Sharing and Preventing Recapitalization

[Comrade #138672]

This topic has been slightly brought up in the thread about free-riders, but I think that it deserves its own topic.

Let's say we have a communistic state. How will resources be shared? How will recapitalization be prevented?

Let's say there's a baker who makes all kinds of bread. How much bread am I supposed to get? "To each his needs." Who makes those rules? Is this a matter of "common sense" and a general sense of fairness?

Someone said that aspiring capitalists wouldn't have the means to recapitalize, but I'm slightly skeptical about whether they wouldn't be able to create the means to recapitalize. If they somehow accumulate enough material by trading and hoarding they might be able to convince people to build the means for them by sharing some of their wealth. Afterwards making people work for them, for a little more goods than would be "socially acceptable in communism". Why is this not possible? And if it's possible what are we going to do about it? Or what do we do to prevent it?

[Luka]

How will resources be shared? How will recapitalization be prevented?
The best solution would probably be labour vouchers. If labour vouchers are not transferable that would also prevent recapitalization

[Comrade #138672]

The best solution would probably be labour vouchers. If labour vouchers are not transferable that would also prevent recapitalizationBut the commodities are transferable.

Transactions don't have to be entirely fair. Many possible circumstances can (temporarily) influence the subjective value judgement, which makes it possible for the capitalist to extract a small profit from the transaction. These small profits can then be accumulated.

[JPSartre12]

I think the idea of having non-transferable labour vouchers would be a step in the right direction, yes.

However, I think that we need to think of the fact that, as capitalism fades farther into the past and socialism (or communism, or whatever post-capitalist term you would like to place here) becomes more and more actualized, human consciousness would be reformed at the same time that economic reforms are taking place. Not only would we be establishing a socialist economy, but also a socialist consciousness.

There will be a point in history wherein the concept of recapitalization will not be conceivable because it will be so removed from what we will think of. However long that will take to fully be, I'm not sure; there will certainly have to be other anti-recapitalization tactics taken until that point.

[Questionable]

If a socialist system is working as it should, why would anyone want capitalism back? They'd have as much credibility as primitivists do in this society.

[RedHammer]

I agree, a shift towards socialism will necessarily see, and require, a shift towards socialist consciousness.

Nobody today routinely thinks about owning slaves or having vassals or the like; they are alien to our modern capitalist system, and so too will capitalization be to the socialist world.

[Kotze]

There was once a guy who announced the goal of getting a house through barter starting with one red paperclip. He got the house after 14 steps. I think the novelty was a big part of it though.

The resurgence of somebody controlling access to means of production and using that to take a cut from the stuff people produce with them, with part of that used to maintain and increase control, that's what we want to avoid.

At first sight it looks like this relation requires at least 2 parts to exist, individuals owning means of production and the possibility to hire labour, so removing 1 of these should already do the trick. One left intellectual once said that only the hiring needs to be abolished. That reminded me of another who had said something against inheritance limits, to paraphrase: Abolishing private ownership of the means of production already goes at the root of inequality, so one shouldn't demand inheritance limits as that would only send a mixed message.

I think both were mislead by the allure of elegant solutions, that is finding a way to handle a task with the minimum amount of work. But in the messy real world going for the minimum usually means slight deviations in carrying out a plan srew up everything, so a bit of redundancy isn't a bad thing.

Sometimes some stuff gets temporarily more scarce and a lucky few that have been hoarding it then have some good opportunities to trade that for stuff that contains more work. Is giving them more the only way to motivate the selfish to share? -That's like saying you can only move an object by pulling and never by pushing. The other way to motivate them is by a tax on possession that goes up when there's a bottleneck. The devil is in the details: tracking everything, how to deal with wear and tear (some people are careless or malicious), and harsh punishment for apparent speculators as a panacea would also be wrong. In a market economy, a trader who anticipates a bottleneck and a hefty tax that nullifies any advantage in addressing it will do nothing about it. If these people are still to play a vital role, and we use the stick with them, we also need to use the carrot. If we want to get rid of them, then we only give them the stick, but we need to have something in place that does some of the things they did.

[ckaihatsu]

I agree, a shift towards socialism will necessarily see, and require, a shift towards socialist consciousness.

Nobody today routinely thinks about owning slaves or having vassals or the like; they are alien to our modern capitalist system, and so too will capitalization be to the socialist world.


This is a crucial point, that, *especially* in a revolutionary post-capitalist societal environment, the *political* component will be just as important, if not more so, than the economic / material component.

As things are now the whole world is on "autopilot", tethered overwhelmingly to the *economic* component since that's what runs the material world -- the markets.

In past centuries there wasn't nearly as much of a fuss over material intricacies because there wasn't much material existing *to* fuss over. Instead, what was valuable was animal and human labor, and so that's what was covered by systems of valuation and ownership.

It's relatively more progressive for more people to be fussing over *material* things while living their own lives free from slavery and serfdom. Unfortunately the flipside is that what's still being fussed over could realistically be just as free as most people are from the bonds of slavery and serfdom, thus also freeing people from *having* to fuss over their valuations. Because of industrialization, I would argue, there's much going on with the world of machinery and material, and so it's subject to private valuations as the much-prized animal and human labor *used* to be.





There was once a guy who announced the goal of getting a house through barter starting with one red paperclip. He got the house after 14 steps.


Congrats, and I have a handful of multicolored staples you may be interested in.


= )





I think the novelty was a big part of it though.




The resurgence of somebody controlling access to means of production and using that to take a cut from the stuff people produce with them, with part of that used to maintain and increase control, that's what we want to avoid.


Agreed.





At first sight it looks like this relation requires at least 2 parts to exist, individuals owning means of production and the possibility to hire labour, so removing 1 of these should already do the trick. One left intellectual once said that only the hiring needs to be abolished.


As a socialist I'll actually argue the *converse* -- that the means of mass production should be collectivized, while the possibility of hiring labor (on a basis fully free of duress, on collectively administered means of production) should be retained.





That reminded me of another who had said something against inheritance limits, to paraphrase: Abolishing private ownership of the means of production already goes at the root of inequality, so one shouldn't demand inheritance limits as that would only send a mixed message.


Yes, that would only be reformism.





I think both were mislead by the allure of elegant solutions, that is finding a way to handle a task with the minimum amount of work. But in the messy real world going for the minimum usually means slight deviations in carrying out a plan srew up everything, so a bit of redundancy isn't a bad thing.




Sometimes some stuff gets temporarily more scarce and a lucky few that have been hoarding it then have some good opportunities to trade that for stuff that contains more work. Is giving them more the only way to motivate the selfish to share?


This exemplifies everything that's symptomatic of the capitalist disease -- a virtual conferring of *life* into the process of exchanges, and the items involved.





-That's like saying you can only move an object by pulling and never by pushing. The other way to motivate them is by a tax on possession that goes up when there's a bottleneck. The devil is in the details: tracking everything, how to deal with wear and tear (some people are careless or malicious), and harsh punishment for apparent speculators as a panacea would also be wrong. In a market economy, a trader who anticipates a bottleneck and a hefty tax that nullifies any advantage in addressing it will do nothing about it. If these people are still to play a vital role, and we use the stick with them, we also need to use the carrot. If we want to get rid of them, then we only give them the stick, but we need to have something in place that does some of the things they did.


We can't afford to get wrapped up in the machinations of exchanges if our politics are to assert a *post-exchange* quality / characteristic. We should be focused on the socialization of production and pre-planned equitable distribution.