Meanings of the word socialism

[Paul Cockshott]

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } This is a fork from the discussion on China and the relationship between the CP and the capitalist class there.



Artesian wrote
<<according to comrade Cockshott, the state sector even in bourgeois economies represents a socialized sector of the economy. Hence comrade Cockshott has argued that "labor Britain"-- post WW2 and pre-Thatcher-- was perhaps "1/3 socialist." The quotation marks are there because I believe that was exactly his characterization.

I believe he has also argued that the former East Germany or Czechoslovakia were maybe 98% socialist.

So let's just briefly look at this claim for the economies previously known as "socialist," .

You have economies supposedly 98% socialist, in China's case maybe even more than that by 1972, and

1) despite the overwhelming socialist organization of the economy-- classes persist. And not just any classes, but an actual bourgeoisie exists.

2) In China's case, despite the overwhelming socialist organization of the economy the socialism proves incapable of industrializing the country; of fundamentally reorganizing agriculture so that small-plot labor intensive cultivation is transformed into larger area capital intensive cultivation; of matching, in fact, the amplification of labor productivity that industrialization both creates and requires.

3. Consequently, the "socialist state" itself begins the introduction, and organization of capitalism, and the creation of a bourgeoisie. In the case of the fSU and some of its European allies, the introduction involves, the destruction of assets, an actual deindustrialization, lowering of living standards, and in essence the practice of social "arson."

4.In China, the course is different, involving what we might call a "controlled burn" of the old organization of the economy through low-wage, high FDI programs.

In both cases a supposedly "socialist" economy creates its negation, so to speak, capitalism. How can a socialist economy create capitalism? What is the necessity for the socialist state to create capitalism?

There has to be a specific organization of labor for the creation of socialism from capitalism; for the negation of capitalism, and the overthrow of its personification in capitalists, by the proletariat.

That specific organization of labor, wage-labor, is absolutely necessary for the reproduction of capital as capital, for the maintenance and expansion of capitalism. This is why we talk about capitalism creating the conditions for its own overthrow. It must reproduce this condition of labor to even be capitalism.

So what is that specific organization of labor, under socialism-- indeed what is that socialist organization of labor, that necessarily creates, strengthens, deepens capital, and capitalism in its very midst?

To pose the question, I think, shows us how nonsensical, literally, Maoism is; how absurd their claim to "socialism" truly is. >>


Before looking at Artesians numbered points I think that there are some important issues of terminology. There are very important real historical issues at stake in the discussion but these substantive issues can be obscured by differences in the meanings that different people attach to the same words. It is important to focus the discussion on substantive questions and avoid misunderstandings that arise from differences in terminology.


It is not clear to me what meaning Artesian attaches to the word socialism, it is apparent that he or she thinks my usage of the word differs from his own, but what he or she means is not made clear.


It is evident from the most cursory look at the socialist movement now and in the past that there are many varieties of socialism. Some socialists have advocated an economy based on nationalised industries, some have advocated an economy based on cooperatives. Some have advocated a mixed economy, with public and private firms co-existing and with the state acting as a redistributive agency. Among those who advocate nationalised industry there have been differnences about the relative roles of planning and the market, and among those who advocate planning there have been disputes as to whether the planning should be done in monetary units or in natura as Neurath advocated.


In addition the socialist movement has historically advocated a distribution of income that is not just based on market principles but is modified on the basis of need.


What is probably the common denominator of socialism has been the idea of common ownership, whether this be interpreted as public, municipal or cooperative.


When I use the word socialism I use it in this general sense of the varying but similar goals of the historical socialist movement. If one uses a narrower sense of the word, one falls into the danger of a sectarian position in which you say that only your own particular interpretation of the word socialism is true socialism, and that others, who are using the word differently from you, are misusing the term.


Bearing this in mind, what Artesian is pointing out in her points 3 and 4 above are real defeats and setbacks that the socialist movement experienced during the last 25 years. The fact that the historical socialist movement suffered defeats and setbacks which led to the re-estabilishment of capitalist economies in Eastern Europe, and to large scale privatisations and weakenings of the welfare state in Western Europe can not be denied. But this does not mean that previous socialist movements were absurd or nonsensical. It does show that previous views of a unidirectional progress of society were over optimisitic, and it does show that the economic and political strategies of the socialist movements were inadequate to the challenges that history threw at them. It also shows that previous socialist movements had a rather naïve idea of how easy it would be to eliminate classes.


My own views as to the economic policies that should have been adopted in the socialist countries in the 1980s are set out in Towards a New Socialism, which was written during the crisis of the 1980s and which was directed to the particular theoretical and economic conjuncture existing in the USSR, Hungary, DDR and CSSR at that time.


I think it is also helpful to distinguish between socialism and the communism advocated by Marx. My reading of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme is that his first stage of communism was a somewhat different economic system from that advocated by 20th century socialists. The key differences were:


Replacement of money by labour hours in pricing goods
Payment in labour hours on a one to one basis – one hour pay for one hour worked
Deductions for social security from the take home pay to cover social expenses and social insurance

This differed both from social democracy ( including orthodox Kautskyism and Leninist variants) and the soviet stalinist system in being non monetary, and differed from the USSR in the use of social security deductions rather than using the profits of nationalised industries as the source of social funds.


I think that the Chinese commune system which used workpoints as the basis of payment conciously drew on this model rather than on social democratic models.

[Rafiq]

Socialism in the marxarian sense, is working class ownership over the means of production. Socialism can mean a lot of things to a lot of people

[Die Neue Zeit]

It is evident from the most cursory look at the socialist movement now and in the past that there are many varieties of socialism. Some socialists have advocated an economy based on nationalised industries, some have advocated an economy based on cooperatives. Some have advocated a mixed economy, with public and private firms co-existing and with the state acting as a redistributive agency. Among those who advocate nationalised industry there have been differnences about the relative roles of planning and the market, and among those who advocate planning there have been disputes as to whether the planning should be done in monetary units or in natura as Neurath advocated.

[...]

I think it is also helpful to distinguish between socialism and the communism advocated by Marx. My reading of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme is that his first stage of communism was a somewhat different economic system from that advocated by 20th century socialists. The key differences were:


Replacement of money by labour hours in pricing goods
Payment in labour hours on a one to one basis – one hour pay for one hour worked
Deductions for social security from the take home pay to cover social expenses and social insurance

This differed both from social democracy (including orthodox Kautskyism and Leninist variants) and the soviet stalinist system in being non monetary, and differed from the USSR in the use of social security deductions rather than using the profits of nationalised industries as the source of social funds.

I think that the Chinese commune system which used workpoints as the basis of payment consciously drew on this model rather than on social democratic models.

Programmatically, I think we should write something like "we are for participatory socialism, for the lower phase of the communist mode of production, and for beyond." This distinguishes between the two as well as what specific form of the former we want.

[S.Artesian]

First, I don't think there was any reason to split this off from its original thread--which was about Maoism supporting a "national bourgeoisie."

Secondly, I never stated anywhere that previous struggle for socialism were nonsensical. I said Maoism as a "theory," and in particular Maoism's "alliance" with a national bourgeoisie is non-sensical. That's one more reason not to have split the thread.

Thirdly, note the comrade Cockshott does not answer the critical questions raised in the post or in the original thread:

1. what is the economic purpose, rationale for allying with the national bourgeoisie?
2. Is that "purpose" achieved in the alliance with the national bourgeoisie?
3. How can socialism economically reproduce classes based on specific relations to the means of production when scientific socialism, as Marx and Engels distinguish it, is the process by which classes are abolished because production is for need, not profit, and scarcity is eliminated?
4. How is that supposed socialisms, proclaiming themselves as scientifically socialist in the tradition of Marx and Engels not only produce classes, but actually create the means for their own decomposition and overthrow?

Now I will point out that the comrade Cockshott's statement:


In addition the socialist movement has historically advocated a distribution of income that is not just based on market principles but is modified on the basis of need.


To which he subscribes:

When I use the word socialism I use it in this general sense of the varying but similar goals of the historical socialist movement.


has very little to Marx's conception of scientific socialism, the reappropriation of social labor on a social basis by a "free association of producers."

It might have something to do with the history of the UK Labor Party, the Webbs, the Fabians, Bernstein, with the social-democrats of Europe pre and post WW2, Dubcek, the "human face to socialism," Michael Harrington and the DSA, Robert Reich and "left-Democrats" but it has nothing to do with Marx's critique of capital and the immanent tendencies within capitalism for its own overthrow and replacement.

And with that, I will take a copy of this reply and post it back on the original thread, where these questions were appropriately raised.

[robbo203]

Let is be clearly understood that those who talk in terms of the post war Labour government in Britian as being "1/3 socialist" or the former East Germany or Czechoslovakia as being "maybe 98% socialist" are drawing on a tradition that is quite separate from the revolutionary marxist/anarchist tradition. In this latter tradition no distinction whatsoever was made between the terms "socialism" and "communism" which were treated as synonyms. What muddleheaded non-revolutionary reformist tinkerers like Cockshott and Co mean by "socialism" is, from the point of view of this tradition, nothing more than state capitalism

In fact, the supposed "scientific distinction" between socialism and communism was entirely a figment of Lenin's imagination who in The State and Revolution called socialism the lower stage of communism and then utterly contradicted himself by calling socialism in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It,(1917) as merely merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people . How socialism can be both the lower stage of communism and a state capitalist monopoly is an enigma I will leave to those slippery dialecticians who are so evidently enamoured with the idea of state capitalism, to resolve.


The plain fact is that right up until the early 20th century socialism and communism were terms widely used interchangeably. Even among the Russian social democrats, prior to their break up into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, this particular usage prevailed. A key text called A Short Course of Economic Science, written by A Bogdanoff, talked of socialism being "the highest stage of society we can conceive", in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which "there will not be the market ,buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution.". This book was published in 1897 and a revised edition, published in August 1919, was used as a textbook in schools and study circles of the Russian Communist Party (Russia 1917-1967: A Socialist Analysis, Socialist Party of Great Britain 1967). Stalin, too, in this early period talked of socialism in this way. For instance, in his book Anarchism or Socialism (1906) he wrote that "Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed -- there will be only free workers". In socialism, argued Stalin, "Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power.". (Anarchism or Socialism?J. V. Stalin,Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954, Vol. 1, pp. 297-391) It was this same Stalin who in the 1930s claimed that the Soviet Union was now a fully formed "socialist state" controlled by the working class when he had previously excluded both the state and classes from his conception of socialism. (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/11/25.htm).

Draw your own conclusions

[Paul Cockshott]

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } In response to my previous posts Robbo has pointed out that during the late 19th and early 20th century writers like Stalin and Bogdanov made no clear distinction between socialism and communism. That is certainly true. The formula according to which socialism preceeds communism became the orthodox soviet doctrine with Lenin, and was probably an innovation by the him. On the other hand at an earlier stage – during the 1840s Marx had been at some pains to distinguish himself as a socialist rather than a communist, and in the CGP he spoke of communism as going through two phases rather than talking of socialism followed by communism. It is also evident that the socialism that Lenin spoke of – state capitalism under the control of the worker's state, was significantly different from the albeit very brief account given by Marx of communism's first stage.


But Robbo's claim that my use of the word socialism to describe what existed in the later USSR or GDR was quite alien to the tradition of anarchism and revolutionary marxism involves a rather selective reading of the past. Kautsky's Social Revolution, put forward essentially this view, and as far as I know, this position was not attacked as revisionist or reformist at the time, Of course my knowledge of the literature at the time is limited so I may be wrong, but I am unaware of any contemorary comments by people like Lenin, Trotsky or Luxemburg denouncing the Social Revolution for proposing the retention of money.
Artesian says that when I use the word socialism in general sense of the varying but similar goals of the historical socialist movement, I am using it in the sense of UK Labor Party, the Webbs, the Fabians, Bernstein, with the social-democrats of Europe pre and post WW2, Dubcek, the "human face to socialism," Michael Harrington and the DSA, Robert Reich and "left-Democrats" but that that this sense has nothing to do with Marx's critique of capital and the immanent tendencies within capitalism for its own overthrow and replacement.
His firs point that my usage overlaps with that by the social democratic movement is obviously true, and was deliberate on my part. But it also overlaps with the view of socialism held by the other big section of the working class movement – the communists. I deliberately use the word socialism in terms of the common goals of the socialist movement from left social democrats to communists, since this spectrum has historically made up the bulk of the socialist movement.


Artesian's claim that the ideas of socialism held by the social democrats and communists had nothing in common with Marx's critique of capitalism, surely does not hold water. The social democratic movement and the communist movement were very heavily influenced by marx's critique of capitalism. The idea that capitalist competition led to the centralisation of capital and that this prepares the way for the nationalisation of industry, the argument by Lenin that Robbo disagrees with, were clearly a result of an understanding of the economy that came from studying Marx. The left Keynesian social democratic argument that the low level of wages in the national income is a major cause of unemployment and slump, is also influenced by Marx's critique of capitalism. I think that if Artesian is to support that argument, Artesian would have to show that the 20th century socialist movement developed these ideas quite independently of Marx, drawing on some other source.


Robbo quotes Stalin and Bogdanov to establish what the early 20th century idea of socialism was, and presumably, to show that what the historical socialist movement achieved, could not have been socialism.
He quotes Bogdanov saying “"the highest stage of society we can conceive", in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which "there will not be the market ,buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution” and Stalin saying This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed -- there will be only free workers"


I presume that he thinks that what the communists and socialists achieved in Russia and Germany was something rather different.


Whilst some of what Stalin and Bogdanov were talking about was achieved: the abolition of an employing class, the abolition of rich and poor as opposed classes some of their aims had not been achieved : the abolition of buying and selling had only been partially achieved. Whilst a state acting for the rich to oppress the poor had been abolished, a state still survived.


No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Plans put forward at the start of the 20th century before socialists had to grapple with the real problems of running an economy and the real problems of war or impending war were bound to be only schematic and inadequate. I dont want to get into the problem of the state here, I want to concentrate on the issue of commodity production versus conscious and systematic distribution.


When these Russian Marxists wrote these things it was enough to say : conscious and systematic distribution. After they came to power they had to work out what that actually meant. There is a huge difference between stating a general aim in a few words, and saying just how this is to be achieved. There is even a big difference between stating an aim and proving that this aim is in principle feasible. They had to create the social structures that would process the information required for the conscious and systematic distribution of production. This is what Gosplan was intended to do, and to a significant extent succeeded in doing during the rapid industrialization of the 30s, the war planning and reconstruction of the 40s and the rapid growth of the 50s.


But as is widely known, there were considerable drawbacks to the Russian system of planning the economy. The plan targets were insufficiently detailed in terms of quality and product mix leading to waste and poor quality products. There was also an endemic problem of plants falsifying requirements and results. Methods of production were often irrational in the light of overall social costs. The system of material balances could only be extended to at most a few hundred goods by the early 50s, and thus targets had to be set in aggregate terms. Aggregation required a unit of aggregation, either Kilos or Roubles. So although buying and selling between independent firms stopped, all outputs being state property, state factories still had to keep accounts in Roubles of aggregate output and aggregate costs. So the aim of abolishing commodity production was only partially achieved.


The 'economic calculation problem' raised in the 20s and 30s by enemies of socialism, turned out, by the 50s to be very real.


It is worth recalling that the only socialists who took this problem seriously in the west were left social democrats like Lerner, Lange, Dickinson and that the solutions that they came up with were heavily influenced by neo-classical economic theory. These people advocated a form of market socialism – I which commodity production was retained under public ownership. They were the fore-runners of later schools of pro-market reforms in the eastern block.


The rise of this school both in eastern Europe and in China, was a response to real weaknesses in the existing system of conscious regulation of the economy, and thus of real weaknesses in the historically existing concept of socialism. It is no good simply denouncing these ideas unless you come up with another practical way of overcoming the economic calculation problem.


I would argue that the theoretical basis for actually solving the calculation problem did not exist until Kantorovich's work in the late 30s and these ideas did not become generally known until the late 50s. And even if Kantorovich provided a theoretical solution, it was wildly impractical to put into effect given the state of computer technology in the 50s. The first person to come up with a practical proposal to achieve what Bogdanov had proposed was Glushkov in the early 60s, but he warned Kosygin that to solve it you would have to build what we now call the internet, that it would take until the 1980s to develop and that it would cost more than the space programme and the nuclear weapons programme combined. Glushkov was right, and in failing to commit to the development, Kosygin sealed the long term fate of the USSR and of the first generation of socialist experiments.

[Paul Cockshott]

. How can socialism economically reproduce classes based on specific relations to the means of production when scientific socialism, as Marx and Engels distinguish it, is the process by which classes are abolished because production is for need, not profit, and scarcity is eliminated?
Where exactly is Marx supposed to have said thiis?

[Bethechange]

What socialism means is perhaps the question I find comes up most often with non-socialists, aside from what anarchism or anarchy mean. In the US, the view seems to be that socialism=state ownership. By this standard, it makes sense to call every state in the entire world a "mixed economy" as they all have at least some state ownership, beyond those things which define a state by themselves (police, courts, military, etc.). Is it socialist if states have national railways, airlines, or health care systems (minus my backwater homeland for the last two)? I think not.

This brings up a clear division between self-described socialists. There are those who feel that working people through "their" state can own and control the production of resources indirectly. Others say this is not socialist at all, but merely state capitalist as Paul Cockshott noted and Lenin himself defined. Such people, like myself, view producer control of production alone as socialism. Thus any "percentage" basis, i.e. the "socialist states" of East Germany and Czechoslovakia being "98%" socialist is ludicrous by the former view, though legitimate in the latter.

The former view is unknown to most non-socialists, while the latter seems to be held among the majority of socialists, assuming it is for supposedly benefiting working people as a whole, under their control somehow. Let's not even get into what communism is, its distinction from socialism, or whether there is one. Let alone the whole issue of economic calculation...:rolleyes:

[Jimmie Higgins]

In fact, the supposed "scientific distinction" between socialism and communism was entirely a figment of Lenin's imagination who in The State and Revolution called socialism the lower stage of communism and then utterly contradicted himself by calling socialism in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It,(1917) as merely merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people . How socialism can be both the lower stage of communism and a state capitalist monopoly is an enigma I will leave to those slippery dialecticians who are so evidently enamoured with the idea of state capitalism, to resolve.

While Marx and Engels used "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably and Lenin did as well early-on, you are taking these quotes entirely out of context in an ideologically self-serving way.

Throughout the essay, Lenin repeatedly contrasts the state-capitalism of a capitalist state with what that same type of organization means for a state that is democratically run by the working class.


For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest?

Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic.

Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy—and then it is a step towards socialism.
For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.


His argument in this article was that while the so-called socialists were making a stagiest argument, saying that the revolution is bourgeois in nature and socialism can not happen until after capitalism has been fully established, Lenin argues that because of monopoly capitalism in Russia, conditions are ripe for worker's control. He was not arguing that state-capitalism (in the abstract, separate from what class organized the state) is the goal, but that the then present existence of state-capitalism in Russia and war-time Europe means that workers can take that over and use centralized production in their own interests:


And what is the state? It is an organisation of the ruling class — in Germany, for instance, of the Junkers and capitalists. And therefore what the German Plekhanovs (Scheidemann, Lensch, and others) call "war-time socialism" is in fact war-time state-monopoly capitalism, or, to put it more simply and clearly, war-time penal servitude for the workers and war-time protection for capitalist profits.

Now try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state- monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!


(and the "dialectical" part of his argument here was that because of state-capitalism/monopoly capitalism in Russia, the revolution must either advance towards socialism, or, as the reformists argued, "regress" to an "imperialist republic" that would then have to crush the "revolutionary democratic" demands of the working class:


There is no middle course here. The objective process of development is such that it is impossible to advance from monopolies (and the war has magnified their number, role and importance tenfold) without advancing towards socialism.

Either we have to be revolutionary democrats in fact, in which case we must not fear to take steps towards socialism. Or we fear to take steps towards socialism, condemn them in the Plekhanov, Dan or Chernov way, by arguing that our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, that socialism cannot be “introduced”, etc., in which case we inevitably sink to the level of Kerensky, Milyukov and Kornilov, i.e., we in a reactionary-bureaucratic way suppress the “revolutionary-democratic” aspirations of the workers and peasants.
)

[S.Artesian]

Cockshott proves himself the master of deflection and distortion-- for example:


Artesian's claim that the ideas of socialism held by the social democrats and communists had nothing in common with Marx's critique of capitalism, surely does not hold water. The social democratic movement and the communist movement were very heavily influenced by marx's critique of capitalism. But that's not what I said. I didn't say that the ideas of the social democrats and communists had nothing in common with Marx's critique of capitalism. I did not say the social democratic movement and the communist movement were NOT very heavily influenced by Marx's critique of capitalism.

Here's what I said he said and what I said:


Now I will point out that the comrade Cockshott's statement:


In addition the socialist movement has historically advocated a distribution of income that is not just based on market principles but is modified on the basis of need. To which he subscribes:


When I use the word socialism I use it in this general sense of the varying but similar goals of the historical socialist movement.
has very little to Marx's conception of scientific socialism, the reappropriation of social labor on a social basis by a "free association of producers."

It might have something to do with the history of the UK Labor Party, the Webbs, the Fabians, Bernstein, with the social-democrats of Europe pre and post WW2, Dubcek, the "human face to socialism," Michael Harrington and the DSA, Robert Reich and "left-Democrats" but it has nothing to do with Marx's critique of capital and the immanent tendencies within capitalism for its own overthrow and replacement.I said this specific notion that a distribution of income based on the "modification" of market principles by need [with modification meaning that the governing principle is still that of the market, of exchange value-- because that's why modification differs from abolition and overthrow] has nothing to do with Marx's critique of capitalism, which critique, if you actually read Marx always maintains as its governing principle, the immanent tendencies in capitalism necessitating its overthrow and abolition.Details, details, details. The devil is in the details, and so is the revolutionary critique of capitalism.

Now to Cockshott's other gem of disingenuous inquiry:


. How can socialism economically reproduce classes based on specific relations to the means of production when scientific socialism, as Marx and Engels distinguish it, is the process by which classes are abolished because production is for need, not profit, and scarcity is eliminated?
Where exactly is Marx supposed to have said thiis? Marx maintains that socialism, scientific socialism requires, means the abolition of all classes throughout his writings. Let's try the Manifesto :


The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby every other previous mode of appropriation

Now this might be a stretch for comrade Cockshott, but in abolishing the "previous mode of appropriation," the proletariat must abolish the bourgeoisie, and thereby abolish itself as the proletariat.

And as for eliminating the the need for the bourgeoisie, not reproducing the need for the bourgeoisie, through emancipating the productive forces from the restrictions of private property, of exchange, Marx states:


And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society... Society can no longer liver under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.


Get that? It's existence is no longer compatible with society. Why? Because its mode of appropriation maintains privation, impoverishes the workers, "cannot assure an existence to its slave within his slavery."

Now maybe comrade Cockshott thinks that such privation, impoverishment etc. can be detached from or eliminated from the production of value, but in that case he is jettisoning every bit of Marx, because every bit of Marx's analysis is developed from the dispossession of the laborers from the means of production; every bit is based on the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor [which condition is the property form of capital]; because surplus-value is based on precisely that dispossession, that inability of the laborer to find or have any use for his or her labor, save its value as a means of exchange for the requirements of subsistence.

This conflict gets played out on the grand scale, as the conflict between scarcity and abundance, between use and exchange, through overproduction of the means of production as capital. In vol 3 of Capital, Marx states that overproduction is always the overproduction of capital.

The conflict erupts, says Marx in The German Ideology an A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, as a conflict between the means and relations of production-- when those means have outgrown the limits of the property form, of wage-labor, as profit declines and as the condition of labor, private property-- the wage-form-- the need for that profit requires the destruction of the components of capital itself, both living and dead.

Marx does more than say these things-- he demonstrates them in his writings, in his economic manuscripts, Vol 33-34 of the collected works which I highly recommend to all interested in Marx's revolutionary critique of capitalism.

In closing, I will only reiterate that this discussion is not about what socialism means-- it is about what it was about-- which is the "reasons" for adopting a class-collaborationist policy with a "national" bourgeoisie. As such it belongs back in its original thread.

[Kotze]

[scientific socialism] is the process by which classes are abolished because production is for need, not profit, and scarcity is eliminated:rolleyes:

[Tavarisch_Mike]

What is probably the common denominator of socialism has been the idea of common ownership, whether this be interpreted as public, municipal or cooperative.


Am i right when i say that all three forms existed in East Germany?

For the topic i will just agree with Chapayev, 'socialism' is the workers control over the production, how we are going to practice that is another question.

[RED DAVE]

I love the fact that Comrade Cockshott defines socialism in his OP without any reference at all to the fact that socialism is the class rule of the working class.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Kotze, I take that to mean you agree, no?

[Kotze]

S.Artesian, you can take that to mean you are full of hippie shit. Cheers.

[S.Artesian]

Hippie? Fuck, I never was a hippie. I didn't know the elimination of scarcity was a drug-driven fantasy.

[Paul Cockshott]

I love the fact that Comrade Cockshott defines socialism in his OP without any reference at all to the fact that socialism is the class rule of the working class.

RED DAVE

Does it not require some change in economic relations then?

Do you not consider that socialism is a different form of economy?

A workers government may take power, but that does not immediately change the form of economic organisation.

[robbo203]

While Marx and Engels used "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably and Lenin did as well early-on, you are taking these quotes entirely out of context in an ideologically self-serving way.

Throughout the essay, Lenin repeatedly contrasts the state-capitalism of a capitalist state with what that same type of organization means for a state that is democratically run by the working class.



Yes I am aware of this - though without wanting yet again to have a go at the nonsensical idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat let me just say that I dont agree Lenins suggestion

However ,this thread is about the meaning of socialism and I frankly fail to see how I am taking Lenin's quote out of context. Socialism he declared is "merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly". Lenin might well argue, as he did, that this kind of state capitalist monopoly under the so called proletarian state was different from the state capitalism under the capitalist state but socialism is still a state capitalist monopoly according to Lenin. This was a fundamental departure from the marxian tradition which, you seem to agree, used the words socialism and communism interchangeably

Anyone who doubts this might just consider Lenins words here which to a traditional Marxist would sound utterly ridiculous:

Without big banks socialism would be impossible. The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism;..A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus" (Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? October 1, 1917 Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 87-136).



His argument in this article was that while the so-called socialists were making a stagiest argument, saying that the revolution is bourgeois in nature and socialism can not happen until after capitalism has been fully established, Lenin argues that because of monopoly capitalism in Russia, conditions are ripe for worker's control. He was not arguing that state-capitalism (in the abstract, separate from what class organized the state) is the goal, but that the then present existence of state-capitalism in Russia and war-time Europe means that workers can take that over and use centralized production in their own interests:


Yep and he was talking a load of utter bull, wasnt he? State capitalism of any kind is not, cannot be, and has never been, run in the interests of workers. Engels had it spot on when he wrote:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Socialism Utopian and Scientific)




(and the "dialectical" part of his argument here was that because of state-capitalism/monopoly capitalism in Russia, the revolution must either advance towards socialism, or, as the reformists argued, "regress" to an "imperialist republic" that would then have to crush the "revolutionary democratic" demands of the working class:




There is no road to socialism via state capitalism. The sooner people dispense with this idea the better. Yes sure Marx and Engels advocated that (although they never ever equated socialism with state capitalism) on the grounds that state capitalism would expedite socialism but they were wrong on this score. Dead wrong. And I think towards the end of their lives began to see the error of their ways. Some of the later prefaces to the Communist Manifesto are interesting in that regard particularly for the way in which they downplay the significance of the reformist and state agenda contained at the end of section 2

[Paul Cockshott]

ARTESIAN
How can socialism economically reproduce classes based on specific relations to the means of production when scientific socialism, as Marx and Engels distinguish it, is the process by which classes are abolished because production is for need, not profit, and scarcity is eliminated?
I asked where Marx said this to which Artesian comes up with two quotes neither of which mention socialism, production for need or the abolition of scarcity.

There is no doubt that Marx argued for the abolition of the capitalist class, as those two quotes show. But where does he

(a) say that he advocates 'scientific socialism', as I recall this phrase is from Engels not Marx
(b) say that socialism is production for need?
(c) that socialism requires the abolition of scarcity?

I think you will find he was much more cautious in his writings than that.

But to return to your orginal question about how socialism can reproduce classes, since this was a key difference between the orthodox soviet position under Khrushchev ( which on most points coincided with what Artesian has argued in these exchanges), and the positions argued by Chou and Mao in the early sixties. The Soviets said, like Artesian, how can there possibly be classes in socialist society now that we have got rid of the capitalist and landlord classes and the working people own the means of production?

The position of Chou and Mao was point to remaining sources of class division and to say that these posed a real danger of capitalist restoration.


Lenin also pointed out that in socialist society, which is the first phase of communism, "Communism cannot as yet be fully ripe economically and entirely free from traditions or traces of capitalism".

[Lenin, "The State and Revolution", Selected Works, FLPH, Mos- cow, 1952, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 302.]

In socialist society, the differences between workers and peasants, between town and country, and between manual and mental labourers still remain, bourgeois rights are not yet completely abolished, it is not possible "at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of articles of consumption ‘according to the amount of labour performed’ (and not according to needs)", and therefore differences in wealth still exist.

[Ibid., p. 296.]

The disappearance of these differences, phenomena and bourgeois rights can only be gradual and long drawn-out. As Marx said, only after these differences have vanished and bourgeois rights have completely disappeared will it be possible to realize full communism with its principle, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Marxism-Leninism and the practice of the Soviet Union, China and other socialist countries all teach us that socialist society covers a very, very long historical stage. Throughout this stage, the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat goes on and the question of "who will win" between the roads of capitalism and socialism remains, as does the danger of restoration of capitalism.
.....

In socialist society, the overthrown bourgeoisie and other reactionary classes remain strong for quite a long time, and indeed in certain respects are quite powerful. They have a thousand and one links with the international bourgeoisie. They are not reconciled to their defeat and stubbornly continue to engage in trials of strength with the proletariat. They conduct open and hidden struggles against the proletariat in every field.

Constantly parading such signboards as support for socialism, the Soviet system, the Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism, they work to undermine socialism and restore capitalism. Politically, they persist for a long time as a force antagonistic to the proletariat and constantly attempt to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat. They sneak into the government organs, public organizations, economic departments and cultural and educational institutions so as to resist or usurp the leadership of the proletariat.

Economically, they employ every means to damage socialist ownership by the whole people and socialist collective ownership and to develop the forces of capitalism. In the ideological, cultural and educational fields, they counterpose the bourgeois world outlook to the proletarian world outlook and try to corrupt the proletariat and other working people with bourgeois ideology.

The collectivization of agriculture turns individual into collective farmers and provides favourable conditions for the thorough remoulding of the peasants. However, until collective ownership advances to ownership by the whole people and until the remnants of private economy disappear completely, the peasants inevitably retain some of the inherent characteristics of small producers. In these circumstances spontaneous capitalist tendencies are inevitable, the soil for the growth of new rich peasants still exists and polarization among the peasants may still occur.

The activities of the bourgeoisie as described above, its corrupting effects in the political, economic, ideological and cultural and educational fields, the existence of spontaneous capitalist tendencies among urban and rural small producers, and the influence of the remaining bourgeois rights and the force of habit of the old society all constantly breed political degenerates in the ranks of the working class and Party and government organizations, new bourgeois elements and embezzlers and grafters in state enterprises owned by the whole people and new bourgeois intellectuals in the cultural and educational institutions and intellectual circles.

These new bourgeois elements and these political degenerates attack socialism in collusion with the old bourgeois elements and elements of other exploiting classes which have been overthrown but not eradicated. The political degenerates entrenched in the leading organs are particularly dangerous, for they support and shield the bourgeois elements in organs at lower levels.

As long as imperialism exists, the proletariat in the socialist countries will have to struggle both against the bourgeoisie at home and against international imperialism. Imperialism will seize every opportunity and try to undertake armed intervention against the socialist countries or to bring about their peaceful disintegration. It will do its utmost to destroy the socialist countries or to make them degenerate into capitalist countries. The international class struggle will inevitably find its reflection within the socialist countries.
(MAO TSE-TUNG July 1964,On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World)

Mao's most important point is this
socialist society covers a very, very long historical stage
It is hopelessly naive to imagine that in a few decades classes will be completely eliminated.

[robbo203]

Robbo quotes Stalin and Bogdanov to establish what the early 20th century idea of socialism was, and presumably, to show that what the historical socialist movement achieved, could not have been socialism.
He quotes Bogdanov saying “"the highest stage of society we can conceive", in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which "there will not be the market ,buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution” and Stalin saying This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed -- there will be only free workers"


I presume that he thinks that what the communists and socialists achieved in Russia and Germany was something rather different.


Whilst some of what Stalin and Bogdanov were talking about was achieved: the abolition of an employing class, the abolition of rich and poor as opposed classes some of their aims had not been achieved : the abolition of buying and selling had only been partially achieved. Whilst a state acting for the rich to oppress the poor had been abolished, a state still survived..



Sorry but this is complete rubbish. Of course what was achieved in Russia was very different to socialism as almost universally understood in the 19th century and early 20th centuries - a moneyless wageless stateless commonwealth

Abolition of an employing class? Well lets look at this. Presumably you accept there was employment. So who were the workers employed by? The state? And who controlled the state? The apparatchiks,the state enterrpise managers, the so called communist party bosses, the military top brass etc etc These were your "employing class£ by virtue of the fact of they controlled the state that employed the workers. To quote Engels again

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Socialism Utopian and Scientific)

Next you contend the abolition of "rich and poor as opposed classes". Strange defintion of class but let that pass. But rich and poor? So you reckon the Soviet Union was an egalitarian society do you. Well think again. Heres something I posted in another post awhile back

In Russia, the ratio between the lowest and highest wages steadily increased from 1:1.8 just after the Bolshevik Revolution to 1:40 in 1950 (Ossowski S, Patterson S, Class Structure in the Social Consciousness, Free Press of Glencoe, New York 1963, 116). John Fleming and John Micklewright in their paper "Income Distribution, Economic Systems and Transition" cite the work of researchers like Morrison who, using data from the 1970s, found that countries like Poland and the Soviet Union had relatively high levels of income inequality, registering gini coefficients of 0.31 in both case, which put them on a par with Canada (0.30) and the USA (0.34) ( http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/eps70.pdf). According to Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976, 540), taking into account not only their inflated "salaries" but also the many privileges and perks enjoyed by the Soviet elite (who even had access to their own retail outlets stocking western goods and various other facilities from which the general public was physically excluded) the ratio between low and high earners was more like 1:100. Some amongst the Soviet elite became very wealthy in their own right and a much quoted source in this regard is a pamphlet published in 1945 by the Russia Today Society (London) called "Soviet Millionaires", written by Reg Bishop, a supporter of the Soviet regime, that proudly boasted of the existence of rouble millionaires there as an indicator of economic success.




The 'economic calculation problem' raised in the 20s and 30s by enemies of socialism, turned out, by the 50s to be very real.


It is worth recalling that the only socialists who took this problem seriously in the west were left social democrats like Lerner, Lange, Dickinson and that the solutions that they came up with were heavily influenced by neo-classical economic theory. These people advocated a form of market socialism – I which commodity production was retained under public ownership. They were the fore-runners of later schools of pro-market reforms in the eastern block.


The rise of this school both in eastern Europe and in China, was a response to real weaknesses in the existing system of conscious regulation of the economy, and thus of real weaknesses in the historically existing concept of socialism. It is no good simply denouncing these ideas unless you come up with another practical way of overcoming the economic calculation problem.


I would argue that the theoretical basis for actually solving the calculation problem did not exist until Kantorovich's work in the late 30s and these ideas did not become generally known until the late 50s. And even if Kantorovich provided a theoretical solution, it was wildly impractical to put into effect given the state of computer technology in the 50s. The first person to come up with a practical proposal to achieve what Bogdanov had proposed was Glushkov in the early 60s, but he warned Kosygin that to solve it you would have to build what we now call the internet, that it would take until the 1980s to develop and that it would cost more than the space programme and the nuclear weapons programme combined. Glushkov was right, and in failing to commit to the development, Kosygin sealed the long term fate of the USSR and of the first generation of socialist experiments.


The economic calculation argument advanced by Mises & co was based on the assumption that socialism would be a centrally planned economy involving society-wide planning rather than a self regulating economy.
Your contention that The 'economic calculation problem' raised in the 20s and 30s by enemies of socialism, turned out, by the 50s to be very real only holds water is you believe socialism is a centrally planned economy. I dont.

Ive posted something before on the subject but let me put it this way - the idea of central planning faces 3 different types of challanges

1) the technical formulation of the plan. Linking of inputs and outputs within a vast Leontief type matrix

2) the gathering of data

3) The fit between the plan and economic reality

In my view only 1) is probably feasible with modern computer technology. 2) is almost certainly beyond the abilities of central planners to fully achieve and 3) is definitely out of the question because the slightest peturbation or departure from the plan in the real world will have repercussions that will effectively mean having to reconfigure the plan in its entirety. Since real world perturbations of this nature will always occur all the time, central planning is an impossibilty. QED

The decisive answer to the Misesian calculation argument lies not with central planning but rather with the idea of a self regulating spontaneous and relatively decentralised socialist economy.

[S.Artesian]

Just a couple of points, and then I'll go through my volumes to find acceptable quotes.

Point 1. Glad to see Cockshott concedes that he distorted my views on social democrats, communists, Marx's critique of capitalism, and the importance of "modifying" market principles in the distribution of income. At least I assume he's conceded the point, because he makes no further mention of it-- his usual mode for dealing with his assertions that cannot be supported.

Point 2. Doesn't stop Cockshott however from continuing to distort what I said about scientific socialism-- "it's Engels' phrase, not Marx," because I specifically said in the original piece "Marx and Engels."

Point 3. References to Khrushchev and the "orthodox soviet position" might be relevant if I thought for one second that the orthodox fSU had itself established socialism. It did not.

Point 4. The quote about Lenin would be just jim dandy if the things mentioned in the process of collectivization of agriculture were in fact socialist-- which it is not in that it simply dispossesses small producers through collectivization but does not revolutionize the relation of labor to the land which is held as a form of capital by the state.

Point 5. And the point about the peasantry retaining their "capitalist characteristics" and the "spontaneous generation" of capital might be important, if in fact that was a reality. It was not in the course of the development of the fSU-- the peasantry had very little in the way of capitalist characteristics and the danger of "spontaneous generation of capitalism" in the countryside after the revolution was vastly overrated by both Lenin and Trotsky. I think we all should take some time to read Chayanov's works on the peasant economy.

Point 6. Quote anything you want-- but if anyone thinks Russia in 1921 was socialist or China in 1964 was socialist, then that means, by definition that the productivity of labor was no longer encumbered by, limited to, the production of value, of exchange value, and that production for need and use had been "emancipated" by the tremendous increase in labor productivity-- in short, scarcity had been abolished. If that's the case how is a bourgeoisie reproduced? What is the economic basis for a bourgeoisie? What critical organization of labor reproduces a bourgeois class?

Same question. Same non-answer.

Quotes to follow.

[Paul Cockshott]

if anyone thinks Russia in 1921 was socialist or China in 1964 was socialist, then that means, by definition that the productivity of labor was no longer encumbered by, limited to, the production of value, of exchange value, and that production for need and use had been "emancipated" by the tremendous increase in labor productivity-- in short, scarcity had been abolished.

The point I am making is that the idea that a socialist or communist economy depends on the abolition of scarcity is Khrushchevite orthodoxy. It is right out of the 1961 programme of the CPSU. The effect of this doctrine is to postpone communism into the indefinite future since as society develops so does the sophistication of human wants and needs, what level of production is enough to abolish scarcity?
US production levels in 1950, GDR production levels in 1989?
What equivalent national product in current dollars per capita would you count as abolishing scarcity?
In a finite world with limited resources of energy, fuel and land, the idea that scarcity can be generally abolished is an illusion and it distracts attention from the social relations of production which are the key factor.

[Paul Cockshott]

if the things he mentions the process of collectivization of agriculture was in fact socialist-- which it is not in that it simply dispossesses small producers through collectivization but does not revolutionize the relation of labor to the land which is held as a form of capital by the state.

Land is not capital. And the land in the USSR did not even function as 'LAND' in the sense of bourgeois economics as no rent was charged on it. What do you actually mean by revolutionising the relation of labour to land?

[S.Artesian]

The point I am making is that the idea that a socialist or communist economy depends on the abolition of scarcity is Khrushchevite orthodoxy. It is right out of the 1961 programme of the CPSU. The effect of this doctrine is to postpone communism into the indefinite future since as society develops so does the sophistication of human wants and needs, what level of production is enough to abolish scarcity?
US production levels in 1950, GDR production levels in 1989?
What equivalent national product in current dollars per capita would you count as abolishing scarcity?
In a finite world with limited resources of energy, fuel and land, the idea that scarcity can be generally abolished is an illusion and it distracts attention from the social relations of production which are the key factor.

Point 1. I am gratified to see that Cockshott has dropped his argument against characterizing the work of Marx and Engels as "scientific socialism.

Point 2.
In a finite world with limited resources of energy, fuel and land, the idea that scarcity can be generally abolished is an illusion and it distracts attention from the social relations of production which are the key factor


First, I would like to ask what limited resources of energy, fuel, and land? Exactly what is limited about our resources of energy and fuel? Please don't say "peak oil" Cockshott, because peak oil is the scam of scams, it's the investment strategy of the Malthus and Madoff hedge fund.
OK, go ahead if you must-- say peak oil-- but let's be clear that so far every prediction of the peak oilers about the declining linked curves of production and reserves, on an international scale, has been wrong-- or if not "wrong," revised, and revised upward as far as reserves are concerned and outward as far as when the peak is going to hit.

The work of the peak oilers-- Campbell, Laherrere [whose name I can never spell correctly], Deffeyes is at best technocratic Malthusianism, at worst downright misanthropic species hate.

And then there's the mere fact that natural gas reserves have increased over the past ten years, precisely at the time when the peak oilers were forecasting the worldwide peak in hydrocarbon production and declining reserves.

Interesting aside: M. King Hubbert, the granddaddy of the peak oilers-- he of the famous prediction that US oil production would peak in 1968, or 1969,, made his first prediction for a peak in production and declining reserves of a hydrocarbon fuel for... coal. That's right folks, coal. I think you can actually get a copy of his paper on this off the web.

Anyway, so exactly what limited resources of energy, and fuel, are we talking about? Can you provide a shred of evidence for this, other than to say-- well the earth has a definite volume, ergo there must be some limit to the amount of energy stored in the earth as fuel? And even if we grant that, and of course there is some limit out there, way way out there-- there's that thing called the sun out there which seems to be pretty close to a limitless supply of energy.

And land? Sorry, if there's one or three things the revolution in English agriculture 1750-1850, and the transformation of US agriculture during the long deflation of 1873-1898 should convince us of, it's that limited supplies of land do not translate into limited supplies of food.

Point 3. I have never read anything by Khrushchev in my life. Nor have I ever read a CPSU programme. I didn't think the fSU was socialist, and I don't think this issue has anything to do with "postponing communism." What voluntaristic nonsense. I do not think by saying "scarcity" or "post-scarcity" it has anything to do with development of the social relations of production and the ability to amplify the social productivity of labor.

The point is not that scarcity detracts from the social relations of production, but rather that scarcity [I]is a social relation of production; scarcity is generated by the demands of capitalist accumulation.

Point 4. So the questions are not "how much GDP is enought to abolish scarcity." The questions are: can social labor be organized so that hunger is abolished for all? that all can have a healthy and varied diet, capable of supporting all human beings to the fullest development of their mental and physical capacities? Or... are there limits to resources that mean only some human beings can has such a diet.

Can social labor be so organized so that all human beings have access to safe water, and proper sanitation, or are there limits to resources [land, fuel, and energy] that mean only some human beings can have access to that?

Can social labor be so organized that all human beings can obtain an education, and training, in areas of their individual and manifold interests so that all can develop to the fullest level of their capabilities? Or are there limits to resources [fuel, energy, land] that make that a fantasy, and only some human beings can obtain that education?

And on and on and on....

IMO, and in my reading of Marx [and I suppose I'll have to find these quotes too] the issue is never [ok, almost never] one of resources, but one of social labor, the relations of production.

Point 5. As for land not being capital... that's a whole other discussion, but for right now-- oh yes it is. That's exactly what capitalism does to land. It converts it from a means of subsistence to a means of production of exchange value by commanding and aggrandizing the labor of others.

[S.Artesian]

Here is, IMO, the only quote I need to validate my assertion that Marx's and Engels' critique of capitalism, of the immanent necessity for its overthrow to emancipate human labor means, finally the organization of production for not just need, but for expanding needs, and the elimination of scarcity:


From vol 3. Capital
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.


By producing for need, by organizing social production for the satisfaction of needs, and elminating scarcity, minimizing the time spent in necessary production by producing exactly for need, we overcome scarcity and begin that "true realm of freedom."

Read it and weep.

[Kotze]

Glad to see Cockshott concedes that he distorted my views on social democrats, communists, Marx's critique of capitalism, and the importance of "modifying" market principles in the distribution of income. At least I assume he's conceded the point, because he makes no further mention of itBecause anybody who doesn't declare opposition to every claim in your wall of text concedes your points.
Doesn't stop Cockshott however from continuing to distort what I said about scientific socialism-- "it's Engels' phrase, not Marx," because I specifically said in the original piece "Marx and Engels."Please look up know what the word "and" means.
but if anyone thinks Russia in 1921 was socialist or China in 1964 was socialist, then that means, by definition blahblahblah scarcity had been abolished.You keep using that word, you might also want to look up that one.
I am gratified to see that Cockshott has dropped his argument against...Oh, fuck off already with that Glenn Beck shit.
I would like to ask what limited resources of energy, fuel, and land? Exactly what is limited about our resources of energy and fuel? Please don't say "peak oil" Cockshott, because peak oil is the scam of scams, it's the investment strategy of the Malthus and Madoff hedge fund.And it's also the strategy of the LIZARD JEWS amirite guys. Quick, go to Cockshott's website, make a screenshot and circle some letters to find out who his real masters are!
I have never read anything by Khrushchev in my life. Nor have I ever read a CPSU programme. I didn't think the fSU was socialist, and I don't think this issue has anything to do with "postponing communism." What voluntaristic nonsense.Methinks Cockshott saw parallels between some of what you said and the pie-in-the-sky 80s projected by the Khrushchev administration, simple as that. Again, you are using words in very innovative ways. Voluntaristic nonsense is to expect that people will work without remuneration, like robbo203 does.
scarcity is generated by the demands of capitalist accumulation.Under capitalism, scarce stuff carries a higher price signal, which creates incentives a) to produce something similar to that stuff using different methods and b) for those who use the scarce stuff as an input, to use it more efficiently or to look for alternative inputs. This eases the problem of scarcity. There are also mechanisms that create artificial scarcity (like patents), but that doesn't mean when capitalism disappears, scarcity will disappear. It's just a ridiculous belief.
As for land not being capital... that's a whole other discussion, but for right now-- oh yes it is.It's a separate category for classical economists, but not for neo-classical economists (which leads to funny results in their analysis).

AND NOW THE MARX QUOTE IN POST #25 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/meanings-word-socialism-t147823/index.html?p=1985632#post1985632)

Cockshott asked you this:
But where does [Marx]

(a) say that he advocates 'scientific socialism', as I recall this phrase is from Engels not Marx
(b) say that socialism is production for need?
(c) that socialism requires the abolition of scarcity?As for (a), the quote doesn't say anything.

As for (b), you comment on the Marx quote that it's about "producing exactly for need" — but the quote's reference to expanding necessity as a result of developing wants shows a usage of the word "necessity" in an unusually broad meaning.

As for (c), you introduce the quote with babble about "elimination of scarcity" — but it only talks about things getting easier because of development of the forces of production and a reduction of the workday. The "true realm of freedom" in the quote is your free time, "which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis" – the realm of working.
Read it and weep.I weep for your reading comprehension :P

[robbo203]

. Again, you are using words in very innovative ways. Voluntaristic nonsense is to expect that people will work without remuneration, like robbo203 does.


Even under capitalism most work is actually unremunerated. What is called the grey economy (non paid work) outweighs both the white and the black economy put together in terms of labour hours

But of course as an anti-communist you are entitled to your prejudices and to hold dogmatically to your bourgeois belief that the communist principle from each according to ability to each according to need is a chimera - without any conception, I might add, of the utterly changed nature of the world of work in a communist society

So long as we all know where you are coming from:)


.
AND NOW THE MARX QUOTE IN POST #25 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/meanings-word-socialism-t147823/index.html?p=1985632#post1985632)

Cockshott asked you this:As for (a), the quote doesn't say anything.

As for (b), you comment on the Marx quote that it's about "producing exactly for need" — but the quote's reference to expanding necessity as a result of developing wants shows a usage of the word "necessity" in an unusually broad meaning.

As for (c), you introduce the quote with babble about "elimination of scarcity" — but it only talks about things getting easier because of development of the forces of production and a reduction of the workday. The "true realm of freedom" in the quote is your free time, "which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis" – the realm of working.I weep for your reading comprehension :P

I dont think Marx specifically used the term scientific socialism . That a socialist (aka communist) society would prooduce solely for need can be inferred from various statements of his about production of use values only and from the fact that the producers to do not exchange their products in communism (Critique of Gotha Programme). Marx and Engels were crytsal clear that future society would involve the abolition of buying and selling, money, the state and wage labour and there are tons of quotes one can advance in support of this claim. Marx did not use the expression "free access" but it is absolutely clear that this is what he meant by the higher phase of communism

On eliminating scarcity I think it is also pretty clear that M & E thought the development of the productive forces to the point where scarcity could be eliminated was a material precondition of communism. In the German Ideology for example we find the following statement:

This "alienation" (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an "intolerable" power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity "propertyless," and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the "propertyless" mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Robbo,
I don't mind that you think that the DoP is unnecessary, that's a differnet debate, I do mind that you you are twisting history and removing the context of historical arguments to fit your preconceived idea about the DoP.

The argument Lenin was making that you quoted from was not a debate over weather there should be worker's power or some kind of top-down bureaucratic state-capitalism, the debate seemed to me to be over weather Russian socialists believe that socialism is possible given the situation in Russia or if the Revolution needs to stop at a bourgeois (democratic) revolution. His argument was the the existence of state-capitalism in Russia due to the war meant that even though the Russian working class was "young," the conditions did exist for workers to take control of production.

Anyone who doubts this might just consider Lenins words here which to a traditional Marxist would sound utterly ridiculous:

Without big banks socialism would be impossible. The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism;..A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus" (Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? October 1, 1917 Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 87-136).Without big banks socialism would be impossible, without the development of industry and factories and distribution networks, socialism would not be able to develop.

This quote you have above again shows that you cherry-pick quotes out of context. What is the thesis of the section of this article you took the quote from? Here, a few paragraphs above in the same section, is the question Lenin raises and then answers in part with the bank quote:


The chief difficulty facing the proletarian revolution is the establishment on a country-wide scale of the most precise and most conscientious accounting and control, of workers' control of the production and distribution of goods.

And here is the context from which you plucked this quote:

It must be wrested from the control of the capitalists; the capitalists and the wires they pull must be cut off, lopped off, chopped away from this apparatus; it must be subordinated to the proletarian Soviets; it must be expanded, made more comprehensive, and nation-wide. And this can be done by utilising the achievements already made by large-scale capitalism (in the same way as the proletarian revolution can, in general, reach its goal only by utilising these achievements). Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal service, consumers' societies, and office employees' unions. Without big banks socialism would be impossible.
The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, this will be, so to speak, some thing in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society.


Funny how you left out all the relevant parts about transforming this capitalist institution into a democratic apparatus reshaped for use by the proletariat.

If you think that Lenin was arguing that socialism is simply state-capitalism or nationalization in the classless abstract, I can only conclude that you are taking these quotes from a secondary source and haven't read the original articles. I don't blame you, I was not really that familiar with these pamphlets until you quoted from them and I had to go back and look at the context.


Yep and he was talking a load of utter bull, wasnt he? State capitalism of any kind is not, cannot be, and has never been, run in the interests of workers. Engels had it spot on when he wrote:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Socialism Utopian and Scientific)Just as Lenin in the first article you quoted say that nationalization and state-capitalism run by the merchants and landowners is not socialism even though at the time some were calling it such

I agree with this Engels quote and Lenin echoes the idea that the modern capitalist state is a tool of capitalism and can not just be "wielded by the working class in present form" in the "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" article you use to claim that Lenin is arguing the opposite of Engels:


The proletariat cannot "lay hold of" the "state apparatus" and "set it in motion". But it can smash everything that is oppressive, routine, incorrigibly bourgeois in the old state apparatus and substitute its own, new apparatus. The Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. are exactly this apparatus.

So it seems to me that Lenin was not arguing that state-capitalism is the "goal" or "ends" for socialism but it some instances is a tool that can be taken over by the proletariat. Just as a large factory means that workers merely have to take over and run this already collectivized (in action, not in who controls it) tool rather than having to build collectivized production methods from scratch.

[S.Artesian]

Kotze--

Short version: You're kibbitzing.

Shorter version: Oh fuck off yourself.

[robbo203]

Robbo,
I don't mind that you think that the DoP is unnecessary, that's a differnet debate, I do mind that you you are twisting history and removing the context of historical arguments to fit your preconceived idea about the DoP.:

Excuse me, but once again let me remind you that this thread is about the meaning of the word "socialism". Now I gave you a direct quote from Lenin which talks socialism being merely a state capitalist monopoly run in the interests of the whole people. How in hells name is this "twisting history", eh? Im not primarily interested here in Lenin's arguments about whether state capitalism was necessary - thats for another debate . I am simply interested, in the context of this thread, what the word socialism meant to him. Geddit?




Without big banks socialism would be impossible, without the development of industry and factories and distribution networks, socialism would not be able to develop.

This quote you have above - AGAIN - shows that you cherry-pick quotes out of context. What is the thesis of the section of this article you took the quote from? Here, a few paragraphs above in the same section, is the question Lenin raises and then answers in part with the bank quote:
.:

You lecture me about cherry picking quotes and distorting history but you conveneniently fail to see what the Lenin quote actually says namely that

A single State Bank,.., will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus"

So Lenin is saying here in no uncertain terms that a state bank is central to his conception of socialism and plays a massively important role within it. Please dont try wriggling out of this one. Its too painful to watch....



If you think that Lenin was arguing that socialism is simply state-capitalism or nationalization in the abstract, I can only conclude that you are taking these quotes from a secondary source and haven't read the original articles. I don't blame you, I was not really that familiar with these pamphlets until you quoted from them and I had to go back and look at the context.:

I think actually Lenin writings are full of contradictions and this is reflected also in his usage of the term socialism. In the early days I think he (like Stalin) did more frequently conform to the traditional marxian of socialism as a synonym of communism. This is apparent for example in his pamhlet on Two Tactics
"If any workers ask us at the given moment why we should not go ahead and carry out our maximum program, we shall answer by pointing out how far the masses of the democratically-minded people still are from Socialism, how undeveloped class antagonisms still are, how unorganised the proletarians still are. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch02.htm). Here we see a clear identification of socialism with the maximum programme which everyone understood to mean implementation of a moneyless wageless stateless communist society.

Later, Lenin's interpretation of the word socialism shifted radically and part of the reason for this was that he along with others were wedded to the fatally flawed idea that state capitalism was somehow "progressive" in the sense that it expedited socialism. Marx and Engels likewise held this mistaken idea, as I said, but they never called state capitalism, "socialism". Lenin did and this is the simple point I am making...

[RED DAVE]

I love the fact that Comrade Cockshott defines socialism in his OP without any reference at all to the fact that socialism is the class rule of the working class.

Does it not require some change in economic relations then?No, socialism does not "require some change in economic relations." Socialism require the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class.


Do you not consider that socialism is a different form of economy?No, socialism is not "a different form of economy." Socialism is the class rule of the working class.


A workers government may take power, but that does not immediately change the form of economic organisation.The institutions that the workers organize to overthrow capitalism, the councils, soviets, army cmmittee, rank-and-file committees, will be the base of the new socialist economy and will chane "the form of economic organization" very rapidly. What you are contemplating, as usual for you, are bureaucratic remnants of capitalism, which you are confusing with socialism.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Regarding "scientific socialism"-- Marx uses the term precisely to contrast"his" socialism developed from the critique of capitalism, based on capitalism's own immanent tendencies leading to its abolition, from the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon, etc.

Marx says precisely this in his notebooks written in 1874 critiquing Bakunin-- available at the Marxist Internet Archive here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm)

Marx also states in his 1880 Introduction to Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific


In the present pamphlet we reproduce the most topical excerpt from the theoretical section of the book, which constitutes what might be termed an introduction to scientific socialism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/04.htm
In a joint letter from Marx and Engels [first drafted by Engels]to the leaders of the German Social-Democrats they write:

I

t is an unavoidable phenomenon, well established in the course of development, that people from the ruling class also join the proletariat and supply it with educated elements. This we have already clearly stated in the Manifesto. Here, however, two remarks are to be made:



First, such people, in order to be useful to the proletarian movement, must bring with them really educated elements. This, however, is not the case with the great majority of German bourgeois converts. Neither the Zukunft [fortnightly Berlin magazine] nor the Neue Gesellschaft [monthly Zurich periodical] has provided anything to advance the movement one step. They are completely deficient in real, factual, or theoretical material. Instead, there are efforts to bring superficial socialist ideas into harmony with the various theoretical viewpoints which the gentlemen from the universities, or from wherever, bring with them, and among whom one is more confused than the other, thanks to the process of decomposition in which German philosophy finds itself today. Instead of first studying the new science [scientific socialism] thoroughly, everyone relies rather on the viewpoint he brought with him, makes a short cut toward it with his own private science, and immediately steps forth with pretensions of wanting to teach it. Hence, there are among those gentlemen as many viewpoints as there are heads; instead of clarifying anything, they only produce arrant confusion — fortunately, almost always only among themselves. Such educated elements, whose guiding principle is to teach what they have not learned, the party can well dispense with. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1879/09/17.htm
I think it is quite accurate to say that both Marx and Engels distinguished their socialism, based on the critique of capitalism which exposed the inherent forces for the abolition of capitalism, as "scientific" in opposition to other socialisms-- utopian and non-utopian.

Now lets move on to production for need, for use, rather than for exchange as the distinguishing characteristic of their scientific socialism.

[S.Artesian]

Regarding the characterization of scientific socialism as requiring the overthrow of the production of exchange, by the production of, and for use [which I, yes I, regard as being substantively identical to production for need]-- from The Grundrisse:


To approach the matter more closely: First of all, there is a limit, not inherent to production generally,but to production founded on capital. This limit is double, or rather the same regarded from two directions.

It is enough here to demonstrate that capital contains a particular restriction of production --which contradicts its general tendency to drive beyond every barrier to production -- in order to have uncovered the foundation of overproduction, the fundamental contradiction of developed capital; in order to have uncovered, more generally, the fact that capital is not, as the economists believe, the absolute
form for the development of the forces of production -- not the absolute form for that, nor the form of wealth which absolutely coincides with the development of the forces of production. The stages of production which precede capital appear, regarded from its standpoint, as so many fetters upon the productive forces. It itself, however, correctly understood, appears as the condition of the development of the forces of production as long as they require an external spur, which appears at the same time as their bridle. It is a discipline over them, which becomes superfluous and burdensome at a certain level of their development, just like the guilds etc. These inherent limits have to coincide with the nature of capital,with the essential character of its very concept. These necessary limits are:

(1) Necessary labour as limit on the exchange value of living labour capacity or of the woes of the industrial population;
(2) Surplus value as limit on surplus labour time; and, in regard to relative surplus labour time, as barrier to the development of the forces of production;[emphasis added]

(3) What is the same, the transformation into money, exchange value as such, as limit of production; or exchange founded on value, or value founded on exchange, as limit of production. [emphasis added] This is:
(4) again the same as restriction of the production of use values by exchange value; or that real wealth has to take on a specific form distinct from itself, a form not absolutely identical with it, in order to become an object of production at all. [emphasis added]

However, these limits come up against the general tendency of capital (which showed itself in simple circulation, where money as medium of circulation appeared as merely vanishing, without independent necessity, and hence not as limit and barrier) to forget and abstract from:

(1) necessary labour as limit of the exchange value of living labour capacity;
(2) surplus value as the limit of surplus labour and development of the forces of production;
(3) money as the limit of production;
(4) the restriction of the production of use values by exchange value. [emphasis added]
Hence overproduction: i.e. the sudden recall of all these necessary moments of production founded on capital; hence general devaluation in consequence of forgetting them. Capital, at the same time, [is] thereby faced with the task of launching its attempt anew from a higher level of the development of productive forces, with each time greater collapse as capital. Clear, therefore, that the higher the
development of capital, the more it appears as barrier to production -- hence also to consumption --besides the other contradictions which make it appear as burdensome barrier to production and intercourse.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857-gru/g8.htm (http://www.revleft.com/vb/401_450%20http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857-gru/g8.htm)


Now true, Marx is not stating verbatim here that socialism means just the end of these limitations, but Marx's analysis is a critique of capitalism, examining and revealing the determinants of capital, which determinants are negations, which determinants require that capitalism be abolished; which determinants in fact precipitate the struggle to abolish capitalism. Since socialism is, in Marx's analysis, the abolition of the limitations capital places on the productive capabilities of social labor [and he may not say that in exactly those words, but that is certainly clear from reading his economic manuscripts from 1857-1864], I think it is justified, safe, and more importantly, absolutely essential to point out that the critique of capital means that socialist production embodies the continuous negation of those limitations upon production for need and use inherent in the production of value, of exchange value.

[Paul Cockshott]

I dont think Marx specifically used the term scientific socialism .
I had not thought so either, but Artesian has shown that he did use the term.


That a socialist (aka communist) society would prooduce solely for need can be inferred from various statements of his about production of use values only
and from the fact that the producers to do not exchange their products in communism (Critique of Gotha Programme). Marx and Engels were crytsal clear that future society would involve the abolition of buying and selling, money, the state and wage labour and there are tons of quotes one can advance in support of this claim.
These are two slightly different points. It is common on the left to talk about production for need not for profit, but I dont think that formulation comes from Marx, I dont know who it came from. The point is that capitalist society also produces to satisfy need. Commodities only have exchange value to the extent that the labour embodied in them is socially necessary, so production for exchange value should not be contrasted to production for need.

But I think you are certainly right about Marx advocating a non-commodity producing society. I made that point in one of my first postings contrasting that objective with the generally accepted view of 20th century socialist and communist parties that money had to be maintained.

20th century socialists generally expressed scepticism about labour certificates. The mainstream social democratic tradition has always held to the notion that a socialist economy will be a monetary one. Kautsky was explicit that money would be required in a socialist economy, and this position was retained by the European CPs where they came to power.

I speak here of the wages of labor. What, it will be said, will there be wages in the new society? Shall we not have abolished wage labor and money? How then can one speak of the wages of labor? These objections would be sound if the social revolution proposed to immediately abolish money. I maintain that this would be impossible. Money is the simplest means known up to the present time which makes it possible in as complicated a mechanism as that of the modern productive process, with its tremendous far-reaching division of labor, to secure the circulation of products and their distribution to the individual members of society. It is the means which makes it possible for each one to satisfy his necessities according to his individual inclination (to be sure within the bounds of his economic power). As a means to such circulation money will be found indispensable until something better is discovered. ( Kautsky social revolution vol 2 part 1)




Marx did not use the expression "free access" but it is absolutely clear that this is what he meant by the higher phase of communism
Khruschev and the CPSU of his day still held out the prospect of a future society in which there would be no money and they too tied this to a future age of plenty. Khrushchev was more adventurous than other communist leaders in forecasting that this would arrive by 1980.

I think that there is a significant difference between Khrushchev and the generality of the Trotskyist and some Left Communist groups on the one hand and Marx and Mao on the other. Marx did not tie the abolition of money and commodity production to the end of scarcity, but instead brought this forward to the first stage of communism ( not mentioning any stage of socialism before that ). In this stage the economy was to work on labour tokens as the allocation system. As such the principle of bourgois right, exchange of equivalents, persists. Inequality persists, both as a result of different work capacity This is the point Mao was emphasising in his argument with Khrushchev.At some stage after this, Marx said, you would have distribution according to need.

But distribution according to need does not imply free distribution either. It may equally well mean a system of system of deductions from the labour credits of those in work to transfer credits to those unable to work, or who have a large family etc.

Bellamy's proposal is interesting in this context. He proposed a basic income distributed via non transferable social credits that would be the same for all citizens, working or sick, young or old but the credits would still constrain the amount that people could withdraw from the social stores. He envisaged a system of distribution that was a sort of cross between Amazon and Argos, but with the goods delivered to your house by pneumatic tubes before you got home.

Bellamy was realistic however in recognising that this principle of universal equal pay, whether working or not, could only be sustained by discipline and the threat of coercion. Those who shirked and deliberately refused their jobs as workers were to be confined in solitary on bread and water.

Mao thought that the key issue was to change social relations, and that it did not have to wait until plenty was achieved.

The Chinese experimented with free distribution in the first stage of the communes in 1958-9 and one account is that the food shortages which followed resulted from the fact that everyone was allowed to eat as much as they wanted from the communal dining rooms free of charge.

In the second phase of the communes from the late 60s they shifted to using the labour certificate of 'work point' system of distribution which was more successful.

One must distinguish different possible schemes of socialism

1. The Kautsky, Lenin, Webb, Trotsky model of nationalised industries producing commodities without planning with the market guiding production.
1a) The Deng model which has the above with the addition of a private sector of industry and some foreign concessions.

2. The Stalin, Khrushchev system of planned production with a much more limited role for markets but with the retention of money for wages, peasant markets and internal accounting.

3. The Tito, Mondragon, Schweikart model of workers control where independent worker owned cooperatives coordinated by the market.

4. Marx's first stage with common ownership, some sort of plan presumably and labour tokens. This is also what the Dutch left communist proposed in the 30s.

5. Marx's second stage where this is modified by some distribution according to need.

6. The Neurath, Remak, Glushkov proposal for the abolition of money and detailed cybernetic planning in kind.

I favour some combination of the Glushkov and the first-stage Marx proposals as initial goals.

[S.Artesian]

Marx did not tie the abolition of money and commodity production to the end of scarcity, but instead brought this forward to the first stage of communism ( not mentioning any stage of socialism before that ). In this stage the economy was to work on labour tokens as the allocation system. As such the principle of bourgois right, exchange of equivalents, persists. Inequality persists, both as a result of different work capacity This is the point Mao was emphasising in his argument with Khrushchev.At some stage after this, Marx said, you would have distribution according to need.

I don't think anything I said should be construed as "postponing" the abolition of money and of commodity production to "higher" stages of socialism-- until communism is achieved. That becomes a backwards circle, a regression as a) it reproduces the highly mechanistic, static, fractionalization of Marxism into a theory of "stages" from the supposed left and b) we're never going to get to any "higher" stage of "communism" without abolishing money and the commodity production just as quickly as our little legs can carry us.

BTW, this is one the many [and IMO terrible] flaws in this whole notion of state capitalism either being a kind of prep stage, or seamless transition to "socialism," or actually being an equivalent to socialism in "less developed" countries.

As for Mao's notion-- that all that's necessary is a change of social relations-- the problem is that Mao abstracts those changes, the real content of the changes being instituted, from the social relations that give rise to them. In essence, IMO, Mao makes the changes a "voluntaristic" equivalent of the purely "economic" developmentalism that so many "Marxists" think, again, as a "transition" stage. This leads those "Marxists" to endorse the socialist rhetoric but national capitalist practice of say a Morales, or a Kirchner, or a Lula, etc.

To these "Marxists," the mere rhetoric of "development," sometimes accompanied by actual expansion of the means of production by either state actions, or FDI, sometimes not, becomes "the next best thing" to class struggle opposing capitalism-- actually a "better thing" than the class struggle against capitalism. That, IMO, is the real content of "anti-imperialism"-- and in fact is the underpinning for the original issue of this thread, the "alliance" with a so-called national bourgeoisie.

In Mao's version, we simply proclaim that we have changed the social relations of production, ignoring the historical reciprocity, interprenetration, of such class relations, of class formations with the actual strength, depth, capability, of the means of production. We ignore the totality that makes up a mode of production.

IMO [again, IMO] Maoism and Maoists seems to demonstrate this "hyper-flexibility" regarding what makes up a mode of production to a remarkable degree-- so that we have a "feudalism" dominating "less developed" areas hand in hand with imperialism, but this feudalism isn't really the feudalism as we know it to be, since the feudalism as we know it is "Eurocentric." So we have a semi-feudalism, based on a semi-colonialism.

Once we've established that, then we can establish that any and all commercial relationships in the historical practice of agriculture were an "incipient" capitalism within the feudal shell, which incipience was suppressed by imperialism. Then we can establish that under conditions of "semi-feudalism" the peasantry is the proletariat, that the national bourgeoisie is "progressive," and that socialism can in fact be built on small plot labor intensive agriculture, conducted on a "commune basis" as long as we declare that "we have changed the social relations of production."

In both cases, the "socialism" of the Maoists, and the "developmentalism" of the "nationalist Marxists" we are on the same horse; the same cart drawn horse. We have different riders, sometimes, but it is, IMO again, the same back ass-wards horse.

Clearly, I think we have seen just how impotent simply "transforming the social relations" or declaring such relations transformed is in the face of the underlying low levels of labor productivity, and in particular the productivity of agricultural labor.

What's the way out of this conundrum? The way out is anti-national. It is international, which is a path only the working class, not the peasantry, not the bourgeoisie, can blaze.

[syndicat]

Jimmie H:

The argument Lenin was making that you quoted from was not a debate over weather there should be worker's power or some kind of top-down bureaucratic state-capitalism, the debate seemed to me to be over weather Russian socialists believe that socialism is possible given the situation in Russia or if the Revolution needs to stop at a bourgeois (democratic) revolution. His argument was the the existence of state-capitalism in Russia due to the war meant that even though the Russian working class was "young," the conditions did exist for workers to take control of production.


Except that Lenin was always opposed to workers controlling production. That is, the actual planning and coordinating and managing of production. For that he insisted that a layer of managers and specialists were necessary, just as much as under corporate capitalism. Lenin's concept of "workers control" was limited to checking and surveillance of management, calls for "opening the books" and so on. He assumed the continuation of a class division between the working class and what I would call the bureaucratic class, of managers, industrial engineers, accountants and so on.

PC:

1. The Kautsky, Lenin, Webb, Trotsky model of nationalised industries producing commodities without planning with the market guiding production.
1a) The Deng model which has the above with the addition of a private sector of industry and some foreign concessions.

2. The Stalin, Khrushchev system of planned production with a much more limited role for markets but with the retention of money for wages, peasant markets and internal accounting.

3. The Tito, Mondragon, Schweikart model of workers control where independent worker owned cooperatives coordinated by the market.

4. Marx's first stage with common ownership, some sort of plan presumably and labour tokens. This is also what the Dutch left communist proposed in the 30s.

5. Marx's second stage where this is modified by some distribution according to need.

6. The Neurath, Remak, Glushkov proposal for the abolition of money and detailed cybernetic planning in kind.



These are not the only models that have been proposed. You leave out, for example, the guiild socialist model where you have both inputs from community assemblies and a residence based "commune" which provides consumption requests, and worker organizations that manage production, and a process of negotiation between people as workers and as consumers. This shows up again in the 1936 Zaragoza program of the Spanish CNT, where the "free municipalities", based on village or neighborhood assemblies, are the channel for consumer input, and worker assemblies and worker congresses are to control the formulation and approval of a plan. both de Santillan and Castoriadis had very well developed conceptions of a grassrooots planning through worker organizations.

And then, growing out of the guild socialist concept of negotiation between people as consumers and as producers, you have the Albert & Hahnel idea of participatory planning. this has interactive re-planning by households, communities and workplaces. workplaces respond to changes in the pattern of requests for production from consumers, and consumers respond to changes in prices due to the changes in the balance of projected supply and demand, but not in a market. these various proposals were all non-market forms of libertarian socialist economy. Pat Devine's proposal of a "negotiated coordination" is a somewhat more statist version of participatory planning.

"production for use" and "production for need" are not the same thing since people want things other than what they "need." an effective economy has to be one that responds effectively to what people want, as the expression of desire is manifested in some socially interactive process that also reveals the social opportunity costs of production.

scarcity is not something that we can get rid of. there are only 24 hours in the day. if Jack spends his time during the day building houses, he can't also be building chairs in a furniture workshop. to commit to building anything X, you by that fact commit to giving up building things that could have been built with the labor and resources committed to building X.

but deprivation is not the same thing as scarcity. deprivation means that people's basic needs aren't being met. we can ensure the elimination of deprivation.

socialism is, first and foremost, the movement for the liberation of the working class from class oppression and exploitation. thus nothing can count as a form of authentic "socialism" if it preserves a class system, and thus the subordination and exploitation of the working class. people can come up with various "proposals" and "plans" for how an economy should be organized but these don't count as socialist unless they give us some confidence that they do not presuppose, or would not generate, class systems, that is, socio-economic arrangements in which the working class continues as a subordinate, exploited class.

quite of a view of the "forms of socialism" that PC lists can be eliminated on that basis. moreover since the class system starts in the system of social production, and is about power there, workers self-management has to be a necessary condition for authentic socialism to exist.

[RED DAVE]

socialism is, first and foremost, the movement for the liberation of the working class from class oppression and exploitation. thus nothing can count as a form of authentic "socialism" if it preserves a class system, and thus the subordination and exploitation of the working class. people can come up with various "proposals" and "plans" for how an economy should be organized but these don't count as socialist unless they give us some confidence that they do not presuppose, or would not generate, class systems, that is, socio-economic arrangements in which the working class continues as a subordinate, exploited class.This is the heart of the matter. Everything else is commentary. Excessive utopian speculation about money, etc., is a nice parlor game. The whole point is workers power.

RED DAVE

[tbasherizer]

As Red Dave said, the root of socialism (in the minds of those serious about it) is workers' power. Precisely how material is moved around will have to be determined by the revolutionary masses.

I personally, in debate or discussion with people about socialism, view the word itself as more of a pointer to an individually determined definition. After a glossary of terms is established, actual discussion can begin. Yammering on about what Marx did or didn't intend or how Lenin betrayed this or that, or even, nonexistant-God forbid, how Prachanda Path-Luxemburgism-Hoxhaism is the only true interpretation of Marx is purely counterproductive. I respect the fact that everyone has their own idea of what socialism is, but in order to get actual discourse done, we need to move past semantics.

[RED DAVE]

As Red Dave said, the root of socialism (in the minds of those serious about it) is workers' power. Precisely how material is moved around will have to be determined by the revolutionary masses.Exacctly


I personally, in debate or discussion with people about socialism, view the word itself as more of a pointer to an individually determined definition. After a glossary of terms is established, actual discussion can begin. Yammering on about what Marx did or didn't intend or how Lenin betrayed this or that, or even, nonexistant-God forbid, how Prachanda Path-Luxemburgism-Hoxhaism is the only true interpretation of Marx is purely counterproductive. I respect the fact that everyone has their own idea of what socialism is, but in order to get actual discourse done, we need to move past semantics.Here's the problem with, to coin a phrase, socialist relativism. The differences between the groups are not semantic. They're very real.

For example, if you look at the various threads on Nepal, you'll see that the central debate is about the meaning of Marxism and this debate is practical. The Nepalese Maoists, and all Maoists, more or less, believe that under the Marxist schema, an alliance between the working class, the peasantry and what they call the "native bourgeoisie" is fine. And the Nepalese Maoists are engaged in building a regime based on this alliance. And they are explicit that this kind of society, which they call New Democracy, will, after suitable economic development, morph into socialism.

Many of other tendencies consider this policy to be a betrayal of the working class and of socialism. We point to China and Vietnam, especially China, where precisely this policy has lead to capitalism.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

One must distinguish different possible schemes of socialism

1. The Kautsky, Lenin, Webb, Trotsky model of nationalised industries producing commodities without planning with the market guiding production.
1a) The Deng model which has the above with the addition of a private sector of industry and some foreign concessions.

2. The Stalin, Khrushchev system of planned production with a much more limited role for markets but with the retention of money for wages, peasant markets and internal accounting.

3. The Tito, Mondragon, Schweickart model of workers control where independent worker owned cooperatives coordinated by the market.

4. Marx's first stage with common ownership, some sort of plan presumably and labour tokens. This is also what the Dutch left communist proposed in the 30s.

5. Marx's second stage where this is modified by some distribution according to need.

6. The Neurath, Remak, Glushkov proposal for the abolition of money and detailed cybernetic planning in kind.

I favour some combination of the Glushkov and the first-stage Marx proposals as initial goals.

I'm not sure why you attribute the first scheme to Kautsky, Lenin, and Trotsky. I was always under the impression that complete nationalization but with markets guiding production was the model proposed by the very first market-socialists. :confused:

In addition to syndicat's question about where the pareconist/participatory socialist model and Devine's model fit in among the six schemes, where would Laibman's (http://www.revleft.com/vb/minimum-program-social-t146543/index.html?p=1964302#post1964302") model fit in? Fotopoulos' ("Inclusive Democracy")?

[Amphictyonis]

It means Hitler!

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/hitler.html

This guy should have his PHD revoked somehow.

[Kibbutznik]

I wasn't going to get involved, but this post absolutely must be addressed.

Point 1. I am gratified to see that Cockshott has dropped his argument against characterizing the work of Marx and Engels as "scientific socialism.
Great, then move on.

First, I would like to ask what limited resources of energy, fuel, and land? Exactly what is limited about our resources of energy and fuel? Please don't say "peak oil" Cockshott, because peak oil is the scam of scams, it's the investment strategy of the Malthus and Madoff hedge fund.
You can't seriously be going on about this...

*sigh* You seem to have a terrible understanding of exactly what a post-scarcity economy is. Post-scarcity does not mean that resources are infinite and will never run out. To even suggest that they are is complete doggerall that is to be expected from anarcho-capitalists, not from socialists.

A post-scarcity economy is an economy in which there are sufficient supplies of commodities being produced to meet the needs of the population without rationing, whether by price or ration books. The task of creating an ecological, post-scarcity economy is precisely necessary because live in a world of finite resources that should not be mis-allocated or wasted.

The amount of land, energy and raw materials available to human civilization is limited. That limit can be changed due to the use of certain technologies, but that limit nonetheless still exists.

OK, go ahead if you must-- say peak oil-- but let's be clear that so far every prediction of the peak oilers about the declining linked curves of production and reserves, on an international scale, has been wrong-- or if not "wrong," revised, and revised upward as far as reserves are concerned and outward as far as when the peak is going to hit.
I've been following peak oil literature for almost a decade now, and I don't get where you've been getting this impression that peak oil predictions have been revised upwards. If anything, they've been revised downwards, as China and India's demand for oil has increased at a rate higher than expected.

The work of the peak oilers-- Campbell, Laherrere [whose name I can never spell correctly], Deffeyes is at best technocratic Malthusianism, at worst downright misanthropic species hate.

And then there's the mere fact that natural gas reserves have increased over the past ten years, precisely at the time when the peak oilers were forecasting the worldwide peak in hydrocarbon production and declining reserves.
*Sigh* Really? The people who are saying that the current ecological path that the capitalist world economy has placed us on is unsustainable and thus we need to develop new alternatives and technologies so that civilization as we know it will not grind down a spirally contraction towards its own destruction are guilty of "Malthusianism" or "misanthropic species hate"?

That's rich.

Geophysics is an evolving science, like all sciences, so no prediction of future energy reserves is ever going to be totally accurate. Some, like methane and natural gas, have increased considerably, largely due to the discovery of the extent of methane hydrates in the ocean floors and the biomass locked in the permafrost of the arctic. Others, such as oil, have had new reserve discoveries barely keep pace with new demands, essentially not changing the global prediction on oil production.

Interesting aside: M. King Hubbert, the granddaddy of the peak oilers-- he of the famous prediction that US oil production would peak in 1968, or 1969,[I forget which], made his first prediction for a peak in production and declining reserves of a hydrocarbon fuel for... coal. That's right folks, coal. I think you can actually get a copy of his paper on this off the web.
Um, no he did not. Hubbert was a petroluem geologist, and all of his predictions on American hydrocarbon production were directly related to his studies in petroleum geology. His prediction, in 1956, of the peak of domestic US oil production was spot on: 1972.

And land? Sorry, if there's one or three things the revolution in English agriculture 1750-1850, and the transformation of US agriculture during the long deflation of 1873-1898 should convince us of, it's that limited supplies of land do not translate into limited supplies of food.
All technologies reach eventual diminishing returns. Trying to squeeze another tonne of grain out of a hectare of land take a lot more energy now than it did even thirty years ago. It's gotten to the point where increasing the amount of food produced on a given plot of land is not going to be cost-effective, regardless of the economic system.

Plants only grow so fast. You can only feed them so much water and fertilizer. The growing season is only so long. You can only fit so many in a hectare. Traditional agriculture, for all intents and purposes, has reached the theoretical limit of productivity; to have any increase at all in agricultural productivity, hydroponics would be necessary, and the demand for food production is simply not high enough to warrant the immense capital expenditure that would result.

[S.Artesian]

Before we go any further with "peak oil," the discussion belongs elsewhere, so if somebody wants to start a separate thread, fine.

[Paul Cockshott]

This is the heart of the matter. Everything else is commentary. Excessive utopian speculation about money, etc., is a nice parlor game. The whole point is workers power.

RED DAVE
Well of course the political power of the working classes is crucial to any socialist change, but unless the working class movement has a political economy

a) the motivation to gain political power is not there: if you think there is no economic alternative why get engaged in politics?

b) unless you have a clear and well thought out political economy you may embark on policies which in the end undermine the goals that you initially have.

Success in this century will require both a political and an economic programme.

To talk about these things might have been utopian speculation in the 1880s, with a century and a quarter of experience behind us, during which these were live political issues, it is futile to think you can have a socialist politics that does not address these issues.

[Paul Cockshott]

I'm not sure why you attribute the first scheme to Kautsky, Lenin, and Trotsky. I was always under the impression that complete nationalization but with markets guiding production was the model proposed by the very first market-socialists. :confused:
I

In addition to syndicat's question about where the pareconist/participatory socialist model and Devine's model fit in among the six schemes, where would Laibman's (http://www.revleft.com/vb/minimum-program-social-t146543/index.html?p=1964302#post1964302%22) model fit in? Fotopoulos' ("Inclusive Democracy")?
I am not claiming the list of 6 models was exhaustive, it was just the main ones that I could think of at the time.

I put Kautsky in that group because of his arguments in Social Revolution
I put Lenin there because when he talks of accounting and control it is all in monetary terms. There is no talk of planning in kind.
As to why Trotsky is there in group 1:

The role of money in the Soviet economy is not only unfinished but, as we have said, still has a long growth ahead. The transitional epoch between capitalism and socialism taken as a whole does not mean a cutting down of trade, but, on the contrary, its extraordinary extension. All branches of industry transform themselves and grow. New ones continually arise, and all are compelled to define their relations to one another both quantitatively and qualitatively. The liquidation of the consummatory peasant economy, and at the same time of the shut-in family life, means a transfer to the sphere of social interchange, and ipso facto money circulation, of all the labor energy which was formerly expended within the limits of the peasant’s yard, or within the walls of his private dwelling. All products and services begin for the first time in history to be exchanged for one another ( Revolution Betrayed).


If a universal mind existed, of the kind that projected itself into the scientific fancy of Laplace – a mind that could register simultaneously all the processes of nature and society, that could measure the dynamics of their motion, that could forecast the results of their inter-reactions – such a mind, of course, could a priori draw up a faultless and exhaustive economic plan, beginning with the number of acres of wheat down to the last button for a vest. The bureaucracy often imagines that just such a mind is at its disposal; that is why it so easily frees itself from the control of the market and of Soviet democracy. But, in reality, the bureaucracy errs frightfully in its estimate of its spiritual resources. In its projections it is necessarily obliged, in actual performance, to depend upon the proportions (and with equal justice one may say the disproportions) it has inherited from capitalist Russia, upon the data of the economic structure of contemporary capitalist nations, and finally upon the experience of successes and mistakes of the Soviet economy itself. But even the most correct combination of all these elements will allow only a most imperfect framework of a plan, not more.
The innumerable living participants in the economy, state and private, collective and individual, must serve notice of their needs and of their relative strength not only through the statistical determinations of plan commissions but by the direct pressure of supply and demand. The plan is checked and, to a considerable degree, realized through the market. The regulation of the market itself must depend upon the tendencies that are brought out through its mechanism. The blueprints produced by the departments must demonstrate their economic efficacy through commercial calculation. The system of the transitional economy is unthinkable without the control of the ruble. This presupposes, in its turn, that the ruble is at par. Without a firm monetary unit, commercial accounting can only increase the chaos. ( Trotsky Soviet Economy in Danger)

[Paul Cockshott]

Before we go any further with "peak oil," the discussion belongs elsewhere, so if somebody wants to start a separate thread, fine.
I am not sure that it does. A 21st century socialism that ignores environmental limits is not going to be viable.

[Kotze]

Short version: You're kibbitzing.

Shorter version: Oh fuck off yourself.Why is the "shorter version" actually longer, is this something I have to understand dialectics for? It's nice to see you try normal language though, I vastly prefer that to your pseudo-archaic shtick in your fake-intellectual bullshit zine. Too bad you can't fire me, eh? =)
But of course as an anti-communist you are entitled to your prejudices and to hold dogmatically to your bourgeois belief that the communist principle from each according to ability to each according to need is a chimera - without any conception, I might add, of the utterly changed nature of the world of work in a communist society

So long as we all know where you are coming from:)It's funny S.Artesian thanked that post, given the respective classes he and I belong to.

S.Artesian and robbo203 seem to not understand what the word scarcity means in economics. It doesn't only refer to things that are ultra-rare, it is a very general concept. It also refers to time. Labour time is limited, so all the stuff that requires labour in its production is limited. With that kept in mind, look at that infamous bit about from each according to ability to each according to need. I will explain the context with a parable:

An engineer gives a talk about a machine she is developing. During this talk she refers to gains in efficiency in comparison with both the status quo and a theoretical frictionless machine. Later, S.Artesian and robbo203 discuss it. S.Artesian concludes that a future with frictionless machines must be just around the corner, since it was clear the engineer was striving for that and how can you strive for something that is not attainable, that wouldn't make sense. Hearing that, robbo203 nods and says the engineer must hide a perpetuum mobile somewhere.
Before we go any further with "peak oil," the discussion belongs elsewhereLooks like a charlatan got called on his bullshit. :D

[syndicat]

Well of course the political power of the working classes is crucial to any socialist change, but unless the working class movement has a political economy

a) the motivation to gain political power is not there: if you think there is no economic alternative why get engaged in politics?

b) unless you have a clear and well thought out political economy you may embark on policies which in the end undermine the goals that you initially have.

Success in this century will require both a political and an economic programme.



The power of the working class isn't reducible to "political power". Class isn't usually defined in terms of control over the state, but over social production. The subordination and exploitation of the working class in social production is the basis of the proletarian condition. This is why I say that proletarian liberation requires workers self-management of production.

But I agree that a "well thought out political and econonic" program is necessary. Red Dave wants to ask workers to buy a pig in a poke: "yes, we're sure to figure out how things will work out, but don't worry about that now." That doesn't wash because 1. seeing that there is a viable alaternative is part of the motivation to fight to achieve it. 2. seeing that there is a viable alternative also helps in becoming clearer about the critique of capitalism itself, that is, in understanding what is wrong with it. 3. a mass movement that is run in a democratic & participatory manner can't be based on restricting discussions of the program to a vanguard elite. this means there needs to be broad discussions of the alternative.

[S.Artesian]

Why is the "shorter version" actually longer, is this something I have to understand dialectics for? It's nice to see you try normal language though, I vastly prefer that to your pseudo-archaic shtick in your fake-intellectual bullshit zine. Too bad you can't fire me, eh? =)It's funny S.Artesian thanked that post, given the respective classes he and I belong to.

S.Artesian and robbo203 seem to not understand what the word scarcity means in economics. It doesn't only refer to things that are ultra-rare, it is a very general concept. It also refers to time. Labour time is limited, so all the stuff that requires labour in its production is limited. With that kept in mind, look at that infamous bit about from each according to ability to each according to need. I will explain the context with a parable:

An engineer gives a talk about a machine she is developing. During this talk she refers to gains in efficiency in comparison with both the status quo and a theoretical frictionless machine. Later, S.Artesian and robbo203 discuss it. S.Artesian concludes that a future with frictionless machines must be just around the corner, since it was clear the engineer was striving for that and how can you strive for something that is not attainable, that wouldn't make sense. Hearing that, robbo203 nods and says the engineer must hide a perpetuum mobile somewhere.Looks like a charlatan got called on his bullshit. :D

You're full of shit. I'm perfectly willing to debate peak oil, and have done so for years, taking on supposed experts on peak oil in several venues. Anybody who is interested can look through the archives of Louis Proyect's marxmail list, or Michael perelman's PEN-L to see the record of those discussions.

Syndicat made a good correction, modification, qualification whatever-- when he pointed out the difference between scarcity and deprivation. I'm more than happy to accept that for the discussion here, although I think it is clear, from Marx's discussion in volume 3 and writings in his economic manuscripts that he has something more than an end to deprivation in mind.

But try leaving aside your hypothetcial fantasy puppet shows and answer some simple questions here-- or start the thread on peak oil and we'll see if you know anything other than the inside of your own guts since your head is so far up your own ass. Like:

1. are there limits to energy, fuel, land that mean the number of people now living, or expected to be leaving in 30 years cannot be provided with, in the one case now, in the other case in 30 years with access to safe drinking water, sanitation, essential preventative and remedial healthcare, education to the fullest of their desires, etc. etc. etc.

2. are the limits immutable? that is to say are resources known, fixed?

By the way, what class are you a member of? Tell me how you've established your pedigree as a real worker?

Fire you? Why would I do that? I happen to take seriously the 6Ps, proper planning prevent piss-poor performance. With that in mind, I'd never let a self-aggrandizing fuck like yourself to work in any position of responsibility on a railroad where you might actually have to account for your actions, and where you might actually hurt people with your smug ignorance.

The first thing everybody and anybody needs to know about peak-oil is that it has nothing to do with ecology, with preserving the environment, with preventing pollution, poisoning of resources-- etc.

The next thing people need to know is that one of its supreme advocates has been dead wrong on almost every prediction he has made in about 15 years. That would be Deffeyes.

After that, people need to know how shot through with Malthusian ideology peak oilers are.

So have at it Cockshott, Kibbitznik, whoever, start the thread on peak oil and we'll give it a go.

Before we do however-- you might want to examine how reserves are defined and tabulated in the petroleum industry.

Short answer, for those of short attention spans: It's an economic definition, as prescribed by-- the IEA? nope. USEIA? nope. The US Securities and Exchange Commission? yep.

[Kotze]

Syndicat made a good correction, modification, qualification whatever-- when he pointed out the difference between scarcity and deprivation. I'm more than happy to accept that for the discussion hereThe actual meaning of the word scarcity in economics has been pointed out to you and robbo203 several times. The goal of doing that is not that you adopt this definition temporarily for the sake of some argument, the goal is that you stop bullshitting.
Fire you? Why would I do that? (...) I'd never let a self-aggrandizing fuck like yourself to work in any position of responsibility on a railroadGood to know that S.Artesian has revenge fantasies about using his bourgie powers to ruin the life of someone for disagreeing with him on the internet.

[S.Artesian]

The actual meaning of the word scarcity in economics has been pointed out to you and robbo203 several times. The goal of doing that is not that you adopt this definition temporarily for the sake of some argument, the goal is that you stop bullshitting.Good to know that S.Artesian has revenge fantasies about using his bourgie powers to ruin the life of someone for disagreeing with him on the internet.

Obviously, the fantasy is all yours-- as if I have any interest in "ruining your life." Besides, of course, the fact that I retired a couple of yours ago from my "bourgie position" where-- interestingly enough, I stopped jerkoffs, those with addictions, and those just too irresponsible from really ruining, if not ending, the lives of others, and that was no fantasy.

I don't recall anyone anytime earlier pointing out what the word scarcity "means" in bourgeois economics, or political economy, since I never brought up scarcity before this. Perhaps you can point that out to me, where I have been so advised, and capriciously ignored the proper definition.

But... I want to congratulate you, if I haven't done so before, for demonstrating just how adept you are at never answering a concrete question.

So start the peak oil thread and present the issues, you bullshitting asshole, or just shut up.

[S.Artesian]

I am not sure that it does. A 21st century socialism that ignores environmental limits is not going to be viable.


Well have at it, tell us what those environmental limits are and what they mean for the organization of society.

[tbasherizer]

Of course the differences between the different compound names of socialism are different. I was just getting across that it is necessary to define one's own conception of socialism before arguing someone on theirs. I've caught myself arguing with anarchists for hours just to realize that we were arguing for the same thing.

[Kotze]

I don't recall anyone anytime earlier pointing out what the word scarcity "means" in bourgeois economics, or political economy, since I never brought up scarcity before this.You don't recall anyone else than syndicat bringing up what scarcity actually is, you say? Let me tell you a little story:

Once upon a time, there was a thread named Meanings of the word socialism, and there was a post were someone said, "How can socialism economically reproduce classes based on specific relations to the means of production when scientific socialism, as Marx and Engels distinguish it, is the process by which classes are abolished because production is for need, not profit, and scarcity is eliminated?" And the people rolled their eyes, for it was such a fucknozzlelistic thing to say. It was the first mentioning of scarcity in that thread, post #4. Can you remember who said it (http://www.revleft.com/vb/meanings-word-socialism-t147823/index.html?p=1982475#post1982475)?

In that thread, there appeared also the following crinceworthy pseudo-critical pomo noodling by some person (http://www.revleft.com/vb/meanings-word-socialism-t147823/index.html?p=1985062#post1985062) in post #10: "This conflict gets played out on the grand scale, as the conflict between scarcity and abundance, between use and exchange, through overproduction of the means of production as capital." It looked like someone was trolling us with a markov chain program.

Some person (http://www.revleft.com/vb/meanings-word-socialism-t147823/index.html?p=1985497#post1985497) said in post #21, "Quote anything you want-- but if anyone thinks Russia in 1921 was socialist or China in 1964 was socialist, then that means, by definition that the productivity of labor was no longer encumbered by, limited to, the production of value, of exchange value, and that production for need and use had been "emancipated" by the tremendous increase in labor productivity-- in short, scarcity had been abolished."

That person sure liked to talk a lot about something he had no understanding of. In post #36, syndicat explained scarcity to him. However, Cockshott had already addressed that his definition of scarcity was off in post #22: "In a finite world with limited resources of energy, fuel and land, the idea that scarcity can be generally abolished is an illusion" — and I had asked S.Artesian to look up scarcity in post #26. I think an apology is in order. :) Of course, something as basic as what scarcity means in economics can also be understood from reading the mailing lists in which S.Artesian spams his timecubistic delusions. I could give also a very specific example of someone explaining to S.Artesian scarcity, but I won't do that to protect my privacy.

S.Artesian's claim that he never brought up scarcity before this thread is of course also a lie, one that can be easily checked with the search function of this forum.

Here is an incomplete (!!!:scared:) list of occurences when S.Artesian brought up scarcity just on this board alone:

11th April 2010:
. Socialism means that the means have production have been socialized, and the socialism of the means of production requires 2 linked elements for its actualization: 1) actual development of the means of production to a level of productivity sufficient to overcome any manifestation of scarcity; capable of overcoming the division between city and countryside and blahblahdeblah17th August 2010:
That, to say the least is not, Marxism. And it isn't even a good analysis of what went on in capitalism in the post 1945 period. Capitalism certainly does maintain scarcity, precisely as it overproduces itself as capital. What Marcuse blahblahblah13th October 2010:
My reaction to part II was largely due to my gut disagreements with, I believe, an implicit "scarcity theory" behind Marx's theory of rent.20th October 2010:
The accumulation of value as and for value does not reappear in the USSR except in the interstices, the holes, the marginalizations that exist as that isolated economy cannot achieve levels of productivity capable of meeting all the needs of the population and eliminating scarcity.19th December 2010:
Blahblah provide some rational allocation of resources until such time as productivity of labor has banished scarcity completely blah.Here is a particularly interesting exchange from July 2010:
Scarcity is not a natural condition; it is a social construction.
Wrong. Whether or not an infinite universe has an infinite amount of resources is an irrelevant ivory tower speculation. (...) You are smoking weed if you think communism means everyone can just put up their feet literally forever and never need to work again.Oh, buuuurn. Someone got fucking told.

Too bad S.Artesian needs to hear everything a 100 times before he remembers it. :(

The following is a great demonstration of this pseudo-intellectual windbag's understanding of economics:
Ground rent that is...which to me, being from the good old USA, and a city boy at that, is the least interesting part of Marx's work... However, I decided to reread the sections on rent in Part 2 of Theories of Surplus Value, and of course vol 3 of Capital.

Why? Because when I first read them years ago, I remember disagreeing with Uncle Charlie, and being dissatisfied with his explanation. For one-- I thought it crept closely, too closely, to "scarcity" economics.

And two.... because rent is such a mis-used concept... with it informing the notion of imperialism, and the advanced countries as "rentier" capitalisms.

(...)

In vol 3 he later states "The price of production of the worse soil is always the one regulating the market price."

His assumptions here are that we are dealing with a defined economic unit, where international trade, imports, are restricted. He explicitly refers to a scarcity in land, in land being scarce; in the constantly increasing demands of the population that requires the maintenance in production of the "worse soil."

(...)

Anyway, I am troubled by the scarcity argument, to say the least. Marx refers to the price and rent increases in England during the anti-Jacobin war of 1794-1815, arguing that it is the prime example of less fertile land being brought into production.Yeah, but maybe Marx was like totally wrong duuuuude, and a world of abundance without the need to work for anybody is possible, you see all scarcity is produced artificially by the capitalists so they can exploit us, let's forget for a moment the question that if all scarcity was artificial why would anyone have a reason to exploit anybody. :rolleyes:

tl;dr: S.Artesian is a pseudo-intellectual charlatan who bullshits about economics.

[syndicat]

well, one very well known limit is 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. it's thtought that above this you get mean temperatures more than 2 C higher than the pre-industrial average. a lot of basis for saying there is then a danger of various tipping points where there would be uncontrolled continuous global warming, such as release of the methane trapped in siberian tundra, warming of oceans to point that potentially the massive amounts of frozen methane trapped at bottom of oceans would be released, with loss of surface ice will get less heat relfected back into the atmosphere, and with loss of west Antarctic ice sheet and Greenland ice sheet you'd see a massive rise of the oceans. i forget the exact prediction, perhaps 20 meters. rising temperature of oceans leads to much more energy for storms, hurricanes, more major rain storms and blizzards due to higher amounts of evaporation from oceans, but also drying up of interior continents, leading to famine.

[S.Artesian]

You don't recall anyone else than syndicat bringing up what scarcity actually is, you say? Let me tell you a little story:

Once upon a time, there was a thread named Meanings of the word socialism, and there was a post were someone said, "How can socialism economically reproduce classes based on specific relations to the means of production when scientific socialism, as Marx and Engels distinguish it, is the process by which classes are abolished because production is for need, not profit, and scarcity is eliminated?" And the people rolled their eyes, for it was such a fucknozzlelistic thing to say. It was the first mentioning of scarcity in that thread, post #4. Can you remember who said it (http://www.revleft.com/vb/meanings-word-socialism-t147823/index.html?p=1982475#post1982475)?

In that thread, there appeared also the following crinceworthy pseudo-critical pomo noodling by some person (http://www.revleft.com/vb/meanings-word-socialism-t147823/index.html?p=1985062#post1985062) in post #10: "This conflict gets played out on the grand scale, as the conflict between scarcity and abundance, between use and exchange, through overproduction of the means of production as capital." It looked like someone was trolling us with a markov chain program.

Some person (http://www.revleft.com/vb/meanings-word-socialism-t147823/index.html?p=1985497#post1985497) said in post #21, "Quote anything you want-- but if anyone thinks Russia in 1921 was socialist or China in 1964 was socialist, then that means, by definition that the productivity of labor was no longer encumbered by, limited to, the production of value, of exchange value, and that production for need and use had been "emancipated" by the tremendous increase in labor productivity-- in short, scarcity had been abolished."

That person sure liked to talk a lot about something he had no understanding of. In post #36, syndicat explained scarcity to him. However, Cockshott had already addressed that his definition of scarcity was off in post #22: "In a finite world with limited resources of energy, fuel and land, the idea that scarcity can be generally abolished is an illusion" — and I had asked S.Artesian to look up scarcity in post #26. I think an apology is in order. :) Of course, something as basic as what scarcity means in economics can also be understood from reading the mailing lists in which S.Artesian spams his timecubistic delusions. I could give also a very specific example of someone explaining to S.Artesian scarcity, but I won't do that to protect my privacy.

S.Artesian's claim that he never brought up scarcity before this thread is of course also a lie, one that can be easily checked with the search function of this forum.

Here is an incomplete (!!!:scared:) list of occurences when S.Artesian brought up scarcity just on this board alone:

11th April 2010: 17th August 2010: 13th October 2010: 20th October 2010: 19th December 2010:Here is a particularly interesting exchange from July 2010:Oh, buuuurn. Someone got fucking told.

Too bad S.Artesian needs to hear everything a 100 times before he remembers it. :(

The following is a great demonstration of this pseudo-intellectual windbag's understanding of economics:Yeah, but maybe Marx was like totally wrong duuuuude, and a world of abundance without the need to work for anybody is possible, you see all scarcity is produced artificially by the capitalists so they can exploit us, let's forget for a moment the question that if all scarcity was artificial why would anyone have a reason to exploit anybody. :rolleyes:

tl;dr: S.Artesian is a pseudo-intellectual charlatan who bullshits about economics.

So thanks for that refresher. An apology? Oh yeah, that's coming. Count on it. In fact hold your breath.

In the meantime, got any examples of the scarcity in EDIT: modern society that isn't produced by the class relations?

Can we see some evidence for the physical scarcity of fuel, energy, land.

Tell you what, thank you for reminding me about my interpretation of scarcity, think I'll stick with it.

As for rent-- I have some problems with Marx's rent theory, and I believe I was asking questions and trying to solicit some input. Don't believe you provided any. On the other hand I have received some input from actual professional Marxist economists, Michael Perelman for 1, who says he too has problems with Marx's rent theory and finds it to be the weakest part of Marx's exposition in Capital.

And for the record fuck-wit, I have never stated, or believed, or implied that "a world of abundance is possible without the need to work." I do state that a world of abundance is possible with the organization of labor as wage-labor, without the aggrandizement of surplus-value.

But hey, still waiting for that apology? Let me know when you turn blue.

[S.Artesian]

well, one very well known limit is 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. it's thtought that above this you get mean temperatures more than 2 C higher than the pre-industrial average. a lot of basis for saying there is then a danger of various tipping points where there would be uncontrolled continuous global warming, such as release of the methane trapped in siberian tundra, warming of oceans to point that potentially the massive amounts of frozen methane trapped at bottom of oceans would be released, with loss of surface ice will get less heat relfected back into the atmosphere, and with loss of west Antarctic ice sheet and Greenland ice sheet you'd see a massive rise of the oceans. i forget the exact prediction, perhaps 20 meters. rising temperature of oceans leads to much more energy for storms, hurricanes, more major rain storms and blizzards due to higher amounts of evaporation from oceans, but also drying up of interior continents, leading to famine.

OK, but does that have anything to do with limited supplies of energy, fuel, or land? I should have specified that when I asked somebody to start the peak oil thread.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I am not claiming the list of 6 models was exhaustive, it was just the main ones that I could think of at the time.

I put Kautsky in that group because of his arguments in Social Revolution
I put Lenin there because when he talks of accounting and control it is all in monetary terms. There is no talk of planning in kind.
As to why Trotsky is there in group 1:

I know about their monetary arguments, but I was under the impression that Kautsky, Lenin, and Trotsky subscribed to the second model. Or were they just too vague about "the transformation of the production of goods into socialist production carried on by and for society" (Erfurt Program) so as to be distinct from Stalin and Khrushchev?


However, Cockshott had already addressed that his definition of scarcity was off in post #22: "In a finite world with limited resources of energy, fuel and land, the idea that scarcity can be generally abolished is an illusion"

He brought up energy, while you brought up time. Scientifically speaking, these two are enough, even after one considers dark matter and zero-point energy re. "free energy."

[Red Commissar]

It means Hitler!

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/hitler.html

This guy should have his PHD revoked somehow.

There'sa fellow named "Rex Curry" on the net (google it) who runs a website playing the old "progressivism=socialism=nazism/fascism" nonsense, long before it was taken up by Glenn Beck and others. I recall wikipedia had a problem with him for a while with vandalizing the socialism pages and project, trying to add Hitler and National Socialism into its topics.

It's useful to have a clear definition of socialism for the public to take (and I think for the most part there are ones like this), but many simply don't accept it. Propaganda is too deeply ingrained. Like Upton Sinclair said, they spread the big lie.

[Paul Cockshott]

OK, but does that have anything to do with limited supplies of energy, fuel, or land? I should have specified that when I asked somebody to start the peak oil thread.
When I mentioned energy limitations it was the limitation imposed by the need to keep down atmospheric CO2 I had in mind.
Remember what this implies - not a lower consumption of fossil fuel, but leaving it underground where it can do no damage.
It means a dependence of future socialist society on renewables and nuclear, both of which are much more expensive in labour than oil. It means an end to land transport by cars and lorries powered by oil, an end to diesel ships, unless one is to use biofuel with the consequent starvation that will cause. It means completely redesigning air transport too use liquid hydrogen, it means either using nuclear ships or sailing ships both of which mean a big rise in shipping costs. It means an end to the steel industry as we know it - a reversion to the pre-industrial process of using charcoal for oxide reduction or else some method of using hydrogen plasma to reduce the ore.....

These are real big shortages that are coming online this century.

[S.Artesian]

When I mentioned energy limitations it was the limitation imposed by the need to keep down atmospheric CO2 I had in mind.
Remember what this implies - not a lower consumption of fossil fuel, but leaving it underground where it can do no damage.
It means a dependence of future socialist society on renewables and nuclear, both of which are much more expensive in labour than oil. It means an end to land transport by cars and lorries powered by oil, an end to diesel ships, unless one is to use biofuel with the consequent starvation that will cause. It means completely redesigning air transport too use liquid hydrogen, it means either using nuclear ships or sailing ships both of which mean a big rise in shipping costs. It means an end to the steel industry as we know it - a reversion to the pre-industrial process of using charcoal for oxide reduction or else some method of using hydrogen plasma to reduce the ore.....

These are real big shortages that are coming online this century.


There are two distinct issues you raise: 1) the need to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, and what that entails 2)the real big shortages that are coming online this century.

I'm sure you see a connection between these two, but is the connection that increased levels of carbon dioxide will so change the climate that food production will be drastically damaged, creating shortages of food OR that by capitalism maintaining its mode of production, the earth will be depleted of reserves of fuels, energy, minerals?

Is the issue that we need to leave the oil, coal, natural gas etc in the ground regardless of the supplies and ability to access supplies, or that we will run out of oil, coal, natural gas, not to mention water to keep all those golf courses in China green, sometime around 2040 [I think that's when the "peak" is forecast]? Could be both of course, but is that what you mean?

[Die Neue Zeit]

It means an end to land transport by cars and lorries powered by oil, an end to diesel ships, unless one is to use biofuel with the consequent starvation that will cause.

Is this ethanol starvation applicable to sugar as well as the inefficient corn?

[syndicat]

yeah, we have to move away from burning fossil fuels. but the thing is, there needs to be proper pricing of damaging uses. at present the air and water are treated as a free access area, a sewer for wastes. this means that capitalist firms can shift costs, creating damage in various ways. not only global warming but toxic pollution as well. overcoming this requires a new common property regime, that is, where there is direct social control over access to, and use of, the environmental commons. this includes the power to ban or require compensation for emission of pollutants.

carbon dixode is a pollutant, as the problem of global warming shows.

largest source of CO2 emissions comes from burning coal to produce electricity. natural gas also produces CO2 emissions, tho less other air pollutants. however, gas production is very dirty. in rural areas where gas fields are drilled, this causes water pollution and serious toxic pollution. a gas field emits as much toxic pollution as a large oil refinery.

this poses a problem for the internet. the growth of the internet requires vast amounts of electricity to power all the server farms. this is in addition to the all the toxic pollution generated by the semiconductor industry, which has a rate of industrial illness & injurty three times the average of industry in general.

the problem with wind, wave and similar forms of electricity production is that the source is intermittent but an electric grid requires a constant source to maintain its stability. one possibility here is paired reservoirs...pump water up during day using solar power, allow water to run downhill thru generators at nite. but a large part of the solution will have to be reduced consumption. and part of that is getting an accurate price to discourage unnecessary demand. pumping CO2 underground has been proposed but is just pie in the sky at this point.

but at least electricity can be produced mainly from sustainable non-fossil fuel sources. i'm not sure how wise nuclear is, tho. uranium is highly toxic and extremely dangerous to miners. half the Navajo indian miners who mined so much uranium post World War 2 died of cancer. the Navajo indan reservation is now polluted with 1,100 abandoned, dangerous, polluting uranium mines.

there is a new field of "green chemistry" which has developed forms of bio-plastics that do not require fossil fuel feedstocks. but, again, it won't be developed unless accurate pricing is available to discourage use of fossil fuels, internalizing the real costs.

i also doubt all the hype for liquid hydrogen. it takes a lot of electricity to produce hydrogen.

the shift to collective transport and use of electricity as the main power source is essential. but, again, this also presupposes solutions to how to maintain a stable power grid without fossil fuel burning.

home heating is an easier thing to solve. there are various experiments with housing that is effectively sealed to loss of heat and so on.

but jet aviation would have to go. it's extremely inefficient in consuming high amounts of petroleum based fuel. highly damaging to the atmosphere. might have to go back to use of dirigibles, using helium or hydrogen.

also, need to get rid of petrochemical based agriculture, such as petrochem fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides. the ecologically destructive effects of chemical capitalist agriculture are well known. again, need to have effective pricing for the damage to the health of others...farm workers, communities whose water supplies are poisoned etc. there are alternatives here such as crop rotation, elimination of monoculture, integrated pest management, etc. agricultural operations would need to be run collectively by integrated farm worker organizations...integrated in the sense that the workers have acquired the knowledge about all the relevant issues related to effective management of the issues they have to deal with...water, pests, soil preservation, etc.

would need to also changeover to electric power for equipment here, such as battery operated tractors.

the issue here is the damage from fossil fuel based industrial organization of production. humanity has gone as far as it can down that route and now is threatened with a question of its own survival.

[Paul Cockshott]

Is this ethanol starvation applicable to sugar as well as the inefficient corn?
It is viable within Brazil but if you attempted to generalise it to the rest of the world it would be at the expense of food crops

[Paul Cockshott]

I'm sure you see a connection between these two, but is the connection that increased levels of carbon dioxide will so change the climate that food production will be drastically damaged, creating shortages of food OR that by capitalism maintaining its mode of production, the earth will be depleted of reserves of fuels, energy, minerals?

Is the issue that we need to leave the oil, coal, natural gas etc in the ground regardless of the supplies and ability to access supplies, or that we will run out of oil, coal, natural gas, not to mention water to keep all those golf courses in China green, sometime around 2040 [I think that's when the "peak" is forecast]? Could be both of course, but is that what you mean?

It is much worse than this, use of a significant part of the fossil fuel could make large areas on earth uninhabitable due to heat stress killing people off: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552

[S.Artesian]

Transportation will be the hardest nut to crack. Lots of energy in a compact, portable "container" with petroleum. In the US petroleum based fuels account for 98- 99% of the energy used in transport.

Do you think your transformation can be accomplished without a dramatic lowering of the living standards for all, or almost all, in the advanced countries?

[syndicat]

Do you think your transformation can be accomplished without a dramatic lowering of the living standards for all, or almost all, in the advanced countries?

you'd need to define "living standards." right now a large part of the population in the USA doesn't have very good "living standards"...lack of adequate health care, dead-end jobs, overwork, stress, a huge parastic bureaucratic class riding herd on us, very alienating auto-dominated urban sprawl, poor diet due to excess cost or unavailability of better food.

[S.Artesian]

you'd need to define "living standards." right now a large part of the population in the USA doesn't have very good "living standards"...lack of adequate health care, dead-end jobs, overwork, stress, a huge parastic bureaucratic class riding herd on us, very alienating auto-dominated urban sprawl, poor diet due to excess cost or unavailability of better food.

Exactly right. Right now almost 1/5 of the children in the US are born into poverty. Rural/industrial America where meat-packing plants, food processing plants, light industry flourished were decimated in the 1980s and 90s, and since then have been ravaged by crystal meth.

Can the auto-dominated sprawl, the poor diet, the dead end jobs, the poverty, the casualization of labor be remedied by dramatic and nearly immediate [since time is a factor here] reduction in energy consumption?

Eliminate autos? Love the idea, truly. I believe cars should only be used for drag-racing and making out at drive-ins. But to eliminate autos requires massive undertakings in public transport.

Restore rural America? Going to require expansion of freight carrying railroads to eliminate long-haul trucking and provide efficient use of locomotives.

And so on and so on. These are problems, they have remedies, to be sure. But the remedies require time and production.

[Die Neue Zeit]

you'd need to define "living standards." right now a large part of the population in the USA doesn't have very good "living standards"...lack of adequate health care, dead-end jobs, overwork, stress, a huge parastic bureaucratic class riding herd on us, very alienating auto-dominated urban sprawl, poor diet due to excess cost or unavailability of better food.

Comrade Hyacinth said that globally achieving the old DDR's average standard of living with low standard deviation would be a huge step forward.

[syndicat]

Comrade Hyacinth said that globally achieving the old DDR's average standard of living with low standard deviation would be a huge step forward.

so you want to set up as a model repressive, polluting Prussian barracks "communism". you're out of your mind.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What was referred to was "standard of living," not political conditions. :rolleyes:


The people in East Germany experienced the elimination of unemployment, the economic independence of women, the far-reaching abolition of poverty, a comprehensive social security system, a large degree of equal social opportunities in the education and health systems as well as in culture. On the other hand, they experience arbitrariness on the part of the state and the restriction of freedoms. In an authoritarian manner, important endeavours for reforms were again and again nipped in the bud. Democracy fell behind, and there was no room for an ecological orientation.

[syndicat]

that's a false dichotomy. and i pointed out that the pollution in eastern Germany was part of its low "living conditions", as was the oppressive control in work.

in all the countries of the east, the old "deal" between the working class and the bureaucratic class had included a level of social services, which have been severely slashed. But eastern Germany would have suffered less than other countries in eastern Europe due to the existence of some kind of social democratic welfare state in the western part of Germany. eastern Germany has suffered from higher unemployment since the anschluss but, again, to say that things have gotten worse there is not to say things were so peachy before.

and i don't share your enthusiasm for Die Linke, a parliamentary party that tails behind the DGB bureaucracy, a service agency bureaucracy that discourages rank and file activism and participation. they've been pursuing concessionary approach like the other main first world trade unions.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I wanted to emphasize "the elimination of unemployment" as the basis for "the far-reaching abolition of poverty." As for Die Linke, it is too parliamentary, but I don't think it tails behind any union bureaucracy. Isn't the DGB aligned with the SPD?

[I'd like to see a German union affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions. That union can certainly be tied to the hip with Die Linke.]

[Paul Cockshott]

the issue is whether the east german living standard world wide would be an improvement. Obviously yes. The interesting question is whether this can be obtained without fossil fuel.

[syndicat]

the issue is whether the east german living standard world wide would be an improvement.

sorry, but that's not the issue. the issue is the sort of structural changes that would be needed to ensure a political economy consistent with ecological survival and liberation from oppression (two things that are tied together).

[S.Artesian]

the issue is whether the east german living standard world wide would be an improvement. Obviously yes. The interesting question is whether this can be obtained without fossil fuel.


The question is not just one of whether or not that standard can be obtained without fossil fuel. The question is also does the argued urgency for the reduction in the excavation and usage of hydrocarbon energy sources entail a devolution of sorts, a fracturing of relations between city and countryside, between and among countries as the means for transport are severely restricted?

Are we in essence talking about something much more impossible, and drastic, than "socialism in one country"? Like "socialism in one village"?

[Jose Gracchus]

What the hell does that mean in practice? What are you contending, that fossil fuels shouldn't be responsibly managed in consumption with reductions immediately sought, with an eye toward complete carbon neutrality? What are you saying we should do or can be done to navigate these troubles?

[syndicat]

George Monbiot (who I sometimes have a hard time stomaching) has written a little book ("Heat") where he tries to show how the needed reductions in CO2 production could be brought about. He assumes the reasonable reductions in electricity demand due to changes in houses & other buildings to make them tighter in terms of heat retention and such. He believes that wind and other renewables can plausibly account for something like half the needed electricity production. he thinks some fossil fuel burning will still be necessary. what he hopes for there is that carbon sequestration can be gotten to work.

this means pumping exhaust from power plants underground. there has recently been an innovation in cement production that greatly reduces the greenhouse gas produced there (if implemented). he thinks jet aviation is hopeless, and that it will be necessary to revert to dirigibles for air transport over oceans. a reason that he doesn't propose doing away with burning fossil fuels completely is that it seems some use of fossil fuels is needed to maintain the stability of electricity grids. the problem with solar soucres is that they are too intermittent. the other alternative i mentioned before is paired reservoirs, where solar power pumps water up to the higher reservoir during the day, and then water is run downhill thru generators at nite.

if there is still electricity production, based mainly on renewables, then there can be electric transport, such as trains, and electric trolleybuses and battery powered trucks and buses (recharged from the grid). there's recently been some innovation in batteries where there is now a large multi-section battery that can power a good sized bus.

[S.Artesian]

What the hell does that mean in practice? What are you contending, that fossil fuels shouldn't be responsibly managed in consumption with reductions immediately sought, with an eye toward complete carbon neutrality? What are you saying we should do or can be done to navigate these troubles?

I am not saying that they should not be rationally managed. Paul Cockshott is saying, in essence, that no rational management is possible, will accomplish the goal.

I believe he said mere excavation of fossil fuel sources will be catastrophic. I am all for responsible careful management and immediate rational reduction in fossil fuels. The most important thing in this regard is to eliminate as many private automobiles as possible.

But there are complications here


What it means is that the basis for socialism has to be an increased productivity of labor, and unencumbered by private property. That cannot be accomplished without a revolutionary change built upon the most thorough workers control of production in the, I guess we call it, "transition period."

It means the basis of socialism has to be more extensive interaction and exchanges between city and countryside, developed and less developed countries.

It means that such increased interaction and exchanges of information, an extended, international "association of free laborers" as Marx might have put requires a bit of hardware to make the dream into a reality.

Now do you think that hardware can be put in place without accessing fossil fuels?

Is it more important to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels, the production of steel and/or any other material, even if technology has not been established to provide alternate means of production and transportation, than it is important to utilize available technologies requiring fossil fuels to improve the the living standards of vast numbers of people?

Illustration: hypothetically: a revolution comes to power before "carbon free" fuel can be producted or distributed on a wide scale. Do we stop using diesel in locomotives, and ocean shipping? Kerosene in passenger jets? Natural gas to provide heat?

If you say yes, do you think there might be the possibility of the very "collapse," and "die off" that you are trying to avoid through finding alternatives?

It's a reasonable question. You can provide a reasonable answer or not.

[Kotze]

George Monbiot (who I sometimes have a hard time stomaching) has written a little book ("Heat") where he tries to show how the needed reductions in CO2 production could be brought about.Figured you had read that book in comment #63 when you said dirigibles. :D

In that book Monbiot proposed carbon rationing on a per-capita basis among nation states, and something like a 60/40 split between government and individual citizens in ownership of tradeable carbon emission rights. After reading Kyoto2.0 by Oliver Tickell, he updated (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/07/01/green-lifeline/) his views:
He shows that there is no logical basis for dividing up the right to pollute among nation states.

It gives them too much power over this commodity, and there is no guarantee that they would pass the pollution rights on to their citizens, or use the money they raised to green the economy. Carbon rationing, he argues, requires a level of economic literacy that’s far from universal in the most advanced economies, let alone in countries where most people don’t have bank accounts.

Instead Tickell proposes setting a global limit for carbon pollution then selling permits to pollute to companies extracting or refining fossil fuels. This has the advantage of regulating a few thousand corporations - running oil refineries, coal washeries, gas pipelines and cement and fertiliser works for example - rather than a few billion citizens. These firms would buy their permits in a global auction, run by a coalition of the world’s central banks. There’s a reserve price, to ensure that the cost of carbon doesn’t fall too low, and a ceiling price, at which the banks promise to sell permits, to ensure that the cost doesn’t cripple the global economy. In this case companies would be borrowing permits from the future. But because the money raised would be invested in renewables, the demand for fossil fuels would fall, so fewer permits would need to be issued in later years.Reduced meat consumption may also play a role, but after reading Simon Fairlie's Meat: a benign extravagance Monbiot admitted (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/09/07/strong-meat/) that the usual claims are vastly exaggerated:
If pigs are fed on residues and waste and cattle on straw, stovers and grass from fallows and rangelands – food for which humans don’t compete – meat becomes a very efficient means of food production. Even though it is tilted by the profligate use of grain in rich countries, the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not the 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 cited by almost everyone, but 1.4 to 1. If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it’s a significant net gain.

It’s the second half - the stuffing of animals with grain to boost meat and milk consumption, mostly in the rich world – which reduces the total food supply. Cut this portion out and you would create an increase in available food which could support 1.3bn people.

Fairlie argues that we could afford to use a small amount of grain for feeding livestock, allowing animals to mop up grain surpluses in good years and slaughtering them in lean ones. This would allow us to consume a bit more than half the world’s current volume of animal products, which means a good deal less than in the average western diet.

[syndicat]

Instead Tickell proposes setting a global limit for carbon pollution then selling permits to pollute to companies extracting or refining fossil fuels. This has the advantage of regulating a few thousand corporations - running oil refineries, coal washeries, gas pipelines and cement and fertiliser works for example - rather than a few billion citizens. These firms would buy their permits in a global auction, run by a coalition of the world’s central banks. There’s a reserve price, to ensure that the cost of carbon doesn’t fall too low, and a ceiling price, at which the banks promise to sell permits, to ensure that the cost doesn’t cripple the global economy. In this case companies would be borrowing permits from the future. But because the money raised would be invested in renewables, the demand for fossil fuels would fall, so fewer permits would need to be issued in later years.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. The best that can be said for it is that it recognizes the principle that fees need to be charged for use of the environmental commons in ways that are damaging to humans. But economic rationality lies in the relationship between benefit and cost. The people who would suffer the cost...humanity en masse in this case...has to have control over the price exacted. Otherwise what will happen is that, with states in the hands of elites, prices charged will bear no relattionship to real costs, and thus there will be inadequate motivation for carbon reduction.

[Kotze]

@syndicat: I don't understand the objection about inadequate motivation for carbon reduction, since both the proposal in Heat and the one in Kyoto2 set a cap on carbon volume.

[Paul Cockshott]

There is a problem with comparing standards of living between times and places where the mixtures of use values consumed change. If we take the DDRs living standard, this had particular mixes of use values that included for example the use of a lot of coal for heating and electricity and a moderate level of petrol consumption for private cars.
In the long run these forms of consumption would not be be generalisable for a global socialist economy.
I think Artesian is being pessimistic about transport in suggesting it implies a return to village economy. A continental economy like the USSR got on ok with rail transport to integrate widely separated centeres of production, and rail can be electrified.
If one wants to overcome the fluctuations in supply from renewables one needs to plan the construction of intercontinental high voltage electricity grids to redistribute energy around the world so that when it is dark in the America, solar power power plants in central asia can provide electricity and vice versa. Similarly for the north south axis, northern parts of south america need to be linked to wind farms in the south of Chile.
I take the point about the hazards of uranium mining, but I would expect that the need for electricity will in the future lead to a revival in breeder reactor technology. This uses less uranium, but is very difficult and expensive to operate reliably. India is likely to rely heavily on Thorium reactor technology rather than using uranium.

In the long run I am pretty confident that thermonuclear power will become viable, but the project is so vast that even now it is only possible via a global pooling of resources.

But the general point politically is that we should be cautious about promoting socialism on the grounds of abundance rather than on grounds of justice if we expect that there are going to be serious natural resource constraints.

[Paul Cockshott]

This doesn't make a lot of sense. The best that can be said for it is that it recognizes the principle that fees need to be charged for use of the environmental commons in ways that are damaging to humans. But economic rationality lies in the relationship between benefit and cost. The people who would suffer the cost...humanity en masse in this case...has to have control over the price exacted. Otherwise what will happen is that, with states in the hands of elites, prices charged will bear no relattionship to real costs, and thus there will be inadequate motivation for carbon reduction.
If one is talking about the short term, it is far better to distribute the carbon permits to individuals on an equal per capita basis. The effect is to confiscate and redistribute the ground rent on oil production.

[syndicat]

If one is talking about the short term, it is far better to distribute the carbon permits to individuals on an equal per capita basis. The effect is to confiscate and redistribute the ground rent on oil production.

why not to communities on an equal per capita basis? this fits in with the fact that the atmosphere is a commons.

[S.Artesian]

I think Artesian is being pessimistic about transport in suggesting it implies a return to village economy. A continental economy like the USSR got on ok with rail transport to integrate widely separated centeres of production, and rail can be electrified.

I think Syndicat's comment about not using the DDR as the "living standard" standard applies equally to the fSU- paticularly as agricultural productivity was unable to match levels in the most advanced countries; percentage of population in rural areas and tied to agricultural production far exceeded those levels in the advanced capitalist countries; Soviet agricultural practices utilized large amounts of synthetic fertilizers, mined materials [potash] and created environmental problems [from runoff, for example, of chemicals applied to stimulate cotton production]; and from inefficiencies
in their rail network.

Yes, railroads can be electrified but that is a tremendous undertaking requiring large amounts of steel, copper, aluminum, and electronics for monitoring the system [SCADA systems, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems can be complicated and, under current conditions, not so cheap].


If one wants to overcome the fluctuations in supply from renewables one needs to plan the construction of intercontinental high voltage electricity grids to redistribute energy around the world so that when it is dark in the America, solar power power plants in central asia can provide electricity and vice versa. Similarly for the north south axis, northern parts of south america need to be linked to wind farms in the south of Chile.Totally agree. Is it possible to construct such a system without accessing increased supplies of fossil fuels? Takes a massive international effort, and takes time: "All economy is the economy of time" right? What is the critical path to accomplish the transition? Does it not require increased use of current technologies to accomplish the transformation in technology?



In the long run I am pretty confident that thermonuclear power will become viable, but the project is so vast that even now it is only possible via a global pooling of resources.Is this the point where we quote Keynes "In the long run we're all dead"? The point I thought you were making earlier is that we don't have a long run available to make this transformation. In the short run, say in the next 30 years if the revolution takes power, and internationally in 2011 what is more important-- shutting down the current technology, or utilizing it, even expanding it-- rationally, without waste, without value production?

EDIT: I should add, 1) the inefficiencies in rail freight transportation are NOT inefficiencies in comparison to US railroads. Railroad tonnages, loaded car miles, and productivity exceeded similar measures for US railroads throughout the 60s, 70s, and the 80s. These inefficiencies started to have serious impacts on the fSU in the post 1986 period. 2) much of the inefficiencies in the fSU rail system stem from locomotive failure rates which added and compounded delay in the system. Locomotive reliability was a problem for the fSU as it lengthened the elapsed turn-around time, an availability rate, not just for locomotives but for freight wagons-- measured from the time of loading to time of dispatchment to time of delivery to time of unloading to return or forward dispatchment of the freight wagons. That, in my readings, seemed to be the serious restriction on throughput.

[Paul Cockshott]

Clearly the USSR was wasteful of fossil fuels, but I was just pointing out that railroads can integrate a big economy. The question of whether we can build the railroads etc and electrify them without an increase in current fossil fuels could only be answered by detailed calculations using input output tables.

[Paul Cockshott]

why not to communities on an equal per capita basis? this fits in with the fact that the atmosphere is a commons.
I am talking about what would be a good mechanism subject to there still being a capitalist economy. At the moment there are no 'communities' to whom the vouchers could go, only states, and distributing it to states would do little to even out income disparities within states, which per capita individual rations would do.

[Hyacinth]

[Even though this thread is a few months old now, I'd like to jump into this interesting and important discussion and share a few thoughts on some points.]


the issue is whether the east german living standard world wide would be an improvement. Obviously yes. The interesting question is whether this can be obtained without fossil fuel.
Can it be obtained without fossil fuels? No. Can it be sustained without fossil fuels? Yes.

To elaborate, an industrial society cannot function without cheap energy, and we do not present have the infrastructure to replace fossil fuels with, say, electricity. The construction of said infrastructure would require the use of fossil fuels to some extent, since, even if we can eventually replace fossil fuels with other forms of energy, getting to that point will require using fossil fuels. Environmental degradation is inevitable with such an undertaking, we should aim to minimize it as much as possible in light of the over-riding goal of raising 6/7ths of the world's population out of misery.


sorry, but that's not the issue. the issue is the sort of structural changes that would be needed to ensure a political economy consistent with ecological survival and liberation from oppression (two things that are tied together).
The issues are interrelated insofar as the implementation of an emancipatory and eco-friendly political economy is rife with technical challenges, among them being the use of fossil fuels.


But the general point politically is that we should be cautious about promoting socialism on the grounds of abundance rather than on grounds of justice if we expect that there are going to be serious natural resource constraints.


Clearly the USSR was wasteful of fossil fuels, but I was just pointing out that railroads can integrate a big economy. The question of whether we can build the railroads etc and electrify them without an increase in current fossil fuels could only be answered by detailed calculations using input output tables.
These are indeed empirical questions which we cannot answer until we've done the required research, but, on the basis of the readings which I have done, I'm optimistic about the possibility of establishing relative abundance (defined within the constraints of possible consumption, and not completely abstractly as in contemporary economics, i.e., not in the face of 'unlimited wants'). The more pressing question in my mind is whether we have enough of a window of opportunity to do so in the face of a potential environmental catastrophe and dwindling supplies of cheap energy. That is, if capitalism manages to screw up the environment enough and exhaust the cheap energy supplies we have, then, well, socialis is no longer in the cards. It would certainly be a boon to socialism if we could establishing that it could outperform markets in satisfying people's preferences, and more importantly, do so in a way that is not as wasteful or environmental damaging. Given the wastefulness of capitalism, I don't think it would be too hard to argue for this.

[Rowan Duffy]

and from inefficiencies
in their rail network.

http://www.globalizationstudies.upenn.edu/system/files/images/22-sol_urban-density-conso_023.preview.jpg

Inefficiencies can exist in absolute terms, but I'm not sure how useful it is to think of them in that way. I'd like to see more detail on relative inefficiencies, since it looks to me that places like Moscow were pretty amazing in terms of transport efficiency.

[robbo203]

Here's a contribution from Dave B of the WSM who for some inexplicable reason has apparently been kicked off the Revleft forum

__________________________________________________ ______________


1844 Letter from Engels to Marx in Paris


The Teutons are all still very muddled about the practicability of communism; to
dispose of this absurdity I intend to write a short pamphlet showing that
communism has already been put into practice and describing in popular terms how
this is at present being done in England and America. [12] The thing will take
me three days or so, and should prove very enlightening for these fellows. I've
already observed this when talking to people here.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/letters/44_10_01.htm#n12 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/letters/44_10_01.htm#n12)

Eg.


Frederick Engels Description of Recently Founded Communist Colonies Still in
Existence; Written: in mid-October 1844




Amongst these people no one is obliged to work against his will, and no one
seeks work in vain. They have no poor-houses and infirmaries, having not a
single person poor and destitute, nor any abandoned widows and orphans; all
their needs are met and they need fear no want. In their ten towns there is not
a single gendarme or police officer, no judge, lawyer or soldier, no prison or
penitentiary; and yet there is proper order in all their affairs. The laws of
the land are not for them and as far as they are concerned could just as well be
abolished and nobody would notice any difference for they are the most peaceable
citizens and have never yielded a single criminal for the prisons. They enjoy,
as we said, the most absolute community of goods and have no trade and no money
among themselves.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm)




And from Lenin;
V. I. Lenin, From the Destruction of the Old Social System, To the Creation of
the New



Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour
performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite
duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not
according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary
labour, irrespective of quotas;

it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a
condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common
good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the
necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy
organism.

It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are
still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad,
really mass scale.


But the very fact that this question has been raised, and raised both by the
whole of the advanced proletariat (the Communist Party and the trade unions) and
by the state authorities, is a step in this direction.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm)

Trotsky;

Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 3, Socialism and the State



The material premise of communism should be so high a development of the
economic powers of man that productive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will
not require any goad, and the distribution of life's goods, existing in
continual abundance, will not demand – as it does not now in any well-off family
or "decent" boarding-house – any control except that of education, habit and
social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty dull-witted to
consider such a really modest perspective "utopian."


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch03.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch03.htm)

Trotsky's Terrorism and Communism


The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite comprehensible, because in
reality they are against the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is to this, in
the long run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its consequences.

Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the
dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected regions. True,
Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be
no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that
under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working,
the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable.

Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact,
under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely,
the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming
commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the
highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I
are just passing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots
up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State,
which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. Now
just that insignificant little fact – that historical step of the State
dictatorship – Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not
notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm)





Kuatsky;

Karl Kautsky The Labour Revolution
III. The Economic Revolution X. MONEY


Besides this rigid allocation of an equal measure of the necessaries and
enjoyments of life to each individual, another form of Socialism without money
is conceivable, the Leninite interpretation of what Marx described as the second
phase of communism: each to produce of his own accord as much as he can, the
productivity of labour being so high and the quantity and variety of products so
immense that everyone may be trusted to take what he needs. For this purpose
money would not be needed.

We have not yet progressed so far as this. At present we are unable to divine
whether we shall ever reach this state. But that Socialism with which we are
alone concerned to-day, whose features we can discern with some precision from
the indications that already exist, will unfortunately not have this enviable
freedom and abundance at its disposal, and will therefore not be able to do
without money.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm#sb (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm#sb)


Hyndman;

Henry Mayers Hyndman The Record of an Adventurous Life
Chapter XV Start of Social Democracy


"A much more serious objection to Kropotkin and other Anarchists is their wholly
unscrupulous habit of reiterating statements that have been repeatedly proved to
be incorrect, and even outrageous, by the men and women to whom they are
attributed. Time after time I have told Kropotkin, time after time has he read
it in print, that Social-Democrats work for the complete overthrow of the wages
system. He has admitted this to be so. But a month or so afterwards the same old
oft-refuted misrepresentation appears in the same old authoritative fashion, as
if no refutation of the calumny, that we wish to maintain wage-slavery, had ever
been made."



http://www.marxists.org/archive/hyndman/1911/adventure/chap15.html (http://www.marxists.org/archive/hyndman/1911/adventure/chap15.html)


Peter Kropotkin 1920
The Wage System

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1920/wage.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1920/wage.htm)


And even uncle Joe before he became a revisionist.

J. V. Stalin ANARCHISM or SOCIALISM? 1906



Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the
abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also
be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of
labour power, for employers and employed -- there will be only free workers.
Future society will be socialist society. This means, lastly, that in that
society the abolition of wage-labour will be accompanied by the complete
abolition of the private ownership of the instruments and means of production;
there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists -- there will be
only workers who collectively own all the land and minerals, all the forests,
all the factories and mills, all the railways, etc.


As you see, the main purpose of production in the future will be to satisfy the
needs of society and not to produce goods for sale in order to increase the
profits of the capitalists. Where there will be no room for commodity
production, struggle for profits, etc.

It is also clear that future production will be socialistically organised,
highly developed production, which will take into account the needs of society
and will produce as much as society needs. Here there will be no room whether
for scattered production, competition, crises, or unemployment.
Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no
need for a state, there is no
page 337

need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich.
Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of
political power.


That is why Karl Marx said as far back as 1846:


"The working class in the course of its development Will substitute for the old
bourgeois society an association which will exclude classes and their
antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called . . . "
(see The Poverty of Philosophy).[89]

That is why Engels said in 1884:

"The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies
that did without it, that had no conception of the state and state power. At a
certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the
cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity. . . . We are now
rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the
existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will
become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they
arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. The
society that will organise production on the basis of a free and equal
association of the producers will put the whole machinery of state where it will
then belong: into the Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel
and the bronze axe"

(see The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State).[

At the same time, it is self-evident that for the purpose of administering
public affairs there will have to be in socialist society, in addition to local
offices which

page 338

will collect all sorts of information, a central statistical bureau, which will
collect information about the needs of the whole of society, and then distribute
the various kinds of work among the working people accordingly. It will also be
necessary to hold conferences, and particularly congresses, the decisions of
which will certainly be binding upon the comrades in the minority until the next
congress is held.


Lastly, it is obvious that free and comradely labour should result in an equally
comradely, and complete, satisfaction of all needs in the future socialist
society This means that if future society demands from each of its members as
much labour as he can perform, it, in its turn, must provide each member with
all the products he needs. From each according to his ability, to each according
to his needs! -- such is the basis upon which the future collectivist system
must be created. It goes without saying that in the first stage of socialism,
when elements who have not yet grown accustomed to work are being drawn into the
new way of life, when the productive forces also will not yet have been
sufficiently developed and there will still be "dirty" and "clean" work to do,
the application of the principle: "to each according to his needs," will
undoubtelly be greatly hindered and, as a consequence, society will be obliged
temporarily to take some other path, a middle path. But it is also clear that
when future society runs into its groove, when the survivals of capitalism will
have been eradicated, the only principle that will conform to socialist society
will be the one pointed out above.
That is why Marx said in 1875:
page 339

"In a higher phase of communist (i.e., socialist) society, after the enslaving
subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also
the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour
has become not only a means of livelihood but life's prime want; after the
productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the
individual . . . only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois law be crossed in
iis entirety and society inscribe on its banners: "From each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs'" (see Critique of the Gotha
Programme).[91].


Such, in general, is the picture of future socialist society according to the
theory of Marx.

This is all very well. But is the achievement of socialism conceivable? Can we
assume that man will rid himself of his "savage habits"?

Or again: if everybody receives according to his needs, can we assume that the
level of the productive forces of socialist society will be adequate for this?
Socialist society presupposes an adequate development of productive forces and
socialist consciousness among men, their socialist enlightenment. At the present
time the development of productive forces is hindered by the existence of
capitalist property, but if we bear in mind that this capitalist property will
not exist in future society, it is self-evident that the productive forces will
increase tenfold. Nor must it be forgotten that in future society the hundreds
of thousands of present-day parasites, and also the unemployed, will set to work
and augment the ranks of the working people; and this will greatly stimulate the
development of the

page 340

productive forces. As regards men's "savage" sentiments and opinions, these are
not as eternal as some people imagine; there was a time, under primitive
communism, when man did not recognise private property; there came a time, the
time of individualistic production, when private property dominated the hearts
and minds of men; a new time is coming, the time of socialist production -- will
it be surprising if the hearts and minds of men become imbued with socialist
strivings? Does not being determine the "sentiments" and opinions of men?


http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3 (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3)

[twenty percent tip]

socialism should mean everything we need it to. but it means bend over for workers. thats why they dont want younear them. 100 years of getting fucked