The case for central planning

[Kotze]

Hellooo, assholes. :D

My essay argues for something that is not usually argued for nowadays, not among conservatives, not among liberals, not even among the radical left — planning, and central planning at that. Here is an example.

Suppose there are several schools that have the same core curriculum but are different in the additional activities they offer. How should students be assigned to these schools?

The king of the country could decide in a completely arbitrary fashion who goes to which school.

Or you know what, we could use a decentralized process: Give each student a random preliminary assignment and then allow them to swap until a set date is reached and the assignments become final. In theory, if everybody was perfectly rational, this would end in an assignment that is efficient in some sense, a Pareto optimal situation.

What does Pareto optimal situation mean?
-It means there is no possible different distribution that would be a Pareto improvement.

And what's a Pareto improvement?
-A Pareto improvement is a change that doesn't make anybody less happy and at least one person more happy. Simulations with perfect market models lead to situations that are Pareto optimal.

So this doesn't actually happen in the real world?
-Well, it is claimed by market apologists that real market exchanges, despite problems with dishonest marketing and other shenanigans, tend to be Pareto improvements, hence they say that there is a tendency towards a Pareto optimal situation.

So the swapping proposal looks better than the proposal with the king. But I think there is a better proposal still: Every student gets a form to write down a ranking of the schools. All these lists are put into one big hat. We pull out the lists in a random order. Each student gets assigned to the school of the schools that aren't full yet that is ranked the highest on that student's list. This does not just have a tendency towards Pareto optimum like the swapping proposal, it directly delivers a Pareto optimal assignment.

Now haters from different ideological currents might have their objections:

1. Down with schools! Anarchyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!
-Thanks for completely missing the point of the example.

2. That proposal with the hat is central planning? I thought central planning always meant something like the proposal with the king, at least that's what I heard in school.
-Yes, the proposal with the hat is an instance of central planning. Your teachers lied. Maybe the first objection wasn't that bad. :-/

3. I'm not uncomfortable with some planning, but with centralizing all the data. Small is beautiful.
-If the students' lists in the example were handled by different institutions that all have their own share of slots at the schools and their own hat, the school assignment distribution could only be guaranteed to be Pareto optimal among students whose documents go into the same hat, not for the students as a whole. If you want to make the most of the data, centralize the computation.

4. I find that talk of Pareto this or that fishy. Can't that be used to justify very unequal distributions? One person has everything, everybody else has nothing, but the one with everything doesn't want to share. The situation is Pareto optimal!
-That's true. When people talk about Pareto efficiency in regard to mechanisms, there are two common meanings. One meaning is that the result of applying the mechanism is a situation that is Pareto optimal and that the mechanism has to arrive there with Pareto improvements. Demanding this is demanding a straitjacket on society. The other meaning of Pareto efficiency in regard to mechanisms is that applying the mechanism only has to result in a situation that is Pareto optimal. That's a more sensible thing to ask for. There are also other criteria, of course.

5. Planning doesn't work. You know, incentives?
-Planning isn't incompatible with payment schemes where people get more purchase power for working longer or performing particularly onerous tasks, if that's what you mean.

6. But planning doesn't work, because people are dishonest.
-I agree that getting input to be as truthful as possible is a challenge, and findings in the fields of game theory and psychology should be taken into account when designing data-gathering processes. Incidentally, for the example with the hat an egoist's best strategy is always honest input.

7. No planning can ever perfectly model the capitalist market!
-That is not the purpose of planning. I have no interest in administrating things with a mechanism that leads to massive inequality that cannot be explained away by differences in talent or effort, a mechanism that leads to speculative bubbles and mass unemployment.

8. I don't know how to counter your claims the best way, but I know that I enjoy my life under capitalism very much, so I have my doubts how broadly applicable the implications of your simplistic little story are. My dad is a successful entrepreneur, I'm a student of economics (and according to my professors a pretty good one, I might add) and I will soon- -HAVE A FATAL AUTOEROTIC ACCIDENT, hopefully. :)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
--Upton Sinclair

Feel free to copy this. :cool:

[Bud Struggle]

Hellooo, assholes. :D



You said something after this? :D

[Red Poplar]

-

[Red Poplar]

-

[Bud Struggle]

Damn it, Bud, I'm starting to get jealous of your sense of humour.

I'm the funny one. You could be the pretty one. :D

Let's start an "OI Union of RevLeft". Support each other's posts, call each other "Brother." Hell, it worked for Solidarity!

Malte: TEAR DOWN THIS FIREWALL!

[Red Poplar]

I'm the funny one. You could be the pretty one. :D

Let's strart an "OI Union of RevLeft". Support each other's posts, call each other "Brother." Hell, it worked for Solidarity!

Malte: TEAR DOWN THIS FIREWALL!

I wanted to found a group called "Red Poplar's fan club", but it seems like restricted members can't found groups. Or the mods realized on time that it would be the largest group on RevLeft, so they stopped me from founding it. :D

[Apoi_Viitor]

I didn't think leftists ever debated whether or not society necessitates centralization - because it most obviously does. I've always felt that the issue came around to being whether or not the process of centralization would be "top-down" or "bottom-up".

[ckaihatsu]

---





The case for central planning





I'll note here that I, myself, do *not* advocate any kind of *de*-centralized society. I've recently written here at RevLeft that the very *notion* of 'revolution' is a necessarily *centralized* political event, since, by definition, it takes place everywhere at more or less the same time. (Meaning that the forces of the bourgeoisie could fairly easily "sneak past" the revolution and defeat it if revolutionary forces weren't *coordinated* on a large-scale basis -- centralized.)





Regarding the top-down and bottom-up stuff, my position -- spelled out within the model at my blog entry -- is that the *general political culture* (of a post-capitalist society) will be able to handle most of the determining, or top-down, part of what should get done. Consider that we'd still be using the net, and would have local, regional, continental, and global media channels of journalism (TV, radio, newspapers, net, whatever) -- so that the politics of the day would be covered by journalists and could reflect back to us what the most prominent discussions happened to be. More-popular initiatives would enjoy widespread grassroots organizing drives, publicity campaigns, celebrity endorsements, debate sessions, news programs, documentaries, etc.

On the flipside -- bottom-up -- liberated laborers, by definition, could pick-and-choose what they would be most interested in using their fully discretionary time for, if anything. In this way the top-down and bottom-up aspects would be dialectical to each other, with an area of complexity in the middle. Not all proposed policy initiatives would enjoy planet-wide support, even if the appropriate liberated labor was available to do it. Or, conversely, some ideas might be wildly popular but would be untenable from the *labor* side of things.

Those plans that were both urgently needed by masses of people -- as for basic human living requirements -- and could be accomplished fairly easily -- providing local farming, building new housing, generating energy for electricity, etc. -- would have no problems finding both popular support *and* the liberated labor that would be sufficient to make it happen.

[Kotze]

More on the hat algorithm:

What I haven't described yet is how to deal with stated indifferences. For example, if a ranked list that is pulled out of the hat has as the equally highest-ranked still available schools A and B, you can't just randomly assign one of these two. Because if you randomly assigned the last slot in A to that person and another list pulled out after that one has A as its highest ranked school, this assignment would not be Pareto optimal. What is done instead is this: If Tom's list is pulled out with a set of several highest-ranked still available schools, you keep on assigning slots at these schools to subsequent lists that are not indifferent towards this set with the restriction that at least one slot in one of the schools from that set has to remain for Tom. This is applied recursively. Here is an example:

We have been pulling lists out of the hat for some time. At each of the schools A, B, and C there is only one slot still available.

We pull out Alice's list: A=B=C>...
We pull out Bobby's list: A=B>C>...
We pull out David's list: B>A>C>...

David gets B, Bobby gets A, Alice gets C.

A human doing this with hundreds of paper lists might take a couple of hours and probably there would also be problems with the legibility of some lists. But if people provide their lists over the internet a computer can do this in less than a second.

You don't have to provide a full ranking or any ranking at all, but you can do that if you want. The goal is to give people the maximum freedom and happiness within the constraints of the big picture.

So maybe this could do the best within the constraints of a big plan, but where do these constraints come from, a lone leader in a fortress who is sitting over that plan all day, twirling his moustache?
-The inputs from assignment processes like the one described as well as inputs from surveys could be reviewed by experts in the different fields who do the higher-level planning, without them having an obligation to respect these inputs in any way. But that's only one possibility. There is also the possibility of using the inputs in a very bottom-up way, directly modifying the higher-level planning. To come back to the example with the schools: How many slots there are at a school doesn't have to be rigidly fixed from above, the number can be allowed to expand or contract somewhat based on how popular the school is according to the input from the school assignment process, and so directly result in a quick allocation of some extra staff and budget, over time the number of slots at a popular school can increase a lot and result in adding a new outbuilding.

Imagine mechanisms similar to the one discribed used in several different instances, not only for slots at schools. In the new socialist society every kid will have the right to be part of a sports club that gets a budget provided by the public and the public will also fund every kid's right to take a vacation away from school and parents. :cool:

[ckaihatsu]

[17] Prioritization Chart

http://postimage.org/image/35hop84dg/

[Jimmie Higgins]

I didn't think leftists ever debated whether or not society necessitates centralization - because it most obviously does. I've always felt that the issue came around to being whether or not the process of centralization would be "top-down" or "bottom-up".I agree with this although there are some leftists who have a knee-jerk anti-centralization attitude whereas I think the question of centralization always has to be how you put it: how is it centralized, who has influence, on what basis is centralization done? Afterall capitalism has a tendency to centralize production and wealth but primarily in privately controlled manner and for the sole purpose of maximizing profits.

Kotze, I'm not sure what you are asking/describing. Are you talking about centralization within the current society, or post-capitalism/socialism?

My first reaction to the possible scenarios, I guess, makes me fall into this category:


1. Down with schools! Anarchyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!
-Thanks for completely missing the point of the example.:lol:

I think "socialist" education will have to be on a very different basis because capitalist public education is a class-system based on competition among students (individual tests, ranked scores, etc) and churning out new workers or professionals depending on the schools. So rather than teaching being done based on real learning, students must jump through different hoops and cross checkpoints on fairly arbitrary age-based requirements. As it is now, if you are 11 in California and can't answer a series of questions about "pioneer days" you are somehow "falling behind" as if learning local history is biologically requred by a certain age... or algebra or fractions for that matter. Almost any educator will tell you that students learn in different ways and at different paces, so treating students like a Model-T on an assembly line is no way to actually educate someone.

Since capitalist education is geared toward producing people fit for the capitalist system (education actually adds value to a worker's labor-time... the labor of the teacher enhances the value of the labor that can be done by the students) a socialist system would require a different kind of education altogether. For example, I think the point of education would be more to cater to people's self-motivated interests, not based on age-level, and geared towards helping people to become real thinking and self-directed participants in society. So while workers might decide that some required education time and some basic skills might be mandatory for the very young, beyond basic reading and math and so on, education could be more self-directed and ongoing throughout a person's life. This would enhance the experience for the student and be education from the "bottom-up" for induviduals.

On a larger-level, organizationally, schools should be run by teachers and students (and maybe parents for schools of younger kids) at the grassroots level with maybe elected representatives to meet in a more centralized regional body to discuss what resources are available and how to best use the resources to address the needs and wants of the workers/students at the local schools. If some schools were more favored by students or somehow had better facilities, then school councils at other schools would probably send their reps to regional decision-making bodies to argue for a better way to share the facilities or resources so that students at other schools have the same opportunities. Rather than schools fighting with each other and competing for top-down district-controlled resources, schools would want to work together and cooperate.

I think similar ways of organizing "centralism from below" could be applied to industries and community-planning.

[Widerstand]

I agree with this although there are some leftists who have a knee-jerk anti-centralization attitude whereas I think the question of centralization always has to be how you put it: how is it centralized, who has influence, on what basis is centralization done? Afterall capitalism has a tendency to centralize production and wealth but primarily in privately controlled manner and for the sole purpose of maximizing profits.
[...]

I think similar ways of organizing "centralism from below" could be applied to industries and community-planning.

There is no such thing as "centralism from below", how can it be "from below" if a small group makes decisions for all of society?

By all means, share with me this insight you have on the meaning of centralism, it vastly differs from the one I can find in any dictionary:


cen·tral·ism (sntr-lzm)
n.
Concentration of power and authority in a central organization, as in a political system.


centralism [ˈsɛntrəˌlɪzəm]
n
(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the principle or act of bringing something under central control; centralization


centralism
a system, especially in government, in which power and administration are concentrated in a central group or institution.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There is no such thing as "centralism from below", how can it be "from below" if a small group makes decisions for all of society?

By all means, share with me this insight you have on the meaning of centralism, it vastly differs from the one I can find in any dictionary:



Com-mu-nism
–noun

2. a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

Ut-oh, this is what the dictionary says about Communism, I guess I should throw in the towel because I don't want to fight for what that describes!

Ok, fine, this is a semantic issue then, I don't think centralization of production inherently means power rests within an eliete. Maybe this is just a specific term that I thought was more general, but what I am talking about when I say "centralization from below" is just organized coordination - people can vote for someone to represent their interests and fight for them in a centralized location - it would just be a means for organizing large industries or projects in a way that control comes from the workplace or community but allows large-scale coordination. I think a workplace and community can probably have direct voting on most things, but I doubt workers would want to have full direct democracy for all coordinating efforts across regions. We would still need central coordination of things, like how to make sure transportation was done according to the needs of workers - the point is that this central coordination has to be based out of power "from below" not some elite deciding things on behalf of people.

[ckaihatsu]

On a larger-level, organizationally, schools should be run by teachers and students (and maybe parents for schools of younger kids) at the grassroots level with maybe elected representatives to meet in a more centralized regional body to discuss what resources are available and how to best use the resources to address the needs and wants of the workers/students at the local schools. If some schools were more favored by students or somehow had better facilities, then school councils at other schools would probably send their reps to regional decision-making bodies to argue for a better way to share the facilities or resources so that students at other schools have the same opportunities. Rather than schools fighting with each other and competing for top-down district-controlled resources, schools would want to work together and cooperate.


I agree with this general description of a political economy.

On its implementation, I've come to a realization / position regarding delegative democracy -- that the actual delegate, or political personage (personification), is wholly unnecessary:





[In] this day and age of fluid digital-based communications, we may want to dispense with formalized representative personages altogether and just conceptualize a productive entity within a supply chain network as having 'external business' or 'external matters' to include in its regular routine of entity-collective co-administration among its participants.





I think similar ways of organizing "centralism from below" could be applied to industries and community-planning.





There is no such thing as "centralism from below", how can it be "from below" if a small group makes decisions for all of society?


*Centralization* should be favored, for the interests / benefits of organizational cohesion, accountability, and efficiency (non-redundancy, or avoiding waste from duplication of effort).

But centralization does not necessarily mean "centralization from above" or "centralization according to the whims of an elite small group", to address your concerns.

Jimmie Higgins has just provided a sketch of the 'bottom-up' process, and I have my description as well from post #8.

But, to be concise, the *answer* to your concerns can be summed up in one word: *policy*. Rather than seeing politics as *having* to reside in individual -- and possibly careerist -- personages, we should conceptualize a generalized, centralized co-administration as consisting of *policy* that has been developed and supported from below in a bottom-up way.

Attached are two illustrations -- please note the 'policy' component under the 'theory' component in the first one, and that -- given that time itself is a one-way flow -- the (aggregated) attentions given to political issues can be determined on an equitable basis by the use of *prioritization*, as seen in the second illustration.


Consciousness, A Material Definition

http://postimage.org/image/35t4i1jc4/


[17] Prioritization Chart

http://postimage.org/image/35hop84dg/

[Jimmie Higgins]

I agree with this general description of a political economy.

On its implementation, I've come to a realization / position regarding delegative democracy -- that the actual delegate, or political personage (personification), is wholly unnecessary:I'm totally open to that. I think when hundreds of thousands/millions of people are actually engaged in taking control over their own lives, they will develop many innovative new ways to deal with how to run society collectively and cooperatively that we can only guess at now (although I know from your posts that you have many ideas of how that can be implemented). I generally suggest delegates because that has happened in past revolutions and it's something that people today can grasp easily. But I'm not wedded to a particular form that workers make decisions as long as it really is class control over production and "the state". With modern technology (especially communication technology) a new revolutionary movement of the working class could probably accomplish a lot more coordination more easily than people in Portugal or Russia or whatnot could have back in the day.

Edit:

But, to be concise, the *answer* to your concerns can be summed up in one word: *policy*. Rather than seeing politics as *having* to reside in individual -- and possibly careerist -- personages, we should conceptualize a generalized, centralized co-administration as consisting of *policy* that has been developed and supported from below in a bottom-up way.I think this is an important point too. Political positions in democratic capitalism are designed to create a sense of democracy while maintaining a distance between the population and the actual rule of society. Obviously, such a thing would be useless for a ruling working class which would actually need efficient ways to coordinate the needs and desires and priorities of a whole bunch of people engaged in ruling and reshaping society.

[Widerstand]

Ok, fine, this is a semantic issue then, I don't think centralization of production inherently means power rests within an eliete.

Explain how a central organ making decisions to be imposed over the whole of society can be anything but power resting within that organ, which very much constitutes an elite?



Maybe this is just a specific term that I thought was more general, but what I am talking about when I say "centralization from below" is just organized coordination - people can vote for someone to represent their interests and fight for them in a centralized location -

But you do realize that coordination does not require centralization, right? A flock of birds is very much coordinated, yet not centralized at all. Neither are ants nor termites. Neither is the international airport network, the railroad system, the telephone cables, the US electricity lines, the internet, etc. Yet they are all very much coordinated (given, some more than others).

So when did anyone ever prove that abstruse claim that "coordination requires centralization?"


it would just be a means for organizing large industries or projects in a way that control comes from the workplace or community but allows large-scale coordination.

But that's exactly the point - in a centralized economy control DOES NOT come from the work places. Control cannot come from the work places in a centralized system, simply because the work places or communities are not central.



I think a workplace and community can probably have direct voting on most things, but I doubt workers would want to have full direct democracy for all coordinating efforts across regions. We would still need central coordination of things, like how to make sure transportation was done according to the needs of workers - the point is that this central coordination has to be based out of power "from below" not some elite deciding things on behalf of people.

Again you fail to address how a central organ that has power OVER people (if it hadn't it would be useless) fits into the rhetoric of "power from below."

[Jimmie Higgins]

Explain how a central organ making decisions to be imposed over the whole of society can be anything but power resting within that organ, which very much constitutes an elite?That's your fantasy, not anything I have described. If you have a very specific definition of "centralization" then fine, think "democratic coordination" where I describe "centralization from below".


But you do realize that coordination does not require centralization, right? A flock of birds is very much coordinated, yet not centralized at all.Yes and they don't consciously decide where to fly either. However, if I am taking a trip with a bunch of my friends, we coordinate it right? So we get all our information and ideas, bring them together (or centralize them) and decide together which route and method makes the most sense to everyone.


Neither are ants nor termites.Sure, they have a sort of genetic/chemical caste system... I think the revolutionary working class can do a little better than being drones following the chemical commands of their breeding queen.


Neither is the international airport network, the railroad system, the telephone cables, the US electricity lines, the internet, etc.Aside from the internet (though that will probably become less-so under capitalism and already has become less-so) these are all centralized on the basis of top-down bureaucratic decision-making (through government agencies or privite capitalist ones), not democratic bottom up decision making. If airports did not have some kind of centralized coordination, then planes would be trying to take-off and land on the same runways. The trick for workers is how to accomplish the same tasks (or better) than capitalism on a cooperative and democratic basis.


So when did anyone ever prove that abstruse claim that "coordination requires centralization?"When more than one person wants to do the same task, they must organize together or one person dictates to the other. I think centralization of many important tasks will be desired by workers for all the reasons that ckaihatsu listed: it's more efficient, less duplicated labor, etc.

People may decide that many things don't require centralization, but big tasks like making sure that planes don't crash into each-other, that materials are going to the places that require them for building roads or homes or whatnot require a broad coordinated effort - right now capitalists decide these things dictatorally and based on what will bring a return on profits. Workers will need to accomplish similar things but since they are the majority of society, they can not just privately do it (through individual companies) like capitalists and they can not do it from a bureaucratic top-down state like capitalists and state-capitalists, so I think the better option is through some kind of bottom-up decision making.


But that's exactly the point - in a centralized economy control DOES NOT come from the work places. Control cannot come from the work places in a centralized system, simply because the work places are not central.You have a strange fixation on the language but are not getting what I'm trying to say. Forget about the word and I'll try and explain myself more clearly.


Again you fail to address how a central organ that has power OVER people (if it hadn't it would be useless) fits into the rhetoric of "power from below."Any democratic decision is both from below but then has power "over people" if you want to get down to it, but this power is much different than some unelected unaccountable bureaucrat or private capitalist making decisions "over the people". Sure it's tyranny of the majority, but what we have known so far in class history has always been tyranny of the minority.

Think of it in concrete terms: ok, so a workplace makes cars and wants more steel to make more cars, you seem to think that they don't need to coordinate that with the companies who produce steel or rubber or parts or paint - so that group in the autoworker plant council gets to dictate to the steel mill workers how much they have to work? No! Once the auto-plant council votes that they do in fact want to build more cars and there is a use for them, then they will have to send someone to meet with reps of the steelworker council who also must base their decision on giving the extra steel based on what labor and materials they can spare (and in consideration of other worker councils who also want steel). So negotiations will have to be done just like today - but unlike today it must be done in a cooperative manner based on worker control over production. The alternative would be that the auto-workers would have to develop their own steel-making facilities, build all their own parts and so on. Centralism is efficient - it's only a tyranny when it is run by an unaccountable minority rather than a cooperative majority.

Maybe mutualism will work for some small-scale tasks in the short term (and much more, if not virtually everything could be mutual once surplus is steady), but initially for large things like building infrastructure, rebuilding housing and communities to meet our needs rather than the needs of profit and so on will require a great deal of coordination among a lot of people. Although workers will have more free-time, I doubt all of them would want to spend it going to subway planning meetings for direct democratic votes every day, so they will probably enable delegates or representatives to carry out their desires on specific issues or tasks. Ways to ensure that these delegates do not become permanent positions or begin to separate in their interests from the people they represent is through rotating positions or instant recall through majority worker council vote or limiting what reps can vote on to what was already decided by the local worker council.

Other groups should be able to organize councils of their own - community coucils to decide things like trash removal, fire/emergency brigades, communal day-care/kitchens/laundry and so on. They will also need to coordinate with worker councils and other community councils, so they would likely set up some central bodies of delegates as well.

[ckaihatsu]

Selectively jumping in here....








So when did anyone ever prove that abstruse claim that "coordination requires centralization?"




[A] central organ [...] has power OVER people (if it hadn't it would be useless)





But you do realize that coordination does not require centralization, right? A flock of birds is very much coordinated, yet not centralized at all. Neither are ants nor termites.


Okay....





Neither is the international airport network, the railroad system, the telephone cables, the US electricity lines, the internet, etc. Yet they are all very much coordinated (given, some more than others).


There *is* centralization, though, in all of your (human-social) examples -- the airport network cross-agrees to a certain shared schedule for all plane flights, the railroad system had to come to an agreement on the gauge of track to use, the telephone cables had to conform to a certain right-of-way access across zoned land, the electricity system has a set policy regarding pricing, and the Internet has come to certain standards on a consistent protocol for packets, and a markup language for the web, among other protocols for other services.

In *political* terms I would say that these are all definitely *centralized* modes of operation, along the lines of a single U.S. dollar currency for the nation of the United States. Like money, the way these systems of standards may be *used* in actual usage is another matter, but that matter is strictly one of *usage*, or consumer-type activity -- meaning non-political with regards to the policy standard.

I'll maintain that the *creation* of a mode of social interchange *is* a political matter, and is one that *always* requires centralization from some sort of process -- hopefully one that is bottom-up, from the self-activity of the working class.

[ckaihatsu]

Although workers will have more free-time, I doubt all of them would want to spend it going to subway planning meetings for direct democratic votes every day, so they will probably enable delegates or representatives to carry out their desires on specific issues or tasks. Ways to ensure that these delegates do not become permanent positions or begin to separate in their interests from the people they represent is through rotating positions or instant recall through majority worker council vote or limiting what reps can vote on to what was already decided by the local worker council.

Other groups should be able to organize councils of their own - community coucils to decide things like trash removal, fire/emergency brigades, communal day-care/kitchens/laundry and so on. They will also need to coordinate with worker councils and other community councils, so they would likely set up some central bodies of delegates as well.


JH, if you like, I'd like to go over this related topic of representative delegation with you, either here or at this other thread:

Delegative Democracy

http://www.revleft.com/vb/delegative-democracy-t146479/index.html


Given that people make *points* on any of a number of *issues*, which may comprise some larger *topics* -- and these fall into some general *themes*, or *categories* -- wouldn't this very discussion-board format of RevLeft be altogether suitable for a massively parallel (ground-level) political participation among all those concerned, particularly workers, for *all scales* of political implementation -- ?

I think there's conventionally been a kind of lingering anxiety over the political "workload" that would confront any regular person who would work *and* wish to have active, impacting participation in real-world policy, along the lines of the examples you've provided for this thread's discussion.

But I'll note that, for any given concrete issue, not everyone would *necessarily* find the material need to individually weigh in with a distinct proposal of their own -- as I think we've seen here from our own regular participation at RevLeft, it's often the case that a simple press of the 'Thanks' button is all that's needed in many cases where a comrade has *already* put forth the words that we would have said ourselves, thereby relieving us from the task of writing that sentiment ourselves.

Would concrete issues at higher, more-generalized levels be so different, so inaccessible to the regular, affected person on the ground? Wouldn't the information gathered within such an appropriate thread of discussion "clue everyone in" as the overall situation at that level -- say, from the participants of several different countries -- ?

I'll ask if delegated representatives *are* really required anymore when our current political vehicle, the Internet-based discussion board, can facilitate massively participatory, though orderly and topic-specific conversations, across all ranges of geography and scales of populations.

[Skooma Addict]

Did you just make up these "objections" to central planning off the top of your head? Given that much of our knowledge is tacit, how would you make use of such knowledge with a central planning scheme if it can't be conveyed verbally?

[ckaihatsu]

Did you just make up these "objections" to central planning off the top of your head?


Just to clarify, I *don't* have any objections to central planning:





I'll maintain that the *creation* of a mode of social interchange *is* a political matter, and is one that *always* requires centralization from some sort of process -- hopefully one that is bottom-up, from the self-activity of the working class.





Given that much of our knowledge is tacit, how would you make use of such knowledge with a central planning scheme if it can't be conveyed verbally?


I don't understand your meaning of 'tacit' here. Regardless, *any* knowledge can be conveyed verbally, *or* with the written word, as we're doing here on this forum.

I advocate the following system of communications for any cohesive group regardless of the medium of communication -- it's a "protocol" of sorts, but one that *facilitates* a group process given an already healthy and positive internal group dynamic....


[16] Affinity Group Workflow Tracker

http://postimage.org/image/1cqt82ps4/

[Kotze]

What about tacit knowledge?
-This is related to the question of getting honest input, but the answer to that only partially answers this. Not all information gets written down, doubts are raised about whether it is even possible to communicate certain information individuals on the ground possess. This is used as an argument against central planning and for capitalism or anarchism.

Speaking about things written down, graphic designers have knowledge about letter design and text composition. How can you know how something looks just by talking about this or that dingly bit of this or that letter? Actually, they do have special jargon for these different bits of letters (stem, spine, ascender, descender, serif, bowl, and more). Similarly, other professions have many words that describe subtle details of the field.

It is true that not all information can be communicated, but this type of information doesn't matter much. Language adopts to new circumstances and finds new words, and today we also have other ways of quickly transmitting information around the globe — pictures, sound, 3D models, gloves that simulate an object's tactile feedback — the role of tacit knowledge is shrinking. This process is wideley known under the term deskilling of labour. A more subtle argument for capitalism might be made here, that there are forces in current society that make tacit knowledge into shared public knowledge.

I do believe there is some value in that argument, but I also believe that alternative mechanisms can work better. The patent system involves the publication of ideas and methods, but the patent holder is a monopolist for 20 years and people are required to either pay an outrageous price, or behave as if the patented thing is not known. This faux-tacit knowledge motivates people to have a go at problems that are already solved just to get around the patent. There is also not enough incentive to find negative side-affects of certain types of medication, unless your company is developing a competing product. There is also a lack of incentive to find new uses for old ideas, and if your idea is a combination and improvement of patented ideas, some of which are disputed as trivial, even experts get lost in the negotiations.

Now imagine a world with broader education, where all scientific journals are freely available online and everybody has internet access, where people have more free time to reflect on things, and where research and development is funded by the public and there are no artificial limits on who can use the results.

Further reading:
"Information and Economics: A Critique of Hayek" — Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott on subjective and dispersed knowledge (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/hayek/hayek.html).

"Financing Drug Research: What Are the Issues?" — Dean Baker about alternatives to patent-financed drug research (PDF) (http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/intellectual_property_2004_09.pdf).