Economic calculation under socialism

[F_Hayek]

Guys,

Can anyone provide me with a brief explanation or link how the biggest flaw, put forward by the "Austrians", in socialism or communism or marxism or every ism not capitalist' is solved, namely that there is no way of economic calculation. Thus this form of society will always end in poverty and starvation.

tnx

[Ian]

Economists - not on this planet

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Most modern textbooks will contain a variation of the following famous definition of economics as

a science which studies human behaviour as a relation between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.

This makes economics the study of the logic of choice in conditions of scarcity. This is not how most people would understand the term, but check for yourself and you will see that the word scarcity occurs again and again in textbook definitions of economics. Paul Samuelson in his Economics, in a very widely studied economics textbook, speaks of a "large scarcity" and says that if goods were not scarce then there would be no role for a science of economics. So, on these definitions, economics is seen as the study of the production and distribution of scarce goods.

The Scarcity Dogma

This definition, however, can only be sustained by giving a peculiar meaning to the word 'scarcity.' The normal sense of scarcity is that of shortage, implying that something is in short supply in relation to the claims on its use. The scarcity theory economists, however, define scarcity to mean the absence of unlimited supplies. Since no good produced by humans is, or can ever be, available in unlimited amounts all such goods are, by definition "scarce".

They reinforce this with a second assumption - that human wants are unlimited. This provides a fall-back position, since, if human wants are infinite, even on the normal meaning of scarcity as shortage of relation to uses goods are always going to be in short supply. But this assumption of human wants being infinite is equally dubious since, while human wants might be great, they are not unlimited. Nor do they exist outside particular social and historical contexts but are determined by the society in which particular humans are living at a particular point in time and are in practice always limited.

This school of economics (which is the dominant one today) needs the scarcity assumption - whether based on an unrealistic definition of scarcity or on an unrealistic assumption of infinite human wants, because it is the basis of its claim that the best way to solve the perpetual either-or problem, which they see humans facing when it comes to deciding what to produce, is to have recourse to money, prices and markets. They want to be able to prove that the present economic system, under which most wealth is produced for sale on the marketplace, is the best one possible. They need the scarcity assumption, in other words, so that they can beg this question.

The scarcity school of economics is right to see economics as the study of the way in which what to produce and how to produce it are determined under a market system. Where they go wrong is in making such a system the outcome of "scarcity".

Scarcity, in their peculiar sense, has existed throughout human history, but the market system - where everything, including the mental and physical energies of humans, has a price and where everybody has to have money to obtain what they need - only began to come into existence comparatively recently, about 500 years ago, and has only come fully into existence in places like America, Europe and Japan within the last 100 or so years. It is still not fully developed in most of the rest of the world.

The basis of the market system is not some eternal scarcity, but the separation of most people from the access to the land which enables them to produce their own food, clothes and houses. In other words, its basis is the dispossession of the majority of the population of all productive resources except their own ability to work and the concentration of the ownership of these resources into the hands of a small minority of the population. It is this, not scarcity, that makes money, prices and the market the universal features of life they are today.

We have now reached a definition of economics: the study of the production and distribution of wealth that is produced to be sold on a market. Economics is the study, not of scarce goods but of marketed goods.

What is wealth?

Wealth "is any material object or service that serves to satisfy some human need or want." An individual item of wealth is known in economics as a good.

Some goods essential to human life, such as the air we breathe and the heat and light of the Sun, are provided spontaneously by nature without humans having to do anything and so are called 'free goods'. Most goods, however, including others equally essential to human life such as food, have to be produced in the sense that humans have to exercise their mental and physical energies to obtain them, even if all that it involves in some cases is picking a fruit from a tree. Most goods, in other words, are products of human work.

When humans produce a good they are not creating something out of nothing; what they are doing is transforming parts of nature into something useful to them. This transformation may, as is the case of the picked fruit, only consist in changing the place of some nature-given material; generally speaking, however, a change of form is involved as well as a change of place.

Production, then, is the process of transforming parts of nature into goods. Apart from "free goods", all wealth is the product of human beings working of materials originally supplied by nature.

Any activity that transforms parts of nature into something useful to humans is productive activity. This is so even if the transformation is merely a change of place, so transportation is a productive activity. So is storage, as preserving the usefulness of some good. Some products of labour are intangible, such as a haircut, and are known as 'services'.

Some people have argued that only tangible goods are wealth, and that therefore only labour that results in some physical product is productive. But they are wrong. The only difference between a tangible and an intangible good, or service, is that in the latter case the product is consumed as it is being produced, but it remains a product.

Goods can be divided into two main groups. First, those which are directly consumed by humans to meet their personal needs, or 'consumer goods'. These may be consumed as they are being produced (some services) or in one go (as food and electricity are) or over a period of time (as clothes, and furniture, and houses, are).

Second, those which are used to produce other goods, or producer goods (also known as 'intermediate goods' and as a 'means of production'. These are consumed (used up) of course but to make other goods and now by humans directly. They include materials extracted from nature, semi-finished goods, tools, machines, buildings, fuel and means of transport.

The basis of the market system is not some eternal scarcity, but the separation of most people from the access to the land which enables them to produce their own food, clothes and houses. As Sir William Petty (1623-1687) put it, labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother.

However, humans are tool-making and tool-using animals and, apart from very basic productive activity such as picking fruit from a wild tree, production involves a third element: the tools and machinery humans use to transform nature-given materials into wealth. These producer goods are of course derived from the other two since they will have been fashioned into their existing form by past human labour working on nature-given materials.

The 'distribution' of wealth is simply the way in which what has been produced is distributed - i.e. divided up - shared, amongst the members of society.

The Market System

Samuelson describes the present economic system (his ideal system) as follows:

Everything has a price - each commodity and each service. Even the different kinds of human labour have prices, usually called wage rates. Everybody receives money for what he sells and uses this money to buy what he wishes. (His emphasis.)

So, under the market system the vast majority of goods (though by no means all, as we shall see in a moment) come to be produced for sale. A good that is produced for sale is called, in modern economics, an 'economic good' (or, in Marxian economics, a "commodity" - note the difference with Samuelson's use of the same word above to mean simply a tangible good). The concept economic good excludes a whole range of non-marketed goods such as housework, vegetables grown in your garden, do-it-yourself repairs and voluntary work. This in itself confirms that economics is concerned not with the production and distribution of wealth in general, but only with the production and distribution of wealth that has been produced for sale.

Goods produced for the market have an 'economic value' in addition to their capacity to satisfy some human need or want, or use value. This economic value is measured by the quantity of other economic goods they can be exchanged for. It is generally expressed in money as their price.

This means that under the market system the basic underlying physical factors involved in production - nature-given materials, human mental and physical energies, and producer goods - all come to have a monetary value. They become 'capital'. Hence "capitalism" as another name for the market system.

In its original sense capital is a sum of money lent out as interest and is still used to mean this today. Under the market system there is another way - it is in fact the overwhelmingly predominant way - in which those with capital, or capitalists, can make money, and that is to use it to purchase productive resources with a view to using them to produce wealth for sale. It is this that turns them into capital. (Note: somewhat confusingly, economists also use the word capital in another sense to refer to fixed produced goods such as buildings, machinery and plant only, thus excluding stocks of raw materials and of finished products and work in progress as well as the case to pay wages and for fuel and services, which accountants, more logically, count as capital).

The act of purchasing productive resources to engage in producing goods for the market is called 'investment' and the monetary gain that results is called 'profit'. The total monetary value of the new wealth produced is a given country over a given period is called either the 'national income' or the 'national product' (the two have the same monetary value). It is distributed by being bought by the members of society out of the monetary income they receive and which is initially generated at the point of production in the form of either wages and salaries or of profits.

It is these relationships, which only arise when the great bulk of wealth is produced for sale, that form the subject-matter of economics. Economics is the study of the factors governing the production and distribution of wealth under the market system of production for profit.

Author: Adam Buick

[Ian]

Sorry, I posted this and it was the same article as RCPNZ's article :P :)

[rcpnz]

Here is an article I digged out for a website I am setting up, perhaps this may help. It mentions yourself a few times(joke).:

Socialism and calculation

In recent years, with the revival of the ideological Right as a reaction to the failure of the wishy-washy middle-of-the-road social reformism that had been in vogue since the war, we in the Socialist Party have been singled out for special attention by those partisans of unbridled capitalism who call themselves "libertarians" and 'anarcho-capitalists'. This is probably because we are the only group calling itself socialist to put forward a coherent definition of what socialism is and prepared to go into the details of how we think a classless, stateless and in particular moneyless society might work.

The point these ideological defenders of capitalism love to attack us on is the idea of abolishing markets, prices, money and all other aspects of buying and selling. This they say would be impossible, as demonstrated by a certain Ludwig von Mises in an article on "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" published in German in 1920 (and first published in English in 1935 in Collectivist Economic Planning edited by Hayek). Von Mises, they claim, showed that a socialist society was impossible because it would be unable to calculate rationally which productive methods to adopt. This they call "the economic calculation argument". According to von Mises, rational economic calculation is only possible on the basis of prices fixed by the free play of market forces. In other words, the only form of rational calculation that can be applied to the production of wealth is monetary calculation.

Although money, and so monetary calculation, will disappear in socialism this does not mean that there will no longer be any need to make choices, evaluations and calculations. Our argument is that these evaluations and calculations, including those concerning the non-monetary "cost" of objects in terms of the effort and materials used to produce them, will be done directly in kind, without any general unit of account or measurement, neither money nor labour-time.

This follows from the very nature of socialism as a society geared to producing wealth directly to satisfy human needs. Wealth will be produced and distributed in its natural form of useful things, of objects that can serve to satisfy some human need or other. Not being produced for sale on a market, items of wealth will not acquire an exchange-value in addition to their use-value. In socialism their value, in the normal non-economic sense of the word, will not be their selling price nor the time needed to produce them but their usefulness. It is for this that they will be appreciated, evaluated, wanted. . . and produced. So estimates of what is likely to be needed over a given period will be expressed as physical quantities of definite types and sorts of objects. Nobody, not even von Mises, has denied that this could be done without problems:

“calculation in natura, in an economy without exchange, can embrace consumption-goods only” (Von Mises, p. 104).

Von Mises' argument was that the next step—working out which productive methods to employ—would not be possible, or at least would not be able to be done "rationally" avoiding waste and inefficiency, without "economic calculation"—monetary calculation based on market prices. Our answer is that the choice of which productive methods to employ will, like working out what consumer goods are needed, be based on estimations and calculations in kind.

A monetary economy gives rise to the illusion that the "cost" of producing something is merely financial; indeed so associated is the word cost with financial and monetary calculation that we are obliged to put it in inverted commas when we want to talk about it in a non-monetary sense. But the real cost of the pen I'm using to write this article is not 10p, but the amount of wood, slate, labour, electricity, wear and tear of machines, used up in producing it. This will continue to be the case in socialism. Goods will not grow on trees, but will still require expenditure of effort and materials to produce them. The point is that in socialism this expenditure of effort and materials will be estimated and calculated exclusively in kind, directly in terms of wood, slate, machinery wear and tear, electricity, and so on (including working time, but as this will be a special case we'll come back to it later). Since socialism will be concerned with conserving resources it will want to adopt those productive methods which, other things being equal, use less rather than more materials and energy and this will be one, but only one, of the factors to be taken into account in deciding which technical method of production to adopt.

Monetary calculation, whether to discover which productive method is the most profitable (as imposed by capitalism and praised by the followers of von Mises) or for any other purpose (as proposed by various partisans of state capitalism and other unrealistic would-be reformers of capitalism), is a very peculiar sort of calculation since it involves reducing all use-values to an abstract common denominator. Use-values can indeed be compared but only in concrete situations since the same object can have a different use-value at different times and under different circumstances. Monetary calculation, however, seeks to compare all objects in terms of an objective standard applicable in all circumstances; to do this it needs to identify a feature common to all objects. Such a common feature can indeed be found: that a certain "cost" in terms of materials, energy and labour expended has had to be incurred to produce them (ultimately the labour-time required to produce them from start to finish, and—this is the basis of the labour theory of value—the materials and energy expended, being produced by labour, can also be reduced to given amounts of necessary labour-time). It is this cost that is supposed to be measured by money. Money, then, is the universal unit of measurement, the "general equivalent", that allows everything to be compared with everything else under an circumstances - but, and this is what the partisans of monetary calculation forget, only in terms of their labour-time cost or the total time needed on average to produce them from start to finish.

To make this the only consideration that counts (as is imposed by the economic laws of capitalism) is an absurd aberration. It is like making volume the most important thing about bottles containing different liquids and then concluding that a litre bottle of water has the same significance as a litre bottle of wine or of oil or of sulphuric acid or whatever. But we are doing exactly the same if we say, or if we believe, that different goods selling at the same price have the same "value", or are "worth" the same, in terms of their real usefulness to people.

Market Values or Human Values?
So the argument between monetary calculation and calculation in kind is much broader than it first seems. It is not merely a technical argument about how to calculate and what units to use for this, but is an argument about the real meaning of words like "value" and "worth". Socialists, as opponents of monetary calculation, say that it is not monetary or market values, in the end total average production time, that is the most important thing about a good but its usefulness in satisfying some human need; that the real values are use-values, human values. We are saying that these are the factors that should be taken into account when making choices and calculations about production. not simply production time.

This presupposes that calculations concerning production can be carried out without money or without some money-substitutes, some other general unit such as labour-time. Such non-monetary calculation of course already happens. on the technical level, under capitalism. Once the choice of productive method has been made (according to expected profitability as revealed by monetary calculation) then the real calculations in kind of what is needed to produce a specific good commence: so much raw materials, so much energy, so much labour. . . In socialism it is not the case that the choice of productive method will become a technical choice that can be left to engineers, as is sometimes misunderstood by our critics, but that this choice too will be made in real terms, in terms of the real advantages and disadvantages of alternative methods and in terms of, on the one hand, the utility of some good or some project in a particular circumstance at a particular time and, on the other hand, of the real "costs" in the same circumstances and at the same time of the required materials, energy and productive effort.

To advocate monetary calculation, then, is to advocate that only one consideration—the total average production time needed to produce goods—should be taken into account when making decisions about which productive methods to employ. This is patently absurd but it is what is imposed by capitalism. Naturally, it leads to all sorts of aberrations from the point of view of human interests. In particular it rules out a rational, long-term attitude towards conserving resources and it imposes intolerable conditions on the actual producers (speed-up, pain, stress, boredom, long hours, nightwork, shiftwork, accidents).

Socialism, because it will calculate directly in kind, will be able to take these other, more important, factors than production time into account. This will naturally lead to different, in many cases quite different, productive methods being adopted than now under capitalism. If the health, comfort and enjoyment of those who actually manipulate the materials, or who supervise the machines which do this, to transform them into useful objects is to be paramount, certain methods are going to be ruled out altogether. The fast-moving production lines associated with the manufacture of cars would be stopped for ever (except perhaps in a museum of the horrors of capitalism); nightwork would be reduced to the strict minimum; particularly dangerous or unhealthy jobs would be automated (or completely abandoned).

Work can, in fact must, become enjoyable. But to the extent that work becomes enjoyable, measurement by minimum average working time would be completely meaningless, since people would not be seeking to minimise or rush such work.

However there will still be some kinds of work that socialist society will want to minimise. For instance, dangerous or repetitive work. Once again, this would be one of the real factors that will have to be taken into account when decisions are made as to what productive methods to adopt. Other factors would be conserving resources (so out would go "planned obsolescence" and in would come solid goods made to last), saving energy, avoiding pollution and generally maintaining a sustainable ecological balance with the rest of nature.

As a matter of fact, even under capitalism, enterprise managers do not just base their decisions on market prices, long-term or short-term. They are obliged by law (and also by trade union pressure) to take into account a whole series of other factors such as safety, anti-pollution and planning permission. The overriding consideration remains of course expected profits (the difference between anticipated sales receipts and monetary cost of production). This means that these factors are of minor importance and only reflect the minimum standards that are not incompatible with profit-making and, being imposed from outside against the logic of short-term profit-making are always being broken. But they do, however marginally, enter into productive decisions, thus showing that it is possible to take into account other considerations than minimum production time.

The Priorities in Socialism
In socialism the situation will be quite different: these factors will be automatically taken into account in the decision-making process and will not have to be imposed from outside as a sort of after-thought, since among the highest priorities of production will be the health and welfare of the producers. We can imagine the decisions as to choice of productive methods being made by a council elected by the workforce, or by a technical subcommittee of such a democratically-elected council. In making their choice they will first take into account, not minimising average total production time as the economic laws of capitalism enforce today, but the health, comfort and enjoyment of the workforce, the protection of the environment and the conservation of materials and energy. Since materials and energy, and work to the extent that it is not interesting and creative but only routine, are real "costs" the aim will be to minimise them. As there will be these clearly defined objectives and constraints, mathematical aids to decision-making such as operational research and linear programming, at present prostituted to the end of maximising profits, can be used to find the optimum productive methods.

Another point that must be understood is that socialism will not have to start from scratch. It will inherit from capitalism a going technical system of production which it will be able to adapt to production for use. Some methods will have to be stopped straight away or as soon as possible but others will only need modifying to a greater or lesser extent. Again, when socialism will have cleared up the mess inherited from capitalism, it will become a society in which methods of production too will only change slowly. This will make decision-making about production much simpler.

We add straight away to avoid any misunderstanding that, even in the period at the beginning of socialism when production will be clearing up the mess in terms of deprivation and poverty left by capitalism, monetary calculation won't be necessary. The necessary expansion of production can be planned and executed in real terms.
So, the so-called "economic calculation argument" against socialism collapses in the face of detailed analysis. The alternative to monetary calculation in terms of exchange-value is calculation in kind in terms of use-values, of the real advantages and real costs of particular real alternatives in particular real circumstances.

(Socialist Standard, December 1987)

[Ian]

Well sorry to post articles, but why not use pre-fabricated insight?

[F_Hayek]

Aren't 2 and 3 the same?

I think both articles exactly prove Von Mises' point, but I'll get back to it later.

And "production for use", how are we going to know this "use"? It's basically a crappy argument as producing for profit can only be done when people are going to use them.

[apathy maybe]

Can anyone provide me with a brief explanation or link how the biggest flaw, put forward by the "Austrians", in socialism or communism or marxism or every ism not capitalist' is solved, namely that there is no way of economic calculation. Thus this form of society will always end in poverty and starvation.

I don't understand the question, are you saying that capitilism will not end in poverty and starvation for the majority? Look at the USA, it is rich and strong because Africa and Asia are poor and weak.

[Bianconero]

And "production for use", how are we going to know this "use"? It's basically a crappy argument as producing for profit can only be done when people are going to use them.

Most goods produced in capitalism are only for those who have the money to aquire them, i.e. for an absolute minority. What I want to say is that capitalism 'overproduces' for that minority. The majority of the workers never see these goods.

'Use' in socialism means the basic needs of all human being such as water, food, etc.

'Use' in capitalism means 'needs' such as 3 cars, 5 houses, 9 airplanes etc. for some individuals.

[dancingoutlaw]

How would socialism deal with fairly distributing goods so as not to create a "wealthy in goods" class of people without some form of currency to track the needs of the people?

[rcpnz]

"And "production for use", how are we going to know this "use"? It's basically a crappy argument as producing for profit can only be done when people are going to use them".

"F A Hayek"(I am still getting over you calling yourself that!), is using this as an argument against the Theory Of Surplus Value. It is true that utility is a factor of production, but it is not the motive for production. I was reading Boudin's reply to Bohm-Bowark(did you ever meet the latter?), and he correctly points out that the capitalists have no interest in what they produce, and woudl as soon produce chewing-gum as produce Bibles
(The Theoretical System Of Karl Marx, 'The Labour Theory Of Value And It's Critics').

"Dancing Outlaw" asks: "How would socialism deal with fairly distributing goods so as not to create a "wealthy in goods" class of people without some form of currency to track the needs of the people?"

This is a good question. But what I think he needs to think about is why people would want to take more than they actually need. Historical materialism tells us that "man's social being determines his consciousness". Because people like to 'hoard' things under capitalism, does not mean their nature will be the same in Socialism. People's so-called 'human nature' will have fundamentally changed because their environment will have changed. They won't be as 'greedy' or anything like that. So I don't think such a situation will arise. How would it deal with it is not for me to decide anyway, that would be utopian. There would be no point in hoarding. Consider it this way. If there was free access, then these people with more goods wouldn't have any use for them. And they couldn't exert control over others as the others would also have free access to them.

A FINAL NOTE ON HAYEK: I think we should all word our replies to Hayek very carefully, as Hayek's ideology openly rejects the Labour Theory Of Value, proposes the Marginal Utility Theory Of Value(which I will talk of if required, but I don't like doing it), and advances a situation of 'anarcho-capitalism'. See his organisation's website:
www.la-articles.org.uk

F A Hayek: do you know David McDonagh by any chance?

[dancingoutlaw]

"Dancing Outlaw" asks: "How would socialism deal with fairly distributing goods so as not to create a "wealthy in goods" class of people without some form of currency to track the needs of the people?"

This is a good question. But what I think he needs to think about is why people would want to take more than they actually need. Historical materialism tells us that "man's social being determines his consciousness". Because people like to 'hoard' things under capitalism, does not mean their nature will be the same in Socialism. People's so-called 'human nature' will have fundamentally changed because their environment will have changed. They won't be as 'greedy' or anything like that. So I don't think such a situation will arise. How would it deal with it is not for me to decide anyway, that would be utopian. There would be no point in hoarding. Consider it this way. If there was free access, then these people with more goods wouldn't have any use for them. And they couldn't exert control over others as the others would also have free access to them


Maybe I should rephrase the question. Until the advent of the "new man under socialism" how does a transitional society ensure that goods and services are fairly distributed without a form of currency? If and when the "new man" appears would the currency be needed in order to ensure the proper amount of goods and services go to the right people at the right time?

[Vinny Rafarino]

I will not touch too much on this subject as it's absolute garbage. Ludwig von Mises and the "austrian" school of econimics were 'right-wing' conservative capitalists. Their opinion that Socialism cannot economically work due to some underlying principle that requires Socialism not to foolow any laws of value is absurd. Value based socialism has been used successfully since it's origins in late 1940's and 50's Soviet Union.

What would one expect a right wing conservative to say about socialism? Only one thing; it can never work and heres why...then proceed to cite random nonsense for support. I've heard it all before and much like Hayek's "bullshit calculation dilemma" in Socialism, the Austrian school is just as gulity of propaganda. Schweickart debunked Von Misis' theory years ago.

In other words lads, don't let the "bookworm capitalists" bring up archaic theories in a last ditch effort to debunk value-based socialist economics. It works, it has worked and it will work again.

[rcpnz]

I did mean to reply earlier but was busy. My sincere apologies:
"Maybe I should rephrase the question. Until the advent of the "new man under socialism" how does a transitional society ensure that goods and services are fairly distributed without a form of currency? If and when the "new man" appears would the currency be needed in order to ensure the proper amount of goods and services go to the right people at the right time?"

There is no such thing as a 'transitional society'. Marx advocated only a transitional period between capitalism and Socialism, not a transitional society.

In a transitional period, if such a period is still required(economic I mean, a political transition will almost certainly be required), a system of Labor-Time Vouchers would exist. A worker would be paid in terms of the amount of hours he has worked. (This is advocated by Marx in his notes on the gotha programme of 1875, and by The DeLeonist Society Of Canada).

There would be no need for currency in a fully socialist society. There would be free access to the produce of society. The idea of people being greedy in such a society I have tried to show as erroneous in my previous post.

[F_Hayek]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 10 2003, 11:03 AM

Can anyone provide me with a brief explanation or link how the biggest flaw, put forward by the "Austrians", in socialism or communism or marxism or every ism not capitalist' is solved, namely that there is no way of economic calculation. Thus this form of society will always end in poverty and starvation.

I don't understand the question, are you saying that capitilism will not end in poverty and starvation for the majority? Look at the USA, it is rich and strong because Africa and Asia are poor and weak.
Go away.

[F_Hayek]

Originally posted by COMRADE [email protected] 11 2003, 12:15 PM
I will not touch too much on this subject as it's absolute garbage. Ludwig von Mises and the "austrian" school of econimics were 'right-wing' conservative capitalists. Their opinion that Socialism cannot economically work due to some underlying principle that requires Socialism not to foolow any laws of value is absurd. Value based socialism has been used successfully since it's origins in late 1940's and 50's Soviet Union.

What would one expect a right wing conservative to say about socialism? Only one thing; it can never work and heres why...then proceed to cite random nonsense for support. I've heard it all before and much like Hayek's "bullshit calculation dilemma" in Socialism, the Austrian school is just as gulity of propaganda. Schweickart debunked Von Misis' theory years ago.

In other words lads, don't let the "bookworm capitalists" bring up archaic theories in a last ditch effort to debunk value-based socialist economics. It works, it has worked and it will work again.
The obvios reply I would have expected from you <_<

As I already told you in another thread, the fact that the USSR survived that long was because they could look at the West to know what prices etc were.

And unfortunately, Schweikart hasn&#39;t debunked anything. If you need proof http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=88


Most goods produced in capitalism are only for those who have the money to aquire them, i.e. for an absolute minority. What I want to say is that capitalism &#39;overproduces&#39; for that minority. The majority of the workers never see these goods.

&#39;Use&#39; in socialism means the basic needs of all human being such as water, food, etc.

&#39;Use&#39; in capitalism means &#39;needs&#39; such as 3 cars, 5 houses, 9 airplanes etc. for some individuals.

Pfff, yes. I didn&#39;t open this topic to read such lame statements.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by F_Hayek+Aug 11 2003, 04:56 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (F_Hayek @ Aug 11 2003, 04:56 PM)
COMRADE [email protected] 11 2003, 12:15 PM
I will not touch too much on this subject as it&#39;s absolute garbage. Ludwig von Mises and the "austrian" school of econimics were &#39;right-wing&#39; conservative capitalists. Their opinion that Socialism cannot economically work due to some underlying principle that requires Socialism not to foolow any laws of value is absurd. Value based socialism has been used successfully since it&#39;s origins in late 1940&#39;s and 50&#39;s Soviet Union.

What would one expect a right wing conservative to say about socialism? Only one thing; it can never work and heres why...then proceed to cite random nonsense for support. I&#39;ve heard it all before and much like Hayek&#39;s "bullshit calculation dilemma" in Socialism, the Austrian school is just as gulity of propaganda. Schweickart debunked Von Misis&#39; theory years ago.

In other words lads, don&#39;t let the "bookworm capitalists" bring up archaic theories in a last ditch effort to debunk value-based socialist economics. It works, it has worked and it will work again.
The obvios reply I would have expected from you <_<

As I already told you in another thread, the fact that the USSR survived that long was because they could look at the West to know what prices etc were.

And unfortunately, Schweikart hasn&#39;t debunked anything. If you need proof http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=88


Most goods produced in capitalism are only for those who have the money to aquire them, i.e. for an absolute minority. What I want to say is that capitalism &#39;overproduces&#39; for that minority. The majority of the workers never see these goods.

&#39;Use&#39; in socialism means the basic needs of all human being such as water, food, etc.

&#39;Use&#39; in capitalism means &#39;needs&#39; such as 3 cars, 5 houses, 9 airplanes etc. for some individuals.

Pfff, yes. I didn&#39;t open this topic to read such lame statements. [/b]
And this is the standard response I would expect from you friend. How can you consider David Gordon&#39;s editorial to be proof that Schweikart has not debunked Von Misis&#39; theory?


For anyone that does not know who David Gordon is and how "impartial" he would be, here is a brief bio;



David Gordon is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He was educated at UCLA, where he earned his PhD in intellectual history. He is the author of Resurrecting Marx: The Analytical Marxists on Exploitation, Free, and Justice, The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics, An Introduction to Economic Reasoning, and Critics of Marx. He is also editor of Secession, State, and Liberty and co-editor of H.B. Acton&#39;s Morals of Markets and Other Essays.

Dr. Gordon is the editor of The Mises Review, and a contributor to such journals as Analysis, The International Philosophic Quarterly, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, and The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. You can reach him at [email protected]

EDIT:

I don&#39;t see an issue with the Soviet Union looking to the west to guage prices. Would you be so bold as to discount say, South Africa for looking to the US and Europe to guage their commodity&#39;s trading prices? This is a common practise in international economics. The Soviets were only playing by the rules. Your statement in a global social setting would not even hold water as monetary value would no longer be of any relevance in guaging value.

[antieverything]

Personally, I reject the labor theory of value and accept the idea that prices are determined through complex relationships--every individual has a percieved value for every good and service and this value is different for each person. There is no such thing as an "actual" or "natural" value or price...only equilibrium prices which are the point at which it is most profitable to charge--price x number of buyers [demand at this price] is greatest.

The determination of prices, however, is less important than the theory of distribution. This is to say that neoclassical economics are seriously flawed in that they attempt to attach morality to the market. The idea that a well-functioning, competitive market gives each aspect of production (land personified by the land-owner, capital by the capitalist, and labor by the workers themselves) exactly what it is entitled to...which is exactly the value it adds to the product. The idea that starvation wages are fair simply because they are what the market gives can hardly hold up against the morality of anyone with a shred of humanity.

I&#39;m curious, who exactly is Schweikart? There are many economists from many eras with that last name&#33; I&#39;m only familiar with David Schweikart who isn&#39;t actually an economist though he writes on it quite a bit and does have PhDs in both Mathematics and Philosophy...he also happens to be a Marxist and a market socialist.

Certainly, the Soviet economy "worked" but whether or not it worked efficiently is another question entirely. We all know about the bumper wheat harvests that never made it into stores because of the inefficiency of artificial price systems.

[F_Hayek]

Originally posted by COMRADE [email protected] 11 2003, 06:09 PM
And this is the standard response I would expect from you friend. How can you consider David Gordon&#39;s editorial to be proof that Schweikart has not debunked Von Misis&#39; theory?

For anyone that does not know who David Gordon is and how "impartial" he would be, here is a brief bio;

I don&#39;t see an issue with the Soviet Union looking to the west to guage prices. Would you be so bold as to discount say, South Africa for looking to the US and Europe to guage their commodity&#39;s trading prices? This is a common practise in international economics. The Soviets were only playing by the rules. Your statement in a global social setting would not even hold water as monetary value would no longer be of any relevance in guaging value.
HAve you actually read it? Then you would know that this was not only the proof. Why does the writer has to be impartial, that&#39;s bs. You are like a kid who is refused candy by his mother.

No, the USSR could survive because only part of the world was socialist.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by F_Hayek+Aug 11 2003, 06:44 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (F_Hayek @ Aug 11 2003, 06:44 PM)
COMRADE [email protected] 11 2003, 06:09 PM
And this is the standard response I would expect from you friend. How can you consider David Gordon&#39;s editorial to be proof that Schweikart has not debunked Von Misis&#39; theory?

For anyone that does not know who David Gordon is and how "impartial" he would be, here is a brief bio;

I don&#39;t see an issue with the Soviet Union looking to the west to guage prices. Would you be so bold as to discount say, South Africa for looking to the US and Europe to guage their commodity&#39;s trading prices? This is a common practise in international economics. The Soviets were only playing by the rules. Your statement in a global social setting would not even hold water as monetary value would no longer be of any relevance in guaging value.
HAve you actually read it? Then you would know that this was not only the proof. Why does the writer has to be impartial, that&#39;s bs. You are like a kid who is refused candy by his mother.

No, the USSR could survive because only part of the world was socialist. [/b]
Thanks for you opinion. Mr. Bush. I can care less what you think of me. Yes I&#39;ve read Dr. Gordan&#39;s work. I give him about as much credibility as you. None. I don&#39;t consider his editorial to be proof, you do. Who gives a fuck? Not me. We can argue like this until the end of capitalism before you finally relent.

Opgroei. Je beledigingen zijn dom.

[dancingoutlaw]

I did mean to reply earlier but was busy. My sincere apologies:
"Maybe I should rephrase the question. Until the advent of the "new man under socialism" how does a transitional society ensure that goods and services are fairly distributed without a form of currency? If and when the "new man" appears would the currency be needed in order to ensure the proper amount of goods and services go to the right people at the right time?"

There is no such thing as a &#39;transitional society&#39;. Marx advocated only a transitional period between capitalism and Socialism, not a transitional society.

In a transitional period, if such a period is still required(economic I mean, a political transition will almost certainly be required), a system of Labor-Time Vouchers would exist. A worker would be paid in terms of the amount of hours he has worked. (This is advocated by Marx in his notes on the gotha programme of 1875, and by The DeLeonist Society Of Canada).

There would be no need for currency in a fully socialist society. There would be free access to the produce of society. The idea of people being greedy in such a society I have tried to show as erroneous in my previous post

rcpnz thank you for replying. I too have a life outside of this but keep coming back for what I hope to be honest and intellectual debate. Since in the transitional period advocated by Marx, a form of currency is used too keep people basically honest and more than likely by the centralized goverment to track what goods and services are needed where (i.e. this industrial sector is reporting back more of these vouchers so there must be a demand) when would this function of simple calculation cease? It is my supposition that the society will never move out of this transitional phase and into a pure socialist state because a pure socialist state without any marker of industrial activity will be directionless and unable to provide effeciently to the people. Since this transitory state can never move into the final phase it is my belief that a what Marxists would call "wage slavery" would in fact be imposed by the state since it is the state that would own all the means of production and would issue these Labor -Time vouchers which is nothing more than a Dollar, Pound, Yen, take your pick by another name. Thank you for your time.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2003, 06:19 PM
Personally, I reject the labor theory of value and accept the idea that prices are determined through complex relationships--every individual has a percieved value for every good and service and this value is different for each person. There is no such thing as an "actual" or "natural" value or price...only equilibrium prices which are the point at which it is most profitable to charge--price x number of buyers [demand at this price] is greatest.

The determination of prices, however, is less important than the theory of distribution. This is to say that neoclassical economics are seriously flawed in that they attempt to attach morality to the market. The idea that a well-functioning, competitive market gives each aspect of production (land personified by the land-owner, capital by the capitalist, and labor by the workers themselves) exactly what it is entitled to...which is exactly the value it adds to the product. The idea that starvation wages are fair simply because they are what the market gives can hardly hold up against the morality of anyone with a shred of humanity.

I&#39;m curious, who exactly is Schweikart? There are many economists from many eras with that last name&#33; I&#39;m only familiar with David Schweikart who isn&#39;t actually an economist though he writes on it quite a bit and does have PhDs in both Mathematics and Philosophy...he also happens to be a Marxist and a market socialist.

Certainly, the Soviet economy "worked" but whether or not it worked efficiently is another question entirely. We all know about the bumper wheat harvests that never made it into stores because of the inefficiency of artificial price systems.
Yes David C. Schweikart. You do not need to have a Ph.D in economics to see that the Von Misis Austrian school of economics is purely a sham. What would one expect a capitalist right-wing conservative group to say?

"Socialism is sound, but we would rather the working class work to line our pockets rather than theirs?"


I believe the state of the Soviet GDP in 1952 is a fairly accurate description of Value based socialism working with extremem effeciency. I find it odd that you would pick on one or to things that transpired and instantly condemn the entire economic platform. Agriculture was still "state held" during Stalin&#39;s time as the country was still heavily involved in building an industrial infrrastructure. The percentages of GDP gained from agridulture versus industry are som miniscule they really cannot even be considered a viable portion of the economic platform.

Mr. Bush complains that the Soviet Union used western prices to guage what the value of the Soviet commodities will be. I won&#39;t dispute this, nor will I say it is even relevant. Many countries look to other models to set their values. The difference being that in a social value based economy, the problem of over-production is sufficiently controlled due to the fact these commodities are being used "as needed" rather than as "demand forecasts" prject will create profit.

Mr. Bush accuses me of not reading capitalist economic platform material yet I do not feel he has ever read anything regarding social value based ecomomics. Unfortunately Mr. Bush, I was forced to read your bullshit in college. I&#39;m well aware of where you stand.

[antieverything]

Ah, yes. Schweikart does a wonderful job of debunking the neoclassical myth&#33; You probably noticed that I actually paraphrased him quite a bit in my last post&#33; Whether or not he is an "economist" it is clear that he knows his economics inside and out&#33;

[F_Hayek]

So enlighten me why austrian economics is a sham Ulrike? Because it disputes your silly utopia? You ought to have better answers than your usual "because it is capitalistic"?

And let&#39;s say it is a sham, why has everything predicted by Von Mises happened in the USSR? And the pricing is relevant, as you wouldn&#39;t want to know what would have happened if the whole world had become socialist.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2003, 08:21 PM
So enlighten me why austrian economics is a sham Ulrike? Because it disputes your silly utopia? You ought to have better answers than your usual "because it is capitalistic"?

And let&#39;s say it is a sham, why has everything predicted by Von Mises happened in the USSR? And the pricing is relevant, as you wouldn&#39;t want to know what would have happened if the whole world had become socialist.
Two reasons;


The first being that von Misis predicts that because socialised economy has no way to guage production facilities on what needs to be produced or how that is to be done. Obviously if you look at social economics in the Soviet Union up until the re-implementation of capitalism, Value-based socialism worked more efficiently than any other economic model. Marxian economics describes how socialist economics will work in an environment free of market influence. Marxian theories are yet to be tested as an environment free of market has yet to pass so it is not rational to assume the do not hold water as there has been no experimental phase.

Secondly, Schweikart brilliantly exposes the Austrian school of economics for what it is in "beyond capitalism". There is no footing beneath von Misis&#39; assumption that economics "absolutely" requires the use of price guaging in order to keep from "economic chaos" specifically if you GDP is intranationally generated versus reliant on foreign trade. If you do not rely on outside trade then there is no reason to assert a value on commodites that fall with in the globally accepted format. In the event of Global socialism, the prices of commodities will be irrelevant as goods are produced based on national trade union census forecasts rather than for mere profit.

If said country exists on a globe that contains capitalist countries, their models of price can easily be adopted for the purpose ov international trade. So as you can clearly see, regardless of the economic structure of the globe, socialist economics will always be able to continue undetered in any environment.

What makes von Misis&#39; school a sham is that he knows this and would rather slander an economic platform out of "principle".

Even Stalin predicted the fall of the Soviet Union due to counter revolutionary activities Mr. Bush. What does this have to do with the price of bacon? Nothing.

You know as well as I that social economics works more efficiently than capitalism, you just won&#39;t admit it due to the same "principle" factors that old von Misis garbled about.

[antieverything]

Wow&#33; Now this is getting interesting...I&#39;ve never once heard someone try to say that the USSR was the most efficient economy in the world&#33; WOW&#33;&#33;&#33; I admit, I&#39;m intruiged. Is there anything you would recommend reading?

[dancingoutlaw]

Obviously if you look at social economics in the Soviet Union up until the re-implementation of capitalism, Value-based socialism worked more efficiently than any other economic model. Marxian economics describes how socialist economics will work in an environment free of market influence. Marxian theories are yet to be tested as an environment free of market has yet to pass so it is not rational to assume the do not hold water as there has been no experimental phase.


The Ruble was never abolished even in the salad days of Stalininst socialism. There can never be a transition to "pure" marxism because without a marker of industrial activity such as any form of currency there is no way to realize surpluses and deficets in any economy. To have any form of currency there needs to be a centralized government to to keep track of it and (in fully socialized societies) to adjust industries to meet demand. Therefore the "final phase" of communism can never be. A strong central government will always need to be in place to issue currency to control industry. As long as there is currency there will not be equality.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2003, 01:31 AM

Obviously if you look at social economics in the Soviet Union up until the re-implementation of capitalism, Value-based socialism worked more efficiently than any other economic model. Marxian economics describes how socialist economics will work in an environment free of market influence. Marxian theories are yet to be tested as an environment free of market has yet to pass so it is not rational to assume the do not hold water as there has been no experimental phase.


The Ruble was never abolished even in the salad days of Stalininst socialism. There can never be a transition to "pure" marxism because without a marker of industrial activity such as any form of currency there is no way to realize surpluses and deficets in any economy. To have any form of currency there needs to be a centralized government to to keep track of it and (in fully socialized societies) to adjust industries to meet demand. Therefore the "final phase" of communism can never be. A strong central government will always need to be in place to issue currency to control industry. As long as there is currency there will not be equality.
I never said the ruble was abolished at any point in my post. I think you have misread it.


You perception that the monetary system can never be abolished is inaccurate.

Why you ask? Look at your own words;


There can never be a transition to "pure" marxism because without a marker of industrial activity such as any form of currency there is no way to realize surpluses and deficets in any economy

Your condradiction lays here. Without a form of currency there can be no suplus and deficits in an economy, in addition, there can not even be an economy.

"Production" was around before the invent of capitalism you know.


EDIT:

AE,

There are not too many books written on Soviet economics as the alot of the platform is simple marxian economics. The The truth lies within the fact the Soviet Union became a global super power in 30 years time.
That fact can never be denied. It is hard to find information on this as the west and certain members of the east have created such a stigma surrounding Stalin that most individuals are not even aware of his abilities in economics. If you have not already, I suggest reading Stalin&#39;s "the economic problems of socialism in the soviet union". .

I&#39;m sure you have already read it but Schweikart&#39;s "Beyond Capitalism" is great.

[F_Hayek]

"Production" was around before the invent of capitalism you know.

So were the advocates of private property?

Oh, and how are we going to do census forecast, with computers which can solve complex mathematical equations?

If indeed economic democracy is far more efficient why hasn&#39;t free market adopted this principle?


What makes von Misis&#39; school a sham is that he knows this

Source?


Even Stalin predicted the fall of the Soviet Union due to counter revolutionary activities Mr. Bush. What does this have to do with the price of bacon?


If said country exists on a globe that contains capitalist countries, their models of price can easily be adopted for the purpose ov international trade. So as you can clearly see, regardless of the economic structure of the globe, socialist economics will always be able to continue undetered in any environment.

I rest my case, lest you want to say that Stalin&#39;s Russia was paradise on earth.

And if you want to use the name of an american I prefer Harry Browne Ulrike.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2003, 09:28 PM

"Production" was around before the invent of capitalism you know.

So were the advocates of private property?

Oh, and how are we going to do census forecast, with computers which can solve complex mathematical equations?

If indeed economic democracy is far more efficient why hasn&#39;t free market adopted this principle?


What makes von Misis&#39; school a sham is that he knows this

Source?


Even Stalin predicted the fall of the Soviet Union due to counter revolutionary activities Mr. Bush. What does this have to do with the price of bacon?


If said country exists on a globe that contains capitalist countries, their models of price can easily be adopted for the purpose ov international trade. So as you can clearly see, regardless of the economic structure of the globe, socialist economics will always be able to continue undetered in any environment.

I rest my case, lest you want to say that Stalin&#39;s Russia was paradise on earth.

And if you want to use the name of an american I prefer Harry Browne Ulrike.
Look up the word "census" in the dictionary.

Would not want to adopt any "socialist" principle now would we? Socialism is "evil."

What makes my assertion that Von Misis knows value based socialism can and does operate? LOGIC.
It already HAS operated, well.

You rest your case? Son you have not even made a case. I am beginning to believe you do not know as much about economics as you claim. Thanks for your last "post" you really showed me you are a true "economic genius".

[F_Hayek]

Oh no, that wasn&#39;t on the capitalism vs. socialism issue.


What makes my assertion that Von Misis knows value based socialism can and does operate? LOGIC.
It already HAS operated, well.

And you sarcastically call me a genius.........

I know waht census means, so how are we going to forecast?


Would not want to adopt any "socialist" principle now would we? Socialism is "evil."

That is again a stupid assumption you make. In a market economy companies are always trying to enhance efficiency, if this mean s that collectives are more efficient such a company would gain a competitive advantage, wouldn&#39;t it?

And do you have any proof of Schweikart "debunking" the other issues in socialism?

[antieverything]

I don&#39;t think that the incredible growth in the Soviet economy has much to do with efficiency of production. Rather it has more to do with the superior ability of a planned economy to industrialize. When it hit a certian point, the Soviet economy ground to a halt due to the inefficient manner in which enterprises were run.

I&#39;ve actually never read Beyond Capitalism though I have read After Capitalism which was absolutely amazing. As a matter of fact, I think you may have the titles confused. I have heard of Schweikart&#39;s Against Capitalism and Capitalism or Worker Control but not Beyond Capitalism. I could be wrong but I couldn&#39;t find it on Google or Amazon.com. I actually started reading After Capitalism for the third time today...it&#39;s still fresh&#33;

I&#39;m just curious, what do you think of Schweikart&#39;s evil antieverything style market-socialist revisionism?

[Vinny Rafarino]

I think you are full of it Mr. Bush. You have yet to refute anything I have said.


How to "forecast"? Aren&#39;t you "getting your masters" right now? Forecasting is hardly a vague concept. Use you noodle son.


That is again a stupid assumption you make. In a market economy companies are always trying to enhance efficiency, if this mean s that collectives are more efficient such a company would gain a competitive advantage, wouldn&#39;t it?

You truly are obtuse Mr. Bush. What makes Social economics "social" is that the industry is "not privitised". Remove privitisation and you remove corporations. Social economics is more efficient in production as there is no "over-supply" created. This process however takes many more man-hours of work to operate making it "not cost effective" for corporations to adopt. Perhaps the facts truly are that your question was stupid rather than my assumption. You&#39;re out of your league Mr. Bush. I&#39;m disappointed.


And do you have any proof of Schweikart "debunking" the other issues in socialism?

Do you have any proof that these "issues" exist besides rhetoric from von Misis? You are quick to discount my use of Schweikart when your own argument is based on someone else&#39;s ideal. Can you explain this to me?

So far you have danced around every issue Mr. Bush. I have refuted your argument that in socialism "there is no way of economic calculation thus this form of society will always end in poverty and starvation"
and you have rebutted with nothing. I will consider this matter now closed as you obviously had no idea what you were talking about and were merely citing rhetoric from von Misis.

[antieverything]

Now that I think of it, that underlining was more trouble than it was worth.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Yes, the title is "After Capitalism" and yes it was amazing.

[dancingoutlaw]

never said the ruble was abolished at any point in my post. I think you have misread it.


You perception that the monetary system can never be abolished is inaccurate.

Why you ask? Look at your own words;


There can never be a transition to "pure" marxism because without a marker of industrial activity such as any form of currency there is no way to realize surpluses and deficets in any economy

Your condradiction lays here. Without a form of currency there can be no suplus and deficits in an economy, in addition, there can not even be an economy.

"Production" was around before the invent of capitalism you know.

I didn&#39;t misread your post. I know you never said that the ruble was abolished. I brought it up to point out what I believe to be the one af the great fallacies of Marxian economics that society cannot operate without currency and as long as there is currency there will be inequality. I also am not sure what contradiction you mean. The only contradiction I was trying to make was that social order relies on currency to keep the surpluses and deficits of goods and services in check. Without currency there is no way to track production. Since Marx abolishes all classes based on inequality there cannot be money... there cannot be civilization. The final marxist phase of society can never be. There will only be the transitional phase and then a stop. Sure production was around long before Capitalism was named so, as was money. Small tribal groups may have lived what is perceived as communally but that could never work for a large global communist system. It is Money that drives civilization. Mainly because it is convenient. I cannot pay my cable bill in chickens or bags of fruit (don&#39;t think I haven&#39;t tried). The last phase of human development according to Marx means that all products are available to all people. I do not see how a sizable distribution network that would meet the needs of the people be able to operate withouteither a profit motive (a definite no-no to you) or an industrial marker like any form of currency controled by a central government. If there can be a world without money, what would it be? How would it work? How would products get to the point of manufacture to the place of use?

[Vinny Rafarino]

social order relies on currency to keep the surpluses and deficits of goods and services in check. Without currency there is no way to track production


How did you ever come to this conclusion?

[dancingoutlaw]

[/QUOTE]How did you ever come to this conclusion? [QUOTE]

Simple observation of how the world works. I would like to know how a moneyless sysytem would work though.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Before I answer that, I would still like to know your reasoning behind your assumption that "social order relies on currency to keep the surpluses and deficits of goods and services in check. Without currency there is no way to track production"

Please esplain to me the dynamics behind this proposal.

[dancingoutlaw]

Man... Comrade RAF do you ever give a straight answer? What beyond common sense observation do you need? Money has been around for more than three thousand years. Since there are a finite amount of choice in one&#39;s life, human behavior is linked to bartering. Not just with money but with everything. I am bartering my time right now to debate with you fine people. Money is a representation of these very finite choices. Corporations, Goverments, heck everybody uses money as a system of choices. If a product does not sell well then a corporation uses the data gained by the inflow and outflow of money to make the choice whether to continue production or not. Here in NYC the sanitation Dept. had some cutbacks. Garbage piled on the streets. Because of public unhappiness about the stink the mayor re-uped the budget to get the trash off of the streets. All representations of cause and effect.... where the resources are being spent and where they are deficient. Simple Logic and Common sense.

Let&#39;s say that global capitalism falls and the marxist worker&#39;s paridise is the norm. From the point of production of ... lets say tomato soup.... how does the truck driver ... who has already overcome the awesome task of procuring a truck from assembly (all the motors... fan belt manufacturing... truck frame.... nice ergonomic bucket seats.... from other parts of the nation. Including the aluminium mining, refinery, and milling into to something that resembles a can to hold the soup and heck maybe even a label so you know what it is. ) Where does he go? How does this driver know where to take his or her wares? Not to be sold but to be distributed. Without any data aquired by a central government (in communism) who would logically use money in order to gain statistics of what sectors were lacking or what cities were starving this driver would be directionless. Even the manufacture of simple products like pencils uses such a wide array of refined resources that only profit motive (Capitalism) or Central control (Communism) will be able to ensure that the product would even be made. Beacuse of complexities like this I don&#39;t beleive that the final phase of marxism will ever be. That government closes shop and everyone does the the work that is interesting is not going to happen. Because the central authority would not go away it would use money. As long as there is money there will be people who have more than others. As long as there is money there will not be equality and true marxism will never be.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Did you not read this thread? I have already ben over this briefly. Which is all that it takes. If you guys can&#39;t figure this one out then god help you.

[dancingoutlaw]

Did you not read this thread? I have already ben over this briefly. Which is all that it takes. If you guys can&#39;t figure this one out then god help you.


I did read the thread. I never once saw any example to contradict my claim that currency is a neccesity to human relations. The complexity of relationships that is inherent to modern life could never be predicted in Marx&#39;s time. What it takes to keep the world just running relies on the cooporation of thousands if not millions of people making decisions which is usually in their own self interest. This complex system could not exsist without profit motive or some sort of central planning to keep it going both which require money. Sometimes the system breaks.... proof being the four hour hike I took home yesterday. This system would never be in place nor would operate under Marx&#39;s worker&#39;s paradise. The final phase can never be. I am sorry if I seem dense Comrade RAF but you did not answer my question of how a moneyless system would work. I propose that it will not. Respectfully yours.

[Som]

I think the biggest problem most have with the idea of a monetaryless system is that they invision it in a society where the relations and overall structure are essentially the same as the current society.

Its a big misunderstanding which leads to alot of confusion. First of all, this society would be organized ultrademocratically, with of course, no class distinctions which would require no hierarchal relations.

Basically you set the premise as the market or statist central planning and leave no other alternative. This of course is way too simplistic and leaves out the idea of any decentralization without the market, which is how any communist society would likely function, centralization and markets both leading to class differences.

Theres of course loads of ways this theoretical society could be organized, and how resourse management and distribution would be handled, but one way to organize that would be through democratic councils of workers and consumers, free association of communes, and trade unions. A communist society would at first likely produce less than any monetary society, but this would be a trivial distinction to a society free of all class distinctions. The concept of &#39;waste&#39; is again nowhere near as important as its put on the capitalist holy altar of effeciency, and it would be determined by simple consensus among those involved, voiced through these democratic councils.
With all of this, i&#39;d expect many new methods of production, increased localisation, and since people won&#39;t be bound to the notion of &#39;work&#39; in any particularly strict way like they do in any modern society we&#39;ve seen so far, they will likely become more productive in their own way, especially in regards to making their own stuff and helping their community. A higher despecialization of labor will happen with this, and eventually more and more people will be able to do it themselves.
Also a society like that will likely value and create its technology to help ease the workload and for use instead of increase it for some new consumer toy.

But this is all speculation, the communist future society is a theory that will work itself out when the time comes.

[dancingoutlaw]

But this is all speculation, the communist future society is a theory that will work itself out when the time comes

This is my criticism of the Communist Utopia.


Basically you set the premise as the market or statist central planning and leave no other alternative. This of course is way too simplistic and leaves out the idea of any decentralization without the market, which is how any communist society would likely function, centralization and markets both leading to class differences.

I see the other alternative as too simplistic. The idea that it will just happen does not make sense to me. A reorder fo soceity on the scale that you propose would be grand indeed and I would be all for it if the world were 10 square miles and contained only 100 people.


Theres of course loads of ways this theoretical society could be organized, and how resourse management and distribution would be handled, but one way to organize that would be through democratic councils of workers and consumers, free association of communes, and trade unions.


Once again what ensures the cooperation between these groups. How would a commune in Oregon obtain neccesary goods from a Commune in California or New York? Would these Communes and organizations be little more than a new sorts of feifdoms without any central control? How would the exchange of goods and services between these communes take place? That is also assuming good will towards all men and an abundance of raw materials.


[/QUOTE]With all of this, i&#39;d expect many new methods of production, increased localisation, and since people won&#39;t be bound to the notion of &#39;work&#39; in any particularly strict way like they do in any modern society we&#39;ve seen so far, they will likely become more productive in their own way, especially in regards to making their own stuff and helping their community.


Would anyone freely devote themselves to waste management, manufacture or simple distribution (going from point A to B) simply for the good of the whole? Would people be elected into these positions instead? I do not beleive that manufacturing things yourself is a good answer. Time is finite. If I am spending time making a chair then that is time not spent watering the tomatoes. I have a place to sit but no soup for me or you. Even for the lofty goal of the "good of the whole" my time or your time may be better spent doing what you or I do best. Still my problem is analagous to "Who does the dishes?"

A higher despecialization of labor will happen with this, and eventually more and more people will be able to do it themselves. [/QUOTE]

Once again time is finite. The manufacture of goods has too happen to at least meet demand. As in the "Great Leap Forward" everyone made steel but no one farmed. You cannot eat steel.


But this is all speculation, the communist future society is a theory that will work itself out when the time comes.

And I come back to this. For me to believe I need more than a speculative society. I base my observations on historical truths that I perceive about human nature. To believe in the Marxist ideal there needs to be more than theory. A world where there is no government and everyone works for the good of each other is a great fantasy indeed and since I am concerned with the practicalities fo said society... I don&#39;t think it will happen.
Thank you for your time Som. Hope to hear from you again.

[elijahcraig]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But this is all speculation, the communist future society is a theory that will work itself out when the time comes

This is my criticism of the Communist Utopia.

"Utopianism" is what we call those who plan out societies in they way of More or Owen. Not those who allow it to develop on the basis of the people.

[Som]

This is my criticism of the Communist Utopia.

I think its an overstated criticism, I think that those looking for something so concrete that it could be considered an actual plan are simply looking too hard. Human nature and interactions are complicated things, and there will much experimenting, organizing, and reorganizing untill any sort of balance is found.

Historically those that have just tryed to jump right in, most notably the anarchists in spain, and the working class at the very beggining of the russian revolution, as well as many other smaller examples have shown amazing creativity and effectiveness of the masses in communist organization. The people will make it work if they want it.


Once again what ensures the cooperation between these groups. How would a commune in Oregon obtain neccesary goods from a Commune in California or New York? Would these Communes and organizations be little more than a new sorts of feifdoms without any central control? How would the exchange of goods and services between these communes take place? That is also assuming good will towards all men and an abundance of raw materials.

Well first I would think there would be much less need for those in oregon to get things from new york and california, the capitalist system works against localized mechanisms in the name of profit. But if such a thing needed to happen, again, it would be organized democratically. Taking turns, maybe someone is visiting, theres all sorts of variables to these things. But if it was absolutly vital, you&#39;d expect someone would take it up as a goodwill measure.

The distribution of goods would all be essentially a variable arrangement of agreements and a democratic gift economy.

Central control? not control, but of course they would all be organized together. A cooperative federation of communes of sorts, for the purpose of coordination instead of hierarchy.


Would anyone freely devote themselves to waste management, manufacture or simple distribution (going from point A to B) simply for the good of the whole? Would people be elected into these positions instead?

They could take turns, they could vote on work, they could volunteer. They could work it out in many different ways.


I do not beleive that manufacturing things yourself is a good answer. Time is finite. If I am spending time making a chair then that is time not spent watering the tomatoes. I have a place to sit but no soup for me or you. Even for the lofty goal of the "good of the whole" my time or your time may be better spent doing what you or I do best. Still my problem is analagous to "Who does the dishes?"

I didn&#39;t say that it would make up for all of that, but that it would decrease the dependency on specialized jobs.

Public attitude in this sort of society would have to favor productive work, and those who sit around all day and contribute nothing will be looked down on.


Once again time is finite. The manufacture of goods has too happen to at least meet demand. As in the "Great Leap Forward" everyone made steel but no one farmed. You cannot eat steel.

If there are shortages or needs, there will be meetings, there will be debates, there will be councils and descisions made on how to best deal with it. Its nowhere near maos china where the descisions were made from above and effected massive portions of the population without their involvement.


And I come back to this. For me to believe I need more than a speculative society. I base my observations on historical truths that I perceive about human nature. To believe in the Marxist ideal there needs to be more than theory. A world where there is no government and everyone works for the good of each other is a great fantasy indeed and since I am concerned with the practicalities fo said society... I don&#39;t think it will happen.

Well, if you need to see something that never existed, you&#39;re going to be quite stubborn to convince. Likewise you couldn&#39;t expect someone living in a 14th century fuedalist society to invision the structure of modern capitalism, and those who dreamed of anything like it would be considered just the same way, utopian dreamers with no sense of practicality.

[dancingoutlaw]

Well, if you need to see something that never existed, you&#39;re going to be quite stubborn to convince. Likewise you couldn&#39;t expect someone living in a 14th century fuedalist society to invision the structure of modern capitalism, and those who dreamed of anything like it would be considered just the same way, utopian dreamers with no sense of practicality.

With due respect Som I disagree. You are proposing a social system that will affect Billions. I think that there needs to be more than some forethought on exactly how it would work. My problem is with the guarantee of transition into this society from the interim government. I do not think that it will happen. I do not see in the future, no matter what good intentions would provoke a revolution, a strong centralized government that is needed to socialize the world no less a nation just one day going away to form a loose array of communes that do not rely on any production data (other than physical headcount) to operate. There has never been any human comfort in anarchy.

I also disagree with the notion that some magic technological pill will help with the future Utopian society. Other than the normal human march of scientific progress,(wildly accelerated in the past century by poeple seeking profit) to assume that a breakthrough would happen is just speculation. There could well be another Lysenko (who used party favor and politics to quelch anyone who disagreed with his official methods) like under Stalin&#39;s rule that set Soviet Agriculture Science back decades.

You say I ask an explanation for something that never exsisted. When what you are proposing is so life changing and sweeping I would that you would expect more than a few critical and skeptical voices.

[redstar2000]

Perhaps I&#39;m being too cynical (again&#33;) but it occurs to me that those who reject communism because of it&#39;s "absence" of a "practical plan" may be doing so for a motive entirely separate from intellectual rigor.

Yeah, you guessed it. What they might be looking for is a guarantee that they personally will be no less privileged than they are now or hope to become in the future under capitalism.

Thus no answer will ever be "acceptable"...though a generous bribe in unmarked small bills would probably receive serious consideration.

http://www.sawu.org/redgreenleft/YaBBImages/smoking.gif
___________________________

U.S. GET OUT OF IRAQ NOW&#33;
___________________________

"...a disgusting and frightening website"
The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.sawu.org/redstar2000)
A site about communist ideas

[Som]

With due respect Som I disagree. You are proposing a social system that will affect Billions. I think that there needs to be more than some forethought on exactly how it would work.

but the very nature of the social system makes this forethought nearly useless, of course theres some vague idea that people might want to know what theyre aiming for, I went through that, and there are even many people with a bit of a slightly more thorough idea of how it would work, but its a system that must be made by everyone involved. It will be a very fluid system, that besides a few basic principles might look and work completely different for everyone.

Like i&#39;ve said, human interactions are terribly complicated things.


My problem is with the guarantee of transition into this society from the interim government. I do not think that it will happen. I do not see in the future, no matter what good intentions would provoke a revolution, a strong centralized government that is needed to socialize the world no less a nation just one day going away to form a loose array of communes that do not rely on any production data (other than physical headcount) to operate. There has never been any human comfort in anarchy.

Well, I don&#39;t necesarily disagree with that. I&#39;m not a marxist, im not exactly too trustworthy of a transition state either, nevermind a very strong one. Though an ultra-democratic state might lead towards a final revolution of sorts. There are forms of transition and revolution that aren&#39;t necesarily statist.

I think anarchy would be quite comfortable, actually.


I also disagree with the notion that some magic technological pill will help with the future Utopian society.

Its not magic, never implied such a thing, just think that it would help.

A society will inevitably hold on and use technology based on how that society works, in current society, new gadgets are produced for profit, in a communist society things would more often be made with communist motivations, likely reducing workload as one example.

the lysenko example is unapplicable as i dont support any authoritarian planning.


You say I ask an explanation for something that never exsisted. When what you are proposing is so life changing and sweeping I would that you would expect more than a few critical and skeptical voices.

So life changing I couldn&#39;t dare tell people how to do it or even try to do it for them.

[dancingoutlaw]

Som just so you know... I can respect your views. I think that we all want a better world but the way we get there is the disagreement. I am glad that you do not agree with the authoritarian statist transition. Since I am a skeptic though, I do not believe that society will function in anarchy. I do not like strong central control either. I do wish your dream could come true. I do not think that the practicalities of it will happen though.

[Vinny Rafarino]

like under Stalin&#39;s rule that set Soviet Agriculture Science back decades.



I would like to see your evidence to support this statement.

[dancingoutlaw]

Comrade RAF you are not really going to defend Lysenko are you? He did set back Soviet agriculture because he believed that aquired characteristics could be passed on to the next generation of seed. This is akin to me losing an arm and my son being born with one hand. His rejection of modern genetics caused great problems in the Soviet science community. He maintained power only through the will of Stalin and any who oppossed Lysenko were punished, mostly by loss of status in the science community but some by gulag and death. Any advances in Soviet agriculture was in spite of him and his grip on the Agricultural science of Russia was pretty tight. You may want to defend Stalin but trust me you DO not want to defend Lysenko.
Respectfully yours

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2003, 08:17 AM
Comrade RAF you are not really going to defend Lysenko are you? He did set back Soviet agriculture because he believed that aquired characteristics could be passed on to the next generation of seed. This is akin to me losing an arm and my son being born with one hand. His rejection of modern genetics caused great problems in the Soviet science community. He maintained power only through the will of Stalin and any who oppossed Lysenko were punished, mostly by loss of status in the science community but some by gulag and death. Any advances in Soviet agriculture was in spite of him and his grip on the Agricultural science of Russia was pretty tight. You may want to defend Stalin but trust me you DO not want to defend Lysenko.
Respectfully yours
I have not defended anyone in regards to Soviet Agriculture, but I will now. I merely asked you to support your statement. I believe your remarks to be embellished as the collectivised agrigultures purpose was to provide food for one nation only, not to be a support structure for the Soviet GDP. Advances in Agricultural science were put on the "back-burner" so to speak to increase the industrial stability of the Soviet economy.

Specific "advances" would only be required if these products were meant to be used as commodities for international trade. I must also remind you that Agriculture Bio-engineering was first used in 1912 (source Johns Hopkins University) and given the relative slowness of the flield (bio-engineering on living systems that were non-production related began to take shape in the 60&#39;s) in regards to development, I cannot see the issue here. Nations have been supplied with enough food for mass consumption well before the invent of bio-engineering. Stalin knew that since the Soviet GDP did not rely on agriculture, and they currently had enough food production to supply the masses, there was no reason to assume the USSR needed to take resources away from industrialisation for this purpose. Why did Stalin protect him? Because to persecute a man for thinking in the terms of what will advance the nation the quickest is absurd.

You will also note that Stalin slated 1954 as the year that resources that are now not needed in industry (as the USSR was now an industrial super power) were to be given over to agrigulture production and technological evolution to accomodate an booming populace (Soviet life expectency doubled durinf Stalins years as leader) . He called for the agriculture industry to be decollectivised and given over to the proletariat. It would be innane to think that technological advancements in the field of agriculture were beyond the grasp of Soviet intellectuals, specifically when they only played a small role in actual production for consumption instead of production for profit.

I don&#39;t see how your statement is relevant to the development of the Soviet State.

[dancingoutlaw]

My attack was specifically on T.D. Lysenko. As I said before any , and I mean ANY advancements made in agricultural sciences on the Soviet behalf during his tenure were in spite of this man. I also believe that he and his ilk could only exsist because of the particular nature of Central Control and a one party state.

Lysenko believed in a sort of Lemarckism. That aquired traits could be passed on genetically. He rejected the thought of the day in which Mendel&#39;s theory of genetics prevailed. I do not talk of agricultural bio-engeneering I speak of simple hybridization of plants to achieve a particular goal. Lysenko came into prominence by promising that he had perfected a new strain of wheat that would allviate the shortages coming from the Ukraine. His work has since been proven false and fraudulent. Stalin elevated Lysenko to be the head of Agricultural Science in the Soviet Union. In the occasion of the session of the All Union Acadamy of Agricultural Sciences in July- August 1948, Lysenko spoke of his theory and launched his assualt on Science and Reason. As the Historian Adam Ulam Describes:" We have alrady encountered the notorius Charlatan before the war when his at first genuine and then faked experiments with develping new strains of wheat earned him the support of the regime and its protection against an enraged scientific community. But the pinnacle of his fame, fraud and influence was to be reached in the 1940&#39;s, when he became the virtual Stalin of Soviet Biology. His was truly a false idea whose time had come. Lysenkoism swamped Soviet biological sciences and threatened to invade other disciplines."

In Lysenko&#39;s speech made during the conference he opened with " Comrades&#33; Before going in to the concluding word, I consider it my duty to state the following. In one of the notes they ask me what kind of relationship exsists between my report and the Central Committee of the Party. I answer: The Central Committee of the Party reviewed my report and approved it."

This is a key statement. Lysenko dedicated his work to Stalin, being the " Coryphaeus of vanguard science."
Stain stood behind Lysenko. The Central Committee stood behind Stalin. Tell me who in their right mind would question Lysenko?

This system of charlatan science could never exist outside of a society dedicated to central authority and one party rule. When Yuri Zhdanov (son of A.A. Zhdanov who was in Stalin&#39;s inner circle) who was appointed the head of the science section of the Central Committee discussed in an unfavorable light Lysenko&#39;s theories during a lecture on the situatiuon in the biological sciences for regional party committee. This lecture caused such a problem that an emergency session of the Politburo was called. No one of any real scientific background believed in Lysenko&#39;s theories and practices, yet they could not be discussed openly because of his backing by Stalin who was for all intents and purposes the State. This can be seen on this excerpt from an open letter to Stalin from Y. Zhdanov in Pravda on aug 7, 1948.

" My sharp and public criticism of academic Lysenko was my mistake. Academic Lysenko at the present time is the ackknowledged leader of the Michurinest tendency in biology. he has defended Michurin and his doctrine form the attack of bourgeois geneticists, and he himself has done much for the science and practice of our economy.... Lenin often pointed out that the recognition of necessity of this or another phenonmenom concealed in itself the danger of falling into objectivism. Quite visibly I did not escape this danger. I characterized the plase of Weismanism and Mendelev- Morganism (I don&#39;t distiguish between them) largely by means of "pimenovsky": taking good and evil indifferently. In place of this, in order to come down sharply against these anti- scientific views, that in theory are a veiled form of popism, theological representaions of the appearance of forms as the result of specific acts of creation, and in practice lead to "maximazation," to the denial of man&#39;s ability to alter nature, livestock and plants, I mistakenly put before myself the task "to acknowledge" the place (of Mendelev and Morgan) in the development of biological theory, to find them " a grain of rationality." A result, the criticism of Weismanism came out weak, objectivist and in essence- supperficial..... Such are my errors, as I understand them."

If I have not bored you to tears yet, I conclude that the Soviet system of one party rule put in place this confederacy of scientific liability. Under a truly democratic or free system, Lysenkoism whould have never taken place because of concerns of independently replacating his work. Only through statism does one see a blatent disregard of facts (from even those who know better) because the State is not wrong... no matter what. Lysenko&#39;s quackery set back the Soviet&#39;s Agricultural science back decades. Wouldn&#39;t the people under the system have been served better under an open and free scientific sysytem that fulfilled the needs of the people and not of one man&#39;s ego? If Stalin did know that the food supply was enough for the masses then why did he sign on for Lysenko&#39;s snake oil to alleviate the shortages from and in the Ukraine until 1949? And as for the persecution of Lysenko... I do not call on the persecution of anyone, just the ability for the rational repudiation of a vapid scientific theory(like Lysenko&#39;s) that was not allowed under Stalin. I do find it interesting that you note that Stalin was to give rescources from industry to agriculture in 1954. Since he died 1953 we will never know what happened if that deadline came and he was still alive and Lysenko still had power.

As to the development to the soviet state. I beleive that the free flow of ideas is neccessary to human advancement . Under Lysenko ( and by proxy Stalin) this was not allowed in the field of agriculture. I see this sort of thing as a canary in the mineshaft to future generations. If scientific thought, no matter what subject, is not allowed to flow freely then we are doomed. I see as a matter of history that a Statist society will allow science to falter in the name of the common good or a common illusion. That is a very dangerous thing. Respectfully yours.

[dancingoutlaw]

It would be innane to think that technological advancements in the field of agriculture were beyond the grasp of Soviet intellectuals


Reading my post again I would like to add that the devopement of agricultural science was not above Soviet intellectuals. In fact there are stories of botanists who surrounded by food during the seige of Leningrad chose to continue their work to add to the field instead of consuming their work or believe in anything that Lysynko advocated. Their work benefits the human race to this day.
To reiterate, I believe that any advancement in Soviet Agricultural Science was made in spite of Lysenko. You may defend Stalin to your dying day, but please do not deify him to the point that he could not make mistakes. His support of Lysenko was a mistake that was justified only by the statist system that was in place under Stalin. Again respectfully yours.

[Vinny Rafarino]

speak of simple hybridization of plants to achieve a particular goal

Right, that&#39;s called bio-engineering.


I simply think you are making a mountain out of a mole hill. As I previously stated, the agriculture industry&#39;s job was a simple one. Perhaps Stalin made a mistake in your eyes. I do not see this point as relevant to feeding Soviet proletarians, so I consider it a mute point.

[dancingoutlaw]

Right, that&#39;s called bio-engineering.


I simply think you are making a mountain out of a mole hill. As I previously stated, the agriculture industry&#39;s job was a simple one. Perhaps Stalin made a mistake in your eyes. I do not see this point as relevant to feeding Soviet proletarians, so I consider it a mute point.

I distinguished hybridization from bio-engeneering because of your citation of 1912 as the first use of Agricultural bio engeneering. Since Gregor Mendel died in 1884 I would assume that that ball had been rolling for about 50 years already.

You may see it as a "mute point" but I of course do not. Peoples lives were ruined over this. The scientists involved I would assume wanted to make a better life for their people. It was foiled by the particular political structure that would allow a quack like Lysenko to rule the roost as it were without question to his authority. The Soviet poeple would have been better served if an open scientific community was allowed to thrive. Stalin did not allow this sort of open community.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2003, 04:12 PM

Right, that&#39;s called bio-engineering.


I simply think you are making a mountain out of a mole hill. As I previously stated, the agriculture industry&#39;s job was a simple one. Perhaps Stalin made a mistake in your eyes. I do not see this point as relevant to feeding Soviet proletarians, so I consider it a mute point.

I distinguished hybridization from bio-engeneering because of your citation of 1912 as the first use of Agricultural bio engeneering. Since Gregor Mendel died in 1884 I would assume that that ball had been rolling for about 50 years already.

You may see it as a "mute point" but I of course do not. Peoples lives were ruined over this. The scientists involved I would assume wanted to make a better life for their people. It was foiled by the particular political structure that would allow a quack like Lysenko to rule the roost as it were without question to his authority. The Soviet poeple would have been better served if an open scientific community was allowed to thrive. Stalin did not allow this sort of open community.
Pleae show how "lives were ruined by this".

[dancingoutlaw]

Alexander Yanata who in his youth took part in the Communist movement. 1933 dismissed from the Institute for Plant Protection for "promoting bourgeois ecological theories in the area of weed control." Incarcerated in 1936. Due to be released in 1938 his imprisonment was extended for five years. He died of tuberculosis while incarcerated.

Nikolai Vavilov who wrote over 350 treatises on genetics, biology, geography and selection. His work, unlike Lysenko&#39;s, actually did help food production in the North of Russia. He helped in the establishment of the Agricultural Acadamy. Also President of of same Lenin Acadamy of Agricultural Science. Officially elected to preside over the 7th International Congress of Geneticists held in Edinburgh in 1939, Nikolai Vavilov was not allowed to attend the conference. He was arrested on August 6 1940 on the charge of undermining the socialist reforms in agriculture. He died in prison on January 26 1943.

Nikolai Tulaikov, director of the Institute of Cereals, ousted. Died 1932

Professor Solomon Levit, director of the medical genetics institute. ousted.

These are some in the science Community that sufferred under Lysenko.

There is evidence to suggest that Stalin&#39;s faith in Lysenko even took down political figures in his own inner circle. The event of Yuri Zhadanov that was related in my earlier post from which I excerpted his open apology culminated with a meeting in Stalin&#39;s office. As related in the memoir of Dimitry Shepolov who worked under A.M. Suslov, head of the agit-prop section of Central Committee. The day after Yuri Zhadanov&#39;s criticism of Lysenko&#39;s methods Shepilov writes of a meeting between Suslov, Shepilov, Yuri Zhadanov, and his father A.A. Zhadanov. Stalin asked who authorized the report and lecture. Shepilov admited to authorization. Stalin then said "On what grounds? Don&#39;t you know that all our agriculture hinges on Lysenko?" Shepelov then claims to explain to Stalin that Lysenko is a fraud, that he doesn&#39;t have the backing of the science communitee and that a special commission should be appointed to investigate Lysenko&#39;s work. Stalin then answered " No. No one could do that. We must appoint a special commission of the CC to examine the matter. We must punish the guilty in exeplary fashion...... it is necessary to question the father and not the children." We would presume he meant the elder Zhadanov.

Nothing immediate happened because of this. This event occurred in April 1948. Zhadanov was slowly pushed from Stalin&#39;s inner circle until July 1948 while he was in Valdai for health reasons he was cut off completly. He soon died in August from "neglegent" care which touched off the famous "Doctor&#39;s Plot". Shepilov found himself out of a job in August as he was preparing for the Lysenko conference. All after the August 7th publication of Yuri&#39;s apology letter in Pravda.

Take these facts as you see fit.

Lysenko could only have come to prominence under the unusual circumstances of Stalin&#39;s Central authority.
No truly democratic and open culture would have ever let this ignorance openly run amok for such a long time. His dangerous worldview based on ideaology over science has come and gone, hopefully never to return, although some creationists in the midwest of the U.S. are trying real hard. Lysenkoism is when ideaology and science mix. Not a very good combination. I will end with a quote that sums up this spitting in the face of logic and reason. "It is better to know less, but to know just what is necessary for practice."- T.D. Lysenko.