outdated, obsolete, and problem-causing. But if exchange values are to be discontinued we're *still* stuck with the original issue of how to properly compensate necessarily voluntary liberated labor for its efforts, particularly at more difficult, hazardous, and longer-term work. As a quick aside, please recall that:

- If labor has to be coerced then it is not truly liberated.

- If labor is *strictly* voluntary, *without* considered compensation / recognition / respect for its efforts then there will be very little *societal*-oriented incentive for workers to take on work roles, especially for types of labor that require extended periods of education, training, apprenticeship, and practice, or for hazardous or distasteful kinds of work.

So the situation in front of us is to provide recompense from society for directed labor efforts *without* using any kind of material-value intermediary like currency. Moreover, no one could be *coerced* into labor or *punished* for *not* working, or denied the means of living for *refusing* to work. *Finally*, in a little more of a gray area, the *denial* of access to the use and products of the means of mass production to *anyone* would *necessarily* be a political issue, akin to denying people access to a shoreline in the present day.

This means that *any* proposed type of 'labor credits' could *not* function like currency, in the sense of holding some kind of representational material value (to cash-in for goods and services). What, then, could 'labor credits' represent if they are to be used to reward liberated labor for its efforts towards the larger society?





In my attached document, 'communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors', at post #101, you'll see that I advocate a system of rolling valuations of recently active workers, through a system of labor credits that apply to *work hours* only, and not to tangible material properties of any sort. This acknowledges that a fully collectivized, or gift, economy, would have *no need or function fulfilled* by assigning quantitative valuations to material products, since everything *could be* coordinated through a *political* economy of collective intention by the society and workers themselves.

The labor credits would serve to take the place of private collections of capital, which today function as the means of coordinating workers in a workforce, through the labor markets. The replacement for today's professionalized managerial staff would be the locality's daily prioritized political demands, aggregated and sorted for the consideration of all liberated workers who would seek to gain labor credits (and to be close to the point of production).

http://tinyurl.com/y35zj8p





[C]urrency valuation would be eliminated (as there would firstly be no speculation on the currency, and no pressure on it from external forces), and it would be a far simpler task for perhaps a central council to peg the value of these labour credits to say, a randomly assorted basket of basic, normal and luxury goods.


While this "basket-of-goods" type of labor credits eliminates the problems of currency fluctuation and currency speculation, the *labor* side of the equation seems unaddressed -- some kind of *political* determination would have to be made that provides varying pay rates for various kinds of work roles.





I feel the general idea is that a 'labour credits' based economy could only work on a world scale, or failing that, in a geographical area that was large enough to be fully autarkical, i.e. it did not need to trade, at all, with outside its own commonwealth.


I'd like to respectfully remind you, and everyone, that we *should* have learned the lesson by now that there *is no* such thing as economic or political autarky in the contemporary world. A worker-collectivized society would necessarily turn bureaucratic (Stalinistic) as a way of presenting a single face to the *least* economic / political / military competitive threat from outside its environs.





I don't know about an agency, but it would require a centralized accounting formula, with the computers in the various industries and services all programmed to follow a common method. What they all have to be programmed to do is easy to visualize.

(1) The central computer adds up an inventory of all the goods and services that can be produced in the whole society in a given time period.

(2) Out of that total, you have goods delivered for the uses that are common among all people, and not individual, such as building, maintaining and developing industries, responding to natural disasters, and any kinds of personal consumption that society wants to be free, such as medicine. Each unit of goods and services that is delivered for those common purposes is subtracted from the total inventory.

[...]

(4) Whatever adjustments to the accounting method that are to be made due to social policy, such as unearned incomes given to disabled people, or bonuses for people who take dangerous jobs, etc., are worked into the formula and therefore affect the calculation of the final prices of consumer goods.


The political decision-making, requisitioning, and logistics of providing for a communist society's most basic needs is relatively straightforward and easily implemented, as you've outlined here, Mike.

( I've borrowed from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a guide in this prioritization ranking, attached: )



Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

http://i45.tinypic.com/30204e8.jpg





(3) Whatever remains in the total inventory is for individual consumers, and will be charged to their individual accounts. You mathematically divide it up according to the total number of hours that the whole population works in that same time period, and that calculation tells us the amount of goods that one individual hour of labor will buy.



This part, though, begs the *political economy* question for the communist society's participants -- perhaps you can clarify here:





(1) The central computer adds up an inventory of all the goods and services that can be produced in the whole society in a given time period.


How would "all the goods and services that can be produced in the whole society" be determined? Would this inventory be based on people's requests, or on the number of work hours they volunteer in advance, or on the maximum work ability they're capable of, or what?





So, in principle, all you need is a worker organization that is responsible for collecting information about the total set of proposals for production from all worker organizations, and the total set of requests from the national, regional, local bodies for public goods and services, including all areas of social provision for things like chilidren, retired, people between jobs, housing provision, education, health care, etc. There could also be an interactive process of mutual adjustment of budgets so that the totals of requests and projected production match up. but the worker organization that collects the info doesn't set the rules. Those would be set through the process of particiipatory democracy.

What social anarchism is opposed to is a state, a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus not effectively controllable by the mass of the people.


The model that I referenced above contains a component for aggregating mass demand from the population of a locality, or, by extension, over several localities that have a good political working relationship:





The replacement for today's professionalized managerial staff would be the locality's daily prioritized political demands, aggregated and sorted for the consideration of all liberated workers who would seek to gain labor credits (and to be close to the point of production).

http://tinyurl.com/y35zj8p


As a proposal for getting from "here" to "there" I advocate the development of a revolutionary global syndicated currency. It would serve as a mechanism for retaining economic flexibility while providing political cohesion through a revolutionary transition that displaces bourgeois rule. It would be an open-bookkeeping, transparent "go-to" index of the strength of the world's revolutionary working class in struggle by gauging the amount of surplus labor value retained and actually in excess, available to the ongoing struggle. It could somehow be compared to *existing* capitalist currencies to demonstrate how exploitative and elitist they are.


Syndicalism - Socialism - Communism Transition Diagram

http://i49.tinypic.com/5nq23t.jpg


Chris




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-- Epitomizing generalities --

[syndicat]

In the absence of private property an individual could *only* consume on a *personal* basis and would not even *be able* to inconvenience, much less harm, others with their own personal consumption -- even a gross example of a wantonly over-eating, sexually indulgent, fuel-wasting, obsessively acquisitive person could *only* dedicate their person-limited attention to so many things at once. After a certain period of time the things they have left unattended would fall into disuse and could be reclaimed by others since no one could "fence off" possessions on a permanent basis as we're used to seeing with private property.


But the overall effect of many people doing this is to create a huge problem. Should we be over-working because people are over-consuming?

Proposed technical fixes like automation are just hand-waving. There's no way of proving how far this could go.


A worker-collectivized society would necessarily turn bureaucratic (Stalinistic) as a way of presenting a single face to the *least* economic / political / military competitive threat from outside its environs.


I don't see any reason to believe this.

[CartCollector]

A worker-collectivized society would necessarily turn bureaucratic (Stalinistic) as a way of presenting a single face to the *least* economic / political / military competitive threat from outside its environs. I don't see any reason to believe this.In contemporary government, external economic / political / military threats are handled through diplomacy or armies. Usually a chief executive or prime minister of the government plays a large part in handling these threats and controlling diplomacy and the army. Is there an anarchistic or, at the very most, direct democratic way of handling these threats?

[syndicat]

In contemporary government, external economic / political / military threats are handled through diplomacy or armies. Usually a chief executive or prime minister of the government plays a large part in handling these threats and controlling diplomacy and the army. Is there an anarchistic or, at the very most, direct democratic way of handling these threats?

In any large territory there has to be some element of representation. But it's a question of how tight the control is on that from the base. I mean, you have policies. For a libertarian socialist polity, these policies are devised through things like congresses of delegates, based on proposals that delegates bring from base assemblies, and can be referred back to the base assemblies in neighborhoods or workplaces if there is disagreement. There is a militia with some sort of coordinating committee that is elected, and accountable to the base assemblies, that is charged with oversight over the militia. Members are rotated off the committee every so often.

But this is different from economic planning and coordination. There is no reason the whole population cannot participate in that. And this is more pertinent to this thread, which is about economic planning. In this case each workplace can make proposals about what it proposes to produce, and neighborhood assemblies, regional federations and so on can make requests. There can then be a worker organization that is charged with collecting this info, doing the number crunching and publishing the results. Certain planning rules are used here, which the population has agreed to. Through some sort of back and forth process of negotiation, people re-adjust their budgets and requests to keep them in line with what is do-able.

[ckaihatsu]

In the absence of private property an individual could *only* consume on a *personal* basis and would not even *be able* to inconvenience, much less harm, others with their own personal consumption -- even a gross example of a wantonly over-eating, sexually indulgent, fuel-wasting, obsessively acquisitive person could *only* dedicate their person-limited attention to so many things at once. After a certain period of time the things they have left unattended would fall into disuse and could be reclaimed by others since no one could "fence off" possessions on a permanent basis as we're used to seeing with private property.





But the overall effect of many people doing this is to create a huge problem. Should we be over-working because people are over-consuming?



Well, I certainly can't speak for *everyone* in a post-capitalist economy, but the *point* is that there *would* be some kind of reality-constrained *upper limit* to a person's physical reach through realtime, throughout their lives. Anything they're not devoting *consistent* attention to could *not* be claimed by them as *personal* possessions (or consumed).

And, by extension, I'm sure a post-capitalist society could do the math and determine what the *upper limit* is for consumption generally, given current trends. Our *political* concern is only about the *material* apportionment and is *not* a moralistic stance in any sense -- as long as a "generous" level of consumption could be reasonably supported, particularly by liberated labor, then that's exactly what a post-capitalist economy is there to fulfill and sustain.





Proposed technical fixes like automation are just hand-waving. There's no way of proving how far this could go.


No, I agree -- our political extrapolations in the present are *limited* and we're necessarily at a loss for any speculative *details* in such a mode. But at the same time we can certainly see the incredible effects *today* from leveraging machine- and fuel-based, and now digital-based, technologies in the role of material production. Eliminating the systematic waste of capitalism by "upgrading" to a worker-based mode of production would enable even *further* leveraging of technology, without the least bit of expropriation from capital.














I'd just like to return to and reiterate my original point which is that a state of static autarky is *impossible* these days -- differing modes of production, as with cooperation-based workers' collectives versus competition-based private capital management, will *not* be able to peacefully coexist.

[mikelepore]

How would "all the goods and services that can be produced in the whole society" be determined? Would this inventory be based on people's requests, or on the number of work hours they volunteer in advance, or on the maximum work ability they're capable of, or what?

A time period is selected for iteration, say, a month. When the system is new, there would be an absense of data for the first few months, so it would be wise to overproduce many things just to avoid shortages, which means the length of everyone's workday being a bit longer than strictly necessary. However, after several iterations, there is actual data. In every month we produce 99 million eggs but consume 93 million, produce 950 kilometers of copper pipe but consume 840, etc.

Now for every kind of product there is a pattern matching exercise between these rates: the consumption rate, the production rate, and the time applied by workers. These are, to use De Leon's phrase, "the statistics of the wealth needed, the wealth producible, and the work required."

We calculate the number of work hours needed in the area of producing each type of product. Then the number of people has to be adjusted up or down.

Just how difficult it will be to make these interdepartment transfers of people, people shall discover later.

(1) In the most fortunate cases, it will be as easy as posting a monthly announcement like: "We have too many people making copper pipe, and not enough people making plastic pipe. If you may be able to help by transfering to another department, down the hall within the same plant, <click here>."

(2) It would be more complicated if the discrepancies among people needed and people available are across dissimilar fields, because of the time needed for training. You can't just take pipe welders and assign them to be optometrists, etc. Society has to work gradually toward the desired balance.

(3) The kind of discrepancy that will generate the most arguments on this forum is the kind where some jobs are naturally more attractive than others. Some people here deny that a classless society will have any such problem, but I consider it an important problem. Suppose that equal compensation for every worker would result in having a hundred times too many people available to take photos of tropical sunsets, and having a hundred times too few people available to clean septic tanks. To allow anyone to do anything they choose would result in complete chaos. You have to apply material incentives for people to go where they're needed. Assuming that we don't want to threaten people with penalties, the alternative is to reward them for making optimal choices.

I think the derivatives will be steep. For example, an increase by a factor of 2 in the compensation for people who volunteer to clean septic tanks may result in a factor of 10 in the number of people who volunteer. A fine tuning across several iterations can determine the right factor.

In the above I have left out the planning for new and large projects, say, a 100-floor building, a space station, etc. These cases are actually easier to plan for than ordinary events, because everyday life has people making unpredictable choices (suddenly everyone likes video games). In the big projects, the planners know with some precision how many materials they will need.

[syndicat]

(3) The kind of discrepancy that will generate the most arguments on this forum is the kind where some jobs are naturally more attractive than others. Some people here deny that a classless society will have any such problem, but I consider it an important problem. Suppose that equal compensation for every worker would result in having a hundred times too many people available to take photos of tropical sunsets, and having a hundred times too few people available to clean septic tanks. To allow anyone to do anything they choose would result in complete chaos. You have to apply material incentives for people to go where they're needed. Assuming that we don't want to threaten people with penalties, the alternative is to reward them for making optimal choices.


The solution likes in reorganizing the jobs so that each job involves both drudge work and skilled work. This is going to be necessary for people to have the expertise and knowledge to participate effectively in planning and decision-making in industries anyway. if someone spends all their time cleaning, when do they have the time to learn about engineering or financial planning?

So, for example, service planning on a transit system might be a task that some bus drivers do when not driving buses. Those who do this spend less time driving buses. Just an example.

[gorillafuck]

mikelepore, how would we decide which jobs are worth what? For example, how do we determine how much a musician makes, and how much a bus driver makes?

[ckaihatsu]

A time period is selected for iteration, say, a month. When the system is new, there would be an absense of data for the first few months, so it would be wise to overproduce many things just to avoid shortages, which means the length of everyone's workday being a bit longer than strictly necessary. However, after several iterations, there is actual data.


Okay, this makes sense and is along congruent lines:





And, by extension, I'm sure a post-capitalist society could do the math and determine what the *upper limit* is for consumption generally, given current trends.





When the system is new, there would be an absense of data for the first few months


I think the system could benefit from whatever capitalism-era records would be acquired, as well as from new, "startup" data, as you've mentioned here.





You have to apply material incentives for people to go where they're needed.




I think the derivatives will be steep. For example, an increase by a factor of 2 in the compensation for people who volunteer to clean septic tanks may result in a factor of 10 in the number of people who volunteer. A fine tuning across several iterations can determine the right factor.





mikelepore, how would we decide which jobs are worth what? For example, how do we determine how much a musician makes, and how much a bus driver makes?


Yeah, I have to second Zeekloid's question here -- while your response, Mike, is one of the more well-reasoned approaches to this topic that I've seen, I think what we're still missing here is some sense of labor-hours-going-forward, or an hours-for-material exchange ratio. I've already put forth my own ideas on this, below, so I won't repeat them, but if you could address this point I'd appreciate it. (Are you suggesting an hours-for-hours trading off of some sort, with a ratio applied? If so then the simplest, easiest kind of work could serve as a "baseline" labor-hour for all others to be compared to, with a derivative "baseline" of base labor hours as an across-the-board societal expectation.)

[mikelepore]

mikelepore, how would we decide which jobs are worth what? For example, how do we determine how much a musician makes, and how much a bus driver makes?

The two basic ways are to decide judgmentally or to calculate it impersonally.

If people adopt a system to decide judgmentally, that means many people have an opinion in which they view some jobs as atypically strenuous, hazardous, or other measures. Then some democratic process would turn this judgement into a guideline that gets written down somewhere. In my personal view, I see no difference here between the bus driver and the musician. Degree of physical strain, like that associated with the lumberjack or the firefighter: zero. Degree of hazard, like that associated with the power line technician or the astronaut: zero. So I would support the proposal that both the bus driver and the musician should receive exactly nominal incomes, one hour credit for one hour work. Society will adopt some balance between direct democracy and representative democracy, unknowable to us today, so I don't know whether I shall have to express my support for this compensation plan by voting in a referendum, or by voting for a representative to do it for me.

The other way is to let a formula decide impersonally. A computer program detects and reports that we have a shortage of bus drivers. Effects in the real world don't happen for no reason, so we can assume that the shortage of bus drivers must be related so some characteristic of the work, whether its stress, boredom, or perhaps something that we haven't yet recognized. It would be possible for the program automatically to enact a five percent bonus in income for bus drivers, possibly for a trial period, post a notice about that change on a public forum, and report again in three months whether the shortage has been affected.

De Leon suggested the automatic method in 1914 (of course, imagining bookkeepers instead of computers, because it was 1914). He acknowledged that this would be a form of continuing to use "supply and demand" in a classless society, and he argued that this is okay, because eliminating class rule also eliminates the oppressive characteristic of using measurements of "supply and demand." [Reference: the pamphlet Fifteen Questions about Socialism (http://www.slp.org/pdf/de_leon/ddlother/fif_ques.pdf)]

[mikelepore]

The solution likes in reorganizing the jobs so that each job involves both drudge work and skilled work. This is going to be necessary for people to have the expertise and knowledge to participate effectively in planning and decision-making in industries anyway. if someone spends all their time cleaning, when do they have the time to learn about engineering or financial planning?

So, for example, service planning on a transit system might be a task that some bus drivers do when not driving buses. Those who do this spend less time driving buses. Just an example.

Along these lines, I heard Michael Albert the parecon guy give a speech where he made an interesting point. He said, if the highly trained staff in a hospital would just take a minute per day to empty their own wastepaper baskets, now we wouldn't need to have one human being who must go through life without ever being called upon to think and just empties everyone else's wastepaper backets.

These sorts of change are important, but there are limits to how far they can go. The need for specialization will only get worse. If someone has studied for ten years just to get competent in the area of Dirac's mathematical technique for particle physics, the most efficient use of their time would be to let them concentrate on doing particle physics. This attention to efficiency can be flexible up to a point.

[mikelepore]

Yeah, I have to second Zeekloid's question here -- while your response, Mike, is one of the more well-reasoned approaches to this topic that I've seen, I think what we're still missing here is some sense of labor-hours-going-forward, or an hours-for-material exchange ratio. I've already put forth my own ideas on this, below, so I won't repeat them, but if you could address this point I'd appreciate it. (Are you suggesting an hours-for-hours trading off of some sort, with a ratio applied? If so then the simplest, easiest kind of work could serve as a "baseline" labor-hour for all others to be compared to, with a derivative "baseline" of base labor hours as an across-the-board societal expectation.)

To add to what I wrote to Zeekloid earlier today... Yes, I imagine the easiest kind of work as the baseline, but not the easiest work in terms of skill -- I mean easiest in terms of whatever would tend to attract too many volunteers if something isn't done to fix that.

To call one or the other the baseline in the sense of "1 hour work credit" is somewhat of a mathematical fiction. If easy work pays 1 and hard work pays 2.5, that's the same as if the easy work pays 0.4 and the hard work pays 1. They are the same because, due to the social deductions, a nominal label of 1 isn't really 1 anyway. Due to the deductions, it already became impossible to make the easiest kind of expression, "It takes x hours to make the article, so if you work x hours then you can acquire the article." The moment we make anything free, such as education and medicine, and as a result of having general administration, we have already lost the ability to make such a simple expression. Now the nominal credit is an abstract number. My own preference would be to use the number 1 for most jobs, and then multiply a factor greater than 1 in exceptional cases. With such a use of the number 1, that would conceal the social deductions as well as concealling the hard work bonuses.

I like your phrase "an hours-for-material exchange ratio." This concept of having such a ratio might not make sense to the novice readers unless they ponder the fact that products incur TIME as they go through manufacturing.

I had an eye-opener years ago when I worked as an engineer in a semiconductor plant. One of my assignments was to help write the software that tabulated the processing time incurred by every part number product. For every unit of every part number, the computer records that the part has spent so many minutes and seconds in photolithography, so many minutes and seconds in ion implant, so many minutes and seconds in acid etching, etc. Using an elementary calculation, the program assigns each item a cost of production in terms of processing time. (The time incurred previously in the incoming intermediate products, such as raw materials and energy, must also be added.)

Of course, this being capitalism, the company performed an additional step of translating that unit cost in terms of processing time into unit cost in terms of dollars. Such a final translation is given by the fact that running each room in the plant costs a known number of dollars. A classless society will not require that final translation into dollars. The product label in terms of processing time contains all the necessary information.

[Crusade]

The solution likes in reorganizing the jobs so that each job involves both drudge work and skilled work. This is going to be necessary for people to have the expertise and knowledge to participate effectively in planning and decision-making in industries anyway. if someone spends all their time cleaning, when do they have the time to learn about engineering or financial planning?

So, for example, service planning on a transit system might be a task that some bus drivers do when not driving buses. Those who do this spend less time driving buses. Just an example.

Syndicat 2012

[ckaihatsu]

If people adopt a system to decide judgmentally, that means many people have an opinion in which they view some jobs as atypically strenuous, hazardous, or other measures. Then some democratic process would turn this judgement into a guideline that gets written down somewhere.


Yeah! This general approach is congruent with the one that I developed and advocate -- the survey-based index of hazard/difficulty multipliers for all work roles, localized [post #3].





The other way is to let a formula decide impersonally. A computer program detects and reports that we have a shortage of bus drivers. [...] It would be possible for the program automatically to enact a five percent bonus in income for bus drivers, possibly for a trial period, post a notice about that change on a public forum, and report again in three months whether the shortage has been affected.


There's no reason why this has to be either-or -- I'd support this second component as an *additional* mechanism to respond faster and more flexibly to *short-term* fluctuations in the work roles realm.

My proviso, though, is that I *don't* support an hours-for-material method of exchange as a priority. The model I developed separates *all* distributions of materials, or *supply*, from the post-capitalist administration of the same, or (mass) *demand*. With this system revisions for the multiplier rates for proposed work roles would have to be intentionally (re-)introduced as political demand items, at various priority levels. In practice this wouldn't have to be onerous, especially in our present state of technology -- it could be as simple as using a scroll wheel on a mouse to adjust the position of a slider on the screen to indicate one's preferred cut-off limit on a particular work role's multiplier rate, for a particular policy proposal that's under active mass consideration.

One's (numerical) political position on the provision of certain multiplier rates for *specific* production run- and project-based work roles, within *certain* policy package proposals under widespread consideration, would be aggregated together with everyone else's input on the same from the locality(-ies) participating, from those who have chosen to participate. These aggregated figures would then be published so that everyone would get a sense of what the collective *numerical* support is for a particular proposal, in terms of requisitioning specific *material* labor hours for particular work roles specified by that policy proposal [post #29].

This process would be an *ongoing* thing, iterated daily or in realtime, so that mass demand is represented *directly* -- not over politically representative positions, but over *actual* proposed policy packages that use collectivized assets and resources and require labor.

By eliminating *not only* the abstraction of labor effort into capitalist-controlled currency, but *also* eliminating the abstraction of labor hours into material recompense we can arrive at a model that *most accurately* reflects the ideals of communism. The model I advocate rewards labor effort with future labor *requisitioning* / *organizing* power, through the use of labor credits for the same, *separate* from individual consumer consumption, mass (fulfillment) demands, supply of materials (collectivized assets and resources), and collective policy-making.

(In this way one would *always* have recourse to individually proportionate, recognized political demands -- as for the basics of life and livelihood -- no matter what one's work history or work status happened to be.)





Due to the deductions, it already became impossible to make the easiest kind of expression, "It takes x hours to make the article, so if you work x hours then you can acquire the article." The moment we make anything free, such as education and medicine, and as a result of having general administration, we have already lost the ability to make such a simple expression.


This is going to be an *unavoidable* problem, though, because it's dependent on conditions of relative abundance or scarcity. Materials in relative abundance, like breathable air, are increasingly untenable to commodify, or to "commodify" into a labor-hours-based index of material recompense.





I like your phrase "an hours-for-material exchange ratio." This concept of having such a ratio might not make sense to the novice readers unless they ponder the fact that products incur TIME as they go through manufacturing.


I find the approach of attempting to abstract labor hours directly into material recompense to be too unwieldy, problematic, and un-communistic to be taken under serious consideration. Even *you*'ve equivocated on this approach, because of the factor of social deductions, here:





Due to the deductions, it already became impossible to make the easiest kind of expression, "It takes x hours to make the article, so if you work x hours then you can acquire the article."


I would add *another*, related category to this -- that being the process of building up *infrastructure*. It rapidly becomes difficult to quantify what *fraction* of someone's past labor for the construction of a light rail system, for example, is being used when someone boards a train for an impromptu leisurely trip, many years after its construction.

[ckaihatsu]

( On the 'central government' subtopic of this thread I'd just like to put this down, for the record: )


Vanguardism [RevLeft]

http://tinyurl.com/y45h5vx