Anarcho-Communist Economics...

[EdgyandOriginal]

It's very easy to critique capitalism, but I struggle with giving a complete description of how an anarcho-communist society would function economically, especially regarding the distribution of goods. I tend to talk about small communities organising themselves and sharing labour, then making alliances with other small communities sharing and producing goods depending on each community's need. In each community people would be able to take from the collective wealth and produce for the collective wealth freely, without coercion.

Does that make some sort of sense? I’ve focused a lot of my energies reading criticisms of capitalism and centrally planned socialism, but I haven’t found something giving a detailed description of how an anarcho-communist society would function.


Does anyone have any recommended reading on this issue?


Oh, and it's my first post here so, hi. :cool:

[Old Mole]

I would recommend Workers Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society by Cornelius Castoriadis, he has written other good texts on the subject as well. I would however critizise him for advocating a kind of "workers exploitation of themselves".

[Jose Gracchus]

Could you be more specific, Old Mole? The CNT has an associated organization which considers participatory economics to be an economics of libertarian communism.

More or less, the idea is virtually all of the spheres of modern life should be organically controlled by their direct participants, with all institutions ultimately dependent on the immediate democratic responsibility to the working class, exhibited through base assemblies and associations in the workplace and community social spaces. Outward from there, various forms of delegate, rotating, and even sortitive democracy is used to develop policy whereby socially necessary labor is re-worked so that all people must participate, instead of simply a lowly stratum being obliged (as the lower class) to carry out the least desirable functions of society. Similarly, the high-empowering and prestige-emanating roles in society should not be monopolized by a privileged group.

Personally, I favor socialized property, organized by a combination of consumer organizations, community assemblies of working-class inhabitants, and workplace assemblies of workers connected cooperatively through free association in various higher level institutions by delegation as well as direct vote. These decision-making points, as well as social spaces, would be connected by information technology enabling real-time information-access, planning, and communication by all participants.

Obviously not everybody would literally do everything. I suspect the Detroit commune might still be renown for its heavy automotive industrial syndicates or collectives, and coordinate with all other communes and communities based on their needs for products. However, I do think we could get to a point where decision-making and the initiative for policy-making is relatively spontaneous, organic, and emergent from the base of society, while allowing substantial individual security and autonomy. It would be necessary on a social basis to make sure everyone participated in some kinds of social labor. It is plausible that self-managing communities might organize their inhabitants into various forms of community service. On the other hand, self-managing communities would have the final say on where the electrical power federation might locate its next power plant, and might commission self-managed societies of statistical work or scientific labs to assess the relative risk and occupational hazards to the workers and community. Therefore, the community might accept the nuclear power plant, but no communities would be saddled with a disproportionate amount of risk and hazard, due to self-management.

[Old Mole]

[QUOTE=The Inform Candidate;2113682]Could you be more specific, Old Mole? QUOTE]

Sure, Castoriadis gives a good advocacy of workers self management but fails to make a sufficient critique of the nature of work in capitalist society. To get rid of capitalism it isnt enough to change the management. Castoriadis presents a society in which the workers still receive wages in the form of money. But as long as you have money and wages there still exist commodity exchange in a somewhat capitalist sense. This means that self managed economys are always risking turning into new capitalisms, a historical example would be the (however limited) self management in Yugoslavia that regressed into primitive capitalism, just like a lot of communist cooperations have done in various parts of the world (I am aware that there are other parts of the reasons for why the examples above failed i e the existence of capitalism). Castoriadis argued that what he described in his book was a transitory phase, but he didnt answer the question of what it would end in. I mean that he has only described a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat that needs to end in the abolishment of economy (money, wages, workers), so that there is nothing left to manage. Only then will capitalism be fully abolished.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think the declassed, post-state socialized society will need to have concrete methods of intelligently and practically getting the information of what resources are available, what labor is available in what desirability/undesirability mix that it may come in, what is needed by humanity in relative desirability, and resolve upon a certain end result, since there will always be some level of real scarcity. You need to be able to answer how people will get the basics they need to live authentic and real lives.

[Tim Cornelis]

The Economics of Pure Communism from Review of Radical Political Economics October 1970 2: 39-50.

It's supposed to be an outline of pure communism in the Marxist sense, however it is not as it still assumes public ownership and some form of central planning. Nonetheless, if he can make a clear case how such moneyless distribution could work we could simply imagine syndicates replacing the government. One problem: I can't find a free version, 1 day access costs 25$ (!).

Other than that "The Program of anarcho-Syndicalism" by Maximoff (meh).
Principles of Syndicalism by Tom Brown (also meh).

Yeah, it's really annoying there's no one comprehensive anarcho-communist economics book as there are of participatory economics.

An Economy of Sustainability: Anarchist Economics, by various. Coming out in the end of this year (december) or beginning of 2012.

[Commie73]

[QUOTE=The Inform Candidate;2113682]Could you be more specific, Old Mole? QUOTE]

Sure, Castoriadis gives a good advocacy of workers self management but fails to make a sufficient critique of the nature of work in capitalist society. To get rid of capitalism it isnt enough to change the management. Castoriadis presents a society in which the workers still receive wages in the form of money. But as long as you have money and wages there still exist commodity exchange in a somewhat capitalist sense. This means that self managed economys are always risking turning into new capitalisms, a historical example would be the (however limited) self management in Yugoslavia that regressed into primitive capitalism, just like a lot of communist cooperations have done in various parts of the world (I am aware that there are other parts of the reasons for why the examples above failed i e the existence of capitalism). Castoriadis argued that what he described in his book was a transitory phase, but he didnt answer the question of what it would end in. I mean that he has only described a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat that needs to end in the abolishment of economy (money, wages, workers), so that there is nothing left to manage. Only then will capitalism be fully abolished.

resnick and wolff do similar in a lot of their work. They talk about workers self management, and the development of cooperative enterprises. Whats kind of weird but interesting is their idea of a "communist class stystem" - which comes from a kind of misunderstanding of marxist conceptions of communism as only the abolition of private property.

To the OP, I would recommend Sam Dolgoffs The Anarchist Collectives. Its a good collected volume of articles on approaches to self management and non capitalist distribution during the spanish civil war. The various non monetary, non market approaches to distribution are quite interesting, especially around the fact that there was regional autonomy, so different regions might be using different systems of distribution, yet still be able to federate with others, and integrate into a larger distributive process.

[Susurrus]

Not to mention, you know, The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories, and Workshops by Kropotkin.

[Tim Cornelis]

Not to mention, you know, The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories, and Workshops by Kropotkin.

Personally I think those works aren't that good...

I just can't read those works. It's written in such an "elusive" manner, I just want to get to the point. How are goods allocated? How are goods produced?
Clear and simple format. Simply explain these things directly comprehensible and without unnecessary rhetoric.

I simply do not have the concentration span for those works.

Maybe I missed something (since I read only a lil' of 'em).

[Susurrus]

How are goods allocated? How are goods produced?
Clear and simple format. Simply explain these things directly comprehensible and without unnecessary rhetoric.

Maybe I missed something (since I read only a lil' of 'em).

You missed a lot. He does get to that.

[Jose Gracchus]

I don't know, I do think Kropotkin was kind of a localist communalist utopian, with his dreams of free-access and spontaneous social cooperation without any mediative functions of any complexity.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

I simply do not have the concentration span for those works.
I hate to sound like a jerk, but capitalism and the critique of it is a very complex system. Sure, having a good one-liner here or there is helpful propaganda, but it's necessary for people to go in-depth on certain things.

[MarxSchmarx]

Yeah, it's really annoying there's no one comprehensive anarcho-communist economics book as there are of participatory economics.


Wait - it's worth mentioning that the originators of Parecon (well albert anyway) see their ideas as an attempt to describe an economy in the spirit of Bakunin and Kropotkin etc... As such Parecon has for better or worse been described as a potential economic system for stateless communism. I suppose it premises that (1) scarcity in some form will remain (precluding a gift economy), and (2) is agnostic about whether a state exists in addition to it. But that doesn't mean it is unsuitable as an anarcho-communist economic theory.

[Dean]

It's very easy to critique capitalism, but I struggle with giving a complete description of how an anarcho-communist society would function economically, especially regarding the distribution of goods. I tend to talk about small communities organising themselves and sharing labour, then making alliances with other small communities sharing and producing goods depending on each community's need. In each community people would be able to take from the collective wealth and produce for the collective wealth freely, without coercion.

Does that make some sort of sense? I’ve focused a lot of my energies reading criticisms of capitalism and centrally planned socialism, but I haven’t found something giving a detailed description of how an anarcho-communist society would function.

I don't think your description is bad, but I think you're looking for something too concrete. The bourgeois revolutions did not know what they would evolve into, and indeed, they probably had a very different image of their future than what transpired.



Does anyone have any recommended reading on this issue?


Oh, and it's my first post here so, hi. :cool:
Anything by Antonio Gramsci. Read about Chartalism (modern monetary theory) and Value, Price and Profit by Karl Marx.

The reason I bring of MMT is because I think it is the answer to a lot of the questions I hear from socialists who don't know how a revolution might look. With any luck, we can achieve full employment and a more equitable arrangement of property at least in the short term. Lenin said to grind the Bourgeois down with high taxes, but I'm more subtle: I say empower the working class with a direct monetary subsidy.

[Tim Cornelis]

Wait - it's worth mentioning that the originators of Parecon (well albert anyway) see their ideas as an attempt to describe an economy in the spirit of Bakunin and Kropotkin etc... As such Parecon has for better or worse been described as a potential economic system for stateless communism. I suppose it premises that (1) scarcity in some form will remain (precluding a gift economy), and (2) is agnostic about whether a state exists in addition to it. But that doesn't mean it is unsuitable as an anarcho-communist economic theory.

I disagree. Communism is usually defined as a system based on distribution according to need. Remuneration (as exists under collectivist anarchism and parecon) is incompatible with communism.

[Jose Gracchus]

Total free access is a fantasy.

[Kiev Communard]

Here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/program-anarcho-syndicalism-t151584/index4.html?t=151584&page=4)is the thread on one of the historic programmes of building a communist-anarchist society that I posted here before. You may be interested in this, and other, Maximov's works on the subject.

[robbo203]

Ive posted a number of links here on the economics of free access communism. More links are on the way

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=5410

Hopefully, it will serve as a counter to the naive "free access is fantasy" line of argument that has been peddled here.

There is a lot more to it than meets the eye ;)

[Rowan Duffy]

Total free access is a fantasy.

Until we get fusion torches, replicators and extremely abundant sources of energy that is. :)

[robbo203]

Until we get fusion torches, replicators and extremely abundant sources of energy that is. :)


Now, now - Lets not get too droll about this ;)

Just be sufficiently open minded to consider what is actually being argued for and not what you might think is the case. Terms like "scarcity" and "abundance" can be interpeted in different ways, you know...

Check out some of the links I gave on group site (below)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Is it not the case that a lot of the intellectual masturbation over how the exact workings of a future economy - especially an anarchic economic mode - might look?

I mean, all this theorising is nice but the truth is that, even someone as honourably committed to anti-state policies as robbo, would only have their exact 'free access' communism (i'm just using an example) implemented by the state. It's highly unlikely, unless they have a magic ball, that anything near their exact ideas would be implemented.

Is the main job of Socialists not to theorise about the exact workings of a future economy, but to educate people on the main principles that might underpin a future communist society in its lower and higher phases, and then give them the tools - in the form of Socialist democracy - to do the work themselves.

In short, let's not be too prescriptive. ;)

[robbo203]

Is it not the case that a lot of the intellectual masturbation over how the exact workings of a future economy - especially an anarchic economic mode - might look?

I mean, all this theorising is nice but the truth is that, even someone as honourably committed to anti-state policies as robbo, would only have their exact 'free access' communism (i'm just using an example) implemented by the state. It's highly unlikely, unless they have a magic ball, that anything near their exact ideas would be implemented.

Is the main job of Socialists not to theorise about the exact workings of a future economy, but to educate people on the main principles that might underpin a future communist society in its lower and higher phases, and then give them the tools - in the form of Socialist democracy - to do the work themselves.

In short, let's not be too prescriptive. ;)

I understand what you are saying and, believe me, I am not trying to be too prescriptive. Its just that it does sometimes need to be stated loudly and clearly to some people on this list who pooh-pooh the idea of free access communism and utilise classic bourgeois marginalist economics to rubbish it that, actually, free acess communism is really and truly the end goal of all our communist aspirations. It is what Marx's "higher stage" of communism is all about despite some attempts Ive seen here to present it as something else.


That said , I have long argued that even in the higher stage of communism, while free access/voluntary labour would be its defining characteristic this does not preclude some forms of ratioing operating alongside this and applying seelctively to some goods rather than others. In fact I ve gone into some detail about how such a form of ratioing could operate. I do not favour the idea of labour vouchers as a form of rationing which, as we know, have traditionally been associated with the "lower stage" of communism. I think a labour voucher system is far too cumbersome and contains too many structural defects to be considered a serious candidate.

My main problem with people who criticise free access communism is that they do so from a thoroughly unjustifable standpoint of assuming hat this presupposes some kind of absolute state of cornucopian superabundance. This is evident in Rowan Duffy's comment that we wont have free access communism "Until we get fusion torches, replicators and extremely abundant sources of energy". This is not what free access communism is about and it demonstrates a complete anthropological naivete about what is actually being proposed. It is based on that hoary old chestnut that is so often brought up against the communist idea - that it is "against human nature". If you allow people to take things without paying for them they are just going to clear the shelves on bugger off over the horizon without a thought for their fellow human beings.

Well, if people still think like that then obviously we would not yet be ready for a communist society. But even in capitalism people dont generally conform to this mean spirited and utterly egoistic model. Our needs are not unlimited whatever the bourgeois hacks say. I live near a spa town in Spain where water gushes freely from its numeorus fountains. Frankly I havent noticed a mad rush of greed-crazed citizens to waste this good quality drinking water or to fill up every last contained they can lay their hands with the stuff. They would certainly appear to have to an incentive to do that becuase this same water is bottled and sold to supermarket chains at some cost. But no the locals take no more than they need and really it would be quite silly to take more than one needs. There are many other examples that spring to mind

What I am arguing for in other words is a more nuanced approach to the question of abundance and scarcity - not this crude "total free access is a fantasy" approach . There are different ways in which you can conceptualise "scarcity". Scarcity in the sense of opportunity costs will always be with us - this no one denies - but there is also scarcity in the sense of being a disparity between supply and demand in real terms., We should be looking at the facotrs that affect both sides of this equation



Even conventional bourgeois economics acknowlege the existence of something called diminishing marginal returns where the marginal utility of every additional unit falls to the point of negligibility. The marginal utility of that first ice cream is great, the second one slightly less so but by the time we are on to our tenth icecream we will be beginning to wish we had never started or m ore maybe stopped at the third

These are the kinds of arguments that we need to be looking at as well as the whole way in which, under capitalism, personal identity and status is so closely bound with conspicuous consumption. In a communist free access economy society that would be literally meaningless. Not only that a huge amount of the work we do today which serves to keep the capitalist money system ticking over would be entirely scrapped. It would be longer needed. So I would say not only would the demand side of the supply-demand equation be radically modifed by the emergence of a communistic moral economy; on the supply side too it would free up literally massive amount of human labour and resources for socially usegul production . To put it differently, the supply of useful products will go up at the same as the demand for things will moderate if not fall significantly.

It is not a questioning if choosing to live a spartain ascetic life. Like most people I enjoy my creature conforts. But we can have these without necessarily having all the crap that capitalism relentless peddles and pushes on to us in its buy buy buy consumerist frenzy. Capitalism is all about making people feel insecure and worthless if they dont have the material goodies it tries to flog them. Give me a good quality of life instead anyway


One final thing - you mention about theorising about the future being all very well but it will be up to the people at the time - hopefully sooner rather than later - to work out the details. I agree but I think it is a huge mistake to infer from this that we should desist from speculating about the future.

I am actually a passionate advocate of utopian speculation, of getting the creative juices flowing . One comrade in the SPGB , Pieter Lawrence, who sadly died a few years ago made a wonderful observation which I have never forgotten to the effect that unless we say more about the goal we are striving for, we relinquish the future to those who insist that all there is an eternity of capitalism (he said this more eloquently than I have but you get the drift...)

It is all very well to criticise capitalism - thats easy! - but the really hard thing is to put forward a viable alternative to put in its place. Its only through speculatiing about alternative in more and more details that we can begin to put more flesh on the bare bones on the idea, that we can ionvest with more credibility. If you dont have an alternative to capitalism you are stuck with capitalism

Part of the way of clarifying and bringing home to people the real potential of such an alternative is to demonstrate how some current practices and insititutions can be adapted to that purpose but also by engaging with these in order to progressively embody or prefigure the kind of society we want toi bring about. The anthroplogist David Graeber once made the very perceptive point that capitalism is just a terribly bad of way of organising our basic communist tendencies

I could say a lot more about that but that would probably best be left to another post! As usual Ive succumbed to a bout of verbal diarrhea. Apologies...

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

There are several issues I have, with leftist economic notions, some of which you have touched upon:

1. The scarcity debate. People try to conceptualise the notion of scarcity into one or another theory. The key problem here is thus: scarcity is not some objective thing that either exists or doesn't exist in the general economy. It is very specific to certain sectors. The paradox of value, however, is thus that due to commodification, abundant goods can operate under the mirage of scarcity, and vice versa, which of course mis-informs peoples' theoretical ideas.

2. Free access communism is not, on paper, a bad idea. I haven't had a chance to read your entire list of free access articles yet, but they look particularly interesting and have been bookmarked for later;)

The issue for me, and I don't restrict this to free access communism, it's true for a lot of what I attacked in my previous post, is that economic theories about what may be in the future are open to so many variables. I won't go into too much detail, but would ask for your agreement on this point:

is it not true that every attempt to document how the economy will look at some future point in time (i'm talking about a post-revolutionary point in time, not just extrapolating for 't+1') is severely handicapped, to the point of disablement, by the fact that really, it is written for some future time 't + infinite', to all intents and purposes? As an Economist, I know that even a theory that extrapolates for time period t+1 is often hugely wrong because it is susceptible to so many (often known, sometimes unknown) variables.

It simply strikes me as guesswork, any attempt to codify a post-revolutionary economy. All we should hope to do is educate about the framework within which an economy MIGHT work, based upon Socialist principles. Does that not make more sense than wasting time essentially playing a game of 'fantasy economics'?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Sorry, I am slightly rushed at the moment. I do look forward to your reply and i'll make sure I have time to expand upon my points next time!

[Tim Cornelis]

About the "blueprint" and "don't be too prescriptive" argument, I think it holds some truth but is essentially nonsense.

Indeed, like El Granma said it is "gueswork", but the point is not guessing how a future society looks like but to convince people it can work by outlining a credible societal structure.

[ckaihatsu]

a credible societal structure.


That's my name...!


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

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

[malcom]

Is the main job of Socialists not to theorise about the exact workings of a future economy, but to educate people on the main principles that might underpin a future communist society in its lower and higher phases, and then give them the tools - in the form of Socialist democracy - to do the work themselves.

In short, let's not be too prescriptive. ;)

I would completely disagree with this.

A lot of countries that tried to implement socialism were run into the ground partly because they didn't have the expertise to run an economy.

But more importantly, advocates of capitalism have an enormous trove of intellectual knowledge that precisely prescribes why and how socialism will fail. Unless you have a specific framework, grounded in our current understanding of how economies work, to counter this, you will never win the public debate and get the system changed.

The modern world is a sophisticated place. Slogans alone will not cut it.

You need a detailed plan, backed by real evidence, or the world will just not take you seriously.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

But we have an enormous trove of intellectual knowledge (far greater, I would argue, than Capitalist Economists who so often tend to be wrong!) about how Capitalism will fail and, indeed, Socialists (and sometimes 'Socialists') have defeated Capitalism before in some isolated historical examples in parts of the world.

But Capitalists can't even tell you how their own economies will go in the future. Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium theories are notorious for being:

a) too complicated, and
b) very inaccurate in terms of foresight of future economic events

I mean, look how much time the Capitalists had to plan for the 'shock therapy' that they would administer in Russia post-USSR, and look how that turned out, because they failed to plan for the simple reality that the cronies would allow or indeed make sure that, ownership of shares went from that of a fairly equal distribution to a concentration in the hands of the oligarchy.

I obviously have no problem with detailed Economic theories from the left of how Capitalism might die, or indeed how the lower phase of communism (Socialism), MIGHT pan out. I have great problems with people making detailed plans for the time period that is, due to variables and uncertainty over when a revolution might even occur, effectively 't + infinite'.

I feel as though it is only realistically possible, and practical, to theorise up until the point that the state and currency no longer exist.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Also, I would suggest that a lot of the countries that tried to implement Socialism failed because they forgot that Socialism means workers' ownership of the Means of Production, not State ownership of the Means of Production. ;)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

You need a detailed plan, backed by real evidence, or the world will just not take you seriously.

Whether the world takes 'us' seriously is absolutely irrelevant.

Historical materialist analysis has shown that revolution happens spontaneously, when the workers rise up, not when the left has its official economic plans accepted by 'the world'.

All I will say is, look at Russia at the start of the 20th century. Little to no organised working class in 1903, yet by 1905 they were in the midst of political revolution.

[ckaihatsu]

I would completely disagree with this.

A lot of countries that tried to implement socialism were run into the ground partly because they didn't have the expertise to run an economy.

But more importantly, advocates of capitalism have an enormous trove of intellectual knowledge that precisely prescribes why and how socialism will fail. Unless you have a specific framework, grounded in our current understanding of how economies work, to counter this, you will never win the public debate and get the system changed.

The modern world is a sophisticated place. Slogans alone will not cut it.

You need a detailed plan, backed by real evidence, or the world will just not take you seriously.


On this philosophical point I'll add that there continues to be fewer and fewer "excuses" for *not* taking a direct collective hands-on approach to worldly matters, particularly those of a democratically controlled global economy and its underlying mass production.

In past decades it may still have been the case that many societal-critical roles would have required particularly specialized training and years of seasoned experience, due to the dependency of the machine on its human operator. But as technology has objectively progressed in the development and maturation of its mechanics, it confers greater proportionate benefits for human effort put forth -- at least theoretically, by the mechanics itself, while we are painfully aware that real potentials lie untapped while our own societal social relations remain muddied and convoluted by capitalism's market exchange function.

Technology usage has now become a staple of the common household, with a solid standard interface that billions know and use regularly -- the web browser. The very real feasible possibility of a fully digital communism beckons us all the more urgently now because of this universality of individualized control through the computer. It's no longer sci-fi to picture intensive factories of industrial production administered according to set protocols by just about anyone, using a web interface on a laptop.

Spread out and extrapolated from this point it's *not* a stretch to ask why major urban areas around the world *aren't* in the process of simply 'converting' and 'upgrading' to a communism-type interchangeable system of social roles by which *all* technological means could be fully pressed into service for society through unhindered cooperative social practices.

Any conceptual "hardware and software engineering" put forth here will speak to this direction, all while the ever-ticking clock steadily echoes the question repeatedly, endlessly, until decisively addressed.

[syndicat]

Sure, Castoriadis gives a good advocacy of workers self management but fails to make a sufficient critique of the nature of work in capitalist society. To get rid of capitalism it isnt enough to change the management. Castoriadis presents a society in which the workers still receive wages in the form of money. But as long as you have money and wages there still exist commodity exchange in a somewhat capitalist sense. This means that self managed economys are always risking turning into new capitalisms, a historical example would be the (however limited) self management in Yugoslavia that regressed into primitive capitalism, just like a lot of communist cooperations have done in various parts of the world (I am aware that there are other parts of the reasons for why the examples above failed i e the existence of capitalism). Castoriadis argued that what he described in his book was a transitory phase, but he didnt answer the question of what it would end in. I mean that he has only described a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat that needs to end in the abolishment of economy (money, wages, workers), so that there is nothing left to manage. Only then will capitalism be fully abolished.

Socalled self-management in Yugoslavia was fake because the bureaucratic class of managers and high end professionals were still in charge. It wasn't the sort of authentic worker management Castoriadis was talking about.

Also, the Yugoslav system was a form of market society whereas Castoriadis advocated central planning. so there was no market exchange in Castoriadis' proposed system. existence of money does not require the existence of a market society.

[Jose Gracchus]

Castoriadis advocated central planning? I thought everything for him was about worker council-run enterprises? How can you have workers' self-management at the enterprise level outside of either a.) a cooperative-market system (though I agree the level of self-management here would be totally superficial and ephemeral), or b.) participatory planning?

Existence of money proper certainly does imply exchange and markets of some kind; I don't think parecon really has money, to give an example. Consumer points are merely a measured claim on goods for certain consumer durables/personal consumption goods; they do not circulate.

[noble brown]

Economic behavior is embedded into our psyche and our social structures. Perspectives rule actions. In order to be progressive about our current predicament I think its imparitive that we start to look more to the sciences for a more accurate understanding of our world. Psychology, anthropology and sociology all have alot to say about what our world could look like
Normative economic theories requires cooperation or coercion. Cooperation is never a given with out a centralized something and then some sort of coercion is bound to occur so what I think will happen is that in a Communist/anatchist world you'll see alot of different economic systems either competing or cooperating together but either way our world will become more inclusive econmically and otherwis

[syndicat]

Castoriadis advocated central planning? I thought everything for him was about worker council-run enterprises? How can you have workers' self-management at the enterprise level outside of either a.) a cooperative-market system (though I agree the level of self-management here would be totally superficial and ephemeral), or b.) participatory planning?

read the section on the "plan factory". except for the guild socialists and Proudhonians, advocates of workers self-management historically advocated some sort of one big meeting scheme to work out a plan for the economy, such as DeLeon's National Industrial Union Congress or De Santillan's regional and national workers congresses. They didn't realize that the one big meeting idea...the one plan...was inconsistent with workers self-management over the long run, that there would be a tendency to impose managers to ensure plan fulfillment and so on.

[Jose Gracchus]

Is that tendency under "big meeting plans" something Albert and Hahnel introduce in one of their books? Which?

The Proudhonians were for markets, and the guild socialists were for...?

[Kiev Communard]

The Proudhonians were for markets, and the guild socialists were for...?

According to Schecter (Radical Theories: Paths Beyond Marxism and Social Democracy (http://books.google.com/books?id=chwNAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=Guild%20Socialism&f=false), the guild socialists were a mixed bunch in terms of their economic views, yet their most important theorists (such as Morris, Penty, Cole, and Ruskin) were simultaneously anti-market and anti-syndicalist, stressing the necessity of abolishing the division of work into mental and physical ones, the need for equal representation of consumer and producer interests, as well as the substitution of impersonal stimuli of the capitalist market with the vaguely conceived return to the innovated artisanal (not necessarily small-scale) standards of production. In this they were somehow similar to the FORA and Japanese communist-anarchists, even though the guild socialists seem to have been in favour of some kind of labour voucher scheme, rather than the communist distribution according to needs.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

I know this isn't too much of a contribute, but I figured a lot of us should be adding this to our lists soon:

http://akpress.com/2011/items/accumulationoffreedom

A soon-to-be-released book on anarchist economics.

[syndicat]

guild socialists weren't "anti-syndicalist" but believed that syndicalism needed to be modified to add a form of decision making rooted in places of residence.

they assumed prices for goods would continue but not as market prices. prices would come from negotiation between workers and consumers. consumers would be organized where they live via "ward meetings" (neighborhood assemblies). but they had no general theory of how prices would be formed through negotiation or how economic trade offs would take place. this is why participatory economics is a more fully worked out theory.

[Kiev Communard]

Currently in the majority of industrially developed nations it is empirically possible to institute a communist distribution according to needs after the revolution, so I do not think such intricate schemes as the ones introduced by guild socialists and pareconists may be needed there. As regards the underdeveloped countries, as I have stated before, some sort of mutualist/collectivist transitional period may be necessary, with its length depending on actual circumstances.

[Rowan Duffy]

Existence of money proper certainly does imply exchange and markets of some kind.

This makes me wonder what "money proper" is. Are non-circulating point systems "money proper"?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Money proper circulates in accordance with the forms of commodity exchange described by Marx:

C-C'
M-C
C-M
C-M-C'
M-C-M'
M-C...P...-C'-M’


The societal abolition of the commodity mode(s) of production towards a higher mode of production where there exists detailed societal management over its own collective labour-time, over all use values, and thus over the allocation of all productive and other non-possessive property necessarily involves the replacement of money-capital with a system of non-circulable (and necessarily electronic) labour credit. This dispenses with M-M’, C-M-C’, M-C-M’, and of course M-C...P...-C'-M’, while the broader and complete convergence between socially necessary labour and surplus labour eliminates exchange value (again, not to be confused with use values) and thus commodities altogether.

[Jose Gracchus]

This makes me wonder what "money proper" is. Are non-circulating point systems "money proper"?

Absolutely not. Otherwise any measured claim on any good or service is money.