Some sort of control in a Gift Economy?

[The Man]

What if someone decides that he wants to take every single Item X in a gift economy. What would prevent someone from doing something like that? and taking everything? Should there be a weekly limit?

[mikelepore]

A gift economy is a completely unworkable idea. Any one crackpot person could make the economic system collapse. All someone would have to do is go to the distribution center and tell them, "Have a thousand tons of diamonds delivered to my house, and make that a 500-room house for me to put them all in." Then the signal would be automatically sent out to all industries that every member of the population is expected to work 24 hours a day to increase productivity to the level that matches the items that you have requested. People who support such a gift economy are going under the assumption that, in the entire human race, there will not be even one crackpot.

On top of that, even among the average and reasonable people, there would be no reason to go to work, so not only is the crackpot calling for infinite productivity, but at the same time, having no one going to work would produce zero productivity. The whole idea is strained by this self-contradiction.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Thanks for posting the arguments of rightist defenders of the current order, Mike. I'm sure a few people here weren't familiar with them.

[PoliticalNightmare]

A gift economy is a completely unworkable idea. Any one crackpot person could make the economic system collapse. All someone would have to do is go to the distribution center and tell them, "Have a thousand tons of diamonds delivered to my house, and make that a 500-room house for me to put them all in." Then the signal would be automatically sent out to all industries that every member of the population is expected to work 24 hours a day to increase productivity to the level that matches the items that you have requested. People who support such a gift economy are going under the assumption that, in the entire human race, there will not be even one crackpot.

On top of that, even among the average and reasonable people, there would be no reason to go to work, so not only is the crackpot calling for infinite productivity, but at the same time, having no one going to work would produce zero productivity. The whole idea is strained by this self-contradiction.

Obviously this is a ridiculous scenario that would never happen (I presume you are being sarcastic) but there needs to be some system that takes into account people's actual contribution to society when rewarding them (preferably without vast quantities of bureacracy and red tape).

I think this was what the OP is getting at. (I'm trying to help phrase the OP phrase his question because as it happens, I too am trying to get an answer to this issue).

The best theory I have come across so far is the idea of non-circulatory labour vouchers (that get destroyed on use) measured according to the producer's socially necessary labour time (that is how many articles the producer has created compared divided by the average labour time of society required to create this many articles or something like that). This way ensures that people are incentivised to continue producing. However, although labour time is a lot simpler to calculate, the question remains, how it is calculated and how the special bodies in charge of calculating it are to be prevented from accumulating to much power.

[The Man]

Obviously this is a ridiculous scenario that would never happen (I presume you are being sarcastic) but there needs to be some system that takes into account people's actual contribution to society when rewarding them (preferably without vast quantities of bureacracy and red tape).

I think this was what the OP is getting at. (I'm trying to help phrase the OP phrase his question because as it happens, I too am trying to get an answer to this issue).

The best theory I have come across so far is the idea of non-circulatory labour vouchers (that get destroyed on use) measured according to the producer's socially necessary labour time (that is how many articles the producer has created compared divided by the average labour time of society required to create this many articles or something like that). This way ensures that people are incentivised to continue producing. However, although labour time is a lot simpler to calculate, the question remains, how it is calculated and how the special bodies in charge of calculating it are to be prevented from accumulating to much power.


That's what I always thought. Labor Vouchers. But in the Conquest of Bread, Peter Kropotkin said that "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." doesn't necessarily mean just bare necessities.

[PoliticalNightmare]

That's what I always thought. Labor Vouchers. But in the Conquest of Bread, Peter Kropotkin said that "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." doesn't necessarily mean just bare necessities.

Well, there are, of course, disagreements within the anarchist movement.

I would like to see a more indepth description of how a gift economy (without labour vouchers) that distributes according to need and not labour input would actually function, considering this may prevent people from freely distributing their goods if they were simply being submitted to "everyone else", if you see what I mean here.

[robbo203]

A gift economy is a completely unworkable idea. Any one crackpot person could make the economic system collapse. All someone would have to do is go to the distribution center and tell them, "Have a thousand tons of diamonds delivered to my house, and make that a 500-room house for me to put them all in." Then the signal would be automatically sent out to all industries that every member of the population is expected to work 24 hours a day to increase productivity to the level that matches the items that you have requested. People who support such a gift economy are going under the assumption that, in the entire human race, there will not be even one crackpot.

On top of that, even among the average and reasonable people, there would be no reason to go to work, so not only is the crackpot calling for infinite productivity, but at the same time, having no one going to work would produce zero productivity. The whole idea is strained by this self-contradiction.


This is the most ridiculous argument Ive come across in a while against the idea of a communist society. If someone wants a thousand tons of diamonds delivered to their doorstep well - tough titties! - it aint gonna happen and the fact that it is not going to happen is not going to bring a communist society collapsing around our heads. You can only take from what has been produced and if you want a barrowload of diamands well then, sorry, that will have to wait at the back of queue. There are much more important things to be produced which society itself will prioritise and which will have a prior claim on resources.

As for people not going to work if they are not paid, even under capitalism, according to figures produced by United Nations Development Programme, people in the industrialised countries as a whole perform as much hours in unpaid work as in paid work . (The North-South Institute Newsletter Vol.3, No.2 , 1999). In the developing countries the proportion will be somewhat higher.

You forget Mike that a communist society can only happen if a majority want it and understand it and if they do that then with that goes a commitment to make such a society work

[28350]

I always thought of it as more of a "gift culture," inasmuch as not all production would be mandated by the populace as a whole, but people would be free to make whatever they wanted. If a surplus of the product was made, it would be shared with the public. I suppose there are different methods of distribution of this surplus, but I think the point remains that for things with relatively small use-value, production wouldn't be mandated by society.

Also, now that I think about it, if the means of production were democratically controlled, how would one person get away with ordering a diamond-studded castle to be built?

[Ocean Seal]

What if someone decides that he wants to take every single Item X in a gift economy. What would prevent someone from doing something like that? and taking everything? Should there be a weekly limit?
There is always a limit in the gift economy. Obviously you can't take beyond reason or the economy would collapse, everyone has a limit based on what is being produced. It is idealistic to believe that there wouldn't be a limit.
I don't believe that we should move directly into a gift economy. I would think that after a few generations of labor vouchers, the social value of labor would increase such that the gift economy would certainly be viable.

[Victus Mortuum]

It's about distribution systems. Communism (socialism with communal distribution) is usually conceived as a gift economy, but I think a democratic-community model of distribution is a much more accurate depiction of what the intent is. Hypothetically you could have various cities democratically deciding to have different distribution models for different product groups. That seems the most workable model to me.

- Market
- Labor vouchers
- Communal-Democratic
- Gift

[ckaihatsu]

It's about distribution systems. Communism (socialism with communal distribution) is usually conceived as a gift economy, but I think a democratic-community model of distribution is a much more accurate depiction of what the intent is. Hypothetically you could have various cities democratically deciding to have different distribution models for different product groups. That seems the most workable model to me.

- Market
- Labor vouchers
- Communal-Democratic
- Gift


This is an excellent point, one I'm surprised we haven't seen earlier. You're placing these various, differentiated methods of distribution on a sliding scale according to the relative *abundance* of the component goods and services produced within.

Perhaps, then, one of the major tasks of a mass collectivized political economy administrating all of this would be to simply categorize *all* goods and services according to their abundant availability, on this sliding scale -- I picture it as a circular bulls-eye centralized point of (all) production, radiating its production outward, with gift distribution closest to the center (indicating abundance), then a bulk-pooled communal-democratic method outside of that, followed by a ratio-based labor voucher system outside of that, with a market-type system (of floating exchange rates) on the outlying peripheral area for least-common and more-specialized items.

[syndicat]

It's about distribution systems. Communism (socialism with communal distribution) is usually conceived as a gift economy, but I think a democratic-community model of distribution is a much more accurate depiction of what the intent is. Hypothetically you could have various cities democratically deciding to have different distribution models for different product groups. That seems the most workable model to me.

- Market
- Labor vouchers
- Communal-Democratic
- Gift


the problem is that economies are integrated over very large areas. products are consumed in one city that are made in another. but it is the economic system that regulates allocation of resources and distribution of products. incompatible systems can't coexist in the same economy.

they might exist on different continents are in different large regions. but not on a city by city basis. separate systems are like autarky. and this becomes ineffective if you're talking about just a community or city. at that point any economic relations between cities becomes like terms of trade between nations.

[mikelepore]

You forget Mike that a communist society can only happen if a majority want it and understand it and if they do that then with that goes a commitment to make such a society work

I draw a major distinction between what people know intellectually must get done and what they will actually be willing to do when the time comes. We know intellectually that having a good life requires production, but if people were told that they could have access to products without having to appear at work for a proportional and measured amount of time, I believe that most people would not show up at work.

Either that, or, if you tell people that they can have free access to wealth if they will just declare any job of their choice, then people would realize that they can classify themselves as poets and movie critics and wine tasters. People would quickly abandon construction, manufacturing and farming after the first month of the novelty of trying them. Production couldn't be sustained.

We can't be allowed to say "let the other people go out and do it today." We are the kind of animal that has to place restrictions on ourselves. Just as we need clocks that make noises to force us to wake up, we also need artificial means such as weekly earnings to force ourselves to produce wealth.

[ckaihatsu]

I draw a major distinction between what people know intellectually must get done and what they will actually be willing to do when the time comes. We know intellectually that having a good life requires production, but if people were told that they could have access to products without having to appear at work for a proportional and measured amount of time, I believe that most people would not show up at work.

Either that, or, if you tell people that they can have free access to wealth if they will just declare any job of their choice, then people would realize that they can classify themselves as poets and movie critics and wine tasters. People would quickly abandon construction, manufacturing and farming after the first month of the novelty of trying them. Production couldn't be sustained.

We can't be allowed to say "let the other people go out and do it today." We are the kind of animal that has to place restrictions on ourselves. Just as we need clocks that make noises to force us to wake up, we also need artificial means such as weekly earnings to force ourselves to produce wealth.


Please note, Mike, that you're referencing work and work habits within our current less-than-humane societal arrangement under capitalism.

Against this 'human nature' type of line I'll say that people readily work, especially creatively, when the work is personally meaningful to them and when they have some degree of actual control over the work process, including their own labor. You're portraying work in a decidedly blue-collar workerist way which may not necessarily be consistent with everyone's own varying work experience.

Regarding production itself perhaps a post-exploitation laboring environment would be one in which everyone is able to openly collaborate on how to lessen routine and monotonous work roles on machines. Certainly mass liberated labor wouldn't be so dull as to return to the same patterns of work designed for controlling and exploiting people -- we have yet to really integrate machinery and machine production in comprehensive, humanity-uplifting ways.

[Ben Seattle]

Hi folks,

I wrote, some time ago, about how I believe conflicts
will be resolved and fought out in the future gift economy.

Passion of all sorts will be released and there will certainly
be a lot of conflicts concerning:

(1) Consumption vs. Investment
(2) Ecosystems vs. Development
And, in the transition period to the gift economy
(ie: after bourgeois rule has been overthrown):

(3) Local vs. International Development
(4) The gift economy vs. other sectors
I have written about this in many places.
The main work is here:

The Self-Organizing Moneyless Economy
http://Leninism.org/some/

Of particular note may be this section:
The Congress of Diamond-Drill Producers Confronts
the Congress of Diamond-Drill Consumers

This section describes a scenario where the people who make
diamond drills get pissed off when their products are used carelessly.

Some of my writing on the transition period is here:

Politics, Economics and the Mass Media
when the working class runs the show
http://struggle.net/alds/essay_153_content.htm

http://struggle.net/alds/transition_economies_small.gif

and here:

Appendix F of "The World for which We Fight"
The ascendency of the self-organizing moneyless economy
http://struggle.net/alds/part_7_F.htm

My main work is a little difficult to read (20 thousand words) and some readers may find it easier to start with the two much shorter works above.

The logical way to settle, in a decisive way, the most important questions concerning the gift economy, would be to organize a serious debate. I do not have time to organize such a debate, but I would have time to participate in it and also offer some tips concerning the distinction between serious, constructive debate and the kind of shallow back-and-forth that often dominates many threads.

[robbo203]

I draw a major distinction between what people know intellectually must get done and what they will actually be willing to do when the time comes. We know intellectually that having a good life requires production, but if people were told that they could have access to products without having to appear at work for a proportional and measured amount of time, I believe that most people would not show up at work.

Either that, or, if you tell people that they can have free access to wealth if they will just declare any job of their choice, then people would realize that they can classify themselves as poets and movie critics and wine tasters. People would quickly abandon construction, manufacturing and farming after the first month of the novelty of trying them. Production couldn't be sustained.

We can't be allowed to say "let the other people go out and do it today." We are the kind of animal that has to place restrictions on ourselves. Just as we need clocks that make noises to force us to wake up, we also need artificial means such as weekly earnings to force ourselves to produce wealth.

Why do you make the assumption that "if people were told "that they could have access to products without having to appear at work for a proportional and measured amount of time", they would not show for work? The whole point of a communist society surely is that it presupposes a quite different outlook in order to be established. We are talking about people being responsible for their own lives and those around them. They would have decided to go for a communist society in the full knowlege that we all depend upon each other for our mutual wellbeing. It is not a question of some elite "telling" us this. We will be aware of this ourselves and with this knowlege comes - dare I say it - the moral imperative to cooperate with others. There is no one else to "blame" if the goods start running out because we are too bone idle to get off our backsides to produce more. If people dont like the fact that goods are running out well then there really is only one solution isnt there? To get off one's backside and do something about it!

So by a reductio ad absurdum argument the problem you raise will resolve itself. Workers having striven to create a communist society are not going to let it collapse around them are they?

Your whole perspective reeks of an apology for capitalistic habits and thought patterns. You say "Just as we need clocks that make noises to force us to wake up, we also need artificial means such as weekly earnings to force ourselves to produce wealth relations". Bullshit. I woke up this morning not to the sound of a friggin alarm clock but because I had things to do some building work on the house. Nobody is paying me to do what I do. I do it because 1) I want to and 2) I need to. As I said before just over half the work that we do in the industriialised countires - more in the developing countries - is completely unpaid This is not just work for oneself or one's immediate family but also outside the famility. In Britiain foir example some 22 million people do volunteer work af all kinds. And this is despite the fact that we live in capitalist society.

If your theory held any water whatsoever, this simply would not be possible. People volunteer to do the most horrendously dangerous and dirty work all the time and in fact there is a lot of empirical research to suggest that the spirit of volunteerism is often compromised and undermined by the existence of pay incentives which you set so much store by.

Besides, your whole approach begs so many question - probably to numerous to be fully answered here. Such as that a huge chunk of the work necessary only to keeping a capitalist society ticking over - from bankers to arms producers - would disappear in a communist meaning we would all have to work much less on average than we do now anyway . Such as that the conditions under which we shall work in a communist society would be completely transfomed without a boss class and that work would become a pleasure not a burden. Such as that the only way we could obtain the esteem and respect of others in a free access communist society would be through ourcontribution to such a society and not what we took out of it. Such as that we would have far more scope in general to automate any work that may be of an inherently unpleasant nature or at least to minimise by sharing it in various ways by sharing the workload

People, you say "would quickly abandon construction, manufacturing and farming after the first month of the novelty of trying them". Rubbish. Please dont assume that because you might like construction, manufacturing and farming others dont either. I know of plenty of indiuviduals who would contradict that claim. Goods thing we are all different.

[ckaihatsu]

The logical way to settle, in a decisive way, the most important questions concerning the gift economy, would be to organize a serious debate. I do not have time to organize such a debate, but I would have time to participate in it and also offer some tips concerning the distinction between serious, constructive debate and the kind of shallow back-and-forth that often dominates many threads.


Hi, Ben, good to see you around RevLeft.

If you'd care to oblige, I was wondering if you might tend to a couple of points:

- How do you conceive of labor and production, particularly industrial-type labor, in a collective gift economy?

- Would you have anything to say about a possible "mixed-mode" arrangement of distribution, based on varying degrees of abundance (ease of production) per item within a post-capitalist collective political economy? (See post #11.)

[Ben Seattle]

Hi there ckaihatsu,


I was wondering if you might tend to a couple of points:

Sure, although, since my time is quite limited and this
is a complex topic with many misconceptions, we may need
to consider a practical approach where I give a few short
answers and then you ask some follow-up questions.

That could get us warmed up as we develop, over time, a
common language.

I should add that I am thrilled that the topic of the gift
economy is beginning to get some of the attention that it
deserves. I have no doubt that it is the fundamental way
forward for humanity. Sooner or later, _everything_ is
leading in this direction.

I will start with the excellent question by Lycanthrope
that kicked off this thread:


What if someone decides that he wants to take every single
Item X in a gift economy.

If the items are MP3's --then they will be able to fill up their hard drive :-)

If the items are something that is in high demand and difficult to produce, then they will be shit out of luck.


What would prevent someone from doing something like that?
and taking everything?

Social disapproval.

And, if necessary, someone's fist in their face. There will
be no professional (ie: paid, uniformed) police in a world
without money. But people will act in self-organized ways
to defend what is right. There will be a large number of
volunteer organizations. People will coordinate their behavior.

You would not allow someone to molest your very young daughter.
Neither would you allow someone to waste or squander some
product or service you worked hard to create.


Should there be a weekly limit?

There will be a hell of a lot of experimentation as millions
and billions of people find out what tends to work and what
does not. Basically, goods and services will be created and
distributed with no strings attached except one: wise
consumption that benefits humanity.

If you have a track record of stupid, thoughtless or shallow
consumption--then you will get less stuff.

Distribution methods are likely to vary by type of industry
and locality and the ideas which are most popular at the time.

Clearly some goods and services will be highly abundant and some
will be the opposite. Distribution methods will clearly be
different in these cases. Music, for example, will be free.
Same with software, etc. Bits are easy to reproduce. Diamond
drill bits are not.


- How do you conceive of labor and production, particularly
industrial-type labor, in a collective gift economy.

Industrial production units (for example creating cars or
airplanes or freeways) will require intense coordination
of a large ecosystem and a fair amount of planning that
is centralized for the production. This is just a way of
saying that if a factory creates a hundred thousand cars
a year--it will need four times as many tires and so forth,
and these will all need to be delivered at the exact right
time (ie: just as takes place under our current system of
commodity production).

There will also need to be competition because, ultimately,
there is no OTHER way to measure how well one production
unit makes wise and effective use of labor, services, parts
and materials--except to COMPARE it to another.

This competition will not, however, be on the basis of
either money or labor hours or any other single quantity.

Factory A and factory B might both produce cars. One
factory might use labor that is more skilled. Another
factory might produce in such a way that workers get more
effective training (ie: a kind of investment in the future).
The factories might use different kinds of materials and
create different kinds of cars. One factory might be more
friendly to the environment. One factory might be more
fun to work in. All of these factors will have weight.

Under capitalism, it is relatively easy to compare the results.
If one factory creates a car for $5,000 and another factory
requires $7,000 to create a car that is similar, then maybe
the first factory is doing something better.

In a moneyless economy, it is more complex. Opinions will
differ. Passions will be involved. A worker may go from
factory A to factory B because he believes that is better.
You may request a car from factory A because that is better.
There will be debates and disputes. Usually these will be
small. Sometimes they will be large.


- Would you have anything to say about a possible "mixed-mode"
arrangement of distribution, based on varying degrees of
abundance (ease of production) per item within a
post-capitalist collective political economy? (See post #11.)

(from post #11):


Perhaps, then, one of the major tasks of a mass collectivized
political economy administrating all of this would be to simply
categorize *all* goods and services according to their abundant
availability, on this sliding scale -- I picture it as a circular
bulls-eye centralized point of (all) production ...

It is important to understand that there is unlikely to be any
kinds of centralized plan covering the entire economy. This is
both unnecessary and impractical. A producing unit may have a
central plan for the 100,000 cars it plans to build that year.
The plan would cover that factory and its suppliers and distributors.

But no scheme would cover _all_ goods.

The economy will be an ecosystem without any need for
the kind of supreme central authority that would be
needed for such a scheme.

Now I would like to make a kind of advertisement:

Please take a look at the three articles I link to:

(1) essay 153
(2) appendix F
(3) the self-organizing moneyless economy (S.O.M.E.)

You don't need to actually read every word.

But, as a practical matter, we will demonstrate greater
respect for the labor of both of us (I believe) if we
make use of these articles. I put an incredible amount
of work into them and believe they are fairly reliable.

[Blackscare]

I see a disturbing lack of emphasis on industrial automation in this thread.


Also, @mike's first post: hoooooooooooooly shit what a gigantic strawman. Jesus.

[ckaihatsu]

Ben,

Appreciate the response -- you outline several good political aspects.

I am mostly in agreement with your general approach to a post-capitalist revolutionary workers' collective society, with a couple of comments, below.





There will be a hell of a lot of experimentation as millions
and billions of people find out what tends to work and what
does not. Basically, goods and services will be created and
distributed with no strings attached except one: wise
consumption that benefits humanity.


I appreciate this "mass-d.i.y." spirit, especially in the formative stages of a revolutionary society, as capitalism's fetters are being ripped away and cast off.

As with using a computer, people shouldn't feel like trying something new is "too dangerous" -- rather the point is to know upfront that the creative process doesn't go in a straight line and that what counts is forging new ground in a positive direction, with mastery of the finer points coming later.

In recent discussions I've noted a distinct difference in a couple of paradigms commonly put forth for a post-capitalist economics -- one is the more fastidious approach to material tracking, using a conventional-type "middle layer" of abstract valuations, or prices, while the one I favor is more along the lines of a mass-politicized "potluck" approach:





I for one have a position that it is not a good idea to juxtapose labor hours against the provision of material goods and services. This only invites the obvious calculations in people's heads and the entire set of politics (and economics) to provide some kind of matching-up from the former component to the latter.

I advocate an approach that is premised on mass human-needs demand being fulfilled with whatever liberated mass collectivized society is able and willing to produce, with liberated labor having "veto power" over the mass demand while also self-organizing its own ranks.

Nonetheless what I advocate is not just a hazy one-big-potluck dream -- there's a model that spells out structural specifics with a mind towards material-based tracking and balancing:


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

http://postimage.org/image/35sw8csv8/


Given that such a post-commodity, mass-collectivized economy would be primarily *political*, this means that *conscious attention* could actually be applied to what-goes-where, and for what reasons.





There will often be disagreement not only concerning which projects are most deserving of resources--but also concerning the distribution of the goods and services created by the gift economy projects. Distribution will generally be free (with exceptions I will discuss below). But where (or to who) should these free goods and services be distributed so that the greatest social good is achieved? Resolution of these (sometimes intense) political and economic disagreements will involve the people who do the work--as well as the masses.

http://struggle.net/ALDS/part_7_F.htm


This dismissing of the *non-conscious* market mechanism for determining society's ongoing direction means that a collectivized society will be able to make the external world *directly reflect* its own internal attitudes and plans over production and the social world. It's essentially a call for the *productive* world to be as diverse in composition and direction as the *social* world has become in recent decades due to the civil rights struggles of previous generations.





There will also need to be competition because, ultimately,
there is no OTHER way to measure how well one production
unit makes wise and effective use of labor, services, parts
and materials--except to COMPARE it to another.

This competition will not, however, be on the basis of
either money or labor hours or any other single quantity.

Factory A and factory B might both produce cars. One
factory might use labor that is more skilled. Another
factory might produce in such a way that workers get more
effective training (ie: a kind of investment in the future).
The factories might use different kinds of materials and
create different kinds of cars. One factory might be more
friendly to the environment. One factory might be more
fun to work in. All of these factors will have weight.





[Instead] of relying on a "Communist" (Stalinist) bureaucratic elite caste to run things, society could be set up to *collectivize* all liberated labor and co-administrative duties. Not everyone would have to do everything, but that would be a guideline-like ideal to aim for. Those who happened to develop more concerns with societal functioning, then as now, would be more involved with political matters, but not in a controlling way since all (liberated) labor would be self-selected and absolutely uncoerced, regardless of work status.





Discussion and debate may also (when passions are sufficiently intense) be backed up by strikes and boycotts of various kinds. Why work for nothing (or close to nothing) on a project which you believe embodies a mistaken attitude toward the environment, education or long-term investment? Why consume goods or services that are created or distributed in a way that sets a negative example? Why support projects which are allied to projects that you oppose?

http://struggle.net/ALDS/part_7_F.htm





If you have a track record of stupid, thoughtless or shallow
consumption--then you will get less stuff.


To be more precise here, it may just be that the workers decide not to produce such stupid, thoughtless, or shallow goods and services in the first place, thus those who may want such things would have to either provide those things for themselves, by their own labors, or else forgo such inclinations in favor of socializing themselves, their tastes, and their efforts to the larger political economy.





Distribution methods are likely to vary by type of industry
and locality and the ideas which are most popular at the time.


I'd welcome an elaboration on this point if you think it would be worthwhile to posit more detail on it....

It's on your more *transitional* aspects that I find myself having some differences with you:





2. Funding levels--will start small

But most of the goods and servives that we need are not based on software or information alone. After the overthrow of bourgeois rule the workers' state will fund numerous experimental projects that create material goods and services.

What will the level of funding for support or subsidy be? My guess is that in the first decade or two it might be somewhere between 5% and 20% of the national budget (ie: the budget of the workers' state--derived from tax revenue). And probably closer, at first, to 5% (or less) because it would be very easy to throw money away on projects that are poorly organized and run by unreliable or incompetent people (or not run by anyone at all because of constant infighting and squabbles). After experience is gained and lessons learned and the majority of the population has seen tangible results (in the form of useful products or services created by the gift economy) popular sentiment may be willing to increase the funding to the 20% level. My guess is that this level of success might take ten years to achieve. (Note: I picked ten years mainly because it is a round number--and because five years seemed too optimistic and twenty years too pessimistic--but this is still nothing but guesswork.)

http://struggle.net/ALDS/part_7_F.htm


How would a transition into a gift economy be removed from commodity production, exactly, and what kind of a quantitatively tracked valuation system are you implying here where there would be money, taxes, and national budgets?





The gift economy would be compelled to engage in commodity production in order to have relations with the commodity economy and to gain positions in all industrial sectors.

But if this is the case, how could the extremely powerful actions of the laws of commodity production be preventing from exacting their revenge and, so to speak, turning this noble effort (ie: to create an economy without exchange) into shit?

The solution (ie: the way to defend against the powerful effects of the laws of commodity production) would be for the gift economy to conduct its relations with the commodity economy in the form of a single, unified entity. From the point of view of the companies in the commodity economy--the gift economsy as a whole--would assume the form of a single giant corporation. So if some project within the gift economy (let's call it "Project Landing Gear") were to produce parts for Boeing--this would be the result of the gift economy as a whole (ie: under the supervision of the masses) negotiating with Boeing and accepting money from Boeing. Boeing would not be able to negotiate directly and privately with Project Landing Gear--nor would Boeing be able pay money directly to it.

http://struggle.net/ALDS/part_7_F.htm


Just as Stalinists in the 20th century posited that socialism had to be preceded by bourgeois national development, you're positing that a Stalinism-type national development has to take place before we can move into full socialism and a gift economy.

This is where I differ with you because we should favor mobilizing the *political* struggle to greater extents so that we *don't* temporize and waste time backtracking to have relations with the existing world economy of commodity production.

[mikelepore]

Why do you make the assumption that "if people were told "that they could have access to products without having to appear at work for a proportional and measured amount of time", they would not show for work?

One way we know is that is to take a close look at precisely who is doing the speaking when we hear people say "My job is also my hobby, I would do this for enjoyment even if I didn't get paid." When we hear that we can see immediately that the people who said that have jobs in certain categories and never certain others. They may be writers, artists, stage performers, directors of social events, speech makers, photographers, lifeguards. But the people who say that are never the people who build, operate and repair the machines in mills or factories, farm and ranch workers, construction workers, lumber workers, transportation workers. Certain varieties of work are never reported to be anyone's hobby in overlap with an occupation. So if you make work voluntary and unpaid, then the guitar player shows up for work but the plumber doesn't, the dancer shows up for work but the coal miner doesn't. Socialists need to admit this problem and seek a plan to resolve it.

The other thing is that I don't have to KNOW, or present any evidence. I'm not the one who is proposing an untried method. Just as the era of class rule has already tested the feasibility of mass production and management by committee, and then hands these things to socialism to make better use of, the era of class rule has already tested the feasilibity of inspiring people to work because they get paid to appear. To make work voluntary and unpaid is an idea that I compare to launching an aircraft off the edge of a cliff with a new kind of engine that has never been tested.

If a future generation realizes that your suggestion for socialism is right, and my suggestion has unnecessary parts, then my suggestion for socialism can be transformed into yours, abruptly or gradually, at any later time.

Therefore, I don't have to prove that I'm right about my projection, but you have to prove that you're right about your projection.


The whole point of a communist society surely is that it presupposes a quite different outlook in order to be established. We are talking about people being responsible for their own lives and those around them. They would have decided to go for a communist society in the full knowlege that we all depend upon each other for our mutual wellbeing. It is not a question of some elite "telling" us this. We will be aware of this ourselves and with this knowlege comes - dare I say it - the moral imperative to cooperate with others. There is no one else to "blame" if the goods start running out because we are too bone idle to get off our backsides to produce more. If people dont like the fact that goods are running out well then there really is only one solution isnt there? To get off one's backside and do something about it!

Actually, no. If the proposal to adopt a classless society is on the social agenda, the proposal may win the majority vote and become enacted if there are one-third of the people who are as enthusiastic as you describe, another one-third have some intellectual understanding of the idea and general agreement with it, but when the time comes for them to live in the new system they may behave liike free-riders, and only the outvoted minority of the remaining one-third who said no, they would rather try to reform capitalism. We may not be fully ready for the system that we give ourselves. And then there's the problem of the people who behave heroically in January, and then they become goof-offs in February. So, no, the fact that we launch this new system doesn't necesarily reflect our degree of cooperation after we have it.

In my proposal, the cooperation is built into the structure, and not particularly required of the people. The software credits people for working, and they don't have to be inspired to any specific degree. It's only a bonus when people are inherently inspired in their work, and not a basic criterion for functionality.


So by a reductio ad absurdum argument the problem you raise will resolve itself. Workers having striven to create a communist society are not going to let it collapse around them are they?

No I don't think people would let it collapse. I think they would realize after a few days that voluntary work isn't feasible, and then they would install some kind of stimulus-reward system such as paying people to work.

I also think they would realize it very quickly, because essential services would shut down when the people needed to run them are not available in the required numbers.

But I don't think it will come to that, because the working class will not be persuaded to adopt socialism at all as long as socialists go on proposing untested methods of doing things. The common inability to visualize the efficient operation of a new system is a major reason why most people refuse to listen to a socialist program.


Your whole perspective reeks of an apology for capitalistic habits and thought patterns. You say "Just as we need clocks that make noises to force us to wake up, we also need artificial means such as weekly earnings to force ourselves to produce wealth relations". Bullshit. I woke up this morning not to the sound of a friggin alarm clock but because I had things to do some building work on the house. Nobody is paying me to do what I do. I do it because 1) I want to and 2) I need to.

You were ambitious to work on YOUR OWN house -- my point exactly. If you had expected some people whom you don't know to travel across town to your house and work on it, they would have to get paid. They would have no other reason for doing it.


As I said before just over half the work that we do in the industriialised countires - more in the developing countries - is completely unpaid This is not just work for oneself or one's immediate family but also outside the famility. In Britiain foir example some 22 million people do volunteer work af all kinds. And this is despite the fact that we live in capitalist society.

That's a useless report without an itemization of the types of work they all performed. What I expect it to show is this: People volunteered unpaid for various social director activities and community get-together activities -- while absolutely no one at all has volunteered unpaid to run a steel mill or a paper mill or an assembly line.


If your theory held any water whatsoever, this simply would not be possible. People volunteer to do the most horrendously dangerous and dirty work all the time and in fact there is a lot of empirical research to suggest that the spirit of volunteerism is often compromised and undermined by the existence of pay incentives which you set so much store by.

The reports you are citing are not credible. If General Motors could get 400,000 volunteers then they simply wouldn't hire 400,000 workers. Clearly the volunteers that you're talking about are in restricted classifications.


Besides, your whole approach begs so many question - probably to numerous to be fully answered here. Such as that a huge chunk of the work necessary only to keeping a capitalist society ticking over - from bankers to arms producers - would disappear in a communist meaning we would all have to work much less on average than we do now anyway .

That's exactly right, much unnecessary work gets eliminated, so we are not talking about a 40 hour work week but probably a 10 hour workweek. In everything that I said here, my argument didn't rely on any particular number of hours.


Such as that the conditions under which we shall work in a communist society would be completely transfomed without a boss class and that work would become a pleasure not a burden. Such as that the only way we could obtain the esteem and respect of others in a free access communist society would be through ourcontribution to such a society and not what we took out of it.

After getting rid of the nuisance that is the boss, we still have the nuisance that is the work. It's only an old socialist promise that work will become a pleasure. No facts support it.


Such as that we would have far more scope in general to automate any work that may be of an inherently unpleasant nature or at least to minimise by sharing it in various ways by sharing the workload

We must NOT go to the workers under capitalism with literature and speeches that suggest the use of automation as the way to eliminate the unpleasant work. If we do that, the working class will reply, "Okay, then come back with your suggestion again in the 23rd century when society becomes ready for socialism." We have to propose a socialist program that can be fully operational next week. My concept of socialism handles the matter of unpleasant work with the issuance of 2x or 3x the rate of work credits for the unpleasant work, realizing that this will affect human choices, as described in De Leon's pamphlet "Fifteen Questions About Socialism."


People, you say "would quickly abandon construction, manufacturing and farming after the first month of the novelty of trying them". Rubbish. Please dont assume that because you might like construction, manufacturing and farming others dont either. I know of plenty of indiuviduals who would contradict that claim. Goods thing we are all different.

A few categories of work overlap with personal enjoyments, but most do not. If factory workers win the big lottery the first thing they do is quit their jobs, but if musicians win the lottery they never quit music. A voluntary work proposal fails to deal with the nonhomogenous characteristic of the variety of activities that get tagged with the name "going to work."

[robbo203]

One way we know is that is to take a close look at precisely who is doing the speaking when we hear people say "My job is also my hobby, I would do this for enjoyment even if I didn't get paid." When we hear that we can see immediately that the people who said that have jobs in certain categories and never certain others. They may be writers, artists, stage performers, directors of social events, speech makers, photographers, lifeguards. But the people who say that are never the people who build, operate and repair the machines in mills or factories, farm and ranch workers, construction workers, lumber workers, transportation workers. Certain varieties of work are never reported to be anyone's hobby in overlap with an occupation. So if you make work voluntary and unpaid, then the guitar player shows up for work but the plumber doesn't, the dancer shows up for work but the coal miner doesn't. Socialists need to admit this problem and seek a plan to resolve it.

The other thing is that I don't have to KNOW, or present any evidence. I'm not the one who is proposing an untried method. Just as the era of class rule has already tested the feasibility of mass production and management by committee, and then hands these things to socialism to make better use of, the era of class rule has already tested the feasilibity of inspiring people to work because they get paid to appear. To make work voluntary and unpaid is an idea that I compare to launching an aircraft off the edge of a cliff with a new kind of engine that has never been tested.

If a future generation realizes that your suggestion for socialism is right, and my suggestion has unnecessary parts, then my suggestion for socialism can be transformed into yours, abruptly or gradually, at any later time.

Therefore, I don't have to prove that I'm right about my projection, but you have to prove that you're right about your projection.




Er no. It doesnt work like that Mike. You are the one that made the assertion that free access communism - Marx's higher phase of communism -would more or less collapse within a month of it commencing. You are the one who therefore needs to supply the proof to back up your assertion. You havent. Not only have you not provided the proof, you have completely ignored the contextual arguments that have been presented to you as well (more anon).

But lets get some of your red herrings out of the way, shall we? You claim
"Certain varieties of work are never reported to be anyone's hobby in overlap with an occupation" Like people who build, operate and repair the machines in mills or factories. Well blow me over but I wonder why that could be? Lets think about it. You happen to own a factory that you can put to use as as a hobby? Somehow I doubt. Things that you and I as workers can engage in as hobbies usually involving something pretty small scaler and within our financial reach - perhaps a little lathe or a bandsaw which we can stick in the garage (if we have one) but not a machine in a mill. Hardly surprising then that working on the latter is not reported as a "hobby" is it?


However, we really get to the nitty gritty when you make the further claim the era of class rule has already tested the feasilibity of inspiring people to work because they get paid to appear. This is precisely what worries me about your proposal. It is uncomfortably close to the kind of outlook that goes with a class society

I am not at all convinced that a method that has been utilised in an era of class rule will not bring us back once again to an era of class rule. Though I accept the labour vouchers are not money and do not circulate I suspect very much that a labour voucher system wouuld sooner or later degenerate into and the reintroduction of capitalism by the backdoor. This is to say nothing of the fact that it would necessitate a massive bureaucracy to monitor labour inputs and oversee the exchane of vouchers for goods. Nor should we overlook the problem of precisely how to evaluate differents kinds of labour and the tensiions that are likely to arise over this between different groups of workers in conequence, tensions that are likely to disincline them to pull their own weight and will thus - ironically act as a disincentive to work. A voluntary system of labour is easily the most efficient and streamlined arrangement one can envisage because it pares down transactions costs to a bare minimum



Actually, no. If the proposal to adopt a classless society is on the social agenda, the proposal may win the majority vote and become enacted if there are one-third of the people who are as enthusiastic as you describe, another one-third have some intellectual understanding of the idea and general agreement with it, but when the time comes for them to live in the new system they may behave liike free-riders, and only the outvoted minority of the remaining one-third who said no, they would rather try to reform capitalism. We may not be fully ready for the system that we give ourselves. And then there's the problem of the people who behave heroically in January, and then they become goof-offs in February. So, no, the fact that we launch this new system doesn't necesarily reflect our degree of cooperation after we have it.

In my proposal, the cooperation is built into the structure, and not particularly required of the people. The software credits people for working, and they don't have to be inspired to any specific degree. It's only a bonus when people are inherently inspired in their work, and not a basic criterion for functionality.

You say this but then ignore the crucial point that I make - that communism presupposses that people understand that we all depend upon each other and that, with that, goes the moral imperative to cooperate -quite apart from any other incentive there may be to contribute. This understanding of our mutual interdependence is not something that is going to fade away upon commencement of a communist sociuety. To the contrary if your scenario of imminent collapse held any water then to the extent that we begin to apprioximate it in reality. we would become, if anything, more appreciative of the fact of our mutual interdepence and even more strongly spurred on take respnsibility about doing something about the situation . No one else is going to do it for us. There is no state to appeal to.



No I don't think people would let it collapse. I think they would realize after a few days that voluntary work isn't feasible, and then they would install some kind of stimulus-reward system such as paying people to work.

You contradictr yourself here. If voluntary work wasnt feasible after a few days then you are postulating a collapse situation which is precisely what you said people would not let happen. Actually the reductio as absurdum argument is precisely that if the voluntary labour system was appearing to fail this would provide the incentive to want to redouble their efforts to make it work. You mention a stimulus reward system. Well in free access communism the reward would and could only be the esteem and respect thatr you gain from contributing to society and such a reward is likely to be enhanced and strengthed to the extent that people feel not enough volunterrs are coming forward

.




You were ambitious to work on YOUR OWN house -- my point exactly. If you had expected some people whom you don't know to travel across town to your house and work on it, they would have to get paid. They would have no other reason for doing it.

As a matter of fact in the valley where i live in southern Spain I know of a number of families who got together to help each other build their own houses,. Im sure this sort of thing is not unique but it is only a tiny part of volunteer labour




That's a useless report without an itemization of the types of work they all performed. What I expect it to show is this: People volunteered unpaid for various social director activities and community get-together activities -- while absolutely no one at all has volunteered unpaid to run a steel mill or a paper mill or an assembly line. .

Yet another red herring. Steel mills paper mills and assembly lines tend to be part of capitalist businessses and of course given the natrure of things as they are today, you are not going to get floods of applicants volunteerrng to do work unpaid in these establsihments. Your mistake is to infer from this that such work is unlikely in itself to attract volunteers in a communist society. This does not follow at all




The reports you are citing are not credible. If General Motors could get 400,000 volunteers then they simply wouldn't hire 400,000 workers. Clearly the volunteers that you're talking about are in restricted classifications.
.

Again this is a daft argument. In case it has seemingly escaped you we still actually live in a capitalist society. If we belong to the working class we have to sell our working abilities for a wage. So 400,000 workers get paid to work in General Motors rather than offer their services for free. But you you cannot simply infer from this that therefore in communist society that commonly owned factories that used to belong to General Motors will not attract volunteers. Its a total non sequitur




That's exactly right, much unnecessary work gets eliminated, so we are not talking about a 40 hour work week but probably a 10 hour workweek. In everything that I said here, my argument didn't rely on any particular number of hours. .

But it is silly to suggest as you seem to be doing here that number of hours needed is a matter of indifference to the question of whether or not sufficient numbers of volunteers would be forthcoming in a communist society. It actually makes quite a big difference. If I had to work at something that I might not particularly enjoy but felt I needed to do as part of my sense of social obligation it would make a big difference to me if i only had to do 10 hours per week rather than 40




After getting rid of the nuisance that is the boss, we still have the nuisance that is the work. It's only an old socialist promise that work will become a pleasure. No facts support it..

Again you contradict yourself. You say that I am ambituous to work on my own house unpaid - precisely becuase it is my own house. So my relationship to the house does in fact make a difference - work is not seen as a nusiance but creativy activity. The same applies to workers in a communist society where they are no longer under the dictatorship of a boss. This is bound to massively affect their view of work and the conditions under which they work. Volunteer workers are often the best workers because they are soelf motivated




We must NOT go to the workers under capitalism with literature and speeches that suggest the use of automation as the way to eliminate the unpleasant work. If we do that, the working class will reply, "Okay, then come back with your suggestion again in the 23rd century when society becomes ready for socialism." We have to propose a socialist program that can be fully operational next week. My concept of socialism handles the matter of unpleasant work with the issuance of 2x or 3x the rate of work credits for the unpleasant work, realizing that this will affect human choices, as described in De Leon's pamphlet "Fifteen Questions About Socialism." ..

I am not suggesting all work be automated at all but it is is possible to expand the scope and intensity of automation in some areas to minimise arduous toil. For several days last week I was involved in constructing and landscaping a long barrier or bund out of spoil tipped from lorries . I humped some smaller rocks around manually while a bloke in a digger moved around the soil and larger rocks. Believe me as manual worker I can appreciate very well the benefits of machinery



A few categories of work overlap with personal enjoyments, but most do not. If factory workers win the big lottery the first thing they do is quit their jobs, but if musicians win the lottery they never quit music. A voluntary work proposal fails to deal with the nonhomogenous characteristic of the variety of activities that get tagged with the name "going to work."

Well of course a factory worker who wins the lottery ios unlikely to remain in his or her job. This is because factory work is associated with wage labour and authoritarian work regimes. That does not means working in a factory per se is boring and even in capitalism there have been some partial attempts to overcome the shortcomings of fordist style assembly mass production techniques. You have to take into account also the social organisation of the work process and things like deskilling, Braverman is quite a useful source on this

[Ben Seattle]

Hi ckaihatsu,

First, thanks for your thoughtful reply, and for doing your
"homework" and reading at least one of my articles.

Ben Seattle:

Distribution methods are likely to vary by type of industry
and locality and the ideas which are most popular at the time.

ckaihatsu:

I'd welcome an elaboration on this point

I believe we can talk in terms of the most important principles
that will guide the gift economy. But there is no way we could
predict any kind of details or create some kind of plan or scheme
for conditions that will only be known to people at the time.

There will be no central authority that governs how all
distribution takes place. I think it is safe to say that much.

But if we accept that--then it follows that there will be a
lot of variation--based on the conditions which exist at the
time and what people at the time believe will work best.

ckaihatsu:

what kind of a quantitatively tracked valuation system are
you implying here where there would be money, taxes, and
national budgets?

There would be no money _within_ the gift economy.

Money and taxes would be taken by the revolutionary government
from the capitalist sectors of the economy (ie: both private
and state capitalist) as a subsidy for the gift economy.

The size of this subsidy would depend on the popular will
since the revolutionary state will be an instrument of the
popular will.

Initially the gift economy will be small. As it proves itself,
over time, people will conclude that it would make sense to
give it more of a subsidy. At a certain point, of course, no
subsidy will be required. Eventually the gift economy will
have the ability to produce essentially everything that anybody
needs and the capitalist sectors of the economy will wither away.

How would a subsidy work?

One simple example: the revolutionary government might use tax
money from the capitalist sectors to buy computer servers or
a data center from the capitalist sector. These servers (or data
center) might then be donated to some worthwhile project within
the gift economy.

The project would not pay the government back. Rather it would
create software services that benefit other projects within
the gift economy or society as a whole.

If some project within the gift economy created a good or service
that was a commodity (ie: for sale to the capitalist sector) then
the revolutionary government would act as a centralized
intermediary between the gift-economy-as-a-whole as the
capitalist business (ie: something like a "ministry of foreign trade"
where "foreign" in this cases means "outside the gift economy").

The money paid by the capitalist business would not go to the
individual project within the gift economy.

This is necessary because _otherwise_ the parts of the gift economy
that created the commodity would become overwhelmed and, so to
speak, "contaminated" and corrupted by commodity production and
would soon become a defacto part of the commodity (ie: "capitalist")
economy.

_None_ of this is understandable if you don't know what commodities
(and the laws of commodity production) are. I suggest you review
this short and easy-to-read essay covering this absolutely essential
topic:

The Laws of Commodity Production for Dummies
http://struggle.net/ALDS/LOCP.htm
http://struggle.net/ALDS/locp-small.gif

ckaihatsu:

How would a transition into a gift economy be removed
from commodity production, exactly, [?]

Within the gift economy there would be no money. This means no
prices, no wages, no capital, etc. Nor would there be _exchange_
of any significant sort (ie: I will give you this if you give me
that, or I will do this for you if you ... etc). The people who
work within the gift economy (as well as within society as a whole)
would understand the principles themselves and defend these
principles in various ways through their actions.

ckaihatsu:

you're positing that a Stalinism-type national development has
to take place before we can move into full socialism and a gift
economy.

We need to work toward a common language so we can talk to one
another (and readers) and be understood.

Your sentence above is a FAIL in this regard.

The word "Stalinism" means (to most readers) a system in which
the basic democratic rights of speech and organization do not
exist. I doubt that is what you have in mind. But then you
must find a way to express your arguments clearly without using
words that create more heat than light.

The word "socialism", in my opinion, is also a FAIL. There is no
fucking agreement on what this word means. Therefore the ability
of this word to communicate is zero.

There are two kinds of development that are required before
the gift economy can expand to cover the essentials of life
and happiness for everyone:

(1) People need to learn how to create in a way that is more
productive and more fun than in the commodity economy.

(2) People will develop their consciousness such that everyone
(or nearly everyone) is constantly looking for something useful
to do and it is useful work which confers social status.

These things will not happen overnight.

I should point out that I have a strong dislike of the basic
bourgeois world view put forth by Mike Lepore in this thread.
However, we must recognize that a lot of the things he says
are true and useful.

mikelepore:

So if you make work voluntary and unpaid, then the guitar
player shows up for work but the plumber doesn't, the dancer
shows up for work but the coal miner doesn't. Socialists need
to admit this problem and seek a plan to resolve it.

Mike, of course, is correct.

We need to know how we will get from "here" to "there".

In any debate between you and Mike that catches wide
attention the overwhelming majority of readers would
conclude (correctly) that Mike is right and you are not.
Readers will conclude that Mike is a realist and you are
an idle dreamer.

Mike is looking at how things exist in the material world.
You would like things to be different but have no clue
(frankly) how to make that so.

I do not present a "plan" but offer something equivalent.
I list the principles (see above) that will guide the
transition from here to there :

(1) more productive and more fun
(2) develop consciousness and criteria of social status

This is going to take time. Probably several decades.
Minimum.

In the meantime, the revolutionary government will need to make
sure there is food in grocery stores.

If there is not food in grocery stores, then everyone will
conclude (correctly) that they were far better off under
capitalist rule.

Even you.

You are full of hot air now (frankly) but you would be singing
a different tune if you were hungry. You would say (along with
everyone else) "bring back the bloodsucking capitalists--at least
I will be able to eat".

You think people are going to get up in the morning and go
to work when they don't have to?

This will only happen when the work of plumber or coal miner
in the future is as much fun as the work of a guitar player
or dancer today. This will only happen when there is a change
in the consciousness of hundreds of millions (or billions) of
people.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

For fuck's sake, have none of you ever successfully lived and shared with other people?
Proposing all of these ridiculously detailed plans for how a gift-economy could work, when, really, all it fucking takes is functioning communities where people can communicate with one another openly and honestly.

Only from the atomized hell of capitalism could anything this desperately antihuman emerge.

Enough graphs! Learn to fucking interact with people!

[ckaihatsu]

For fuck's sake, have none of you ever successfully lived and shared with other people?
Proposing all of these ridiculously detailed plans for how a gift-economy could work, when, really, all it fucking takes is functioning communities where people can communicate with one another openly and honestly.

Only from the atomized hell of capitalism could anything this desperately antihuman emerge.

Enough graphs! Learn to fucking interact with people!


Respectfully, VMC, it's not *quite* as easy as just "everyone being cool with each other", unfortunately.

I agree with the part that Mike posted about having an overall structuring that *enables* people to work constructively, cooperatively:





In my proposal, the cooperation is built into the structure, and not particularly required of the people. The software credits people for working, and they don't have to be inspired to any specific degree. It's only a bonus when people are inherently inspired in their work, and not a basic criterion for functionality.


We shouldn't expect revolutionaries to be Che Guevara-type romantics, forever storming the barricades to keep the revolution alive.

The main reason why *I'm* being active at RevLeft is because this kind of collaborative environment wasn't available in past years when I first became political (as a revolutionary only). This discussion-board format is an excellent vehicle for being political generally, and particularly for hashing out the particulars of what could really be feasible as people increasingly decisively turn away from the world's capitalist system.

And, of course, for ourselves, we'd merely be *individuals* if we didn't have some basis of similarity politically -- the more specific, the better, I'd say....





I believe we can talk in terms of the most important principles
that will guide the gift economy. But there is no way we could
predict any kind of details or create some kind of plan or scheme
for conditions that will only be known to people at the time.


Fair enough -- that's understandable.





Money and taxes would be taken by the revolutionary government
from the capitalist sectors of the economy (ie: both private
and state capitalist) as a subsidy for the gift economy.




At a certain point, of course, no
subsidy will be required. Eventually the gift economy will
have the ability to produce essentially everything that anybody
needs and the capitalist sectors of the economy will wither away.


Okay -- this sounds like an appropriate method for gauging the *political* struggle in a formal way -- the world's mass revolutionary workers would be appropriating control of the means of mass industrial production at the same time, so it would be a 'dual power' situation during this period you're describing.





How would a subsidy work?

One simple example: the revolutionary government might use tax
money from the capitalist sectors to buy computer servers or
a data center from the capitalist sector. These servers (or data
center) might then be donated to some worthwhile project within
the gift economy.


I have to object to any actual *dependence* on the conventional cash economy, though -- politically it would be economism and would beg the political question of why the revolutionary workers aren't simply controlling whatever infrastructure in question -- the computer servers, in your example.





Within the gift economy there would be no money. This means no
prices, no wages, no capital, etc. Nor would there be _exchange_
of any significant sort (ie: I will give you this if you give me
that, or I will do this for you if you ... etc). The people who
work within the gift economy (as well as within society as a whole)
would understand the principles themselves and defend these
principles in various ways through their actions.


Generally this is fine, especially for goods and services that would be easier to produce and thus would be in abundance / surplus, but the trickier part is for (essential) things that might be more difficult to maintain the production of, particularly under conditions of protracted political struggle with imperialist hegemony.





There are two kinds of development that are required before
the gift economy can expand to cover the essentials of life
and happiness for everyone:

(1) People need to learn how to create in a way that is more
productive and more fun than in the commodity economy.

(2) People will develop their consciousness such that everyone
(or nearly everyone) is constantly looking for something useful
to do and it is useful work which confers social status.


These are not objectionable points but I think you may want to place more emphasis on the *political* struggle against the forces of capital since that's a prerequisite for the kind of development you're outlining.





Mike, of course, is correct.

We need to know how we will get from "here" to "there".

In any debate between you and Mike that catches wide
attention the overwhelming majority of readers would
conclude (correctly) that Mike is right and you are not.
Readers will conclude that Mike is a realist and you are
an idle dreamer.

Mike is looking at how things exist in the material world.
You would like things to be different but have no clue
(frankly) how to make that so.


I don't know why you're dramatizing and personifying the exchanges here -- instead of keeping a scorecard on people why not just stick to addressing the *political* points being made?





In the meantime, the revolutionary government will need to make
sure there is food in grocery stores.

If there is not food in grocery stores, then everyone will
conclude (correctly) that they were far better off under
capitalist rule.

Even you.


I appreciate the practicalities involved.





You are full of hot air now (frankly) but you would be singing
a different tune if you were hungry. You would say (along with
everyone else) "bring back the bloodsucking capitalists--at least
I will be able to eat".


Please avoid characterizing me in vague, generalized ways, and also don't use my person as the subject of your examples. Thank you.

[Ben Seattle]

I appreciate the practicalities involved.

Prove it ...

[ckaihatsu]

Prove it ...


That simply means that I agree with what you said.

[Kotze]

For fuck's sake, have none of you ever successfully lived and shared with other people?
Proposing all of these ridiculously detailed plans for how a gift-economy could work, when, really, all it fucking takes is functioning communities where people can communicate with one another openly and honestly.I don't know if that counts as successful living, but I have shared a flat with people who are neither family members nor romantically interested in me, without fisticuffs so far. We have always had some group-use items (eg. toilet paper) and rotating cleaning-up duties.

We don't calculate everyone's share in buying these items down to the cent, but we do it roughly (the calculating, you swine) and of course we refer to the market prices of these goods for that. So yeah, we do need a measure of cost.

As I never tire to point out, the reason why in some small tribes things work out without money is not that everybody is free to do what they want without any repercussions, the reason is that in small groups with a small number of different items and services, an average member can keep track in the head how much everybody roughly contributes. This doesn't scale.

[Jose Gracchus]

For fuck's sake, have none of you ever successfully lived and shared with other people?
Proposing all of these ridiculously detailed plans for how a gift-economy could work, when, really, all it fucking takes is functioning communities where people can communicate with one another openly and honestly.

Only from the atomized hell of capitalism could anything this desperately antihuman emerge.

Enough graphs! Learn to fucking interact with people!

Hold still while I intelligently 'interact' with Chinese comrade workers in Hong Kong, where my Joe said his old buddy Mark from Fresno they are renown for their Voluntary Community Goddamn Awesome Wonton Soup Works. So he attempts to intelligently interact with those workers to know about his demand. Somehow their soup works is becoming very popular. How are they going to get more raw materials from the Voluntary Community Works For Fucking Iodine? Those rock mining enthusiasts producing the iodine which is an indispensable additive to dietary salt for increasing public thyroid health (basic modern public health) voluntarily produce the required extra amount they know via their...interacting.

Or wait, what you're talking about is either primitivism or delusional magical localism. A totally generalized gift economy cannot meet world food production requirements, and everyone cannot just make their own food.

[mikelepore]

robbo203, you talk about human feelings that are unreliable and nearly absent in the industrial production process - "people understand that we all depend upon each other and that, with that, goes the moral imperative to cooperate" ... "the esteem and respect that you gain from contributing to society" ... "part of my sense of social obligation."

Your words describe the reason why socialists distribute leaflets on the street corner, but they are not the reason why workers make gears for machines, etc., which socialism will need people to do.

Those feelings are next to useless in maintaining the practical routines necessary to operate industry. Those feelings will not get 100,000 people to express a commitment to show up at a certain buiding every Tuesday and Wednesday at ten o'clock, for the six months, to perform some repetitive steps involving pulling levers on machines. People do not have any emotional attachment to performing routine operations.

The human motivation to work is based on the swap: if I agree to put my time in, what would I get out of it?

Only in the movies, the supervisor says, "You're working too hard! I insist that you take a paid vacation!", but the "professional" replies, "Oh, please, not that! I'm needed here!" That movie scene is about as realistic as the ghosts visiting Scrooge.

The socialist program cannot be to give people a prescription to begin thinking and feeling differently than everyone has thought and felt for the past thousand years. We need a form of socialism that will take people as they are.

[robbo203]

robbo203, you talk about human feelings that are unreliable and nearly absent in the industrial production process - "people understand that we all depend upon each other and that, with that, goes the moral imperative to cooperate" ... "the esteem and respect that you gain from contributing to society" ... "part of my sense of social obligation."

Your words describe the reason why socialists distribute leaflets on the street corner, but they are not the reason why workers make gears for machines, etc., which socialism will need people to do.

Those feelings are next to useless in maintaining the practical routines necessary to operate industry. Those feelings will not get 100,000 people to express a commitment to show up at a certain buiding every Tuesday and Wednesday at ten o'clock, for the six months, to perform some repetitive steps involving pulling levers on machines. People do not have any emotional attachment to performing routine operations.

The human motivation to work is based on the swap: if I agree to put my time in, what would I get out of it?

Only in the movies, the supervisor says, "You're working too hard! I insist that you take a paid vacation!", but the "professional" replies, "Oh, please, not that! I'm needed here!" That movie scene is about as realistic as the ghosts visiting Scrooge.

The socialist program cannot be to give people a prescription to begin thinking and feeling differently than everyone has thought and felt for the past thousand years. We need a form of socialism that will take people as they are.

Your last sentence is the one that gives it all away. It reveals precisely what is wrong about your whole approach. You are looking at society as it is today. You are projecting into a future socialist society virtually lock stock and barrel everything that you dislike about capitalism - from its authoritarian hierarchical industrial relations to the the way in which the work process itself is carried. You are assuming the need for a kind of Fordist type mass production system no doubt complete with scientific Taylorism as a mode of management.

No we do not need a form of socialism that will take people as they are. On the contrary, it is an absolutely fundamental tenet that people have to change their outlook on life and the way they relate to each other for socialism to happen at all. There is a good quote from the German Ideology which puts across this point well

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. (my emphasis)

You have only been able to maintain what I would call your naively empiricist standpoint by ignoring virutally every single point I ve made in opposition to your pessimistic view of human potentialities.

Factory work, and indeed any other kind of work, will be transformed in a socialist society. The relationship of people to work and to each other will be quite different. What puts people off factory work today is the terms and conditions under which they work - being ordered around by some boss, the inflexibility of the work commitments and so on - but even so as industrial sociologists have shown there is much more to life on the shopfloor than standing over an assembly line. Have you ever worked in a factory? While my occupation now is a gardener I did once briefly and I cannot say that my experiences tallied all that well with your bleak view of factory life. You seem to forget that people are all different and that you cannot just glibly generalise about what people like or dont like. Some people enjoy what you may reghard as being utterly boring

In socialism it will be not just be the bonhomie of cooperative production, the comradeship of fellow workers, that will motivate people to work. The very nature of voluntary labour changes the way we will look at work, radically. The work process itself will be redesigned radically to make it much more intrinsically satisfying and indeed even in capitalism we have seen a tendency to move away from a Fordist type impersonal assembly line production to a more holistic approach involving small teams of workers intearcting more creatively with the product. Even the capitalists have done something to ease the problem of work motivation. In socialism the move away from the kind of detailed division of labour will become much more pronounced. Work will be transformed much more intrinsically satisfying and create and become something akin to the relationship between the artisan and his or her tools


You say the "human motivation to work is based on the swap: if I agree to put my time in, what would I get out of it?" Actually, no, most work today in unpaid and involves no remuneration at all . The "grey economy" as it called which lies outside of the monetary sector absorbs more human labour hours than the official white economy and the unoffocial black economy combined. So what you are saying is simply not true. A large chunk of the grey economy (and we are not talking here about hobbies or lesiure type activities you go on about) falls within the household sector but outside of the household sector - working in the community or for others - there are significant amounts on unpaid labour being performed - even today under capitalism, mind. In Britain 22 million people perform some kind of volunteer work in the community according to TUC figures

What would people get out of work in a socialist society ? Lots of things! The respect and esteem of others will probably rank highly in this regard. Since goods and services would be completely free for people to take according to their self defined needs, there would be absolutely no point in accumulating wealth for the purposes of social display. That in itself would not only reduce the total workload by reducing the demand for many things, it would also mean that the only way in which individuals could acquire status in the eyes of others would be through their contribution to society - not what they take out of it. Work that you regard today as unsatisfying would be precisely the kind of work that would attract the greatest prestige and precisely because society depended on it. The acquisition of respect and status would more than compensate for the "sacrifice" of spending pwerhaps two or three hours per week on such drudgery

Then again a huge amount of work that is absolutely necessary to the functioning of a capitalist society such as all money related occupations will simply disappear in a free access society. What that means is that huge numbers of workers will be released from socially useless occupations such as these and made avaialble for socially useful production so to speak. To put it differently there will be far more people around to share the workload which itself would have been reduced by the mere fact that so much of what is produced today will no longer be needed. So we are talking about a work week than on everage will be a small fraction of what we have today. This actually has important consequences for the kind of work you think peoiple will not volunteer to do and need to be paid to . Their unwillingness to do such work, I am sure evcen you will accept , would be positively correlated with the average time we need to spend on it. If it involved only a few hours rather than a whole woking week then the chances are much greater that people will do it.

Given this, given the fact that we will feel a much stronger sense of moral obligation towards each other (a point you consistently fail to appreciate) given that the work process itself will be radically transformed and that whatever intrinsically unsatisfying work there may left, will automated or reduced to a bare minimum , I see absolutely no grounds for you to take such a pessimistic outlook of the prospects of work in a free access socialist society

You say my talk of a sense of moral obligation or the feelings of respect that we get from others who appreciate what we are doing are words that "describe the reason why socialists distribute leaflets on the street corner, but they are not the reason why workers make gears for machines, etc., which socialism will need people to do.". No. Not at all. It is capitalism that makes these artificial distinctions and separates us into producers and consumers, that imposes a detailed division of labour on us and prevents us from appreciating the full diversity of work experiences that we could experience in a free access voluntaristic society.

You are unwittingly reflecting and indeed reinforcing such divisions by your fundamentally conservartive attitude towards this whole area of work in a socialist society. Your are projecting into socialism what applies rto capitalism where there is absolutely no warrant whatsoever for doing so.

[ckaihatsu]

Given this, given the fact that we will feel a much stronger sense of moral obligation towards each other (a point you consistently fail to appreciate) given that the work process itself will be radically transformed and that whatever intrinsically unsatisfying work there may left, will automated or reduced to a bare minimum , I see absolutely no grounds for you to take such a pessimistic outlook of the prospects of work in a free access socialist society

You say my talk of a sense of moral obligation or the feelings of respect that we get from others who appreciate what we are doing are words that "describe the reason why socialists distribute leaflets on the street corner, but they are not the reason why workers make gears for machines, etc., which socialism will need people to do.". No. Not at all. It is capitalism that makes these artificial distinctions and separates us into producers and consumers, that imposes a detailed division of labour on us and prevents us from appreciating the full diversity of work experiences that we could experience in a free access voluntaristic society.

You are unwittingly reflecting and indeed reinforcing such divisions by your fundamentally conservartive attitude towards this whole area of work in a socialist society. Your are projecting into socialism what applies rto capitalism where there is absolutely no warrant whatsoever for doing so.


This is a very involved segment of discussion since it's touching on an intersection of blue- and gray-collar(?) work in the contexts of the here-and-now and also in a posited future socialist society. Here's the "chart":

- Blue-collar work now -- mostly sucks due to exploitation and lack of any participatory control over the work process -- still in force in many parts of the world due to cheap labor, commodification, and quasi-continual industrialization of non-industrialized areas.

- Gray-collar work (volunteerism) now -- doesn't suck as bad, for those able to do it, due to much more interdependent involvements and partial control over one's own work process -- politicizes the social realm on a small-scale and depends on ongoing 'service' needs among participants. May be increasingly detached from the larger economic world and in need of hard currency.

- Blue-collar work then -- would be socially necessary but probably increasingly undesired due to newfound general freedoms -- could arguably be quickly automated, and/or could arguably be increasingly put into stasis without much labor-dependent growth needed -- could be done by empowered, interdependent liberated labor

- Gray-collar work then -- probably the noblest and most enlightened social interactions humanity will ever have seen -- this will be the mass self-determining political process for all liberated labor within a fully collectivized global society.

[ckaihatsu]

Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy

http://postimage.org/image/ccfl07uy5/