Question about Cockshott market socialism

[malcom]

Would US workers make $92k/year $116k/year if income was paid out equally?

If Paul, or anyone else can answer, that would be great. His idea is to price everything in labor time and distribute that income equally. He claims that if we paid out income equally, most people would benefit and the average income would double.

I wanted to test that claim in the US and ran into problems. How do you determine what the income would be, based on today's economy, if everyone was paid an equal income?

Here is what I did:

GDP - Investment = Consumption Income
Consumption Income / Workers = Average Worker Pay

Which works out to be:
$14.119 trillion - $1.589 trillion = $12.530 trillion Consumption Income
$12.530 trillion / 136 million = $92,132 Average Worker Pay
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=5&ViewSeries=NO&Java=no&Request3Place=N&3Place=N&FromView=YES&Freq=Year&FirstYear=2009&LastYear=2011&3Place=N&Update=Update&JavaBox=no#Mid

According to that calculation, every worker would earn $92k per year if income was distributed equally. The median income in the US is $33k. That means half the workers would triple their income and 95% would get some kind of raise (only 5% earn $100k or more). That doesn't seem right.

If the average American was shown an economic plan that would triple their income, that would make them all wealthy, they would all become socialists!

However, that $92k number does not seem to be correct. The census bureau also publishes statistics on income. According to them there was only $9.253 trillion in total income for that period (compared to the $12.530 trillion I calculated above).

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032010/perinc/new01_001.htm

Based on the census numbers, the equal income paid to workers would be $68k per year. If we switched to a socialist system and paid everyone $68k, not that many people would benefit. The median income of full time workers in the US is $42,401 per year. But 25% make more than $68k. So 1/4 of the workers would lose out.

So does anyone know where to get the correct total income?

$92k would be a revolutionary number.

$68k - not so much.




UPDATE
1. The census bureau says in their pdf explaining their stats that their stats come from surveys and that people tend to under-report their income in surveys. But they don't say by how much and a 38% difference between the census number and the GDP number seems significant enough for them to mention.

2. The BEA (who publishes the GDP and the rest of the national economic numbers) publishes a breakdown of total Personal Income. It confirms the number I came up with from my GDP calculation.
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=58&ViewSeries=NO&Java=no&Request3Place=N&3Place=N&FromView=YES&Freq=Year&FirstYear=2009&LastYear=2011&3Place=N&Update=Update&JavaBox=no#Mid

3. If the BEA numbers are correct and workers would earn ~$100k per year in an egalitarian society, it seems to me THAT WOULD BE A GAME CHANGER.

It would put into very real terms what inequality means and the raw deal they get in capitalism. Wouldn't that $100k number be an unstoppable weapon in converting the masses to socialism?

The average person doesn't care about economic ideologies. They care about their bottom line.


UPDATE 2
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=212&Freq=Year&FirstYear=2008&LastYear=2009
The BEA publishes total hours worked by everyone.

Calculating income per hour is much more accurate than income per employee because only 100 million of the 136 million workers are employed full-time year-round.

Income per hour is: $56.18
($56.18 per hour = $12.530 Trillion Total Income / 223,006 Million Hours Worked)

So a full-time worker would earn: $116,480 per year

I think if people are made aware of these numbers it would completely change the political landscape. Imagine a Ross Perot type political candidate who just uses simple charts that show the average worker produces $116k per year in income but only gets to keep $33k of it. The $83k in income you lose out on each year is used to fund the extravagant lifestyles of the top 1% of society.

Only getting $33k of the $116k you produce is exploitation. Demand a better deal: Demand all of it.

[Paul Cockshott]

in France and Germany an hour of labour creates about 30 euros value, projecting that to dollars and assuming a US working year of 2000 hrs would give something between your two estimates.
But US workers may be more productive.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't know about you, but i'm sure the vast majority of people would take $70k, if offered to them.

Having said that, I don't think that any of us have access to enough statistics, nor (i'm assuming) have enough statistical know-how, to really pin down any sort of numbers here, so its a bit of a pointless exercise.

[Lynx]

Would the equal distribution of income increase consumption and money velocity? Wealthy people spend a lower % of their income on goods and services.

[Paul Cockshott]

I have been thinking about why there may be a difference between the Census and BEA figures. The national income accounts will include all profit income whether it accrues to US nationals or not, it is possible that the census figures are different. In general I would place more reliance on the national accounts as these are produced in a relatively standard way internationally. I think in response to the last writer, that it is very useful training for any marxists to become familiar with the statistical sources of their own country. Think back to all the statistical work Lenin did in order to write the Development of Capitalism in Russia.

[malcom]

in France and Germany an hour of labour creates about 30 euros value

How did you calculate that?

Why not just take Total Income and divide it by Total Workers (or total hours worked)?

All of those stats are published by the govt. They are the basic stats that economists and the govt work with. I'm just not an economist, so I am not sure if I am reading them correctly.

It seems to me that if the GDP numbers I calculated are correct, where the average pay becomes ~$100k, that would be a game changer. If people knew that their income would be $100k in an egalitarian society, they would see how badly they were getting ripped off in our current system and would become socialists in droves.

Wouldn't that $100k number be the smoking gun as to the raw deal you get in capitalism?

[Paul Cockshott]

Would the equal distribution of income increase consumption and money velocity? Wealthy people spend a lower % of their income on goods and services.
It would change the composition of consumption very markedly with many luxury products going out of production, and many 'services' which are actually totally unproductive : banking, commercial law, tax advisors etc, who cater to the wealthy, being drastically cut back with a consequent redeployment of labour.

[malcom]

Would the equal distribution of income increase consumption and money velocity? Wealthy people spend a lower % of their income on goods and services.

Equal distribution would not change total consumption. The money wealthy people don't spend is lent to someone who does spend it.

Only 5.9% of total income was saved (which is shown in the chart I link to in the Update part of my original post).

[malcom]

It would change the composition of consumption very markedly with many luxury products going out of production, and many 'services' which are actually totally unproductive : banking, commercial law, tax advisors etc, who cater to the wealthy, being drastically cut back with a consequent redeployment of labour.

Have you done any research in this area or know anyone who has?

I have done some and found that this could have just as big an impact in increasing your standard of living as redistribution of income.

Since unemployment is no longer an issue, you could use existing automation technology to automate half the jobs people do (warehouse, transportation, restaurant, sales, office work, landscaping, etc.) and have all those people put into jobs that we can't automate or into training programs that enable them to do more useful jobs.

And without capitalism, you wouldn't need most of the jobs that are required to run that system. Sales (13.4 million jobs) and Finance and Insurance (6.6 million jobs) would largely be unnecessary.

You could make the case that a reshuffling of jobs could add 25% to productivity.

Equal income plus increased productivity could mean a $125,000 per year income in a modern socialist economy.

(And it could all be done in a more environmentally responsible way with clean energy, maximum recycling, etc.)

(And with that kind of income, redistributing income from rich countries to poor countries would be much more popular.)

[Paul Cockshott]

I have never tried to quantify the gains through the abolition of capitalistic unproductive labour, but I am sure you are right they would be big. I think, from a propaganda standpoint it is a good idea to investigate it.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Couple of points here, especially to any non-economists:

It matters little what the per capita income is. The level of egalitarianism and the level of per capita income in any particular economy have neither a correlation nor causal link.

The only way to increase per capita income is to increase production across the board. Obviously, those of us who believe in some sort of transitional stage between Capitalist economic relations and the abolition of the monetary economy as we know it, understand that this would involve a large measure of re-distribution and thus greater equity in society, but let us be clear on this: re-distribution =/= increases in national income.

These sums are not hugely simple as to allow us to gather the data for total income and divide it by total workers. Non-economists and non-statisticians should understand that an open economy comprising of tens of millions of labour, trillions of units of capital and so on, is not something that can even begin to be approached from anything other than a serious, academic and highly statistical viewpoint. That is if one wants to be accurate.

Lastly, it should be pointed out that, whilst as Socialists we believe that the transitional stage should be as equitable as possible, and that there should always be a minimum programme that we keep in mind, in relation to wages and working conditions/overtime, prices, living standards etc., we should not substitute our main goals for any greater measure of egalitarianism. That is, the main goal is to eradicate bourgeois economic relations, not create a more egalitarian society out of Trade Union-style 'economism'. This last point, to me, is of utmost importance.

[NewSocialist]

Another point that needs to be mentioned here is incentive. If you abolished capitalism tomorrow and erected a system wherein everyone was paid equally, there's no assurance that prior levels of productivity would remain the same. I'm quite certain that some system needs to be constructed which rewards productive workers somewhat more than the lazy (lest you risk the free rider problem from destroying the economy.)

I don't think making claims along the lines of "everyone will earn $100,000 a year under socialism" is a good idea. As the previous poster said, the goal should be the abolition of bourgeois social relations (and I would add ecological sustainability, and having a say in decisions in purportion to the degree we're effected by those decisions.)

[Kotze]

Hmm. There's the term guard labor used by Arjun Jayadev and other authors, that refers to the unproductive activity (including unemployment) necessary to sustain wealth inequality (they claim more guard labor is necessary in the US than in Europe, because there's more inequality in the US), they should have some papers online. Consider that your country is an outlier regarding incarceration rates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate) and also military spending (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures).

[malcom]

If you abolished capitalism tomorrow and erected a system wherein everyone was paid equally, there's no assurance that prior levels of productivity would remain the same.

Since overall compensation will be decided by the entire public through direct vote, it is reasonable to expect that they would vote in favor of a scheme that allows harder workers or more productive workers to be paid a bonus.

However, they would not vote in a system that allows someone to earn thousands of times the compensation of others because this would be undemocratic. You want people to be rewarded for hard work but you don't want them to have any more power over economic decisions.

View the Dan Pink TedTalk on incentives. He did a talk based on a study done by the US Federal Reserve into incentives.

What it concludes is that performance based pay works for simple tasks (mow X amount of lawns) (which are also jobs we should automate). But pay for performance makes people who do cognitive tasks perform worse.

The best pay system is to just pay people well so that the issue of money is taken off the table. Then give workers Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. It leads to the best worker performance and overall satisfaction.




I don't think making claims along the lines of "everyone will earn $100,000 a year under socialism" is a good idea. As the previous poster said, the goal should be the abolition of bourgeois social relations (and I would add ecological sustainability, and having a say in decisions in purportion to the degree we're effected by those decisions.)

I completely disagree. You will be able to better convince people of embracing socialism by telling them they will earn $100k per year than by telling them they will get to abolish bourgeois social relations.

[malcom]

I added a second update to my original post:


UPDATE 2
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=212&Freq=Year&FirstYear=2008&LastYear=2009
The BEA publishes total hours worked by everyone.

Calculating income per hour is much more accurate than income per employee because only 100 million of the 136 million workers are employed full-time year-round.

Income per hour is: $56.18
($56.18 per hour = $12.530 Trillion Total Income / 223,006 Million Hours Worked)

So a full-time worker would earn: $116,480 per year

I think if people are made aware of these numbers it would completely change the political landscape. Imagine a Ross Perot type political candidate who just uses simple charts that show the average worker produces $116k per year in income but only gets to keep $33k of it. The $83k in income you lose out on each year is used to fund the extravagant lifestyles of the top 1% of society.

Only getting $33k of the $116k you produce is exploitation. Demand a better deal: Demand all of it.

[Paul Cockshott]

I completely disagree. You will be able to better convince people of embracing socialism by telling them they will earn $100k per year than by telling them they will get to abolish bourgeois social relations.

Quite so!

What is the point of Marx analysing how much workers are exploited if we dont propose to do something about it that makes a real and immediate difference to those who are exploited.

[robbo203]

I completely disagree. You will be able to better convince people of embracing socialism by telling them they will earn $100k per year than by telling them they will get to abolish bourgeois social relations.

So lets see how this might work...

You dangle the juicy capitalist carrot before workers' eyes - the prospect of everyone earning on average $100k per year - and this somehow is going to better persuade them to embrace "socialism". Somehow I dont think so. Why would they want to embrace socialism if capitalism was the kind of considerate and caring society you make it out to be - thoughtfully concerned with the welbeing of us workers

This is to say nothing of the consequneces of cultivating such a hopelessly unrealistic and utopian expectation of what capitalism is capable of delivering - devasting disappointment and mass disillusionment. Thankfully most workers have the their feet more more firmly planted on Terra Firma than you appear to have.

Sorry to sound harsh but this is timewasting and utterly diversionary drivel. Time to wake up and smell the coffee. Seriously

[Paul Cockshott]

Nobody was suggesting that a real wage of that level or near it is compatible with capitalism at current productivity levels.

[Paul Cockshott]

Nobody was suggesting that a real wage of that level or near it is compatible with capitalism at current productivity levels.

[malcom]

You dangle the juicy capitalist carrot before workers' eyes - the prospect of everyone earning on average $100k per year

Why do you call earning an income in a socialist society a "juicy capitalist carrot"? Do you not believe in the concept of earning an income?



and this somehow is going to better persuade them to embrace "socialism".

Absolutely. If you had a choice between a capitalist system where you get to earn $42k or a socialist system where you get to earn $116k, most people would choose a socialist system.



Somehow I dont think so. Why would they want to embrace socialism if capitalism was the kind of considerate and caring society you make it out to be - thoughtfully concerned with the welbeing of us workers

Hmmm. I'm not sure you are reading correctly what my post is saying. I'm saying capitalism is robbing $74k of the income you earned. In a socialist system, that income would no longer go to a capitalist class. You would get paid the full $116k per year.

I'm saying in very real monetary terms that capitalism is NOT kind and considerate.



This is to say nothing of the consequneces of cultivating such a hopelessly unrealistic and utopian expectation of what capitalism is capable of delivering

Where in my post do I say capitalism is going to deliver a utopia? I don't think you read my post correctly.

[Jose Gracchus]

Robbo is a "free access communist" and thinks wage labor is any form of organized reciprocity or measured claim on goods.

[robbo203]

Why do you call earning an income in a socialist society a "juicy capitalist carrot"? Do you not believe in the concept of earning an income?.

No I dont. I oppose the capitalist employment system - completely. There is no such thing as "earning an income in a socialist society" in my book because wage labour - and let us be clear this is precisely what you are talking about - presupposes capital and hence capitalism. In other words what you are advocating is capitalism, not socialism, however much you pretend otherwise....





Absolutely. If you had a choice between a capitalist system where you get to earn $42k or a socialist system where you get to earn $116k, most people would choose a socialist system.


But they would NOT be choosing socialism (which entails the compete abolition of wage labour) but capitalism - and not only that, a wholly unrealistic and unrealisable form of capitalism at that. Its simply nonsense on stilts



Hmmm. I'm not sure you are reading correctly what my post is saying. I'm saying capitalism is robbing $74k of the income you earned. In a socialist system, that income would no longer go to a capitalist class. You would get paid the full $116k per year.


Since wage labour would still function under your system it follows that so too would capital. Capital accumulation out of surplus value would be the overriding imperative of your system. Howver, that can't really happen if you are giving each each worker $116k per year and that is why your system would not even last week. It would be devoured by profit hungry capitalist vultures who would swoop in to feed on the pickings of a totally bankrupted and devastated capitalist economy



I'm saying in very real monetary terms that capitalism is NOT kind and considerate.
.

Then why advocate it? Because make no mistake about it, thats exactly what you are doing - advocating capitalism




Where in my post do I say capitalism is going to deliver a utopia? I don't think you read my post correctly.

You certainly do have a utopian view of capitalism. You want workers to be paid $116K per year on average which is completely unsustainable at current rates of exploitation and would put virtually every business out of existence. You want capitalism without the nasty bits. Instead of saying as a revolutiuonary would - stuff it! Let get rid of the whole capitalist employment system - you want to humanise capitalism and the wage labour-capital relation. You are daydreaming

[robbo203]

Robbo is a "free access communist" and thinks wage labor is any form of organized reciprocity or measured claim on goods.

Not quite true. Labour vouchers, for example are a form of "organized reciprocity or measured claim on goods" but I dont equate a labour voucher scheme with wage labour. I do however oppose the labour voucher scheme as both unworkable and unneccesary

Free access (or Marx's higher) communism is a form of "generalised reciprocity" par excellance which as the term itself suggests denotes the absence of any kind of quid pro quo set up. I dont believe revolutionaries today, 150 years after Marx, should be messing round with questionable stop gap measures that have long been rendered obsolete by technological development. We should be hell bent on getting the real thing - a society based on the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need"!

[malcom]

Free access (or Marx's higher) communism

What my post shows is that if the means of production were publicly owned and income was distributed equally, the income would be equivalent to about $116,000 per year.

That is not capitalism! You can't have your own definitions. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production.

Also, rationing is necessary not because of any particular ideology, but because of the physical limits of production! And there is no better way to ration the limited amount of production than to price everything based on the hours of labor it took to make, to allocate everyone an equal income based on the total that is produced, and to use an automated Walrasian auction to eliminate surpluses and shortages.

A system where everything is free and there is no rationing would not work because people demand far more than what we are able to produce. You would have shortages in everything. And you would have shortages in labor since only a fraction of the people who are willing to work for a wage would be willing to work for free. And there would be huge inequalities in wealth because all the people who don't work will spend their time getting the very limited goods before all the workers do.

[malcom]

Paul,

I have a number of other questions about your ideas.

How would administration work? How would you decide on management, how much power would they have and how would they be accountable?

I envision a system where the economy is broken down into firms (similar to what you see today) in order to best utilize division of labor with more than one firm providing a given good or service in order to provide choice, spark the competitive spirit to be the best and avoid the problems of group think and stagnation.

Firms would be run by managers. Managers will have a mandate to meet and beat industry benchmarks on cost, sales, customer/worker satisfaction and innovation. They would have autonomy over labor and operations of their firm and would be responsible for fulfilling the firm's production against those industry benchmarks.

And those managers would be directly accountable to an independent board in order to maintain division of power.

The system would be entirely transparent to the public. So managers either deliver results or they will be replaced with people who will.

[robbo203]

What my post shows is that if the means of production were publicly owned and income was distributed equally, the income would be equivalent to about $116,000 per year.

That is not capitalism! You can't have your own definitions. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production..

Public ownership in this instance is a complete misnomer. The "public" no more "own" so called publicly owned means of production - by which you really mean state owned means of production - than they own any private corporation or business. What you are advocating is a system of alienated labour - generalised wage labour - which Marxists identify with capitalism. In short state capitalism.

We had state capitalism in the Soviet Union for instance. Only, starry eyed idealists like yourslelf with a fondness for plucking figures out of thin air, want state capitalism without the inequality. Well that was tried as well and failed dismally. Within months of coming to power Lenin was forced to admit that the Boshevik policy of uravnilovka or income levellling had failed. In an address given in April 1918 (published as "The Soviets at Work") he abjectly recanted:

"We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and agreed a very high remuneration for the services of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, that it is a departure from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule."

Inequality grew by leaps and bounds in the Soviet Union and and indeed various studies have shown that levels of inequality were roughly comparable to some western countires see for example ( http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/eps70.pdf).

In short you can't have capitalism without signficiant inequality



Also, rationing is necessary not because of any particular ideology, but because of the physical limits of production! And there is no better way to ration the limited amount of production than to price everything based on the hours of labor it took to make, to allocate everyone an equal income based on the total that is produced, and to use an automated Walrasian auction to eliminate surpluses and shortages..

Two points:

Firstly You said quite clearly that under your system "You would get paid the full $116k per year" Unless my eyes are deceiving me that looks very much like a dollar sign. So you presumably envisage the retention of money, no?

Secondly, if what you really meant was that under your system there would not actually be money but non circulating labour vouchers that workers were paid with then I would be prepared to withdraw the charge that you simply advocate capitalism. Labour vouchers as you know were advocated - somewhat unenthusiastically - by Marx for his lower stage of communism. However you need to be aware that there are actually numeorus question marks that can be attached to the proposal of labour vouchers that cast in doubt both its feasibility and its desirability






A system where everything is free and there is no rationing would not work because people demand far more than what we are able to produce. You would have shortages in everything. And you would have shortages in labor since only a fraction of the people who are willing to work for a wage would be willing to work for free. And there would be huge inequalities in wealth because all the people who don't work will spend their time getting the very limited goods before all the workers do.

Ah yes those hoary old myth of the "greedy worker" and the "lazy worker" so beloved by our bourgeois pop sociologists. Jeez these arguments have been so comprehensively rebutted and demolished I am surprised you see fit still to drag them out of the closet

Greedy worker? If workers were half as greedy as you claim we wouldnt put up with so generously allowing a capitalist class to exploit us and enrich themselves at our expense. Abundance kills greed as you seem to admit yet the world is brimming over with potential plenty. I came accross a staggring figure the other day that in China there are a mindboggling 64 million empty apartments
" (http://www.grist.org/cities/2011-03-31-chinas-ghost-cities-and-the-biggest-property-bubble-of-all). Here in Spain there between 3-4 million empty homes. Everywhere you look in capitalism there is massive wastage.


On work incentive in a communist society here's a few points to consider


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Jose Gracchus]

Not quite true. Labour vouchers, for example are a form of "organized reciprocity or measured claim on goods" but I dont equate a labour voucher scheme with wage labour. I do however oppose the labour voucher scheme as both unworkable and unneccesary

Free access (or Marx's higher) communism is a form of "generalised reciprocity" par excellance which as the term itself suggests denotes the absence of any kind of quid pro quo set up. I dont believe revolutionaries today, 150 years after Marx, should be messing round with questionable stop gap measures that have long been rendered obsolete by technological development. We should be hell bent on getting the real thing - a society based on the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need"!

Insanity trying to pass itself off by the use of slogans. There's no basis for me ever changing my psychology to get really excited to go do sanitation work for the community. Moreover, how could we just spontaneously get enough people volunteering to meet appropriately this or that social need, versus other needs? How are atomized workers supposed to be aware of the desired labor out there? The relative trade-offs? Your system is only workable on the scale of a tiny self-reliant commune. There is no way to intelligently aggregate all the people's willingness to do various types and mixes of socially-necessary labor, and aggregate their demand for various goods, and make sure people are performing the labor that is most desired.

We don't want everyone volunteering to hang posters when we need skilled and safely performing steel smelters sometimes. You have no mechanism for how this is to be accomplished. Just fantasy and slogans. No surprise no worker will ever line up for that crap. It is about as substantive as wishy-washy hippies asking "why can't everyone just get along?" In fact, that is basically what you're suggesting.

[malcom]

Public ownership in this instance is a complete misnomer. The "public" no more "own" so called publicly owned means of production - by which you really mean state owned means of production - than they own any private corporation or business.

Public ownership means the public has direct say over the production organizations and they get the full fruits of its production.

Macroeconomic decisions are made by direct vote. Like Paul, I do not believe in electing politicians to run the economy. I will place my own votes on all the big, important, subjective decisions of what to do with the productive forces we own.

So it is not state owned. Politicians working for the state do not make the decisions, the public makes the decisions.

And all the microeconomic decisions are based on how I and everyone else in the public spends their money. The state doesn't decide what to produce, consumers do.




What you are advocating is a system of alienated labour - generalised wage labour - which Marxists identify with capitalism. In short state capitalism.

If you define capitalism as a system where workers are paid a wage, I reject that. You are redefining terms.




We had state capitalism in the Soviet Union for instance.

What is being advocated here is not what they did in the soviet union. The soviets didn't have computerized firms connected to each other so that data can be shared in real time. So they were unable to have a rational accounting system. This prevented them from efficiently allocating resources.

They didn't utilize a real-time Walrasian auction to price final goods in order to clear markets. So there was constant shortages and surpluses in everything.

They had a command economy where what to produce was determined by politicians. I advocate a system where consumers determine what to produce based on whatever they buy.

Their economy was managed by politicians who were largely unelected. I advocate doing away with politicians and use our communications technology to enable every citizen to place a vote on all public policy directly.

Their system of accountability was to eliminate transparency, withhold all information from the public and murder or imprison anyone who complained or disagreed with the politicians.

I advocate a fully transparent system where everything is recorded digitally and made public online in realtime. The system will encourage criticism and feedback from all corners of society. It will share best practices. And citizens will have the power to change any organization that is not meeting society's demands.

What I advocate I simply call democracy. It is nothing like the soviet union.




Only, starry eyed idealists like yourslelf with a fondness for plucking figures out of thin air, want state capitalism without the inequality.

I made clear I don't advocate state capitalism and I cite the sources for the numbers I used. They didn't come from thin air, they came from government statistics.

Are you really saying the BEA doesn't exist and doesn't publish the country's total income and total hours worked? lol




Within months of coming to power Lenin was forced to admit that the Boshevik policy of uravnilovka or income levellling had failed.

Paying an equal income in a poor, undeveloped 1918 Russia means everyone is equally poor.

Paying everyone an equal income in 2011 America means everyone is equally wealthy. There is a big difference.




if what you really meant was that under your system there would not actually be money but non circulating labour vouchers that workers were paid with then I would be prepared to withdraw the charge that you simply advocate capitalism.

I advocate what Paul advocates which is using labor vouchers. When you buy a product, the product gets deleted from the system and so does the labor vouchers.

Labor vouchers just mean that everyone is paid an equal income. I was just pointing out that America currently produces $56.18 in value per hour. So if everyone was paid in labor vouchers, which means everyone is paid an equal income, a full time income would be equivalent to $116k per year.

If we made 1 labor hour equal to "56.18". And we put the symbol "$" to denote a labor hour, it would not change how a labor voucher functions. But it would give people a better sense of how much income they would earn from a system of labor vouchers and the prices of stuff they buy will be somewhat similar to the price they pay for things today.




However you need to be aware that there are actually numeorus question marks that can be attached to the proposal of labour vouchers that cast in doubt both its feasibility and its desirability

So let's have that debate. What do you think are its problems?




Greedy worker? If workers were half as greedy as you claim we wouldnt put up with so generously allowing a capitalist class to exploit us and enrich themselves at our expense.

Wanting more than your income allows does not make you greedy. And just because they are not calling for the overthrow of capitalism doesn't mean they don't want more than what they are currently consuming.

If the millions of workers who make $25k per year had their salary doubled, they would consume $50k worth of goods.

If the millions of workers who make $50k per year had their salary doubled, they would consume $100k worth of goods.

If the millions of workers who make $100k per year had their salary doubled, they would consume $200k worth of goods.

If the millions of workers who make $200k per year had their salary doubled, they would consume $400k worth of goods.

There are people who earn millions of dollars in income every year who manage to spend every last dime.

If every adult was allowed to consume everything they wanted it is not unreasonable to expect for them to want to consume $400k+ each every year. That would require an $88 trillion economy. You are not dealing with reality.




Abundance kills greed as you seem to admit yet the world is brimming over with potential plenty. I came accross a staggring figure the other day that in China there are a mindboggling 64 million empty apartments

Come on. They stand empty because all the people who need homes don't have enough money to buy them.

If China made everything free, here is what the headline on housing would read:

"Since adopting robo203's economic advice, China has a mindboggling backlog of 1.2 billion 5,000-30,000 square foot homes. China officials say they should be all caught up on their orders for homes by the year 2136."




# If you only have to do 2 hours per week on a boring job you are going to regard it differently than if you have to do it for 20 hours

As I pointed out, my numbers are backed by government published statistics. You, however, just pulled that number out of a hat.

Show me proof that only working 2 hours per day can produce the same as we produce now.




# A volunteer economy means that we are not stuck with just one job but can try a variety so there is a labour reservoir in depth for any particular job

There is nothing preventing anyone from changing jobs in a system that uses labor vouchers.




# Conspicuous consumption and the accumulation of private wealth would be rendered meaningless by the simple fact that all wealth is freely available for direct appropriation

It will become painfully meaningful to you when you adopt that idea and find out you can only meet 1% of the demand people have.




# Work. loosely defined as meaningful productive activity is actually a fundamental human need, not simply an economic requirement.

I agree. Read: http://www.demandthegoodlife.com/plan-automation.asp
"All of our production comes from work. But there are two forms of work we do: Jobs and Productive Leisure Activities.

A job is work that nobody has any interest in doing. The only reason why people work jobs is because they need money to survive. An example of a job is working as a cashier, driving a truck, working in a warehouse, landscaping, and doing retail sales.


A productive leisure activity, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of a job. It is, as the name suggests, a leisure activity. It is work that people naturally want to do, that people do in their free time, that people do even if they aren't getting paid for it, that people would do more of if they didn't have a job to go to.


But even though it is a leisure activity, it is also an activity that is productive. Work that is considered a productive leisure activity is writing a book, creating music, filming a movie, playing baseball, raising a family, furthering basic science, finding cures to diseases, studying the night sky, reverse engineering the human being, occupying a position of importance, building robots, programming open source software, designing stuff and developing new inventions - anything that people already volunteer to do, that people do as a hobby or that people pay to do.


And it turns out that leisure activities aren't just fun. They also tap into what makes us productive as human beings.
Human beings weren't built to work jobs. We were built to do leisure activities.


We get more overall productivity from people doing leisure activities (where we get to have fun, express our creativity and apply our intellect) than from people doing jobs (which are boring, menial and best suited for machines).


So in order to maximize the efficiency of our labor, machines should do all the jobs and people should do all the leisure activities. And in order to accomplish that, we just need to make full use of the automation that already exists.


Of all the work we do, 20% of workers are employed in Productive Leisure Activities and 80% of workers are employed in Jobs.


Of all the Jobs we do, about 30% of them we don't yet have the ability to automate. Jobs like working on a factory floor, construction, mining and maintenance are examples of work nobody has any interest in doing, and it is work that we do not yet have the ability to fully automate.


But what that means, and this will probably come as a shock to most people, is that roughly 70% of the Jobs we do can be automated with technology that already exists. The technology has already been developed and is already in use. If we want to eliminate every single one of those jobs, most of the jobs we all do, we just need to make the effort to deploy this technology throughout the entire economy. That's it.

Jobs like retail sales, transportation, warehousing, commercial banking, restaurant staff, cleaning and landscaping are all examples of work nobody has any interest in doing and are all jobs that can be automated immediately with existing technology.


More than half of the work we all do is a complete and total waste of human time and effort and a tragic waste of people's very short lives. Having people work jobs that they have no interest in doing, that machines can easily do, is an inefficiency in our society that needs to be fixed."


I would make the point - and I think Paul makes the same point - that the reason why automation is not fully deployed and why 70% of the Jobs we do can be automated is because labor is artificially underpriced.

If owners had to pay the full $56.18 per hour for labor, adopting automation would be more cost effective. They would, for example, buy automated checkout machines instead of hiring cashiers at $56.18 per hour.

[robbo203]

Insanity trying to pass itself off by the use of slogans. There's no basis for me ever changing my psychology to get really excited to go do sanitation work for the community. Moreover, how could we just spontaneously get enough people volunteering to meet appropriately this or that social need, versus other needs? How are atomized workers supposed to be aware of the desired labor out there? The relative trade-offs? Your system is only workable on the scale of a tiny self-reliant commune. There is no way to intelligently aggregate all the people's willingness to do various types and mixes of socially-necessary labor, and aggregate their demand for various goods, and make sure people are performing the labor that is most desired.

We don't want everyone volunteering to hang posters when we need skilled and safely performing steel smelters sometimes. You have no mechanism for how this is to be accomplished. Just fantasy and slogans. No surprise no worker will ever line up for that crap. It is about as substantive as wishy-washy hippies asking "why can't everyone just get along?" In fact, that is basically what you're suggesting.


Er ..arent you kind of jumping to conclusions here? I havent discussed mechanisms because that wasn't the question asked. That doesnt mean Im bereft of any ideas on the subject of mechanisms. Since you ask, I can quite easily envisage, for example, something along the lines of a network of job centres (or even online equivalents) liaising between production units and the general public, communicating information about job vacancies, training course and the like. Whats the big problem? That's how are workers are "supposed to be aware of the desired labor out there" - precisely by virtue of the fact that this information would be constantly communicated and updated through the approprate social channels.

I would have thought all this was pretty damn obvious and I can't imagine from where you got the silly idea of workers in a communist society being "atomised" and somehow spontaneously materialising on the shop floor without any idea of what if anything needs to be done. On the contrary, it is precisely because they would know that they were needed for this or that job that they would put in an appearnace. Nothing "wishy washy" about that at all

Now, if you saying that you can't rely on them turning up, well, thats another argument altogether - about motivation - and its best not to confuse the two. I would have to disagree with you and for all the reasons listed in my previous post (which I notice you have not addressed). You might not be partial to sanitation work but you should not assume 1) that what you like or dislike is what other people like or dislike or 2) what what people like is the only cocenivable motivating factor as if a sense of moral responsiblity towards others would count for nothing and we are all just hedonistic egoists with a mindset still wedded to capitalist values. Tell that to the lifeboatpeople who, despite capitalism, risk their lifes on the high seas for no payment whatsoever

[robbo203]

Public ownership means the public has direct say over the production organizations and they get the full fruits of its production.

Macroeconomic decisions are made by direct vote. Like Paul, I do not believe in electing politicians to run the economy. I will place my own votes on all the big, important, subjective decisions of what to do with the productive forces we own.

So it is not state owned. Politicians working for the state do not make the decisions, the public makes the decisions.

And all the microeconomic decisions are based on how I and everyone else in the public spends their money. The state doesn't decide what to produce, consumers do..

So let me just get this straight. Are you or you not saying that money will continue to exist in your system? Do you understand the significance of this question ? Money is a mean of exchange amongst other things and what it implies is the existence of an exchange economy which is completely incompatible with the idea of your "public" owning the means of production. Exchange denotes a transfer of ownership rights of the things being exchanged. This cannot happen where everyone owns the means of production, common ownership rules out the exchange of products and hence money


Logically then if you advocate the use of money and hence exchange, this means you advocate a system based on sectional or private ownership of the means of production - not common ownership






If you define capitalism as a system where workers are paid a wage, I reject that. You are redefining terms.
..

Not so. This is the long established Marxian position. Generalised wage labour signifies capitalism. Read your Marxian classics like Wage Labour and Capital. To wit:

Capital therefore presupposes wage-labour; wage-labour presupposes capital. They condition each other; each brings the other into existence.

and

To say that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical, signifies only this: that capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch06.htm



What is being advocated here is not what they did in the soviet union. The soviets didn't have computerized firms connected to each other so that data can be shared in real time. So they were unable to have a rational accounting system. This prevented them from efficiently allocating resources...

Soviet state capitalism didnt fail becuase it lacked the computing power to effiiciently allocate resources. This is an utterly naive, technological determinist and reductionist view to take. It overlooks what the whole process of capital accumulation was about and the socio economic context of the Soviet Union itself






They had a command economy where what to produce was determined by politicians. I advocate a system where consumers determine what to produce based on whatever they buy....


Big deal. This is no different from what any apologist for capitalism says capitalism does. The dominant myth being the "consumer is king"



Their economy was managed by politicians who were largely unelected. I advocate doing away with politicians and use our communications technology to enable every citizen to place a vote on all public policy directly.

Their system of accountability was to eliminate transparency, withhold all information from the public and murder or imprison anyone who complained or disagreed with the politicians.

I advocate a fully transparent system where everything is recorded digitally and made public online in realtime. The system will encourage criticism and feedback from all corners of society. It will share best practices. And citizens will have the power to change any organization that is not meeting society's demands.

What I advocate I simply call democracy. It is nothing like the soviet union.

...

And this is all going to happen within the framewoirk of a system of wage labour and capital is it. Dream on. At the end of the day what you will have is just another class based society parading as one in which the means of production are purportedly publically owned but acually owned by the state and from which with a wave of your magic wand you have expelled all those disagreeable little things about capitalism like competitioon, class struggle, exploitation and so on

Im sure you mean well but the way to hell is paved withg good intentions


Just one thing - you say you want to "enable every citizen to place a vote on all public policy directly". Policy desicions are not quite the same thing as practical decisions on things such as whether and where to locate a new power station. Do you advocate the public be involved in this too? And where do you draw the line given that there are thousands and thousands of decisions to be





Paying an equal income in a poor, undeveloped 1918 Russia means everyone is equally poor.

Paying everyone an equal income in 2011 America means everyone is equally wealthy. There is a big difference.
...

Certainly. But the point is that the idea of imposing equality of income on American capitalism is just as futile - maybe even more so - as trying to impose the Bolshevik policy of income levelling in Russia in 1918 - a point which Lenin himself accepted. Capitalism needs inequality to function properly on its own terms. Egalitarian capitalism is a contradiction in terms





I advocate what Paul advocates which is using labor vouchers. When you buy a product, the product gets deleted from the system and so does the labor vouchers.

Labor vouchers just mean that everyone is paid an equal income. I was just pointing out that America currently produces $56.18 in value per hour. So if everyone was paid in labor vouchers, which means everyone is paid an equal income, a full time income would be equivalent to $116k per year.

If we made 1 labor hour equal to "56.18". And we put the symbol "$" to denote a labor hour, it would not change how a labor voucher functions. But it would give people a better sense of how much income they would earn from a system of labor vouchers and the prices of stuff they buy will be somewhat similar to the price they pay for things today.
...

You see - here is where I am getting confused. You seem to be suggesting above and in previous posts that money would be retained. Now you say no. Workers would be paid in labour vouchers. So presumably that means you accepted after all that wage labour (which presupposes capital) would come to an end.

Frankly Im not quite sure whether you youself know quite where your stand but as I said if you advocate a system of non circulating labour vouchers then this indeed would no longer be capitalism. But as I also said such a system is hugely problematic for all sorts of reasons . Check outfor example


http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/conquest/ch13.html

http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/labour_vouchers.php






Wanting more than your income allows does not make you greedy. And just because they are not calling for the overthrow of capitalism doesn't mean they don't want more than what they are currently consuming.
If every adult was allowed to consume everything they wanted it is not unreasonable to expect for them to want to consume $400k+ each every year. That would require an $88 trillion economy. You are not dealing with reality.
...

Actully no - you are nor dealing with the point I made but missing it completely namely that if workers were as greedy as suggested they wouldnt allow the capitalists to exploit them




Come on. They stand empty because all the people who need homes don't have enough money to buy them.

If China made everything free, here is what the headline on housing would read:

"Since adopting robo203's economic advice, China has a mindboggling backlog of 1.2 billion 5,000-30,000 square foot homes. China officials say they should be all caught up on their orders for homes by the year 2136."
...

Not quite sure I understand you point. China has a reputedly 64 million empty apartments. Spain (where I live) has 3-4 million empty homes. The UK has I believe about 1 million empty homes. . Why? Becuase as you say yourself people who need homes dont have enough money to buy them. So capitalism artifically maintains scarcity. Which is what I was saying. Get rid of ca[pitalism. Make things freee and you wont have a situation where homelss people exist alongside empty homes



As I pointed out, my numbers are backed by government published statistics. You, however, just pulled that number out of a hat.

Show me proof that only working 2 hours per day can produce the same as we produce now....

I didnt say that. I said if you only have to work 2 hours doing a certain kind of work your attitide to that work will be differentt than if your had to work 20 hours.

But, yes, by getting rid of capitalism and all the massive and growing structural waste it entails means we will be able to at least double the amount of manpower and resources for socially useful production. And that is probably a conservative estimate

[malcom]

So let me just get this straight. Are you or you not saying that money will continue to exist in your system? Do you understand the significance of this question ?

The labor voucher works like a theater ticket. When you use it to purchase access to a movie, the ticket gets destroyed.

The person working at the store you make a purchase at does not own the store and does not profit from the things you buy. He does not keep the vouchers you spend at his store.




But as I also said such a system is hugely problematic for all sorts of reasons . Check outfor example

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/conquest/ch13.html

http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/labour_vouchers.php

I don't know how you can take that information seriously.

The top link said vouchers are a waste of time because people will argue over wage scales and it is inhumane to use accounting to track labor.

The other link says you don't need vouchers because you no longer need to ration. Their proof was that eliminating advertising will reduce demand, you can eliminate a lot of unnecessary jobs and people will share lawn mowers and cars.

I'm not sure how that convinced you, but that does not stand as any kind of legitimate evidence for people to take seriously.




Make things freee and you wont have a situation where homelss people exist alongside empty homes

Or you can do the more rational thing which is to pay everyone an income based on your production capacity and just have homeless people buy or rent a home.

[robbo203]

The labor voucher works like a theater ticket. When you use it to purchase access to a movie, the ticket gets destroyed.

The person working at the store you make a purchase at does not own the store and does not profit from the things you buy. He does not keep the vouchers you spend at his store.

.


I know what labour vouchers are nd your reference to the theatre ticket comes from Marx. My difficulty with you is I that am not quite sure - still - what your position is in relation to money. You dont seem to have decisively rejected it but instead come out with statements like this: And all the microeconomic decisions are based on how I and everyone else in the public spends their money.

If you want labour vouchers and labour vouchers alone then and then only would I accept that what you advocate is not capitalism. So what is it you advocate?




I don't know how you can take that information seriously.

The top link said vouchers are a waste of time because people will argue over wage scales and it is inhumane to use accounting to track labor.

The other link says you don't need vouchers because you no longer need to ration. Their proof was that eliminating advertising will reduce demand, you can eliminate a lot of unnecessary jobs and people will share lawn mowers and cars.

I'm not sure how that convinced you, but that does not stand as any kind of legitimate evidence for people to take seriously.



Come come - this is called gross caricaturisation . The links said a lot more than that....

In any event, I oppose labour vouchers for a host of reasons some of which may be roughly summarised as follows

1) Many advocates of labour vouchers support the idea of differential payments according to labour contribution. This raises the problem of how you measure one person's contribution vis a vis another's Thats doesnt apply in your case since you advocate equal payment across the board but that means that people are not being paid according to the value of their labour input

2) Any kind of quid pro quo or exchange set up raises motivational issues and fosters egoism. If you pay people differently people will disagree with the pay rate assigned to them. If you pay them the same, a nuclear scientist will contend that her work is of far greater import than a garbage collector and she should be paid much more. Friction and discontent are almost guaranteed. Not only that , you have no way of ensuring that people will not gravitate towards the most congenial work if all work attracts the same rate. This is becuase quid pro quo set ups enocurgae one to think in terms of what is in one's own interest and not the interests of the larger society. It promotes an atomised individualistic perspective. Garbage will remain uncollected. You can of course restrict labour mobility and centrally allocate labour but then you are back to the capitalist state and that in itself creates more problems than it solves

3) A labour voucher scheme will require a huge bureacracy to administer - on the one hand to administer, police and record labour inputs and on the other to administer police and record purchases. Labour vouchers will require labour time accounting across the board which is massively complicated. You might pay people the same but for planning/allocative purposes you certainly cannot treat labour inputs as equal. The stock argument that we can do all this with the super duper computer technology we have is no argument at all. Computerisation certainly helps with calculation but this is much more than a problem of calculation. Its also one of evaluation and enforcement. Whats to stop people abusing the system. Who is going to monitor the monitors? And so on.

4) To ensure that goods are cleared at the stores at an effiicient rate you have to ensure that the sum total of the face value of vouchers issued equals the sum total of labour inputs in the sphere of priduction. Otherwise you risk incurring huge structural shortages or surpluses. This applies not only at the macro level but for specific goods too. Cockshott in his book suggested selling goods at above or below their labour content in order to influence consumer spending habits but already this is a significant departure from the strict labour voucher scheme. Equally significantly it opens up the path for speculative buying and selling of goods and hence corruption.

5) People under a labour vocuher scheme are reputedly paid according to their labour contribution but what about those who cannot work. The very old, the very young , the infirm and the disabled. In your earlier post you supposed that workers produced a total value of $116K but got only a fraction of that. You said Only getting $33k of the $116k you produce is exploitation. Demand a better deal: Demand all of it Well you cant "get all of it" can you? - not if the non working population was going to be catered for as well. Same goes for large scale capital expenditures. This was the point made by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme - that it is absurd talking about workers getting the full value of their contribution. Necessarily the working population would have to get less than the value of what they produce and the value of their labour vouchers would have to be adjusted according. All this incidentally would add yet another of unproductive bureaucracy to administer this social welfare scheme

6) There is nothing to prevent a black market emerging alongside and undermining a system of labour vouchers ex post facto Informal commodity transactions can arise making use of goods purchased with vouchers - particularly if , as is the case with most advocates of labour vouchers it is suggested that vouchers are for specific goods. But even if they were not and with your voucher you could buy any good that still does not stop a black market coming into being. Whats to stop you for example growing stuff in you backyard and bartering it for other goods. Whats to stop you combing with others to form an agricultural collective to do the same on a much large scale? Eventually as we know bater will give way to money and in due course this could quite conceivably lead back to capitalism

I could go on but that is enough to be getting on with. ;) The point is that none of these problems arise in a system of free access communism.

From the point of view of administration, free access communism would be immeasurably more efficient and streamlined - bureaucracy will be reduced to a bare minimum. The motivational issues will not arise either. People would not be compelled to do just one particular job but would be free to diversify meaning that for any particular job there would be a massive reservoir of labour provided by almost everyone. Social opinion would also play a decisive role in all this. You would no longer acquire status through conspicuous consumption which would be meaningless in a free acess society. The respect and esteem of others - a hugely important motivational factor in any society - would derive from your actual contribution to society and social opinion would directly influence one's choice of work in a dynamic way. Thus, work that was considered most pressing and urgent would, other things being equal, be precisely the kind of work that would attract most prestige and in a dynamic responsive fashion. If people neglected garbage collection the prestige of garbage collecting would rise accordingly as the piles of riubbish mounted. Supply and demand of social prestige in other words would step in to resolve the problem. Lastly of course there would be no reason for a black market to emerge. There is no way a distribution system of paid for goods can outcompete a system of free goods.

And so on and so forth...

There is much more to the sociology and economics of free access communism - Marx's higher communism - than some people here seem to realise and is betrayed by their knee jerk stock responses. Quite simply they havent really given the idea the serious consideration it merits

[Kotze]

Not only that , you have no way of ensuring that people will not gravitate towards the most congenial work if all work attracts the same rate.I see, and you don't have that problem in free access communism.

People under a labour vocuher scheme are reputedly paid according to their labour contribution but what about those who cannot work.Labour-voucher advocates have always said everybody can and must take their part in production, and have talked at length about how this can be done. For example, Allin Cottrell has a blog where he shows step by step how a homeless man is made into various products: pâté, black pudding, etc.

[robbo203]

I see, and you don't have that problem in free access communism..

Nowhere near to the same extent and for the reasons cited.

Since you dont have a quid pro quo set up with free access communism, individuals are free to do whatever work they chose. What work needs to be done as I explained to Inform candidate can be readily communicated through the appropriate channels such as job centres, online facilities and so on. You dont have the same kind of dichotomous view induced by a quid pro quo set up which pits your self interest against the interests of others. So social opinion become becomes a much more powerful force in society. Work that needs to be done most urgently and is not perhaps being done to the extent required - e.g. garbage collection - gains in status to the extent that it remains undone. People work for all sorts of reasons not just becuase they "like it". This is why I find the usual objections to free access communism being trotted out to be utterly simplistic and reductionist. There are many other reaons besides the intrinsic pleasure of the work itself that motivates people to work. Read some of the classics of motivational theory - like Elton Mayo's "Hawthorne Studies" in the 1920s. (http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/97/7/439.full).



Labour-voucher advocates have always said everybody can and must take their part in production, and have talked at length about how this can be done. For example, Allin Cottrell has a blog where he shows step by step how a homeless man is made into various products: pâté, black pudding, etc.

This still doesnt account for people who cannot take their part in production as I explained. Its not true that everybody can take their part in production. Can young children, the very elderly, the infirm and the disabled take part in production. Generally speaking, no, they cannot. This needs to be factored in in any realistc social proposal

[malcom]

Labor vouchers (as I, Owen and Marx describe) are money since they are what is accepted for payment of goods and services. They are a unit of account, a store of value and medium of exchange.

1. I think it is fine to have different wages. I believe in democracy and if society votes for it, so be it.

2. If you don't like your pay rate, get a job that has the pay rate you want. But I can't understand how you say that is a negative against vouchers when you advocate a system where beach bums will earn the same amount as full time construction workers.

3. It costs virtually nothing to record digital transactions. You swipe your payment card and everything is recorded. It requires zero labor.

Having a manager add up all the labor time his or her firm has is also simple. What is so complicated about adding total hours all your employees worked!?! Labor accounting is not complicated at all. Every business in the world already does it. And since every organization is computerized, all that administration is done automatically.

Of course people will still steal. We don't live in a perfect world. But security makes up a small fraction of total costs.

Managers will be responsible for the performance of their organization so they will have every incentive to prevent theft. Theft will increase the manager's cost and reflect badly on their performance.

4. Yes corruption will happen since we live in an imperfect world. But it will be more difficult to get away with because every firm is publicly owned. So fellow employees will not tolerate anyone robbing the store they own. You are no longer robbing some rich owner, you are robbing society. But this also represents a small fraction of total costs.

5. Receiving $33k of $116k is exploitation because it is going to a wealthy class and you get nothing in return. However, you still have to pay tax to cover the cost of public goods. Tax is not exploitation since you get public services in return and you have a say in how much tax you pay. The level of tax is decided on democratically.

A portion of GDP has to be used for investment. The investment level is also set democratically. The $116k is what is left over after investment and net of imports and exports. Investment has already been accounted for.

6. I don't advocate vouchers being restricted to certain goods.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a black market. It will be a check on the public companies to make sure they are meeting demand. A black market good means the public companies are failing to meet a public need.



I agree free access is a much better system. And when the Star Trek replicators become available in the year 2212 that make free access possible, I will be the first to advocate eliminating vouchers.

[Kotze]

Labor vouchers (as I, Owen and Marx describe) are money since they are what is accepted for payment of goods and services.It's a semantic issue. People on this forum have different definitions of what "money" means. Sure, a labour-voucher system means that you can buy stuff for your consumption with it and usually it also means that you don't have to use it all immediately and it's also used for some efficiency estimates, and all that is also true for money. Marx and Engels distinguished between money and labour vouchers based on how freely the former can circulate, which they saw as a key element in how massive wealth inequality develops.
Labour-voucher advocates have always said everybody can and must take their part in production, and have talked at length about how this can be done. For example, Allin Cottrell has a blog where he shows step by step how a homeless man is made into various products: pâté, black pudding, etc.
This still doesnt account for people who cannot take their part in production as I explained. Its not true that everybody can take their part in production.http://i54.tinypic.com/29p4ynd.gif

[Paul Cockshott]

To ensure that goods are cleared at the stores at an effiicient rate you have to ensure that the sum total of the face value of vouchers issued equals the sum total of labour inputs in the sphere of priduction. Otherwise you risk incurring huge structural shortages or surpluses. This applies not only at the macro level but for specific goods too. Cockshott in his book suggested selling goods at above or below their labour content in order to influence consumer spending habits but already this is a significant departure from the strict labour voucher scheme. Equally significantly it opens up the path for speculative buying and selling of goods and hence corruption.
It would only do that if vouchers were transferable between people rather than being electronic accounts that can only be used in purchases from public stores.

[malcom]

Paul, do you propose that people will not be able to exchange vouchers with each other? If so, how would you buy/sell used and after market goods?

[robbo203]

Labor vouchers (as I, Owen and Marx describe) are money since they are what is accepted for payment of goods and services. They are a unit of account, a store of value and medium of exchange..

Marx explicitly distinguished between labour vouchers and money. Labour vouchers are not money because they dont cirulcate



1. I think it is fine to have different wages. I believe in democracy and if society votes for it, so be it.
..

So not only do you now support wage labour - capitalism - but accept that it is "fine" to have "different wages". At least now we know where you really stand



2. If you don't like your pay rate, get a job that has the pay rate you want. But I can't understand how you say that is a negative against vouchers when you advocate a system where beach bums will earn the same amount as full time construction workers.
.

So what became of your idea that everyone should be paid the same in labour vouchers, eh? And, no, I dont "advocate a system where beach bums will earn the same amount as full time construction workers". Thats just silly. I advocate a system in which there is zero employment and hence where no one earns anything. The concept of "earning" disappears , becomes redundant, when you give according to your ability and take according to self defined need and when we can all get the opportunity to do a bit of beach bumming , construction work or whatever



3. It costs virtually nothing to record digital transactions. You swipe your payment card and everything is recorded. It requires zero labor..

The cost of swiping your payment card is the least of it. You need to consider the totality of transaction costs, direct and indirect, which are much much larger than you think




Having a manager add up all the labor time his or her firm has is also simple. What is so complicated about adding total hours all your employees worked!?! Labor accounting is not complicated at all. Every business in the world already does it. And since every organization is computerized, all that administration is done automatically

Labour accounting is far more complicated than you imagine. Its not just a case of totting up all labour hours worked. Its a case of how you evaluate different labour hours performed for the purposes of allocation




Of course people will still steal. We don't live in a perfect world. But security makes up a small fraction of total costs.


Security costs are more than just a case of putting a security person on the front door of the shop or monitoring the CCTV. Since you are advocating a system in which "stealing" exists as a structural possiblity - unlike free access communism - you have to ensure against a multitude of ways in which individuals can abuse the system both at the point of production and the point of distribution





Managers will be responsible for the performance of their organization so they will have every incentive to prevent theft. Theft will increase the manager's cost and reflect badly on their performance.

That is, if managers themselves dont abuse the system and they will dertainly be nicely positioned to do so! As I said who is going to monitor the monitors?

But what is all this about managers being responsible for the performance of their organisation. Are we already beginning to see in this a power structure and the re-emergence of class relations of production?



4. Yes corruption will happen since we live in an imperfect world. But it will be more difficult to get away with because every firm is publicly owned. So fellow employees will not tolerate anyone robbing the store they own. You are no longer robbing some rich owner, you are robbing society. But this also represents a small fraction of total costs..

Like I said, any kind of quid pro quo or econmoic exchange arrangement which necessarily elevates concern with own interests over the interests of others will undermine what you claim will happen. In that respect, it doesnt really matter who you think people are robbing from - some rich owner or "society at large". Quid pro quo arrangements pit your interests against the interest of others and structure the way in which you look at the world in essentially egoistic terms




5. Receiving $33k of $116k is exploitation because it is going to a wealthy class and you get nothing in return. However, you still have to pay tax to cover the cost of public goods. Tax is not exploitation since you get public services in return and you have a say in how much tax you pay. The level of tax is decided on democratically...

All those little costs are beginning to add up, arent they? So now we have the costs of administerering a system of taxation. Presumably differing circumstances e.g. single persons vis-a-vis couples with large families . will have to be taken into account. So more form filling , more bureaucracy. And then there is this one - the level of tax is to be decided democratically. Easier said then done!



A portion of GDP has to be used for investment. The investment level is also set democratically. The $116k is what is left over after investment and net of imports and exports. Investment has already been accounted for.
...

You cant just vaguely talk about a portion of GDP for investment being "set democratically". You have to disaggregate. Investment in what? This too has to be presumably democratically decided upon. The point is that all of this arises in a society in which which the notion of "income" and "earnings" exists as a structural fact - unlike in free access communism - and almost certainly, whatever decision you make and however you make it, few are going to be happy with it - precisely for the reason that quid pro quo arrangements nurture an egoistic outlook and give rise to the free rider problem



6. I don't advocate vouchers being restricted to certain goods.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a black market. It will be a check on the public companies to make sure they are meeting demand. A black market good means the public companies are failing to meet a public need.
...

OK so if you admit the possibility that black markets can arise in your system of labour vouchers. Will you now admit the possibililty that they can come to undermine the latter?



I agree free access is a much better system. And when the Star Trek replicators become available in the year 2212 that make free access possible, I will be the first to advocate eliminating vouchers.

Notwithstanding the ironic tone of your comment, free access communism is not some futuristic science fiction scenario buit has existed as potentiality within capitalism itself at least since the beginning of the 20th century. It is not predicated on some "superabundance" of wealth being made available to people but rather on the very real possibilty of being able to meet our basic needs. The elimination of capitalism's massive strucutural waste is the prime source of this productive potential; it will make huge amounts of resources available for socially useful production in a society in which the only considertation is meeting human needs, not selling commodities on a market with a view to profit.

Despite what the bourgeois economists and pop sociologists assert, our demands are not insatiable. They are conditioned by the society we live in and in a free access communist society much of what we falslely consider to be essential to our wellbeing - the pursuit of status via conspicuous consumption - will be rendered totally meaningless. Scarcity (or abundance for that matter) are a function of both supply and demand and these are both influenced by the kind of society we live in. In capitalism the logic of competition and the self expansion of capital without limit is reflected in the bourgeois notion that as individual consumers our demands are "infinite". This notion serves as an apology for capitalism, in other words. As I keep on pointing out, in free access communism the only way logically you can gain the respect and esteem of your fellows is through your contribution to society and not what you take out of it. No one should ever underestimate the potency of this particular motive

It astonishes me that some on the left seem to have discarded altogther the idea of free access communism and what is even more astonishing is the grounds on which they do so . They have bought lock stock and barrel into the bourgeois myth of "human nature" to defend their anti communist position.

Even people like Lenin and Trotsky never for a moment doubted that free access communism was the ultimate goal of the communism - much as I am firecely critical of many of their ideas. There is a nice quote in
Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed that says it all:

The material premise of communism should be so high a development of the economic powers of man that productive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will not require any goad, and the distribution of life’s goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand – as it does not now in any well-off family or "decent" boarding-house – any control except that of education, habit and social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective "utopian."

What Trotsky is advocating here is the abandonment of the idea of material rewards or remuneration as a so called incentive to produce.

And we should not forget that Marx whose Critique of the Gotha programme is a primary source of theoretical support for the advocates of labour vouchers contains this description of the higher phase of communist society

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

People have seem to have fogetten about this in ther ill-informed attempt to dismiss free access communism . They have failed to see just how much their own perspective is imprisoned within narrrow horizon of bourgeois rights and bourgeois behaviour patterns

[robbo203]

It would only do that if vouchers were transferable between people rather than being electronic accounts that can only be used in purchases from public stores.

Not so. Im talking about what happens to goods after they have been purchased from the public stores . It is in this respect that a role for speculative buying and selling of goods on the black market exists as a very real possibility

[Vanguard1917]

Is this some kind of "transitional demand", or is it a vision of how capitalism could be made to work in the interests of the working class?

[Paul Cockshott]

Is this some kind of "transitional demand", or is it a vision of how capitalism could be made to work in the interests of the working class?
It is a component of a transition programme

[Paul Cockshott]

Paul, do you propose that people will not be able to exchange vouchers with each other? If so, how would you buy/sell used and after market goods?
Do you have freecycle in the US?

[Kotze]

Paul, do you propose that people will not be able to exchange vouchers with each other? If so, how would you buy/sell used and after market goods?It's a core Marxist belief that the big ripoff happens between employer and employee. The important thing is to make it hard that capitalist relations — that is you need access to some stuff X in order to produce some stuff Y and somebody controlling stuff X hires you to produce Y — grow back. As a consequence some specific processes have to become slightly more bureaucratic.

So no, the proposed electronic payment system doesn't allow an individual to transmit points to another individual (though I can imagine a small fraction of your points being mobile points for cases like when you have the flu and you want your neighbour to go buy you something, to curb shenanigans these transmissions could be non-anonymous). I think there should be a process for handling second-hand stuff, individual to some big org to individual, not individual to individual like a flea market.

One cannot rule out 100% that people will ocassionally barter or illegally work in exchange for specific stuff, but such a market doesn't have the attractiveness and exciting dynamics of illegally trading goodies and services for cash usable for legal stuff where you live. Admittedly such a market could have quite some size near the border of a non-socialist country when that country's currency is used, but even then there are limits. I only enjoy going to flea markets when they are big and a big illegal flea market would be easier found out by the authorities. I can't count on any consumer protection for stuff I got illegally from a person I don't know, if what I got that way is defect I'm screwed. There's a reason why black markets usually only work well with networks of people who know each other and who regularly buy the same stuff, something small, like illegal drugs.
Do you have freecycle in the US?It does exist in the US, but why not allow people to get remuneration for giving stuff they have little use for? Do you worry much about speculation?

It doesn't have to be either 0 remuneration or remuneration according to what a market bubble says. Given that with electronic labour vouchers it's easy to track who buys what, extreme cases of people hoarding items that then go extremely high above their labour value could be addressed with a carrot-and-stick approach: Imagine people not only getting paid for returning such an item in good condition, there could be a tax for having recently bought it (or is that rented, in retrospect?). I suppose a flexible implementation as an ever-changing tax would only succeed as a demonstration of how price flexibility can generate chaos, but I believe it could work as a deterrent against speculation when actually only used in rare cases.

[malcom]

We do have freecycle but I don't think that would be sufficient to manage all used/after-market goods/services for the entire country. Why not just allow people to trade?

[malcom]

Robo,

To be clear, I advocate democracy which I define as a society where power rests with everyone equally and directly. There are no concentrations of power.

That means everyone has equal and direct control over the govt and economy.

Equal power doesn't mean equal incomes so long as everyone has the power to work within the pay grade they want. This power will keep pay differentials in check because the higher the pay, the more people will want to do that job and the more people that do that job, the less that profession is able to pay.

So the incomes for different jobs will work like the Walrasian auction for clearing markets for goods. If there is a shortage in a key job, you can raise the income to attract more people.

And since compensation levels are a macroeconomic issue, society will vote directly on it. So pay differentials will only be approved with the consent of society.


Why democracy?

The goal of every human being is the same no matter where you live, what your background is, or what culture you were raised in. The goal of every human being is to pursue happiness.

So the purpose of society should be to enable everyone to have the freedom to pursue happiness - the ability to maximize happiness without coercion or restraint.

Democracy is the only system that can achieve that because it gives everyone the equal power to freely pursue their happiness. It does not allow concentration of power since concentration of power means one person will have a greater amount of freedom at the expense of someone else having less freedom.

Democracy guarantees that the govt and economy are working just as hard to deliver your freedom as everyone else. They are working just as hard at eliminating the coercions and restraints that block your ability to pursue happiness as everyone else.

Their goal is to make sure you will never be coerced into doing something that does not bring you happiness and you will never be restrained from doing something that does bring you happiness.

And since democracy means everyone has this power equally, democracy means you have the power to freely pursue happiness so long as it does not violate that same power in others. Society's responsibility is to deliver that in a way that is reasonable and fair.

That simple formula is the only rational way to run the world.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Really good thread guys, I've enjoyed the argument. I have a question for roboo203. In free access communism how would you allocate scarce, high expense, high demand products? For example if airplane trips were free many people would want to fly off to hot places all the time, but the reality of the great expense of flying would put a limit on that. How would you allocate the limited amount of spaces to a huge number of people?

With labour vouchers people could spend them on what ever they wish, so if someone wanted to spend all their vouchers on flying to hot places five times a year they could. If someone wanted to save their vouchers and go on holiday in Cornwall or wherever, they could. But if you didn't have to pay everyone would want to fly.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

How is public ownership compatible with people having money to buy and sell stuff? Surely a society where you get paid for working and then buy stuff is just an eglatarian form of capitalism? Rather than socialism or anything like that.

I think Malcom is getting stuck on the idea of definitions of private and public spheres rather than looking at how his economy would actually fuction, where there would surely still be exploitation but it would be done by everyone and then the profits would be redistributed? The "laws of motion" of capitalism now would remain the same it'd just be fairer?

[ar734]

Would US workers make $92k/year $116k/year if income was paid out equally?

If Paul, or anyone else can answer, that would be great. His idea is to price everything in labor time and distribute that income equally. He claims that if we paid out income equally, most people would benefit and the average income would double.


Only getting $33k of the $116k you produce is exploitation. Demand a better deal: Demand all of it.

The idea of equal distribution of wages has obviously been around a long time. Marx discussed it in Wages, Price and Profit:

"The cry for an equality of wages rests, therefore, upon a mistake, is an insane wish never to be fulfilled... To clamour for equal or even equitable [distribution] on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system. What you think just or equitable is out of the question. The question is: What is necessary and unavoidable with a given system of production?"

His point is, I think, that under a capitalist system of wages-labor there can never be an equal distribution of wages. First you have to destroy the capitalist system; not merely demand a better deal.

[Rowan Duffy]

The idea of equal distribution of wages has obviously been around a long time. Marx discussed it in Wages, Price and Profit:

"The cry for an equality of wages rests, therefore, upon a mistake, is an insane wish never to be fulfilled... To clamour for equal or even equitable [distribution] on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system. What you think just or equitable is out of the question. The question is: What is necessary and unavoidable with a given system of production?"

His point is, I think, that under a capitalist system of wages-labor there can never be an equal distribution of wages. First you have to destroy the capitalist system; not merely demand a better deal.

Nobody is suggesting keeping capitalism. The question was merely about how one might do a back-of-the-napkin style calculation to determine current productivity versus current consumption among the population. It is meant to give us a rough approximation of how much better off we'd be under socialism.

[ar734]

Nobody is suggesting keeping capitalism. The question was merely about how one might do a back-of-the-napkin style calculation to determine current productivity versus current consumption among the population. It is meant to give us a rough approximation of how much better off we'd be under socialism.

One problem would be that if a pilot made the same income, say, 160K, as a janitor, why would anyone want to work as a pilot?

[malcom]

How is public ownership compatible with people having money to buy and sell stuff?

Money is just a system of rationing. Just because all companies are publicly owned doesn't mean we no longer need to ration goods and services.

Eliminating money means the price of everything would be zero and people would have unlimited budgets. People under that scenario would obviously demand far more than we can produce. So eliminating money does not work.




Surely a society where you get paid for working and then buy stuff is just an eglatarian form of capitalism? Rather than socialism or anything like that.

The use of money does not make an economy capitalist. Money is just a tool. Since the companies are not privately owned and since there are no profits to be made, the system is not capitalist.




I think Malcom is getting stuck on the idea of definitions of private and public spheres rather than looking at how his economy would actually fuction, where there would surely still be exploitation but it would be done by everyone and then the profits would be redistributed? The "laws of motion" of capitalism now would remain the same it'd just be fairer?

There is no such thing as fair exploitation. You are either getting exploited or you are not. Since there are no longer any owners of capital and since 100% of the income goes to workers, workers are no longer getting exploited.

[malcom]

One problem would be that if a pilot made the same income, say, 160K, as a janitor, why would anyone want to work as a pilot?

I think we can have different pay grades. In my post above, I show how democracy (where everyone has the power to work in the field with the pay grade they want) would keep pay differentials in check.

But I think people who love to fly would much rather work as a pilot than a janitor.

[ar734]

I think we can have different pay grades..

Ok, let's pay the fly-boy 20k per year to do what he loves, and let's pay the janitor 160k per year to do the dirty work for the rest of us.

[robbo203]

Really good thread guys, I've enjoyed the argument. I have a question for roboo203. In free access communism how would you allocate scarce, high expense, high demand products? For example if airplane trips were free many people would want to fly off to hot places all the time, but the reality of the great expense of flying would put a limit on that. How would you allocate the limited amount of spaces to a huge number of people?

With labour vouchers people could spend them on what ever they wish, so if someone wanted to spend all their vouchers on flying to hot places five times a year they could. If someone wanted to save their vouchers and go on holiday in Cornwall or wherever, they could. But if you didn't have to pay everyone would want to fly.


I have sort of answered your question in the thread "currency under socialism" in Learning http://www.revleft.com/vb/currency-under-socialism-t155587/index2.html

To elaborate, I am not opposed in principle to the idea of rationing. Allocation in a system of free access communism would be influenced or conditioned among other things by society's structure of priorities which may mean certain low priority goods - like luxury goods - may not be sufficently plentiful for distribution on a free access basis and would thus need to be rationed. To be precise, then, I envisage two systems of distribution coexisting - a free access system for plentiful (high priority) goods and a rationing system for scarce (low priority) goods. Obviously the dividing line between them will probably be a constantly shifting one reflecting changing circumstances.

As far as rationing is concerned I do not favour a system of labour vouchers. I think it would be an extraordinarily cumbersome system to operate whatever our computerphiles on this thread may say and it will be beset by numerous problems some of which I earlier touched upon.

I favour a rationing system that would be much more straightforward and simple to operate. If I might quote from something Ive written elsewhere which kind of explains it all (sorry about the length). It would help to answer your point about airline tickets (insofar as these need to be rationed):


What might be the criteria that such a system of rationing could use to distribute those goods in short supply? Firstly, let us remind ourselves again that we are talking only of some goods - most likely, non necessities - and only insofar as they are in short supply which may or may not turn out to be the case. So, clearly, this in itself would rule out the idea of labour vouchers as a mean of rationing which would have to be a generalised approach applying to all goods, or not at all, and which I have already rejected, in any case, on other grounds. Secondly, it is important to note that the transformation of society from capitalist to communism will not immediately transform the material legacy that the former will leave to the latter. In other words, from the point of view of individuals themselves, the immediate material circumstances they find themselves in will still differ strikingly from one person to the next.

If there is one thing that encapsulates such a difference it has to be the quality and nature of housing stock. This is a hugely important material consideration for anyone - one's accomodation. In capitalism, we see an enormous variation in housing stock - from the tin shacks of some shanty town Favela, clinging perilously to a hill's steep slopes, to the luxurious splendour and spacious comfort of some stately home. Clearly, there are some things we can do more or less immediately about remedying such material inequality. For instance, individuals do not have to live in run down shoddy accommodation if they do not wish to when there is already an abundance of empty but reasonably sound housing stock lying around and waiting for someone to move into. In the last chapter we looked at some of the statistics to illustrate the sheer scale of this phenomenon. But it is not just empty housing stock that we are talking about either - there are many offices, shops warehouses and so on that could be more or less easily converted into suitable accommodation. This is quite apart from taking steps to immediately improve and upgrade what one's existing home. That stately mansion, for example, with it twenty bedrooms could provide accommodation for several people who could then help to maintain and revitalise it . Far better that than allow it to gradually go to seed in the hands of its two aging incumbents who can no longer afford the servants to do the cleaining or the repairs to prevent the dry rot from spreading.

So there is certainly much that can be done immediately to ameliorate the housing situation but equally, it has to be said, there is much that cannot be done immeidately . It will take time - perhaps many years - to overcome capitalism's huge structural legacy of material inequality in respect of housing. And it is precisely housing that could furnish the criterion upon which a system of rationing might operate which I have dubbed the "compensation model of rationing". I use the term "compensation" advisedly because this is indeed what it would entail. Since it is not logistically possible for everyone in a full blown communist society to take possession of good quality accommodation all at once, and from the word go, then it would seem only right and proper that those who cannot should, in some sense, be "compensated" for having to put with less than satisfactory accommodation in the meantime. This would accord with egalitarian ethos of a communist society and with a sense of natural justice. It would serve to heal and to bring harmony rather than sow dissent and social friction.

How such individuals could be compensated could , I suggest, take the form of granting them priority accesss to those goods that are subject to rationing. This could conceviably be a graduated scheme with different levels of priority access corresponding to the assessed ranking of the housing stock in which people are living. The beauty of such a scheme is that it is flexible, straightforward and relatively simple to implement. Certainly , it would not require some vast sprawling bureaucracy to administer. For instance, distribution stores stocking goods that are often difficult to get hold of and thus need to be rationed, could reserve such items for a specified period of time during which time only those with priority access rights and able to present the appropriate documentation to prove it, would be entitled to take them. Upon expiry of that time period any remaining goods could then be made available to the general public at large to take as they see fit on the basis of free access.

I offer this merely as a suggestion - to illustrate one possible practical way in which the scheme might be operated. No doubt there are any number of other ways in which it might be operated and far be it from me to specify and set in concrete the precise details of any arrangement to be adopted. Rather, it is the underlying principle or rationale of such a proposed scheme that I wish here to elucidate. Its purpose is to signal or make transparent society's recognition of the fact of material inequality and its intention to do something about it and, most importantly, in accordance with its egalitarian values.

The technical or administrative process of mapping out this inequality and calibrating a system of rationing to match, is eminently achievable in my view. In the UK, for example, the council tax which in 1993 replaced the hugely unpopular community charge or "poll tax" introduced by Mrs Thatcher, sought to raise local taxes on the basis of the presumed capital value of properties. Each property within the jurisdiction of a local authority was allocated to one of eight different bands which attracted increasing charges, the higher the band in which the property fell. Of course, in a full blown communist society taxes would cease to exist but the principle of valuing properties and allocating them to one of several broad bands could easily be adapted and used for the purposes I have described. A rough points system which assessed properties on the basis of objective criteria such as size, facilities, overall condition and so on could be applied to facilitate the banding process and the occupants of the property in question could then be issued a certificate indicating the band it fell under. All this information, incidentally, would also be extremely useful from the point of view of local communities in their endeavours to upgrade their housing stock generally. In order to do that one would need to have a reasonably clear idea of the scale of the problem to be addressed and this is precisely what such a process would provide.

The proposal to institute some form of rationing for some goods - non rationed goods would, by definition, be distributed on the basis of free access so that you would have, in effect, have two parallel distribution systems operating side by side - presupposes, as I have said before, some way of prioritising the goals of production and the allocation of inputs generally. This is an integral part of a larger system of production whose different components are will be functionally interconnedted. In exploring the nature of these connections we shall at last bring to the light and systematically explicate the inner workings of a post capitalist alternative to contemporary capitalism

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

Money is just a system of rationing. Just because all companies are publicly owned doesn't mean we no longer need to ration goods and services.

Eliminating money means the price of everything would be zero and people would have unlimited budgets. People under that scenario would obviously demand far more than we can produce. So eliminating money does not work.





The use of money does not make an economy capitalist. Money is just a tool. Since the companies are not privately owned and since there are no profits to be made, the system is not capitalist.





There is no such thing as fair exploitation. You are either getting exploited or you are not. Since there are no longer any owners of capital and since 100% of the income goes to workers, workers are no longer getting exploited.

Well, okay, I can accept that money is just a tool, but on your other points you just repeat previously stated tautologies.

In this thread your belief that private ownership = capitalism has been questioned, by me as well as others, so simply telling me that because there isn't private ownership it isn't capitalism isn't the response i was looking for.

You then say there are no profits and so the system isn't capitalism. This is the kinda argument I was looking for, but I feel that there are "profits" in a sense in your system. In the immediate time after production, it would seem that some form of value is extracted from the people working in the publically owned companies, but that this value (profits) is then, due to public control of industries, returned to society at large, in contrast to now, where it is kept in the hands of a few who are able to do so due to their private ownership of the means of production. It would seem to me that exploitation (in the strictly marxian, rather than moral) sense STILL would take place, but that the profits from said exploitation would be shared. I guess its the same as a cooperative in society now, workers exploit "themselves" (in that they get paid less than the value of their labour in the form of wages...which is what must happen if it is then worthwhile for them to sellthe goods they make at all) and make profits of the items they were selling which are returned to the cooperative rather than their bosses etc. If in your society workers weren't still paid less than the value of their labour, how could your society operate? If there wasn't some common fund to reinburse every worker equally or to some democratically decided ideal, then surely individual workers would be paid everything at the time they did their work, with differnet rates depending on the value of their labour, whether their products sold or not, and so on? And if profit was not made on items, aside from state decree or force, where would be the motivation for workers to produce? I understand you have critisied communists in this thread for wanting a system where people to produce according to their own whims, so you cannot consistantly argue they would do so due to the intrinsitic joy of production.

Viewed from this lens I think it seems that the fundamnetal "laws of motion" (I hate that phrase) of a capitalist society are still in place, its just yours is a lot more eglatarian. Not that i'm denying that I wouldn't love to live in a working version of your society, or that it sounds really brilliant, but I don't think that makes it socialism which I feel is best defined in specific marxian terms rather than something as vague as "public ownership?" (Does that mean the nazi war economy was half socialist or something? Or countries now are 1/3 socialistic? :S)

I think mabye as a final point, you might want to look at the daily life of a worker in your society. Sure they'd be well rich and stuff, but what would change in terms of their daily actions? Presumably they'd still be waking up and needing to go to work to get money to feed their kids and pay their bills and they most likely would have a job they didn't really like and while there wouldn't be any capitalists leeching off them, they'd still be pitted economically against every other person in society and have a built in incentive to rip them off or exploit them fundamental to the system in a way that a society of free production and distribution wouldn't have (Unless you think people are going to punch their neighbours and try and amass like 100 xboxes or whatever?). This society basically sounds like a far cry from Marx's description (which I read recently wasn't actually serious but I like it, and it seems that at least half of Marx's famous remarks really werne't intended to be taken as they are but..) where people can fish by day and be a philsopher in the evening and the free association of each is the condition for the free association for all.

[malcom]

You then say there are no profits and so the system isn't capitalism. This is the kinda argument I was looking for, but I feel that there are "profits" in a sense in your system. In the immediate time after production, it would seem that some form of value is extracted from the people working in the publically owned companies, but that this value (profits) is then, due to public control of industries, returned to society at large, in contrast to now, where it is kept in the hands of a few who are able to do so due to their private ownership of the means of production. It would seem to me that exploitation (in the strictly marxian, rather than moral) sense STILL would take place

There are no profits. Everything is sold at cost. 100% of the revenue generated gets paid to the workers. So there is also no exploitation.




I guess its the same as a cooperative in society now, workers exploit "themselves" (in that they get paid less than the value of their labour in the form of wages...which is what must happen if it is then worthwhile for them to sellthe goods they make at all) and make profits of the items they were selling which are returned to the cooperative rather than their bosses etc.

That is not how the system would work. Everything would be priced based on how much labor went into it. If we made the value of 1 labor hour $56 and it took 5 hours to make some widget, the price of that widget is $280. And if the wage of every worker was $56/hour, everyone would get paid $56/hour regardless of how well the organization you worked for did.




And if profit was not made on items, aside from state decree or force, where would be the motivation for workers to produce?

Workers would be motivated by their $126,000 per year salary and by pride of work.

Managers would have an incentive to make sure their firms were efficient and innovative because they will be judged against industry benchmarks.

For example, if you are the manager of a firm that made a widget that cost 150 labor hours when other firms are able to make it for 125 labor hours, you are going to be held accountable.




I think mabye as a final point, you might want to look at the daily life of a worker in your society. Sure they'd be well rich and stuff, but what would change in terms of their daily actions?

A lot of things will change. You would be able to work less than fulltime if you wanted since the salary is so high and still live well.

We would deploy our full automation capabilities. It no longer makes sense to hire cashiers when they are making $56 hour. So 55% of the work we do would be automated since 55% of all our work is menial, repetitive tasks that machines have the capability of doing.

Since you will be paid to go to school, you can work any job you want. You no longer have to work a job you hate.

In a post above, I talk about how we should eliminate every job and have machines do them so that humans can do leisure activities only.




[workers would] still be pitted economically against every other person in society and have a built in incentive to rip them off or exploit them fundamental to the system in a way that a society of free production and distribution wouldn't have

That is not true. Where is this incentive to rip others off? How are all workers pitted against each other?

[robbo203]

There are no profits. Everything is sold at cost. 100% of the revenue generated gets paid to the workers. So there is also no exploitation.


What about funds for investment if workers get 100% of the revenue? What about those who cannot work? The very young , the very old, the sick and the disabled? Are they not going to get anything? If they are going to get something where is this going to come from except out of the revenue generated by the wealth producers perhaps in the form of a taxation levy?





That is not how the system would work. Everything would be priced based on how much labor went into it. If we made the value of 1 labor hour $56 and it took 5 hours to make some widget, the price of that widget is $280. And if the wage of every worker was $56/hour, everyone would get paid $56/hour regardless of how well the organization you worked for did.


Aside from the fact that you are still semingly talking in terms of money and your whole scheme thus comes across as just a pie-in-the-sky way of operating capitalism which hasnt the slightest chance of taking off, this is not quite how I imagine labour time accouting would work. The vouchers received by the worker would reflect the time worked. So for a 40 hour week a worker would receive vouchers corresponding to this - 40 units. The price of the widget would be 5 labour time hours or 5 units - if this correctly reflected the total labour time it took to produce it which must also include indirect costs in labour time such as the cost of machine that produced the widget . Therefore at the end of the working week, the worker could with 1/8 of his or her income buy 1 widget




Workers would be motivated by their $126,000 per year salary and by pride of work.

Managers would have an incentive to make sure their firms were efficient and innovative because they will be judged against industry benchmarks.

So there will be economic competition. What is this incentive that managers would receive in a society in which i was given to understand everyone would be paid exactly the same. This is beginning to look more and more like just plain old capitalism. Willl firms deemed "inefficient" be shut down and the workers laid off. Will there be strikes?



For example, if you are the manager of a firm that made a widget that cost 150 labor hours when other firms are able to make it for 125 labor hours, you are going to be held accountable.



So you are held accountable. What then? Is somebody just going to wag a finger and say "tut, tut". What does "held accountable" mean? Loss of earnings? Spo already we see yet another departure from labour time accounting. What you get paid does not truly reflect the hours you work. It ref;lects also the penalties and presumably rewards that society bestows on you for your performance



Since you will be paid to go to school, you can work any job you want. You no longer have to work a job you hate.



This gets better and better. Next you will be advocating that we bottle the air and the managers be "incentivised" to sell it to the highest bidder



That is not true. Where is this incentive to rip others off? How are all workers pitted against each other?


Any kind of quid pro quo set - "I give you something in return for you giving me something else" - has a built in conflict of interests that orientates individuals to adopt an egoistic or self interested approach vis-a-vis others. You are advocating an exchange economy of some type - though I still fail to see any substantive difference between your system and capitalism other than the fact that you want to wave a magic wand and make every one get paid the same, despite economic competitition. You have already admitted that managers would be held accountable and that there would be incentives for firms to become more efficient. That can only mean they would be differentially remunerated according to their performance. Managers will want to reduce labour costs for example presumably by reducing hours worked or even laying off workers. How else, after all, is "efficiency" to be measured in your system other than by net income - the difference between revenue and costs. In pursuit of net income, managers incentivised by the competitve desire for higher remuneration will soon enough pit themselves against the workers.

Lets face it - you basically just want capitalism without the nasty bits. You want to have your capitalist cake and eat it

[malcom]

What about funds for investment if workers get 100% of the revenue? What about those who cannot work?

The level of investment is a macroeconomic issue that will be set by direct vote. A mature economy invests ~12% yearly. That would be deducted from total GDP. Worker pay would be based on GDP - Investment - net of Import/Export

Then an income tax would be levied to pay for non market goods and services like medicine, school, pension and digital media.

What I meant by workers receiving the full income is that none of the available income will go to owners of capital.

I think we covered this already.




Aside from the fact that you are still semingly talking in terms of money

Since labor vouchers are what is used to pay for goods and services, it is money.




and your whole scheme thus comes across as just a pie-in-the-sky way of operating capitalism which hasnt the slightest chance of taking off

I don't think you understand what capitalism is. Capitalism is a system where capital is owned privately and is used for private profits.

So a company would be privately owned. The owner would then try to pay their employees the least amount possible. And the owner would try to sell his widgets for the most amount possible. The difference between his revenue and costs is profit that the owner keeps all to himself.

In the system proposed here, the company is nor privately owned. There is no bargaining with employees over wages. Wages are fixed and based on total country GDP. Widgets are sold at cost plus its walrasian auction price to clear markets. There are no profits. If revenue exceeds expenses, prices are adjusted, the surplus doesn't go in the pocket of an owner or anyone else.

So it is not capitalism. I think we covered this as well.




this is not quite how I imagine labour time accouting would work. The vouchers received by the worker would reflect the time worked. So for a 40 hour week a worker would receive vouchers corresponding to this - 40 units. The price of the widget would be 5 labour time hours or 5 units - if this correctly reflected the total labour time it took to produce it

That is correct and that is what I said in my last post. All I did was make 1 labor hour = $56. I did this because it would give people a sense of what 1 labor hour is equivalent to. The US economy produces $56 in goods and services for every labor hour worked.



which must also include indirect costs in labour time such as the cost of machine that produced the widget

That is correct. Each company will need to add up their labor hours plus their expenses (machines, materials, electricity, water, office cleaning, whatever). However, the only labor time they need to count is their own employees because their expenses will be billed to them in labor hours. So their electric bill will cost them 400 labor hours per month because the electric company already calculated their labor costs.

That is why a labor accounting system is simple. Every company just adds up their own labor which is very easy to do. It is what every company already does. Accounting law requires them to add up all their expenses and allocate those expenses to each product they make so they can determine the profitability of every product they produce.

I think this was already covered.




So there will be economic competition. What is this incentive that managers would receive in a society in which i was given to understand everyone would be paid exactly the same.

I'm not sure how many times I mentioned it. But yes there can be wage differentials.




This is beginning to look more and more like just plain old capitalism.

Yes, this is exactly like capitalism. In capitalism everyone works to make things. What is being advocated here is a system where everyone works to make things. So it must be capitalism.




Willl firms deemed "inefficient" be shut down and the workers laid off. Will there be strikes?

Inefficient firms will get new management. There is no purpose to running inefficient firms. Firms that produce widgets nobody is willing to buy will get shut down. There is no purpose in producing things nobody is buying.

Workers will be laid off. But there will be no strikes because everyone is guaranteed a job. Unlike capitalism, there is always full employment.




So you are held accountable. What then? Is somebody just going to wag a finger and say "tut, tut". What does "held accountable" mean? Loss of earnings?

It could mean a loss of earnings if managers are paid a performance bonus. It could also mean no longer being the manager. Protocols for management will be developed.

We won't be completely reinventing the wheel. There are already tons of examples of organizations that don't operate within any kind of market but are still responsible for performance: police, fire, nasa, veteran's hospitals, schools, etc.




I still fail to see any substantive difference between your system and capitalism

At least read the wikipedia article on what capitalism is. If you take the time to learn what capitalism actually is, you will see the difference.



other than the fact that you want to wave a magic wand and make every one get paid the same, despite economic competitition.

Nobody is competing for profits. The wage system is fixed. There is a big difference between good workers earning a bonus and a capitalist owner making 1000 yimes the average worker.

I'm dealing with reality where resources need to be rationed, firms need to be efficient and workers need to perform.

You are dealing in a fantasy where everything magically comes together on its own.




Managers will want to reduce labour costs for example presumably by reducing hours worked or even laying off workers.

Yes, the goal is to reduce cost. That is how you increase wealth. Nobody wants to pay $100k for a hyundai. Everyone will be poorer if their goods cost more.

[robbo203]

The level of investment is a macroeconomic issue that will be set by direct vote. A mature economy invests ~12% yearly. That would be deducted from total GDP. Worker pay would be based on GDP - Investment - net of Import/Export

Then an income tax would be levied to pay for non market goods and services like medicine, school, pension and digital media.

What I meant by workers receiving the full income is that none of the available income will go to owners of capital.

I think we covered this already..


So you agree that workers would not get 100% of the revenue generated contrary to your earlier claim





Since labor vouchers are what is used to pay for goods and services, it is money...


Labour vouchers only become money if they circulate - a distinction that seems to have eluded you thus far





I don't think you understand what capitalism is. Capitalism is a system where capital is owned privately and is used for private profits....

I understand very well what capitalism but I dont think you do given your constant confused reference to the existence of wages in your system which presuppose capital and vice versa. Thats basic marxism




So a company would be privately owned. The owner would then try to pay their employees the least amount possible. And the owner would try to sell his widgets for the most amount possible. The difference between his revenue and costs is profit that the owner keeps all to himself.

In the system proposed here, the company is nor privately owned. There is no bargaining with employees over wages. Wages are fixed and based on total country GDP. Widgets are sold at cost plus its walrasian auction price to clear markets. There are no profits. If revenue exceeds expenses, prices are adjusted, the surplus doesn't go in the pocket of an owner or anyone else.
....

So once again you agree that commodities under your system are not priced in accordance with their labour time content but depart from this being influenced by supply and demand.

Saying there would be no profts is a semantic quibble. It doesnt matter essentially who pockets the profit enterprises make in your system which enterprises you admit would be "held accountable" and would compete in the market in pursuit of profit despite what you claim to the contrary




That is correct and that is what I said in my last post. All I did was make 1 labor hour = $56. I did this because it would give people a sense of what 1 labor hour is equivalent to. The US economy produces $56 in goods and services for every labor hour worked.
..

So why talk of labour hours in money terms? It doesnt clarify matters at all





That is why a labor accounting system is simple. Every company just adds up their own labor which is very easy to do. It is what every company already does. Accounting law requires them to add up all their expenses and allocate those expenses to each product they make so they can determine the profitability of every product they produce.
..


Once again you contradict yourself . First you say "There are no profits" under your system . Now we learn that enterprises under your system will have to "determine the profitability of every product they produce".




I'm not sure how many times I mentioned it. But yes there can be wage differentials.

..

If there are wage diffientials there is a wage system and hence capitalism




Yes, this is exactly like capitalism. In capitalism everyone works to make things. What is being advocated here is a system where everyone works to make things. So it must be capitalism...

It is capitalism that in the end you are advocating. Why not just admit it?

[Paul Cockshott]

Originally Posted by malcom http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2132528#post2132528)
The level of investment is a macroeconomic issue that will be set by direct vote. A mature economy invests ~12% yearly. That would be deducted from total GDP. Worker pay would be based on GDP - Investment - net of Import/Export


Depends whether you mean net or gross investment. The figure looks hight to me for net investment

[Paul Cockshott]

why talk of labour hours in money terms? It doesnt clarify matters at all
it does help bring out to people how much capitalism exploits them. People know what a $ is worth, they dont know, in today's world, what an hour is worth.

[malcom]

Depends whether you mean net or gross investment. The figure looks hight to me for net investment

That is gross investment. Net investment is only 5%.

But my understanding is that net investment only measures how much your capital stock has increased or decreased.

So if we bought $100 in new machinery and loss $80 of existing machinery to use, the net investment would be $20. Even though we bought $100 in new machinery, the value of our total machinery only went up $20.

So the gross investment is the relevant number. It represents how much labor we used towards investment that period. In the example above, we produced $100 worth of new machinery, not $20.

[malcom]

So why talk of labour hours in money terms? It doesnt clarify matters at all

Telling someone that under this system they will earn $2,240 per week instead of 40 Labor hours per week is certainly a lot more clear.




Once again you contradict yourself . First you say "There are no profits" under your system . Now we learn that enterprises under your system will have to "determine the profitability of every product they produce".

I did not say that. I said under our current system, companies have to determine the profitability of every product they produce.

I was just pointing out that companies already have to allocate their total expenses to each product they produce. Allocating total labor hours to each product produced will be no more difficult. So saying labor hour accounting is too difficult is not true.




If there are wage diffientials there is a wage system and hence capitalism

The definition of capitalism is not whether there is a wage system. What makes an economic system capitalism is whether the capital is owned privately for a profit.

Take the time to look up its definition.

Then after you look up the term capitalism, look up the term argumentative.

[Jose Gracchus]

That's truly absurd. Marx and no classic left theorist defines capital as "being owned privately for a profit." Such a concoction is a bankrupt thing which is adored by precisely three groups for self-interested reasons a.) Soviet-type states and their apologists, who hope the appropriation of surplus value on a collective-statist basis will throw off the scent to their exploitation of alienated wage labor, b.) social democrats hoping people will think nationalized industries and public services magically are bits of socialism in a capitalist society, and c.) neoliberal ideologues, who seek to identify the atoms of socialist disease that disrupt the ideal "free market" economy and excise them. Fortunately, we do not have to commit to this revisionist definition and go down the rabbit hole of those discredited politics.

Marxism (and social anarchism) identify the capitalist mode of production as that characterized by generalized commodity production. Only when all products become commodities must all labor itself become a commodity. Therefore, it is necessary for the wage-laborers who produce those commodities (whether they be in the obviously capitalist Western welfare states, Third World neo-colonies for imperialist capital, Third World nationalist capitalist development regimes, or Soviet-type centralized state-bureaucratic capitalist regimes) to seize control of the means of production and labor and organize them for production for their democratically-determined needs, and appropriated by collective democratic principles, at which point both labor and goods will begin to lose their commodity character and we will pass to the associated mode of production, or stateless communism.

[malcom]

to seize control of the means of production and labor

That is exactly what is being advocated. The means of production (capital) is no longer going to be owned privately for profit (capitalism). They are going to be owned publicly for the benefit of everyone.



and organize them for production for their democratically-determined needs

That is also what is being advocated. Macroeconomic goals (like level of investment, amount of public goods, wage differentials) are determined by direct vote, not by some central group of politicians. Microeconomic decisions are determined by "dollar voting". Companies produce what consumers buy, not what some central group of politicians want.


Instead of debating terms, it would be more productive to debate the merits of what is being advocated.

[robbo203]

Telling someone that under this system they will earn $2,240 per week instead of 40 Labor hours per week is certainly a lot more clear..

No, all it does is suggest that they will earn $2240 per week and that they will still be living in a money economy in your system. Aside from anything else they will just laugh at the thought and think you must be crazy. They will think of what their boss at work who had hitherto fiercely resisted putting up their wage by 2% to $550 per week might have to say about putting it to $2240 per week. You will just come across as sounding ludicrously unrealistic






I did not say that. I said under our current system, companies have to determine the profitability of every product they produce.

I was just pointing out that companies already have to allocate their total expenses to each product they produce. Allocating total labor hours to each product produced will be no more difficult. So saying labor hour accounting is too difficult is not true..

OK my mistake. I misread what you said about profitability. Although I would still maintain your system would need to measure profitability in some sense and you yourself have made clear the competitive nature of the system you advocate.






The definition of capitalism is not whether there is a wage system. What makes an economic system capitalism is whether the capital is owned privately for a profit.

Take the time to look up its definition.

Then after you look up the term capitalism, look up the term argumentative.

Come come - if anyone doesnt understand what capitalism is about it is you, my friend.

The notion that capitalism is a system where "capital is owned privately for a profit" is absurd. Doesnt capital owned by the state for example count as capitalism? Doesnt the very fact that means of production take the form of capital . irrespective of who owns it , make the system capitalist ? Where do you think the word " capitalism" came from (clue - it contains within itself the word "capital")? In Socialism Utopian and Scientific Engels noted how capitalism was rapidly evolving away from private ownership of capital for profit by individual capitalist to joint stock companies and on to ownership by the state. Here is what he said concerning 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"

It is you who really needs to take time to look up what is meant by capitalism. Of course you can chose to define it in whatever way you want but, at least in the Marxian tradition - which I presume you reject - the relation between "capital" and "wage labour" is absolutely pivotal to any real understanding capitalism. Hence statements like this that I presented to your earlier from Marxian classics like Wage Labour and Capital.:

Capital therefore presupposes wage-labour; wage-labour presupposes capital. They condition each other; each brings the other into existence.

and

To say that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical, signifies only this: that capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...abour/ch06.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...abour/ch06.htm)

[Jose Gracchus]

That is exactly what is being advocated. The means of production (capital) is no longer going to be owned privately for profit (capitalism). They are going to be owned publicly for the benefit of everyone.

This suggests Stalinism, Third World development regimes, and oil populism are all socialism and not capitalism. They are just as capitalist as Wal-Mart.


That is also what is being advocated. Macroeconomic goals (like level of investment, amount of public goods, wage differentials) are determined by direct vote, not by some central group of politicians. Microeconomic decisions are determined by "dollar voting". Companies produce what consumers buy, not what some central group of politicians want.

Two problems. First of all, giant referenda require very clear, discrete, and simple choices. The choices and policy preferences will be in practice narrowed down by specialists and 'presented' to the public for ratification. The professionalized proposal development process has the possibility of becoming a privileged bureaucratic class if abstractly more "democratic" than GOSPLAN's apparatchikki.


Instead of debating terms, it would be more productive to debate the merits of what is being advocated.

I think there should be directly democratic means of social appropriations, so like we have consumer societies and communes or whatever, and people use participatory planning or participatory budgeting to appropriate things for their region, city, community, neighborhood, workplace, and the like, as well as directly participating in the consumer process. I am not strictly adverse to Cockshott's suggestions, but I think his panacea of juries and e-referenda hardly cuts the cake in terms of democratic and collective participation and data-inputs to the economy. There's a role for it, certainly, but I also think there is also for concepts like Albert and Hahnel's consumer councils. There is individual demand preferences as well as social needs and social appropriation and social interests in the economy.

[malcom]

They will think of what their boss at work who had hitherto fiercely resisted putting up their wage by 2% to $550 per week might have to say about putting it to $2240 per week.

You are just not following along.

I am advocating a system where that company is no longer privately owned. It is publicly owned. So the worker will no longer have a boss that controls how much she earns. Total national income will be divided more equally among every worker. The income that used to go to capital owners as profit now goes to the worker. There will no longer be workers who make $550 per week. They will all make about $2240 per week.




The notion that capitalism is a system where "capital is owned privately for a profit" is absurd.

Capitalism: "an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, characterized by the freedom of capitalists to operate or manage their property for profit in competitive conditions"

source: World English Dictionary

Capitalism: "Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit"

source: Wikipedia




Doesnt capital owned by the state for example count as capitalism?

No it does not. That is socialism. Most countries are "mixed" economies. That means they are a mix of capitalism (privately owned capital) and socialism (publicly owned capital).




Doesnt the very fact that means of production take the form of capital . irrespective of who owns it , make the system capitalist ?

No!! Capital is an asset (like a machine, factory, or truck) used to produce goods and services. Without capital, YOU HAVE NO ECONOMY!!




Where do you think the word " capitalism" came from (clue - it contains within itself the word "capital")?

According to the online etymology dictionary, the word originated in 1877 as meaning a political/economic system which encourages capitalists.




at least in the Marxian tradition - which I presume you reject - the relation between "capital" and "wage labour" is absolutely pivotal to any real understanding capitalism. Hence statements like this that I presented to your earlier from Marxian classics like Wage Labour and Capital.:

Capital therefore presupposes wage-labour; wage-labour presupposes capital. They condition each other; each brings the other into existence.

and

To say that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical, signifies only this: that capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...abour/ch06.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...abour/ch06.htm)

What this is talking about is money is a form of capital which gives capitalists the ability to buy and own the means of production. This then gives them the ability to buy labor just like any other commodity.

What I have been advocating is a system where all capital is publicly owned. And labor is no longer a commodity - the entire national income is paid out in wages, wages are democratically determined and workers are guaranteed a job.

[robbo203]

You are just not following along.

I am advocating a system where that company is no longer privately owned. It is publicly owned. So the worker will no longer have a boss that controls how much she earns. Total national income will be divided more equally among every worker. The income that used to go to capital owners as profit now goes to the worker. There will no longer be workers who make $550 per week. They will all make about $2240 per week.
.


I know exactly what you are saying. Im talking about the perception people might have of what you are saying if you use money terms to describne a labour voucher system. They might be forgiven for thinking that you advocate a money system



Capitalism: "an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, characterized by the freedom of capitalists to operate or manage their property for profit in competitive conditions"

source: World English Dictionary

Capitalism: "Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit"

source: Wikipedia


Duh. You dont say, eh? OK, if you want to go along with a naff definition of capitalism from some ignoramous dictionary that thinks capitalism = the free market, then dont let me stop you. I am just telling that this is not how capitalism is perceived in the revolutionary tradition (e.,g Marxism_. Its not even conventionally seen in this way by many mainstream commentators who acknowlege the existence of state capitalism as a construction





No it does not. That is socialism. Most countries are "mixed" economies. That means they are a mix of capitalism (privately owned capital) and socialism (publicly owned capital).



Well if you think nationalised state run industries are an example of "socialism" then that demonstrates precisely why you are no socialist





No!! Capital is an asset (like a machine, factory, or truck) used to produce goods and services. Without capital, YOU HAVE NO ECONOMY!!

.

Sheesh. Its gets from bad to worse. You really have no idea, do you? A machine in itself is not "capital". What makes it capital is the system of socio economic relationships in which the machine is used. This is absolutely basic Marxism yet you dont seem to have a clue about it at all.







What I have been advocating is a system where all capital is publicly owned. And labor is no longer a commodity - the entire national income is paid out in wages, wages are democratically determined and workers are guaranteed a job.

See? This is exactly what I mean! You say labour is no longer a commodity in your system and then in the very same breath you say the entire national income is paid out in wages. What in hells name do you think a wage is, eh? What do you think its signifies? A marxist will tell you that it signifies a price that is paid for in exchange for the commodity, labour power but then, of course, you will no doubt want to be guided by what some conventional bourgeois dictionary definition has to say about such things than by what revolutuoinary socialists have to say on the matter

[Jose Gracchus]

Malcom, I'm afraid you've fallen for neoliberal economic dogma. The world is not full of "mixed economies" unless "capitalism" is some abstract ideal of a totally a-historical "free market", rather than a really existing social formation, a distinct mode of social production. I hate to be one of those people who says "liberal" and "idealist" and "read Marx," but you really do need to take a look into the critique of political economy and historical change by Marx and other leftists before you'll understand the conceptual basis for revolutionary socialism. It is a radically different thought system from bourgeois liberal politics at its essential core.

I'm afraid you're espousing basically liberal politics, a vague concoction of "worker-managed" capitalism and distributism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The professionalized proposal development process has the possibility of becoming a privileged bureaucratic class if abstractly more "democratic" than GOSPLAN's apparatchikki.

FYI, Gosplan's apparatchiki were by no means the Soviet ruling class. Some other central "party" bureaucracy called the shots, and these same planners had to contend with ministerial hierarchies and state enterprise managers.


I am not strictly adverse to Cockshott's suggestions, but I think his panacea of juries and e-referenda hardly cuts the cake in terms of democratic and collective participation and data-inputs to the economy.

Juries and Handivote are applied to more political issues than economic planning, which would rely more on computers.


There's a role for it, certainly, but I also think there is also for concepts like Albert and Hahnel's consumer councils. There is individual demand preferences as well as social needs and social appropriation and social interests in the economy.

Although I think here you're calling for a "mixed socialist" transitional economy (no private ownership, different forms of planning, etc.), much of the functions of consumer councils can be fulfilled simply by systemic filling out of purchase orders.

[Jose Gracchus]

Ah yes, socialism, the automatic robot cafeteria, of course.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I didn't have "automatic robot cafeterias" in mind at all. I was thinking about fine-tuning Enterprise Resource Management and the like, synchronization between customer purchase order needs and supplier information systems, etc.

[malcom]

Im talking about the perception people might have of what you are saying if you use money terms to describne a labour voucher system.

Why would someone have the perception that their boss would not raise their salary when they know what is being proposed is a system where some boss no longer has control over how much you make?

That makes no sense.

And how could you object to the perception people will have about paying everyone more equally but not object to the perception people will have when you propose the absurd idea of not requiring anyone to work and making everything free!?! lol




I am just telling that this is not how capitalism is perceived in the revolutionary tradition (e.,g Marxism_. Its not even conventionally seen in this way by many mainstream commentators who acknowlege the existence of state capitalism as a construction

So then debate the merits of the idea. Don't try and convince the world to adopt new definitions for words that nobody accepts except for a small, obscure group of marxists.

The goal is to solve economic problems, the goal is not to change the definition of terms.




See? This is exactly what I mean! You say labour is no longer a commodity in your system and then in the very same breath you say the entire national income is paid out in wages. What in hells name do you think a wage is, eh?

What I believe Marx was referring to in regards to labor being a commodity was that humans had to sell their labor in a market just like any other commodity and since they own no capital, their labor was their only means for survival. That is what makes a person a proletariat: no capital and your only means to survival is to sell your labor in a market.

Marx objected to this for the same reason that I do. First, it is inhumane to treat people like a commodity. Second, the market process reduces the price of commodities to its cost of production. For people, the cost of production is their ability to get just enough to keep them working.

So selling your labor like a commodity in the market will eventually drive down your wages until you make just enough to live.

We see the result of this today. Although workers produce $56.18/hour in income, the median pay they get is just $15.18/hour.

But let's be clear. What makes labor a commodity is not that workers are getting paid a wage. What makes labor a commodity is workers who have no capital and have to sell their labor in a market which will drive their wage down to the bare minimum.

I do not propose a system where labor is treated like a commodity. Their wage will not be determined in the market. So their wage will not be driven down by the market process.

What is being proposed is a system where every worker gets paid about equally and gets paid the full $56.18. Their wage will never be driven down to "the cost of production" or the bare minimum to survive.

[malcom]

I'm afraid you're espousing basically liberal politics, a vague concoction of "worker-managed" capitalism and distributism.

You are missing the point of my posts. I'm not trying to debate you on what I advocate should be called.

You are hung up on labels and definitions. I want to talk about economic solutions and ideas. All you care about is what those ideas should be called.

[robbo203]

Why would someone have the perception that their boss would not raise their salary when they know what is being proposed is a system where some boss no longer has control over how much you make?

That makes no sense..

If they "know" that then why use money terms at all? If they dont know that, then people will simply laugh at you and think what you are proposing - an egalitarian form of capitalism - is ridiculous. And they would be right. You cant run capitalism along egalitarian lines. Thats not how the system works



And how could you object to the perception people will have about paying everyone more equally but not object to the perception people will have when you propose the absurd idea of not requiring anyone to work and making everything free!?! lol..

It is not that proposal to pay everyone more equally that I am objecting to but rather than that you seemingly propose to do this in conventional capitalist terms of money payments - wage labour. Or, at least, that is the impression you convey.

I dont quite see the connection between this and your snide reference to how a real socialist/communist society would and should operate - "from each according to abilities to each according to needs"






So then debate the merits of the idea. Don't try and convince the world to adopt new definitions for words that nobody accepts except for a small, obscure group of marxists...

For the umpteenth time, this is not a new definition of capitalism. It is a very old and long established one and by no means confined to a small obscure group of marxists




The goal is to solve economic problems, the goal is not to change the definition of terms....

Pleez. "The goal is to solve economic problems". How naff can you get? I cant think of anyone who would not likewise embrace such a goal - from either extremities of the political spectrum to everyone in between.






What I believe Marx was referring to in regards to labor being a commodity was that humans had to sell their labor in a market just like any other commodity and since they own no capital, their labor was their only means for survival. That is what makes a person a proletariat: no capital and your only means to survival is to sell your labor in a market.

Marx objected to this for the same reason that I do. First, it is inhumane to treat people like a commodity. Second, the market process reduces the price of commodities to its cost of production. For people, the cost of production is their ability to get just enough to keep them working.

So selling your labor like a commodity in the market will eventually drive down your wages until you make just enough to live.

We see the result of this today. Although workers produce $56.18/hour in income, the median pay they get is just $15.18/hour.

But let's be clear. What makes labor a commodity is not that workers are getting paid a wage. What makes labor a commodity is workers who have no capital and have to sell their labor in a market which will drive their wage down to the bare minimum.

I do not propose a system where labor is treated like a commodity. Their wage will not be determined in the market. So their wage will not be driven down by the market process.

What is being proposed is a system where every worker gets paid about equally and gets paid the full $56.18. Their wage will never be driven down to "the cost of production" or the bare minimum to survive.

Come off it. This is sheer incoherent nonsense and you must surely see this. Look at your statement:

What makes labor a commodity is not that workers are getting paid a wage. What makes labor a commodity is workers who have no capital and have to sell their labor in a market which will drive their wage down to the bare minimum.

By that reckoning the capitalists who definitely possess capital are not actually selling commodities on the market! I dont know what precisely it is they are supposed to be doing according to your warped logic but since it is the non possession of capital by workers that makes what they are selling a commodity then presumably the possession of capital by capitalists makes what the latter are selling a non commodity. Yes?

Your garbled account of things confuses two quite separate things. It is because workers have no capital that they have to sell their labour power. But the fact that their labour power is sold at all is actually what makes it a commodity in the first place, not the fact that they have no capital. The fact that they have no capital explains why they sell their labour power to the capitalists but it doesnt explain what makes their labour power a commodity. Labour power is a commodity because it is something that is exchanged on a market for something else - a wage packet. This is what is meant by a commodity - something you buy and sell on the market


Look, instead of wittering on about marxist economics and making yourself look silly in the process why dont you do yourself a big big favour and get acquainted with the basics. Im not having a dig here but, seriously, and as has been pointed out by others here too, you could certainly benefit by having a read

Try these for a start....

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/

[malcom]

If they "know" that then why use money terms at all? If they dont know that, then people will simply laugh at you and think what you are proposing - an egalitarian form of capitalism - is ridiculous. And they would be right. You cant run capitalism along egalitarian lines. Thats not how the system works

This makes absolutely no sense.

You are asking if a worker knows that I am proposing a system where wages are set by the egalitarian distribution of total national income and not by your boss, then why am I telling her what that egalitarian distribution would amount to!?!?

Because they want to know if it will be a good deal for them! Showing that their income will increase to about $116k per year shows that it will most likely triple their income.

If egalitarianism meant everyone's pay was cut in half, a worker would not want to switch to an egalitarian system.




It is not that proposal to pay everyone more equally that I am objecting to but rather than that you seemingly propose to do this in conventional capitalist terms of money payments - wage labour.

Show me a better system than pricing everything in labor hours and paying every worker based on total produced. Telling people work is voluntary and everything is free is not going to match supply with demand.




I dont quite see the connection between this and your snide reference to how a real socialist/communist society would and should operate - "from each according to abilities to each according to needs"

If socialism means work is voluntary and everything is free, socialism is an idiotic system in 2011.




Your garbled account of things confuses two quite separate things. It is because workers have no capital that they have to sell their labour power. But the fact that their labour power is sold at all is actually what makes it a commodity in the first place, not the fact that they have no capital.

That is what I said. What is garbled is your understanding of what I wrote.

And this contradicts your original claim that just merely getting paid to work makes labor a commodity. It doesn't. It is having to sell your labor that makes it a commodity.

Again, what I propose is a system where you no longer have to sell your labor. So your labor is no longer a commodity. Everyone is guaranteed an income and your income is based on whatever the total national income is (it isn't based on what you are able to sell your labor for in the market).




Look, instead of wittering on about marxist economics and making yourself look silly in the process why dont you do yourself a big big favour and get acquainted with the basics.

What is silly is you claiming that just getting paid a wage makes labor a commodity. And now that you found out that you were wrong, you are trying to pretend that you never said that.

[Zanthorus]

Well this thread appears to be something of a mess. I will probably have to build up this post in increments while I try and sort out what's what but first things first. The argument put forward by robbo203 that Marx was a supporter of a form of communism in which there were absolutely no restrictions on individual consumption is highly tenuous. The evidence amounts to a single phrase taken from a private letter written by Marx to the delegates of the Gotha unification congress containing marginal notes on the programme about to be adopted by the newly formed Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. As far as I am aware, no similar phrase or suggestion appears anywhere in Marx's vast published output. Further, the interpretation of the phrase as implying a lack of restrictions on consumption is again highly tenuous. The quote originated with the French 'Social-Democrat' and advocate of the 'Organisation of Labour' Louis Blanc, who I don't think could be said to be an advocate of 'free access'.

As for what it does mean, this still remains somewhat obscure to me, but the user ZeroNowhere did point me in the direction of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts and the critique of abstract labour contained within it. In those Manuscripts Marx does complain about the life of the worker being reduced by capitalism to hours of labour, with the workers human needs being ignored by the capitalist since their fulfillment is something that occurs outside the production process. The aim of capitalist society is not the development of human powers and faculties as an end in themselves, but rather the accumulation of dead labour-time. This same problem exists with labour credits in as much as people are still regarded as hours of labour and the end of production is not the development of humanity as an end in itself. Marx's 'higher stage' could thus be viewed as a society in which the end of society is the development of humanity as an end in itself rather than everyone regarded as a certain number of hours of labour. This, however, does not at all imply a lack of mechanisms for regulating consumption except perhaps in robbo's pre-industrial fantasies.

The original purpose of this thread also appears to be somewhat ridiculous to me. Attempting to spread socialist propaganda to the effect that under some pre-meditated vision of socialism wages will be higher for most people is not only incredibly banal but practically useless. No historical movement for socialism has ever emerged from the brains of a group of intellectuals sitting in circles and working out how the perfect society should work then spreading the message to the masses. It was precisely this kind of thing that Marx set out to destroy. Socialism does not exist mediated through the brains of the priests of doctrinaire social science, it exists mediated through the proletariat as subject, through the real contradictions of capitalist society which lead it towards breakdown.

[Rowan Duffy]

The original purpose of this thread also appears to be somewhat ridiculous to me. Attempting to spread socialist propaganda to the effect that under some pre-meditated vision of socialism wages will be higher for most people is not only incredibly banal but practically useless. No historical movement for socialism has ever emerged from the brains of a group of intellectuals sitting in circles and working out how the perfect society should work then spreading the message to the masses.

Yes, pre-mediated visions of communism should not be attempted. This charge is so important that you should immediately cease talking about communism and indeed posting to this board or you are destined to mediate the conception of communism for the workers.


It was precisely this kind of thing that Marx set out to destroy. Socialism does not exist mediated through the brains of the priests of doctrinaire social science, it exists mediated through the proletariat as subject, through the real contradictions of capitalist society which lead it towards breakdown.

Marx's "anti-utopianism" is actually manifesting here as gnostic mystical spontaneism. It's probably the worst thing that Marx has ever done when he encouraged restrictions on how we can attempt to systematise analyse and plan the future economic and political formations of society. They will not be magically revealed to us on the day of the revolution.

Human science is the study of what we can analyse and predict. Indeed we must strive to find exactly what it is possible to conceive properly first and later implement. This attempt at the manifestation of conceptualisation is an absolute necessity. This is the very essence of science.

[Zanthorus]

Yes, pre-mediated visions of communism should not be attempted.

This is a straw-man argument. I do not claim that thinking about communism might look like is a useless activity. What I do claim is that methods of implementing communism which involve conjuring an image of it out of thin air and then attempting to spread this vision through propaganda are useless. There is a reason why the Fourierists and Owenites practically dissapeared while socialist schools which focused on the working-class as the active agent of revolution like syndicalism and Marxism came to dominate. There is also a fairly good reason why no revolution in history has ever been preceeded by well-meaning ideologues spreading propaganda about the best of all possible worlds until 50%+1 of the working-class came to think 'hmmm, that's actually a good idea'.


Marx's "anti-utopianism" is actually manifesting here as gnostic mystical spontaneism.

You don't seen to comprehend what Marx's opposition to Utopian Socialism entails. It is based essentially on Hegels' critique of the approach of the French revolutionaries who sought to impose on the world a vision derived from the halls of abstract reason. In contradistinction to this, Hegel saw the task of philosophy (Including political philosophy) as bringing out what is rational in the already-existing world. Similarly, Marx's critique of Utopian Socialism does not imply a critique of scientific analysis from a socialist standpoint as such, but specifies that this analysis should begin with the real movements and tendencies within capitalist society which lead towards the latters abolition.


This is the very essence of science.

There is no 'essence' of science. There are a number of different practices which aspire to attaining some form of knowledge about the existing world which are grouped under the name of science. The majority of these sciences begin by analysing how the world actually is rather than conjuring ideal pictures of how things work from thin air.

[Rowan Duffy]

This is a straw-man argument. I do not claim that thinking about communism might look like is a useless activity. What I do claim is that methods of implementing communism which involve conjuring an image of it out of thin air and then attempting to spread this vision through propaganda are useless. There is a reason why the Fourierists and Owenites practically dissapeared while socialist schools which focused on the working-class as the active agent of revolution like syndicalism and Marxism came to dominate. There is also a fairly good reason why no revolution in history has ever been preceeded by well-meaning ideologues spreading propaganda about the best of all possible worlds until 50%+1 of the working-class came to think 'hmmm, that's actually a good idea'.

It isn't a straw man, it's the logical conclusion of the belief that we shouldn't attempt to create hypotheses for the systemics of a future society. It is an insistence that we confine ourselves to theories which are not even wrong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong).

It is definitely insufficient to have a hypothesis without the capacity to set up the experiment. It is a grave error to assume that because we need to be able to set up the experiment we should focus entirely on finding means of doing that without any idea of what experiment we want to perform and what hypothesis we have.



You don't seen to comprehend what Marx's opposition to Utopian Socialism entails.

If Marx's opposition to Utopian socialism meant what you think it means, he was definitely wrong. Maybe he meant something else, if so, he may have been right.


There is no 'essence' of science. There are a number of different practices which aspire to attaining some form of knowledge about the existing world which are grouped under the name of science. The majority of these sciences begin by analysing how the world actually is rather than conjuring ideal pictures of how things work from thin air.

Science is precisely about conjuring of ideal pictures (models of the real world) and attempting to use them for the purpose of prediction and control.

[malcom]

The original purpose of this thread also appears to be somewhat ridiculous to me. Attempting to spread socialist propaganda to the effect that under some pre-meditated vision of socialism wages will be higher for most people is not only incredibly banal but practically useless.

You tell me a more powerful way to get people to embrace this concept than the fact that their income will triple.




No historical movement for socialism has ever emerged from the brains of a group of intellectuals sitting in circles and working out how the perfect society should work then spreading the message to the masses.

You think people in modern America or its equivalent are going to want to overturn all of society based on philosophical statements that sound nice!?

Unless you have a viable plan, nobody is going to listen to you.

All progress in America came from intellectuals with well thought out plans for how to improve society.




It was precisely this kind of thing that Marx set out to destroy. Socialism does not exist mediated through the brains of the priests of doctrinaire social science, it exists mediated through the proletariat as subject, through the real contradictions of capitalist society which lead it towards breakdown.

I could really care less about what some guy 150 years ago thought. And more importantly, neither can the vast majority of the population where I live.

People for the most part live well in America. Capitalist society is not breaking down. I just think they can be doing a lot better. They will listen to a plan where their income is guaranteed, they get paid to go to school, their interest is eliminated on their loans so that their mortgage is cut in half and their salary is tripled.

Those are the things people cope with on a daily basis.

People will not respond to quotes from Marx which you treat like scripture or ramblings about commodities, surplus value and the over-accumulation of capital.

[Zanthorus]

it's the logical conclusion of the belief that we shouldn't attempt to create hypotheses for the systemics of a future society.

Except you will note that I said in my previous post:


I do not claim that thinking about communism might look like is a useless activity.

So you are drawing logical conclusions from beliefs I do not hold, which is what is commonly referred to as a straw-man argument, as I said.


It is an insistence that we confine ourselves to theories which are not even wrong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong).

It is definitely insufficient to have a hypothesis without the capacity to set up the experiment. It is a grave error to assume that because we need to be able to set up the experiment we should focus entirely on finding means of doing that without any idea of what experiment we want to perform and what hypothesis we have.

I think this is a really absurd outlook and indicative of the impoverished nature of thought based on a rigid adherence to an fictionalised ideal of 'the scientific method'. Politics is not like Physics or Chemistry. No-one in history has ever governed a country on the basis of lab experiments, and no mass political movement has ever arisen because some physics nerds cum social scientists did tests in some closed off lab and found deep flaws in existing social structures and institutions. You can't explain the Wars of the Three Kindgoms or the French and Russian revolutions by means of scientific experiments. If you think this is the case then you're horribly deluded.


Science is precisely about conjuring of ideal pictures (models of the real world) and attempting to use them for the purpose of prediction and control.

We are not talking about models of the real world though, we are talking about people drawing diagrams for a world which doesn't yet exist.


You think people in modern America or its equivalent are going to want to overturn all of society based on philosophical statements that sound nice!?

Nope.


All progress in America came from intellectuals with well thought out plans for how to improve society.

Please tell us then how this explains:

(1) The War of Independence
(2) The American Civil War
(3) The Civil Rights Movement


People for the most part live well in America. Capitalist society is not breaking down.

I don't know about America. I know that in Britain the working-class has been under sustained attack since the '70s and that traditional working-class jobs in manufacturing and such have been replaced with low-wage low-skill jobs, which incidentally something like half of all university graduates now will still end up in despite their qualifications. I know that the previous government which was led by a so-called party of labour saw the highest levels of inequality we've had in god knows how long. I know further that the economy is in a bit of hole at the moment and a large number of people are out of jobs due to something called the global financial crisis. I believe you may have heard of it, as my sources inform this also affects America? It's true that society is on the brink of collapse, but that doesn't mean that some fictional social harmony from the wet dreams of bourgeois economists has been achieved. Just recently the business secretary Vince Cable threatened harsher anti-strike laws in lieu of threats of co-ordinated strikes in the public sector on June 30th.


People will not respond to quotes from Marx which you treat like scripture or ramblings about commodities, surplus value and the over-accumulation of capital.

You don't seem to be getting the point at all.

[Zederbaum]

Originally Posted by Rowan Duffy
it's the logical conclusion of the belief that we shouldn't attempt to create hypotheses for the systemics of a future society.
I do not claim that thinking about communism might look like is a useless activity.

So you are drawing logical conclusions from beliefs I do not hold, which is what is commonly referred to as a straw-man argument, as I said.

Are you in favour of creating hypotheses regarding the systematics of a future society or not?

If you are, do you think such ideas should be communicated?

If not, what exactly do you think of when meditating on communism?


I do not claim that thinking about communism might look like is a useless activity. What I do claim is that methods of implementing communism which involve conjuring an image of it out of thin air and then attempting to spread this vision through propaganda are useless.Who is conjuring anything out of thin air? He is putting forward some ideas that are getting debated. There are a myriad of ways of how any proposals could be propagated. Somebody has to be first to put an idea out there and the discussion will initially be inevitably confined to a minority who are intensely interested in it. The fact that such an elementary human activity appears ridiculous to you is bizarre.


No historical movement for socialism has ever emerged from the brains of a group of intellectuals sitting in circles and working out how the perfect society should work then spreading the message to the masses. It was precisely this kind of thing that Marx set out to destroy.Historical movements rarely emerge from caricatures, it is true. But the idea that an alternative society was possible did help create mass movements in the past. The inadequacy of these movements' vision for a post-capitalist society was a minus and not a plus. We should encourage rather ridicule such discussions that seek to remedy that defect.


You don't seem to be getting the point at all.Let's hope he continues to steer clear of utopian communism all right.

[malcom]

Nope.

So then tell me exactly what you think will get people in America to consider turning over all of society.




Please tell us then how this explains:

(1) The War of Independence
(2) The American Civil War
(3) The Civil Rights Movement

You can't compare trying to get workers a better salary to being occupied by a foreign nation or enslaving black people or lynching black people.

Nobody who makes $33k per year in America is willing to go to war for better pay and benefits.

The policies I advocate will be adopted the same way social security, medicaid, medicare, public works programs, workplace regulations, environmental protection, etc. were adopted - through well thought-out ideas able to address critical objections and pass into law. It won't be adopted by a revolution of angry workers storming the gates of the White House.




I don't know about America. I know that in Britain the working-class has been under sustained attack since the '70s and that traditional working-class jobs in manufacturing and such have been replaced with low-wage low-skill jobs, which incidentally something like half of all university graduates now will still end up in despite their qualifications.

That is exactly what has happened here. Radical free market policies have taken over thanks to Reagan and Thatcher.

But what is going to appeal to a university graduate is a plan based on verifiable facts. A society where financial struggle ends and everyone is wealthy is only possible because the facts support it, not because you hate capitalism.

Why would anyone accept that socialism is better without any facts to support it? People think socialism is a system where everyone is equal, but equally poor, with a nanny state dictating their entire life.

robbo wants to adopt a system where working is voluntary and everything is free. He thinks that will improve society. But do you think anyone is going to take that idea seriously? Of course not. Because it is not grounded in reality or facts.




I know further that the economy is in a bit of hole at the moment and a large number of people are out of jobs due to something called the global financial crisis. I believe you may have heard of it, as my sources inform this also affects America? It's true that society is on the brink of collapse

Unemployment is 9%. Real unemployment is maybe double that. That means 80%+ of all workers are doing fine. When society is working for more than 80% of the population, society is not collapsing. Plus, many of the unemployed have a system of benefits supporting them so that they can survive. And the unemployment rate will eventually get back to the natural unemployment rate within a few years.



You don't seem to be getting the point at all.

I don't. And I still don't since you never answered my question:

What is a more powerful way to get people to embrace this concept than the fact that their income will triple?

[robbo203]

This makes absolutely no sense.

You are asking if a worker knows that I am proposing a system where wages are set by the egalitarian distribution of total national income and not by your boss, then why am I telling her what that egalitarian distribution would amount to!?!?

Because they want to know if it will be a good deal for them! Showing that their income will increase to about $116k per year shows that it will most likely triple their income..

Seems I have to spell it out for you. I was talking about a worker who doesnt know that your "egalitarian system" was not supposed to be a capitalist system. If you told them that everyone was going to get paid the same they would look at you as if you had lost your marbles. Most workers know very well that capitalism simply cannot be run on egalitarian lines....



Show me a better system than pricing everything in labor hours and paying every worker based on total produced. Telling people work is voluntary and everything is free is not going to match supply with demand...

Thats rubbish. Supply and demand can be pretty easily matched up through what is called a self regulating system of stock control using "calculation in kind" which is in fact what happens today - except that alongside calculation in kind (counting physical stock and the rate at which they are removed from the shelves), what we have today also is a system of monetary accounting. In fact the computer technology that we have today makes this all eminently feasible




If socialism means work is voluntary and everything is free, socialism is an idiotic system in 2011....

For your information, most work that is done today occurs outside the monetary system and this is by no means confined to the domestic household economy.

Of course we cannot have socialism now in 2011 - anymore than we can have your system of labour time accounting - because the conscious majoritarian support for such a system simply does not yet exist. You can't have socialism without a large majority wanting and understanding it






That is what I said. What is garbled is your understanding of what I wrote.

And this contradicts your original claim that just merely getting paid to work makes labor a commodity. It doesn't. It is having to sell your labor that makes it a commodity.....

Huh? You say "That is what I said" in response to this statement of mine:
.
Your garbled account of things confuses two quite separate things. It is because workers have no capital that they have to sell their labour power. But the fact that their labour power is sold at all is actually what makes it a commodity in the first place, not the fact that they have no capital.

And then you promptly contradict yourself by saying "It is having to sell your labor that makes it a commodity"! You seems quite confused to say the least!

Actually "having to sell your labour power" is what makes you a member of the working class and the fact that it is sold is what makes that labour power a commodity




Again, what I propose is a system where you no longer have to sell your labor. So your labor is no longer a commodity. Everyone is guaranteed an income and your income is based on whatever the total national income is (it isn't based on what you are able to sell your labor for in the market).


You advocate a wages system do you not? So what do you think a wage is if not the price of a commodity that you sell - your labour power? Interesting also that you should oppose the idea of a socialist society based on freely associated volunteer labour and then assert that you propose a system "where you no longer have to sell your labor". If you no longer have to "sell your labour" that implies that your labour is freely and voluntarily provided




What is silly is you claiming that just getting paid a wage makes labor a commodity. And now that you found out that you were wrong, you are trying to pretend that you never said that.

Whaaaat? Do you ever seriously read what other people say? Labour power IS a commodity by virtue of being exchanged for a wage. I havent budged from this position at all and I have no idea what you are wittering on about in suggesting I am somehow trying to "pretend" that I never said that. I have no reason to pretend. That is what I said and what I stick by it

[robbo203]

Well this thread appears to be something of a mess. I will probably have to build up this post in increments while I try and sort out what's what but first things first. The argument put forward by robbo203 that Marx was a supporter of a form of communism in which there were absolutely no restrictions on individual consumption is highly tenuous. The evidence amounts to a single phrase taken from a private letter written by Marx to the delegates of the Gotha unification congress containing marginal notes on the programme about to be adopted by the newly formed Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. As far as I am aware, no similar phrase or suggestion appears anywhere in Marx's vast published output. Further, the interpretation of the phrase as implying a lack of restrictions on consumption is again highly tenuous. The quote originated with the French 'Social-Democrat' and advocate of the 'Organisation of Labour' Louis Blanc, who I don't think could be said to be an advocate of 'free access'..

I dont think that there is any doubt that the higher stage of communism in Marx's view corresponded to what we would call today "free access communism." You refer to the Critique of the Gotha Programme. If you read it, it is quite clear that as society moves from the first or lower stage of communism the system of labour vouchers falls into disuse and that can only mean free access as the logical outcome of this development, driven by the development of the productive forces themselves which make this free access possible. Marx might not have used the precise expression "free access" as such but it is absolutely implicit in his model of communism. It is the absolute corrollary of volunteer, freely associated, labour about which he wrote . The same is true of Engels who occasionally noted how advances in the productive forces where causing him to reconsider the length of time required for some kind of transitional arrangement en route to communism proper.

In fact it was pretty well nigh universally understood among social democrats, anarchists and so on on in the 19th and early 20th centiry that the goal of the revolutionary movement would ultimate culminate in free access communism once the productive forces had advanced sufficiently to enable this to happen and I am quite astonished that you want to portary this some kind of non-significant quirkish abberrant side thought on the part of those who thought this. Numerous writers referred to free access communism as the ultimate goal of the revolutionary movement - Morris, Lafargue, Kropotkin and so on - even if they did not use the exact term. Indeed, Lenin himself gave a very good description of higher communism/socialism as being based on free access and Kautsky alluded to it thus

"Besides this rigid allocation of an equal measure of the necessaries and enjoyments of life to each individual, another form of Socialism without money is conceivable, the Leninite interpretation of what Marx described as the second phase of communism: each to produce of his own accord as much as he can, the productivity of labour being so high and the quantity and variety of products so immense that everyone may be trusted to take what he needs. For this purpose money would not be needed.

We have not yet progressed so far as this. At present we are unable to divine whether we shall ever reach this state. But that Socialism with which we are alone concerned to-day, whose features we can discern with some precision from the indications that already exist, will unfortunately not have this enviable freedom and abundance at its disposal, and will therefore not be able to do without money.
(Karl Kautsky The Labour Revolution III. The Economic Revolution X. MONEY http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm#sb)

One final point you say "Further, the interpretation of the phrase as implying a lack of restrictions on consumption is again highly tenuous". Personally speaking, I think this is very regrettable way of interpeting free access. It does not mean a complete lack of any kind of restriction on consumption; it simply means the absence of any kind of economic exchange or quid pro quo set up mediating between you and the products you appropriate . However that does NOT mean that you consume without regard for others , without concern for the environment and so on. What is precisely NOT being suggested here is some kind of cornucopian paradise of hyper consumerism, a fantastical extension of the driving motives of capitalism projected into communism. Absolutely not.

This is what I find so perverse about the arguments presented critics of free access communism. They have completely got the wrong end of the stick. They uncritically project into communism the same kind of atomistic self interested outlook that prevails in capitalism forgetting that we are talking about quite a different kind of society altogther. In fact, free access communism to me is the most complete example of what is called a "moral economy" in anthropological terms. It is based on the principle of generalised reciprocity and the clear recognition of our mutual inter-dependence. It is not economic restrictions in the form of some kind of rationing that we should be focussing on (which presupposes an egoistic outlook) but, rather, moral or self imposed constraints on consumption that stem from a radical reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and society and the realisation of human beings as truly social beings




As for what it does mean, this still remains somewhat obscure to me, but the user ZeroNowhere did point me in the direction of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts and the critique of abstract labour contained within it. In those Manuscripts Marx does complain about the life of the worker being reduced by capitalism to hours of labour, with the workers human needs being ignored by the capitalist since their fulfillment is something that occurs outside the production process. The aim of capitalist society is not the development of human powers and faculties as an end in themselves, but rather the accumulation of dead labour-time. This same problem exists with labour credits in as much as people are still regarded as hours of labour and the end of production is not the development of humanity as an end in itself. Marx's 'higher stage' could thus be viewed as a society in which the end of society is the development of humanity as an end in itself rather than everyone regarded as a certain number of hours of labour. This, however, does not at all imply a lack of mechanisms for regulating consumption except perhaps in robbo's pre-industrial fantasies...

This is frankly ridiculous. There is nothing "pre-industrial" about it at all. To the contrary! And as I have explained above, saying that there is no economic mechanism mediating between you and the things you need does not at all mean that consumption is not regulated or socially conditioned. It is just that the mode of regulation is quite different to what prevails today and in fact fits in completely with the sentiment expressed above where "the end of society is the development of humanity as an end in itself rather than everyone regarded as a certain number of hours of labour"


In my opinion, critics of free access communism need now to fundamentally question and reassess the assumptions upon which they base their criticisms. The time is long overdue to restore and reassert the vision of higher communism as the explicit goal of revolutionaries everywhere. Anything short of that has either failed dismally or been found wanting

[black magick hustla]

another guy with a phd playing the sims and civ iv with socialism. what is with phds and elaborate utopias?

[Jose Gracchus]

Think they grow up wanting to "understand the world", and some never realize that they too are alienated fragements of humanity...they try to capture all of that understanding in utopias... I don't want to talk a lot of shit, I think Albert and Hahnel and Cockshott and Cottrell are both utopians with severe political flaws, but I do think it helps provide some evidence and ideas for how workers could feel "Yeah, we can do this." Helps if you think we can jimmy some computers together with production lines and soviets and have real planning.

[Rowan Duffy]

I think this is a really absurd outlook and indicative of the impoverished nature of thought based on a rigid adherence to an fictionalised ideal of 'the scientific method'. Politics is not like Physics or Chemistry. No-one in history has ever governed a country on the basis of lab experiments, and no mass political movement has ever arisen because some physics nerds cum social scientists did tests in some closed off lab and found deep flaws in existing social structures and institutions. You can't explain the Wars of the Three Kindgoms or the French and Russian revolutions by means of scientific experiments. If you think this is the case then you're horribly deluded.

There is a difference between chemistry, physics and the science of politics. Those differences are in our much weaker ability to perform experiments because the costs are so high. These costs make it such that experiments are far and few between, and largely uncontrolled and constrained by obvious ethical imperatives.

We can, however, glean hypotheses from the many uncontrolled past revolutionary experiments and attempt to produce various types of tractable model experiments - including looking at human functioning in smaller arrangements which are less costly - as with the logistics planning in the US military, or the social dynamics of humans in democratic organisations of various sizes.

The ethical problems with proposing a vast revolution without even vague hypotheses about what would make things better and what would make things worse is, at best, reckless negligence.

Explorations can inform us far better than your alternative, which appears to restrict itself to exegesis from Marx.*



We are not talking about models of the real world though, we are talking about people drawing diagrams for a world which doesn't yet exist.

Modeling is a fundamental part of all science - including Marxian. You produce an abstraction of the world by inferring a hypothesis from the known particulars as best you can - and proceed to test the predictive power of this model.

The slippery attitude towards empiricism leaves open the most mystical and metaphysical interpretations. There is simply no way to separate gnosticism and mysticism from science without insisting that our models tell us something predictive.

However, if you insist on exegesis, perhaps you could reveal to us the secret meaning in this passage.


A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

The current economy didn't just fall from heaven. Fractional banking, fiat currency, futures, options, joint stock companies, limited liability etc. were all ideas which were proposed and then implemented.

We will not get rid of capitalism simply by proposing its abolition. There must be ways of relating in society which eliminates our need for it. That demands that we find alternative approaches - models - based on our best guesses from prior understandings about past successes and failures - and then attempt them in practice.

Utopian does not describe an insistence on a scientific approach to knowledge.
Utopian describes exactly the opposite; the approach that insists that we'll be endowed with the appropriate knowledge at the appointed time as long as we act with the class.

* If I'm wrong here, then you better explain to me what we're allowed to explore abstractly. As far as I can see from your arguments, we're restricted to only discussing how to make revolutions, but never allowed to talk about what the purpose of the revolution is, or what goals we might promote among the proletariat.

[Zanthorus]

Are you in favour of creating hypotheses regarding the systematics of a future society or not?

Well, if you checked the first post I made in this thread, which began as an attack on the idea that communism would be characterised by the complete absence of regulations on consumption, you'd realise that the answer was yes, I am in favour.


If you are, do you think such ideas should be communicated?

Well, I don't think that spreading bluepring visions of how a socialist society would work will lead to anything particularly significant. I also think that any recruits to the cause you got in the process would be rendered useless since they would also probably follow the method of trying to spark a movement through the spread of blueprints. That said, it's not my place to stop you. If you wish to try by all means go ahead. Though hopefully when you've gotten as far as Fourier and Saint-Simon got you'll start to wonder if it would have been better if you'd gone with those crazy Marxists and their adherence to the workers' movement.


the system of labour vouchers falls into disuse and that can only mean free access as the logical outcome of this development,

No, it can't. There are more ways of regulating consumption than labour vouchers.


It is the absolute corrollary of volunteer, freely associated, labour about which he wrote.

Except in Capital Volume I, when Marx asks us to imagine "a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community", he also asks us to "assume... that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time." This is an obvious suggestion that what for Marx at least, what he means when he speaks about the freely associated producers is compatible with the regulation of consumption according to labour-time. Indeed, a free association producers is his general description of a communist society, so if we were to follow you and assume that a lack of restrictions on consumption is the 'absolute corrollary' of associated labour, then Marx would have been contradicting himself when he described a society in which consumption was regulated by labour-time as the 'lower phase' of a communist society.


the Leninite interpretation

This part of your quote would suggest that Kautsky viewed the free acess interpretation of the Gotha Critique's higher phase as Lenin's interpellation. In addition, the quote is somewhat soured by the fact that in it Kautsky posits the impossibility of socialism without money until productivity has advanced such that scarcity is abolished, whereas August Bebel for example, in his 'Women and Socialism' had noted that in a society based on common ownership of the means of production where the labour of the individual directly formed a part of the total social labour there would be no need for the money commodity, the function of which is to allow the concrete labour of various individuals producing privately to appear as it's opposite, directly social labour.


They uncritically project into communism the same kind of atomistic self interested outlook that prevails in capitalism forgetting that we are talking about quite a different kind of society altogther.

In other words, you believe that in a communist society everyone will become a monk. Never much been a fan of religion or moralism in generaly myself.

[robbo203]

No, it can't. There are more ways of regulating consumption than labour vouchers..[/QUOTE]


Not in the context of the Critique of the Gotha Programme though.

Its pretty obvious that Marx was equating the higher stage of communism with free access communism. In the Critique he talks of the right of producers being proportional to the labor they supply; and how

these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

That last phrase did indeed originate with Louis Blanc but as a revision of Saint Simon's argument that individuals should be rewarded according to their labour input. In other words it specifically repudiates the notion of payment for work - whether in cash or labour vouchers or whatever



Except in Capital Volume I, when Marx asks us to imagine "a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community", he also asks us to "assume... that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time." This is an obvious suggestion that what for Marx at least, what he means when he speaks about the freely associated producers is compatible with the regulation of consumption according to labour-time. Indeed, a free association producers is his general description of a communist society, so if we were to follow you and assume that a lack of restrictions on consumption is the 'absolute corrollary' of associated labour, then Marx would have been contradicting himself when he described a society in which consumption was regulated by labour-time as the 'lower phase' of a communist society..

Yes but when Marx is talking about a "community of free individuals" carrying on their work where the "share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time" he is referring to what in the Critique of the Gotha programme he called the lower stage of communism as it has emerged from capitalism and not as it has developed on its own foundations.

I am not saying that the expression "community of free individuals" is not applicable in this case. What I am saying is that the the principle of voluntarism does not apply in this case since what we have here is a form of social mechanism to compel individuals to work by linking consumption to labour contribution. In other words it a quid pro quo set up. This would not be the case in free access communism this would not and could not be the case. Volunteerism goes hand in hand with free access. That is the point that you have conveniently overlooked




This part of your quote would suggest that Kautsky viewed the free acess interpretation of the Gotha Critique's higher phase as Lenin's interpellation. In addition, the quote is somewhat soured by the fact that in it Kautsky posits the impossibility of socialism without money until productivity has advanced such that scarcity is abolished, whereas August Bebel for example, in his 'Women and Socialism' had noted that in a society based on common ownership of the means of production where the labour of the individual directly formed a part of the total social labour there would be no need for the money commodity, the function of which is to allow the concrete labour of various individuals producing privately to appear as it's opposite, directly social labour..

It is not simply Lenin's interpellation; it was generally understrood at the time that higher communism equated with free access communism. You say the Kautsky quote is somewhat soured by the fact that "in it Kautsky posits the impossibility of socialism without money until productivity has advanced such that scarcity is abolished". Precisely. I am less concerned with the fact that Kautsky may be wrong in assuming that without advanced productivity you are bound to have money than with the fact Kautsky is here clearly linking free access communism (or socialism) to the possiblity of being able to produce enough to abolish scarcity. This is precisely what lies behind the reference in the Critique of the Gotha Programme - "all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly" . Such abundance is precisely what makes free access or higher communism possible and eliminates the need for rationing in terms of labour vouchers





In other words, you believe that in a communist society everyone will become a monk. Never much been a fan of religion or moralism in generaly myself.

Come off it - this is a ridiculous argument and carries about as much weight as if I were to call you an advocate of bourgeois egoism for rejecting the notion of free access communism. Religion and moralism has got sod all to do with the notion of a moral economy which has a specific meaning in an anthropological context. It applies to a system of generalised reciprocity which is in fact what free access communism would amount to. Curiously the internet is another example of generalised recipricity but I dont notice that the participants in this site being overwhelminingly drawn from the ecclesiastical orders. Do you?

It is not monklike behaviour that free access communism requires; it is the behaviour of individuals who recognise clearly that they are fully part of society upon which they are dependent and who therefore have every reason to behave responsibly as decent human beings towards each other rather than as alienated individuals competing against each other on the market. The free development of the indiviudual is the condition for the free development of all and vice versa

Free access communism is the fullest possible realisation of our truly social nature, in other words

[Jose Gracchus]

...

Remember, kids, when in doubt, just repeat yourself. :rolleyes:

[Zanthorus]

Yeah, I should probably pin a note up on the wall or something reminding myself not to try and engage the SPGB or any of their sympathisers on, well anything really, but especially the issue of restrictions on consumption within socialism.

[Jose Gracchus]

I was reading Brinton's "Bolsheviks and Workers' Control" last night, and this made me laugh aloud, and made me think of our very own SPGBers (to remind observers, this was written by someone thirty five years ago):



Over the last fifty years all the existing organizations of the left have elaborated a whole mythology (and even anti-mythology) of the Russian Revolution...

...For various anarchists, the fact that the State or "political power" was not immediately "abolished" is the ultimate proof and yardstick that nothing of fundamental significance really occurred. The SPGB (Socialist Party of Great Britain) draw much the same conclusion, although they attribute it to the fact that the wages system was not abolished, the majority of the Russian population not having the benefit of having heard the SPGB viewpoint (as put by spokesmen duly sanctioned by their Executive Committee) and not having then sought to win a parliamentary majority in the existing Russian institutions.

Sad this ossified monastic excuse for political practice remains seemingly unblemished and the same as over three decades ago.

[robbo203]

Sad this ossified monastic excuse for political practice remains seemingly unblemished and the same as over three decades ago.

What is truly sad is the utter barrenness and the anthropological myopia of the arguments levelled against the notion of free access communism. Might I remind Zanthorous and Inform Candidate that I am not a member of the SPGB but neither myself nor, I believe, the SPGB rule out some form of rationing for some goods in such a society (see an earlier post of mine on this thread). This is quite apart from the fact that I have explictly argued against envisaging free access communism as some a hyper consumerist paradise of superabundance in which individuals can avail themselves of whatever they fancy without any kind of self restraint

Incidentally, Brinton's comments on the SPGBs attitude to the Russian Revolution are absurd to the point of being inane but then what can you expect

[Jose Gracchus]

I think Brinton's remarks are an amusingly and refreshingly direct take on the behavior of a closed sect that imagines it will the take the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints way to communism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Marx's "anti-utopianism" is actually manifesting here as gnostic mystical spontaneism. It's probably the worst thing that Marx has ever done when he encouraged restrictions on how we can attempt to systematise analyse and plan the future economic and political formations of society. They will not be magically revealed to us on the day of the revolution.

^^^ "Gnostic mystical spontaneism"? I like that! :D

The worst thing he did was lean towards political spontaneism after the collapse of the Paris Commune (but before redeeming himself somewhat with the Parti Ouvrier).

[Die Neue Zeit]

There is also a fairly good reason why no revolution in history has ever been preceeded by well-meaning ideologues spreading propaganda about the best of all possible worlds until 50%+1 of the working-class came to think 'hmmm, that's actually a good idea'.

Comrade, please compare and contrast:

The Erfurt Program
The Social Revolution
WSM propagandism
Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution
Towards a New Socialism

With regards to real and perceived "utopianism" on the subject of maximum programs.


Indeed, Lenin himself gave a very good description of higher communism/socialism as being based on free access and Kautsky alluded to it thus

The quote you gave was from when Kautsky was already a renegade. :glare:

[robbo203]

I think Brinton's remarks are an amusingly and refreshingly direct take on the behavior of a closed sect that imagines it will the take the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints way to communism.


Come off it. This is naff criticism and you know it. Ive encountered this same old dreary dogmatic line before and people who make this dumb claim generally havent got a clue of what the SPGB is about at all.

There are legitimate criticisms one can make of the SPGB but its not this. The one thing that the SPGB has been proven to be absolutely correct in saying is that you cannot have a socialist/communist revolution without a majority wanting and understanding it. Those who deny this, who in effect think it can happen behind our backs or be carried out some vanguard, are really and truly the ones who subsribe to a magic wand theory of revolution.

I suggest your read Dave Perrin's book on the SPGB before you make such idiotic remarks

[Zanthorus]

The one thing that can be said about the SPGB is at least they're consistent with advocating the whole 'free acess' thing since for a system like that to work you'd need nigh on 90-100% of the population in total agreement. You'd certainly find it difficult to work it on the basis of spontaneous workers' struggle.


Comrade, please compare and contrast:

[...]

With regards to real and perceived "utopianism" on the subject of maximum programs.

What would be the point of my engaging in such an excercise except for you to have yet another classification system for delineating political tendencies and programmes? Have you ever considered thinking about these documents and they issues they bring up carefully for yourself rather than slapping labels on them on the basis of discussions you had on internet forums?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have, and considering your debate with Rowan (and what I perceive to be an ill-directed critique of one of those specified documents), it seems you haven't. Feel free to prove otherwise.


It is based essentially on Hegels' critique of the approach of the French revolutionaries who sought to impose on the world a vision derived from the halls of abstract reason. In contradistinction to this, Hegel saw the task of philosophy (Including political philosophy) as bringing out what is rational in the already-existing world.

I have no problems with casting abstract reason aside and using real-world existing conditions. This was done with emphasis on computer technology, barcodes, purchase orders, etc.