Modern Anarcho-Communist Economics?

[Kiev Communard]

Recently I have found a lot of books and other texts on the economic questions of realization of the respective projects of "new socialism" - from mutualist Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy to Paul Cockshott's and Allin Cottrell's Towards the New Socialism, which generally tends toward classical Marxist approach. However, I failed to find anything substantial on economics, especially economics of transition to socialist/communist society, written from Anarcho-Communist perspective in modern times, i.e. in 1990s - 2000s. Does anybody know where to find such material?

Thanks in advance.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

This publication from my signature is from the 2000's and is libertarian communist economics so just what you asked for really. I personally think it's really good:
http://www.solfed.org.uk/?q=the-economics-of-freedom

[L.A.P.]

From what I know Anarcho-Communists favor a gift economy that would break the cycle of poverty, this was advocated by Peter Kroptokin. Many Anarcho-Primitivists also favor this type of economy but for reasons of wanting to go back to hunter-gatherer societies.

[NewSocialist]

Parecon is kind of like a modern anarcho-communism - http://www.amazon.com/Parecon-After-Capitalism-Michael-Albert/dp/184467505X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297299740&sr=8-1

[syndicat]

the anarchist economists at ICEA (a think tank associated with CNT) regard participatory economics as a form of libertarian communist economy.

[gestalt]

Parecon is kind of like a modern anarcho-communism - http://www.amazon.com/Parecon-After-Capitalism-Michael-Albert/dp/184467505X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297299740&sr=8-1

Participatory Economics is certainly a refreshing take, however, there are some inherent problems. Namely, in Michael Albert's model, it is not decentralized enough. It depends on large-scale units the size of current nation states, which makes it increasingly less democratic and sustainable.

Also it gets stuck in the "from each according to their ability, to each according to their deeds" stage by allocating more to the most productive members. As such, it offers a viable council alternative to bureaucratic socialism as a transitional stage, but is not fully anarcho-communism.

[syndicat]

Participatory Economics is certainly a refreshing take, however, there are some inherent problems. Namely, in Michael Albert's model, it is not decentralized enough. It depends on large-scale units the size of current nation states, which makes it increasingly less democratic and sustainable.

Also it gets stuck in the "from each according to their ability, to each according to their deeds" stage by allocating more to the most productive members. As such, it offers a viable council alternative to bureaucratic socialism as a transitional stage, but is not fully anarcho-communism.

both of these criticisms are wrong-headed. economies are integrated over very large areas. if an "anarcho-communist" economy can't scale up to whole nations or continents, it isn't feasible. and it doesn't depend on "states" so that part is a mistake.

participatory economics does not "allocate more to more productive members." the poster here seems to confuse "distribution according to output" with remuneration for work effort. these are not the same. A might be more productive than B in terms of output but exert the same effort. in that case they'd be paid the same, effectively, when you work out the bit about balanced jobs, participatory economics proposes equal remuneration.

god only knows what "fully anarcho-communist" means.

[gestalt]

I was referring to the "facilitation boards" or however the authors termed them, which seem to exert ultimate decision making power over the local councils. The potential for the creation of a bureaucracy that rivals existing governments is there as is the threat of the emergence of an elite. Nothing was said about states, aside from the plausible de facto one. It is not in keeping with the kind of federation I would prefer.

As to the second point, it was poor wording on my part, the passage in the book on remuneration for effort and "balanced job complexes" was tortuous and the idea of an "effort rating" unconvincing. I am open to explanations if you want to provide them, minus the condescension.

The realization of anarcho-communism in my mind is a gift economy operating under the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need." The means by which we attain this might be diverse, but I am not sure the model of parecon as presented is the way.

[robbo203]

Parecon is kind of like a modern anarcho-communism - http://www.amazon.com/Parecon-After-Capitalism-Michael-Albert/dp/184467505X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297299740&sr=8-1


I dont think it is. Anarcho communism is in its essentials a gift economy based on generalised reciproicity. Not so, Parecon


Incidentally there is work in progress at this site concerning the economics of a non-market non-statist socialist economy

http://non-market-calculation.wikispaces.com/


And you can join the group discussing these issues here

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ecaworkinggroup/?yguid=90109900

[NewSocialist]

I dont think it is. Anarcho communism is in its essentials a gift economy based on generalised reciproicity. Not so, Parecon


Incidentally there is work in progress at this site concerning the economics of a non-market non-statist socialist economy

http://non-market-calculation.wikispaces.com/


And you can join the group discussing these issues here

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ecaworkinggroup/?yguid=90109900

I was under the impression that at least Hahnel considered himself an anarchist, but perhaps parecon is too bureaucratic to be considered "anarcho-communist" -- at least as some people define it. Aside from the website, have you any books you could recommend to Kiev Communard on the topic?

[robbo203]

This publication from my signature is from the 2000's and is libertarian communist economics so just what you asked for really. I personally think it's really good:
http://www.solfed.org.uk/?q=the-economics-of-freedom


This is generally speaking a good article but I seriously question one or two points that it makes. In particular this:

Once the plan is agreed, no more is needed from the computer model. Enterprises just work according to the priorities that are laid down. Timber workers know they have to give priority to supplying paper producers rather than furniture makers. Workers do not need precise directions from the computer – after all, the plan is based on the predictions of the workers themselves about what they can do given various allocations of resources. It is now just a matter of trying to make these predictions happen.

I think this is a mistaken approach. It does seem to me to be based on a kind of quasi-central planning approach (albeit with a democratic input). The opportunity costs of planned outputs that express the needs of workers are calculated in advance with inputs and outputs all being matched up within "the plan". Even though the article says workers do not not need precise directions from the computer about what to do, one has to wonder what was the point of the exercise in that case. "Precise" decisions about precisely how many bicyles, photovoltaic cells and hi fi stereos still have to be made in the end otherwise there will be considerable wastages and dispropotionalities between different lines of production.

It seems to me what is missing from this article is the key concept of a feedback mechanism. Ive been banging about this for a few years now, trying to get my fellow anarcho communists to see the absolutely critical relevance of this concept to any discussion about the economics of an anarcho-communist society.

The market has its own feedback mechanism in the form of the price system whereby prices fluctuate in response to changes in supply and demand. A non-market anarchocommunist society needs an equivalent or analogous kind of feedback mechanism and this, I suggest, its precisely what a self regulating system of stock control provides. It is through such a mechanism - not some a priori giant plan, however provisional its suggested output targets may be - that the countless millions of ongoing detailed day-to-day adjustments to changes in supply and demand can be made by the producers in an anarcho communist economy

[syndicat]

I was referring to the "facilitation boards" or however the authors termed them, which seem to exert ultimate decision making power over the local councils.

Hahnel & Albert's language is not always helpful. the "facilitation board" doesn't make decisions. so you've got that wrong right off. they collect all the plans that worker groups make about what they propose to produce, and all the plans in which households, communities, regions etc propose (request) product. from this they aggregate projected supply and projected demand. using a price rule that the society has agreed to, they publish the projected prices. but the "facilitation board" makes no plans or decisions. these are made by worker groups, households, communities, regions etc. they then adjust their plans based on the reports of price changes due to changes in projected supply and demand.

as to a "gift economy" i think this has no meaning in the context of a modern industrial economy.

[robbo203]

Hahnel & Albert's language is not always helpful. the "facilitation board" doesn't make decisions. so you've got that wrong right off. they collect all the plans that worker groups make about what they propose to produce, and all the plans in which households, communities, regions etc propose (request) product. from this they aggregate projected supply and projected demand. using a price rule that the society has agreed to, they publish the projected prices. but the "facilitation board" makes no plans or decisions. these are made by worker groups, households, communities, regions etc. they then adjust their plans based on the reports of price changes due to changes in projected supply and demand..

That is precisely why parecon is not a gift economy. The price mechanism is retained. If it is not exactly capitalism, it will lead us back into capitalism - that is, if it were ever possible to achieve a parecon economy in the first place.



as to a "gift economy" i think this has no meaning in the context of a modern industrial economy.

In what sense no meaning? Most work today is performed without any kind of quid pro quo payment involved - from self provisioning peasant farmers to the domestic household sector to internet exchanges to volunteering of all kinds - and so forms part of an already huge gift economy


If you are referring to what Andre Gorz called "heternomous" or socialised labour, on what grounds do you suppose that this could not be reorganised on the basis of a gift economy - if this is what you are saying? Do you accept the transparently pro-capitalist sentiments of John Stuart Mill who back in 1848 wrote:

It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress (The Principles of Political Economy)

It is the common error of anti-socialists to overlook a lots of things about socialism. Like

1) the sheer amount of work that we will no longer need to do with the elimination of capitalism's vast array of socially uselesss money-related occupations - from bankers to tax collectors With everyone having much less work on average this in itself will radically alter our attitude to work. What appears to be a drudge if we have to do it for 40 hours a week can appear throughly engaging if we need only do it for 4 hours a week

2) With work being entirely voluntary we do not have to be stuck doing just one kind of work, We can experiment and put our hands to several different kinds of work. That means that for any kind of work that needs to be done the reservoir of labour except perhaps for most highly skilled jobs will be society itself. That is there will be a system of back up in depth. Under capitalism you cannot just transfer workers willy nilly from work where there is low demand to work where there is high demand. In anarcho communism, by contrast, workers will freely move from one to the other as they please.

3) it is not "work" that is the problem - we need to work as a creative expression of ourselves - but the terms and conditions under which we work which under capitalism is hierarchical and alienating - though even under these terms and conditions some workers today still manage to find work creative and stimulating and affording job satisfaction. For any normal healthy person to do absolutely nothing - even for a few days - will induce a state of excruciating boredom, bordering on depression.

4) we need as social aninals to gain the respect and esteem of our fellows. In a communist gift economy when all goods and services are available for free, how do we aquire status except through our contributon to society?

5) An anarcho communist gift economy can only be brought about by a majority who want and understand it and who, having established it, would have a vested interest in ensuring that it worked. They would not want to see a return to capitalism.

6) an anarchocommunist gift economy would be fundamentally a moral economy in which we recognise our basic mutual interpendence and moral obligation towards each other. It will be a truly caring sharing society. This implies a quite different attitude to work - one of moral responsibilty rather than relying on , for example, the ubiquitous nanny state of capitalism to do things for us


I could go on but the above will suffice...

[NewSocialist]

That is precisely why parecon is not a gift economy. The price mechanism is retained. If it is not exactly capitalism, it will lead us back into capitalism - that is, if it were ever possible to achieve a parecon economy in the first place.

I don't see why parecon is any less feasible than a gift economy and I really don't see why keeping some kind of price mechanism would inevitably lead us back to capitalism.

[syndicat]

That is precisely why parecon is not a gift economy. The price mechanism is retained. If it is not exactly capitalism, it will lead us back into capitalism - that is, if it were ever possible to achieve a parecon economy in the first place.



this is mere assertion. you can assert whatever you like. why not assert the moon is made of green cheese? of course, providing a good argument is something else again.

there is no single "price mechanism." there are different kinds of "price mechanisms" depending on the social relationships the social economy is built on. completely autonomous firms that seek to accrue surpluses (as in market socialism) are one thing, but that doesn't exist in participatory economy.

if all goods and services are free, there is no way whatsoever for the economy to know what the real preferences of people are for product. you won't have an effective economy. even if regions or communities decide to provide certain things for free, they will still need info on the relative costs and benefits of providing those things if they are to be able to discuss and make a collective rational decision about what quantity and mix of goods and services to provide thru free social provision. and to know what the social costs are you have to be able to measure costs on a common numeric scale, that is, you need prices for social accounting.

much existing work is done for free...within the family. but in this case it is a small group of people who know each other well and have very immediate ways to indicate pleasure or displeasure in regard to what the other person has done or not done.

to try to extrapolate from family economy to a vast industrial economy of millions of people is ridiculous.

[robbo203]

this is mere assertion. you can assert whatever you like. why not assert the moon is made of green cheese? of course, providing a good argument is something else again..


Well,we'll have to disagree on that but i think we can agree that parecon is definitely not a gift economy. Yes?



if all goods and services are free, there is no way whatsoever for the economy to know what the real preferences of people are for product. you won't have an effective economy. even if regions or communities decide to provide certain things for free, they will still need info on the relative costs and benefits of providing those things if they are to be able to discuss and make a collective rational decision about what quantity and mix of goods and services to provide thru free social provision. and to know what the social costs are you have to be able to measure costs on a common numeric scale, that is, you need prices for social accounting...

Ah, the good old economic calculation argument. Interesting to discover you're a fan of Ludwig von Mises. Have you considered the counterarguments to his though? Try some of the links I gave earlier.

But I really cant let you get away with this one: if all goods and services are free, there is no way whatsoever for the economy to know what the real preferences of people are for product . Of course there is. Its a called a "self regulating system of stock control". It already exists and operates alongside the price mechanism (anarcho-communism will simply dispense with the latter and keep the former). How does it work? You go to a store and take a good. Other people take the good as well. What happens? The stock on the shelf declines. Someone comes along and monitors the rate at which stock levels fall (these days its all done automatically). This triggers an order for fresh stock from the suppliers. The suppliers too might find they are running low of particular input to manufacture the good in question. So this too triggers orders for more stock of the input in question. And so on and so forth. Right down the productiion chain.


In all of this please note - the economy knows exactly what the real preferences of people are! These preferences are indicated by the rate of take up or depletion of stock. Stocks which are are not depleting very rapidly suggest that people dont have a particularly strong prefernece for them. Conversely , stock which are depleting rapidly suggest a strong preference is being expressed. All this information is instantly picked up and acted upon in a completely self regulating manner by the anarcho communist economy

Your problem. as with so many others, is that you are not looking at anarcho communism in terms of a feedback mechanism, You are fixated on the idea of a priori central planning - deciding what to produce first and then setting about to organise production according. This is wrong and this is why you fail to see what is so obvious and hovers right in front of your nose





much existing work is done for free...within the family. but in this case it is a small group of people who know each other well and have very immediate ways to indicate pleasure or displeasure in regard to what the other person has done or not done.

to try to extrapolate from family economy to a vast industrial economy of millions of people is ridiculous.

I dont get this argument at all. What is it about a "vast industrial economy" that makes it ridiculous to claim that unmediated relationship that exist within a familiy set up can be applicable to it as well. Why do you assume that for a gift economy to operate it is necessary that there be a "small group of people who know each other well and have very immediate ways to indicate pleasure or displeasure in regard to what the other person has done or not done". Capitalism seem to get by with workers being wholly indifferent to the question of where product will finally end up. Why not anarcho communism as well. Ah but you say in capitalism workers are paid to work and this the incentive or coercion that makes them go to work. We wouldnt be paid in anarcho communism so according to you we will all tend to disregard the needs of others apart from those in our immediate vicinity because well we are all basically lazy callous who couldnt care a toss for anyone but ourselves and our kith and kin. Ergo a large scale gift economy is a non starter

Actually you are quite mistaken anyway. The internet is a flourishing example of a massive gift culture in action. Millions upon millions of people interact on a daily basis often with complete strangers without having any immediate way of knowing whether the recipients of their information find pleasure of displeasure in it. Millions upon millions of people contriibute to charities or volunteer for causes, the beneficiaries of which happen to live on the side of thewworld which, according to you, simply could not happen because there is no way immediate way for the latter to "indicate pleasure or displeasure"


If you know your anthropology you will heard of Malinowski whose classic ethnography Argonauts of the Western Pacific is about the Trobriand islands who have this strange insititution called the Kula - basically shells that circulate from one island to the next and which you are morally obliged to pass on . This is not money or comercial trade at all. It is a way of cementing social relationships over time and over vast distances. The Bedouin of North Africa - to cite another example - have a strong tradition of welcoming strangers , giving them water food and shelter all for free, becuase they know full well that in a desert environment they too might have to avail themselves of the assistance of others at some future date. Bedouin culture has thus adapted itself to the exigencies of the situation in which it finds itself.

I see absolutely no reason why an anarcho communist society cannot do likewise. Why should individuals who have gone through the effort of creating such a society not recognise the fact that we all depend upon each other (whether or not we know each other) Why should not this awarenss of our mutual dependence not translate into a sense of moral obligations towards others whether they exist in the same housefold or in another part of the world. Granted we might not feel as strongly committed to the latter as to the former but that does not rule out altogether some degree of commitment, does it? If nothing else we have a strong incentive to collaborate with, or help to satisfy the needs of strangers becuase in the end we will benefit from this as well


There are other reasons why the lazy person argument simply holds no water than the desire to please others. You have only looked at this one particular reason and your argument has been found wanting. You should perhaps at least consider the other arguments I presented which -collectively - utterly demolish the claim that human beings are naturally lazy and that consequently anarcho communism can never happen

[syndicat]

Its a called a "self regulating system of stock control". It already exists and operates alongside the price mechanism (anarcho-communism will simply dispense with the latter and keep the former). How does it work? You go to a store and take a good. Other people take the good as well. What happens? The stock on the shelf declines. Someone comes along and monitors the rate at which stock levels fall (these days its all done automatically). This triggers an order for fresh stock from the suppliers. The suppliers too might find they are running low of particular input to manufacture the good in question. So this too triggers orders for more stock of the input in question. And so on and so forth. Right down the productiion chain.



this won't give you an accurate picture of preferences. to obtain that, people have to make hard choices. this means people need to have budgets which corresponds to their finite share of the social product (individually distributed versus the part of their consumption that comes thru a system of social provision such as health care and education).

if a person has a finite budget, then they may get only 2 shirts rather than 8 because there are other things they want to use their consumption entitlement for. or suppose that having a boat for fishing is important for Joe so he's been not acquiring as much other stuff, no new furniture, and so on, so that he has enough consumption entitlement to get a boat. you would have no way to measure how important this boat is to him.

in your system people do not have to make these hard choices. they can pick up for free whatever they want, without limit. so there is no reason for A to not pick up those 8 shirts rather than limit himself to 2. Or there may be a person B who wouldn't acquire a bicycle if he had to give up some of a limited budget for one because he'd only use it infrequently. but if it's free, then he might pick one up, even if he doesn't use it much and it isn't all that important to him.

so you'll get a major increase in what appears to be demand, but this will lead to a lot of inefficiency because people will be picking up products not because their actual desire for them merits the resources the society will need to expend to make them.

your system will also encourage anti-social individualism. that's because a system encourages the development of traits if those traits enable people to win. if a person completely disregards social costs of production and leaving some items for others, that person may simply make it a point to be the first when new stuff comes in, and may take 10 shirts instead of 2 and so on. their greediness enables them to win in the sense that they end up with more stuff.

also, your system has no way for people to indicate how much they like the products, how well made they are, nor is there any way for them to support a new product. your stock system works only with things where at some point in the past a decision was made to produce that thing. so how do new products get introduced?

[robbo203]

this won't give you an accurate picture of preferences. to obtain that, people have to make hard choices. this means people need to have budgets which corresponds to their finite share of the social product (individually distributed versus the part of their consumption that comes thru a system of social provision such as health care and education)

if a person has a finite budget, then they may get only 2 shirts rather than 8 because there are other things they want to use their consumption entitlement for. or suppose that having a boat for fishing is important for Joe so he's been not acquiring as much other stuff, no new furniture, and so on, so that he has enough consumption entitlement to get a boat. you would have no way to measure how important this boat is to him.


What I was talking about - a self regulating system of stock control - was simply a clear example to refute your unsubtantiated claim that there was no way of knowing what people's preferences are in an anarcho communist economy. There clearly is a "way" and I demonstrated to you precisely a mechanism by which consumer preferences can be revealed via a self regulating system of stock control.


You do not offer any counterarguments that directly address this point but instead shift your ground somewhat to the question of opportunity costs. OK Fair enough. Lets look at this argument

In saying that consumer preferences can be revealed via a self regulating system of stock control please do not assume that this exhausts the subject. There are other mechanisms that do this too. I only offered this one as an obvious example to refute yoiur argument. Here Illl focus on just other mechanism which really gets to the heart of the matter of opportunity costs: a socially agreed hierarchy of production goals. By this I mean some some indicative sense of our social priorities placed along an ordinal scale.

Note that this is not apriori planning at all. There are no inputs being calculated or outputs being decided upon within some huge overearching social plan. What a socially agreed hiearchy of production goals amounts to is simply a guideline or schema to guide producers in the allocation of resources under condisitions where there are competing demands placed on a given resource i.e. scarcity. Under such conditions it makes sense for resources to be allocated to high priority ends as defined by society in general rather than low priority ends.

I wont go on about this as the process is comprehensively explained here

http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm

Once youve understood what it entails I think you will find that a lot of your objections to an anarcho communist society will simply melt away



your system will also encourage anti-social individualism. that's because a system encourages the development of traits if those traits enable people to win. if a person completely disregards social costs of production and leaving some items for others, that person may simply make it a point to be the first when new stuff comes in, and may take 10 shirts instead of 2 and so on. their greediness enables them to win in the sense that they end up with more stuff.


Actually no. Its quite the opposite. When goods and services are free there is simply no point in wanting to take more than you need. There are no kudos to be gained thereby. You dont obtain more status because youve accumulated more stuff. In fact the only way you can obtain more status and the resepct and esteem of your fellows is through your contribution to society

It is not anarcho communism that encourages "anti-social individualism". Rather it is any kind of system based on the principle of economic exchange (and hence private property). Inherent in the idea of exchange is the latent tension betweeen buyer and seller which resolves itself into the conflicting interests of each. We define our own interest in opposition to those of others. As buyers we want the lowest price possible. as sellers we want the highest price possible. I understand that you want to retain some kind of price system including the pricing of labour power in your vision of the future. Draw your own conclusions



also, your system has no way for people to indicate how much they like the products, how well made they are, nor is there any way for them to support a new product. your stock system works only with things where at some point in the past a decision was made to produce that thing. so how do new products get introduced?


Simple. Ever heard of thing called a consumer survey? The information gleaned from such a source can perfectly easily enable producers in an anarcho communist economy to introduce new products into the system. The whole point abvout such an economy is that it is wonderfully adaptable and flexible - a very far cry from the rigidities of apriori central planning

[Kotze]

Do the Parecon guys still advocate that tasks are ranked according to how empowering or awful they are, and that every rank a voter assigns is worth a fixed number of points, and that for each task you sum all the voters' points to determine how good or bad it is and then you use this to give everyone a task mix with at least roughly the same score, Y/N?
participatory economics does not "allocate more to more productive members." the poster here seems to confuse "distribution according to output" with remuneration for work effort. these are not the same.But we don't measure that with other instruments than people voting. While I share the idea of paying for effort I don't believe that the effort judgements will usually divert much from productivity judgements.

[syndicat]

What I was talking about - a self regulating system of stock control - was simply a clear example to refute your unsubtantiated claim that there was no way of knowing what people's preferences are in an anarcho communist economy. There clearly is a "way" and I demonstrated to you precisely a mechanism by which consumer preferences can be revealed via a self regulating system of stock control.



apparently you have problems of reading comprehension.

as I pointed out, your proposed system has no way to pick up how much someone prefers one alternative over another because they never have to choose one rather than the other.

that's called a refutation.

your claim was simply implausible. the mere fact that someone picks something from a store tells us very little about their preferences, if everything is free and a person does not have to give up anything to get the thing they take. if you understand English, you should know that "prefer" refers to a three-place relation. A person X prefers A to B. But if a person can pick up both A and B because both are free, how does the system read the preference? And if something isn't on offer on the shelves, how does the system know if people might prefer it to what is on offer?


a socially agreed hierarchy of production goals. By this I mean some some indicative sense of our social priorities placed along an ordinal scale.



this is silly. does this mean the whole society makes this decision? then you have the problem that preferences vary from one individual to another. so you'd end up with tyranny of the majority in the realm of consumer preferences.

that's just the beginning of the problem. say the community decides that housing is right now the highest priority, electric power production is a second priority, and so on. why doesn't this mean that all of the society's resources whatever go into housing and nothing into anything else? your "hierarchy" bit doesn't tell us anything about how the resources are to be distributed.

[Kotze]

I asked this: Do the Parecon guys still advocate that tasks are ranked according to how empowering or awful they are, and that every rank a voter assigns is worth a fixed number of points, and that for each task you sum all the voters' points to determine how good or bad it is and then you use this to give everyone a task mix with at least roughly the same score, Y/N? It looks like the answer is that they want to use either average ratings or they want indeed to use rankings where each rank is worth a fixed number of points (the latter voting method is known under the name Borda, and it's crap (http://www.revleft.com/vb/questions-australians-voting-t140120/index.html?p=1832621#post1832621)).

Either way, there is something basic that is wrong with their proposal. I don't just want to replace that non-proportional method with a better non-proportional method, I believe it's far from optimal to use a non-proportional method here.

Assigning everyone to slots based on what the majority thinks of these slots — whether the slots are duties or time slots at different resorts or seats in restaurants or many other things — is far from optimal, as people have different levels of tolerance for different things, they like and hate different things. For example, I know a schizoid woman who probably has a very different idea of what tasks are stressful than Michael Albert, a man who enjoys the experience of talking to a big audience. Assigning people to slots should take more into account what different people themselves like or dislike. When it comes to judging slots or creating or modifying or erasing slots I'm not against doing the majority of that based on the will of the majority, but doing all of that only based on what the majority wants is far from optimal.

Albert and Hahnel may talk all day about how much they like diversity, but their framework fails to deliver.

After having a look at the links in this thread it looks like there are no serious alternatives to capitalism or central planning with labour vouchers and sortition like in Towards a New Socialism.

[syndicat]

kotze, your mistake is in assuming that effort ratings are part of the definition of participatory economics model. they are not. they are merely what Hahnel & Albert call a "practical suggestion."

i personally advocate equal remuneration per hour of work for everyone. and this is perfectly consistent with participatory planning.

what participatory planning needs are only certain things:

1. self-managed production organizations (based on assemblies) that runs workplaces and industries and through which workers develop plans for what they propose to produce, how they propose to produce it, what enhancements they want for their workplace, etc.

2. self-managed mass organizations (based on assemblies) rooted in neighborhoods that organizes people as consumers, reisdents, citizens. households, communities, regional federations etc also do planning and develop plans for what they propose to consume, that is, what they are requesting to have produced.

3. there are finite budgets for households, communities, regional federations, workplace organizations. people must make their choices for what to propose within those limits so that their choices then provide an accurate picture of their preferences, and thus enable the system of planning to gain info about social opportunity costs, via accurate info about projected supply and projected demand.

these are the three main pieces to participatory planning. but authentic and effective participation can't occur if there is any sort of internal class division, and this leads to another of the characteristic features:

4. re-organization of all jobs so as to integrate planning, conceptualization, decision-making...the empowering tasks...with the physical doing of the work, and all the various drudge and boring tasks. so each person's job includes elements of both.

now, i think it's likely that worker organizations will have expectations for how much effort they expect from each person. they are not going to be happy if a coworker is slacking off while others are not. there are various ways workers might choose to deal with this. the Hahnel & Albert proposal about altering remuneration based on ratings of effort is only one possible way workers might choose to deal with this.

[robbo203]

apparently you have problems of reading comprehension.

as I pointed out, your proposed system has no way to pick up how much someone prefers one alternative over another because they never have to choose one rather than the other.

that's called a refutation.

your claim was simply implausible. the mere fact that someone picks something from a store tells us very little about their preferences, if everything is free and a person does not have to give up anything to get the thing they take. if you understand English, you should know that "prefer" refers to a three-place relation. A person X prefers A to B. But if a person can pick up both A and B because both are free, how does the system read the preference? And if something isn't on offer on the shelves, how does the system know if people might prefer it to what is on offer?.


Lets go over this again shall we because it seems we might be talking somewhat at cross purposes.

You last question is easily answered and I have already done so. It is called a consumer survey. Consumers are asked their views about a trial product. Do they like it? Do they prefer it to the one that is available in the store? What aspects of it could be improved on? And so on and so forth. Now I take it you accept that all this is relatively unproblematic und will continue to assume so unless I hear arguments from you to the contrary

Now to the question of preferences. Yes, of course, if a person takes A and B from the store there is no way of knowing whether one is preferred over another. But realistically its not going to happen like that is it? We are talking statistically here - not Joe Bloggs confronting a can of baked beans and a can of peas and having to decide on which. Statistically speaking when we are talking about thousands upon thousands of units desptached by suppliers to stores on a daily basis , it is most certainly possible to discern consumption trends - patterns of consumer preferences, in other words - in terms of the differential rates of stock depletion. You are surely not denying this, are you?. Why do you think supermarkets closely monitor stock levels and abruptly discontine certains line of stock? It is becuase they are not clearing at an acceptable rate. To put it in simple terms consumers seem to exercising a preference. They are discriminating between different products and deciding some or not particularly to their liking





this is silly. does this mean the whole society makes this decision? then you have the problem that preferences vary from one individual to another. so you'd end up with tyranny of the majority in the realm of consumer preferences. .

First of all, because a consensus about the broad priorities of production has been democratically reached this does not at all mean low priority needs will not be met. It simply means they will be considered to be of a lower priority when it comes to the allocation of a particular resource. Should the resource be insufficient to meet all the multivarious demands placed on it what would then tend to happen is 1) that the production of lower priority goods will delayed until an adequate supply of the resource had been achieved OR 2) technological substitution and the use of more abundant alternatives

Secondly, of course consumer preferences are going varey from person to person. You are quite right to say that. But remember what is at issue here is not will or will not be produced but rather what is socially regarded as being more important to produce or less important to produce in the light of opportunity costs . What possible objection can you have to this? What is the problem wioth communities democratically deciding on its broad prioirities - or do you prefer that this should be left to the size of person's wallet to determine. So some club of rich yacht owners can bullldoze over plans to be build a school where they would prefer to build a marina and have the money to impose this decision. You cant have it both ways ; if you dont like what a wealthy can do with their money then what other alternative is there than that decisions of this nature are made by the community - democratically. Unless of course you prefer a dictator to make these decisions but that is obviously not your position

In any case , it is quite misleading to characterise this as the tyranny of the majority in the realm of consumer preferences. The consumer will continue to be able to express their own preference in respect of the selection of goods available at the point of distribution. They can still pick and choose. Its just that some of the things they might want to chose might not necessarily be immediately avaialble, being low priority goods

Thirdly , the whole point of having some kind of notion of production priorities is to serve as a guideline or rule of thumb for producers in respect oif the allocation of scarce resources. It does not have to be perfect of comprehensive. but it would be absurd NOT to have some kind of hierarchy of productuion goals. What would be the alternative?. Are you seriously suggesting that resoruces should just be allocated randomly or on a first come first served basis perhaps? That would be neither rational nor efficient not just.



that's just the beginning of the problem. say the community decides that housing is right now the highest priority, electric power production is a second priority, and so on. why doesn't this mean that all of the society's resources whatever go into housing and nothing into anything else? your "hierarchy" bit doesn't tell us anything about how the resources are to be distributed.

Well, for a start, we will inherit from capitalism an apparatus of production that is highly diverse and caters for the productiuon of a wide range of things. The productiuon of ball bearings or microproccesors, fdor instance, are not, as far as I know particularly pertinent to the process of building houses. Cement, blocks, joists, aggregate, windows, and door frames on, the other hand, are. What is not being proposed here is that factories involved in the production of ball bearings or microprocessors convert to turning out aluminium window frames or whatever. Such factories will continue producing - ball bearings and microprocessors.


What I am trying to get here - perhaps rather clumsily - is that your whole approach to this question is conditioned by the way in which we consider resources under capialism is a monetised phenenomenon and therefore completely and effortlessly substitituable. This is what allows you to to even ponder the absurd idea that having a hierachy of production goals might mean that all of the society's resources whatever go into housing and nothing into anything else. No it wont because the actual physical structure of production as such could not enable that to happen and constrains the extent to which we can just switch resources willy nilly between different end uses. Besides which ,the production of houses needs (or least these days it does) an electicity supply of some sort and of course the end product -the house itself - will require electirical fittings and be connected up to the a grid unless you have a solar panel or ind turbine . So its not really a case of either/ or


While it is not quite true to say that the hierarchy bit doesn't tell us anything about how the resources are to be distributed - it certainly does tell something about which end use should receive preferential treatment in the allocation of resources - what it doesnt really say is how much prefential treatment one end use should receive over another. This is I think the point that you are getting at and I agree this is not something I have definitively answered. However, my feeling is that this something for which a definitive answer cannot really be given a priori. I think its a question of judgement - in this case the judgement of the producers themselves

Mistakes are inevitably going to be made- there is no such thing as a perfect economy - but the main thing I want to impress on you is that whatever arguments you may bring up against the notion of some kind of hiearachy of production goals, whatever the shortcomings you can point to , you really cannot dispense with some kind of hierarchy of this sort. Like it or not you have to prioritise your end uses - otherwise you will just end up with chaos. I see such a productiuon hierarchy as a rough guidweline which helps to nudge producers in the direction of a making a more efficient allocation of resources by which I mean efficient from the standpoint of meeting our human needs which are themselves, some would argue (perhaps most famolusly Maslow), hierarchically ordered.

[syndicat]

It is called a consumer survey. Consumers are asked their views about a trial product. Do they like it? Do they prefer it to the one that is available in the store? What aspects of it could be improved on? And so on and so forth. Now I take it you accept that all this is relatively unproblematic und will continue to assume so unless I hear arguments from you to the contrary



nope. consumer surveys don't work. that's because people don't have to give up anything to get anything. nor are their suggestions any thing more than that. what's needed is a way for people to actually dedicate a part of their consumption entitlement to a proposed new product. this then gives an accurate picture of how much they really want the proposed product. surveys don't do this. they do not give consumers any power or indicate real preferences.


Mistakes are inevitably going to be made- there is no such thing as a perfect economy - but the main thing I want to impress on you is that whatever arguments you may bring up against the notion of some kind of hiearachy of production goals, whatever the shortcomings you can point to , you really cannot dispense with some kind of hierarchy of this sort. Like it or not you have to prioritise your end uses - otherwise you will just end up with chaos. I see such a productiuon hierarchy as a rough guidweline which helps to nudge producers in the direction of a making a more efficient allocation of resources by which I mean efficient from the standpoint of meeting our human needs which are themselves, some would argue (perhaps most famolusly Maslow), hierarchically ordered.

you're just repeating yourself. repetition isn't an argument. as i said, what we need is not a "hierarchy" but the ability of people to make hard choices and assign part of their consumption entitlement to the production of something. that way they get to make the decision about what is important.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I asked this: Do the Parecon guys still advocate that tasks are ranked according to how empowering or awful they are, and that every rank a voter assigns is worth a fixed number of points, and that for each task you sum all the voters' points to determine how good or bad it is and then you use this to give everyone a task mix with at least roughly the same score, Y/N? It looks like the answer is that they want to use either average ratings or they want indeed to use rankings where each rank is worth a fixed number of points (the latter voting method is known under the name Borda, and it's crap (http://www.revleft.com/vb/questions-australians-voting-t140120/index.html?p=1832621#post1832621)).

Either way, there is something basic that is wrong with their proposal. I don't just want to replace that non-proportional method with a better non-proportional method, I believe it's far from optimal to use a non-proportional method here.

Assigning everyone to slots based on what the majority thinks of these slots — whether the slots are duties or time slots at different resorts or seats in restaurants or many other things — is far from optimal, as people have different levels of tolerance for different things, they like and hate different things. For example, I know a schizoid woman who probably has a very different idea of what tasks are stressful than Michael Albert, a man who enjoys the experience of talking to a big audience. Assigning people to slots should take more into account what different people themselves like or dislike. When it comes to judging slots or creating or modifying or erasing slots I'm not against doing the majority of that based on the will of the majority, but doing all of that only based on what the majority wants is far from optimal.

Albert and Hahnel may talk all day about how much they like diversity, but their framework fails to deliver.

After having a look at the links in this thread it looks like there are no serious alternatives to capitalism or central planning with labour vouchers and sortition like in Towards a New Socialism.

Pat Devine does a better job at rotating within the "functional" division of labour than the pareconists. Perhaps you can read him up, because Cockshott and Cottrell didn't write much about the job mix.

[robbo203]

nope. consumer surveys don't work. that's because people don't have to give up anything to get anything. nor are their suggestions any thing more than that. what's needed is a way for people to actually dedicate a part of their consumption entitlement to a proposed new product. this then gives an accurate picture of how much they really want the proposed product. surveys don't do this. they do not give consumers any power or indicate real preferences.


Of course consumer surveys "work". Do you seriously imagine they would be carried out at considerable expense if they didnt? They point is the provide indicative information about new products that could be brought on stream in response to consumer preferences (indeed explicit choices can be incorporated in a consumer survey form itself). Of course, in themselves consumer surveys are not usually about people having to give up something (though I guess they could be adapted to do that so people could indicate not only what they positively want but what they would be prepared to give up as well). But the point is that the opportunity costs make themselves felt within the actual production process itself as mediated by the existence of a hierarchy of production goals. If we chose certain things this will be on the understanding that we may have to give up certain other things. Is that going to be a terrible problem? I dont think so.


you're just repeating yourself. repetition isn't an argument. as i said, what we need is not a "hierarchy" but the ability of people to make hard choices and assign part of their consumption entitlement to the production of something. that way they get to make the decision about what is important.

You are not thinking clearly here . Any hard choice entails in itself a "hierarchy" of values. We choose one thing over another because we value the former over the latter. However you look at it, some kind of hierarchy of production goals or end uses - however imperfect or incomplete - is needed. Otherwise the alternative is to operate on a completely random basis as far as preferences are concerned (i.e. we have no preferences) or on a first-come first served basis. I ask you again - which of these latter two do you prefer if you reject the need for a hierarchy of production goals?

[Kotze]

kotze, your mistake is in assuming that effort ratings are part of the definition of participatory economics model. they are not. they are merely what Hahnel & Albert call a "practical suggestion."Got it.

To say that Parecon is not pluralistic just by looking at what they actually propose is wrong, it's just practical suggestions. For example, a superficial observer might say that them requiring qualified majorities for many things slows processes down. But the fact is that this is intended to protect diversity and minorities. The superficial observer might then ask how this in effect protects any minorities other than a very specific one, the one that likes the status quo. But surely, that's not the intent of Albert and Hahnel, so the criticism must be wrong.

It's not bureaucratic either. For example, when you want some cookies or erotic underwear or whatever, you just meet with your neighbourhood consumption council, with people like Sam_b and your mom, and you discuss with them what you want. Then a plan is drawn, that is not the ultimate plan, you know there is a back and forth between producers and consumers, then a plan is agreed on, then you have to know that it's specified a year in advance, so you wait a year — and voilà, there you have it (if you haven't moved). Albert and Hahnel say they don't like bureaucracy and I believe them.

People who say it's bureaucratic just don't see the big picture, or maybe they don't want to see the big picture. You have to watch out for people from the coordinator class who just hate Parecon for their own greedy and selfish reasons. Don't believe them, it's just like when Satan buried the fake fossils to undermine Christianity.

In conclusion, the beauty of Parecon is that it's so pluralistic and unbureaucratic. It is pluralistic because Hahnel and Albert repeatedly state that it's their intent and it's unbureaucratic because they state that this is also their intent. Repeatedly. QED.

[syndicat]

DNZ:
Pat Devine does a better job at rotating within the "functional" division of labour than the pareconists. Perhaps you can read him up, because Cockshott and Cottrell didn't write much about the job mix.

Pat Devine doesn't emphasize worker power at the point of production or avoiding the emergence of a bureaucratic class to the same extent as Hahnel & Albert. Moreover, Devine is a statist, whose proposals were written to be compatible with continuation of a state.

maybe these are reasons you prefer Devine.

[syndicat]

But the point is that the opportunity costs make themselves felt within the actual production process itself as mediated by the existence of a hierarchy of production goals.

as i've pointed out before, you're wrong about this. a "hierarchy" doesn't say anything. that's because it's obvious that just because building new health clinics is considered a higher priority this year than expanding kidney bean production that doesn't mean we're not going to grow any kidney beans. so, that tells us nothing because what we need to know is *how much* more important are the health clinics? But that means, how much in the way of resources do we propose to put into it? But then you need a numeric scale on which to measure costs...and that's a price system.

Also, one person's preferences are different than anothers. But you talk as if there is only one "hierarchy". So, you must be assuming this "hierarchy" is decided by a single body of some sort. So if there is any accountability at all, it must be to the entire social collectivity.

that means tyranny of the majority as far as production of products is concerned.

[syndicat]

kotze:
To say that Parecon is not pluralistic just by looking at what they actually propose is wrong, it's just practical suggestions.

i have no idea what you're getting at here. it's not all "practical suggestions." there are some things that are essential, part of the very definition:

1. dual governance system for decision-making so there are separate plans developed by producers and consumers. These are rooted in assemblies and participatory democracy in workplaces and neighborhoods.

2. households, communities, regions and worker organizations all have budgets within which they would normally be required to conform. can't obtain info on preferences without this.

3. re-integration of the empowering, skilled, conceptual tasks of production with the less empwering physical tasks. jobs are re-designed so that they have both kinds of tasks. the skilled, conceptual, decision-making work is not concentrarted on a minority as it is now but distributed over the workforce.

4. some worker group to collect and aggregate data from the plans so that projected supply and demand are calculated and prices then fall out from that.


It's not bureaucratic either. For example, when you want some cookies or erotic underwear or whatever, you just meet with your neighbourhood consumption council, with people like Sam_b and your mom, and you discuss with them what you want.

nope. this is not how it works. households or individuals (in the case of a single person who is a one-person household) make up their own plans. they do not have to get them approved by anyone. certainly not by any "neighborhood consumption council."

the neighborhood assembly and its elected council only have authority over devising plans for public goods and services (education, health care, public transit, parks, enviro defense, parks, etc), not individual consumption of private consumption goods.

[Die Neue Zeit]

DNZ:

Pat Devine doesn't emphasize worker power at the point of production or avoiding the emergence of a bureaucratic class to the same extent as Hahnel & Albert. Moreover, Devine is a statist, whose proposals were written to be compatible with continuation of a state.

maybe these are reasons you prefer Devine.

Systemic, collective worker management stems from the earlier premise of stakeholder co-management. Even you in your rhetoric acknowledge the need for consumer or neighbourhood organizations in contrast to "point of production" management.

Besides, Cockshott, Cottrell, Devine, Laibman, and I all have one thing in common not shared by Albert and Hahnel: political Marxism and not something from classical liberalism ("parpolity" vs. "town hall meetings").

[syndicat]

Besides, Cockshott, Cottrell, Devine, Laibman, and I all have one thing in common not shared by Albert and Hahnel: political Marxism and not something from classical liberalism ("parpolity" vs. "town hall meetings").

you might consider that Hahnel & Albert wrote a book called "Unorthodox Marxism." their program calls for management of workplaces by "workers councils."

as to you, well, "Marxism" means many things...including advocates of one-party dicatorships. on the other hand, there is "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves", which is shared by anarchosyndicalists like me.

Parpolity is the advocacy of building up governance on the basis of the direct democracy of neighborhood assemblies. this is not political liberalism. Liberalism advocates socalled "representative democracy."

rebuilding governance around assemblies in both neighborhoods and workplaces has long been a part of the libertarian socialist tradition. both were included in the revolutionary program of the Spanish CNT in 1936. in the region of Aragon the towns and villages were in fact run thru assemblies initially, through the initative of the CNT village unions.

As Bookchin and Kropotkin both emphasized, neighborhood assemblies played a major role in both the French revolution of 1789-94 and the revolt of 1871 in Paris. Larger concentrations of capital and larger collective workplaces were not as common back then, but it doesn't follow there is no role for assemblies in the neighborhoods as part of a system of direct governance by the masses, along with workers managing the industries.

but you prefer your various bureaucratic schemes popped out apriori from your own head.

[Die Neue Zeit]

How 'bout "the emancipation of the working class must be the bureaucratic process and permanent organizational work of the workers themselves"? :cool:

[revolution inaction]

as I pointed out, your proposed system has no way to pick up how much someone prefers one alternative over another because they never have to choose one rather than the other.


apart from simply asking people what they want, which i think is perfectly adiquat in most cases, I have repeatedly advocated rationing in situations where the demand is greater then the supply, this does not mean that people would have a ration for each individual product, it seems to make more sense to ration particular classes of product in most cases, for example some one wants a laptop, they are allowed, picking a random number, one a year and there are several different models, so they pick the one they perfer, they workers in charge of laptop production see which models are most popular and so produce more of them. this could be extended more to electronics in general, so someone has a choice between a laptop a phone and a tv or what ever. but i don't see why someone getting them selves a tv should mean they cant also get somr books or beer or a chair, since the production process is fundamentally different and so producing one doesn't really have much to do with the the ability to produce the other.

[syndicat]

apart from simply asking people what they want, which i think is perfectly adiquat in most cases, I have repeatedly advocated rationing in situations where the demand is greater then the supply, this does not mean that people would have a ration for each individual product, it seems to make more sense to ration particular classes of product in most cases, for example some one wants a laptop, they are allowed, picking a random number, one a year and there are several different models, so they pick the one they perfer, they workers in charge of laptop production see which models are most popular and so produce more of them. this could be extended more to electronics in general, so someone has a choice between a laptop a phone and a tv or what ever. but i don't see why someone getting them selves a tv should mean they cant also get somr books or beer or a chair, since the production process is fundamentally different and so producing one doesn't really have much to do with the the ability to produce the other.

who gets to decide what is rationed? some bureaucracy? a general meeting of everyone (then you have tyranny of the majority problem)?

and why should "demand exceed supply"? isn't that an indication the system of production isn't providing people with what they want?

anyway, there is nothing in what you say that indicates anything about relative strength of preference for one thing rather than another. and without that information, there is no possibility of calculating social opportunity costs, and thus no way for the economy to be efficient. and waste of resources will mean people don't get what they want.

[Kotze]

households or individuals (in the case of a single person who is a one-person household) make up their own plans. they do not have to get them approved by anyone. certainly not by any "neighborhood consumption council."Hmmm, is that so? So maybe the following is out of date then.

Can participatory economics tame marketplace relations? (http://home.flash.net/%7Ecomvoice/32cPareconOverall.html)
Albert and Hahnel repeat over and over that a parecon society will promote diversity. But at times they admit that, under parecon, preserving diversity poses some real problems.

For one thing, one is supposed to list everything that one intends to buy in one's annual consumption proposal, which is considered by the neighborhood consumption council. So your neighbors will know everything that you want to buy, and this will put pressure on you to conform.

This is a real problem; and it took Hahnel some time to deal with it. He describes the problem as follows:

"Justin Schwartz is worried about privacy when specifying consumption needs. He claims that 'even if there is no individual identification, there will be an understandable reluctance to enter your preferences for things of which your community disapproves.'"

Hahnel's solution is "Submit your request to a geographically dispersed anonymous consumption council. By the way, my students when discussing this issue have taken to calling it 'the kinky underwear problem.' We have discussed it ad nausea(m) and now feel that we have the problem licked. ". [Hahnel also said this: "Or, maybe Justin should either move or consider a little more struggle with his neighbors concerning their overly judgmental attitudes!" -Kotze]

It is bad enough that the local consumption councils might want to intrude into one's bedroom (the "kinky underwear" problem). But naturally this also concerns dissident books and printing supplies as well as a whole host of personal preferences.

So to deal with diversity, Hahnel had to propose a revision in the basic structure of parecon. That is how serious the problem is. He had to supplement the neighborhood consumption councils by geographically-dispersed anonymous councils. But it's not clear that this would be consistent with preparing the parecon annual plan. The neighborhood consumption councils are supposed to in touch with all consumption in the local area. They are supposed to plan the balance between local work effort and local consumption, and, with respect to local consumption, the balance between private consumption and social services. They are one of the links in the planning that leads to the formulation of the annual economic plan. If any significant part of consumption doesn't go through the neighborhood council, this harms its ability to carry out its work.

Probably for this reason, Albert proposed a different solution to the problem in his book Parecon. His idea was that an individual could make an anonymous consumption request, but apparently it was still going to be considered by the individual's local neighborhood council. According to Albert, anyone in the neighborhood would "be privy to the general character of her community mates' anonymous private consumption choices because she is allowed to question those that seem dangerous or otherwise antisocial at planning sessions... " It certainly would be an interesting discussion, in which anyone who spoke up in favor of their own consumption choice would thereby risk losing the anonymity of that choice.

Thus neither Hahnel's plan for an anonymous council, nor Albert's plan for anonymous requests to one's local council, would fully solve the problem. Maybe not the dirty linen, but certainly the "kinky underwear", will be aired in public after all. For one thing, the neighborhood consumption council would know who had submitted anonymous requests to them, or that anyone who didn't submit all or part of their consumption request to it must have submitted it to an anonymous council. They would thus know which people had something to hide, so to speak. And they might even know the "general character" of these requests, even if they didn't necessarily know who had made them, and in enough detail so that the requests could be judged.

This problem is one aspect of the fact that parecon has no provision for the distinction between public and private matters. This distinction is discarded because one's interests are supposedly sufficiently safeguarded by the principle that people should participate in decisions to the extent that they concern one. But since few things have no affect at all on others, this principle can justify interference by others in almost anything. What you buy, what books you read, your religious or anti-religious beliefs, what you do for recreation, and even your choices in health care -- all these things might affect your relations to others.

[gorillafuck]

Participatory Economics is certainly a refreshing take, however, there are some inherent problems. Namely, in Michael Albert's model, it is not decentralized enough. It depends on large-scale units the size of current nation states, which makes it increasingly less democratic and sustainable.If your idea of a socialist economic system is economies that are isolated to certain regions for the sake of decentralization, then you're nuts.

[syndicat]

Hmmm, is that so? So maybe the following is out of date then.

Can participatory economics tame marketplace relations? (http://www.anonym.to/?http://home.flash.net/%7Ecomvoice/32cPareconOverall.html)

out of date? no. green just never understood participatory economics.

as i said before, hahnel & albert were not always clear in differentiating their "practical suggestions" from the core elements of the model. what the planning system needs is the aggregate data on demand. there is no need to retain any information as to who the author of the input is. but it is useful to separate this question of privacy from whether individuals have to get approval. they need to get approval only if they go over budget. in other words, people can do that...it's called borrowing. but that is getting into side details.

if you've earned private consumption entitlement thru your work effort, you don't need to get anyone's approval on how you allocate it in the production request system. that's why it's an "entitlement."

[Die Neue Zeit]

but you prefer your various bureaucratic schemes popped out apriori from your own head.

How do you expect generalized parecon councils to deal with these areas in an era of manufacturing, let alone more beyond?

Construction
Material-Technical Supply
Labour and Social Questions
Science and Technology
Inventions and Discoveries
Prices
Standards
Professional-Technical Education
Television and Radio
Cinematography
Publishing, Printing, and the Book Trade
Forestry
Foreign Economic Relations

Aviation Industry
Automobile Industry
Foreign Trade
Gas Industry
Civil Aviation
Machine-Building
Machine-Building for Livestock and Fodder Production
Machine-Building for Light and Food Industries and Household Instruments
Medical Industry
Maritime Fleet
Petroleum Industry
Defence Industry
General Machine-Building
Instrument-Making
Means of Automation and Control Systems
Industry for Means of Communications
Transport
Radio Industry
Medium Machine-Building
Machine-Tool and Instrument Industry
Construction, Road, and Municipal Machine-Building
Construction of Enterprises of the Petroleum and Gas Industry
Ship-Building Industry
Tractor and Agricultural Machine-Building
Transport Construction
Heavy and Transport Machine-Building
Chemical and Petroleum Machine-Building
Chemical Industry
Cellulose-Paper Industry
Electronics Industry
Electrical Engineering Industry
Power Machine-Building

Internal Affairs
Higher and Secondary Specialized Education
Geology
Procurements
Public Health
Foreign Affairs
Culture
Light Industry
Timber and Wood-Processing Industry
Soil and Water Conservation
Assembly and Special Construction Works
Meat and Dairy Industry
Oil Refining and Petrochemical Industry
Defence
Food Industry
Industrial Construction
Industry and Construction Materials
Education
Fisheries
Communications
Rural Construction
Agriculture
Construction
Construction of Enterprises of Heavy Industry
Trade
Coal Industry
Finance
Non-Ferrous Metallurgy
Ferrous Metallurgy
Power and Electrification
Justice

[Citation: Constitution of the USSR, Articles 70, 77, and 78, as amended in the 1970s]

[robbo203]

as i've pointed out before, you're wrong about this. a "hierarchy" doesn't say anything. that's because it's obvious that just because building new health clinics is considered a higher priority this year than expanding kidney bean production that doesn't mean we're not going to grow any kidney beans. so, that tells us nothing because what we need to know is *how much* more important are the health clinics? But that means, how much in the way of resources do we propose to put into it? But then you need a numeric scale on which to measure costs...and that's a price system..

Also, one person's preferences are different than anothers. But you talk as if there is only one "hierarchy". So, you must be assuming this "hierarchy" is decided by a single body of some sort. So if there is any accountability at all, it must be to the entire social collectivity.

that means tyranny of the majority as far as production of products is concerned.

I dont think you have been taking on board what Ive been saying and it is really beginning to show. For example, you say because building new health clinics is considered a higher priority this year than expanding kidney bean production that doesn't mean we're not going to grow any kidney beans. Well, that's exactly what I have been trying to tell you and for some time now!

It is not relevant for the purposes of this schema to determine "how much" more important health clinics are than kidney bean production. Simply that they are more important. There is, in other words an ordinal scale in which priorities are ranked. You say a hierarchy "doesnt say anthing". Thats silly. Of course it does. I think even you will admit that it tells us that health clinincs are regarded as ranking more highly along this scale than kidney bean production. What you dont yet understand is the significance of this simple point in terms of the schema Ive outlined

But first lets dispose of the claim that you need a numeric - or what I think is called a cardinal - scale in order to measure "how much" more important health clinics are than kidney bean production and that, for that you need a price system. Actually there are all sorts of reasons why a price system is quite inept at doing what you claim it does. For a start, it is a very poor mechanism for capturing information about opportunity costs. The price system hides more information than it reveals. Have a look at the link I gave you which eleborates on this:

http://non-market-calculation.wikispaces.com/

And of course there is the point that what is judged to be "important" e.g. health care clinics is ultimately a subjective valuation so this begs the burning question of precisely how the subjective evaluations of millions of people are translated into objective price signals that, according to you, place an accurate value on how much more important hospital clinics are than kidney bean production.

Two quick points specifically about that. Firstly, immediately we see a contradiction between this claim of yours and your other claim that "one person's preferences are different than anothers". Indeed they are but you are attacking my schema precisely becuase you contend that I am ignoring this point. Yet your price system must equally ignore this point! When you go to a store you dont generally tend to find a product having a range of prices attached to it for you to chose from according to your own "subjective valuation", do you now?. No, what you tend to find is that there is one single price which is presented on a take it or leave it basis


Secondly you overlook what prices are. Ultimately, of course, they are the monetary expression of labour values though the price of particular commodities will rarely if ever coincide with their value content. Supply and demand considereations cause prices for individual commodities to diverge from or fluctatuate around, value. This means they are dependent not simply on the desire for a given commidity but the effective demand we can exercise in order to obtain said commodity. i.e. how much money we have in our wallet. Now since there are enormous differences between people in terms of how much money they possess with which to express their effective demand, it follows logically that this fact alone means we are not talking about a level playing field as far as the subjective preferences of individuals are concerned. Or, to put it differently, prices are not an accurate indicator of people's subjective preferences which are massively distorted by the unequal distribution of income

Coming back to the the question of a hierachy of production goials in a non-market socialist economy I asked you specifically how do you propose to allocate resoruces if you reject the need for a hierarchy of end uses. So far you've not answered this point. There are only two other available options as I far as I can see:

1) that you allocate resoruces on a purely random basis
2) that you allocate resources on a first come first serve basis

Which of these do you prefer? State your preference and then we can look into the matter

For my part I fully accept the need for a hierarchy of production goals i.e. some ordinal ranking of priorities. To me that makes complete sense. What you dont yet seem to understand is how this ranking system impacts upon the allocation of resources in my schema.

It is not intended to determnine how much "more important" a health clinic is than kidney bean production. This is a subjective matter and I seriously question any claim that this is something that can be quantified. The claim that this accomplished by a price mechanism is utterly bogus for the reasons given. When you are talking about subjectivity you are talking about empirical individuals who you admit have preferences that vary from one to another. You cannot meaningfully quantify these preferences. Yes you can take a vote on their preferences and this is essentially what an ordinal scale does but yoiu cannot sensibly measure how much one preference is preferred to another in this aggregate sense.

A ranking of prorities is simply a guide, a kindof mental map, available to producers in a non market socialist economy to allocate a particular input in a specific situation where there are a number of demands for this input for which the overall supply of this particular input is inadequate. In other words, we are talking about an occasional situation not a chronic situation where a production unit has to sift through these various demands on this input when the supply is inadequate to meet all of them. For the most part , ideally speaking , this situation would not arise because the normal tendency would be for production units to create a buffer stock to allow for unexpected increases in demand. Sometimes though such a buffer stocks may be inadequate.

It is in this last situation that the idea of a hierarchy of production goals comes into play. The input is allocated firstly to the end use judged to have the highest priority and then downwards so that low priority end uses might receive little or nothing of this input. This might mean a slowing down or even a halt to the production of low priority goods although though more likely what will happen is a process of technological substitition - the low priority end use resorts to some other more abundant input

Note something else here. If, say, health clinics were adjudged to be the top priority within the ranking scheme it does not follow that all of societies resources will be poured into building health clinics leaving nothing over for other purposes - that there would be no constraints at all on the consumption of inputs by top priority end uses simply becuase they are top priority end uses. Building a health clinic requires a certain number of inputs. For simplicity's sake lets call them inputs X, Y and Z. If the manufacturers of X are faced with the sitaution where the competing demands for X exceed the supply of X, they cant just say lets just forget about all the other demands and hand over the entire supply of X to bulding health clinics. Why? The reason is simple. Its because, with every project and every product , you will find there is something which is called a technical ratio of inputs to outputs. The bundle of inputs come in a particular configuration. So to produce 1 health clinic you may need 10 units of X, 5 units of Y and 7 bunits of Z. If youve got 5 units of Y and 7 units of Z but are having difficulty with the supply of X you cannot just willy nilly hand over all of X to the building of health clinics. Lets say the suppliers of X are faced with a total demand for X of 20 units but have only 15 available. They cannot just hand over all 15 units to building clinics. Why? Becuase the demand for X is governed by the technical ratio of inpouts and by the availability of these other inputs involved in building a health clinic . Handing over 15 units means 5 of those units will be unused. There will be no point in having 15 units when only 10 is needed. What this means basically is that end use of building a health clinic will get all 10 units it requires with the remaining 5 units being distributed among lower priority end uses accordingly.

Try to understand what I am saying here becuase it goes a very long to answering your point about "how much" . I am arguing that there are certain technical constraints to do with the diversified structure of production itself that will help to resolve this issue

[Paul Cockshott]

I was referring to the "facilitation boards" or however the authors termed them, which seem to exert ultimate decision making power over the local councils. .

I think that there are only superficial differences between what A & H propose and what Allin and I wrote.

[Paul Cockshott]

I.e the Facilitation boards are in effect a planning agency.

[revolution inaction]

apart from simply asking people what they want, which i think is perfectly adiquat in most cases, I have repeatedly advocated rationing in situations where the demand is greater then the supply, this does not mean that people would have a ration for each individual product, it seems to make more sense to ration particular classes of product in most cases, for example some one wants a laptop, they are allowed, picking a random number, one a year and there are several different models, so they pick the one they perfer, they workers in charge of laptop production see which models are most popular and so produce more of them. this could be extended more to electronics in general, so someone has a choice between a laptop a phone and a tv or what ever. but i don't see why someone getting them selves a tv should mean they cant also get somr books or beer or a chair, since the production process is fundamentally different and so producing one doesn't really have much to do with the the ability to produce the other.


who gets to decide what is rationed? some bureaucracy? a general meeting of everyone (then you have tyranny of the majority problem)?

and why should "demand exceed supply"? isn't that an indication the system of production isn't providing people with what they want?

anyway, there is nothing in what you say that indicates anything about relative strength of preference for one thing rather than another. and without that information, there is no possibility of calculating social opportunity costs, and thus no way for the economy to be efficient. and waste of resources will mean people don't get what they want.

I don't get the impression that you actual read the posts about communis, or are interested in what communists actually propose.

your question who would decided, doesn't really make sense, workers would decide how much they intended to produce, probably based on how much was used in the past and on how much was requested, and how much they where willing to work and what materials where available, and probably other things.

Then if people tryed to take more then was available then the amount they people could take would be limited, i would think that the people running the distributions centres would decide which things needed limits imposed, but it could be the workers of the factories they made it, or they could be requested though the workers councils when people found they couldn't get what they wanted because other people got there first. I don't know, and its not possible for me to know at the current time.

Of cause we don't want the demand to be greater then the supply but the fact is that it will not always be possible to produce as much of every single thing as people want, especially in cases where something becomes popular rapidly, or uses materials or ingredients that are of limited availability.
I assume you do not denie this?

I proposed two ways that relative preferences could be calculated, firstly, to ask people, secondly, to see which people take, remember that i proposed that things which have similar production requirements be in the same ration groups, so people have to chose which they wanted.

There are other things that could be done too, none of which require money or payment for hours worked.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I think that there are only superficial differences between what A & H propose and what Allin and I wrote.

Comrade, they rely too much on manual planning. Computers could render much council work superfluous.

[Paul Cockshott]

I thought they were quite keen on the coordination boards using computers, albeit a bit vague about it

[Kiev Communard]

Comrade, they rely too much on manual planning. Computers could render much council work superfluous.

Yes, the reliance on exclusively personal contacts and personal establishment of individual consumption plan priorities in parecon seems to me somewhat utopian (of Fourier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fourier)-style) .

[syndicat]

Paul C.:

I.e the Facilitation boards are in effect a planning agency.


there's only one facilitation board and it's NOT a planning agency. it is a worker organization whose function is to aggregate all the data from everybody's plans (and of course computers and networks would be very helpful for this). this then gives the total projected supply and total projected demand. they then publish the result. that's it. the society, when it sets up the planning system, creates a pricing rule, such as: When projected demand outruns projected supply by N percent, raise the projected price by N percent. The facilitation board then uses this rule to publish the new list of projected prices. of course, it's likely the rule would be tweaked due to experience after initially setting up a system of this sort.

but that's all they do. they don't make plans. only worker self-management organizations for production, on the one hand, and indivisuals/households, communities, regions etc make plans.

there may also be what Shalom calls "staff associations" that work with the national or regional or city federations to do R & D in regard to public goods planning or infrastructure planning. these staff associations do work that has been alloted to them by the assemblies & delegate bodies, but the authority for the decisions ultimately rests with the assembies & delegate bodies. again, this is because it is the base units and their federations that do the plans. the planning is thus distributed throughout the society and everyone particates in it.

the reason there is only one facilitation board is because the prices need to apply throughout the economy.

[syndicat]

Then if people tryed to take more then was available then the amount they people could take would be limited, i would think that the people running the distributions centres would decide which things needed limits imposed, but it could be the workers of the factories they made it, or they could be requested though the workers councils when people found they couldn't get what they wanted because other people got there first.

then the actual consumers/users will have no say. you'll have no way to ensure that what gets produced is what people most prefer. to ensure that, there has to be a way for the production organizations to be accountable to the population who use and consume the products...and live around the plants that do the producing.

[syndicat]

I don't get the impression that you actual read the posts about communis, or are interested in what communists actually propose.


i've read tons of srtuff by the likes of Kropotkin and his followers and so on. but i won't accept vague handwaving. and i start by taking what they say quite literally....and then working out the consequennces...which invariably disturbs them, as we see with you.

[robbo203]

Paul C.:

there's only one facilitation board and it's NOT a planning agency. it is a worker organization whose function is to aggregate all the data from everybody's plans (and of course computers and networks would be very helpful for this). this then gives the total projected supply and total projected demand. they then publish the result. that's it. the society, when it sets up the planning system, creates a pricing rule, such as: When projected demand outruns projected supply by N percent, raise the projected price by N percent. The facilitation board then uses this rule to publish the new list of projected prices. of course, it's likely the rule would be tweaked due to experience after initially setting up a system of this sort..

This is a quite absurd and patently unworkable proposal. Its interesting also that you were the one who was going about "individual preferences" and the "tryanny of the "majority". Now we find it is "society" in your schema that sets up the planning system and creates the pricing rules. What happens when you or I dont like the fact that "society" has pushed up the price of that laptop to just beyond our reach.? Is there a complaints department attached to the facilitation board and can we be assured that the countless bureaucrats employed there will attend to our complaints promptly and efficiently?

There are hundreds of thousands - probably millions - of intermediate and final goods - of all kinds. Changes in the supply/ demand of some affects others becuase of the interconnected nature of modern production. Such changes happen and will happen all the time. Is the "facilitation board" going to respond to every such change - in which case it will be utterly overwhelmed - or is it going to do this perhaps once a year - in which case you will find massive disproportionalities and structural inefficiencies building up.

Honestly, people who want to retain a price system of any kind - this whole absurd tradtion of so called "market socialism" - might just as well let production and distribution units set their own prices and be done with it. At least then we dont have to pretend its not capitalism

[syndicat]

This is a quite absurd and patently unworkable proposal. Its interesting also that you were the one who was going about "individual preferences" and the "tryanny of the "majority". Now we find it is "society" in your schema that sets up the planning system and creates the pricing rules. What happens when you or I dont like the fact that "society" has pushed up the price of that laptop to just beyond our reach.?

your objection is silly. if the projected price went up, this reflects projected suppy and projected demand. you're forgetting that projected prices are only a moment in the planning process. if the price goes up, this indicates there is sufficient demand that perhaps it would warrant moving more resources to produce more of the product. if in worker production orgs then propose that more resources be provided to them to produce more laptops, the projected supply might increase and if projected demand does not, then the projected prices would come back down.

whether the resources are actually provided to this organization to produce the product depends on whether the ratio of benefit to cost at least approximates to a standard that society has agreed to...such as the social average of benefit per unit of cost.


Honestly, people who want to retain a price system of any kind - this whole absurd tradtion of so called "market socialism"

participatory planning isn't a form of market socialism. there are no markets.

[revolution inaction]

then the actual consumers/users will have no say. you'll have no way to ensure that what gets produced is what people most prefer.

you say this again and again, but it is not true, i suggest ways in which people can express preferences, which you ignore.




to ensure that, there has to be a way for the production organizations to be accountable to the population who use and consume the products...and live around the plants that do the producing.

We know since i am an anarchist communist that i favour a federation of workers councils (including community councils) through which people organise society, including production, so people have methods that they can use to change how resources are allocated if the aromatic mechanisms do not work properly.



i've read tons of srtuff by the likes of Kropotkin and his followers and so on. but i won't accept vague handwaving. and i start by taking what they say quite literally....and then working out the consequennces...which invariably disturbs them, as we see with you.

you are happy to pick and choose which bits of paricon you like, and you compleatly ignore it when anachist communists come up with suggestions for ways to do things you claim anarchist communism has no way of doing, and demand a full blue print for a situation an indefinite time in the future which we can have full knowledge of, and you claim this is taking what they say literally and working out the consequences?
no this is not disturbing, it is frustrating, and i don't belive you have any intention of serious discussion.

[nuisance]

i don't belive you have any intention of serious discussion.
Syndicat sure is a headstrong fellow.

[syndicat]

me:
then the actual consumers/users will have no say. you'll have no way to ensure that what gets produced is what people most prefer.

you:
you say this again and again, but it is not true, i suggest ways in which people can express preferences, which you ignore.


i haven't "ignored" any of your "suggestions." I've pointed out why they won't work. and when i provide counter-arguments, you ignore them...as you're doing here.

me:

to ensure that, there has to be a way for the production organizations to be accountable to the population who use and consume the products...and live around the plants that do the producing.

you:


We know since i am an anarchist communist that i favour a federation of workers councils (including community councils) through which people organise society, including production, so people have methods that they can use to change how resources are allocated if the aromatic mechanisms do not work properly.


this is traditional handwaving. as I have repeatedly pointed out, a collective decision by an assembly or body of delegates only tells us about the collective or common decision of that body. this does NOT provide ANY information about individual preferences for consumption items for their own use or consumption. People have different tastes, different needs, different preferences.

To say that whatever is to be produced must be approved by a collective assembly or delegate is grotesque tyranny of the majority as far as production for satisfying individual consumer preferences for personal consumption is concerned.

decisions about what the community is going to request to be produced are appropriate for a community council or body of delegates for an area, if we're talking about public goods & services, things for which the community is providing a common system of social provision for...water, power, education, health care, public transit, enviro defense.

it is completely inappropriate for decisions about what is to be produced to satisfy individual consumption wants for personal consumption...the kinds of foods, furnishings, clothes and other personal items. for this we need a system that can capture the individual preferences.

and even in the case of the collective consumption goods, that is, public goods and services, you still need to have a way to measure social opportunity costs. and this will require that these community councils and delegate bodies have finite budgets they need to stick to. when they decide to use more of their resources building health clinics this year than houses that tells us the health clinics are a higher priority right now. if they have no finite budget, that info about the collective community preference can't be captured. a finite budget will be expressed in terms of a numeric value of costs. hence prices.

[robbo203]

your objection is silly. if the projected price went up, this reflects projected suppy and projected demand. you're forgetting that projected prices are only a moment in the planning process. if the price goes up, this indicates there is sufficient demand that perhaps it would warrant moving more resources to produce more of the product. if in worker production orgs then propose that more resources be provided to them to produce more laptops, the projected supply might increase and if projected demand does not, then the projected prices would come back down..

Yep good ol' capitalist supply and demand. But it doesnt get you out of the hole youve dug yourself into regarding your fetishisation of "individual preferences", no matter how many times you repeat the word "silly". Eventually, as you say, projected supply might increase but, in the meantime, of course, as an individual I would prefer to rather not pay the price that your facilitation board suggests for a laptop 'cos it just so happens Im skint and dont have enough money to buy it



whether the resources are actually provided to this organization to produce the product depends on whether the ratio of benefit to cost at least approximates to a standard that society has agreed to...such as the social average of benefit per unit of cost...

Whooosh . There you go again. Another reference to what "society" had agreed to do. Its truly amazing. So after all the stick i got from you about advocating the "tyranny of the majority" in deciding on the kinds of priorities that guide production in a genuine non-market communist society (as opposed to the mish mash you offer), it seems that in your utopia something called "society" is, after all, going to "agree" to certain things. Presumably that means that you accept that the preferences of some individuals may have to be overruled. I was wondering when you were finally going to shed off that bourgeois individualist anti-democratic posture of yours prattling on about the "tryanny of the majority". See, sometimes, as with joint decisions of this nature, it may indeed be necessary and unavoidable for the majority to overule the minority. Its called democracy. And if you dont like it there are only two other alternatives:

1) that the will of the majority is ignored
2) that a minority imposes it own decisions on the majority

Which of these is your "individual preference"?



participatory planning isn't a form of market socialism. there are no markets.

There is a price system by your own admission. That makes goods and services, commodities. They can only be appropriated in exchange for money. You know - that stuff that comes in the shape of little rectangular peices of paper, usually with the image of some or other parasite on it (in the UK at least, it is the image of Betty the Queen, that well known billoinaire social security scrounger) That means you have a market. Things are bought and sold. It doesnt matter if it is a rigged market or a regulated market or a market heavily controlled and policed by the countless bureaucrats of the "facilitation board". It is still a market.

[syndicat]

Yep good ol' capitalist supply and demand.

supply and demand isn't a product of capitalism. it will exist in any feasible economy.



But it doesnt get you out of the hole youve dug yourself into regarding your fetishisation of "individual preferences",

individual preferences are a reality...a reality you ignore. but no economy will be effective for people if it can't satisfy their desires. and hence they'll get rid of it.



Eventually, as you say, projected supply might increase but, in the meantime, of course, as an individual I would prefer to rather not pay the price that your facilitation board suggests for a laptop 'cos it just so happens Im skint and dont have enough money to buy it


facilitation board doesn't decide the prices. apparently you have a problem of reading comprehension.

the prices reflect social costs. people can't be socially respnsible in consumption, even if they want to be, if they don't know what the social costs of items are.


There you go again. Another reference to what "society" had agreed to do. Its truly amazing. So after all the stick i got from you about advocating the "tyranny of the majority" in deciding on the kinds of priorities that guide production in a genuine non-market communist society (as opposed to the mish mash you offer), it seems that in your utopia something called "society" is, after all, going to "agree" to certain things.

it's called libertarian socialism. you should learn something about it. in this arrangement the corporations and state are replaced by generalized self-management. this means there are social institutions through which the population have power over the society, such as community assemblies, workplace assemblies, regional and national federations accountable to the base aseemblies. they have a governance system thru which the population are able to govern their society.

[robbo203]

supply and demand isn't a product of capitalism. it will exist in any feasible economy.


Quite true. But in your example it is a case of capitalist supply and demand



individual preferences are a reality...a reality you ignore. but no economy will be effective for people if it can't satisfy their desires. and hence they'll get rid of it. .


I dont ignore it all. In fact that is quite a meaningless statement since, even in the case of joint decisions, "individual prefences" are the basic constituents of the decisionmaking process. Everybody puts their tuppence worth into the decisionmaking process. Its called democracy. Individuals decide according to their preferences even if the overall outcome may not be to their liking; it will be to the liking of most individuals. Its ironic that you should prattle on about individual preferences being a reality and me irnoring it. Im the one here who is actually advocating from "each each according to ability to each according to need". You are the one who is claiming this is "silly" or "ridiculous". But what is communiusm if not the most complete incarnation of the principle of individual preferences - a voluntaristic free access society



facilitation board doesn't decide the prices. apparently you have a problem of reading comprehension..

Whatever. Although I might be forgiven for thinking that your so called facilitation board was the one that decided on price levels judging from the the following comment of yours When projected demand outruns projected supply by N percent, raise the projected price by N percent. The facilitation board then uses this rule to publish the new list of projected prices. of course, it's likely the rule would be tweaked due to experience after initially setting up a system of this sort. If the faciliation board doesnt decide on the price pray do tell - who does?




the prices reflect social costs. people can't be socially respnsible in consumption, even if they want to be, if they don't know what the social costs of items are...

Ah I see. The "people" cant be trusted to make wise decision so these decisions have to be made for them by those who know better - the elite. As for the idea that prices reflect social costs you seriously have got to be kidding. Do you know any about, say, the problem of externalities under a price regime? They are a problem precisely because the price mechanism is a very poor mechanism for capturing and reflecting real costs




it's called libertarian socialism. you should learn something about it. in this arrangement the corporations and state are replaced by generalized self-management. this means there are social institutions through which the population have power over the society, such as community assemblies, workplace assemblies, regional and national federations accountable to the base aseemblies. they have a governance system thru which the population are able to govern their society.


What you are advocating has got sod all to do with socialism let alone libertarian socialism. (how can you possibly claim it is "libertarian" when the people according to you cannot be trusted to make socially responsible decisions, your viewpoint is fundamentally elitis) Its simply a system of warmed-up capitalism with all the basic features of capitalism plus a sprinkling of utterly idealistic and unrealistic sentiments about popular sovereginty.

And incidentally on this last point once again I ask - if the people have a governance system thru which the population are able to govern their society how the hell can you you have the effrontry to criticise me on the grounds that i advocate a "tyranny of the majority" - democracy. Why are you constantly evading this point??? Could it be that youve been rumbled on this very point and have suddenly become very coy about it all. So do please tell us all - how precisely is the population going to "govern their society" in your utpoia? Will it be on a democratic basis ("tyranny of the majority") or not. And if not what do you propose - ignoring the will of the majority or a dictatorship of the "socially responsible" minority. Its about time we should be told!

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yes, the reliance on exclusively personal contacts and personal establishment of individual consumption plan priorities in parecon seems to me somewhat utopian (of Fourier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fourier)-style) .

Haha, come to think of it, parecon really would be sandwiched by pressures from market socialism, on the one hand, and Marxist models (Cockshott-Cottrell, Devine, Laibman, etc.) on the other.

While the pre-2000s Schweickart model or some other *proper* market-socialist model would most likely prevail in the immediate transition, Cockshott's suggestion of developing a shadow planning information system would lay the foundation of rendering many "personal contacts" and "personal establishment of individual consumption plan priorities" obsolete.

[syndicat]

me:
supply and demand isn't a product of capitalism. it will exist in any feasible economy.
you:
Quite true. But in your example it is a case of capitalist supply and demand



you're being an ass. I'm proposing a non-market socialist economy, not a capitalist economy.

me:
individual preferences are a reality...a reality you ignore. but no economy will be effective for people if it can't satisfy their desires. and hence they'll get rid of it. .
you:


I dont ignore it all. In fact that is quite a meaningless statement since, even in the case of joint decisions, "individual prefences" are the basic constituents of the decisionmaking process. Everybody puts their tuppence worth into the decisionmaking process. Its called democracy.

you are supremely ignorant. a collective decision-making process can only generate a collective preference, not an individual preference.

moreover, there is actually a mathematical proof that collective decison-making rationality is not reducible to individual preference rankings...Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.

to have only a collective decision-making process for deciding what is to be produced is a grotesque form of tyranny of the majority.

me:

the prices reflect social costs. people can't be socially respnsible in consumption, even if they want to be, if they don't know what the social costs of items are...

you:
The "people" cant be trusted to make wise decision so these decisions have to be made for them by those who know better - the elite.

what an ass.

you're obviously losing it. resort to insults shows you can't make a rational case. there is no elite in libertarian socialism. like I said, you should try learning something about it.

the costs are determined by people themselves, by making individual and collective choices in the course of self-managing their own workplaces, their own consumption and their own communities. costs are costs to people. we can't know what the costs to people are if people have no way to express their preferences that the system then captures. when people make hard choices under a situation of finite budgets about what they prefer to have produced, they are indicating relative importance of using resources in certain ways. when there is high demand for certain resources that are scarce, a higher price for this resource expresses the cost of using it.

[robbo203]

you're being an ass. I'm proposing a non-market socialist economy, not a capitalist economy..



If you have a price system then ipso facto you have a market, however rigged or regulated. This was explained to you. Instead of answering the argument all you do is make ex cathedra type statements



you are supremely ignorant. a collective decision-making process can only generate a collective preference, not an individual preference.



I know that perfectly well. But thats not the point, is it? The point is that you were attacking the democratic process on the grounds that it was a "tyranny of majority" with the clear implication that you were opposed to all forms of collective decisionmaking. Go back a few posts ansd you will see that when I suggested that society needs to be able to decide on its broad production priorities, you jumped on this with the "tyranny of the majority" dogma. THAT is why Ive been criticising you on this point: you are being totally inconsistent



moreover, there is actually a mathematical proof that collective decison-making rationality is not reducible to individual preference rankings...Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.


Again, I know that perfectly well and never claimed that colllective preferences were "reducible" to individual prefeneces. What I said is that individual preferences expressed for example in the form of a vote go to make up collective preferences in the same way that individuals go to make up society. There is no society without individuals but at the same time society is more than just an aggregation of individuals



to have only a collective decision-making process for deciding what is to be produced is a grotesque form of tyranny of the majority.


There we go again. Tyranny of the majority. Also a complete and utter strawman argument from you. I have never said anything to suggest there would only be collective decisionmaking. Individuals prefernces/decisionmaking will coexist with collective preferences/decsionmaking. In fact anarcho communism gives far more scope for the expression of individual preferences than does your regulated capitalist utopia. Anarcho communism or "From each according to ability to each according to need" is the most complete and developed systm possible to facilitate the expression of individual preferences




you're obviously losing it. resort to insults shows you can't make a rational case. there is no elite in libertarian socialism. like I said, you should try learning something about it.

Wow . This from the guy who cannot resist making snidey little remarks about other people's "reading comprehension" etc . There is no elite in libertarian socialism, I agree, but you are not advocating libertarian socialism. You are advocating a form of regulated or popular capitalism. And I like the way you completely fall for the bogus economic calculation arguments of such a rightwing supporter of the market as Ludwig von Mises

[syndicat]

If you have a price system then ipso facto you have a market, however rigged or regulated.

nope. wrong again. a market economy requires that the owners or people in control in the production organization are the residual claimants...responsible for the expenses and have a right to accrue the revenue. this makes the income of the people in control of the firm (owners or workers or bureaucrats, whoever) remunerated by the value of the output, and they will be motivated to seek to accrue surpluses of revenue over expenses, that is, profits.

but within a participatory economy, it is society as a whole that is the residual claimant. workers do not accrue income from revenue. they are remunerated by the society based on hours worked...with everyone paid the same per hour of work. as the anarchist economists of ICEA (a think tank associated with the Spanish CNT) put it, participatory economics is a form of libertarian communism.

prices are necessary to have an economy that is effective because prices are necessary as a measure of social opportunity costs. but within an economy based on participatory planning, prices are formed by the planning process, not by market forces.


In fact anarcho communism gives far more scope for the expression of individual preferences than does your regulated capitalist utopia.

more resort to insults as a method.


but you are not advocating libertarian socialism. You are advocating a form of regulated or popular capitalism. And I like the way you completely fall for the bogus economic calculation arguments of such a rightwing supporter of the market as Ludwig von Mises

more resort to the method of insults. Mises and Hayek argued that only in a market could the information about consumer preferences be captured. I argue that info about desires of the population cannot be adequately captured in markets. that's why i propose a non-market economy.

you complain about my "snide" remarks but i'd suggest looking in the mirror sometime. such as your persistent tendency to smear what I'm advocating as capitalist.

[black magick hustla]

i fail to see how the future world will be made in the image of the ideas in the heads of two dudes with tons of time in their hands. this is what marx called utopian socialism. the building of the world socialist community or whatever will require the participation and brainstorming of a lot of people and circumstances that we have not encountered yet

[NewSocialist]

i fail to see how the future world will be made in the image of the ideas in the heads of two dudes with tons of time in their hands. this is what marx called utopian socialism. the building of the world socialist community or whatever will require the participation and brainstorming of a lot of people and circumstances that we have not encountered yet

That's crap. A LOT of people know that capitalism sucks, but unless you have a well thought out, feasible and attractive alternative formulated to some extent, don't expect people to organize --let alone possibly risk their *lives*-- to overthrow capitalism.

[black magick hustla]

That's crap. A LOT of people know that capitalism sucks, but unless you have a well thought out, feasible and attractive alternative formulated to some extent, don't expect people to organize --let alone possibly risk their *lives*-- to overthrow capitalism.

so how can two nobodies and a bunch of drug addled college kids can formulate this "alternative" of building a new world.

[robbo203]

nope. wrong again. a market economy requires that the owners or people in control in the production organization are the residual claimants...responsible for the expenses and have a right to accrue the revenue. this makes the income of the people in control of the firm (owners or workers or bureaucrats, whoever) remunerated by the value of the output, and they will be motivated to seek to accrue surpluses of revenue over expenses, that is, profits.

but within a participatory economy, it is society as a whole that is the residual claimant. workers do not accrue income from revenue. they are remunerated by the society based on hours worked...with everyone paid the same per hour of work. as the anarchist economists of ICEA (a think tank associated with the Spanish CNT) put it, participatory economics is a form of libertarian communism.

prices are necessary to have an economy that is effective because prices are necessary as a measure of social opportunity costs. but within an economy based on participatory planning, prices are formed by the planning process, not by market forces..

It really does not matter how precisely prices are formed for the purposes of this discussion, what matter is what they signify. For something to have a price attached to it means that it is an article that is bought and sold. It means that you cannot acquire the article in question without exchanging an equivalent value in the form of money. This makes the article in question a commodity.

Now two simple questions:

Do you or do you not agree that an article that has a price attached to it is a commodity?

Do you or do you not agree that commodities imply the existence of markets?

I would appreciate a straightforward answer without sophistry.


As for the rest of your points:

You say "workers do not accrue income from revenue" in your scenario". So where would the income come from if not from the sale of commodities on the market? Ehat would ensure that you were not spending more than you earned if you failed to tie income to revenue?

You say "everyone paid the same per hour of work". Thats not true - is it? - because Albert has specifically argued that some workers should be paid more than others as an incentive (Albert, Michael Parecon: Life After Capitalism Part II, Chapter 7: Remuneration p. 112-117 )

You say "prices are necessary to have an economy that is effective because prices are necessary as a measure of social opportunity costs". They are not. In fact prices are very ineffective as a measure of social opprotunity costs and the fact that they are established by something so vague as the "planning process" will not materially alter this fact on wit.


You say "but within a participatory economy, it is society as a whole that is the residual claimant". Similar claims have been made of Soviet state capitalism. I would say, very quickly, if your scheme ever got off the ground, the facilitation board would emerge as a new ruling class. The antagonism that exists in the commodity form between buyer and seller is the seeds from whence such a possibility will almost certainly turn into reality






more resort to insults as a method. ..

So tell me then do you or do you not agree that anarcho communism gives far more scope for the expression of individual preferences than the schema you advocate. What kind of social arrangement can improve on a free access economy based on volunteer labour in terms of providing scope for the expression of individual preferences? I mention all this only becuase you were the one who was insistent about me advocating the "tyranny of the majority" and ignoring the importance of "individual preferences". I notice youve gone all coy about that now, now that you have been forced to admit there will also be collective decision making in your schema and thefore also presumably the tyranny of the majority:rolleyes:



more resort to the method of insults. Mises and Hayek argued that only in a market could the information about consumer preferences be captured. I argue that info about desires of the population cannot be adequately captured in markets. that's why i propose a non-market economy.
.


But thats the whole point - you dont advocate a non market economy! You advocate a system of prices and therefore a market system. Prices cannot and do not exist apart from markets. And yes you have swallowed wholesale the basic arguments of Mises and Hayek about prices reflecting social opportunity costs.

[NewSocialist]

so how can two nobodies and a bunch of drug addled college kids can formulate this "alternative" of building a new world.

Which two "nobodies" are you referring to? Do they completely reject input from other people? Socialism has a rich history of rigorous debate and collaboration, on the subject of forumlating theories of a post-capitalist future.

[robbo203]

so how can two nobodies and a bunch of drug addled college kids can formulate this "alternative" of building a new world.


Ah I see. As one of those nobodies you refer to you presumably think

either

that it is not my place to express an opinion on anything, being a mere horny handed son of toil, and that this something best left to them there intellectuals in yer toff universities to speculate on

or

that we should not speculate at all, not argue about the kind of future we want , not use our abilities to reason. imagine and anticipate the kind of problems that may arise in the kind of society we want - even though, by doing so, we actually help to bring the whole thing to life , put flesh on the bones of the communist idea and make it altogther more credible than merely resorting to a few glib slogans


Either way, mate, I think yer off yer trolley. Even if at the end of the day it is up to the people who establish communism who will decide on the specifics that does not at all invalidate speculation and debate.

Sneer at it for all you like about it being "utopian" but as Oscar Wilde
put it in The Soul of Man under Socialism, "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at. Progress is the realisation of Utopias"

[syndicat]

It really does not matter how precisely prices are formed for the purposes of this discussion, what matter is what they signify. For something to have a price attached to it means that it is an article that is bought and sold. It means that you cannot acquire the article in question without exchanging an equivalent value in the form of money. This makes the article in question a commodity.

Now two simple questions:

Do you or do you not agree that an article that has a price attached to it is a commodity?

no.


do you or do you not agree that commodities imply the existence of markets?

yes...if that's how we choose to define "commodity".
[/QUOTE]

A necessary condition of commodity production is that the items are produced by a firm that is autonomous in the sense that the social validation of its work only occurs through the sale of the product in a situation where sellers can try to get as much as they can for their products and buyers can try to get products as cheaply as they can get away with (that is, a market). this point was made by Marx.

commodity production thus implies that the firm -- either a worker coop, capitalist corporation or self-employed producer -- is the residual claimant. The revenue received by the firm depends upon its bargaining power in the market...such as the degree of monopoly or monopsony power it enjoys.

these conditions are not satisfied by participatory economy.

in participatory economy, only workers control the production process but they are remunerated by the society on the basis of their work effort, that is, equal pay per hour of work. means of production are not owned by a "firm" but are socially owned and allocated to worker production groups by the planning process. to retain their use right to the means of production, workers must meet certain conditions of social accountability and of course their product must continue to have sufficient demand among the population to merit the use of the resources in its production.

workers' remuneration is thus not dependent on value of their products in a market nor can they accrue surpluses from revenue from sale. nor are the prices for their products determined by market forces such as relative monopoly power. prices are determined thru the participatory planning process.


You say "everyone paid the same per hour of work". Thats not true - is it? - because Albert has specifically argued that some workers should be paid more than others as an incentive

this is another of those cases where the presentation by Albert & Hahnel is misleading. the bit about "effort ratings" and all that is merely a "practical suggestion." moreover, you have to keep in mind that they propose "balanced jobss." this means the relative harshness, boredom, etc of work gets evened out among jobs, by integrating the decision-making, conceptual tasks, skill etc with the physical doing of work. in other words, jobs are redesigned so that they require roughly equal work effort/sacrifice. hence equal rate of remuneration per hour.

the problem lies in their tendency to try to deduce everything from first principles. so they want to first propose an
ethical principle about remuneration, and this is remuneration based on relative effort/sacrifice. but once you work out the consquences of this taken in conjunction with the jobs balancing idea, it ends up advocating equal remuneration.

but i also have other reasons for advocating equal remuneration, such as the fact that the revolutionary process requires a vast movement of struggle based on worker solidarity. and where all have taken the risks and participated in the struggle, why should anyone gain a greater income or cushy position out of it?


I mention all this only becuase you were the one who was insistent about me advocating the "tyranny of the majority" and ignoring the importance of "individual preferences". I notice youve gone all coy about that now, now that you have been forced to admit there will also be collective decision making in your schema and thefore also presumably the tyranny of the majority

you're not paying attention. i make a distinction between individual goods and public goods. things like democratic control of the society, elimination of the class system, creating collective control over access to the enviro commons, ensuring that everyone's health is protected, ensuring the real access to means to develop one's potential (job balancing, free education from pre-school to any level), and so on. these are all things over which it is appropriate to have collective decision-making because they are collective social goods.

but many things that are produced, and many things that people want, are not collective social goods but private consumption goods. to require that production of individual consumption goods be decided by collective social decision-making is tyranny of the majority. each individual or household needs to be able to self-manage its own consumption.

[black magick hustla]

Ah I see. As one of those nobodies you refer to you presumably think

nah i mean the parecon dudes who are essentially for all intent and purposes nobodies (they have phds tho)

[revolution inaction]

me:

then the actual consumers/users will have no say. you'll have no way to ensure that what gets produced is what people most prefer.you:

you say this again and again, but it is not true, i suggest ways in which people can express preferences, which you ignore.

i haven't "ignored" any of your "suggestions." I've pointed out why they won't work. and when i provide counter-arguments, you ignore them...as you're doing here.

You have not provided any counter arguments to what i suggested, you didn't even acknowledge it. I suggested asking people what they prefer, and monitoring what they take, you have not made any are argument for why these will not give a accurate view of what people prefer.





this is traditional handwaving. as I have repeatedly pointed out, a collective decision by an assembly or body of delegates only tells us about the collective or common decision of that body. this does NOT provide ANY information about individual preferences for consumption items for their own use or consumption. People have different tastes, different needs, different preferences.

To say that whatever is to be produced must be approved by a collective assembly or delegate is grotesque tyranny of the majority as far as production for satisfying individual consumer preferences for personal consumption is concerned.


i have never suggested this




decisions about what the community is going to request to be produced are appropriate for a community council or body of delegates for an area, if we're talking about public goods & services, things for which the community is providing a common system of social provision for...water, power, education, health care, public transit, enviro defense.

it is completely inappropriate for decisions about what is to be produced to satisfy individual consumption wants for personal consumption...the kinds of foods, furnishings, clothes and other personal items. for this we need a system that can capture the individual preferences.


and i have suggested two, and a way to deal with it when things don't work properly.



and even in the case of the collective consumption goods, that is, public goods and services, you still need to have a way to measure social opportunity costs. and this will require that these community councils and delegate bodies have finite budgets they need to stick to. when they decide to use more of their resources building health clinics this year than houses that tells us the health clinics are a higher priority right now. if they have no finite budget, that info about the collective community preference can't be captured. a finite budget will be expressed in terms of a numeric value of costs. hence prices.

we can measure what inputs are needed and what resources are available and then make disisions about what choose to make, i fail to see the need for prices.

[syndicat]

we can measure what inputs are needed and what resources are available and then make disisions about what choose to make, i fail to see the need for prices.

we need to be able to put them all on the same scale to measure the total resources. any given resource can be used to make a variety of different outputs.

costs are always in relation to alternatives. what would it cost us to build a school building versus creating a park or providing a new bus line? we have to be able to compare these costs.


I suggested asking people what they prefer, and monitoring what they take, you have not made any are argument for why these will not give a accurate view of what people prefer.



yes i have. these two are the consumer survey and stock control bits. I've already argued as to why these can't capture actual preferences.

[syndicat]

nah i mean the parecon dudes who are essentially for all intent and purposes nobodies (they have phds tho)

left communists like you are nobodies as far as i'm concerned.

[Kotze]

moreover, there is actually a mathematical proof that collective decison-making rationality is not reducible to individual preference rankings...Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.It's the other way around. Arrow (and Condorcet before him and IIRC Ramon Llull had known this a couple centuries before) showed that no method can guarantee to aggregate ranked lists supplied by voters into an overall ranking that respects all majorities, because there can be circular ambiguities (eg. majorities prefering A to B and B to C and C to A at the same point in time), the individual transitive rankings not always returning aggregate majoritarian transitivity is popularized with words like individual rationality not implying collective rationality.

The criterion by Arrow called "independence of irrelevant alternatives" demands that erasing a non-winning candidate from ballots and running the election method's algorithm again shouldn't change the winner, that is, the method shouldn't be vulnerable to some losers spoiling the election. If a voting method always returns the option preferred by the majority in the case with 2 options to vote on, how could such a method handle a case with majorities preferring A to B and B to C and C to A? If the method selects A as a winner, erasing B from the ballots would result in the election being a duel between A and C, which A loses. Similar claims can be made about selecting one of the others as the winner. So if a method is majoritarian in the case with 2 options to vote on, it can't be completely immune to the spoiler problem. Related to that is the problem that a method that is majoritarian in the case with 2 options to vote on can't be strategy-free in all situations with more than 2 options.

The implication of the research by Arrow and others is that among the deterministic voting methods ISDA methods (http://www.revleft.com/vb/getting-closer-real-t138550/index.html?p=1884714#post1884714) are the most robust when it comes to spoiler problems (admittedly counting by hand can be taxing here) and that ballot lottery or population lottery are the only completely strategy-free methods to select people for a board (and for ballot lottery you have to qualify that statement, because with public voting it won't be strategy-free).

I haven't seen these results reflected in anything written in this thread and I can't say that I've sensed much of that in other threads about democracy on this board either.
You [=syndicat] are advocating a form of regulated or popular capitalism.It's common here to refer to capitalism in a way that implies ownership and control of means of production in the hands of a few. It's your own idiosyncratic definition to say that any system with remuneration for doing tasks is capitalist, and I don't believe you will get most people here to adopt that definition.

[syndicat]

It's the other way around. Arrow (and Condorcet before him and IIRC Ramon Llull had known this a couple centuries before) showed that no method can guarantee to aggregate ranked lists supplied by voters into an overall ranking that respects all majorities, because there can be circular ambiguities (eg. majorities prefering A to B and B to C and C to A at the same point in time), the individual transitive rankings not always returning aggregate majoritarian transitivity is popularized with words like individual rationality not implying collective rationality.



for a methodological individualist, tho, it implies there can't be rationality in collective decision-making. this is used repeatedly by the neo-classical economics types and right-wing "libertarian" theorists.

the thing is, when people seriously engage in collective decision-making, for their family, a community, a union or any collective context, what happens is that people adopt the stance of a particular "we" and argue in terms of what is best for that "we." so there is a different rationality that applies to collective decision-making.

[black magick hustla]

left communists like you are nobodies as far as i'm concerned.

and that is why i can recognize insignificant nobodies who have the pretense to create elaborate plans on how to organize everybody

[StalinFanboy]

Ah I see. As one of those nobodies you refer to you presumably think

either

that it is not my place to express an opinion on anything, being a mere horny handed son of toil, and that this something best left to them there intellectuals in yer toff universities to speculate on

or

that we should not speculate at all, not argue about the kind of future we want , not use our abilities to reason. imagine and anticipate the kind of problems that may arise in the kind of society we want - even though, by doing so, we actually help to bring the whole thing to life , put flesh on the bones of the communist idea and make it altogther more credible than merely resorting to a few glib slogans


Either way, mate, I think yer off yer trolley. Even if at the end of the day it is up to the people who establish communism who will decide on the specifics that does not at all invalidate speculation and debate.

Sneer at it for all you like about it being "utopian" but as Oscar Wilde
put it in The Soul of Man under Socialism, "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at. Progress is the realisation of Utopias"
I think its more like the future will be born from specific material conditions, and not ideas.

We can talk about it all we want, but in reality, it isn't up to us, but humanity as a whole.

[syndicat]

We can talk about it all we want, but in reality, it isn't up to us, but humanity as a whole.

of course. but humanity won't create any liberatory, authentic socialism if their mass social movements don't talk about what they want to achieve, and develop a program that will have a liberatory result.

and by talking about it now, we are contributing to the ongoing discussion that will be needed within movements towards the appropriate sort of anti-capitalist program. there won't be a libertarian anticapitalist program if there isn't work to discuss this within movements and so that people collectively self-develop a consciousness that is inspired towards liberatory objectives.

right now i'm happy to see increasing militancy and more resistance to the system, but as movements become stronger and a social transformation becomes the order of the day, then the movement already needs to have a lot of people who are educated about these sorts of questions. if not, then some elite are likely to waltz in and put forward their cooked up solution.

[revolution inaction]

we need to be able to put them all on the same scale to measure the total resources. any given resource can be used to make a variety of different outputs.

costs are always in relation to alternatives. what would it cost us to build a school building versus creating a park or providing a new bus line? we have to be able to compare these costs.

we can compare resources used, i don't see why money would be needed to do this, in fact i think it obscures actual costs.




yes i have. these two are the consumer survey and stock control bits. I've already argued as to why these can't capture actual preferences.
I don't remember any argument that actual showed they wouldn't work.

[robbo203]

I am leaving shortly to do some forestry work in France for a few weeks and will be offline during this time. Its a pity but I dont really have enough time left now to respond to the various points raised. I dont consider that there has been any serious attempt made here to demonstrate that an anarcho-communist economy is unworkable in the absence of a price mechanism. The people making these claims seem to be completely unfamiliar with the arguments that have effectively destroyed the case put forward by Ludwig von Mises and co. for the necessity of a price system and this shows no more so than in the discussion on opportunity costs

As for Parecon - well, what I can say? Perhaps I will leave you with a little snippet of a debate between Albert and the SPGB which I came across when checking out their journal recently http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/apr06/text/page10.html. Enjoy



There are few political debates currently occurring of any real significance to the majority of the world's population. The debate concerning the nature of a post-capitalist economy ranks as the most important on the revolutionary agenda.

Thus, we present recent correspondence between ourselves and the author of the book Parecon: Life After Capitalism.


Parecon or socialism?



The review of Parecon: Life After Capitalism, appearing in February Socialist Standard, was troubling. The review says the economic system proposed in the book called participatory economics, or parecon for short, permits profits, just not excessive profits. But in parecon there are no owners. In fact there are no classes. More, no one earns income based on ownership of any kind. There are, therefore, no profits - none.

Yes, society produces a social product. Yes, some plants produce a total value of output greater, and in some cases even much greater, than the total value of their inputs, including their labor. But, no, this does not enrich anyone associated with those plants relative to the incomes, say, of people working at plants that are far less productive. Remuneration is uncorrelated to value of output save that people must do socially valuable labor to be remunerated for labor at all. What the reviewer says about profit affecting wages, etc., in parecon, is simply about some other system...unless the reviewer is saying, if total output for a parecon is lower, average income is lower, which is, of course, a truism, having zero to do with profits, which don't exist in a parecon.

The reviewer says, incredibly, that getting rid of private ownership of production, markets, top down decision making, the corporate division of labor, and remuneration for property and power, the core economic institutions of capitalism, and replacing them with self managing workers and consumers councils, balanced job complexes, remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of labor, and participatory planning, the core economic institutions of parecon - is correcting political dimensions, but not economics. I doubt the reviewer read the book. It is confined to addressing economic dimensions, not the polity.

I suspect that this reviewer thinks that because in parecon there are income, wages, and valuations - prices - it must be capitalism. This marks a major confusion. A letter I received from the host periodical signed off, "Yours for a moneyless, wageless world of common ownership." This too, is troubling.

In this world you desire to attain there is, I presume, production. Likewise, I assume you agree that people will consume. More, beyond production and consumption, is there some regulation of what is produced and in what quantity? The alternative would be that anyone can produce anything, with no concern other than that they wish to. This is nonsense, but if there is regulation of how resources, energies, and labor are allocated to generate outputs, does that regulation reflect the preferences that both producers and consumers have and especially a full valuation of the relative contribution to well being and development of different choices? If it does, then to that extent it includes "money." The valuations are prices, albeit not necessarily as we have known them in market and centrally planned systems.

In turn, do people receive a share of the product? Obviously they must if they are to survive, much less attain their capacities. So, that being true, is there any correlation between the share one gets and what one does as one's work? If not, anyone can take anything, in any amount, and do no work - which, of course, is absurd, since demand would exceed supply. If there is a correlation, however, then there are to that extent "wages" according to some norm, even if the correlation is due to people collectively and responsibly establishing their own incomes. In parecon, these are the reasons why there are "money" and "wages." The task becomes having this limited money and wages, which is to say valuations and shares of income, inevitably present in any economy, in accord with our full aspirations and values.

Money - more importantly, relative valuations of products and processes - exists in a parecon, therefore, so that people might make choices in light of full and true social costs and benefits. Participatory planning facilitates the determination of true and full values as decided by the self managing population.

Wages - more importantly, shares of social product allotted to citizens - exists in a parecon so that, of course, we can all equitably benefit from the social product, and specifically so that choices regarding such things as how long people work, how hard we work, producing what items, and what we justly consume, can be determined by the population, again, in accord with true social costs and benefits and, as well, with attaining equitable outcomes and self management.

I would claim, and the book does claim, that parecon is not only a serious economy able to meet needs, develop potentials, incorporate true self management, and be not just profitless but, beyond that, classless - but is also as close to having no money and no wages as is possible without incurring immense damage. That is, it has valuations and it has income shares, like any economy, but not the pejorative aspects of either - distinguishing it from all capitalist, market, or centrally planned economies.
Michael Albert, ZNet / Z Magazine

Reply:
The gist of your complaint is that, contrary to the claim made in the review of your book Parecon in the February Socialist Standard, you maintain that there are no profits in parecon because "no one earns income based on ownership of any kind. There are, therefore, no profits - none". But this is only because you have defined profit as a property income. It's still there, however, as you admit in your second paragraph above: "... some plants produce a total value of output greater, and in some cases much greater, than the total value of their inputs, including their labour". For profit to exist - or more generally “surplus value” (rent, interest and profit) - it is not necessary that these accrue to individuals through their ownership of property. Profit is simply the difference between expenditure and income and derives from the unpaid labour of the workers. Profits therefore existed in the former state-capitalist USSR and exist in the present-day Vatican - even though there is no individual ownership.

On page 132 of your book the rate of profit appears under the guise of "benefit cost ratio":

"Each round of planning, or iteration, yields a new set of proposed activities. Taken together, these proposals yield new data regarding the status of each good, the average consumption per person, and the average production 'benefit cost ratio' per firm. All this allows for calculation of new price projections and new predictions for average income and work, which in turn lead to modifications in proposals ..." http://www.zmag.org/books/pareconv/parefinal.htm (http://www.zmag.org/books/pareconv/parefinal.htm) (Chapter 8, subsection: Proceeding From One Proposal To Another)

You say the "benefit cost ratio" has nothing to do with profit because the "benefit cost ratio" will only benefit parecon society as a whole and not any individual. But as we have seen, this is based on a misunderstanding of what profit means. Moreover, you also claim on the same page in your book that:

"...workers’ councils whose ratios of social benefits of their outputs to social costs of their inputs were lower than average would come under pressure to increase either efficiency or effort..."

Or go bust, presumably, unless profits were redistributed from workers' councils with above average ratios. This shows the limits of planning in “parecon”, for in their planning considerations they must maintain profit rates. And while planning might be based on past or current profit rates, profits themselves are inherently unpredictable and this may scupper plans for the future. There is also the antagonism between wages and profits. Parecon society would need to maintain a positive rate of profit or lurch into crisis. This means that workers could not push up wages to the level that stopped profits being made, and this again sets definite limits to what can be planned.

Of course production and consumption will be regulated in a socialist society. That’s an essential part of it, but this does not require recourse to money either as a means of exchange or for costing products and production. Calculation - and “costing” - in socialism will take place in kind (in tonnes of steel, kilowatt-hours of electricity, person-hours of work and so on) without having to put a monetary value on anything and everything. Socialist society will decide - through democratic discussion and from what people indicate they want by what they take from the common stores - what it needs to satisfy individual and collective consumption, and to replace and expand (if need be) the productive apparatus and then will bring together the physical and human resources to produce this. This will be done in the most technically efficient way, after taking into account good working conditions and environmental considerations.


In implementing the long-standing socialist principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, socialist society breaks the link between work done and consumption. Rather than being “allotted” what to consume as under “parecon”, people would be able to take from the common store of wealth set aside for individual consumption what they judged they needed to live and enjoy life, irrespective of what they had contributed to production. Every able-bodied person would be expected to contribute something, but we don’t share your bleak view that, in this event, not enough would be produced to satisfy people’s needs (that “demand would exceed supply”, as you put it) - and that therefore, not just profits, but the wages system too would have to be retained as a means of both obliging people to work and of limiting their consumption. Just like under capitalism.


Hence our original description of “parecon” as “post-capitalist capitalism”, i.e. not post-capitalism at all. We would be prepared to refer to it as a “utopian blueprint for an ideal society” if you prefer.- Editors.


Rejoinder:
By any definition I have ever encountered, surpluses are not profits per se, though they may become profits under certain social relations, of course. Definitions aside, Parecon people's income, in any case, is not correlated to output, or to revenues minus expenditures, but to effort expended in socially valued production. No class takes income based on unpaid workers labor. No one does, other than those infirm and unable to work, that is. On the other hand, society and each of its members very much benefits if the total social product per time worked and inputs used up, is more, rather than less, socially valuable.

Saying that if a firm produces things of greater social value than it uses up, that means there are profits and the system is capitalist, is, honestly, absurd. In any economy, from now until the sun burns out and beyond, one will want workplaces of humans to actually generate more worth than they use up, of course. How the social product is then dispersed among the population is a very important issue, to be sure. Doing it according to effort, having also eliminated not only private owners above workers, but a coordinator class above workers, by balancing job complexes and instituting self management, is equitable.

Our real difference is probably best encapsulated in your calling the old Soviet Union state capitalist, and my saying that since it didn't have private owners of means of production, and it didn't have markets, but it did have a ruling economic class composed of those monopolizing empowering tasks in the economy, it is far more sensibly called not capitalist, not socialist, but coordinatorist, after its ruling class.

I share your desire that a future desirable economy involve workers and consumers cooperatively negotiating economic activities and their distribution. That is what parecon accomplishes. Given space limits, I guess for now we just have to agree to disagree about a lot, beyond that desire, however.
Michael Albert


Reply:
It is only under capitalism that the social surplus takes the form of a monetary surplus value and, as you admit, this is what will exist in “parecon”. And this is what will be the imperative guiding and limiting its planning decisions. The institutional changes you advocate (no legal individual ownership of means of production, self-management, etc.) are inadequate reasons for claiming that capitalism has been overthrown.


We agree that the former Soviet Union did have a ruling class, but not that there were no markets there. Even the regime’s ideologists admitted that there was “commodity-production”, i.e. production for sale, and that buying and selling relationships existed between state enterprises. While there was no individual legal ownership of the main means of production (though there was of some things: dachas, works of art, state bonds, bank accounts), these means of production were not owned by society as a whole but effectively by a class which monopolised them, via the state, and which lived a privileged life from the surplus value extracted from the wage-labour of the workers. That is why we think the best description of that and similar societies was state capitalist.


Your attitude towards the former Soviet Union is revealing in that it shows that you had nothing against the continued existence there of the key features of capitalism that are production for sale, money, wages, profits, etc but only to the fact that the economic system involving these was controlled by a privileged ruling class and not democratically by the workers. “Parecon” is thus revealed to be the idea of the economic system that existed in Russia “self-managed” by the workers. A sort of “self-managed capitalism” that could only exist on paper.

Socialism will break free from the financial bureaucracy of capitalist calculation. It will treat people as ends in themselves. It will produce directly for human needs. It will break the link between individual effort and individual consumption. That’s what all those who consider themselves to be anti-capitalist should be aiming at. - Editors.

[syndicat]

one fallacy in this piece by the SPGB is that is defines "profit" as any surplus. how is there a surplus? consider children. should they be the responsibility of the parents' earnings to take care of all their needs? we don't think so. but in that case, then, a portion of the social product goes for provision for children...these might be for pre-schools, for child allotments provided to parents, whatever. thus a part of the value produced by the economy goes to cover these things. and this would be true for any public good that the society decides to provide thru free social provision. this is where the "surplus" goes. it goes to the society. this follow from the society being the residual claimant in a participatory economy.

[black magick hustla]

that we should not speculate at all, not argue about the kind of future we want , not use our abilities to reason. imagine and anticipate the kind of problems that may arise in the kind of society we want - even though, by doing so, we actually help to bring the whole thing to life , put flesh on the bones of the communist idea and make it altogther more credible than merely resorting to a few glib slogans


Either way, mate, I think yer off yer trolley. Even if at the end of the day it is up to the people who establish communism who will decide on the specifics that does not at all invalidate speculation and debate.

Sneer at it for all you like about it being "utopian" but as Oscar Wilde
put it in The Soul of Man under Socialism, "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at. Progress is the realisation of Utopias"

actually, im sorry if i appeared somewhat snide. you are a good poster and i appreciate your existence in this boards in general.

i think the problem here is also a problem of political tradition. from what i gather, you come from the old impossibilist tradition, you think capitalism if it dissappears will be "voted out of existence," not as a sort of social break.

ifone thinks capitalism will be voted out of existence, then it makes sense to carve some sort of "blueprint". the problem is that i think capitalism will not be "voted out" but if it is destroyed (it might not get destroyed, revolutionary optimism belongs to zealots but not thinkers) it will be mostly by historical law. furthermore historical law will mould the circumstances of whatever is the world and the revolution at that particular situation, so to try to think about a world that will be so beautiful and mind blowing and awe inspiring by using the slave language we grew up with, that consciousness that strips men from their humanity and makes them beasts of burden and slaves, would be pretentious at the least. i just know i hate this world and i know that the crime done against me was that the world prepares for me a future of alienation and toil. i dont have the conceptual tools to imagine what type of relationships we are going to develop if this world will get superseded by a better world. we can think and analyze, however, the way the class has fought against existence and work themselves - carving a space-time for themselves in certain moments (russian revolution, hungary, spain, french may, iran) and these certainly show a short glimpse to that future world. but to create constitutions and to dream about new economies with the frameworks given us by our masters i am afraid constitute as dead dreams.

[Paul Cockshott]

nah i mean the parecon dudes who are essentially for all intent and purposes nobodies (they have phds tho)
This is ridiculous. On the one hand, everybody is somebody, and on the other, within the context of the debate on economic alternatives Albert is somebody quite well known.

[Paul Cockshott]

ifone thinks capitalism will be voted out of existence, then it makes sense to carve some sort of "blueprint". the problem is that i think capitalism will not be "voted out" but if it is destroyed (it might not get destroyed, revolutionary optimism belongs to zealots but not thinkers) it will be mostly by historical law. furthermore historical law will mould the circumstances of whatever is the world and the revolution at that particular situation,

Whether socialism comes about in a country by voting or by civil war, the party or parties advocating socialism still have to campaign for public support and to do so they must put forward a definite economic programme.

[Jose Gracchus]

Whether socialism comes about in a country by voting or by civil war, the party or parties advocating socialism still have to campaign for public support and to do so they must put forward a definite economic programme.

Thank you very much. I always cringe and roll my eyes at people who think flippant excuses and vague supposition with the obligatory reference to vulgar Marxist concepts of "historical law" (presupposing that historical materialism is anything like 'scientific law' or 'law' at all) is enough to bring to the table in a serious movement to remake the world.

Either you bring forward some proposal, or I guarantee others - who probably are objectively class enemies - will. Furthermore, one could easily say yes, it is part of the HM rise of a class to the position of power that it develop its own economic science and educate itself, etc., etc. But to sit on our asses and not participate in this process is idiotic. It is just like the people who try to pass off discussing organization or politics or whatever because the class and history will do it automatically. It is utterly without substantive content. Mere phrase-mongering.

[gorillafuck]

i fail to see how the future world will be made in the image of the ideas in the heads of two dudes with tons of time in their hands. this is what marx called utopian socialism. the building of the world socialist community or whatever will require the participation and brainstorming of a lot of people and circumstances that we have not encountered yetThere's nothing wrong with discussing socialist economics. Quit it with this pretentious anti-theory stuff.

Anywho I don't know much about parecon or how it's different from other libertarian socialist economics, but I do notice that a lot of people who buy into it seem to me to buy into ideas of scarcity that are present under capitalism but will not be as relevant in a socialist society where resources are used differently. I might be way wrong though.

[Tim Cornelis]

as the anarchist economists of ICEA (a think tank associated with the Spanish CNT) put it, participatory economics is a form of libertarian communism.

prices are necessary to have an economy that is effective because prices are necessary as a measure of social opportunity costs



I agreed with most of your post (anarcho-communists too often consider every socialist system that is not strictly moneyless "capitalistic"), except these two points.

Participatory economics is not a form of libertarian communism as communism is a system based on production for needs and consumption according to need, whereas participatory economics is based on remuneration (which is always non-communist) according to effort. However, this is just semantics and irrelevant.

your second point that under communism the calculation of opportunity costs is impossible is not true.

We can calculate in kind using a material balance account of all necessary resources and compare these to the other alternatives.

To build a railroad around, over the top, underneath, or through a mountain we simply have to look at which alternative costs less resources in kind.