A planned economy under Communism?

[nativeabuse]

I was thinking about this while looking at the political profiles thread, and a lot of people here like the idea of a planned economy, and I do as well. I feel like in the end communism will need a planned economy to correctly allocate/distribute goods to everyone in a fully communist society. But I don't understand how you can have such high level all-encompassing planning without some sort of governing body, a sort of body that does nothing but economic planning.

I think that it would have to be done via some sort of massive networking system, if it wasn't done by a governing body, or something along those lines.

My question is, how does/can economic planning work in a communist society which has no state bodies?

[L.A.P.]

free/planned economy I think is a false dichotomy

I'm pretty sure all bourgeois states have to plan their economic policies in accordance with the chaotic/absurd demands of capital

I couldn't see how any economic system could function without any sort of planning. :blink:

[nativeabuse]

I know that there are plenty of people here who think that it planning isn't the way to go, from what I've seen in the Political Profile thread. I was simply curious as to how it would work without planning, or peoples individual thoughts on how planning should work once the workers have full control of the state ( since we all obviously know how it has worked under historical situations where the workers didn't really have full power like USSR/China/all other socialist states )

I'm sure you all have tons of interesting ideas about how planning should be enacted, or how to go about things without it being explicitly planned.

[soso17]

A system to help organize production, distribution, and the wants/needs of the population is hardly a "state", in that it doesn't work to enforce one class's interests against another. It could be as seemingly simple as a network that keeps track of production, consumption, and the wants of the citizenry.

Don't attack me if this is a simplistic understanding, but I see no reason why this wouldn't (eventually) be enough...after a few generations growing up under the DoTP and socialism.

[Decolonize The Left]

I was thinking about this while looking at the political profiles thread, and a lot of people here like the idea of a planned economy, and I do as well. I feel like in the end communism will need a planned economy to correctly allocate/distribute goods to everyone in a fully communist society. But I don't understand how you can have such high level all-encompassing planning without some sort of governing body, a sort of body that does nothing but economic planning.

I think that it would have to be done via some sort of massive networking system, if it wasn't done by a governing body, or something along those lines.

My question is, how does/can economic planning work in a communist society which has no state bodies?

Planned economy = / = planned economy

What I mean by this is that this term means a lot of different things from a strict interpretation (i.e. Soviet Union under Stalin) to a loose interpretation (i.e. libertarian free trade).

Governing body = / = governing body

'Governing' merely refers to the act of governance, that is the decision making process of allocation, and 'body' refers to any number of systems.

The question in itself is too vague as the terms could mean any number of things to any number of people.

[nativeabuse]

It could be as seemingly simple as a network that keeps track of production, consumption, and the wants of the citizenry.


I feel like this is basically what we all agree would need to be in place, but how the network would actually be setup and function could be wildly variant, with loads of different methods.

Like I was saying earlier, we could easily leave it mostly to a computer system to keep track of everything and have it be very hands-off in terms of people actually planning it themselves. I can't really think of any nuances that an algorithm couldn't handle.

[ckaihatsu]

There's a distinction to be made between 'selection' and 'operation' -- a computer network and accompanying machinery could certainly be able to do the physical tasks of passing information and activating switches on machines, so that the *logistical* aspects are automated.

But it sounds a little 'off' to hear that a computer system should enable *people* to be 'hands-off' in regards to the *selection* of what needs to be produced. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your wording, but I thought the whole point of a revolution is to have the world's machinery at the disposal of collective intentions.

So would the algorithm be just for machine processes or would we really want it to be making *choices* for us as well -- ?

My position is that, for any process requiring a group-selection over a range of options, a *prioritization* of the options can be accomplished. If reiterated daily it will show an ongoing sorted ranking, from #1 to infinity, that reflects the collective choices of any given population.


Prioritization Chart

http://s6.postimage.org/jy5fntvcd/17_Prioritization_Chart.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/jy5fntvcd/)


There's a discussion that goes into depth on this:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/science-history-t174356/index.html

[YugoslavSocialist]

My question is, how does/can economic planning work in a communist society which has no state bodies?

In a pure Communist society the only form of economic planning will be
Decentralized planning and Workers' self Management.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Well, these are two different subjects, but you may be interested in this thread as well based off some of the things you said in your first post.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/socialism-can-organize-t176746/index.html?t=176746

I disagree with robbo203 on some things (such as his anti-Bolshevism and his opposition to the dotp) but his idea of a "system of self-regulating stocks" was pretty interesting, I thought.

[Let's Get Free]

Every economy entails planning. The most idealistic libertarian's free market dystopia would involve extensive planning.

[nativeabuse]

But it sounds a little 'off' to hear that a computer system should enable *people* to be 'hands-off' in regards to the *selection* of what needs to be produced. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your wording, but I thought the whole point of a revolution is to have the world's machinery at the disposal of collective intentions.

Yes you are misinterpreting what I said. I mean that it could extrapolate how much needs to be produced in a given year per population, where people are buying certain things more and not others, keep up with distribution, and keep orders automated.

It goes without saying that you have to use human made inputs as to what would be produced in the first place for it to sort, how else could it possibly get inputs in the first place? lol

[ckaihatsu]

Yes you are misinterpreting what I said. I mean that it could extrapolate how much needs to be produced in a given year per population, where people are buying certain things more and not others, keep up with distribution, and keep orders automated.


Yup.





It goes without saying that you have to use human made inputs as to what would be produced in the first place for it to sort, how else could it possibly get inputs in the first place? lol


Yeah. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't some kind of sci-fi AI-utopia line.