A question regarding the Anarchist FAQ, and another

[The Man]

1. In the section where it states how an Anarchist society would work. They said in a communist one, that if people didn't work, the community would use some sort of social pressure. How so? How would you know this would work? What if the person just doesn't listen to the social pressure?

2. Wouldn't it be easy for Fascist/Capitalist revolutionaries to take down such a system, by just not working. and not providing anything? How would we prevent that?

[Broletariat]

1. In the section where it states how an Anarchist society would work. They said in a communist one, that if people didn't work, the community would use some sort of social pressure. How so? How would you know this would work? What if the person just doesn't listen to the social pressure?

I am not vouching for the validity of their accusation, but I'm just going to try and defend such a system because it does seem practical.

Social stigmas can be a powerful thing, is scat porn illegal? As far as I'm aware no, then why do people shy away from it? Largely because of cultural perspectives on feces. There's other examples you could pull from such as people skipping in lines even though it's not illegal to do so, no one does it because it makes you look like a douche.


2. Wouldn't it be easy for Fascist/Capitalist revolutionaries to take down such a system, by just not working. and not providing anything? How would we prevent that?

The only way for Fascist/Capitalists to regain power would be to somehow amass social power once again and resume individually owning the means of production, them not working does not accomplish this.

[syndicat]

1. In the section where it states how an Anarchist society would work. They said in a communist one, that if people didn't work, the community would use some sort of social pressure. How so? How would you know this would work? What if the person just doesn't listen to the social pressure?


1. How do they know they're not working? in a densely populated urban metropolis it's easy for people to be relatively anonymous.

2. Amoral individualism is encouraged by capitalism, and it's likely that there will be a large minority of people who don't have much sense of social compassion or obligation, as far as the larger society is concerned. therefore, free-loading would in fact be likely to be a serious problem if people can freely consume without working.

3. there are different social circles. among those who were not supporters of the change, resistance by not working may be supported by their friends and family. so "social pressure" in this case would be to not cooperate with the communist set up.

this is why it's necessary to require that people work in order to earn entitlement to consume items produced for private consumption. i'm not talking about things that are provided as free services, such as health care, education.



2. Wouldn't it be easy for Fascist/Capitalist revolutionaries to take down such a system, by just not working. and not providing anything? How would we prevent that?


yes. a large opposition minority would be serious economic problem if you have a system of "free-sharing" where people don't have to work to earn consumption entitlement. solution is to require work for individual consumption entitlement, and for people to earn such entitlement through their work effort.

[robbo203]

1. In the section where it states how an Anarchist society would work. They said in a communist one, that if people didn't work, the community would use some sort of social pressure. How so? How would you know this would work? What if the person just doesn't listen to the social pressure?

2. Wouldn't it be easy for Fascist/Capitalist revolutionaries to take down such a system, by just not working. and not providing anything? How would we prevent that?

There are many reasons why this is unlikely to present the problem you might think it would.


Here are a few I listed on another thread


On incentives in a communist volunteer economy of "freely asociated labour", several points:


# The amount of work that needs to be done by comparison with today will be significantly less because of the elimination of all the socially uselsss labour that only props up the capitalist money economy - from bankers to tax collectors. Less work means a much reduced per capita workload on average which, in turn, means less resistance to working since our attitutde to work is partly conditioned by how much time we are required to do it. If you only have to do 2 hours per week on a boring job you are going to regard it differently than if you have to do it for 20 hours

# A volunteer economy means that we are not stuck with just one job but can try a variety so there is a labour reservoir in depth for any particular job - even the most onerous or boring - and to an extent that is simply not possible under capitalist employment.

# With free acess to goods and services there is only one way in which you can acquire status and the respect and esteem of your fellows - through your contribution to society. Conspicuous consumption and the accumulation of private wealth would be rendered meaningless by the simple fact that all wealth is freely available for direct appropriation

# The terms and conditions of work will be radically different without the institution of capitalist employment. It is often these terms and conditions - in particular the authoritarian structure of the capitalist workplace - that are the real problem rather than the work itself

# Without the profit motive there will be far greater scope to adapt technology to suit our inclinations. Some work might be subject to greater automation; other work might be made more artisan or skilled-based

# In a communist society our mutual interdependence will be much more transparent and the sense of moral obligation to give according to one's ability in return for taking according to one's need will correspondingly be much more sharply defined and enhanced as a motivating factor

# A communist society cannot be introduced except when the great majority understand and want it. Having struggled to achieve it can it seriously be maintained that they would willingly allow it to be jeopardised? The reductio as absurdum argument

# Work. loosely defined as meaningful productive activity is actually a fundamental human need, not simply an economic requirement. Try sitting around on your bum for week doing nothing and you will soon find yourself climbing up the wall out of sheer boredom. Prison riots have been known to break out on occasions when frustrated prisoners are denied work opportunities and even under the severe conditions they have to contend with.

# Even under capitalism just over half of the work that we do is completely unpaid and outside of the money economy. This is by no means just confined to the household sector - think for example of international volunteers such as the VSO - and it gives the lie to the capitalist argument that the only way you can induce people to work is paying them to do it

One final point - any attempt to link consumption entitlements to work effort will itself constitute a huge cost that will subtract from social productivity. It is very likely to spawn a vast bureaucracy comparable to what exists in capitalism today to administer this system of entitlements as well as to monitor work effort. One of the advantages of a communist economy, by comparison, is the fact that it will be highly streamlined and cost effective in real terms. Not only that, I strongly suspect a system of consumption entitlements based on work effort will prepare the ground for the re-emergence of class relations with a technocratic coordinating elite, used to monitoring all this work effort and dispensing all those consumption entitlements. emerging as a new ruling class. Certainly the scope for serious systemic corruption exists in such a set up.

There are also massive theoretical problems which the advocates of consumption entitlements seem to blithely disregard or downplay. Not the least of which is - how precisely do you go about measuring work effort? Any serious attempt to do so is bound to give rise to resentment, one way or another. If you pay workers a flat rate regardless of the work done, doctors will feel peeved at the thought of being paid the same as, say, janitors. If you pay a differential rate, on the other hand, structural engineers will be outraged at the thought of being paid half the going rate for a nuclear physicist. The point is that it is the very linking of consumption entitlement to work effort within a quid pro exchange relation that is itself the problem and the cause of such resentments.

Indeed, paying people to work actually serves to undermine what motivational psychologists call people's intrinsic motivation and there is substantial empirical evidence to back this up ( See for example "Does Pay Motivate Volunteers?", Review of Economics and Statistics, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich , Bruno S. Frey and Lorenz Goette Working Paper Series , ISSN 1424-0459 , Working Paper No. 7, May 1999) There is also, incidentally, substantial empirical evidence to suggest that paying people to work also lowers work performance into the bargain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc)

[syndicat]

There are also massive theoretical problems which the advocates of consumption entitlements seem to blithely disregard or downplay. Not the least of which is - how precisely do you go about measuring work effort? Any serious attempt to do so is bound to give rise to resentment, one way or another.

but it's easy to show that robbo's "free sharing" scheme will lead to resentments. if people can take whatever they want without working, this rewards the more aggressive and asocial. that's because they will have less scruples about taking more than others.

and if some take more than others do, this will cause resentment.

the "free sharing" bit was attempted in rural towns in Aragon during the Spanish revolution. There was interesting discussion of this by some of the participants in "Blood of Spain"...an oral history. They pointed out that the farm workers didn't like it because they felt they had earned a certain entitlement.

there were also inefficiencies like farmers using bread (since it was free) to feed hogs...a waste of the human effort and resources to make bread.

[robbo203]

but it's easy to show that robbo's "free sharing" scheme will lead to resentments. if people can take whatever they want without working, this rewards the more aggressive and asocial. that's because they will have less scruples about taking more than others. and if some take more than others do, this will cause resentment..

Its interesting that you should deflect criticism of your own scheme of consumption entitlements, presumably administered and dispensed by a coordinating elite, by dint of simply ignoring it. So pray do tell - how precisely are are you going to evaluate the work effort of individuals under your system and how are you going to avoid resentments arising whether from a differential rate of payment or a flat rate?

In a communist society by contrast the notion of "rewarding" people - or people "rewarding" themselves - in terms of providing them with material goods simply does not arise. There is no meaningful way in which you can gain the respect and esteem of your fellows except via your contribution to society. You are inadmissably projecting into communism the values of a capitalist society

[syndicat]

Its interesting that you should deflect criticism of your own scheme of consumption entitlements, presumably administered and dispensed by a coordinating elite,

"presumably", you say. but I've explained this to you before. there is in fact no reason to suppose any bureaucratic class, as I would call it.

in a revolutionary social transformation from below, in which the working class takes over control of social production and over social governance, it must decide what sort of social arrangement it is going to establish, including such things as the way resources are allocated and how the benefits of production are distributed, how people are remunerated for their work efforts (to encourage them to actually engage in work efforts).

so, if the mass movement that makes the change decides to remunerate people at the same rate of pay per hour or in some other way, it is thru that mass democratic process that this gets established.

and I've already explained how participatory planning works. work groups make up their own plans for what they will do to produce things that people want. part of this is a plan of how many worker hours they estimate it will take, the resources they will need, the conditions of work they propose and so on.

the plan may get modified through the give-and-take participatory planning process, which also involves communities, households, regional federations and so on developing plans for what they want produced.

to ultimately how much their work group's remuneration is comes down to the remuneration principle the mass democratic movement has decided on, and if they decide on equal remuneration per hour of work, for example, then their amount of remuneration falls out of their plan, which includes a proposal for how much work they will be doing, how many people they need to do it, and so on.

there is no bureaucratic class in my proposed conception of libertarian socialism. if you want to *argue* that such would develop, then let's see the argument.

[robbo203]

"presumably", you say. but I've explained this to you before. there is in fact no reason to suppose any bureaucratic class, as I would call it. .

I did not say class - I said elite - but, yes, I do think a class set up would emerge out of the dynamics of the situation in which in which individuals would have to be monitored in terms of their work effort and regulated in terms of the allocation of work entitlements. This springs from the inherent conflict of interests that stems from any system of economic exchange of which yours is an example. Those who do the monitoring and the regulating will be in poll position to become this new ruling class.

And you have still not answered the question I posed earlier - how are you going to evaluate the work performance of individuals - what criteria are you going to use - and how are you going to avoid the resentments and social divisiness arising from such evaluation? In a communist society where work is entirely voluntary and goods and services entirely free you simply dont have these sort of issues arising.




in a revolutionary social transformation from below, in which the working class takes over control of social production and over social governance, it must decide what sort of social arrangement it is going to establish, including such things as the way resources are allocated and how the benefits of production are distributed, how people are remunerated for their work efforts (to encourage them to actually engage in work efforts).

so, if the mass movement that makes the change decides to remunerate people at the same rate of pay per hour or in some other way, it is thru that mass democratic process that this gets established..

Yeah yeah I can just see it. The "mass movement" deciding in community A that neurosurgeons should be paid the same as landscape gardeners like myself while next door, in community B, they get paid 10 times the rate. Meanwhile in community C where landscape gardeners are in short supply you will find they get paid 15 times the rate of a neurosurgepon. I guess I will just have to relocate to C even though i was born and bred in B!

I very much suspect if your scenario ever did get off the ground 9/10s of our time will be taken attending overheated meetings squabbling about comparative pay rates. Nothing will get done. Ah, for the simple straightforward communist way of life, you will be wistfully thinking, where we scrap the need for all this bureaucratic nonsense and simply give according to our abilities and take according to our needs...







and I've already explained how participatory planning works. work groups make up their own plans for what they will do to produce things that people want. part of this is a plan of how many worker hours they estimate it will take, the resources they will need, the conditions of work they propose and so on.

the plan may get modified through the give-and-take participatory planning process, which also involves communities, households, regional federations and so on developing plans for what they want produced.

to ultimately how much their work group's remuneration is comes down to the remuneration principle the mass democratic movement has decided on, and if they decide on equal remuneration per hour of work, for example, then their amount of remuneration falls out of their plan, which includes a proposal for how much work they will be doing, how many people they need to do it, and so on...


Yes you've previously "explained" how your participatory planning system would work and it was as utterly unconvincing then as your attempt to do so now. Vague formulations such as a "give-and-take participatory planning process" is just a verbalistic fig leaf to cover up a completely inadequately conceived scheme. There are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of different kinds of products in existence. How does all the apriori planning for all these things meld together. Saying there will be "give and take" is no answer. It will actually very rapidly develop into a bureaucratic nightmare of epic proportions - if it ever got a chance to be tried, that is.

[Tablo]

1. How do they know they're not working? in a densely populated urban metropolis it's easy for people to be relatively anonymous.
Well, some would not consider this a problem as some believe communism will be focused around relatively small communes. This certainly could pose a problem, but there I always the possibility of having some kind of special clearance on an ID of sort that confirms you are a working member of the community.


2. Amoral individualism is encouraged by capitalism, and it's likely that there will be a large minority of people who don't have much sense of social compassion or obligation, as far as the larger society is concerned. therefore, free-loading would in fact be likely to be a serious problem if people can freely consume without working.
Communism comes after long-term transition. Communities will probably focus on the use of a collectivist wage system or labor vouchers during transition. Even when there are individuals who want to undermine the community's economic system that doesn't mean the community has to put up with it. They can deny goods and services to free-loaders.


3. there are different social circles. among those who were not supporters of the change, resistance by not working may be supported by their friends and family. so "social pressure" in this case would be to not cooperate with the communist set up.
They can not work all they want, but that doesn't mean the community has to provide them goods and services. If they want to go play capitalist or individualist in the woods then they are welcome to, but they shouldn't expect any help.


this is why it's necessary to require that people work in order to earn entitlement to consume items produced for private consumption. i'm not talking about things that are provided as free services, such as health care, education.
There are ways of determining who is entitled to goods and services without retaining the wage systems that are a leftover of market economies. In the long run(and I mean really long) most production would be automated and I can see work being a thing of the past so everyone would be free to consume without having to have contributed labor, but that is purely science fiction at this point.




yes. a large opposition minority would be serious economic problem if you have a system of "free-sharing" where people don't have to work to earn consumption entitlement. solution is to require work for individual consumption entitlement, and for people to earn such entitlement through their work effort.
Or, as long as they are recognized as workers we don't have to maintain a wage or labor voucher system. In a gift-economy goods and services would be freely provided to those that actually take part in the economy. That doesn't mean a bunch of lazy individualist punks can run around fucking everything up by taking.

[syndicat]

I did not say class - I said elite - but, yes, I do think a class set up would emerge out of the dynamics of the situation in which in which individuals would have to be monitored in terms of their work effort and regulated in terms of the allocation of work entitlements. This springs from the inherent conflict of interests that stems from any system of economic exchange of which yours is an example. Those who do the monitoring and the regulating will be in poll position to become this new ruling class.



what are you talking about? what "monitoring"? once again you're making stuff up.''


Yes you've previously "explained" how your participatory planning system would work and it was as utterly unconvincing then as your attempt to do so now. Vague formulations such as a "give-and-take participatory planning process" is just a verbalistic fig leaf to cover up a completely inadequately conceived scheme.

well, you're being dishonest. I've explained this in great detail before.

[robbo203]

what are you talking about? what "monitoring"? once again you're making stuff up.''
.

If you are going to pay someone according to work effort then it is obvious that you are going to have to monitor their work effort. Your whole argument rests on the capitalistic assumption that people wont work unless they are paid. So clearly to pay them you first need to "monitor" their work to ensure that they they are doing it in the first and to the standard you require of them



well, you're being dishonest. I've explained this in great detail before.

Yes you have an as Ive explained your whole schema remains utterly unconvincing despite your explanation. Frankly you might just as well opt for capitalism and be done with it.