Super Computers and a Planned Economy [Archive]

robbo203

8th May 2011, 12:56

Are there any studies done on this? I read that in the year 2000, it was predicted that a super computer would be built which has a computing power greater than the human race by the year 2013. I haven't heard any developments on this, so I will assume that this isnt near completion. It also brought to mind Hayek's criticism of a planned economy: it assumes that the intelligence of one man or agency is equivalent to the intelligence of all humans in the world in allocating resources. (Not that I agree with everything that Hayek says, but I'm sure a lot of policy makers do.)
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Will the development of a supercomputer like this make it possible for a planned economy to be obviously better than a market economy?

No. Hayek is right in one sense but completely wrong in another - in assuming socialism must be a centrally planned economy encapsulated by the totally absurd abstraction of a "single society wide plan". Even if some supercomputer could coordinate all of society's inputs and outputs in this way via a vastly complicated form of linear programming, this only scratches the surface of the problem. Data collection and enforcement of the plan are much more formidable, and indeed insurmountable , problems to contend with

Recognising that socialism will NOT be a centrally planned economy in that sense, that it will have a feedback mechanism that can only exist when you have a polycentric or decentralised system, is the key to fundamentally and completely demolishing the whole Misesian economic calculation paradigm against a moneyless socialist economy. It is probably for this reason that anarcho-capitalists cling to a model of socialism that entails central planning in this sense. Intuitively I suspect they realise they have no answer to the argument that socialism will not - and could not - be centrally planned in that sense

Kotze

8th May 2011, 16:00

Even if some supercomputer could coordinate all of society's inputs and outputs in this way via a vastly complicated form of linear programming...I said a normal computer can do this.
Data collection and enforcement of the plan are much more formidable, and indeed insurmountable , problems to contend withI agree that getting input that is close to reality is the tricky part, but I don't think that's insurmountable, unless meant in the sense of getting it perfectly right. In that sense many optimizing challenges are "impossible" that are nevertheless tackled with satisfying results in the real world. I call this critique of planning the Non-Travelling Emo Salesman Problem.

It's like saying that it's maybe possible to measure the direct work applied at the last step of producing everything, but impossible to measure the whole process. If the amount of work at the last step can be measured, we can go backwards from there to approximate the whole process. So the remaining question is how to measure the effort at that step, and when setting how much to give more for harder work and what the harder work is and what work is similarly stressful even if it is in completely different sectors, there's definitely a political dimension to it, that problem is not unique to planning.

I have found people who talk about "decentralized planning" to be rather vague about what they mean by that, I guess it's either bull or just central planning with some critique of some form of central planning nobody actually advocates.

Paul Cockshott

8th May 2011, 16:45

robbo203

9th May 2011, 00:15

I said a normal computer can do this..

Whether or not a normal computer can do it or it requires a supercomputer, the computational aspect of central planning is the least of the problem

I agree that getting input that is close to reality is the tricky part, but I don't think that's insurmountable, unless meant in the sense of getting it perfectly right. ..

You can only say that if by "central planning" you mean something quite other than literal society wide planning which is what Mises and Hayek had in mind as an ideal type. That concept of central planning is unquestionably totally impractical - the idea of coordinating all society's inputs and outputs within a single mega matrix. Amongst other things the slightest perturbation in the real world will necessitate re-drafting of the plan in its entirely becuase of the interconnectedness of everything. And one thing you can predict is the unpredictable will happen. This alone disposes of the idea of the idea of central planning in the sense I am yalking about. But there are other problems - such as the problem of data collection for literally millions of different kinds of inputs and outputs which render the whole idea of central planning in this sense , impracticable

In that sense many optimizing challenges are "impossible" that are nevertheless tackled with satisfying results in the real world. I call this critique of planning the Non-Travelling Emo Salesman Problem...

Well then we are obviously not talking about the same concept of central planning, are we. I am talking about the ideal type employed by the likes of Mises and co. What are you talking about?

It's like saying that it's maybe possible to measure the direct work applied at the last step of producing everything, but impossible to measure the whole process. If the amount of work at the last step can be measured, we can go backwards from there to approximate the whole process. So the remaining question is how to measure the effort at that step, and when setting how much to give more for harder work and what the harder work is and what work is similarly stressful even if it is in completely different sectors, there's definitely a political dimension to it, that problem is not unique to planning....

I am not much of a fan of labour time accounting and I think you grossly simplify what is a much more complex problem. There is also a theoretiucal point about bygones being bygones. How useful is it to draw on data concerning labour already expended for the purposes of planning for the future

I have found people who talk about "decentralized planning" to be rather vague about what they mean by that, I guess it's either bull or just central planning with some critique of some form of central planning nobody actually advocates.

Well this may be the problem - that we are talking at cross purposes. My critique of central planning ir oriented towards the anarcho-caps definition of the same - namely, society wide planning , the idea of a single plan for the whole of soiciety. Decentralised or polycentric planning can take many forms but my own preference is for a multi-tiered approach with global, regional and local levels of planning with the bulk of planning decisions being made at the local level

Kotze

9th May 2011, 12:33

You can only say that if by "central planning" you mean something quite other than literal society wide planning which is what Mises and Hayek had in mind as an ideal type. That concept of central planning is unquestionably totally impractical - the idea of coordinating all society's inputs and outputs within a single mega matrix.If that was unquestionably totally impractical, you wouldn't feel the need to say that it was. At least these aristocrats have the excuse of being dead for some time, what's the excuse of the living for being ignorant of recent (and not so recent, really) developments?

Amongst other things the slightest perturbation in the real world will necessitate re-drafting of the plan in its entirely becuase of the interconnectedness of everything. And one thing you can predict is the unpredictable will happen. This alone disposes of the idea of the idea of central planning...Reminds me of a toddler reasoning they can't be seen because they have their eyes closed. Interconnectedness is true regardless of whether you have central planning. Central planning looks at interconnectedness, this is its strength.
Let's leave out problems with expectational bubbles for some more paragraphs and just picture people who set prices via trial and error and take the prices they can get away with as buyers or sellers as an indicator of current scarcity and that's it. In such a model we can see that the price system enables dealing with scarcity: If an unforeseen natural disaster strikes, price signals help dealing with bottlenecks, both on the side of producing that stuff (the incentive to create what is now scarce) and on the side of taking it as an input or for consumption (incentive to search for alternatives).

But not all scarcity comes from outside society. Bottlenecks and oversupply are also generated inside the economy, by many jumping on or moving away from the same thing having too little awareness of each other's movements. Central computation with dependency info can adjust to external bottlenecks in a way that avoids many of the rocky movements that appear inside market economies.

Imagine a robot in a maze. The only information about the outside world comes through a sensor that tells the robot how much space there is between the robot and a wall in running direction. This sensor doesn't give much information about the whole maze. A price, even if quick and flexible and whatever, is just a single value on a line, but there are several constraints on the economy. Even if prices "work", they cannot capture much information; at best, they are shortsighted signals about what are the most pressing constraints right now, without making a distinction whether these are dictated from outside of human society — facts of nature — or generated inside, so these signals can lead you right out of one dead end into another.

What makes human society so pathetic is that unlike the robot in the maze, we ourselves constructed many of the walls we run into.An implicit assumption in what critics of central planning have written seems to be central planning always meaning optimizing for the moment, so not being able to deal with quick developments. But of course it's possible to have a bit of redundancy in a central plan, for example I'd rather have a bit of overproduction in food items during normal times.
But there are other problems - such as the problem of data collection for literally millions of different kinds of inputs and outputs which render the whole idea of central planning in this sense...pretty much doable with a system of electronic payment and item tracking :P
I am not much of a fan of labour time accounting and I think you grossly simplify what is a much more complex problem.Labour value estimates are to be used for deciding between different production processes for the same thing. Occasional cases where this returns very close results in their overall labour scores while having very different types of work in them, so that a change in politics giving a different multiplier for work classified as particularly arduous results in a different decision of what is considered efficient, doesn't prove it an unworkable concept. Under capitalism, cartels and a weird structure of taxes and subsidies make sensible cost calculation much more noisy.

That's exactly what I referred to with Non-Travelling Emo Salesman. You don't need to know the most efficient route to travel and you don't need to know exact labour values for production, and in both cases having approximate solutions is very helpful.

robbo203

9th May 2011, 19:13

If that was unquestionably totally impractical, you wouldn't feel the need to say that it was. At least these aristocrats have the excuse of being dead for some time, what's the excuse of the living for being ignorant of recent (and not so recent, really) developments?.

Your oblique style of writing leaves me a little puzzled. I simply want to enquire how you define central planning and not be delivered a lecture on dead aristocrats

I am using the classical definition of central planning as society wide planning with a single plan to coordinate all society's inputs and outputs because this is the definition used in the discourse on the subject. The assumption made by anarcho caps is that socialism would not work for the very reason that it entails central planing in this sense. Dont believe me? Well, do some reading yourself and check it out. Try D R Steele's From Marx to Mises Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge if Economic Calculation . Steele is adamant that this version of central planning is or certainly was commonplace among socialists and that there is even prima facie evidence for this in the works of Marx's and Engels (particularly the latter's Socialism Utopian and Scientific). So its not quite as irrelevant as you seem to make out.

My take on it is not only is this conception of central planning wholly impracticable; it is also incompatible with socialism being necessarily top-down in orientation. I am essentially attacking the anarcho caps for assuming that socialism must be centrally planned in this way - as they do despite what you say - but if any who claim to be socialist likewise promote such conception then my attack would equally be directed at them as well. Whether that includes you I do not know. And that was why I was asking how you define central planning

Reminds me of a toddler reasoning they can't be seen because they have their eyes closed. Interconnectedness is true regardless of whether you have central planning. Central planning looks at interconnectedness, this is its strength.An implicit assumption in what critics of central planning have written seems to be central planning always meaning optimizing for the moment, so not being able to deal with quick developments. But of course it's possible to have a bit of redundancy in a central plan, for example I'd rather have a bit of overproduction in food items during normal times

Of course "interconnectedness is true regardless of whether you have central planning" but what of it? Central planning you say looks at interconnectedness and that is its strength. It may "look" at it but can it cope with it? I suggest not. Its the very complexity of modern day production - its interconnectedness - that completely rules out central planning as defined above. The gulf between the plan and the economic reality would widen dramatically because the errors that are certain to happen would have cumulative ramifications. But then again I do not what you mean by central planning so we might talking at cross purposes

10th May 2011, 06:50

jake williams

10th May 2011, 07:45

The whole Central Planning vs Free Market question is to a large extent a false dichotomy. Planning is rather essential within capitalism, be it that it mostly happens on a corporation scale. Communists simply want to extent this planning to the social level, so production based on human need is a feasible objective.
This is a good point. If you look at the amount of economic activity that goes on in the "financial services" or "marketing" sectors, functions often analogous to planning functions in a capitalist society, huge surplus goes into it and it's extremely inefficient. I've heard estimates that marketing takes up about a fifth of the US economy, and financial services a similar amount. If you hear bourgeois economists explain the use and function of financial services, it's basically planning. If a capitalist economy spends a third of its resources (at least) on planning, they have a very difficult argument to make that a communist society wouldn't have the resources to do it, especially without the wastes and redunancies involved with capitalist planning, eg. Coke vs. Pepsi competition, securities fraud, engineering circumstances for profiting from currency speculation, etc.

ar734

11th May 2011, 01:07

I totally agree. The modern, gigantic, monopolistic corporation plans everything it does down to the number of seconds its employees spend on breaks. And it does this with computers. The modern corporation plans production down to the last plastic wrapper, plans prices down to the last cent; it controls demand with advertising planned down to the last second of television time.

But all of this has been known at least from the 60s: Galbraith, Sweezey and others. Yet all you see in the media and, I suppose, in economics classrooms, is the magic of the marketplace.

I know media propaganda is extremely powerful, but how can an entire generation of Americans be completely ignorant about something as basic as monopolies?

Paul Cockshott

11th May 2011, 21:58

Re technology required. We suggested super computers back 20 years ago. It is now possible to buy a computer for about £2000 that will do all we suggested in 1991.
I have just been doing benchmarks on the following machine
64 Gb RAM
2 sockets filled with Xeon E5620
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz
64 bit - 4 Cores - 8 threads
Gulftown, based on Westmere Architecture - the 32nm shrink of Nehalem

L2 Cache: 4 × 256 KB
L3 Cache: 12Mb
The price 6 months ago was £2400

the benchmark problem was an N body planetary simulation for the sun, 4 major planets and 1018 Oort cloud objects. I found with my auto parallelising Vector Pascal compiler that this machine would deliver 7 Gigaflops on a real problem.
The planetary simulation problem is a maximally interconnected problem in that every planet affects, via its gravity, every other. Planning problems and the determination of labour values are characterised by sparse matrices and as such have a lower interconnection order.

I would be interested in practical experimental work any others on the list might try to see how rapidly they can get plan algorithms to converge on high end desktop machines today.

Hyacinth

12th May 2011, 09:30

http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/hpccloud/2011-05-06/simulating_society_at_the_global_scale.html

This article might be of interests to people in this thread:

The group plans to develop “planetary-scale computing facilities” that can equip governments, scientists and ordinary people with a massive computational system the group calls the “Living Earth Platform”. In their vision, this platform “could provide a basis for predicting natural disasters or managing and responding to man-made disasters that cross national borders or even continents.”

[T]he project is about collecting data from things that are happening globally in real-time to run global-scale simulations of social systems.

[It would be] near real-time analytics on an unprecedented scale with vast streams of massive data.

ellipsis

17th May 2011, 05:43

I don't think processing speed or any mechanical abilities would be the problem. The problem would be programing the damn thing to do something useful, like run the entire economy.

robbo203

17th May 2011, 08:39

Re technology required. We suggested super computers back 20 years ago. It is now possible to buy a computer for about £2000 that will do all we suggested in 1991..

All very impressive, Im sure, but to do what exactly? Performing the calculations, solving the linear equations, is the least of the problem. In the real economy there are millions upon millions of different inputs and outputs. Not only do you have to collect the relevant data and ensure its accuracy but more importantly ensure the Plan is faithfully carried out to the letter. Is this remotely feasible? Of course not. Just one poor harvest in the American Mid West, say, will upset your calculations for the agricultural sector with ramifications that will multiply and accumulate and so undermine the usefulness of the Plan. This is just one of a virtually infinite number of ways in which best laid plans of mice and men can turn out to be hopeless inept. A complete waste of time and effort

This is to say nothing of what is implied by central planning - that production quotas are rigorously adhered to, that consumption levels are absolutely enforced through the strictest rationing. Is this compatible with the emancipatory nature of a communist society? I dont think so

I have just been doing benchmarks on the following machine
Planning problems and the determination of labour values are characterised by sparse matrices and as such have a lower interconnection order.
.

I am not at all sure what you are getting at here but I presume your are referring to labour time accounting. Labour time accounting is sometimes associated with the proposal to institute labour vouchers although it is not quite the same thing. Marx talked generally of using labour time accounting as a tool for communist planning and presumably intended it to be used in higher or free access commmunism as well the lower stage of labour voucher communism.

I see little merit in labour time accounting and even less in labour vouchers (try imagine for one moment trying to "price" goods in terms of the labour time content. People who think its easy have no grasp of the problem). There are multiple problems that beset labour time accounting, not the least of which is determining the ratio of skilled to unskilled labour or indeed between different kinds of skilled labour. There is also the question of what exactly are you measuring - socially necessary labour time or actual time worked? And how useful is it anyway to use past labour embodied in machinery and so on for the purposes of future planning. How is the value of this past or dead labour distributed between products produced by living labour utilising this peice of machinery? Or the electricity used to power it? And so on and so forth

There are other more flexible planning tools available to a communist society that can be brought into play without having to go down the dead end road of central planning in its classic sense

Paul Cockshott

17th May 2011, 11:33

All very impressive, Im sure, but to do what exactly? Performing the calculations, solving the linear equations, is the least of the problem. In the real economy there are millions upon millions of different inputs and outputs. Not only do you have to collect the relevant data and ensure its accuracy but more importantly ensure the Plan is faithfully carried out to the letter. Is this remotely feasible?Of course not. Just one poor harvest in the American Mid West, say, will upset your calculations for the agricultural sector with ramifications that will multiply and accumulate and so undermine the usefulness of the Plan. This is just one of a virtually infinite number of ways in which best laid plans of mice and men can turn out to be hopeless inept. A complete waste of time and effort
On data collection. Now that most orders are placed via computer networks and are drafted on computers, the data collection problem is eminently tractable - certainly much simpler than the data collection that Google does daily.

The point about computer technology, and this was understood by the Soviet
cyberneticians, is that you move from a long term prescriptive plan to an
interactive feedback or cybernetic plan which responds to changing situations
like the harvest failure you suggest. This was the kind of application that Beer
aimed at under Allende -- responding fast to changing situations.

This is to say nothing of what is implied by central planning - that production quotas are rigorously adhered to, that consumption levels are absolutely enforced through the strictest rationing. Is this compatible with the emancipatory nature of a communist society? I dont think so
If you use labour vouchers as the basis for distribution there is no need for rationing.
Instead you use the information on what people are spending the labour vouchers on
to determine what the plan mix should be.

I am not at all sure what you are getting at here but I presume your are referring to labour time accounting. Labour time accounting is sometimes associated with the proposal to institute labour vouchers although it is not quite the same thing. Marx talked generally of using labour time accounting as a tool for communist planning and presumably intended it to be used in higher or free access commmunism as well the lower stage of labour voucher communism.

He also talked about it as a distribution mechanism.

I see little merit in labour time accounting and even less in labour vouchers (try imagine for one moment trying to "price" goods in terms of the labour time content. People who think its easy have no grasp of the problem). There are multiple problems that beset labour time accounting, not the least of which is determining the ratio of skilled to unskilled labour or indeed between different kinds of skilled labour.

Skilled labour is itself a produced output requiring training labour as input and as such is no more difficult to quantify than any other produced output.

There is also the question of what exactly are you measuring - socially necessary labour time or actual time worked?

You need to compute socially necessary time. In cases where multiple different
sites make the same thing, the socially necessary time is usually the average time.
Kantorovich argued that one should essentially take the marginal time, but this is
only likely to be significantly different in a few industries with decreasing returns
like oil. In these cases marginal time should be taken. This is pretty clear from
the theory of value in Capital vol III.

And how useful is it anyway to use past labour embodied in machinery and so on for the purposes of future planning. How is the value of this past or dead labour distributed between products produced by living labour utilising this peice of machinery? Or the electricity used to power it? And so on and so forth

The procedures for accounting for this are pretty clearly described in volume I of Capital

There are other more flexible planning tools available to a communist society that can be brought into play without having to go down the dead end road of central planning in its classic sense

I doubt it, if you do not use planning you end up using the market and re-instituting
the germs of capitalist commodity production.

Rowan Duffy

17th May 2011, 11:36

All very impressive, Im sure, but to do what exactly? Performing the calculations, solving the linear equations, is the least of the problem. In the real economy there are millions upon millions of different inputs and outputs. Not only do you have to collect the relevant data and ensure its accuracy but more importantly ensure the Plan is faithfully carried out to the letter. Is this remotely feasible? Of course not. Just one poor harvest in the American Mid West, say, will upset your calculations for the agricultural sector with ramifications that will multiply and accumulate and so undermine the usefulness of the Plan. This is just one of a virtually infinite number of ways in which best laid plans of mice and men can turn out to be hopeless inept. A complete waste of time and effort

This is to say nothing of what is implied by central planning - that production quotas are rigorously adhered to, that consumption levels are absolutely enforced through the strictest rationing. Is this compatible with the emancipatory nature of a communist society? I dont think so

Steven Smith (http://www.ri.cmu.edu/person.html?person_id=293)has done some very useful work on planning and scheduling with devolved/decentralised decisions collated into central plans and dynamic updating of plans according to new information.

The military uses some software developed at the CMU Robotics Institute for logistics. It is not the case that it can't be made to work though there are a number of real problems that have to be dealt with seriously.

The question of information quality is a serious one. The pilot logistics programme for the military encountered difficulties with people attempting to expedite emergency plans by movements outside of the accounting system which lead to cascading failure of information quality, as distribution channels were, in reality, shut down while still being available inside the system.

The key to overcoming such problems is to set up the system in such a way that it's actually easier for users to go through the system than to avoid it. That's going to take experimentation and there is really no way to avoid it. For this reason I don't believe that we can expect a quick transition to planning. More likely we'll have to have some intermediary step where planning attempts are engaged in seriously. A sort of planning Manhattan project.

In a market economy a shipment of defective parts is liable to be rejected, the supplier sued if the purchaser is not reimbursed and that supplier is unlikely to be used again. Some mechanism for ensuring quality within point-to-point shipments is likely required. There may need to be carrots and sticks in point-to-point shipments to ensure that this occurs.

In terms of dynamism, tight planning and scheduling has to be rejected. Tight plans can not be dynamic without excessive computational load. Instead, everything needs to be over-approximated. We will over-produce and early-ship such that normal scale disruptions do not require recomputation. Large-scale changes will still require new plans, but that's liable to work out better than ad-hoc approaches to coping with utter disaster anyhow.

The question does not resolve to rigid totally centralised authority controlling everything with gulags for failure or no planning at all. Indeed trying to shift out of planning entirely hardly solves the problem at all. In reality what will happen when free, uncoordinated ad-hoc distribution fails to function is a return to market economics.

RED DAVE

17th May 2011, 16:55

What does any of this have to do with revolutionary workers democracy? Are we going to borrow techniques from the USSR and capitalist Chile to run a socialist society?

RED DAVE

robbo203

17th May 2011, 18:06

On data collection. Now that most orders are placed via computer networks and are drafted on computers, the data collection problem is eminently tractable - certainly much simpler than the data collection that Google does daily..

"Placing orders" via computer networks is not the issue. In fact that is actually an aspect of what I am advocating as part of a self regulating decentralised alternative to classic central planning. Unless we are talking at cross purposes, what you are promoting here is not central planning in this sense.

The point about computer technology, and this was understood by the Soviet
cyberneticians, is that you move from a long term prescriptive plan to an
interactive feedback or cybernetic plan which responds to changing situations
like the harvest failure you suggest. This was the kind of application that Beer
aimed at under Allende -- responding fast to changing situations.

Incorporating a feedback mechanism necessarily signifies the abandonment of central planning in the sense of one single coordinated plan for all of society -society wide planning

If you use labour vouchers as the basis for distribution there is no need for rationing.
Instead you use the information on what people are spending the labour vouchers on
to determine what the plan mix should be.

This is confused. Labour vouchers are a form of rationing. That is why they were advocated - to ration goods under conditions of scarcity. That is why Marx held they would disappear under higher or free access communism when material abundance prevailed

He also talked about it as a distribution mechanism..

Labour vouchers is the distribution mechanism. not labour time accounting as such . Labour time accounting is implicated in adminstering the labour voucher scheme but is not to be equated with it. It is simply a a planning tool which, for some, is not confined to just labour voucher communism but to communism in general

Skilled labour is itself a produced output requiring training labour as input and as such is no more difficult to quantify than any other produced output...

With this , you simply brush under the carpet the very real problems in trying to evaluate different kinds of labour. You are only redefining the problem, not solving it. How do you measure the education and training required to produce and reproduce one kind of labour as opposed to another and how is this to reflected in pay ratios? Does someone who gets paid in labour vouchers three times what someone else gets paid means that that person has embodied within him/her 3X the training and education . Or what? What do the ratios actually signifiy?

You need to compute socially necessary time. In cases where multiple different
sites make the same thing, the socially necessary time is usually the average time.
Kantorovich argued that one should essentially take the marginal time, but this is
only likely to be significantly different in a few industries with decreasing returns
like oil. In these cases marginal time should be taken. This is pretty clear from
the theory of value in Capital vol III....

The point is that sociallly necessary labour time is not something that can be empirically measured and computed; rather, it is an abstraction, something it is revealed or inferred ex post facto through the operation of market prices in the sense thatonly in the long run do prices and values tend to coincide. The only labour that is said to confer value on a commodity is "socially necessary labour" and this determined by conditions subsequent to production and at the time of sale. Actual labour time expended is not much help here (as Marx himself pointed in his critique of Gray's "labour money" scheme in Grundrisse )

The procedures for accounting for this are pretty clearly described in volume I of Capital....

They may be clearly described but are they realistically implementable? I think Marx massively understestimated the complexities surrounding labour time accounting. The existence of powerful computer technologies today is not of much help here since we are talking of a problem that is not really one of computation but evaluation

I doubt it, if you do not use planning you end up using the market and re-instituting
the germs of capitalist commodity production.

There is planning under any possible system you can conceive of. The market itself is full of plans. Entrepeneurs and corporations plan all the time. So this is a complete false dichotomy.

The real issue is who plans and for what. Are we talking about polycentric planning or a single planning authority that plans for the whole of society and coordinates all of its inputs and outputs within a single society wide plan? That is central planning in its classic sense. By definition it precludes the operation of a feedback mechanism which you yourself have accepted must exist. Ergo you have implicitly rejected this centrally planned model yourself. Despite that, you want to hang on those features of it which you find attractive - such as the coordination of production -seemingly without realising that production can be coordinated spontaneously and that this does not require the market mechanism

Paul Cockshott

17th May 2011, 19:00

What does any of this have to do with revolutionary workers democracy? Are we going to borrow techniques from the USSR and capitalist Chile to run a socialist society?

RED DAVE

This just sounds like 'Dave Spart' type sectarianism. It is just silly not to study, not uncrtically but still seriously, attempts that have been made in the past to address these issues . Beer's work in Chile was done as part of the attempt by the PU government there to start a socialist transition. That alone gave it purpose, it was immediately discontinued after the coup.

Paul Cockshott

17th May 2011, 19:10

"Placing orders" via computer networks is not the issue. In fact that is actually an aspect of what I am advocating as part of a self regulating decentralised alternative to classic central planning. Unless we are talking at cross purposes, what you are promoting here is not central planning in this sense.

Incorporating a feedback mechanism necessarily signifies the abandonment of central planning in the sense of one single coordinated plan for all of society -society wide planning

Why do you think this?

This is confused. Labour vouchers are a form of rationing. That is why they were advocated - to ration goods under conditions of scarcity. That is why Marx held they would disappear under higher or free access communism when material abundance prevailed

In a very abstract sense yes, but they are very different from rationing as it
is normally understood. In the normal sense of the word, you get a ration
book that allows you definite quotas of key goods: so much flour, so much butter,
so much bacon. I was using rationing in the common sense meaning.

Labour vouchers is the distribution mechanism. not labour time accounting as such . Labour time accounting is implicated in adminstering the labour voucher scheme but is not to be equated with it. It is simply a a planning tool which, for some, is not confined to just labour voucher communism but to communism in general
yes

With this , you simply brush under the carpet the very real problems in trying to evaluate different kinds of labour. You are only redefining the problem, not solving it. How do you measure the education and training required to produce and reproduce one kind of labour as opposed to another and how is this to reflected in pay ratios? Does someone who gets paid in labour vouchers three times what someone else gets paid means that that person has embodied within him/her 3X the training and education . Or what? What do the ratios actually signifiy?

Why should trained workers be paid more if training is free and people get grants to study?

The point is that sociallly necessary labour time is not something that can be empirically measured and computed; rather, it is an abstraction, something it is revealed or inferred ex post facto through the operation of market prices in the sense thatonly in the long run do prices and values tend to coincide. The only labour that is said to confer value on a commodity is "socially necessary labour" and this determined by conditions subsequent to production and at the time of sale

This is how the currently fashionable 'labour form' theorists interpret Marx. I think
it is a quite wrong interpretation of him, and one very much influenced by Hayek.

The real issue is who plans and for what. Are we talking about polycentric planning or a single planning authority that plans for the whole of society and coordinates all of its inputs and outputs within a single society wide plan? That is central planning in its classic sense. By definition it precludes the operation of a feedback mechanism which you yourself have accepted must exist. Ergo you have implicitly rejected this centrally planned model yourself. Despite that, you want to hang on those features of it which you find attractive - such as the coordination of production -seemingly without realising that production can be coordinated spontaneously and that this does not require the market mechanism
I think this notion of spontaneous order is Hayekian. I do reject it. I think that the key issue is how to exercise democratic control over planning.

S.Artesian

17th May 2011, 21:41

What does any of this have to do with revolutionary workers democracy? Are we going to borrow techniques from the USSR and capitalist Chile to run a socialist society?

RED DAVE

Of course we are. Just as we are going to use the techniques developed by capitalism. We'll use the "critical path" method to plan, sequence, stage construction and the production and delivery of materials necessary for large undertakings. We'll use GANTT charts.

We'll probably find lots to use in China's construction of its HSR network, and I know there's a lot to use in the way the fSU managed its growth in rail traffic in the 60s, 70s, 80s.

We'll use inventory control just like we're going to use computers, radio technology, laser surgery, antibiotics... anything.

Chile's experiment, Beers attempt to track, manage, social production on a integrated basis under Allende was very interesting.

Die Neue Zeit

18th May 2011, 02:52

^^^ Gotta agree with you there, but you forgot the most important aspect of inventory control today: barcodes.

RED DAVE

18th May 2011, 03:10

Jose Gracchus

18th May 2011, 03:56

I must agree with RED DAVE. One thing I will give the pareconists is they have at least claimed to embed it systemically in a conception of power revolving around the direct producers: yes, let's talk about the working class. So we imagine a revolution, and this should be promulgated and implemented by what means in order to secure the real dissolution of capitalist relations and to solidify workers' power?

S.Artesian

18th May 2011, 12:45

RED DAVE

18th May 2011, 19:41

Sociallism = soviets + electrification

becomes

Socialism = electronic sovietsWhich becomes

socialism = linked computers

PCs of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your users; you have an Internet to win!

RED DAVE

S.Artesian

18th May 2011, 20:33

Which becomes

socialism = linked computers

PCs of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your users; you have an Internet to win!

RED DAVE

No, not "linked computers." That would be digital fetishism. Workers utilizing computers to organize the economy consciously for the satisfaction of needs, for the totality of society.

I meant it humorously. But we have to manage the economy, I mean we collectively, as a whole, a social whole. How are we going to do that without creating the conscious links that capitalism establishes in alienated, conflicted, expropriated manner?

Hit The North

18th May 2011, 20:45

All Watched Over
by Machines of Loving Grace

by Richard Brautigan

I'd like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky. I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Paul Cockshott

18th May 2011, 21:08

Maybe I'm over-reacting, but, frankly, I find this bureaucratic shuffling, which seems to fascinate PC and DNZ, to be somewhat beside the point.

Let me ask you comrades how all this is going to fit with workers democracy from the workplace on up, especially since you both come from a very bureaucratic, elitist political background, to be kind.

RED DAVE

I can understand you thinking this because you are already convinced of the superiority of socialism. But in this you are in a small minority. Many many more people are convinced by the popularisations of the conservative critiques which claim to show the impossibility of socialism. If socialism is to be once again the commonsense of the age, as it was say 80 years ago, it is necessary to have rebuttals of the arguments against socialism put forward by the right.

robbo203

18th May 2011, 21:38

Why do you think this?.

Why? Because the placing of orders implies a feedback mechanism, a interactive process. The "orders" derive not from some "single vast plan" that is entailed in classical central planning. You are not being guided by this plan as to what produce. You are being guided by numerous different units who each place orders with you, acting separately, and to which you as just another unit, respond

In a very abstract sense yes, but they are very different from rationing as it
is normally understood. In the normal sense of the word, you get a ration
book that allows you definite quotas of key goods: so much flour, so much butter,
so much bacon. I was using rationing in the common sense meaning.

Even in your normal sense of the word "rationing" most advocates of labour vouchers would maintain that the vouchers are for specific goods and not exchangeable for just any good.

Why should trained workers be paid more if training is free and people get grants to study?.

Thats not for me to answer since I am not an advocate of labour vouchers or any other form of remuneration. I am solely interested in what Marx called higher communism - free access and voluntaristic communism.

But thats getting away from the point isnt it? If you advocate labour time accounting - which must be so if you advocate labour vouchers - how do you differentiate between different kinds of work or levels of skill? Or dont you? Is one hour's work performed by a neurosurgeon going to count for precisely the same as one hour's work by say a road sweeper? You might pay them the same in labour vouchers which you might want to justify on ethical grounds but would you treat them the same for planning purposes as in labour time accounting? Why?

This is how the currently fashionable 'labour form' theorists interpret Marx. I think
it is a quite wrong interpretation of him, and one very much influenced by Hayek.

How so? What are Hayek's thoughts on socially necessary labour time and can you cite references? I thought it was generall understood that SNLT which confers value on a commodity is not something that can actually be empirically measured or pinned down at any on point in time since it is the result of many different factors that are themsleves in a state of flux. Marx describes SNLT as ‘the labour required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production and with the average degree and skill and intensity prevalent at the time,’ with its parameters being determined by ‘the average amount of skill of the workman, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organization of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of production and by physical conditions’.

I think this notion of spontaneous order is Hayekian. I do reject it. I think that the key issue is how to exercise democratic control over planning.

How can you possibly envisage "democratic planning "in respect of a single vast plan that encompasses and coordinates all or society's inputs and outputs? Are we going tyo democratically decide - all 6 billion of us at a global level - how many car batterieis, soft drink dispensers, or ball bearings global saociety ought to produce? Of course not . The idea is absurd. Never mind trying to solve this democratically. It cannot even be done by some terchnocratic elite with super duper computer technology at its disposal and for reasons I touched on ealirer.

Your comments show that you dont really understand what is meant by the notion of a "spontaneous order" or indeed central planning. Its not necessarily anythingf to do with Hayek. Hayek talked about the informational problem confronting central planners but he advocated the dispersal of information via the mediation of the market. But you can have a spontaneously regulated society without the market at all.

This is the point you need to get to grips with. In point of fact you are more than half way there as your comments on placing orders via a computer network show. Its just that for some strange reason you want to hang on to the idea of central planning. But central planning in its classic sense, at any rate, of society wide planning, is a non-starter.

There is no alternative to a polycentric self regulating spontaneous order. The only question is what kind of spontaneous order do we want. Nor is this incompatible with planning since even the market is full of plans

Kotze

18th May 2011, 22:57

Incorporating a feedback mechanism necessarily signifies the abandonment of central planning in the sense of one single coordinated plan for all of society -society wide planningCentral planning in the sense used by Cockshott and Cottrell (and others, eg. me) doesn't imply that, merely central data processing, which allows better optimization compared to decentralized approaches (simplistic example of assigning kids to schools (http://www.revleft.com/vb/case-central-planning-t142473/index.html?t=142473)).
Labour vouchers are a form of rationing.Well, that's true in a sense, though that word has several meanings and from the context it's pretty clear that Cockshott interpreted your claim that central planning means "consumption levels are absolutely enforced through the strictest rationing" in the sense of people getting identical consumption bundles, which is not implied by central planning in the sense used by him, and he merely intended to point that out. The proposed labour-voucher system in Towards a New Socialism is used to allow people to consume according to individual preferences and also for adjusting production based on demand, there are not different vouchers for different products or different product categories, only one type. The reason why Cockshott doesn't call this money is that his definition of money entails some features that are absent here (buying means of production, hiring labour, inheritance).
How do you measure the education and training required to produce and reproduce one kind of labour as opposed to another and how is this to reflected in pay ratios?For planning, the time needed to learn the skills as well as the time of teaching persons has to be estimated. Paid are not only the teaching persons, those acquiring skills are paid while they are in the process of learning them. This cost is made part of the price customers have to pay for items and services (with collectively funded exceptions like healthcare; the collectively funded part of the economy may increase as technology and popular opinion change). The work that goes into acquiring skills for producing an item is treated as part of that item's production cost, just like the work that goes into making and maintaining the machines used in producing that item.

The cost of someone becoming a skilled worker is not used to justify a higher income for skilled workers, as they are already paid an income during their training, so the usual arguments about needing enough incentive to take the risk of studying and having to pay down debt accrued during studying don't apply here.

I do not understand why people who are so eager to put forth lengthy critiques of the framework in Towards a Socialism, which is freely available online, haven't read it. The result of this and that people here have little interest in economics is that we have "discussions" that go on for several months without "committed users" like you, syndicat, RED DAVE, and S.Artesian getting an inch closer to being capable of paraphrasing the position you pretend to criticize, while offering "alternatives" like vague slogans about how the workers will find a solution (RED DAVE) or iPods-growing-on-trees voodoo nonsense (you). :closedeyes:

S.Artesian

18th May 2011, 23:36

I don't believe I've criticized Mr. Cockshott's position on supercomputers.

robbo203

19th May 2011, 00:38

Central planning in the sense used by Cockshott and Cottrell (and others, eg. me) doesn't imply that, merely central data processing, which allows better optimization compared to decentralized approaches (simplistic example of assigning kids to schools (http://www.revleft.com/vb/case-central-planning-t142473/index.html?t=142473)).

Central data processing is not planning. Planning might entail central data processing but it is a lot more than this. Classic central planning is the proposal to coordinate apriori all society's input and outputs within a single vast society-wide plan with specific detailed targets being handed down to all production units which they are expected to comply to the letter since these units depend on other units for their inputs If Cockshott and Cottrell are not advcacating this then they are not advocating central planning - at least not in its classic sense. I simply want them to recognise and acknowlege this simple fact and not get so carried away by the rhetoric of "planning"

Well, that's true in a sense, though that word has several meanings and from the context it's pretty clear that Cockshott interpreted your claim that central planning means "consumption levels are absolutely enforced through the strictest rationing" in the sense of people getting identical consumption bundles, which is not implied by central planning in the sense used by him, and he merely intended to point that out. .

I didnt say anything about people getting identical consumption bundles. It is still possible to get different consumption bundles and for this also to be enforced by the "strictest ratioming". Obviously it would have to be strict since everything about the plan is coordinated and determined a priori. - you cant just magic twice as many bottles of lemonade out of thin air than allowed for in the Plan since the resources have already been allocated. Doubling the output of lemonade means redrawing the whole Plan because of the interconnectedness of everything in the Plan

The proposed labour-voucher system in Towards a New Socialism is used to allow people to consume according to individual preferences and also for adjusting production based on demand, there are not different vouchers for different products or different product categories, only one type. The reason why Cockshott doesn't call this money is that his definition of money entails some features that are absent here (buying means of production, hiring labour, inheritance)..

Like I said, while he might propose a type of labour voucher system in which you can use a voucher for any good you chose, other advocates see vouchers as being tied to specific goods.

Personally I see no merit in the labour voucher scheme at all. Quite apart from the formidable problem of evaluating and monitoring work contributions, there is the even more daunting task of having to price labour vouchers in labour time units. I dont think labour voucher enthsuiasts have thought through just what a problem this is. Additionally of course, if you want to avoid serious imbalances in supply and demand you have to ensure that the total face value of vouchers issued more or less equates with the total face value of all prices. You thinks thats easy? Think again!

The usual explanation as to why vouchers are not money is that they do not circulate- not "buying means of production, hiring labour, inheritance" as such. But presumably, since you mention it, means of production and not just consumer goods would have to be priced under a labour voucher system as well. Afterall the pricing of consumer goods would presumably again have to reflect their embodied labour content and therefore also the labour content passed on to the product from the machine that produced the product. How would producer units obtain producer goods if not by buying them with vouchers.

For planning, the time needed to learn the skills as well as the time of teaching persons has to be estimated. Paid are not only the teaching persons, those acquiring skills are paid while they are in the process of learning them. This cost is made part of the price customers have to pay for items and services (with collectively funded exceptions like healthcare; the collectively funded part of the economy may increase as technology and popular opinion change). The work that goes into acquiring skills for producing an item is treated as part of that item's production cost, just like the work that goes into making and maintaining the machines used in producing that item.)..

This is just glossing over the problem not dealing with it. My point was how do you evaluate different kinds of labour. If you do evaluate different kinds of labour differently i.e. remunerated differently, this has an obvious bearing on production costs as you seem to agree yourself since you talk of the "work that goes into acquiring skills for producing an item is treated as part of that item's production cost". So what are you going to do? Pay everyone the same hourly rate or pay them a different rate according to level of skill etc. If the latter, how do you work out the specific ratios? How much more productive is a neurosurgeon than a roadsweeper? Either way there are huge problems for a labour voucher scheme which its advocates have simply not taken into account, in my view, not the least of which is the social friction and discontent that is like to arise

The cost of someone becoming a skilled worker is not used to justify a higher income for skilled workers, as they are already paid an income during their training, so the usual arguments about needing enough incentive to take the risk of studying and having to pay down debt accrued during studying don't apply here..
.

They may well be paid in the process of acquiring a skill but having acquired a akill - if I might put my devils advocates hat on - the persons concerned might consider themselves more productive to society and therefore fully deservingt of a high than average income never mind what it cost them to obtain that skill. Are you going to deny them this. I mean what would be the point of studying to be a neurosurgeon is you can expect to get paid exactly the same afterwards as a roadsweeper. I only mention this not becuase I buy this aregument but rather becuase the labour voucher scheme has been justifed as a way of compelling individuals to contribute to society. Fine. But if we are all paid the same whats to stop us all gravitating towards the most congenional jobs around, leaving society with a conspiucuous shortage of shit shovellers or people to repair broken nuclear reactors etc

I do not understand why people who are so eager to put forth lengthy critiques of the framework in Towards a Socialism, which is freely available online, haven't read it. The result of this and that people here have little interest in economics is that we have "discussions" that go on for several months without "committed users" like you, syndicat, RED DAVE, and S.Artesian getting an inch closer to being capable of paraphrasing the position you pretend to criticize, while offering "alternatives" like vague slogans about how the workers will find a solution (RED DAVE) or iPods-growing-on-trees voodoo nonsense (you). :closedeyes:

Ive read most of Towards a New Socialism some time ago and frankly wasnt impressed. I recall it talking about the Soviet Union and asserting that what was basically wrong with the SU was that it was not sufficently democratic. As if.

RED DAVE

19th May 2011, 01:20

I do not understandYou don't understand.

why peoplePeople not comrades.

who are so eager to put forth lengthy critiques of the framework in Towards a Socialism, which is freely available online, haven't read it.With all due respect, having skimmed it, it strikes me as a very bureaucratic approach to socialism.

The result of this and that people here have little interest in economics is that we have "discussions" that go on for several months without "committed users" like you, syndicat, RED DAVE, and S.Artesian getting an inch closer to being capable of paraphrasing the position you pretend to criticizeIn your opinion.

while offering "alternatives" like vague slogans about how the workers will find a solution (RED DAVE)What I am adressing is the crucial issue of workers power, which does not seem to enter into the calculations of Cockshott, et al. And, to me, this is prior to any other discussions.

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

19th May 2011, 01:25

From Towards a New Socialism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/%7Ecottrell/socialism_book//new_socialism.pdf)

1) Soviet society was indeed socialist.

(2) This society had many undesirable and problematic features.

(3) The problems of Soviet society were in part related to the extremely dif-
ficult historical circumstances in which the Bolsheviks set about trying
to build socialism, but that is not all: important policy mistakes were
made (just as possible in a socialist society as in capitalism), and further-
more the problems of Soviet socialism in part reflect serious weaknesses
in classical Marxism itself.

(4) The failure of the Soviet system is therefore by no means irrelevant to
Marxian socialism. We must reflect carefully on the lessons to be learned
from this failure.

(5) Nonetheless, unlike those who delight in proclaiming the complete historic
rout of Marxism, we believe that a different type of socialism—still recog-
nizably Marxian, yet substantially reformulated—is possible. The Soviet
Union was socialist, but other forms of Marxian socialism are possible.

(6) This claim can be sustained only by spelling out in much more detail than
hitherto both the sorts of economic mechanisms and the forms of political
constitution which socialists consider both desirable and feasible. This we
try to do in the book.(page 9)

203 pages of this. Sigh!

RED DAVE

S.Artesian

19th May 2011, 02:05

Well, far be it from me to get into a political discussion in a strictly economics thread, but here's my problem with Towards a New Socialism. Mr. Cockshott argues that economic systems can be differentiated by the way differences in the mode of appropriation of the surplus product. And he claims the fSU was clearly socialist, not some intermediate organization, but socialist. And then he says:

Starting from the question of how the extraction of a surplus product was possible in a planned but undemocratic system, the cult of Stalin’s personality appears not as a mere ‘aberration’, but as an integral feature of the system. Stalin: at once the inspirational leader, making up in determination and grit for what he lacked in eloquence and capable of promoting a sense of participation in a great historic endeavour, and the stern and utterly
ruthless liquidator of any who failed so to participate (and many others besides).
The Stalin cult, with both its populist and its terrible aspects, was central to the Soviet mode of extraction of a surplus product.
See how this works? Different appropriation of surplus-- not through the market, therefore socialism. And then... well, threat, terror, arrest, imprisonment, was necessary to make this different mode of appropriation, this socialism function.

Those with more than a passing knowledge of Marx's analysis of the labor process, particularly Marx's explication in his economic manuscripts 1857-1864 might recall that Marx talks about the compulsion imposed upon the laborers in different systems. There's the compulsion of the lash under slavery; the compulsion of the corvee, there's the compulsion, the "free" compulsion,exercised upon the laborer by capitalism where his/her labor has no use other than its use in exchange for the means of subsistence.

So to this we can now add the "socialist" compulsion of the gulag, of the show trial, of the execution. And that's socialism. Sure, it isn't the socialism Marx envisioned, where the socialism had to be a product of the mechanisms for developing a conscious association of producers; where in fact, it couldn't be socialism if the conscious association of producers did not consciously, freely, and without threats determine and account for the needs of all as individuals, but hey, nobody's perfect, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, etc. etc. etc.

So once I read that little bit of ahistorical, and faux-materialist representation of the fSU, I kind of lost the desire to read anymore. Hey, nobody's perfect. Sue me.

And what's even more idealist is Mr. Cockshott's thumbnail sketch of the post WW2 decline of the fSU... all that bunk about "pioneering spirit" etc.

But I sure have enjoyed reading the discussion about centralized planning and computers.

robbo203

19th May 2011, 06:53

Hyacinth

19th May 2011, 08:35

Hyacinth

19th May 2011, 08:45

From my experience Cockshott is essentially correct when he says, in response to RED DAVE's concerns:

I can understand you thinking this because you are already convinced of the superiority of socialism. But in this you are in a small minority. Many many more people are convinced by the popularisations of the conservative critiques which claim to show the impossibility of socialism. If socialism is to be once again the commonsense of the age, as it was say 80 years ago, it is necessary to have rebuttals of the arguments against socialism put forward by the right.
For all its faults Toward a Now Socialism, along with subsequent work by the authors, as well as some of the work by Albert and Hahnel (the pareconists), is the only contemporary attempt that I've come across that attempts to tacke the question of how a socialist economic order is going to be organized. As the experience of the Soviet Union and other attempts to build a non-market economy shows, it is a far from trivial matter. Now, I am convinced, perhaps naively, that contemporary computing technology has overcome the technical problems standing in the way of a planned economy preforming as well, and even outperforming, capitalist counterparts. Demonstrating that this is true and how this could be done, apart from its utility to a post-revolutionary society, has considerable propagandistic value today. Many people today, even if they might be sympathetic to socialism, wrongly believe that it is impossible or impractical; if we can dissuade them of this they are more likely to support and stand up for a socialist cause.

robbo203

19th May 2011, 09:02

Even if you disagree with the analysis of the Soviet Union in Toward a New Socialism, I don't see how this in any way renders the work as a whole (and more contemporary work by Cockshott) incorrect or irrelevant. Especially as, even if the Soviet Union is regarded as socialist in Toward a New Socialism and you think this is wrong (as I do), considering the work explicitly eschews the Soviet-model as something that we want to emulate (though this isn't to say that we have nothing to learn from it), it's stance on the Soviet Union has little to do with the proposals for how a socialist economy can be coordinated and planned.

I disagree. Toward a New Socialism unequivocally declares that the Soviet Union was a socialist society. If you believe that then this is bound to colour anything else you might propose. This is because any proposal as to how a socialist economy can be coordinated and planned starts with the basic assumption that such an economy must resemble in its basics what existed in the Soviet Union. That is what they mean by "socialism". They dont like certain things about this "socialism" in the Soviet Union - its undemocratic aspects for example - but in essence their new "socialism" is the same as the old "socialism" i.e. state run capitalism

They basically want a nicer, more cuddly liberal version of "socialism" with of course a secure role for all those well meaning computer scientists in comfortable university posts to ensure that everything is "coordinated and planned" with the aid of super duper computer technology for the benefit of us proles

robbo203

19th May 2011, 09:18

From my experience Cockshott is essentially correct when he says, in response to RED DAVE's concerns:

For all its faults Toward a Now Socialism, along with subsequent work by the authors, as well as some of the work by Albert and Hahnel (the pareconists), is the only contemporary attempt that I've come across that attempts to tacke the question of how a socialist economic order is going to be organized. As the experience of the Soviet Union and other attempts to build a non-market economy shows, it is a far from trivial matter. Now, I am convinced, perhaps naively, that contemporary computing technology has overcome the technical problems standing in the way of a planned economy preforming as well, and even outperforming, capitalist counterparts. Demonstrating that this is true and how this could be done, apart from its utility to a post-revolutionary society, has considerable propagandistic value today. Many people today, even if they might be sympathetic to socialism, wrongly believe that it is impossible or impractical; if we can dissuade them of this they are more likely to support and stand up for a socialist cause.

This is a recipe for absolute failure. If you are trying to persuade people to the socialist cause the last thing you want to do is try to associate it in any way with soviet state capitalism and its brutal anti working class policies. Retaining this same basic model of "socialism" but now with the bolt on features of modern computer technology is not going to make it appear any more attractive or feasible. This is technological determinsm of the worst sort. Its the system itself, the social relations that characterise it, that people react negatively to and this is not going to change becuase we now have the means allegedly to better "plan and coordinate production".

If we are going to make any progress towards socialism at all we have to decisively cut away any association whatsoever between socialism and Soviet state capitalism. Lets not pussyfoot about this. We need to say loudly and clearly for all to hear that this latter thing is emphatiically not socialism, has nothing to do with socialism and is not even some kind of convenient transitional arrangement to expedite socialisdm. On the contrary it has probably been the single biggest obstacle in the way of socialism - the fact that people thought and still think Soviet capitalism had something to do with "socialism"

Hyacinth

19th May 2011, 09:31

I disagree. Toward a New Socialism unequivocally declares that the Soviet Union was a socialist society. If you believe that then this is bound to colour anything else you might propose. This is because any proposal as to how a socialist economy can be coordinated and planned starts with the basic assumption that such an economy must resemble in its basics what existed in the Soviet Union. That is what they mean by "socialism". They dont like certain things about this "socialism" in the Soviet Union - its undemocratic aspects for example - but in essence their new "socialism" is the same as the old "socialism" i.e. state run capitalism.

They basically want a nicer, more cuddly liberal version of "socialism" with of course a secure role for all those well meaning computer scientists in comfortable university posts to ensure that everything is "coordinated and planned" with the aid of super duper computer technology for the benefit of us proles.
To quote from an excerpt from Toward a New Socialism which RED DAVE quoted in a post above:

[U]nlike those who delight in proclaiming the complete historic rout of Marxism, we believe that a different type of socialism—still recognizably Marxian, yet substantially reformulated—is possible. The Soviet Union was socialist, but other forms of Marxian socialism are possible.
This doesn't sound to be like an endorsement of the Soviet-model.

I read Toward a New Socialism more like an economic work that deals with a planned economy, rather than a proposal for the political economy of socialism. Any socialist political economy, whatever the particular details of its organization, will have to employ computing technology and advanced linear and non-linear models of the economy as a whole to coordinate and plan all the activities that are currently done via market mechanisms. And it is precisely these technical tools which can remove the economy from the market chaos and bring it under the control of goal-directed reason which make possible the democratization of the economy.

Perhaps Cockshott and Cottrell doesn't explicitly discuss the participatory and anticipatory democratic mechanisms that will determine the outputs of the plan in Toward a New Socialism (it's been a while since I've read the work), but, IIRC, Cockshott does go on to address such questions in subsequent papers, and, IIRC again, he has even gone so far as to say that the difference between his and Cottrell's position and that of Albert and Hahnel (whose left libertarian credentials aren't in question) is largely terminological, arising from their different political backgrounds as Marxists and anarchists respectively.

Now, if you don't want to take their word for it, fine. But it doesn't negate their important technical discussions about how linear programing can be employed to plan an economy, the tractability of solving a system of linear equations of a complexity class equivalent to an existing economy, and their contribution to the socialist calculation debate on the side of socialism. It it this which I find of value in their work.

That these technical methods were (poorly) employed by the Soviet Union and are employed (far more effectively) by contemporary capitalist firms doesn't render them irrelevant to socialism, or their employment somehow capitalist, state or otherwise. As, after all, socialism will be build on the ashes of the old world with the methods the technology that is developed by it. Computers and linear programing aren't authoritarian.

Hyacinth

19th May 2011, 09:40

This is a recipe for absolute failure. If you are trying to persuade people to the socialist cause the last thing you want to do is try to associate it in any way with soviet state capitalism and its brutal anti working class policies. Retaining this same basic model of "socialism" but now with the bolt on features of modern computer technology is not going to make it appear any more attractive or feasible. This is technological determinsm of the worst sort. Its the system itself, the social relations that characterise it, that people react negatively to and this is not going to change becuase we now have the means allegedly to better "plan and coordinate production".
Two things, in brief: (1) as I said in my previous post, the technical contribution still stands even if you find the particular politics of the authors unpalatable, and (2) I think you underestimate the importance of material conditions, as, after all, one of the major complaints of people on the former so-called 'socialist' states was less to do with social relations and the authoritarian nature of the state (not that this was not a concern), and more to do with the fact that their material standard of living was far below that of the capitalist West (the systems unresponsiveness to consumer demand due to lack of market mechanisms, and its parallel political unresponsiveness due to its undemocratic nature, resulted in the shortage of consumer goods, which was a much more immediate complaint of most people under Soviet rule).

If we are going to make any progress towards socialism at all we have to decisively cut away any association whatsoever between socialism and Soviet state capitalism. Lets not pussyfoot about this. We need to say loudly and clearly for all to hear that this latter thing is emphatiically not socialism, has nothing to do with socialism and is not even some kind of convenient transitional arrangement to expedite socialisdm. On the contrary it has probably been the single biggest obstacle in the way of socialism - the fact that people thought and still think Soviet capitalism had something to do with "socialism"
Sure, agreed. We may well have to rebrand the movement, akin to the rebranding that the Third International took to distance itself away from 'social democracy'.

But this thread isn't a place where we're trying to persuade unaffiliated masses to our cause. I'm not recommending Toward a New Socialism as a propaganda pamphlet.

Psy

19th May 2011, 09:59

Kotze

19th May 2011, 10:47

[Cockshott] might propose a type of labour voucher system in which you can use a voucher for any good you chose...Might?
the formidable problem of evaluating and monitoring work contributionsexists in any system where people are remunerated for work.
Additionally of course, if you want to avoid serious imbalances in supply and demand you have to ensure that the total face value of vouchers issued more or less equates with the total face value of all prices. You thinks thats easy?Yes.
But presumably, since you mention it, means of production and not just consumer goods would have to be priced under a labour voucher system as well. Afterall the pricing of consumer goods would presumably again have to reflect their embodied labour content and therefore also the labour content passed on to the product from the machine that produced the product. How would producer units obtain producer goods if not by buying them with vouchers.You are mixing up 2 things. The labour time estimation going into producing means of production is used for pricing consumer items and for planning, so that when several approaches to produce something are compared, the approach with the lower labour-cost estimate is selected. These "prices" of means of production are used for efficiency comparisons, not for buying or selling them. It's in the book.
If you do evaluate different kinds of labour differently i.e. remunerated differently, this has an obvious bearing on production costs as you seem to agree yourself since you talk of the "work that goes into acquiring skills for producing an item is treated as part of that item's production cost". So what are you going to do? Pay everyone the same hourly rate or pay them a different rate according to level of skill etc.I already answered that question in this thread, and it's also in the book of course (chapter 2). Again, you are mixing up 2 things. There's a cost to society in making someone skilled which includes an income for teaching people and the trainee income. Why should that justify paying more to a skilled person? Your question is like this: Should a person receive a higher income for having undergone surgeries or should the doctors work for free?
But if we are all paid the same whats to stop us all gravitating towards the most congenional jobs around, leaving society with a conspiucuous shortage of shit shovellersA pay bonus for arduous work is a very different concept from a pay bonus for skilled work. Again, you are talking about 2 very different things in the same paragraph, again, this is something I already addressed in this thread, and again, this is also in the book (also chapter 2).
[Cockshott's and Cottrell's] stance on the Soviet Union has little to do with the proposals for how a socialist economy can be coordinated and planned.Indeed.

That part in Towards a New Socialism reminded me of when programmers do a presentation about a project in the works and show a mock-up interface with intentionally ugly colours in a few places, so the management types don't feel left out because they can "contribute" something. It works as a quick indicator whether somebody basically groks what you are talking about.

robbo203

19th May 2011, 11:05

That these technical methods were (poorly) employed by the Soviet Union and are employed (far more effectively) by contemporary capitalist firms doesn't render them irrelevant to socialism, or their employment somehow capitalist, state or otherwise. As, after all, socialism will be build on the ashes of the old world with the methods the technology that is developed by it. Computers and linear programing aren't authoritarian.

Fine. But to go back to an earlier argument my concern is where all this emphasis in linear programming and the use of computers leads to. What is implied by it? This is what I was getting at in my earlier reference to the classic definition of central planning as involving one single vast plan coordinating, on a society wide basis, all of society's inputs and outputs.

The proponents of a so called "planned economy" seem constantly to be implying they support this idea but when confronted with this suggestion they throw up their hands in mock horror and say "no thats not what we mean by central planning and this is just an asburd abstract ideal which nobody actually proposes". But then I ask myself - whats the difference between their "planned economy " and the market. The market economy is also a planned economy in the sense that businesses plan their activities. The market is actual full of plans.

The only logical inference that one can draw from this supposed dictomoy between a planned economy and a market economy is that the multiple plans or the latter are not coordinated. But thats the problem, see. If you coordinate the multiple plans what you are effectively doing is planning the interactions between these plans so that in effect they disappear as discrete and separate plans. They are absorbed into a single giant plan. So we are back to central planning in its classic sense!

This fundamental confusion lies at the heart of Cockshott's talk of planning and what not. This shows in his remark I think this notion of spontaneous order is Hayekian. I do reject it. I think that the key issue is how to exercise democratic control over planning.

Sorry, but there is no way around this. If you accept the possiblity of multiple plans then the only way each or these plans can interact with others is spontaneously. If you start planning the interactions between these plans you no longer have separate plans. You have just one single vast plan - central planning in its classic sense - and no amount of advanced computerised linear programming can salvage such an absurd idea from the ignominious fate that awaits if it were ever attempted in practice

That is why I believe Cockshott's whole position is fundamentally incoherent and illogical from the word go. It is also completely misinformed if he thinks acknowlegement of the necessity of a spontaneous order makes one a "Hayekian". Some of us having been arguing for a non market spontaneous order for quite a few years now as against the champions of "central planning"

S.Artesian

19th May 2011, 13:38

Sir Comradical

19th May 2011, 13:54

I suppose under socialism firms would still have to buy and sell from each other, only the surplus would be appropriated and reallocated according to a plan (Kosygin reforms, USSR)?? If RED DAVE would like to enlighten us and explain to us how exactly the nuts and bolts of a socialist society would operate instead of falling back on slogans about workers democracy then I'm all ears. Of course we all want workers democracy, but that has nothing to do with the sobering reality that coordinating billions of processes and allocating resources is difficult.

I actually appreciate these discussions.

robbo203

19th May 2011, 16:12

.You are mixing up 2 things. The labour time estimation going into producing means of production is used for pricing consumer items and for planning, so that when several approaches to produce something are compared, the approach with the lower labour-cost estimate is selected. These "prices" of means of production are used for efficiency comparisons, not for buying or selling them. .

Well yes and no. Partly it depends on what kind of labour voucher system you intend to use. If you use a system in which everyone is paid the same flat hourly rate then this might not matter so much but if you use a differential system of payments then it clearly does matter. Higher paid workers cost society more. True they might be more skiiled/productive but my question is how do you begin to rationalise or explain the difference in payment of labour vouchers in terms of such productivity. How do you compare the productivity of a steelworker, say, vis a vis a doctor in terms of their productivity.

This was precisely the point that Marx in his critique of Grays labour money scheme. It highlights one of a number of problems that beset the whole idea of labour vouchers however you administer the system - not the least of which is the resentments it is likely to generate whether people are paid the same or differently.

Hyacinth

19th May 2011, 18:06

Fine. But to go back to an earlier argument my concern is where all this emphasis in linear programming and the use of computers leads to. What is implied by it? This is what I was getting at in my earlier reference to the classic definition of central planning as involving one single vast plan coordinating, on a society wide basis, all of society's inputs and outputs.

The proponents of a so called "planned economy" seem constantly to be implying they support this idea but when confronted with this suggestion they throw up their hands in mock horror and say "no thats not what we mean by central planning and this is just an asburd abstract ideal which nobody actually proposes". But then I ask myself - whats the difference between their "planned economy " and the market. The market economy is also a planned economy in the sense that businesses plan their activities. The market is actual full of plans.

The only logical inference that one can draw from this supposed dictomoy between a planned economy and a market economy is that the multiple plans or the latter are not coordinated. But thats the problem, see. If you coordinate the multiple plans what you are effectively doing is planning the interactions between these plans so that in effect they disappear as discrete and separate plans. They are absorbed into a single giant plan. So we are back to central planning in its classic sense!
Sure, I agree, except that I see nothing wrong with it.

This fundamental confusion lies at the heart of Cockshott's talk of planning and what not. This shows in his remark I think this notion of spontaneous order is Hayekian. I do reject it. I think that the key issue is how to exercise democratic control over planning.

Sorry, but there is no way around this. If you accept the possiblity of multiple plans then the only way each or these plans can interact with others is spontaneously. If you start planning the interactions between these plans you no longer have separate plans. You have just one single vast plan - central planning in its classic sense - and no amount of advanced computerised linear programming can salvage such an absurd idea from the ignominious fate that awaits if it were ever attempted in practice.

That is why I believe Cockshott's whole position is fundamentally incoherent and illogical from the word go. It is also completely misinformed if he thinks acknowlegement of the necessity of a spontaneous order makes one a "Hayekian". Some of us having been arguing for a non market spontaneous order for quite a few years now as against the champions of "central planning"
Aside form your assertion that "you have just one single vast plan - central planning in its classic sense - and no amount of advanced computerised linear programming can salvage such an absurd idea from the ignominious fate that awaits if it were ever attempted in practice" have you any arguments that this is impossible? Is the complexity class of the system of linear equations necessary to represent a global economy greater than that of a similar system of linear equations used in capitalist firms today? A number of which are considerably larger as economic entities than many countries.

Now, of course, it is an empirical question whether we have the technical capacity to surmount the challenge of actually planning a global economy, and to what extent. I don't imagine we will do away with market mechanisms immediately, but I see no reason why we cannot in principle. Especially at a time when you have computer scientists talking about the possibility of modeling and simulating the whole of society, except for, of course, in the service of the bourgeoise (see the article I posted earlier in this thread).

If we are capable of a simulation of such a level of detail and complexity that would permit for the prediction of social dynamics, there is no reason in principle which prevents such a model from being employed, in conjunction with cybernetic control mechanisms, for the self-regulating control of the economy as a whole dispensing altogether with less efficient and responsive market mechanisms.

If you have technical misgivings, fine, but the mere continued repeated assertion of the bourgeoise line on the economic calculation debate without seriously looking at advances in computing and mathematical modeling does a disservice to the socialist cause. Just as Marx stood alone among many thinkers throughout the ages in maintaining that socialism from below, genuine democracy, was possible—against the chorus of people who shouted that it can't bed one—so too I see these kinds of arguments against economic planning in a similar light: "Socialism can't work! After all, people are too dumb, so we can't have democracy, and economic planning is impossible, because our a priori neoclassical economics says so!"

Though you seem to have a further objection to a single plan:

How can you possibly envisage "democratic planning "in respect of a single vast plan that encompasses and coordinates all or society's inputs and outputs? Are we going to democratically decide - all 6 billion of us at a global level - how many car batteries, soft drink dispensers, or ball bearings global society ought to produce? Of course not . The idea is absurd. Never mind trying to solve this democratically. It cannot even be done by some terchnocratic elite with super duper computer technology at its disposal and for reasons I touched on earlier.
No body is suggesting that all 7 billion + humans decide on a global level the minutia of every plan, that's indeed absurd. The overall paramaters of investment can be decided globally, i.e., we can vote on percentage of social surplus which is to be invested in various sectors and on various projects, but the minutia is to be handled by the cybernetic control mechanisms in an anticipatory way. People will consume goods, and we can keep track of the consumption to ensure a steady supply of the goods base do on consumer demands. Not every consumption decision need be or is political.

In a way it is misleading to this of this as one giant monolithic plan that determines the outputs of the economy, as this paints an overly static picture of what is going on. Rather, the coordination and planning mechanisms are there to determine what the most efficient and effective means of satisfying our preferences are, and since our preferences are changing, it will continuously be readjusted. As for how we decide what our preferences are, i.e., what the plan targets will be, a combination of participatory (democratic) and anticipatory (cybernetic) mechanisms.

robbo203

19th May 2011, 21:10

Sure, I agree, except that I see nothing wrong with it.

Aside form your assertion that "you have just one single vast plan - central planning in its classic sense - and no amount of advanced computerised linear programming can salvage such an absurd idea from the ignominious fate that awaits if it were ever attempted in practice" have you any arguments that this is impossible? Is the complexity class of the system of linear equations necessary to represent a global economy greater than that of a similar system of linear equations used in capitalist firms today? A number of which are considerably larger as economic entities than many countries. .

Its not rocket science as to why society wide central planning is a complete non starter and its really got liitle to do with the ability or otherwise of modern computers to process the immense amounts of data we are talking about. What blows the whole idea apart is the very simple fact that the real world out there is simply not tractable in the way that classic central planning requires. Not even remotely. Becuase the "single vast plan" of the central planners must be a coordinated one, linking inputs and outputs (millions of them!) any deviation is intolerable because of the ramifications that entails which will upset the planners calculations thus requiring the plan to be redrawn in its entirety. But one thing we can predict is that the unpredictable will happen . It happens all the time so the Plan will never ever get to see the light of day anyway - it will have to be constantly redrawn all the time.

This is just one reason why central planning is a non starter; there are others. For instance, I would argue that the logic of central planning is implicitly authoritarian and thus wholly incompatible with a communist society

Now, of course, it is an empirical question whether we have the technical capacity to surmount the challenge of actually planning a global economy, and to what extent. I don't imagine we will do away with market mechanisms immediately, but I see no reason why we cannot in principle. Especially at a time when you have computer scientists talking about the possibility of modeling and simulating the whole of society, except for, of course, in the service of the bourgeoise (see the article I posted earlier in this thread).

If we are capable of a simulation of such a level of detail and complexity that would permit for the prediction of social dynamics, there is no reason in principle which prevents such a model from being employed, in conjunction with cybernetic control mechanisms, for the self-regulating control of the economy as a whole dispensing altogether with less efficient and responsive market mechanisms. .

You see this is what I find so frustrating. You carefully explain to people what is meant by apriori society wide central planning. You point out how the it cannot, by its very nature, entail a feedback mechanism since a feedback mechanism means in effect that spomeone else's plans - or material requirements - are being presented to which you respond accordingly. So your instructions come not from a single source but multiple soirces. That means the overall shape of the economy the pattern of input/output linkages, is arrived at spontaneously and is not centrally determined.

When you point all this out to people who say they support something called a "planned economy" they typically react by saying "oh not we dont mean that everything in the economy is decided centrally ... just ..er.. the broad parameters" The nitty groiooty details can be left to the local level.

Well there are two observations I would make here

The first is that the broad parameters are made up of the nitty gritty details and are not something separate from the latter

Secondly, if you admit that the nitty grtiity details are decided locally or whatever then inevitably that means you are agreeing that overall picure of the economy is arrived at spontaneously, It is not predetermined centrally and handed down to production units to fuflil in line the Plan.

Now Cockshott has nailed his colours to the mast. He has stated in no uncertain terms that he is opposed to the idea of a spontaneous order and he has even called this Hayekeian. Since hew rejects the idea of a spontaneously ordered or self regulated economy (which I stress again does not preclude planning but allows for a multiplcity of plans interacting with each other) then I can only conclude he supports classic central planning . Either that or he has no idea what he is talking about at all.

If you have technical misgivings, fine, but the mere continued repeated assertion of the bourgeoise line on the economic calculation debate without seriously looking at advances in computing and mathematical modeling does a disservice to the socialist cause. Just as Marx stood alone among many thinkers throughout the ages in maintaining that socialism from below, genuine democracy, was possible—against the chorus of people who shouted that it can't bed one—so too I see these kinds of arguments against economic planning in a similar light: "Socialism can't work! After all, people are too dumb, so we can't have democracy, and economic planning is impossible, because our a priori neoclassical economics says so!" .

This is a ridiculous argument. For a start I never said I was against "economic planning" but the only realistc option on the cards is polycentric economic planning. In fact recognising the self regulating nature of a socialist economy is precisely what is required in order to demolish the economic calculation argument against socialism raised by the very bourgeois economists you talk of!

Though you seem to have a further objection to a single plan:

No body is suggesting that all 7 billion + humans decide on a global level the minutia of every plan, that's indeed absurd. The overall paramaters of investment can be decided globally, i.e., we can vote on percentage of social surplus which is to be invested in various sectors and on various projects, but the minutia is to be handled by the cybernetic control mechanisms in an anticipatory way. People will consume goods, and we can keep track of the consumption to ensure a steady supply of the goods base do on consumer demands. Not every consumption decision need be or is political.

In a way it is misleading to this of this as one giant monolithic plan that determines the outputs of the economy, as this paints an overly static picture of what is going on. Rather, the coordination and planning mechanisms are there to determine what the most efficient and effective means of satisfying our preferences are, and since our preferences are changing, it will continuously be readjusted. As for how we decide what our preferences are, i.e., what the plan targets will be, a combination of participatory (democratic) and anticipatory (cybernetic) mechanisms.

But, then, cant you see that you are not then arguing for central planning in its classic sense? You are not advocating society wide planning. Do you understand what I am saying? I am tryuing tell that by acknowleging the very things that you say you approive of you are thereby rejecting classic central planning

Classic central planning does not have to entail that everyone has to decide on the details of the plan. This can can in theory be decided by a small technocratic elite but even this elite unencumbered by the nicities of democratic deicsionmaking will be hopelessly unable to deliver.

jake williams

19th May 2011, 21:22

I think the objection to the use of supercomputers in the economic planning of socialist societies can only be technophobic and ignorant. I'm not trying to be unkind, but I really do think it's ridiculous.

Advanced industrial economies with millions of workers, and millions of workplaces, each with dozens (or thousands) of inputs and outputs, intermediary and final products, efficient production chains etc. absolutely require planning. I don't see how you could possibly argue otherwise. This goes on in capitalist societies, though it does so extraordinarily inefficiently and cruelly. Look, if we have electricity, we have to know how much electricity to produce. We can do this through explicit planning for how much electricity we expect people will need, based on ongoing input from consumers, or through implicit planning: we can use money and market mechanisms to price electricity and acquire information that way, privately plan production based on that information, and plan (centrally and democratically or not) the money system which supports a mechanism. The latter mechanisms sort of work, but this probably isn't the forum for you.

There's no other way to do it. You can't just guess how many gigawatts of electricity a given (inter)national grid is going to need, or how much you might decentralizedly contribute to such a grid. At the end of the day, planning and modeling calculations for an advanced industrial economy have to be done, and are extremely complex. Aside from being almost comically inefficient, there's no reason to believe doing them on paper notepads would be more democratic. Objections to the effect that this is "technocratic" or undemocratic seem, to be, equally unfounded. You could have a technocratic and undemocratic economy which was also centrally planned, but there's no causative link between the one and the other.

The only two real objections I see raised to central planning with electronic assistance aren't really objections to central planning with electronic assistance:

1) Central planning is done without democratic input of workers and consumers, doesn't have enough information, and is done only in the interests of the planners. No one is proposing this. This is a danger, one to be taken quite seriously, and one which has been taken seriously for as long as there have been objections to the utopian proto-socialism developed before Marx. But it's in no way intrinsic in planning, unless you believe that advanced industrial societies can't possibly be democratically planned, in which case, again, this isn't the forum for you. And anyway, no one here is an advocate of this, and almost no one ever has been an advocate of this. Anyone who would advocate undemocratic planning here would be (or, in some cases, has been) restricted. That's not the discussion, and suggesting it is is blatantly mistaken at best.

2) Central plans must be dictatorally and absolutely followed at all costs, with no human intervention, in all situations. The robots will take over and try to eat our infant children. This is silly, and I don't really want to address it, but if I have to I supposed I could. Suffice it to say, I hope, that equally as no one here is anti-democratic, no one here has some sort of moral obligation to our lives being run by machines. We simply need complex mathematical models to work with the complex systems which (I should hope) we all want to use, and we need advanced computers to work with that math.

Edit: I should add that there is a third objection, which is kind of a corollary of 1) and 2) and which anyway I thought had already been clearly addressed and dismissed. This is the objection that it would be problematic to make all of the billions of economic and workplace decisions made every day on a single computer, at a single building, in a single document, etc. This is also absurd and no one here would even think of seriously suggest it in the speakable future.

Paul Cockshott

19th May 2011, 22:03

How do you compare the productivity of a steelworker, say, vis a vis a doctor in terms of their productivity.

You only have to think about this for a while to see that this is a meaningless question.
You may be able to compare the productivity of two surgical teams in terms of which is able to perform the most hip operations a month, but as soon as you alter the goods
produced the whole question becomes meaningless. It is dimensionally undefined.

Productivity of hips operations could be rated in terms of hips fixed per person day, but comparing this to tons of steel per person day makes no sense as the units of measure
are incomparable.

S.Artesian

19th May 2011, 22:06

Its not rocket science as to why society wide central planning is a complete non starter and its really got liitle to do with the ability or otherwise of modern computers to process the immense amounts of data we are talking about. What blows the whole idea apart is the very simple fact that the real world out there is simply not tractable in the way that classic central planning requires. Not even remotely. Becuase the "single vast plan" of the central planners must be a coordinated one, linking inputs and outputs (millions of them!) any deviation is intolerable because of the ramifications that entails which will upset the planners calculations thus requiring the plan to be redrawn in its entirety. But one thing we can predict is that the unpredictable will happen . It happens all the time so the Plan will never ever get to see the light of day anyway - it will have to be constantly redrawn all the time.

This is just one reason why central planning is a non starter; there are others. For instance, I would argue that the logic of central planning is implicitly authoritarian and thus wholly incompatible with a communist society

This is a ridiculous argument. For a start I never said I was against "economic planning" but the only realistc option on the cards is polycentric economic planning. In fact recognising the self regulating nature of a socialist economy is precisely what is required in order to demolish the economic calculation argument against socialism raised by the very bourgeois economists you talk of!

But, then, cant you see that you are not then arguing for central planning in its classic sense? You are not advocating society wide planning. Do you understand what I am saying? I am tryuing tell that by acknowleging the very things that you say you approive of you are thereby rejecting classic central planning

Classic central planning does not have to entail that everyone has to decide on the details of the plan. This can can in theory be decided by a small technocratic elite but even this elite unencumbered by the nicities of democratic deicsionmaking will be hopelessly unable to deliver.

So the distinction is that there is polycentric planning with commmunication among the polycenters? And this allows adjustment to the plans? Right?

With either/or, or both central and polycentric planning we are engaged in a calculus; we will be compelled to make a series of adjustments based on the feedback from the decisions we just made prior to the alteration of the plan by those very decisions.

That happens today. Many capitalist enterprises operate according to a central plan, like railroads, and then use real time inputs from trains [speed, distance, schedule, time on duty etc] to adjust, to deviate from the details of the plan in order to achieve the same goals embodied in the plan.

Now there is, and has been, an issue of overcentralization, and even too much "scaling up." I wish I could remember the name, but there was a [civil, electrical?] engineer working in the fSU during the 1930s [I think] who showed that the massive mega-electrification projects were of such a size as to be unwieldy, inefficient, and more costly than smaller projects.

And again in the railroad industry the Union Pacific Railroad provided a perfect example when, after taking over the Southern Pacific, the Missouri Pacific, and the Western Pacific, it decided to centralize all its operating decisions in Omaha, and disregarded the experience, knowledge of the employees on the former SP, MP, and WP railroads about how to handle traffic.

The result was the great Union Pacific cluster-fuck of the late 90s [98 if I remember correctly], practically paralyzing rail traffic west of Chicago, with terrible impacts on the railroads, and industries in the East. All the computers in the world, daisy chained together would not, could not have resolved that problem. I mean you have no idea how many trains were stored in sidings, unable to enter yards, how many crews expired on the hours of service [12 hours on duty max in any 24] without getting more than 10 miles from their initial terminals. Los Angeles was so bagged with trains that the commuter service could barely operate.

Anyway, I think it's going to be a helluva an experiment.

Paul Cockshott

19th May 2011, 22:17

The only logical inference that one can draw from this supposed dictomoy between a planned economy and a market economy is that the multiple plans or the latter are not coordinated. But thats the problem, see. If you coordinate the multiple plans what you are effectively doing is planning the interactions between these plans so that in effect they disappear as discrete and separate plans. They are absorbed into a single giant plan. So we are back to central planning in its classic sense!

That is broadly correct. The issues are ( in no particular order of importance )

1. How responsive can a planning system be to changing conditions due to natural disasters and technical change

2. How effectively can a planning system collect information in order to establish coherence between different branches of economic activity.

3. How effectively can a planned economy adjust output of consumer goods in conformity with popular tastes.

4. How can the population as a whole determine the broad goals of economic development and have this feed through the planning process.

The reason why I oppose the argument about spontaneous order is that the only institutional framework to allow spontaneous order is the market. It is not by accident that Hayek in chosing a philosophical standpoint to defend capitalism chose spontaneous order. Capitalism is the spontaneous order of an unplanned social division of labour with advanced industry. As opposed to a spontaneous order, a planned socialist economy has politics in command. The question is what politics and what social forces and classes predominate in the political process.

Psy

20th May 2011, 00:42

Its not rocket science as to why society wide central planning is a complete non starter and its really got liitle to do with the ability or otherwise of modern computers to process the immense amounts of data we are talking about. What blows the whole idea apart is the very simple fact that the real world out there is simply not tractable in the way that classic central planning requires. Not even remotely. Becuase the "single vast plan" of the central planners must be a coordinated one, linking inputs and outputs (millions of them!) any deviation is intolerable because of the ramifications that entails which will upset the planners calculations thus requiring the plan to be redrawn in its entirety. But one thing we can predict is that the unpredictable will happen . It happens all the time so the Plan will never ever get to see the light of day anyway - it will have to be constantly redrawn all the time.

Again this was debated in Moscow in the 1960's the theoretical solution was to give computers authority over workers and we see this today for example computer controlled dispensers of supplies and tool where the workers can't get supplies unless the computers sees a work order that requires it, then that deduction of inventory is automatically noted.

This is just one reason why central planning is a non starter; there are others. For instance, I would argue that the logic of central planning is implicitly authoritarian and thus wholly incompatible with a communist society

No, since the point if communism is a conflict in class interests. If production carries out the class interests of the masses then you are not going against communism. Also the masses don't want to be bothered with the details of how utility is produced they are only concerned that of getting that utility.

You see this is what I find so frustrating. You carefully explain to people what is meant by apriori society wide central planning. You point out how the it cannot, by its very nature, entail a feedback mechanism since a feedback mechanism means in effect that spomeone else's plans - or material requirements - are being presented to which you respond accordingly. So your instructions come not from a single source but multiple soirces. That means the overall shape of the economy the pattern of input/output linkages, is arrived at spontaneously and is not centrally determined.

You don't understand central planning, all central planning means is production has a centralized planning process, thus feedback mechanism exist in centralized planning processes for example Wal-Mart has a highly centralized planning processes yet that is based on feedback from what is happening in the market and stores.

Now Cockshott has nailed his colours to the mast. He has stated in no uncertain terms that he is opposed to the idea of a spontaneous order and he has even called this Hayekeian. Since hew rejects the idea of a spontaneously ordered or self regulated economy (which I stress again does not preclude planning but allows for a multiplcity of plans interacting with each other) then I can only conclude he supports classic central planning . Either that or he has no idea what he is talking about at all.

The problem is a lack of macro planning to maximize Earth's economy. For example you don't have a centralized plan for all of the Communist world for the consumption of crude oil and how to fairly ration crude oil among everyone on Earth.

This is a ridiculous argument. For a start I never said I was against "economic planning" but the only realistc option on the cards is polycentric economic planning. In fact recognising the self regulating nature of a socialist economy is precisely what is required in order to demolish the economic calculation argument against socialism raised by the very bourgeois economists you talk of!

There is no self-regulating nature of any market even a communist market with production for use. Decentralized planning carries the risk of unequal distribution of utility in a communist society.

But, then, cant you see that you are not then arguing for central planning in its classic sense? You are not advocating society wide planning. Do you understand what I am saying? I am tryuing tell that by acknowleging the very things that you say you approive of you are thereby rejecting classic central planning

Classic central planning does not have to entail that everyone has to decide on the details of the plan. This can can in theory be decided by a small technocratic elite but even this elite unencumbered by the nicities of democratic deicsionmaking will be hopelessly unable to deliver.

Yet central planning post 1965 does, Moscow scientists already looked into how to modernize central planning with the aid of cybernetics.

Hyacinth

20th May 2011, 02:53

Its not rocket science as to why society wide central planning is a complete non starter and its really got liitle to do with the ability or otherwise of modern computers to process the immense amounts of data we are talking about. What blows the whole idea apart is the very simple fact that the real world out there is simply not tractable in the way that classic central planning requires. Not even remotely. Becuase the "single vast plan" of the central planners must be a coordinated one, linking inputs and outputs (millions of them!) any deviation is intolerable because of the ramifications that entails which will upset the planners calculations thus requiring the plan to be redrawn in its entirety. But one thing we can predict is that the unpredictable will happen . It happens all the time so the Plan will never ever get to see the light of day anyway - it will have to be constantly redrawn all the time.

This is just one reason why central planning is a non starter; there are others. For instance, I would argue that the logic of central planning is implicitly authoritarian and thus wholly incompatible with a communist society

You see this is what I find so frustrating. You carefully explain to people what is meant by apriori society wide central planning. You point out how the it cannot, by its very nature, entail a feedback mechanism since a feedback mechanism means in effect that spomeone else's plans - or material requirements - are being presented to which you respond accordingly. So your instructions come not from a single source but multiple soirces. That means the overall shape of the economy the pattern of input/output linkages, is arrived at spontaneously and is not centrally determined.

When you point all this out to people who say they support something called a "planned economy" they typically react by saying "oh not we dont mean that everything in the economy is decided centrally ... just ..er.. the broad parameters" The nitty groiooty details can be left to the local level.

Well there are two observations I would make here

The first is that the broad parameters are made up of the nitty gritty details and are not something separate from the latter

Secondly, if you admit that the nitty grtiity details are decided locally or whatever then inevitably that means you are agreeing that overall picure of the economy is arrived at spontaneously, It is not predetermined centrally and handed down to production units to fuflil in line the Plan.

Now Cockshott has nailed his colours to the mast. He has stated in no uncertain terms that he is opposed to the idea of a spontaneous order and he has even called this Hayekeian. Since hew rejects the idea of a spontaneously ordered or self regulated economy (which I stress again does not preclude planning but allows for a multiplcity of plans interacting with each other) then I can only conclude he supports classic central planning . Either that or he has no idea what he is talking about at all.

This is a ridiculous argument. For a start I never said I was against "economic planning" but the only realistc option on the cards is polycentric economic planning. In fact recognising the self regulating nature of a socialist economy is precisely what is required in order to demolish the economic calculation argument against socialism raised by the very bourgeois economists you talk of!

But, then, cant you see that you are not then arguing for central planning in its classic sense? You are not advocating society wide planning. Do you understand what I am saying? I am tryuing tell that by acknowleging the very things that you say you approive of you are thereby rejecting classic central planning

Classic central planning does not have to entail that everyone has to decide on the details of the plan. This can can in theory be decided by a small technocratic elite but even this elite unencumbered by the nicities of democratic deicsionmaking will be hopelessly unable to deliver.
It's becoming clear to me that our entire dispute is terminological. In fact, you've set up a straw man position that you call 'central planning' and have argued against it, and I'll concede successfully, for all the good it does as no one is advocating it. I'll note that not once did I ever, in this thread, use the term 'central planning' or even 'central' except when I once quoted you.

I don't think we disagree. I'm certainly not advocating what you call 'central' planning, I'm advocating what I think is a promising way of planning and coordinating a socialist economy: a democratically and cybernetically regulated dynamic control system. Which is what (a) Cockshott and Cottrell, and (b) Albert and Hahnel are advocating. Paul Cockshott is right here in this thread, he can correct me if I'm wrong in my reading of him.

robbo203

20th May 2011, 06:06

You only have to think about this for a while to see that this is a meaningless question.
You may be able to compare the productivity of two surgical teams in terms of which is able to perform the most hip operations a month, but as soon as you alter the goods
produced the whole question becomes meaningless. It is dimensionally undefined.

Productivity of hips operations could be rated in terms of hips fixed per person day, but comparing this to tons of steel per person day makes no sense as the units of measure
are incomparable.

That is precisely the point that I am trying to make! That to compare the productivity of a steelworker with that of a doctor is meaningless. The question you then have to ask yourself is what does this mean for a system of labour time accounting or indeed, the system of labour vouchers which you yourself favour

robbo203

20th May 2011, 06:51

I think the objection to the use of supercomputers in the economic planning of socialist societies can only be technophobic and ignorant. I'm not trying to be unkind, but I really do think it's ridiculous. .

With respect this is a complete straw argument. No one has ever objected to the use of supercomputers in economic planning in socialism. As a matter of fact, it is precisely this computing power that makes a polycentric socialist economy all the more credible. Think of the way a self regulating system of stock control links multiple centres with information flows such as stock orders.

The real objection to central or society wide planning - the idea of one single vast plan for the whole of society - has to do with the relationship between this plan and the economic reality it imposes itself upon. Becuase it lacks a feedback mechanism what we have, in effect, is a one way process. Compilation of the plan might involve prior consultation but once the plan is formulated, thats it. It has to be accepted as it is in order to be carried out. This is what I mean by a one way process. It relates to plan implementation.

Planning under GOSPLAN in the Soviet Union for example involved a bargaining stage where state enterprises assessed provisional targets suggested for them with recommendations being passed upwards again to GOSPLAN to fine tune the plan through a process of "material balances". In theory, after that the plan was non negotiable and state enterprises were obliged to fulfil their specific targets. But even under the Soviet Union, planning was a long long way off from classical concept of central planning - there was much more decentralised decisionmaking at the state enterprise level than might be imagined - and almost invariably the "plan" would be adjusted to fit the changing economic realities, not the other way round Plan fulfilment was thus largely a myth. Yet classic central planning would seek to centralise and coordinate under one single umbrella the totality of economic decisions pertaining to sicety's inputs and outputs

Edit: I should add that there is a third objection, which is kind of a corollary of 1) and 2) and which anyway I thought had already been clearly addressed and dismissed. This is the objection that it would be problematic to make all of the billions of economic and workplace decisions made every day on a single computer, at a single building, in a single document, etc. This is also absurd and no one here would even think of seriously suggest it in the speakable future.

Yes of course it is absurd but this IS what is meant by classic central planning. This IS what is essentially meant by one single vast plan for the whole of society. Though it does have to mean decisions being literally made on a single computer or in a single building. It simply means that these decision are centralised under the aegis of a single planning authority.

The point is while you may say it is "absurd" as do many others here, what is not sufficiently recognised and acknowleged is what logically follows from this. If we are no longer talking about a single centre making these decisions then logically we must be talking about a polycentric arrangement. In other words, we are talking about multiple centres formulating plans or making specific material requests for stock in the light of their own stock requirements. So we are talking about an interactive or feedback process - to be sure, making good use of all that computer technology - in which no one actually plans the overall outcome - its is arrived at spontaneously - even if the numerous plans themselves are purposefully intended and worked out.

This is the whole point that Ive been banging on about here - to get people to acknowlege at long last that the overall shape of the economy cannot possibly be planned as per some gigantic central plan. It has to be the outcome of a spontaneous or self regulating process.

Cockshott has clearly stated that he is opposed to the notion of a spontaneous order. Logically that can only mean one thing - that he is an advocate of classical central planning. Absurd? Well the absurdity lies entirely with him and those like him who buy into the ideology of central planning and who preposterously seem to think that to oppose classic central planning is somehow in itself, "Hayekian"

robbo203

20th May 2011, 08:02

The reason why I oppose the argument about spontaneous order is that the only institutional framework to allow spontaneous order is the market. It is not by accident that Hayek in chosing a philosophical standpoint to defend capitalism chose spontaneous order. Capitalism is the spontaneous order of an unplanned social division of labour with advanced industry. As opposed to a spontaneous order, a planned socialist economy has politics in command. The question is what politics and what social forces and classes predominate in the political process.

This is absolute nonsense and it goes to demonstrate precisely the fundamental confusion that lies at the very heart of your whole approach.

If it were truly the case that "the only institutional framework to allow spontaneous order is the market" then it follows that all your concessions to the notion of a more "responsive" planning system count for nothing. Insofar as you claim to be opposed to the market this can only mean you envisage an alternative to the market as being non spontaneous in terms of it outcome. Do you understand what that means? Do you grasp the significance of what you are saying here?

It does not mean just simply that everything in the (non market) economy is "planned". Everything in a capitalist market economy is also "planned." Every single capitalist enterprise does planning by the bucketful. There are literally millions of plans being formulated and implemented in a capitalist market economy every day. These plans interact with each other in a feedback process and somehow an overall outcome is reached which no one specifically planned or intended

Central planning, at least in its classic sense, is the proposal to plan the linkages between all these millions of separate plans so that in effect they become absorbed into a single vast plan. It is the proposal to coordinate all soicety's inputs and outputs in advance of implementation of this plan. This is what is entailed by the elimination of a spontaneous order - you plan the totality of linkages and leave nothing to chance. There is no more feedback process, no more interaction. Sure you can have a consultation process prior to formulating the plan but once the plan has been formulated, thats it! It cannot brook deviation from its specified targets. That would be to allow other plans to intrude on the provess of plan implemetation so you would in effect no longer have a single plan and the only way in which two or more plans can accommodate themselves to each other is spontaneously

Your rejection of a spontaneous order necessarily implies your acceptance of classic central planning and the idea of one single vast plan coordinating all of society's inputs and outputs. That is an absurdity. Yet youve rashly committed yourself to upholding such an absurdity by your explicit rejection of a spontaneous order. If, on the other hand, you reject central planning in this sense then ipso facto that means you must after all accept the notion of a spontaneous order that is implied by this rejection. You cant have your cake and eat it. You have to chose which position you support

What I find absolutely astonishing is how completely youve bought into the bourgeois economists myth that "the only institutional framework to allow spontaneous order is the market". Though you dont seem to be aware of what you are saying here, what this means is that insofar as classic central planning is out of the question and the only realistic option is some kind of spontaneous order, you are in effect saying there is no alternative to the market. Your perspective is unwittingly a pro capitalist one!

In any case it is complete rubbish of coure as you must surely know. Take your modern supermarket for example. In practice what you find is two sets of accounting procedures being used. One in monetary from, the other being calculation in kind. It is simply not possible to dispense with the latter in any kind of system of production but you can certainly dispense with the former. Self regulating stock control systems utiitising calculation in kind (e.g. numbers of tins of baked beans on the shelves) are precisely an example of a spontaneous order which you claim is impossible outside of the market.

There is absolutely no reason why we cannot utilise such a self regulating system of stock control exemplified by the case of modern supermarkers within a non-market future socialist economy - except of course that in such economy we will dispense altogether with monetary accounting. In fact, and this is what is truly ironic about your whole postion, you yourself have hinted at this function with your talk of enterprises "placing orders" via the computerised technology at our disposal today.

Let it be clearly understood that that in itself - the idea of a self regulating system of stock control - necessarily entails the notion of a spontaneous order which you claim to have rejected but which in fact and quite correctly you have endorsed. It remains only for your to recognise this contradiction in your position and do something about remedying it

Rowan Duffy

20th May 2011, 09:46

It cannot brook deviation from its specified targets. That would be to allow other plans to intrude on the provess of plan implemetation so you would in effect no longer have a single plan and the only way in which two or more plans can accommodate themselves to each other is spontaneously

Replace spontaneously with magically and you'll see how what you're saying looks to me.

If you have a concrete proposal with some experimental evidence and mathematical modeling or something that will convince us that we'll get a desirable system spontaneously then I'll take it a bit more seriously. I actually don't think such a proposal could be reasonably expressed in a forum, which is why Albert, Hahnel, Schweickardt, Cotrell, Cockshott, Fotopoulos and others have written books to try to carefully relate their ideas.

As regards collating input of wants, the New Socialism proposal is "cybernetic" in the sense that it can easily see where there are shortages, and where there are deviations from things like average socially necessary labour time. This means that the system can very much respond to input stimulae.

In addition, it (and all other non-circulating labour time voucher concepts) is capable of devolving/decentralising decisions in the extreme. Individual purchasers can make decisions in a completely ad hoc way about what they want to consume.

This isn't a necessary feature of the proposal though. In practice we might want to set up the system with a tiered structure to promote pre-planning of large purchase decisions like housing, holidays and such.

In terms of how the structure of the plan can be decided democratically, there are definitely broad democratic mandates that could be made regards plans. Voting on how (and whether) to assess externalities of various goods, how to deal with particular types of item shortages or gluts, whether certain absolutely scarce goods with low embodied labour should be rationed etc.

In terms of how a planning system can actually come into existence at all, I think there are similar problems with other proposals. My opinion is that any attempt is going to have to have a monetary phase. There is no way to implement any of the systems I know of without some serious restructuring of infrastructure. It might make sense to look to Schwekardt's proposal as a bridge stage.

Setting up Parecon, for instance, such that people had convenient access to equipment for providing demand schedules and software that could realistically collate and converge answers in reasonable times and all of the process and oversight that would be necessary including the bodies that produce the software, help design the process and the bodies that would be required to ensure proper functioning - well that could take a while. Realistically it could take years to get functioning correctly.

Where does that leave the working class? We need to conquer finance and take democratic control over workplaces. How to do that seems to me to be a different conversation.

jake williams

20th May 2011, 15:14

With respect this is a complete straw argument. No one has ever objected to the use of supercomputers in economic planning in socialism.
RED DAVE very much seemed to me to be implying a particular sort of technophobia. Apologies if you weren't.

Planning under GOSPLAN in the Soviet Union for example involved a bargaining stage where state enterprises assessed provisional targets suggested for them with recommendations being passed upwards again to GOSPLAN to fine tune the plan through a process of "material balances". In theory, after that the plan was non negotiable and state enterprises were obliged to fulfil their specific targets.
You're talking about two separate questions (leaving aside certain questions of efficacy of implementation). One is about whether or not a given method of planning can or does respond to changes in the economy. Another is about the politics of autonomy for local actors. They're two separate questions. The manager (an individual or collective) of, say, an individual power plant, having the right to produce or not to produce however much electricity they want, is a totally different thing than this decision being entirely based on the whim of some particular economic planner (again, an individual or a collective).

Regarding the rights of "local producers", I'm sorry, but no one can just do whatever they'd like. All producers are depend on particular inputs, can only productively produce particular outputs, and have to fit within social bounds about the externalities of the productive process. Capitalism provides relative freedom for particular producers, so you might like that, but even they face social bounds, concealed behind the money system.

Regarding the question of the responsiveness to changes in the economy or information about it, of course the planning process needs to be dynamic and responsive. Again, no one would argue otherwise, and no one is. No one prefers a plan which poorly reflects available information to one which reflects it well. It's one of the more ridiculous straw man arguments I can conceive of.

Yes of course it is absurd but this IS what is meant by classic central planning. This IS what is essentially meant by one single vast plan for the whole of society.
No, it isn't. Anything which doesn't require on-the-job decision-making can be done by machines. The only tasks which really remain for human labour are those that require human intellectual intervention. This is a separate question from the participation of all producers in the democratic planning process.

robbo203

20th May 2011, 19:53

Replace spontaneously with magically and you'll see how what you're saying looks to me.

If you have a concrete proposal with some experimental evidence and mathematical modeling or something that will convince us that we'll get a desirable system spontaneously then I'll take it a bit more seriously. I actually don't think such a proposal could be reasonably expressed in a forum, which is why Albert, Hahnel, Schweickardt, Cotrell, Cockshott, Fotopoulos and others have written books to try to carefully relate their ideas..

As regards collating input of wants, the New Socialism proposal is "cybernetic" in the sense that it can easily see where there are shortages, and where there are deviations from things like average socially necessary labour time. This means that the system can very much respond to input stimulae.

You ve obviously missed the point completely and read into the term "spontaneously" something that is simply not intended at all

I am counterposing a spontaneous order to a centrally planned economy in the classical sense of the word as society wide planning in which all inputs and outputs are coordinated within a single vast plan. The overall allocation of resources, in other words, is predetermined a priori.

A spontaneous order by contrast is one where the overall allocation of resources is not predetemined but emerges through the interactions of numerous plans. This is all it means. I can't imagine how you could have thought otherwise

In fact a spontaneous order in this sense is the only possible option available. A centrally planned system in the above sense is not even remotely possible . It is simply an ideal type in the weberian sense.

A spontaneous order does not negate planning. The market is an example of a spontaneous order and it is full of plans. The "New Socialism" proposal you mention - though I find it distinctly unappealing - is also a spontaneous order for the reason you cite. Anarcho communism, my preference is a futher example of a spontaneous order. There is no such thing as a system that is not sponaneously ordered at the system level, nor could there ever be.

One more thing - you ask me if I have a proposal that will convince us that we'll get a desirable system spontaneously. Here you are confusing two quite separate matters. Getting a desirable system is quite a different matter to how that system functions in terms of its overall allocation of inputs.

I dont claim an anarcho communism society will be achieved spontaneously - it has to involve mass communist consciousness and political action to achieve it. I do, however, assert that anarcho-communism (or indeed any other conceivable form of society) will necessarily be a spontaneous order in this sense even if it is achieved by non spontaneous means

malcom

20th May 2011, 23:08

try imagine for one moment trying to "price" goods in terms of the labour time content. People who think its easy have no grasp of the problem

This is actually quite easy to do. It would be no different than what every company does today. Each organization would add up their labor time (simple) and divide it by the amount of widgets you made (also simple).

You would also add in your regular expenses outside of labor (like electricity, materials, tools, machinery, etc.). But these will be just simple expense numbers because the organizations that provided you those inputs priced them based on their labor and inputs.

So the accounting will look exactly like the accounting in a company today and the accounting for cost and sales will be performed the exact same way.

The only difference between labor vouchers and today's system is the price of labor is fixed.

And how useful is it anyway to use past labour embodied in machinery and so on for the purposes of future planning. How is the value of this past or dead labour distributed between products produced by living labour utilising this peice of machinery?

In order to determine the cost of a widget, you need to know the cost of the machinery it takes to make the widget.

A widget that requires a machine that took 5000 labor hours to build will be more expensive than a widget that needs a machine that costs just 10 labor hours to build.

Since machines are capital equipment, their cost is depreciated over the life of the machine. If a machine will last 10 years and costs 10,000 labor units, you would add 1,000 labor units to the cost of all the widgets produced each year.

That is exactly how companies today account for capital expense and would be the same with labor units.

There are other more flexible planning tools available to a communist society that can be brought into play without having to go down the dead end road of central planning in its classic sense

Reading through your posts, it sounds like you are confusing a planned economy with a command economy. Not every planned economy has to be a command economy. If the plan is just to meet the demand of consumers based on their purchases, there is no single plan that everyone is commanded to adhere to (like in a command economy).

The "plan" in a non-command planned economy is for production to just constantly adjust based on orders placed. You can do some advanced planning (like companies do today), but the plan would be to fulfill consumer orders as they come in, not fulfill the plan made by some computer at the beginning of the year.

If orders slowed down, this would mean less orders for all its inputs. This information would be made available to the entire economy in real time so that every organization can react to changing consumption patterns in real time. Nothing needs to be fixed.

malcom

20th May 2011, 23:15

Here are some responses : http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/berlin.ppt (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/berlin.ppt)
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf)
orr this : http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/hayek/hayek.html (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/hayek/hayek.html)
And a variety of other ones here: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html#econ (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/index.html#econ)

Paul, I just read your book and loved it. And I went through some of your other material on your website.

I have some questions.

How would you decide investment allocation? We can't fund every new product idea, gizmo, research idea, etc. So what would the mechanism be for determining what ideas get funded and which ones do not?

robbo203

21st May 2011, 08:18

This is actually quite easy to do. It would be no different than what every company does today. Each organization would add up their labor time (simple) and divide it by the amount of widgets you made (also simple).

You would also add in your regular expenses outside of labor (like electricity, materials, tools, machinery, etc.). But these will be just simple expense numbers because the organizations that provided you those inputs priced them based on their labor and inputs.

So the accounting will look exactly like the accounting in a company today and the accounting for cost and sales will be performed the exact same way.

The only difference between labor vouchers and today's system is the price of labor is fixed.

In order to determine the cost of a widget, you need to know the cost of the machinery it takes to make the widget.

A widget that requires a machine that took 5000 labor hours to build will be more expensive than a widget that needs a machine that costs just 10 labor hours to build.

Since machines are capital equipment, their cost is depreciated over the life of the machine. If a machine will last 10 years and costs 10,000 labor units, you would add 1,000 labor units to the cost of all the widgets produced each year.

That is exactly how companies today account for capital expense and would be the same with labor units..

Youve overlooked quite a few things here, havent you? Even granted the apparent simplicity of the operations performed above - I will say nothing of the sheer arbitrariness of treating all labour units as exactly the same by averaging out their contribution and the adverse economic consequences for economising on, of making the most efficient use of, labour such a procedure will entail - there are other things you have to bear in mind.

Pricing a product in labour hours is all very well but the point of producing the product is that it should be consumed. Now, of course, labour time accounting does not necessarily entail a system of labour vouchers but in your case it seems to be just such a system you favour. So in order for such a system to function properly and for the products that are produced to be efficiently cleared from the shelves what you have to do is to ensure that the combined face value of labour vouchers issued equals the combined face value of products in terms their labour time input. Why? Becuase if you dont do that then the chances are you you will run into serious shortages or alternatively surpluses

You see, under a strict system of labour vouchers prices are not responsive to changes in supply or demand. They are as you say fixed in accordnace with ther labour time input. In a capitalist market, shortages or surpluses lead to changes in prices which in turn lead to changes in the way resources are allocated. You won't have this option under a labour voucher scheme

Now immediately we run into several serious problems. The first has to do with what might be called socially unproductive workers. In capitalism, these are workers who do not produce commodities for sale on a market. A teacher working in a state school for example is unproductive. This is no reflection on the usefulnesss of her job. Productiveness in this case is a concept that relates to the system itself and its inner dynamics

Your treacher under a system of labour vocuhers will of course be doing useful work and will be paid a labour voucher at the end of the day but she is not producing a product. She is prioducing a service which moreover is made available to multiple users (her pupils). OK you might want to argue that her pupils should pay for the service which incidentally will add an additional cost in terms of bureacacry that not even under capitalism - bureaucratic nightmare that it is - we generally have to bear.

But then again consider who her pupils are - school children. Presumably they dont perform labour in exchange for labour vouchers. But kids need stuff like anyone esle. Where do they get the labour vouchers to buy this stuff? Being dependents one presume the stuff is purchased for them by their parents out the labour vouchers that mum and dad receives. So already we begin to see an anamoly cropping up. The earnings that people with kids get must differ from single people - you cant just divide the total number of hours worked by the numbers of workers as the costs of workers in terms of ther labour vocuhers received will vary according to circumstance - and the prices of goods on the shelves must be adjusted accordingly to take this into account. Not only thar, there will presumably be an administration to administer this welfare system -not just for the benefit of families with kids, but also the old, the disabled and the sick. This adminsitrative work constitutes a cost which has to be paid for. How is it to be paid if prices of goods only reflect their purported labour costs

There are many other problems arsing from a system of labour vouchers - not just the huge bureaucracy that will be entailed by the monitoring and constantly having to check how many hours you work - easy perhaps if you work in a factory but not so easy and for more open to abuse if you work alone or in a relatively isolated location or are on the move. There is also the obvious resentments and frictions that are bound to arise however you evaluate work - whether you pay the same flat rate to everyone or differentially.

It will frankly begin to resemble capitalism more and more and indeed will do nothing to prevent a flourishing black market emerging alongside. The only really substantive that prevents a system of labour vocuhers from evolving into a form of capitalism - the fact that labour vouchers do not circulate and are not money - will I believe come under serious assault

Reading through your posts, it sounds like you are confusing a planned economy with a command economy. Not every planned economy has to be a command economy. If the plan is just to meet the demand of consumers based on their purchases, there is no single plan that everyone is commanded to adhere to (like in a command economy).

The "plan" in a non-command planned economy is for production to just constantly adjust based on orders placed. You can do some advanced planning (like companies do today), but the plan would be to fulfill consumer orders as they come in, not fulfill the plan made by some computer at the beginning of the year.

If orders slowed down, this would mean less orders for all its inputs. This information would be made available to the entire economy in real time so that every organization can react to changing consumption patterns in real time. Nothing needs to be fixed.

You see , here once again we have a problem of definition. Ive stated absolutely clearly what I mean by a central planned economy in its classical sense as involving a single society wide plan. Im not confusing anything

I know very well what you mean by a "planned economy" as well as a command economy. But a planned economy in the sense that you mean it is not - I repeat not - a centrally planned economy in the classic sense. The overall detailed allocations of inputs are not planned or predetermined by some single planning authority; they arise from the unplanned interactions of numerous economic actors. It is a system of polycentric planning in other words with perhaps a bit more emphasis on long range strategic thinking. But it is still not a centrally planned economy in the classic sense. Not by a long way.

A market economy like I said is full of plans as well. If I were to be mischievous I might want to call a free market, a planned economy for that very reason. But I know very well that is not what people have in mind when they talk about a planned economy. However it also does well to remind people here that neither is a planned economy a centrally planned economy despite its emphasis on long range strategic planning. There is only a relatively stronger emphasis on planning at higher levels of spatial organisation within what is still fundamentally a polycentric system of planning

red cat

21st May 2011, 10:00

Are posters here arguing that a computer of today can take the place of humans in planning an economy ?

RED DAVE

21st May 2011, 14:48

Are posters here arguing that a computer of today can take the place of humans in planning an economy ?With regard to Paul Cockshott and DNZ, I believe the answer is "Yes." They have a fundamentally bureaucratic, stalinist concept of socialism, which, no matter how they protest, is the negation of workers power.

Computers, planning, etc., are wonderful things, but the fundamental issue is workers democatic control, from the bottom up. The point is how computers, etc., will be used by the working class to run the economy. We have to always start not with computers and computing techniques, which are merely tools, but with workers democracy, which is the heart of socialism.

Frankly, I mistrust Cockshott, et al., especially as they are coming from a stalinist political tradition, which is the negation of workers democracy. Cockshott says (see above) that the USSR was some kind of socialism. So, he's given it all away before he even starts.

RED DAVE

Paul Cockshott

21st May 2011, 15:33

Youve overlooked quite a few things here, havent you? Even granted the apparent simplicity of the operations performed above - I will say nothing of the sheer arbitrariness of treating all labour units as exactly the same by averaging out their contribution and the adverse economic consequences for economising on, of making the most efficient use of, labour such a procedure will entail - there are other things you have to bear in mind.

To be an accurate guide to social cost you have to take into account the variation in training costs of different labour. If to do a particular job one has to have an extra two years training, and if this training lasts 10 years before becomining out of date, then each hour of your time on the job should count for at least an extra 20% in the social accounting to allow for the time spent training. I say at least, since you would also have to cover the time spent by the trainers.

Pricing a product in labour hours is all very well but the point of producing the product is that it should be consumed. Now, of course, labour time accounting does not necessarily entail a system of labour vouchers but in your case it seems to be just such a system you favour. So in order for such a system to function properly and for the products that are produced to be efficiently cleared from the shelves what you have to do is to ensure that the combined face value of labour vouchers issued equals the combined face value of products in terms their labour time input. Why? Becuase if you dont do that then the chances are you you will run into serious shortages or alternatively surpluses
This is correct and is an important point. It is unclear how one would ensure this without some system of planning and accounting operating accross the whole economy.

You see, under a strict system of labour vouchers prices are not responsive to changes in supply or demand. They are as you say fixed in accordnace with ther labour time input. In a capitalist market, shortages or surpluses lead to changes in prices which in turn lead to changes in the way resources are allocated. You won't have this option under a labour voucher scheme

We have suggested that if there are severe shortages or surpluses the state wholesaling agency should arrange for some goods to be marked at a premium or discount. This may be helpful in preventing the very apparent shortages that have arisen in some socialist and semi-socialist economies in the past. On the other hand
when I have tried to carry out simulations of how capitalist markets work it has appeared that when you have the sort of free price movements that, according to
orthodox economics are supposed to happen, the whole system seems to become
drastically unstable very quickly. I suspect therefore that the importance of price movements in existing economies is overstated by orthodox economics.

The fact that labour values are pretty good predictors of actual price ratios seems to bear this out,

Paul Cockshott

21st May 2011, 15:40

With regard to Paul Cockshott and DNZ, I believe the answer is "Yes." They have a fundamentally bureaucratic, stalinist concept of socialism, which, no matter how they protest, is the negation of workers power.

Computers, planning, etc., are wonderful things, but the fundamental issue is workers democatic control, from the bottom up. The point is how computers, etc., will be used by the working class to run the economy. We have to always start not with computers and computing techniques, which are merely tools, but with workers democracy, which is the heart of socialism.

Frankly, I mistrust Cockshott, et al., especially as they are coming from a stalinist political tradition, which is the negation of workers democracy. Cockshott says (see above) that the USSR was some kind of socialism. So, he's given it all away before he even starts.

RED DAVE

So you think that having been a member of the CPGB and sold the Morning Star is like original sin, or the stain of blood on Macbeth's hands, it taints me forever?

It might be fairer to see what I actually say on democracy and criticise that :
http://sosialismi.net/blog/2011/02/07/ideas-of-leadership-and-democracy/

Psy

21st May 2011, 16:06

Are posters here arguing that a computer of today can take the place of humans in planning an economy ?

How many people today don't trust Operating Systems to manage computer resources? Why would a economic operating system be any different where a network of mainframes abstract the economy for humans, where the computers deal with the gritty details of realizing the wants of humanity?

It is not that we want computers to make decisions for us just to abstract the economy for us so humanity can focus on debating utility not how that utility is produced. For example if we want to move 1 tonne of goods from point A to point B why have a vote when we can simply ask computers to plot the most logical means to move that 1 tonne of goods from point A to point B? Computers have the advantage in this case of simply brute forcing path finding and calculating all possible paths then finding the most effective path before humans can even organize a vote, same with resource allocation in general, computers can brute force solutions far faster then humans can sit down and work though the solution.

For example if it was possible to build a artilect (self-aware computer) and it was able to plan far more effectively then any human then what would be the case against letting it plan? Why would humanity care how a computer planned the economy if that computer was a slave of humanity that had to plan the economy to produce the utility humanity wanted?

red cat

21st May 2011, 16:13

With regard to Paul Cockshott and DNZ, I believe the answer is "Yes." They have a fundamentally bureaucratic, stalinist concept of socialism, which, no matter how they protest, is the negation of workers power.

Computers, planning, etc., are wonderful things, but the fundamental issue is workers democatic control, from the bottom up. The point is how computers, etc., will be used by the working class to run the economy. We have to always start not with computers and computing techniques, which are merely tools, but with workers democracy, which is the heart of socialism.

Frankly, I mistrust Cockshott, et al., especially as they are coming from a stalinist political tradition, which is the negation of workers democracy. Cockshott says (see above) that the USSR was some kind of socialism. So, he's given it all away before he even starts.

RED DAVE

Leaving aside your usual Stalinophobia, I will say that you have made a correct point here. There is a basic problem with replacing humans with a super-computer. A workers' democracy should give fundamental importance to the choice of workers. Therefore it is impossible to substitute the decision making process of the working class with a machine. The working class can at best collectively use a super computer or multiple machines over a network to solve numerical and optimization problems that will help in planning.

Psy

21st May 2011, 18:31

Leaving aside your usual Stalinophobia, I will say that you have made a correct point here. There is a basic problem with replacing humans with a super-computer. A workers' democracy should give fundamental importance to the choice of workers. Therefore it is impossible to substitute the decision making process of the working class with a machine. The working class can at best collectively use a super computer or multiple machines over a network to solve numerical and optimization problems that will help in planning.
Again why should humanity care of how utility is created as long as they get that utility. For example why should workers have a choice to use Robeson or Phillips screws when producing utility especially after a computer has calculated the most effective screw to use thus all we'd be doing is allowing workers to vote for the less effective screw to use.

red cat

21st May 2011, 20:37

Again why should humanity care of how utility is created as long as they get that utility. For example why should workers have a choice to use Robeson or Phillips screws when producing utility especially after a computer has calculated the most effective screw to use thus all we'd be doing is allowing workers to vote for the less effective screw to use.

A machine always optimizes on a well defined input set. When a system as complex as a whole economy is concerned, several factors might not be well defined or not clearly detectable before or even after actual experimentation. For example, in case of commodity or resource distribution, it is impossible to feed to the machine the individual choices of the workers and predict what the result of negotiations between workers would lead to. Therefore a machine cannot fully substitute workers themselves deciding the allocation of resources or products.

In your other post you say this :

It is not that we want computers to make decisions for us just to abstract the economy for us so humanity can focus on debating utility not how that utility is produced. For example if we want to move 1 tonne of goods from point A to point B why have a vote when we can simply ask computers to plot the most logical means to move that 1 tonne of goods from point A to point B? Computers have the advantage in this case of simply brute forcing path finding and calculating all possible paths then finding the most effective path before humans can even organize a vote, same with resource allocation in general, computers can brute force solutions far faster then humans can sit down and work though the solution.

The particular problem that you give as an example is solvable in a much more efficient method, a computer won't need to go through brute force path finding for that. But there are other problems that need brute force calculation as of now, for example global optimization over resource or product distribution. Presently it is impossible for even the most powerful of super-computers to solve large instances of this problem efficiently. A series of meetings of workers would be a much better method for such complex problems.

Psy

21st May 2011, 21:18

A machine always optimizes on a well defined input set. When a system as complex as a whole economy is concerned, several factors might not be well defined or not clearly detectable before or even after actual experimentation. For example, in case of commodity or resource distribution, it is impossible to feed to the machine the individual choices of the workers and predict what the result of negotiations between workers would lead to. Therefore a machine cannot fully substitute workers themselves deciding the allocation of resources or products.

From the point of view of the computer it is just looking at the means of production and calculating how to use them to produce the result desired by humanity as the computer interrupts that order.

In your other post you say this :

The particular problem that you give as an example is solvable in a much more efficient method, a computer won't need to go through brute force path finding for that.

Actually it kind of does, that is how the Internet works, computers brute force a path to get the data packet to its destination. We can see this too with path finding, with computers calculating travel times for each path using probability of traffic on each of those paths.

But there are other problems that need brute force calculation as of now, for example global optimization over resource or product distribution. Presently it is impossible for even the most powerful of super-computers to solve large instances of this problem efficiently. A series of meetings of workers would be a much better method for such complex problems.
Actually computers are used to effectively distributive product today. Hell the financial industry has totally automated planning of the movement of capital, where computers trade stocks automatically with just confirmation of human operators and the only reason it doesn't work is the computers are working with a bourgeoisie understanding of how finical markets work (thus the problem of garbage into a computer, garbage out of the computer).

mikelepore

21st May 2011, 21:23

You don't need a supercomputer. You could do the same thing with a 1960 era computer. All socialist planning has to do is set the production rate of each article to keep up with the shipment rate. If the local stores tend to order 800,000 light bulbs per month from the factory, then the factory has to make 800,000 light bulbs per month. There is nothing more that needs to be calculated. Mises and Hayek were full of baloney to claim that you also have to know how desperate the recipients are to receive the product, as indicated by how high a price they can be pressured into paying for it. Unlike capitalism, the point of socialism is not to seek out people who are already down so that you can kick them.

S.Artesian

21st May 2011, 21:31

So you think that having been a member of the CPGB and sold the Morning Star is like original sin, or the stain of blood on Macbeth's hands, it taints me forever?

It might be fairer to see what I actually say on democracy and criticise that :
http://sosialismi.net/blog/2011/02/07/ideas-of-leadership-and-democracy/

Thought it was Lady Macbeth who kept trying to get rid of the stain "Out, out damned spot," and all that.

FWIW, I don't think it taints you. But other things make me cautious. Like that stuff where the fSU can be socialist almost [but not quite] no matter what mediation it uses to extract its surplus from the workers. That's a real problem, you know, because then it's so easy to slip into the "historical necessity" justification to explain what has happened, and may certainly happen again, because the amount of destruction that will likely be the result of the civil war with the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries will look, to those who want to see it, just like the "historical necessity" that "demanded" the suppression of left communists, revolutionists, Marxists, Bolsheviks, in the fSU which then in turn was used as the basis for imposing similar suppression of revolutionary struggles outside the fSU.

So, I am really sympathetic to the impulse that is implicit, and becomes more or less explicit, in your work-- that we have to be able to answer the bourgeoisie's claim that they, the "free market," delivers the goods and socialism, a planned economy, collapsed because it was a planned economy.

But we know that the "planning" of the Soviet economy was hardly precise, that internal markets still functioned in the pores of the economy, and that the fSU collapsed not because it was "socialist," but because it wasn't.

It did not achieve a level of productivity in agriculture equivalent to that of the advance countries. If you now claim that democracy is essential to socialism and socialist planning-- then why was it not necessary back in 1926, 1928, 1933? What makes it necessary, not possible, but necessary now, but not necessary to socialism then? Is it because socialism has changed? The fundamental class relations of laborers to their own labor is going to be different this time?

Not to mention.. that while it's important to discuss this area of planning, if democracy is essential to socialism, then your model is NOT, as workers may develop and apply different models without "damaging" the underlying social relation of production-- the relation of the laborers to the conditions of their own labor.

Paul Cockshott

22nd May 2011, 00:49

It did not achieve a level of productivity in agriculture equivalent to that of the advance countries. If you now claim that democracy is essential to socialism and socialist planning-- then why was it not necessary back in 1926, 1928, 1933? What makes it necessary, not possible, but necessary now, but not necessary to socialism then? Is it because socialism has changed? The fundamental class relations of laborers to their own labor is going to be different this time?

Not to mention.. that while it's important to discuss this area of planning, if democracy is essential to socialism, then your model is NOT, as workers may develop and apply different models without "damaging" the underlying social relation of production-- the relation of the laborers to the conditions of their own labor.

These are good questions. I dont think democracy was necessary for socialism in the early USSR. Had a democratic system of government existed there it is very unlikely that the Bolsheviks could have held onto power during the 20s. The class composition of the country was such that democracy would have resulted in a government representing primarily the interests of the peasants. Given the relatively weak support that the Bosheviks had traditionally had in peasant areas, such a government would have favoured a market economy which would have combined capitalism with private peasant production for the market.

The USSR by the 1960s had a quite different class structure, and in these circumstances socialism could probably have survived a genuine demarchy, but not a multi-paarty electoral system. If we address the world today, the chance of socialism coming about via a Bolshevik style dictatorship over a peasant majority can probably be discounted. Socialists stand to gain by being the most forthright advocates of democracy, as they were in the days of classical social democracy.

S.Artesian

22nd May 2011, 01:19

These are good questions. I dont think democracy was necessary for socialism in the early USSR. Had a democratic system of government existed there it is very unlikely that the Bolsheviks could have held onto power during the 20s. The class composition of the country was such that democracy would have resulted in a government representing primarily the interests of the peasants. Given the relatively weak support that the Bosheviks had traditionally had in peasant areas, such a government would have favoured a market economy which would have combined capitalism with private peasant production for the market.

The USSR by the 1960s had a quite different class structure, and in these circumstances socialism could probably have survived a genuine demarchy, but not a multi-paarty electoral system. If we address the world today, the chance of socialism coming about via a Bolshevik style dictatorship over a peasant majority can probably be discounted. Socialists stand to gain by being the most forthright advocates of democracy, as they were in the days of classical social democracy.

You jump for saying "democracy wasn't necessary for socialism in the 1930s" to concluding that democracy would have amounted to the overthrow of the soviets and the probable restoration of capitalism in a peasant state.

This does not answer these questions: Why was democracy not economically necessary for socialism in the fSU in the 1920s and 1930s? Why is democracy now necessary for socialism? Is it an economic, class necessity based on socialism being the emancipation of labor, and inevitably reintroducing the stratification of the working class, and its economic estrangement from the products and conditions of labor if there is no proletarian democracy? Or is it simply a political expedient, designed to win over the fence-sitters, the petit-bourgeois, the unwilling.

If it is of economic necessity, based on the relation of labor to the conditions of labor, then it was necessary in 1930, and the lack thereof means whatever we want to call the fSU [and state capitalist is not something I would call it], we sure can't call it "socialist."

How could a socialist society have a different class structure in the 1960s than in the 1930s, if in fact both were socialist? See, this is why the question of politics, of class, of the social relations of production is so essential, take priority over all questions of "planning" etc.

What you've come down to is exactly what I said it would come down to-- the justification of what happened as "historically necessary" without consideration of the actual impact on the social relations of production and, just as importantly the prospects for the proletarian revolution.

We might not see in advanced countries a Bolshevik dictatorship over a peasant majority, but we sure might see that in say half the world... no?

Another concern, although this really needs its own thread, is that if the Bolshevik circumstances were so unique as to create this sort of extraction of surplus by terror and still be socialism, why was it imposed internationally on the CPs throughout the advanced, and less advanced countries?

Right... I don't think the "socialist dictatorship" as practiced by the agents of the fSU and the 3rd Intl against revolutionists worldwide has any chance of every taking power in advanced countries-- but it sure can fuck up the revolution; it sure can make it impossible for the proletariat to organize itself for the taking of power. And that has been demonstrated in the not too distant history.

But anyway, the main issue-- that planning a socialist economy is essential to the taking and maintaining of power by the proletariat is, IMO, beyond dispute-- how we work that out is, like I said, going to be one helluva fantastic experiment. The rest needs its own thread.

Die Neue Zeit

22nd May 2011, 05:27

Given the relatively weak support that the Bosheviks had traditionally had in peasant areas, such a government would have favoured a market economy which would have combined capitalism with private peasant production for the market.

Don't forget the decline of support in urban areas too, as early as 1918.

I don't think Soviet workers supported the socialist primitive accumulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_accumulation) aspects of having their real wages depressed by over half during the industrial drive, stricter labour discipline and penal policy, etc.

red cat

22nd May 2011, 08:26

From the point of view of the computer it is just looking at the means of production and calculating how to use them to produce the result desired by humanity as the computer interrupts that order.

Correct, but to predict the outcome of a workers' meeting and reflect their choices one would have to feed the computer with some input simulating the thought processes of the workers, which is impossible.

Actually it kind of does, that is how the Internet works, computers brute force a path to get the data packet to its destination. We can see this too with path finding, with computers calculating travel times for each path using probability of traffic on each of those paths. It is a bit unusual for a computer to use a brute force method if it manages to attach constant probabilities to segments of roads between crossings.

Actually computers are used to effectively distributive product today. Hell the financial industry has totally automated planning of the movement of capital, where computers trade stocks automatically with just confirmation of human operators and the only reason it doesn't work is the computers are working with a bourgeoisie understanding of how finical markets work (thus the problem of garbage into a computer, garbage out of the computer).Effectively, but not correctly. A computer of today cannot solve efficiently and correctly optimization problems of resource allocation consisting of integer units. These problems will become more complex when all round social welfare and maintenance of workers' democracy rather than private profit become the object of the economy.

Jose Gracchus

22nd May 2011, 09:24

I must say, I completely agree with red cat. You can't be so reductionist to think workers' power consists solely some statisticians coming up with baselines for performance and inputting them into the massive machine. There are specific issues where in specific contexts, some tools are clearly superior in particular ways for particular applications, and here scientific methods will excel and in fact must be put to use by workers. However, this must be done in the context of the workers' self-activity as a class, building a socialist economy. This cannot be "imparted" upon it by abstract means.

Psy

22nd May 2011, 15:19

Correct, but to predict the outcome of a workers' meeting and reflect their choices one would have to feed the computer with some input simulating the thought processes of the workers, which is impossible.

That computers won't be trying to predict, you seem to confuse choice with problems. A problem has a quantifiable best answer this is what computers in central planning solves, there is no choice as any answer that is not the quantifiable best answer is wrong thus there is no choice to be made, while a choice is where there is no quantifiable best answer.

For example if you what to know what street light design to use that is not a choice it is a problem, it can be solves through the scientific process were you simply try all designs and standardize the most effective street light design, all other designs will be proven inferior through the scientific method thus not mass produced.

On the other hand the how many streets lights to have is a choice you can't use the scientific method to make a quantifiable correct answer as there is a trade off between the utility of having streets light up at night and the utility of darkness at night.

Central planning uses computers for problem solving to standardize the quantifiable correct solutions to problems and enact choices on a global scale.

It is a bit unusual for a computer to use a brute force method if it manages to attach constant probabilities to segments of roads between crossings.

The problem is the computer doesn't know as it hasn't fully calculated everything it wants to move. Sure computers can remember its past solutions but if a computer has to path find millions of vehicles across a wide network it will have to brute force path finding a path might get congested later on in its calculations. For example lets say there is a road block because fire fighters have closed the road to fight a fire, that means dispatch computers have to figure out how to get around the road blocks so drivers ordered by dispatch computers don't get caught in the backup of traffic caused by the road closer.

Effectively, but not correctly.
A computer of today cannot solve efficiently and correctly optimization problems of resource allocation consisting of integer units. These problems will become more complex when all round social welfare and maintenance of workers' democracy rather than private profit become the object of the economy.

Again you are confusing problems for choices, computers are better at problem solving then humans and the bulk of economic planning is problem solving. Thus what you would have is democracy to make choices and computers solving the problem related to realizing those choices.

Paul Cockshott

22nd May 2011, 18:41

How could a socialist society have a different class structure in the 1960s than in the 1930s, if in fact both were socialist? See, this is why the question of politics, of class, of the social relations of production is so essential, take priority over all questions of "planning" etc.

Well they were not both socialist. I think Bordiga's analysis of the combination of modes of production in 1920s russia was right:
1. Patriarchal peasant production
2. Petty commodity production
3. Capitalism
4. State capitalism

Kotze

22nd May 2011, 18:56

On the other hand when I have tried to carry out simulations of how capitalist markets work it has appeared that when you have the sort of free price movements that, according to orthodox economics are supposed to happen, the whole system seems to become drastically unstable very quickly. I suspect therefore that the importance of price movements in existing economies is overstated by orthodox economics.Isn't that like traffic: When you are alone on the street, getting from A to B works the best the less you are restricted by rules. The more dense traffic gets, the more you have to concentrate on anticipating behaviour of others, and the less bound by rules they are, the harder this becomes.

Still, the individual experience is of course that things would be easier if one had to follow less restrictive rules all else equal, which makes proposals that claim to offer more "individual freedom" so alluring. It is true that setting more strict speed limits in some places can result in people getting faster from A to B, but getting people to accept this isn't easy.

Die Neue Zeit

22nd May 2011, 18:59

JamesH

22nd May 2011, 19:25

We have suggested that if there are severe shortages or surpluses the state wholesaling agency should arrange for some goods to be marked at a premium or discount. This may be helpful in preventing the very apparent shortages that have arisen in some socialist and semi-socialist economies in the past. On the other hand
when I have tried to carry out simulations of how capitalist markets work it has appeared that when you have the sort of free price movements that, according to
orthodox economics are supposed to happen, the whole system seems to become
drastically unstable very quickly. I suspect therefore that the importance of price movements in existing economies is overstated by orthodox economics.

The fact that labour values are pretty good predictors of actual price ratios seems to bear this out,

Are there any published or working papers about these simulations?

Kotze

22nd May 2011, 19:40

Are there any published or working papers about these simulations?Only had a brief look, but I believe this could be useful:
A Sraffian Critique of the Classical Notion of Center of Gravitation by Ajit Sinha and Michel-Stéphane Dupertuis (PDF) (http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/%7Ecottrell/ope/archive/0709/att-0111/01-GravMec_pdf_.pdf)

S.Artesian

22nd May 2011, 22:46

Well they were not both socialist. I think Bordiga's analysis of the combination of modes of production in 1920s russia was right:
1. Patriarchal peasant production
2. Petty commodity production
3. Capitalism
4. State capitalism

So then, when did it become socialist as you claim in the introduction to your book?

And if it became capitalist after that "progression"-- remarkable in itself that it could make such a progression without a bourgeoisie in control-- why was terror necessary to enforce the socialism, when the peasant and petty production had been already overcome?

Paul Cockshott

23rd May 2011, 14:21

Are there any published or working papers about these simulations?
It is one of the banes of science that one does not tend to publish negative results. Since the models based on the textbook views worked so badly I did not publish them. Ian Wright has published some much simpler simulation models which did give good results.

Paul Cockshott

23rd May 2011, 14:22

So then, when did it become socialist as you claim in the introduction to your book?

Perhaps by the late 30s, certainly by the 50s.

Paul Cockshott

23rd May 2011, 14:23

Only had a brief look, but I believe this could be useful:
A Sraffian Critique of the Classical Notion of Center of Gravitation by Ajit Sinha and Michel-Stéphane Dupertuis (PDF) (http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/%7Ecottrell/ope/archive/0709/att-0111/01-GravMec_pdf_.pdf)
That paper by Ajit is good, Ians results claim to contradict Ajit's.

Paul Cockshott

23rd May 2011, 14:25

Lenin outlined this before Bordiga did, in Left-Wing Childishness. :confused:
You are right Bordiga used that position of Lenin as a starting point for his own book

RED DAVE

23rd May 2011, 14:36

Perhaps by the late 30s, certainly by the 50s.Are you seriously asserting that the USSR was socialist from the late 1930s to the 1950s?

(1) Have you considered a career as stand-up comic?

(2) Where are the organs or workers control of the economy which are the hallmark of socialism?

(3) Why would the fearless leader of a socialist country have to resort to mass terror and a systematic campaign of slander and lies to sustain socialism?

RED DAVE

S.Artesian

23rd May 2011, 15:11

Perhaps by the late 30s, certainly by the 50s.

This just doesn't make sense. You claim that proletarian democracy was not only NOT essential to "socialism," and I guess the construction of socialism, but was also inimical to socialism given the dominant peasant mode of production in the fSU. Ergo, the "undemocracy" the terror.

Then you claim the fSU was socialist by the late 1930s, [meaning among other things, it was state capitalist before then], which of course, is the period brought about by the first five year plans and the expansion of the terror.

So how could the terror be essential to socialism before socialism, in the period of state capitalism? How could the terror be essential to socialism after the economy has morphed from peasant based, and petty commodity production to state capitalism? Did the terror overthrow the class associated with state capitalism?

This should all be discussed on its own, but what it indicates to me is that you,in your formulations, define socialism "asocially" so to speak, as the result of planning, with the expropriation of the means of production by the working class through its own organizations, and the working class conscious democratic organization of the economy as merely "tactical" requirements to inaugurate the government of, by, and for the planners.

What was it Lenin said about Trotsky? A bit too preoccupied with the purely administrative side of things? You think that might apply here?

The issue is really, is there an economic, social necessity for proletarian democracy in the replacement of capitalism, of its social relations of production? Or is the class really nothing more than a donkey on which the messiah of planning rides in?

Die Neue Zeit

23rd May 2011, 20:03

The issue is really, is there an economic, social necessity for proletarian democracy in the replacement of capitalism, of its social relations of production? Or is the class really nothing more than a donkey on which the messiah of planning rides in?

Bordiga thought the latter.

I will say this: there is no need for "delegative democracy" in the lower phase of the communist mode of production or in the transition towards it.

S.Artesian

23rd May 2011, 20:05

And I am not a Bordigaist.

I will say this: In Marx's writings, it certainly seems to be necessary at all points in the transition.

Die Neue Zeit

23rd May 2011, 20:09

I just wanted to introduce a labour credits perspective that downplayed the democracy question. As much as I disagree with Bordiga, I think the lower phase of the communist mode of production can have more than one political direction. I suggested a technology-employing bureaucratic road in between "ultra-democratists" and Bordiga's "totalitarianism" (his words).

malcom

23rd May 2011, 22:02

Here are some responses : http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/berlin.ppt (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/berlin.ppt)
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf)
orr this : http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/hayek/hayek.html (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/hayek/hayek.html)
And a variety of other ones here: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html#econ (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/index.html#econ)

Paul,

How would your proposed system of using labor vouchers deal with large purchases like a house? Would there be some kind of lending system? How would that work?

Also, would you be able to point me to the information that shows how investments will be allocated? We can't fund every new product idea, gizmo, research idea, etc. So what would the mechanism be for determining what ideas get funded and which ones do not?

Die Neue Zeit

23rd May 2011, 23:32

^^^ There's a chapter or two in TNS that deals with savings and credit.

robbo203

24th May 2011, 07:07

Are you seriously asserting that the USSR was socialist from the late 1930s to the 1950s?

(1) Have you considered a career as stand-up comic?

(2) Where are the organs or workers control of the economy which are the hallmark of socialism?

(3) Why would the fearless leader of a socialist country have to resort to mass terror and a systematic campaign of slander and lies to sustain socialism?

RED DAVE

Well this is the problem isnt it? Its the humpty dumpty perspective on the word "socialism". Which character was it in Alice in Wonderland who said something along the lines that a word is whatever I take it to mean.

Paul Cockshott considers the Soviet Union was once "socialist". No orthodox or traditional Marxist would agree with this in the slightest. A Marxist would point to the existence of generalised wage labour in the SU as proof positive of the existence of capitalist relations in the SU (like Marx said, wage labour presupposes capital and vice versa). A Marxist would point to the existence of commodity production - not just for consumer goods but capital goods as well in respect of inter-enterprise relationships with state agencies like GOSSNAP (State Commission for Materials and Equipment Supply) essentially playing a mediating role. A Marxist would point to the requirement placed upon state enterprises to pursue profit, which profit ultimately reverted to the state and its de facto ruling class that exerted ultimate control over the allocation and distribution of surplus value. A Marxist would point out that contrary to the fiction that the SU was some sort of "planned economy" there was (of necessity) a considerable degree of decentralisation in the Soviet state capitalist economy and all the much touted plans emanating from GOSPLAN were largely based on wishful thinking and were invariably and constantly modified by economic realities rather than guiding the later.

Still, what can you say in the face of someone who persists in arguing that the Soviet Union was somehow "socialist"? My stock response is simply to say that if that is "socialism" then I count me as an ardent opponent of this "socialism"

jake williams

24th May 2011, 13:31

Still, what can you say in the face of someone who persists in arguing that the Soviet Union was somehow "socialist"? My stock response is simply to say that if that is "socialism" then I count me as an ardent opponent of this "socialism"
Duly noted.

robbo203

24th May 2011, 17:02

Duly noted.

Do I detect the ever-so-faint note of irony here and might I wonder what your response might be to , say, Labour party style "socialism" (e.g. the so called "socialist" government of Spain) or better still , "national socialism". You're not suggesting that because these things incorporate the term "socialism" that they can or should be supported by socialists. I sincerely hope not....

jake williams

24th May 2011, 18:13

Do I detect the ever-so-faint note of irony here and might I wonder what your response might be to , say, Labour party style "socialism" (e.g. the so called "socialist" government of Spain) or better still , "national socialism". You're not suggesting that because these things incorporate the term "socialism" that they can or should be supported by socialists. I sincerely hope not....
The opportunist online posturing about now the working class has never accomplished anything gets really aggravating. The SU was a really flawed society. But I have a hard time seeing the sort of position you seem to be taking as anything other than an excuse for not taking working class politics seriously.

robbo203

24th May 2011, 19:04

The opportunist online posturing about now the working class has never accomplished anything gets really aggravating. The SU was a really flawed society. But I have a hard time seeing the sort of position you seem to be taking as anything other than an excuse for not taking working class politics seriously.

How on earth do you figure this out and what the hell has this got to do with a discussion on the nature of socialism anyway?

I do take working class politics very seriously, for your information, being a worker myself, but if working class politics is to make any progress at all it has got to learn the lessons of history. One of those lessons, unpalatable though it may be to you, is that the experience of the Soviet Union which even you admit was a "really flawed society" was a complete cul de sac as far as the advancement of socialism was concerned and more - an utter diversion which dragged the good name of socialism through the mud by associating it with political tryanny.

Unlike you, I prefer to call a spade and spade and not be so precious and mealy mouthed about it...

Jose Gracchus

25th May 2011, 06:13

"Blah blah, don't slander October you'll demoralize the workers"

In a word, bullshit.

Did general commodity production persist in the USSR? Was the Soviet terror under Stalin an act of "socialist construction" by the really existing working class? When, where, and how did the working class have functional means to exercise control in the three spheres essential to socialism (high politics, macroeconomic decision-making, and control on the shopfloor and in working-class communities)?

sobia

25th May 2011, 07:46

nice to see the video, about the super computer, thanks for sharing with us

Rowan Duffy

25th May 2011, 12:25

Did general commodity production persist in the USSR? Was the Soviet terror under Stalin an act of "socialist construction" by the really existing working class? When, where, and how did the working class have functional means to exercise control in the three spheres essential to socialism (high politics, macroeconomic decision-making, and control on the shopfloor and in working-class communities)?

I don't think generalised commodity production (GCP) persisted if you mean generalised commodity production for the purpose of profits in the sense of capitalism - the way in which it is used by Marx. The SU had production that was largely meant to supply the population with commodities for their use (as determined by some planning bodies) rather than for profits. The idea that the SU could in no way evaluate what was useful is also not entirely correct since it had information about what goods were in shortage and which were oversupplied. This is probably considered grossly insufficient information by most libertarians, and rightly so, but it isn't no information.

There were of course constraints on this activity imposed by questions of real scarcity and the need to interact with the international market. However, trying to see the SU as GCP obscures how it actually functioned.

Whether the removal of GCP is socialism is really sort of definitional. Most libertarians would insist that without democratic control you don't have socialism - since they would like to excise the SU from consideration as socialist.

This helps with advertising/branding etc. since it's nice and convenient to say Stalinism isn't socialism, the USSR was never socialism and nothing that happened there is what we are for. It's a very sensible approach when orientating to the population, and hence popular. For this reason I'm fairly sympathetic to it. I don't think you're going to convince the mass of Americans to make subtle distinctions along the lines expected by those who want to defend the USSR as socialist.

It is, however, pretty much an entirely definitional approach, and probably not the one that someone like, say, Bakunin would have taken or he wouldn't have said:

"Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, and socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality"

I'm not particularly worried which definition people use as long as they don't get too hot under the collar thinking that they are arguing about the same things when arguing with someone who has a different definition.

There are lots of ways to produce commodities that aren't driven by the profit motive that are undesirable. I think it's fair enough to conclude that we need to have commodity production driven by the use-values to people subject to the constraints of our ability to supply labour to those needs, and that that should be done in the most democratic way possible.

I suppose the main question that perhaps Inform really has is why anyone would feel it is necessary to defend the SU as socialist in the face of Stalinism and the abject failure to allow the working class a voice. I think a lot of this is historically driven, and some of it is driven by relative measures of benefit.

I think part of the problem that the SU=Socialist camp see is in the equivocation implied. Not all situations prior to libertarian communism are identical. The situation after the collapse in Russia was worse than the situation before on almost all human measures. That is despite the supposed introduction of bourgeois freedoms which are more or less meaningless when you're starving. People who are uncomfortable watching this equivocation might feel compelled to defend the SU against the logic of capitalism, which seems on almost all measures, worse.

I personally believe that Stalinism did an incalculable disservice to socialism through the purges. This has left a stain on the entire communist movement that is very difficult to remove. On the other hand, it should not prevent us from carefully examining information about the mode of production and how it functioned without over-simplifying. While we need to be careful about the manner in which we approach the public, we should allow some level of nuance when analysing history.

robbo203

25th May 2011, 18:14

I don't think generalised commodity production (GCP) persisted if you mean generalised commodity production for the purpose of profits in the sense of capitalism - the way in which it is used by Marx. The SU had production that was largely meant to supply the population with commodities for their use (as determined by some planning bodies) rather than for profits. The idea that the SU could in no way evaluate what was useful is also not entirely correct since it had information about what goods were in shortage and which were oversupplied. This is probably considered grossly insufficient information by most libertarians, and rightly so, but it isn't no information.

State enterprises were legally obliged to keep profit and loss accounts. State enterprises that did not make a profit could be, and were, penalised in a variety of ways. They may not have gone out of business as in the West but neither do nationalised businesses in the West tend to go out of business. As in the SU, such loss making enterprises are subsidised by profitable industriies and this is precidely why the SU could not risk being too lax about the need to compel state entrepises to make a proft. Accounting profits reverted to the state as surplus value out of which capital was accumulated as in any other capitalist contury but with the superficial difference that this was done via the the agency of the state. As Alec Nove has noted this surplus value extraction reached its apogee under Stalin in the 30s when working class living standards were sacrificed on the altar of capital accumulation and fell drastically as a result under this ruthlessly exploitative capitalist system

There certainly was generalised commodity production in the full Marxian sense - not only in respect of consumer goods but also capital goods. Contractural relationships between state enterprises were commodity based - with inputs and resouces being bought and sold between enterprises and with state agencies like GOSSNAP essentially acting as intermediaries. The state bank provided finance but state enterprises also had recourse to private credit

In its essentials, the SU conformed precisely to what is called a capitalist economy in Marxian terms; it was just a slightly more unconventional form of capitalism but certainly not one without precedent in the West. Lenin after all urged his compatriots to imitate the state capitalist German war economy!

Rowan Duffy

25th May 2011, 20:23

There certainly was generalised commodity production in the full Marxian sense - not only in respect of consumer goods but also capital goods. Contractural relationships between state enterprises were commodity based - with inputs and resouces being bought and sold between enterprises and with state agencies like GOSSNAP essentially acting as intermediaries. The state bank provided finance but state enterprises also had recourse to private credit

Firstly, the full Marxian sense is a capitalist class which takes financial capital and invests it in order to make profit which it then splits between self-consumption and re-investment. That's part of generalised commodity production as analysed by Marx.

What happened during the phases of the economy which were mostly planned can not be realistically called generalised commodity production without changing the meaning pretty significantly.

In its essentials, the SU conformed precisely to what is called a capitalist economy in Marxian terms; it was just a slightly more unconventional form of capitalism but certainly not one without precedent in the West. Lenin after all urged his compatriots to imitate the state capitalist German war economy!

No, it didn't perform like a capitalist economy in Marxian terms since it didn't actually have a capitalist class.

As per the NEP, that was essentially a programme of dirigisme, which was considered by, for instance, Bukharin, to have been a calculated retreat from an overly idealistic vision of the transition. They did want to institute large scale nationalisation with a temporary capitalist economy - however that isn't something which remained the dominant mode for the economy over the course of the life of the USSR.

I think we will find it more fruitful to be more careful in looking at the various productive modes in their particulars, because they will have interesting things to tell us about economics if we aren't so interested in abstracting the entire experiment with a label as opaque as state capitalism.

S.Artesian

25th May 2011, 20:56

bezdomni

25th May 2011, 21:21

To address the video, why not a decentralized planned economy?

Better yet, why not a decentralized planned economy which makes calculations across a massively distributed computing cluster?

For example, the [email protected] (http://folding.stanford.edu/) project.

I don't think the computer would ever (in the foreseeable future) be able to make decisions about how to plan an economy, but it would be able to construct predictive models which would help humans make informed decisions about adjustments in pricing/production/distribution algorithms.

bezdomni

25th May 2011, 21:28

Kotze

25th May 2011, 23:27

To address the video, why not a decentralized planned economy?
Better yet, why not a decentralized planned economy which makes calculations across a massively distributed computing cluster?Even better, now imagine these massively distributed computers getting moved into the same room, so they can tell each other intermediate data faster :P

(And you would have several completely redundant computation centers in different places doing exactly the same calculations, duh.)

robbo203

25th May 2011, 23:49

Firstly, the full Marxian sense is a capitalist class which takes financial capital and invests it in order to make profit which it then splits between self-consumption and re-investment. That's part of generalised commodity production as analysed by Marx.

What happened during the phases of the economy which were mostly planned can not be realistically called generalised commodity production without changing the meaning pretty significantly.

No, it didn't perform like a capitalist economy in Marxian terms since it didn't actually have a capitalist class.

As per the NEP, that was essentially a programme of dirigisme, which was considered by, for instance, Bukharin, to have been a calculated retreat from an overly idealistic vision of the transition. They did want to institute large scale nationalisation with a temporary capitalist economy - however that isn't something which remained the dominant mode for the economy over the course of the life of the USSR.

I think we will find it more fruitful to be more careful in looking at the various productive modes in their particulars, because they will have interesting things to tell us about economics if we aren't so interested in abstracting the entire experiment with a label as opaque as state capitalism.

Your argument seems to hinge on the claim that there was no capitalist class in the Soviet Union.

I disagree. There was such a class though its relationship to the means of production was different from that of its counterparts in the West where de jure private ownership of capital by individuals was possible. Indeed Engels had noted how this form of private ownership was on the way out being replaced by trusts and state ownership. As he put it with regard to the latter:

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

Note the identification of the state with the "national capitalist"

In the SU you essentially had a de facto monopolisation of the means of production by a tiny elite - the nomenklatura - who via their control of the state apparatus effectively owned the means of production as a collective class.

De facto ownership and ultimate control really amount to the same thing. Its not possible to separate them. Ergo, the ultimate control exercised by the nomenklatura that gave them power over the disposal of the surplus product was tantamount to class ownerhip of the means of production

The function of this state capitalist class was to do precisely what you say a capitalist class does in the marxian sense which is to take financial capital and invest it in order to make profit which it then splits between self-consumption and re-investment. Of course this was mediated through the planning process in the SU which may give it the appearance of being something other than what it was but ultimately the system hinged on the process of capital accumulation through the extraction of surplus value from an exploited workforce and this expressed itself at the state enterprise level in terms of the compulsion to produce operating profits.

All of the categories of capitalism operated in the SU though the particular form that capitalism took there differed from its western counterpart

Psy

27th May 2011, 16:29

BTW, consider the following example for an idea of the complexity associated with these kinds of computations.

Suppose you have an index of all available airline tickets, which are being bought and sold and adjusted in price continuously. Your index refreshes at some given rate (say 10 Mhz), and you want to be able to look up the best price for a given flight quickly.

As it turns out, this is pretty hard to do. In fact, I believe this problem is of computational complexity class NP-Hard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-hard).
Why would you adjust prices 10 million times a second?

In computer science that is like keep picking up the phone to check to see if someone called (polling) you instead of waiting for the phone to ring (that is a interrupt).

In this cause the index will only be updated if the computers handling booking airline seats interrupts the central planning computer with booking being out of the window of normality, else the central planning computer will assume airline books are within the window of what planner assumed.

For example if all of sudden there is a huge spike in booking then alarms will start going off alerting humans of a unsustainable rate of booking for flights, if it keeps going eventually the computers will just freeze all bookings to prevent over bookings of flights till humans figure out what is going on (i.e if it is a hacker or is there really some sudden shift in air travel that human planners didn't plan on and what is the cause of this sudden shift).

As for prices, prices won't exist in a late stage communist economy.

bezdomni

27th May 2011, 17:26

Why would you adjust prices 10 million times a second?

What? Nobody suggested that.

Prices aren't adjusted 10 million times per second, availability is refreshed because there are a lot of things to keep very close track of when actually distributing goods over the internet.

In computer science that is like keep picking up the phone to check to see if someone called (polling) you instead of waiting for the phone to ring (that is a interrupt).

Uh...

In this cause the index will only be updated if the computers handling booking airline seats interrupts the central planning computer with booking being out of the window of normality, else the central planning computer will assume airline books are within the window of what planner assumed.

How will the planning computer make predictions though? It is hard to anticipate behavior like purchising airline tickets (for specific flights), which people are doing constantly (that is, availability is constantly changing). The airline thing was just an example of some economic behavior which is (a) currently making heavy use of internet as a circuit of direct distribution of goods/services (b) somewhat understood from a computational complexity perspective.

This "central planning computer" has to (run algorithms which) solve problems that are NP-hard.

Planning an economy is NP-hard, that is all I was saying/conjecturing.

For example if all of sudden there is a huge spike in booking then alarms will start going off alerting humans of a unsustainable rate of booking for flights, if it keeps going eventually the computers will just freeze all bookings to prevent over bookings of flights till humans figure out what is going on (i.e if it is a hacker or is there really some sudden shift in air travel that human planners didn't plan on and what is the cause of this sudden shift).
There is an easier way to do it? (e.g. like it is done now, by the computer based on availability - but how to adjust availability to anticipated demand? that is a hard question to answer without a lot of data, a good model and tons of computing power).

It would not make sense to do this in one individual industry, let alone have all industry operate like this.

As for prices, prices won't exist in a late stage communist economy.

Okay, but the level of technology then will be far different than anything imaginable now , and there will have to be a way to do things in socialism...

Psy

27th May 2011, 19:04

What? Nobody suggested that.

Prices aren't adjusted 10 million times per second, availability is refreshed because there are a lot of things to keep very close track of when actually distributing goods over the internet.

You basically just take the average and peak.

How will the planning computer make predictions though? It is hard to anticipate behavior like purchising airline tickets (for specific flights), which people are doing constantly (that is, availability is constantly changing). The airline thing was just an example of some economic behavior which is (a) currently making heavy use of internet as a circuit of direct distribution of goods/services (b) somewhat understood from a computational complexity perspective.

You don't care about specific flights you care about regional capacity as planes can be reassigned as flight traffic changes.

This "central planning computer" has to (run algorithms which) solve problems that are NP-hard.

Planning an economy is NP-hard, that is all I was saying/conjecturing.

There is an easier way to do it? (e.g. like it is done now, by the computer based on availability - but how to adjust availability to anticipated demand? that is a hard question to answer without a lot of data, a good model and tons of computing power).

It is not hard, what was the demand last year to date compared to this year to date, that would be roughly how much extra demand will exist next year to date. This is how most industries with very long production cycles plan expansion of capacity (like building new electric power stations).

Okay, but the level of technology then will be far different than anything imaginable now , and there will have to be a way to do things in socialism...
Which already is done with current technology when capitalists plan for internal use of resources.

bezdomni

27th May 2011, 19:15

I'm talking about how things are bought/sold on the internet (actual distribution of goods), whereas you are talking about how resources are planned to be allocated.

[After reading your post a second time - I am actually not sure exactly what you are talking about.]

Still, both are highly complex computational problems. If you disagree with my conjecture about planning an economy being NP-hard, a proof would be interesting.

Which already is done with current technology when capitalists plan for internal use of resources.
They are not planning an entire economy where production is designed to meet existing levels of human need. Capitalists only do planning in their industry, which is largely guess-work and voodoo.

Psy

27th May 2011, 19:31

I'm talking about how things are bought/sold on the internet (actual distribution of goods), whereas you are talking about how resources are planned to be allocated.

Same thing, how many units of a commodity sold last year to date compared to this year to date.

Still, both are highly complex computational problems. If you disagree with my conjecture about planning an economy being NP-hard, a proof would be interesting.

That capitalists get by using peak and average demand because they can store commodities still sold or have excess capacity to deal with peaks.

They are not planning an entire economy where production is designed to meet existing levels of human need. Capitalists only do planning in their industry, which is largely guess-work and voodoo.
It is not guess-work and voodoo. It is based on trends calculated from previous demand. For example power companies computers regularly predict with great accuracy what the peak load will be on the network ahead of time so they have a heads up of when they have to buy more power to meet peak demand. The same computers give them an idea of what extra capacity they need in the long run.

bezdomni

27th May 2011, 19:50

Same thing, how many units of a commodity sold last year to date compared to this year to date.

It is not this simple to distribute goods in a planned economy.

In most circumstances, it is fairly straightforward to plan for production capacity based on projections made on current production. However, actually carrying out the plan and adjusting it quickly to avoid disasters when your model is wrong has proven a very difficult task, especially in certain volatile industries.

Making production meet demand is a non-trivial issue, and so is allocating/distributing goods efficiently.

You seem to be trivializing the problem somewhat. It is not easy to plan an economy, in fact it is probably NP-hard to plan an economy. [If we could rigorously define what it means to plan an economy, this statement can be proven mathematically.]

It is based on trends calculated from previous demand.

Yes, and how are these things calculated? This is not an irrelevant detail, but is the central problem.

For example power companies computers regularly predict with great accuracy what the peak load will be on the network ahead of time so they have a heads up of when they have to buy more power to meet peak demand. The same computers give them an idea of what extra capacity they need in the long run.

Yes, and in the Soviet Union the economic planners did basically the same calculations with pencil and paper. They did it better than the free market has ever done it. Heavy industry and capital were very well-planned in the Soviet Union.

Agricultural planning is somewhat harder to do, and was a particular difficulty for the Soviet Union (collectivized farming disasters, Lysenkoism, etc). Capitalists make/lose a lot of money speculating on agricultural goods. It is not as deterministic as you seem to think. Crops you expect to be harvested may be destroyed/unusable due to climate or disease, the products of agriculture are for the most part perishable and can only stay on the market for a finite/short period of time, etc...

Production and distribution of consumer goods, however, will always be the most difficult thing for a planned economy. It is very hard to anticipate what demand will look like for new products, supply can disappear much faster than expected for no apparent reason, production can get bogged down due to unforeseen difficulties...

This was a major problem in the Soviet Union. The economic planners did not really know how to tackle the problem, and people would often not complain about shortages or poor quality of goods out of fear of repercussions (or out of good old-fashioned Russian cynicism).

Kotze

27th May 2011, 20:27

How will the planning computer make predictions though? It is hard to anticipate behavior like purchising airline tickets (for specific flights), which people are doing constantly (that is, availability is constantly changing).Predicting an individual's buying behaviour is not necessary. There seems to be a common belief that when it's hard to track and predict the behaviour of a small part of a much bigger thing, then it must follow that when you have to consider the big picture with all the other parts it can only get harder, if not impossible. This is not true.

In physics, one can have very little knowledge about what happens on the quantum level while still making solid predictions regarding movement of bigger objects. When you have 12 potatoes and you assign them randomly to 2 sets with half the number of potatoes each, these sets might have a big difference in weight, percantagewise; but it's highly unlikely that a similar difference appears when you do that with 120 potatoes, since the outliers tend to balance out and this gets more reliable with big numbers. Such an effect exists for many things when doing higher-level planning. For planning public transport you don't need to track and store for years precise information about individual usage patterns, though technically this is very much possible today.
It would not make sense to do this in one individual industry, let alone have all industry operate like this.On the contrary, central computation can be much more efficient. It is important that the planning constraints appear as high-level as possible in the planning process to get efficient results.

Lame example: There's some board people are elected for (with some STV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote) method) and there is a norm demanding some guaranteed minimum representation of a specific group (could be women, could be people with a normal income, let's not get lost in specifics).

One approach to fulfill that requirement is to have separate elections for candidates of this and that specific group, but doing that means in situations where it would have been fulfilled with a single election voters get needlessly restricted in how they can express themselves; furthermore, in such situations the distortion of the voters' will can lead to a very different field of elected candidates.

Another approach to fulfill it is to implement it on a higher level. Candidates run in one election, individual voters are not required to rank a minimum or maximum number of candidates from this or that group, and the constraint is applied when tabulating the result. The more centralized approach is less of a hassle for the voters and interferes very little when the voting pattern is close to satisfying the constraint by itself. This example shows how implementing a constraint at a higher level can give people more freedom.

It is not this simple to distribute goods in a planned economy.:lol:READ THE FUCKING BOOK (http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/)

Psy

27th May 2011, 20:34

It is not this simple to distribute goods in a planned economy.

In most circumstances, it is fairly straightforward to plan for production capacity based on projections made on current production. However, actually carrying out the plan and adjusting it quickly to avoid disasters when your model is wrong has proven a very difficult task, especially in certain volatile industries.

Making production meet demand is a non-trivial issue, and so is allocating/distributing goods efficiently.

You seem to be trivializing the problem somewhat. It is not easy to plan an economy, in fact it is probably NP-hard to plan an economy. [If we could rigorously define what it means to plan an economy, this statement can be proven mathematically.]

Then how does Wal-Mart do it? Wal-Mart for a decade has used computers to plan prices and stock level.

Yes, and how are these things calculated? This is not an irrelevant detail, but is the central problem.

Agricultural planning is somewhat harder to do, and was a particular difficulty for the Soviet Union (collectivized farming disasters, Lysenkoism, etc). Capitalists make/lose a lot of money speculating on agricultural goods. It is not as deterministic as you seem to think. Crops you expect to be harvested may be destroyed/unusable due to climate or disease, the products of agriculture are for the most part perishable and can only stay on the market for a finite/short period of time, etc...

See Kotze's post

Production and distribution of consumer goods, however, will always be the most difficult thing for a planned economy. It is very hard to anticipate what demand will look like for new products, supply can disappear much faster than expected for no apparent reason, production can get bogged down due to unforeseen difficulties...

For new products you don't care as they are new. Having shortages of new products isn't a big problem as people would have survived before they hit the market.

Also there are ways to gauge demand, for example with electronics you first produce for industry then ask workers to take surveys on what they think of the new technology being made available for home use, now you'd be outside economic planning models but it is a new product once it gets properly introduced into the market you can then start calculating future demand once past demand.

This was a major problem in the Soviet Union. The economic planners did not really know how to tackle the problem, and people would often not complain about shortages or poor quality of goods out of fear of repercussions (or out of good old-fashioned Russian cynicism).
And why would this would exist in a proper production for use market?

bezdomni

27th May 2011, 20:56

READ THE FUCKING BOOK

I've done considerable research and thinking on this question. There is no need to speak to me in a derisive manner.

Anyway, yes this book looks interesting (although the assumption that I should already know about its existence is odd).

They write on the website ("update on computer speeds"):

One of the themes of our work is that the speed of modern computers makes a real difference to the feasibility of efficient economic planning.

This has been my argument in this thread all along. The computational complexity associated with planning an economy is (probably) NP-hard, so you can do it much more easily with a faster computer. Since computers today are fast and the computers tomorrow will be faster, having a planned economy is much more feasible today than it previously has been.

In particular, agricultural and especially consumer goods will be much easier to allocate -- since we have the internet and the ability to instantly transmit data (such as supply/demand information) across the globe.

Predicting an individual's buying behaviour is not necessary.

I never said or even suggested that it was.

There seems to be a common belief that when it's hard to track and predict the behaviour of a small part of a much bigger thing, then it must follow that when you have to consider the big picture with all the other parts it can only get harder, if not impossible. This is not true.

Why do you even quote my post at all if you aren't even responding to what I actually said?

I don't think it is impossible or necessarily that hard (conceptually) to have a planned economy. When I say NP-hard I mean something specific about the computational complexity of planning an economy, this means doing all of the calculations required to have a functional and efficient planned economy is computationally expensive -- there is a lot of data that the computer has to go over.

Something with as many moving parts as an economy is very complex. It is a dangerous kind of reductionism to think otherwise.

In physics, one can have very little knowledge about what happens on the quantum level while still making solid predictions regarding movement of bigger objects.

On revleft, one can have very little knowledge about physics while still bringing it up for no apparent reason.

For planning public transport you don't need to track and store for years precise information about individual usage patterns, though technically this is very much possible today.

True. And the democratic nature of a planned economy is an element which actually simplifies the problem somewhat.

On the contrary, central computation can be much more efficient. It is important that the planning constraints appear as high-level as possible in the planning process to get efficient results.
Much more efficient is still computationally expensive, which is not an enormous problem since computers today are fast and algorithms are clever. My only remark was about the computational complexity associated with a planned economy, which is the comment I have made which was not addressed by either you or Psy.

bezdomni

27th May 2011, 21:03

Then how does Wal-Mart do it? Wal-Mart for a decade has used computers to plan prices and stock level.

When did I say they don't? When did I say they can't?

You're not understanding what I have said.

Also there are ways to gauge demand, for example with electronics you first produce for industry then ask workers to take surveys on what they think of the new technology being made available for home use, now you'd be outside economic planning models but it is a new product once it gets properly introduced into the market you can then start calculating future demand once past demand.

Yes, and the internet makes it easier to gauge demand by opening up a communication line between the people and planners where large amounts of important economic information can be transferred instantaneously.

Then it becomes much easier to solve the NP-hard decision problem of planning an economy, which is already solvable but solution is made more efficient when planning is done democratically, etc etc.

Hence the internet and modern computers can make planned economies more feasible, more efficient and more democratic.

And why would this would exist in a proper production for use market?

It wouldn't. That's my point.

bezdomni

27th May 2011, 21:11

Psy

27th May 2011, 21:41

(On the computational complexity of planning an economy, rephrasing my question.)

Which is harder: Planning an economy (which I propose is NP-hard, a weaker condition than NP-complete) or a game of battleship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_%28puzzle%29#Computers_and_Battleship)?

The problem of planning an economy is related to the (also NP-complete) problem of Bayesian network inference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network#Inferring_unobserved_variable).
The problem with a game of battleship is lack of information early off in a game. Planning a economy had the advantage of repetition thus you can make huge abstractions to make simplified models thus making it no longer NP-hard thus why you have economics models in games as they can be abstracted to point they take up a small amount of CPU cycle to calculate as the computer is take huge short cuts through abstractions. The same is done in real world planning, computer programs make abstractions in economic models so the computer can run the model easily.

This is the same technique used for military simulations, we have role playing models thanks to mathematicians looking for short cuts to modeling battles. Thus abstractions like transforming unknown outcomes in the models into dice throws became a standardized method of abstracting chance.

brigadista

27th May 2011, 22:11

watch the first part of

Adam Curtis - All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

currently on bbciplayer if you are in the uk - dont know where you can watch it in the us

talks about computers and world market predictions - very interesting linking ayn rand [not sympathetically]

Kotze

27th May 2011, 22:16

I've done considerable research and thinking on this question.
(...)
the assumption that I should already know about [Towards a New Socialism's] existence is oddYou should at least have known from reading the thread you are posting in. Which books and papers did you read for your considerable research?
Something with as many moving parts as an economy is very complex. It is a dangerous kind of reductionism to think otherwise.I find it quite amazing how you manage to quote me right after that — one can have very little knowledge about what happens on the quantum level while still making solid predictions regarding movement of bigger objects — to make that little quip:
On revleft, one can have very little knowledge about physics while still bringing it up for no apparent reason.Do you deny that what I put in italics here is true? It's an example how something being hard to know on one level does not imply that getting that sort of information on a more aggregate level is hard. The example with the potatoes in the same paragraph should make it more clear.

Regarding complexity and "solving" economic problems: If solving the planning challenge in an efficient manner is defined with enough precision, this can be proven to be impossible with any computer technology we have today. This cuts both ways though: A market economy can't solve it either. When it comes to approximate solutions, I don't find it plausible that a market economy could hope to find something as good at the same speed.

bezdomni

27th May 2011, 22:41

You should at least have known from reading the thread you are posting in. Which books and papers did you read for your considerable research?

I have studied Sraffa's "On the production of commodities by means of commodities" extensively, which is tangentially related to this problem.

The Soviet Price Determination: An econometric study (http://129.3.20.41/eps/dev/papers/0510/0510003.html)

The classical Soviet-type economy: Nature of the system and implications for reform (http://www.jstor.org/pss/1942862) (requires JSTOR access)

Robert Vienneau's blog (http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/2009/05/capital-is-dead-labor-that-vampire-like.html)

Deterministic Production Planning: Algorithms and Complexity (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2630701) (requires JSTOR access)

Computers and Economic Planning: The Soviet Experience (http://books.google.com/books?id=0NA8AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA38&ots=6JWDa8ORqU&dq=economic%20planning%20algorithms&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q=economic%20planning%20algorithms&f=false) (google books)

Discrete Procedures in Economic Planning: A unified view from different direction methods (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2297084) (requires JSTOR access)

I find it quite amazing how you manage to quote me right after that — one can have very little knowledge about what happens on the quantum level while still making solid predictions regarding movement of bigger objects — to make that little quip:

I have no interest in distorting your argument brother. It was unnecessary to quote the remainder of that part of your post since there was nothing in contention.

Do you deny that what I put in italics here is true? It's an example how something being hard to know on one level does not imply that getting that sort of information on a more aggregate level is hard. The example with the potatoes in the same paragraph should make it more clear.

I don't dispute what you put in italics, nor do I think we are in any actual state of disagreement.

Your metaphor to physics and your metaphor involving potatoes was understood and not disputed. Although one is tempted to call into question the meaningfulness of your analogy, but I see no enormous problem with it so I just left it alone.

Regarding complexity and "solving" economic problems: If solving the planning challenge in an efficient manner is defined with enough precision, this can be proven to be impossible with any computer technology we have today.
Who says it is impossible? I say it is NP-hard, which is certainly in the realm of possible.

As mentioned this is how they actually sell/distribute airline tickets on the internet, by implementing efficient algorithmic solutions to the problem (which is known to be NP-hard at best).

The combinatorics of airfare search are daunting. There are 25,000,000 practical flight combinations for a round-trip between Boston and Los Angeles with one day travel windows. Computing the price for any of those ways is at least NP-hard. Fares are updated five times a day, while seat availability data is updated in real-time at 100Hz. And we must produce a diverse array of the most convenient and inexpensive solutions in ten seconds or less....

From the horses's mouth (ITA Software) (http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/work-at-ita/ita-engineering.html)

This cuts both ways though: A market economy can't solve it either. When it comes to approximate solutions, I don't find it plausible that a market economy could hope to find something as good at the same speed.
I claim that it only cuts one way: Namely you are right that the market can't solve it. But you are, I believe, wrong that a planned economy can't "solve" it.

Typically when I say "solve" I mean "find a good approximation".

There is also no clear, rigorous statement of what it means to "solve the planned economy" problem that we are using so it is difficult to talk about what it means to solve the problem.

Psy

27th May 2011, 23:19

Who says it is impossible? I say it is NP-hard, which is certainly in the realm of possible.

As mentioned this is how they actually sell/distribute airline tickets on the internet, by implementing efficient algorithmic solutions to the problem (which is known to be NP-hard at best).

Yet that level of accuracy in unnecessary in a communist market. In communism planes flying at 3/4 capacity would be considered good, while under capitalism those empty seats would be seen as lost potential surplus value.

bezdomni

27th May 2011, 23:35

Yet that level of accuracy in unnecessary in a communist market.

This is not obvious to me. Could you elaborate why you think this?

In communism planes flying at 3/4 capacity would be considered good, while under capitalism those empty seats would be seen as lost potential surplus value.

Fair enough. Does this generalize to every industry though? How?

RED DAVE

27th May 2011, 23:51

There is also no clear, rigorous statement of what it means to "solve the planned economy" problem that we are using so it is difficult to talk about what it means to solve the problem.Like I've said, how much of this relates to revolutionary workers control.

RED DAVE

Psy

27th May 2011, 23:59

This is not obvious to me. Could you elaborate why you think this?

Because you are talking about utility not exchange value, what matters is producing utility thus capacity sitting idle is not a major issue.

Fair enough. Does this generalize to every industry though? How?

Yes, even for perishables you have overstock what is not consumed is transformed into livestock feed, what goes rotten is composted. It is a waste of productive forces but since your are not trying to accumulate as much surplus value as possible it is not that big of a deal if wasted labor is kept low that is very possible with mechanization of labor.

bezdomni

28th May 2011, 00:39

Like I've said, how much of this relates to revolutionary workers control.

The planned economy is central to revolutionary workers control, and it has historically been somewhat challenging to implement. Technology since the last socialist experiments took place has developed tremendously, and it is good for communists to think about how to use technology as a tool for liberation.

Is it not natural question then to ask about how computers and the internet can be used to serve the people by using them to plan an economy and democratic involvement in society?

This should question should be more widely discussed, I think, because (a) communists are not making the most out of the internet and modern technology and (b) the "free market" has not been performing well and many weaknesses are becoming evident to more people, so more discussion about having a planned economy would probably make socialism sound good to a lot of people.

Because you are talking about utility not exchange value, what matters is producing utility thus capacity sitting idle is not a major issue.

True. It is not a major issue.

Yes, even for perishables you have overstock what is not consumed is transformed into livestock feed, what goes rotten is composted. It is a waste of productive forces but since your are not trying to accumulate as much surplus value as possible it is not that big of a deal if wasted labor is kept low that is very possible with mechanization of labor.

This makes sense. But how does this make planning an economy still not an NP-hard problem?

The constraints are not as strict as the problem I referenced above, but if you're having computers do the bulk of the work then why not at least have them do the work efficiently? I'm not saying socialism should try to squeeze every last penny and cut every corner (if anything it should prefer the contrary, you are right), but a well organized society should operate efficiently (although the paradigm for "efficiency" would probably change drastically for a socialist society).

Hm. Is the desire for efficiency bourgeois?