workers democratic councils possible?

[Land Of Upright Men]

Do you see council communism as a viable option, or do you think it is not strong enough to defend from imperialism.

I believe councils must be formed, and instead of a military or police force, Militias, consisting of the entire populace, split into regional militias.

This way, no power is absolute, the best way to minimize the chances of military or governmental usurpation of power is to instead, give the power to the people.

Millitias vote on who to make officers, they can replace an officer every two weeks etc, or keep thyem if performing well, same for councils in all workplaces.


My idea of post revolution, is Anarchy, with big horizontal organising and democratic society, which elects its own councils to run the production of goods, in the way the workers say.

Money should be abolished, and all forms of government that are not needed be done away with, not beefed up so we can square off with some capitalist nation, near bankrupt ourself, then sell the cause out for a not so free market.

agree ?

[superborys]

You have broken the cardinal law here on revleft: You're not Marxist! Oh noes!!!

Besides the insane Leninist/Maoist criticisms you receive, I am wholly in agreement with you, with the exception that these anarchic council-regions would be confederated to help unify them when the need arose.

Here on RevLeft, even though Anarchists make up about 40-60% of the people, they make up about 5% of the seriously outspoken and 'loud' members.

Also know that Council Communism has a huge overlap with anarchism. Tendencies are not as clear-cut as you would think, so don't worry about it.

[Land Of Upright Men]

thanks man, good answer :)

Could you talk more about this federated council theory, cheers.

[ContrarianLemming]

they make up about 5% of the seriously outspoken and 'loud' members.

whenever I'm in a big shitstorm debate favouring anarhcism i always seem to be alone in defending, anarchist need to learn to troll better.

[ContrarianLemming]

thanks man, good answer :)

Could you talk more about this federated council theory, cheers.

see the anarchist faq , it describes it very well, it's description is in keeping with council communism, so it works fine for you.

[Agnapostate]

You have broken the cardinal law here on revleft: You're not Marxist! Oh noes!!!...Also know that Council Communism has a huge overlap with anarchism. Tendencies are not as clear-cut as you would think, so don't worry about it.

Regardless of any overlap, council communism was conceived of and developed by avowed Marxists. The end result may have been similar ideological creatures, as you say.

[Kotze]

Money should be abolishedDo you mean that in the sense that everything will be organized as a barter economy or in the sense that the rules are changed in a way that you can't endlessly accumulate whatever tokens are used, can't use them to be a factory's dictator, can't pass them on to your offspring? I definitely do not want a barter system.

About confederational organizing: I think that everyone agrees that there is the threat of power abuse when things are centralized too much (even though there is quite some disagreement what too much is), the solution in the last couple of centuries has been, whether I look for answers by catholic social teaching or anarchists or elsewhere, a tree hierarchy. It happens all the time that someone reinvents these very indirect systems with delegates who vote for delegates who vote for delegates who vote for delegates who vote for delegates and the only new thing is the name, like Nested Councils™ or whatever.

When you have regions with clear-cut borders that have quite some autonomy and their own militias, there isn't much of a difference from having several countries, no? To curb the us-vs-them mentality you would need different rules, like councils and militias in a region having their share of people from adjacent regions.

[AK]

Do you mean that in the sense that everything will be organized as a barter economy or in the sense that the rules are changed in a way that you can't endlessly accumulate whatever tokens are used, can't use them to be a factory's dictator, can't pass them on to your offspring? I definitely do not want a barter system.
Have you ever heard of a post-scarcity communist gift economy? Barter isn't the only non-monetary system.

[Kotze]

Just because some things between humans happen without contracts doesn't mean there aren't expectations attached. Giving gifts is a reciprocal process. It happens among humans who meet each other again and again and again and again. It's something that happens in a family, among friends, among neighbours. It's something that happens under any system, but exchanging barter and gifts is a niche thing in modern society and there's a cause for that.

In a tribe without money stuff is still rationed. If there aren't many different types of goods and services and few people, they have a basic understanding of how much work goes into producing a thing and who did how much work, which is necessary when it comes to determining what a fair share and what reckless freeloading is. This doesn't scale. If there are many humans and many different goods accounting units are needed.

So all talk I have heard so far about "post-scarcity gift economy" has been handwaving. But maybe you have a different definition and a more concrete idea?

[AK]

I do not have the time or patience to answer your questions, but there are many threads on the gift economy that could help you out. Besides, a moneyless, non-barter economy for resources in abundance has been a goal of Marxism and anarchism since, well, forever.

[Kotze]

I do not have the time or patience to answer your questionsWave your hands in the air, wave it like you just don't care...

I've already read quite a bit here and elsewhere about barter and gifts and post-scarcity, nothing of that is plausible as the dominant mode of how a hi-tech society could be organized. Aside from things were reproduction costs are essentially 0 (text, software, music, movies) or your ability to consume has a strict physical limit (I can only be on 1 bus at a time), making it freely available for everybody is not an option. So much for post-scarcity. If you have scarcity, you need to be efficient. Barter is not. In the following I will talk about barter, I know you said gift economy, but gifts are not something completely different from barter, they are mostly made with expectations of reciprocity, they are intertemporal bartering without contracts, but with a heavy dose of tit-for-tat strategy.

To be fair, barter and gifts don't only happen between close friends. Person A has a friend B who has a friend C, A doesn't know C, yet it can happen that A can produce for C with B as an intermediary and vice versa. Even longer chains are possible, but it's slow and convoluted.

Maybe an online web of trust system with subjective evaluation could be used for neighbourhood bartering and for evaluating basically everything there is in the world. Here is the description.

You declare which people you trust and the system looks at how they rated other people and how those who got good ratings from them in turn rated other people etc. When you look at a user's rating you also see a little bar below it that indicates how indirect that evaluation is connected with you.

You also get options for fine-graining, so instead of giving a thumps up or thumbs down to Joe D. Toriyama the person, you can give a thumps up or thumbs down to Joe D. Toriyama's plumbing abilities and also use a finer rating scale (the thumbs are the minimum and maximum). While the default assumption of the system is that a person you rate highly also rates others in a way you trust, you can also rate their rating abilities separately, eg. you might trust Joe's restaurant ratings without Joe working in a restaurant.

A web of trust system can also allow people to have any number of pseudonyms without the system knowing which pseudonyms belong to whom or how many you have without that being any problem. Example: You trust equally Joe's and Kevin's hairdresser ratings and Kevin in turn indicates to trust the hairdresser ratings by Lars. The default setting of the system is that Lars, whoever that is, is merely a stand-in for Kevin. So if Kevin himself rates the hairdresser X, but not hairdresser Y, an opinion by Lars about hairdresser X has 0 weight for the ratings you see, only a rating by Lars about Y has a weight. If the situation changes in that Kevin now also claims to trust the hairdresser ratings of Molly and Norbert, the three accounts Lars, Molly, Norbert together act as 1 stand-in for Kevin, so their hairdresser ratings together now have the same weight as Lars alone before. So spamming is not a problem.

Such a system can reveal to you whether you are part of a group that should barter (eg. A wanting X and providing Y, B wanting Y and providing Z, C wanting Z and providing X). With such a system people can put up information about what they can do where and when and this could boost neighbourhood interactions like babysitting, piano lessons and what have you. Still, its usefulness would be quite limited. Contracts always have room for interpretation. Is an item of sufficient quality? To what extent does the failure of providing a service lie within the person who promised it? There is subjectivity, there is an arbitrariness in standards, yet we need standards that apply universally, so things fit together. Finding out whether a thing has a specific quality or whether a person has a specific expertise is sometimes really expensive. So you need centralized institutions for that. It's not great to be punished, but we can't do without rules and enforcement of these rules. Not now, not in a hundred years. Alice might be good at making party cakes and brain surgery. A barter/gift system can only be used well for one of these two activities.

[revolution inaction]

J
In a tribe without money stuff is still rationed.
whats wrong with rationing?
i personaly wouldn't call communism a gift economy because it sounds like individuals giving stuff to other individuals, but the way i see it is they people would produce things and perform necessary services for free and then, and these would be distributed/made available for free. and the would thing would be planed,not just left to what people felt like.

[Kotze]

whats wrong with rationing?The claim is not that rationing is wrong. The context of the quote you refer to is that societies without accounting units also take into account what you contribute to help determine what your fair share is and that their method of doing that (basically everybody observing everybody) doesn't scale. So whenever the quantity available is limited and what people would like to have outstrips that in a society of millions, there is need for using accounting units and price tags.
the way i see [communism] is they people would produce things and perform necessary services for free and then, and these would be distributed/made available for free.With very few exceptions (music) that's not a feasible way to organize things in the short run. Things might look very different in 500 years, but I doubt it.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

I would recommend the book Workers' Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society by Cornelius Castoriadis, its quite thin and easy to read.

[revolution inaction]

The claim is not that rationing is wrong. The context of the quote you refer to is that societies without accounting units also take into account what you contribute to help determine what your fair share is and that their method of doing that (basically everybody observing everybody) doesn't scale. So whenever the quantity available is limited and what people would like to have outstrips that in a society of millions, there is need for using accounting units and price tags.

i don't propose that we just observe each other, obviously that would be a part of it but i take it as given that we would record who worked, what at and how much they did, and also who took what.



With very few exceptions (music) that's not a feasible way to organize things in the short run. Things might look very different in 500 years, but I doubt it.
why not?