Marxism and planned economy

[Argument]

When people hear Marxism, or communism, they usually think about a planned economy, run by the state. Is this true? Is this what Marx wanted, and what marxist strive for? A planned economy, where the state owns the factories, and where supply and demand is removed in favor of the state determination the prices? Or is this just bourgeoisie propaganda, in an attempt to smear Marxism?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

How does that "smear" Marxism apart from the fact that it is a simplistic and strange way of putting it? There are many ways in which a planned economy can be arranged. Yes, Marx argued in favour of a planned economy. Planning can be a lot more "democratic" than capitalism and "supply and demand" which you seem to be in favour of? Planning can even be decentralised. Prices are determined by the planning organisation, whichever shape it might take. As to "run by the state" and "owned by the state", those are rather simple ways of putting it-

Planning is simply replacing the anarchy of the market with the conscious strivings of an organised plan, which can be formulated independently by workers committees in factories given sufficient information regarding the needs of the community, just to name one example of decentralised planning.

[Argument]

Planning can be a lot more "democratic" than capitalism and "supply and demand" which you seem to be in favour of?I am in favor of mutualism, anti-capitalist free market socialism. More about my beliefs about the free market here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/free-trade-t134422/index.html


Planning can even be decentralised. Prices are determined by the planning organisation, whichever shape it might take.How are they to know how high the prices should be, if they don't use supply and demand?

[Zanthorus]

When people hear Marxism, or communism, they usually think about a planned economy, run by the state. Is this true? Is this what Marx wanted, and what marxist strive for? A planned economy, where the state owns the factories, and where supply and demand is removed in favor of the state determination the prices? Or is this just bourgeoisie propaganda, in an attempt to smear Marxism?

Why don't we ask Mr Marx himself :)


The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.


When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.

[vyborg]

free market socialism? what about a vegan tiger?

[Zanthorus]

I am in favor of mutualism, anti-capitalist free market socialism. More about my beliefs about the free market here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/free-trade-t134422/index.html

Not everyone on here agrees that simply replacing corporations with co-operatives is enough for your society to be labelled "socialist". First of all most mutualists are against the outright banning of capitalist enterprise, they just think that co-operatives would be more likely to thrive in a free-market. Secondly there's still a labour market with people being bought and sold, only now it's being done by groups of workers intead of capitalists.


How are they to know how high the prices should be, if they don't use supply and demand?

The problem with supply and demand is that it's a total abstraction. There are thousands of differing possible equilibrium prices for any given good depending on what the distribution of income is (Because "demand" isn't actual demand for goods, it's the amount of money people are willing to pay for goods. And "supply" isn't the actual amount of goods, it's how many different suppliers there are to compete with each other) in your society. And income distribution in turn only reflects the relative power of social classes. The distribution mechanism of capitalism is not some mystical eternal principle, like the slave societies of antiquity and feudal aristocracies that preceded it the distribution of goods is based on the power structures of society. Distribution in communism will also be based on power structures.

[Argument]

Not everyone on here agrees that simply replacing corporations with co-operatives is enough for your society to be labelled "socialist".Tucker said that he was an anarcho-socialist, and Proudhon certainly thought he was a socialist. Do you mean that these people weren't socialists?


First of all most mutualists are against the outright banning of capitalist enterprise, they just think that co-operatives would be more likely to thrive in a free-market.True. I would say all anarchists, including anarcho-communists, are against banning capitalism outright. Then again, why would people want to live in a capitalist society when they can live in, say, an anarcho-communist society, or perhaps a mutualist, anarcho-collectivist or anarcho-syndicalist society?


Secondly there's still a labour market with people being bought and sold, only now it's being done by groups of workers intead of capitalists.Wage slavery and wage labor is not the same thing, though. Wage slavery will, of course, be abolished in a mutualist society. Why would you sell yourself as a slave when you easily can be free, start your own personal company, or perhaps join a workers' cooperative? Also, anarcho-collectivism also have wage labor, would you argue that anarcho-collectivism is non-socialistic?


The problem with supply and demand is that it's a total abstraction.I see. Interesting argument.

[Zanthorus]

Tucker said that he was an anarcho-socialist, and Proudhon certainly thought he was a socialist. Do you mean that these people weren't socialists?

I mean that it's still up for debate. I think part of the problem is that we don't agree on what capitalism is as evidenced by...


Wage slavery and wage labor is not the same thing, though. Wage slavery will, of course, be abolished in a mutualist society. Why would you sell yourself as a slave when you easily can be free, start your own personal company, or perhaps join a workers' cooperative? Also, anarcho-collectivism also have wage labor, would you argue that anarcho-collectivism is non-socialistic?

Ok, first point - "wage-labour" is not simply labour for which you are enumerated. Wages are "...the amount of money which the capitalist pays for a certain period of work or for a certain amount of work," (Marx, Wage Labour and Capital) and wage-labour is working for wages, in other words, working for the benefit of a capitalist. Anarcho-collectivism has renumeration for work done but this is not merely a certain amount of money paid by the capitalist to the labourer equal to the value of labour-power but a recognition that the person has contributed X amount of goods to the total social product and is entitled to X amount of goods back from society.

The thing about co-operatives is that a lot of the time the capital they are using is borrowed capital. Although the workers have control over the production process the capitalist still demands a return on the capital he has contributed. This is why co-operative schemes are sometimes referred to as "self-managed exploitation". The worker is managing his own exploitation by the capitalist.

If mutualism were ever to come about this scheme of renting capital from capitalists, essentially merely pushing the capitalists into the background, would likely become the dominant one because contrary to what you seem to think you cannot just "start your own personal company" and then become a rich entrepeur or whatever. First of all you need startup capital. Yet workers consume most if not all of the wages given to them by capitalists by buying means of subsistence. So you need to take out a loan from a bank (Here we've already got financial capitalists involved in your free market "anti-capitalism"). Then of course you need to find a market in which you have an opportunity to be competitive and make money. Yet the perfect market conditions in which anyone can enter and make a profit at will almost never exist in reality apart from in incredibly new markets in things like abundant natural resources which can be dug up by any old idiot.

Now lets imagine that some workers get together and decide to form their own co-operative. The first thing they need is startup capital so they go to the banks and borrow a loan from the financial capitalists. We'll assume for the sake of argument that they find a market that they can compete in and be successful. Now they need some means of production and raw materials so they can begin selling to make some profit. In lots of minor unimportant markets they can easily buy these with the loan they got at the start and then go off and start making stuff for the market. However in capital intensive industries with high overhead costs (That is, most of the ones that produce the really important goods we use everyday like computers, cars, refridgerators and what have you) they won't have a chance in hell unless they're willing to put themselves into debt for the next trillion years. [EDIT: Also in a lot of industries which aren't very capital intensive like say, shoe making, advertising people's general preference for what they're used to and can trust tends to lead to the success of large companies which can afford to spend lots of money on advertising campaigns. If the workers want to compete with these types of cultural monopoly then they need lots of advertising revenue which again, they aren't going to be able to get fromt he bank unless they put themselves into heaps of debt. I think in those situations the most likely outcome is the advertising companies wanting a percentage of the profit in return for running ad campaigns. So again we've got capitalists entering into the picture and extracting surplus-value from the workers.] If they're smart entrepeneurs then what will almost inevitably happen is that they'll end up having to rent out capital from an already succesful capitalist and pay him a certain amount of return (profit). So we see that even in the realm of industry, industrial capitalists still exist in free-market socialism. They're just pushed into the background while the workers manage their own exploitation.

And the final point, even if the workers do own the capital in the industry and retain all the profits for themselves they can actually become capitalists themselves by hiring out temporary employees who aren't officially part of the co-operative and hence aren't entitled to a share in any of the profits as happens in many real world co-operatives (Mondragon does this for example).


True. I would say all anarchists, including anarcho-communists, are against banning capitalism outright. Then again, why would people want to live in a capitalist society when they can live in, say, an anarcho-communist society, or perhaps a mutualist, anarcho-collectivist or anarcho-syndicalist society?

Why would you want to live in somalia when you can come and live in a nice western country? Because it's not that simple, that's why.

If I'm working for a capitalist seventeen hours a day in order to pay off my debts I can't exactly just pack up and leave for the communist society down the road. The capitalist would probably get his armed corporate thugs on me.

[Argument]

Your answer is interesting, Zanthorus, I will answer it later. I should tell you that in a mutualist society there banks would be run by the workers. I suggest that you check out Mutual Banks, they are run without profit. You can find more info here, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_%28economic_theory%29

I'll have to admit that economy is not my forte, though.

[Zanthorus]

Oh yeah, I've heard about those. I haven't read any detailed articles on them so I can't offer any opinions at the moment though.

Also a little advice: Wiki is very volatile and can change a lot. When you link to an article the bit relating to what you are saying might dissapear eventually and then when people come back to read these threads it gets confusing for them. When you link to a wiki article, go to "history" and click on the date of the last edit (the one that appears first in the list), to get a permanent link to the current version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mutualism_(economic_theory)&oldid=359016112

:)

[mikelepore]

When people hear Marxism, or communism, they usually think about a planned economy, run by the state. Is this true? Is this what Marx wanted, and what marxist strive for? A planned economy, where the state owns the factories, and where supply and demand is removed in favor of the state determination the prices? Or is this just bourgeoisie propaganda, in an attempt to smear Marxism?

As usual, the ambiguous word "state" causes nothing but confusion. Marxism calls for central industrial management. But is that the same thing as the state? If the state is that department of society that handles purely legal matters, then there's no reason for industrial management, no matter how centralized, to be the same thing as the state. In other words, there's no reason to think that the public representatives who were given the task of deciding how many years in jail a person will get for committing assault or murder would also be the best available expert to be the manager of the manufacturing of canned beans or electronic circuits or airplane engines. The state exercises law making and law ennforcement power. Industrial management is merely industrial management. To use the same term for both social functions is a practice that has caused considerable confusion. Both of these functions need to be centralized, but also, hopefully, completely separated.

[BAM]

I am in favor of mutualism, anti-capitalist free market socialism.

That was part of Marx's critique of Proudhon, that he would seek to get rid of capitalism merely by a stricter adherence to capitalism's own inner principles (free competition, fair exchange, etc.)

[Hyacinth]

How are they to know how high the prices should be, if they don't use supply and demand?
And why does knowing the supply and demand require markets? There is no reason why such information cannot be gathered in a planned economy: we can directly gather information about consumption at point of requisition via the use of, say, barcode technology (something already commonly employed under capitalism, except it is done within firms to keep track of stock and sales).

[mikelepore]

And why does knowing the supply and demand require markets? There is no reason why such information cannot be gathered in a planned economy: we can directly gather information about consumption at point of requisition via the use of, say, barcode technology (something already commonly employed under capitalism, except it is done within firms to keep track of stock and sales).

You're quite right. Business today monitors the flow of goods past several points. In the store, they count the sales, they count the number brought from the warehouse and placed on shelves, and they count the number ordered from the manufacturer. The manufacturer counts the number shipped to stores, the number taken from the production line to the warehouse, and the number of new units started in the production line. Information about supply and demand is available from any and all of these counts. Nothing in the capitalist marketplace is necessary for industry to have and use this information.

[syndicat]

however, that only tells you which things people select among those on offer, not what they would prefer. for that you need a request mechanism, or a way for people to participate in the planning.

another problem with central planning is that it has no way to make use of or acquire the tacit knowledge that workers have about production. this is a reason why plans for production need to be made by workers themselves, not a central planning agency, in addition to the fact that worker management will be an illusion under central planning.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Ever since the invention of the beloved purchase order (with the end consumer equivalent being the catalogue), the argument for chaotic markets became significantly weakened.

[Hyacinth]

however, that only tells you which things people select among those on offer, not what they would prefer. for that you need a request mechanism, or a way for people to participate in the planning.

another problem with central planning is that it has no way to make use of or acquire the tacit knowledge that workers have about production. this is a reason why plans for production need to be made by workers themselves, not a central planning agency, in addition to the fact that worker management will be an illusion under central planning.
There are many means by which we can incorporate participatory mechanisms into a planned economy. Moreover, socialism isn't just a planned economy, but a democratically controlled one at that. I would suggest something along the lines of open-source planning to allow anyone interested to contribute ideas for new products, production methods, or any other suggestions. As well, there is no reason why a planned economy cannot accommodate custom made products as well in order to satisfy consumer demand for things that are not mass produced. There are many means by which consumer preferences, including for products not available immediately, can be gathered (participatory, anticipatory; democratic, demarchic; etc.).

What is sometimes called 'central planning' often gets a bad reputation because it is mistakenly equated with placing in the hands of a bureaucratic elite the power to made decisions about production and distribution. The role that planners at a regional or national level would serve is ones of coordinators, or at least some mechanism for coordinating all economic activity is necessary. I would imagine that once a planned economy is up and running such things would be largely automated, with say requisitions for certain resources or capital from one factory on one side of a nation would be immediately communicated via the Internet to the relevant suppliers, and national figures of stock of said items would be automatically adjusted.

One way to ensure that administrators do not gain too much influence is to have all administrative bodies function on demarchic principles; that is, by having their members be selected at random from a relevant sample population. For example, a transport committee could consist of transport workers, technical experts, commuters, and whatever other relevant parties there are so as to ensure that the views of all relevant parties involved in the planning, production, and consumption of some good or service have a voice in its administration.

And worker's control is not threatened by such a system insofar as the role of administrative bodies would be purely advisory: they would exist in order to provide recommendations. They would not be a government or a state in the existing sense of the term, as they would lack the power to enforce their recommendations. It would at the end of the day be up to workers whether or not they wish to abide by the recommendations of said bodies. It is at this level that you can have the tacit knowledge about production that workers have be incorporate into the planning process (in addition through other mechanisms, such as open-source planning), because if an administrative body proposes some course of action that workers know to be inadvisable they can simply ignore it and tell the administrative body to go back to the drawing board.

[Glenn Beck]

How are they to know how high the prices should be, if they don't use supply and demand?

You're begging the question. You might as well be asking how their markets work if they don't have markets.

[mikelepore]

however, that only tells you which things people select among those on offer, not what they would prefer. for that you need a request mechanism, or a way for people to participate in the planning.

Agreed. My last post was limited to discussing selection of things that already exist.


another problem with central planning is that it has no way to make use of or acquire the tacit knowledge that workers have about production. this is a reason why plans for production need to be made by workers themselves, not a central planning agency, in addition to the fact that worker management will be an illusion under central planning.

I would call "the workers themselves" the FORM that "central planning" takes on. After all, when "the workers themselves" take on any task, they must call for a wide variety of resources from a wide variety of locations to converge upon them to be mixed into their single application. Suppose the workers build a chair. Into the chair goes wood from Casablanca that has been cut with blades from Caracas, nails from Montreal that have been made with iron from Reykjavik, and paint from Barcelona that has been made from chemicals from Madagascar. It's only a chair and the entire human race has built it.

[Agnapostate]

I'll have to admit that economy is not my forte, though.

Mutualists, and market socialists in general, tend to be more economically informed than anti-market socialists. It's simply the phenomenon of additional thought and consideration being a necessary condition of deviation from norms. It's the reason why any of us could probably defeat the average proponent of capitalism in a debate, but also the reason why the average Misesian or white supremacist could defeat the average liberal in a debate. Specialized knowledge and ideology equips one with the capacity to anticipate and (seemingly) refute typical criticisms.

I promote anarchist communism, which is deviant from mainstream political advocacy, but is not a deviant tendency in anarchist or even socialist circles themselves. It's very easy for a young idealistic fan of the punk scene to declare himself an anarchist, as the stereotype goes, as it is for young idealistic college students to declare themselves any sort of socialists. Market socialism is relatively obscure even among socialists, with its philosophical nature more rightist than forms of socialism that emphasize non-market planning. Its proponents have to be prepared to anticipate casual criticisms of more leftist socialists who challenge their credentials, and have usually devoted heavy study to their field, which is why David Schweickart, Jaroslav Vanek, David Ellerman, Theodore Burczak, Kevin Carson, etc., are all market socialists.

[Hyacinth]

Market socialism is relatively obscure even among socialists, with its philosophical nature more rightist than forms of socialism that emphasize non-market planning.
I'm not sure where you're getting this from, but market socialism (i.e., an economic system where the means of production are publicly owned, managed, and administered and the market is utilized to distribute resources and economic output) was more or less the norm in all the so-called 'real socialist' states in the 20th century. Not necessarily because of any ideological commitment to markets, but rather out of necessity in that a planned economy was simply technically impossible to implement for much of the 20th century.

Also, it often tends to be the case that leftists in general are rather ill-informed about economics, insofar as they take it for-granted that a socialist economy will function without worrying about the details of how—but, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

[Agnapostate]

I'm not sure where you're getting this from, but market socialism (i.e., an economic system where the means of production are publicly owned, managed, and administered and the market is utilized to distribute resources and economic output) was more or less the norm in all the so-called 'real socialist' states in the 20th century. Not necessarily because of any ideological commitment to markets, but rather out of necessity in that a planned economy was simply technically impossible to implement for much of the 20th century.

I'm referring to ideology, not the corrupted aims of state socialists. I'd recognize only one market socialist (and Marxist) state, however: Yugoslavia. The other "socialist states" were more fundamentally reliant on central planning, which produced admittedly impressive economic growth and efficiency in the USSR for several decades, but ultimately atrophied due to the increasing education and human capital accumulation of the population conflicting with the limited sovereignty that the authoritarian nature of central planning provided.


Also, it often tends to be the case that leftists in general are rather ill-informed about economics, insofar as they take it for-granted that a socialist economy will function without worrying about the details of how—but, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

That's probably going a bit far. Though declared socialists certainly constitute a small minority in the economics discipline, Marxism has repercussions for all of political economy, and Marxist and institutionalist approaches constitute the principal challenge to the neoclassical paradigm in modern labor economics. Socialist radicals form a powerful heterodox contingency.

[anticap]

Tucker said that he was an anarcho-socialist, and Proudhon certainly thought he was a socialist. Do you mean that these people weren't socialists?

All anarchists are socialists by definition. Any non-socialist calling himself an anarchist is mistaken as to what either anarchism or socialism are. Terms such as "anarcho-socialist" are redundant; but worse, they allow so-called "anarcho-capitalists" [sic] and their ilk into a conversation where they have no business speaking.

That said, simply calling oneself a socialist doesn't make it so.


I would say all anarchists, including anarcho-communists, are against banning capitalism outright.

I wouldn't say that. Capitalism constitutes a crime against humanity. Banning it is logically no different from banning murder (i.e., establishing consequences for perpetrators and holding them accountable), which anarchists will certainly do.


Then again, why would people want to live in a capitalist society when they can live in, say, an anarcho-communist society, or perhaps a mutualist, anarcho-collectivist or anarcho-syndicalist society?

Indeed, why? But then, people didn't (and don't) choose capitalism -- it was (and is) imposed on them. There is nothing contra-anarchist about defending against such imposition.

P.S. What is an "anarcho-syndicalist society"? Do you know what anarcho-syndicalism is?


Wage slavery and wage labor is not the same thing, though.

Perhaps not in the idiosyncratic vocabulary of mutualism, but in the world outside that bubble the term "wage slavery" grew out of a disdain for -- and recognition of the actual nature of -- wage labor. The former is simply a more blunt way of saying the latter.


Wage slavery will, of course, be abolished in a mutualist society. Why would you sell yourself as a slave

Assuming you use "slave" here to mean "chattel slave": that's not what "wage slavery" means (although they are in effect the same, at least in terms of human relations, differing only in duration, and in the fact that the latter is contract-consecrated; and that's what was so abhorrent to opponents of wage labor from the beginning). To be a wage slave is to legally sell yourself daily into slavery; it's almost akin to being a prisoner who gets to go home on furlough on the weekend.


start your own personal company

Unless we abolish private ownership of the means of production (which seems to be precluded by your suggestion), as well as wage labor (which you seem to support), then exploitation will persist....


or perhaps join a workers' cooperative?

...co-ops may abolish exploitation internally, but they still most go out onto the market in search of a slice of the profit pie, which will be extracted from exploited workers elsewhere.

The only way your idealized conception could work as portrayed would be in a market consisting of nothing but co-ops and individual proprietors. But that's not socialism, despite the fact that the workers would control the means of production. Socialism entails the society-wide shared-utilization of resources. The term "market socialism" is an oxymoron: the market implies an unequal distribution of resources.


Also, anarcho-collectivism also have wage labor, would you argue that anarcho-collectivism is non-socialistic?

The collectivists advocate a system utilizing labor notes, out of what they feel is a temporary necessity; but they recognize "to each according to need" as an eventual and inevitable goal. This temporary system hardly qualifies as "wage labor," though I don't favor it.

P.S. The term "socialistic" is essentially meaningless. It's most often used by anti-socialists as an attempt to associate something with the bogeyman of socialism when the facts show that it has nothing to do with the conditions that actually constitute socialism. So for example, so-called "mixed economies" [sic] are called "socialistic"; yet one could just as easily call them "capitalistic." Neither makes a lick of sense: such economies are capitalist, through-and-through; they merely include welfare provisions, which is not an aspect of socialism since a socialist society will have no need of such provisions (everyone will get what they need from the system by virtue of its nature). I understand that you weren't using it this way; I just wanted to mention it.

[ckaihatsu]

Planning can be a lot more "democratic" than capitalism and "supply and demand" which you seem to be in favour of?


Collective, direct-to-production economic planning *is* more democratic than capitalism and its reliance on the "invisible hand" -- the go-between of capital.

I've come to view 'supply' and 'demand' as generic universal constants -- unfortunately these days the terms have a capitalist coloration due to the social practice of the market mechanism. 'Supply', in generic material terms, simply means whatever materials -- built-up assets and natural and/or manufactured resources -- are available to production and consumption. 'Demand', in generic material terms, simply means whatever it is that people need and want that they cannot readily provide to themselves. In between generic 'supply' and 'demand' comes the entirety of economics and politics.

[ckaihatsu]

Planning can even be decentralised.


I don't think planning can be decentralized, unless it's necessarily done in an aggregative, bottom-up kind of way so that larger overall patterns can be discerned -- otherwise it's an inherent contradiction of terms around the variable of scale and the market mechanism would re-assert itself to provide some kind of interface from local to large-scale.





Prices are determined by the planning organisation, whichever shape it might take.


'Pricing' connotes a market mechanism. Otherwise, if determined by a central planning authority it will suffer from Stalinistic or existential problems wherein its basis of valuation, particularly for more experimental- or progress-oriented endeavors, will become increasingly difficult to define.

[ckaihatsu]

however, that only tells you which things people select among those on offer, not what they would prefer. for that you need a request mechanism, or a way for people to participate in the planning.


Yes.





another problem with central planning is that it has no way to make use of or acquire the tacit knowledge that workers have about production.


This is a real stretch, bordering on workerist mystification. Either the central planning administration enjoys the support and cooperation of the ground-level workers' collectives, or it doesn't.

[ckaihatsu]

this is a reason why plans for production need to be made by workers themselves, not a central planning agency, in addition to the fact that worker management will be an illusion under central planning.


I can appreciate this point, and I think *everyone* should appreciate this point -- it's the crux of working class independence and worker sovereignty over their own labor. While the larger population's human-needs 'demand' should determine general production policy, the *details* of production itself *must* be reserved to the workers themselves.

I think this is doable with a central planning administration, if done in this way.

[ckaihatsu]

I would suggest something along the lines of open-source planning to allow anyone interested to contribute ideas for new products, production methods, or any other suggestions.


If every factory / productive center had its own Wikipedia-style page then people could simply discuss ideas about how it could be collectively run, and what it could produce. Such discussions could be generalized from several factories in an area to better coordinate production across the larger area, and each factory / productive center could have a *separate* set of discussions by the respective groups of *workers only* to set actual work schedules, based on the 'demand' discussions.

[ckaihatsu]

---




And worker's control is not threatened by such a system insofar as the role of administrative bodies would be purely advisory: they would exist in order to provide recommendations. They would not be a government or a state in the existing sense of the term, as they would lack the power to enforce their recommendations. It would at the end of the day be up to workers whether or not they wish to abide by the recommendations of said bodies. It is at this level that you can have the tacit knowledge about production that workers have be incorporate into the planning process (in addition through other mechanisms, such as open-source planning), because if an administrative body proposes some course of action that workers know to be inadvisable they can simply ignore it and tell the administrative body to go back to the drawing board.

[ckaihatsu]

Our present-day databases can easily do a mechanical sort of incoming demands and requests from a local area. A formal administrative or oversight body is *not needed* whatsoever anymore when the Internet is available to socially network the bottom-up human-needs 'demand' with the existing top-down productive infrastructure, or 'supply'. As long as everything remains posted out in the open for public scrutiny then workers could do the rest, enabling direct distribution from factory production to consumers without any further subservience to a capital-controlling elite.

[Hyacinth]

I'm referring to ideology, not the corrupted aims of state socialists. I'd recognize only one market socialist (and Marxist) state, however: Yugoslavia. The other "socialist states" were more fundamentally reliant on central planning, which produced admittedly impressive economic growth and efficiency in the USSR for several decades, but ultimately atrophied due to the increasing education and human capital accumulation of the population conflicting with the limited sovereignty that the authoritarian nature of central planning provided.
Certainly the Yugoslav economy relied more upon market mechanisms than the state-capitalist economies of the Eastern Bloc, but the state-capitalist economies were still dependent upon market mechanisms in a way that is eschewed by contemporary proponents of socialist planned economies.

I think we need to distinguish between the sort of state-capitalist economies which called themselves 'socialist', which have been called 'centrally planned economies', from the contemporary proposals for a socialist (and hence democratic) planned economy. For one, no one is in favor of Soviet-style state-capitalist: which is both unresponsive to preferences, as well as undemocratic.

[Hyacinth]

I don't think planning can be decentralized, unless it's necessarily done in an aggregative, bottom-up kind of way so that larger overall patterns can be discerned -- otherwise it's an inherent contradiction of terms around the variable of scale and the market mechanism would re-assert itself to provide some kind of interface from local to large-scale.
The employment of cybernetic mechanisms in the regulation and coordination of economy activity makes the entire dispute over centralized vs. decentralized planning moot, if not entirely inapplicable. In that under a planned economy employing such cybernetic mechanisms it isn't as though information flow and directives flow only one way, from the central to the periphery, from the national to the local, etc. but rather it is a complicated interrelated web of information flow from various regions to other regions, from the specific to the general and vice versa, etc. A mechanism which allows for continuous real-time regulation and coordination of all economic activity based on inputs from all sources.

[Hyacinth]

Our present-day databases can easily do a mechanical sort of incoming demands and requests from a local area. A formal administrative or oversight body is *not needed* whatsoever anymore when the Internet is available to socially network the bottom-up human-needs 'demand' with the existing top-down productive infrastructure, or 'supply'. As long as everything remains posted out in the open for public scrutiny then workers could do the rest, enabling direct distribution from factory production to consumers without any further subservience to a capital-controlling elite.
If this is in response to what you quoted of what I said, I'm entirely in favor of this. At the same time—and I might be wrong about this—it strikes me that we still might want a dedicated administrative body consisting of individuals democratically or demarchically selected to work on specific tasks, in addition to the bottom-up grass roots approach that you online above. In that not everyone might be interested or have the time to participate in various discussions on social networks.

BTW, I don't envision these bodies having any substantive economic role to play, I would imagine most of the planning would be automated anyway, but rather the bodies would be there to oversee activities that are less economic: for example, school boards, city parks, etc. Say, a school board could consist of teachers, support staff, students, technical experts, etc. who could come together and make proposals for how an education system could be structured (subject to the approval of all interested parties, of course), and then the necessary goods could be requisitioned from the production centers.

In fact, these bodies could conceivably even consist of volunteers, we might not want any formal selection procedures existing for these bodies, and might allow them to form of an ad hoc basis. At the end of the day it will be up to the people in a post-revolutionary society to decide the specifics as to how exactly they want things organized, we're just speculating and offering possible suggestions of how it might be done.

[ckaihatsu]

complicated interrelated web of information flow


"stochastic" (-- ?)
"complex" (-- ?)





Say, a school board could consist of teachers, support staff, students, technical experts, etc. who could come together and make proposals for how an education system could be structured (subject to the approval of all interested parties, of course), and then the necessary goods could be requisitioned from the production centers.


Right -- this would be within the scope of how workers decide to organize themselves, as you note:





At the end of the day it will be up to the people in a post-revolutionary society to decide the specifics as to how exactly they want things organized

[ckaihatsu]

complicated interrelated web of information flow





"stochastic" (-- ?)
"complex" (-- ?)


To extend this meandering direction of thought, I've always pictured the *logistics* -- beyond the information flow, which could be thought of as ubiquitous -- of a collectivized cooperative economy to be akin to several concurrent expanding ripples in a pond. The ripples represent "pulses" of productive output from each locus out into the larger society. The edges of two expanding ripples touching could be thought of as points of *transfer* from one productive center to another -- linkages in a supply chain. (Since all production would be pre-planned there would not have to be any significant waste, pictured as parts of the ripple's perimeter that radiated out to infinity.)

[ckaihatsu]

Realistically the pond might be better thought of as having the viscosity of *broth*, meaning that "waves" of supplies are physically / materially limited in their geographical radii of outreach, due to logistical *costs* (of transportation, etc.). In practice perhaps this highly stochastic web of logistical interconnections might simply use a communications overlay that mirrors their radii of *physical* outreach -- limited-range wi-fi "clouds" that extend out to communicate current inventories and capacities with their productive-capacity neighbors, and no further.

[ComradeOm]

Anyone who thinks that is is possible to provide a planned economy without a central planning apparatus is simply deluding themselves. I can tell you from experience that the planning process in a single factory is a highly complex and time consuming (even with modern software) task that requires expertise and education. No amount of buzzwords can compensate for the fact that implementing material/production/economic planning on a national scale would be a Herculean task even with a dedicated planning apparatus

But then perhaps I'm just not up to date on the impact of ripple effects or cybernetic webs on stochastic social networks. If you do want to learn some useful buzzwords then do some reading on operations research. The linear programming techniques developed by the Soviet planners are particularly impressive

[ckaihatsu]

Anyone who thinks that is is possible to provide a planned economy without a central planning apparatus is simply deluding themselves.


I appreciate this point, and it's valid -- after all, there should be a generally obvious *base* of mass political support for the particular planned economy in the first place. This mass support would *equate* to a centralized apparatus anyway....

I don't mean to say that this crucial step could be sidestepped.

[ckaihatsu]

I think at *some* point past the regularization of a post-capitalist openly administrated liberated society there could be a more *diffuse* *technical* system of supply chain requisitioning, but it would have to be a logistical *improvement* over the relatively more-hands-on logistical operations planning that you're describing.

I've heard that the file sharing networks that run on the Internet's infrastructure use a more-diffuse model for data interchange -- maybe this kind of automation is along the lines of what I had in mind (but for non-electronic physical materials).