Debit Cards Under Socialism: A Proposition

[Skyhilist]

This sounds weird based on the title alone, but hear me out.

So communism, of course, is supposed to function with the idea of "by each according to his/her own ability, to each according to his/her own need."

However, there might be some things where not everyone could could consume them at the levels that they might like sustainably. I think I've used this example before, but lets take airline flights. Imagine if you told everyone in the world that they could go on as many flights as they wanted, to places as far away as they wanted. First of all, an extreme amount of planes would need to be built extremely quickly (far faster than even during wars in the past that encouraged airplane production), even if there were waiting lists to get on flights. The amount of planes needed might not even be possible in and of itself. If it were, imagine the enormous, widespread, and detrimental environmental impact that would result from such an action. It wouldn't be good.

Even if you don't agree with my point about planes specifically, my point is that with at with at least some resources, either a) demand would exceed supply or b) meeting the demand would not be environmentally sustainable.

This inevitably calls for some type of regulation that would lower levels of consumption of these items.

Here is what I would suggest:

Have groups trained in this area (economists, and environmental scientists) group resources in a few different ways.

I have grouped resources into 4 different categories.

CATEGORY 1: The first group is abundant, non-environmentally sensitive resources. These are resources where the supply is already enough to meet the demand, and where meeting that demand with current technology of the time would not cause harm to the environment. These resources may be consumed freely by any worker without any regulations, unless their status as abundant and non-environmentally friendly changes at some point. This group will ideally make up the vast majority of resources, including most food items, making as many goods as possible freely available to all workers.

CATEGORY 2: The second group is naturally scarce, non-environmentally sensitive resources. These are resources where the demand exceeds the supply, but where if that demand was able to be met, it would be environmentally sustainable. These resources might include, for example, braces. In third world areas where dental health isn't something people have enough money to worry about, children who need braces go without them. As a result, braces are not produced for the majority of people who need them. Therefore, if everyone could afford braces who needed them, there would not immediately be enough to go around. However, we have plenty of resources to create enough braces for everyone across the globe who needs them. With resources being focused on increasing the supply of braces, there would easily be enough to go around, and (if done correctly) without serious environmental consequences. For resources like braces, and everything classified as part of this group, resources would immediately be focused on raising the supply until there was enough to go around (while continuing to be environmentally friendly as a requirement) and they could be eventually recategorized as part of the first group. Until then, these resources would be evaluated by economists (in terms of their demand relative to their supply) and given a value in terms of units. Each worker would be given a specific number of units that they could spend with a special type of debit card. If they chose to deplete the number of units they had available by spending some on this category of resource, they could choose to. This would lower the amount of consumption for these items, because not everyone will spend the certain amount of units on them that they are assigned. Obviously, this would only apply for non-essential resources (e.g. TVs). For something like braces, it wouldn't be fair to give only some kids (that needed them) them based on whether their parents were willing to deplete the units that they had available for spending on them. Essential needs like this might involve other options (besides spending units) like waiting lists instead, in order to be more fair. Obviously for an important need like braces, this isn't optimal. For this reason, production of essential resources in this category would be prioritized above non-essential resources in this category (like maybe TVs). That way essential goods can become available to people as fast as possible.

CATEGORY 3: The next category of resource non-scarce, but environmentally sensitive resources. This are resources where the supply equals or exceeds the demand, but where meeting the demand would be inherently unsustainable for the environment. Personally, I don't think that too many resources would fall into this category, and I can't think of any essential resources that would under this category after we completely transitioned to alternative energy (maybe something odd like infrared lasers that use rare earth metals like ytterbium). An example of a resource before this that might fall into this category before that transition would be oil (that is, given that we haven't run out by the time of the revolution and haven't transitioned completely to alternative energy pre-revolution). For these resources, environmental scientists would do their best to collectively quantify the environmental risks of consuming these resources, and attach a value, in units, as to how much each resource in this category would deplete someone's unit allowance (on their socialist-style debit cards) should they want to obtain it at a given amount. This would greatly lower the incentive to consume resources that might be detrimental to the environment, because it would mean workers would have less to spend on other resources that didn't fall into the first category. At the same time, energy would be devoted towards making extraction and production of these resources more energy efficient, and/or to finding equally (or more) desirable alternatives to these resources that were more eco-friendly in the extraction/production process. Because of this goal and the devotion of energy in this sustainable direction, the cost of all items in this research would decrease, until most if not all could eventually be reclassified into the first category mentioned and be freely consumed by all.

CATEGORY 4: The last category is of naturally scarce resources, that are also environmentally sensitive. These are resources where demand not only exceeds supply, but where even if that demand could be met, it would be inherently environmentally harmful. This category of resource is obviously the most problematic because it involves more than one problem that must be solved. Resources falling into this category would once again be assigned a unit value. The difference is that this time the determination of the unit-based cost would need to be determined jointly by both environmental scientists and economists, both groups needing to cooperate. The cost of items in this group having both (hopefully temporary) environmental, and economic risks would likely be the most, if people really had the impulse to consume them. However, groups that would fall into this category would be few and far between. I personally cannot think of any items that might fall into this category off of the top of my head, let alone essential items. Anyways, similarly to the other categories, the goal would be to get the items of this group out of this category and into the first group where they could be freely consumed. This would mean prioritizing improvements in both extraction/production AND environmental efficiency so that these resources could be produced in a manner environmentally sustainable, and where supply also equalled or slightly exceeded demand. Prioritizing making these resources environmentally friendly would be done first until they could be recategorized into the second group. That way, when people consumed these items the environmental impact would be minimized as quickly as possible. Production of these resources would then be prioritized (so long as it remained environmentally sustainable) until they could hopefully be recategorized in the first group.

Let me reiterate. This is meant to be temporary, because the goal is that all resources eventually fall under the first category where they can be freely consumed. Even at the start of this process though with the introduction of a revolution, the majority of resources would likely fall under the first category and be able to be consumed freely. With enough time, all groups in the other categories would hopefully become a part of this first group as well, but at the very least become inexpensive if they had to remain in the other groups for various reasons. The number units that people could obtain items with in groups 2-4 would be the same amongst all workers (as well as non-workers who were too young to work, had a disability, had recently become parents, or had some other issue preventing them from working), given that social pressures would push workers more under socialism to working to their ability (since slacking off would mean more work for others). Given that most resources could be freely consumed (and that there would be plenty of units to obtain others), everyone would be able to receive everything that they needed from the start. This ensures that this system does not violate the system of "by each according to his/her own ability, to each according to his/her own need."

Special exceptions to how many units could be spent by a person (like for example, if an oncologist needs more units to spend for machines that help with cancer research) might be made by making appeals to the community, or one's workplace, which might have an allowance of units for doing work itself. The processes that would go into this could be determined regionally using confederalism, because obviously not everyone would agree on how to go about this. Confederal decision making could also determine (on a regional scale) certain things like whether or not the units placed on socialist style debit cards would rollover from year to year (or between any other time frames). These debit cards could also be used to verify one's status as a worker or one's lack of ability to work.

This is an idea of mine that's been constantly evolving. I'd be interested in everyone's feedback. This is pretty complex though so sorry, I'm not really sure how to write a "tl;dr" version of it. I don't anticipate that being too much of a problem since most people here like to read.

Thanks!

[adipocere]

This is quite a post. I like that you are using modern examples.
Don't forget how many resources can be saved by eliminating all the pointless bullshit consumerist capitalism produces. Oncologists would mostly find themselves out of job and not even need extra units if we could eliminate the excesses of vanity consumption.
I've frequently thought that debit cards like you mention would be preferable to currency - something that couldn't be exchanged, invested, loaned or hoarded - that's topped up to the same level every month - similar to the way food stamps are administered.
Actually, your post makes me kind of sad - we have such a long way to go.

[Skyhilist]

We do have quite a long way to go, although I am hopeful that due to the unstable nature of capitalism we will get there eventually (although I worry that it wont happen soon enough to prevent the destruction of most ecosystems).

Fair point on the oncologists. Perhaps a more accurate example would be researchers who study currently uncured genetic diseases that are less tied to consumerism and capitalism than cancer is.

I also agree that the allowances on the debit cards should not be allowed to be exchanged in any way so as to prevent anyone from managing to gain any sort of monopoly on them.

[adipocere]

I would wonder how drugs, alcohol and prostitution would work...how to avoid illicit substances from supporting a black market currency? I get that poverty a la capitalism is a big driver behind these things, but not completely. How could vice be controlled?

[Skyhilist]

Well, I think these issues are better looked at individually rather than as a whole.

Lets take drugs, for example. If most people want to consume a certain drug, resources will either need to be devoted for stopping them or for giving them the opportunity to be rehabilitated should they become addicted (if it's a particularly harmful drug). Generally devoting those resources to stopping them (with a police force, prisons, etc.) is an ineffective strategy with drugs that tends to increase drug use. So, if the majority want to do drugs, devoting energy towards rehabilitating those that needed it would most likely be more effective. So given that, if drugs are not criminalized, they will most likely fall under the first category of freely available resources. This should ensure that there is not a black market for them, because after all, why pay someone for something that you can already have for free?

Other illicit things are a different matter. Certainly, if people feel the incentive to use these things in a place where they are illegal, there may be a chance for a black market to occur. So perhaps there should be some type of democratic (or consensus, or modified consensus) decision making (which is also confederal) to determine which things should and shouldn't be illegal in an area. If an area allows certain things to be legal that probably shouldn't be, there should be a societal learning curve and a natural type of evolution occurring. It's the same type of evolution that would occur if "anarcho-capitalists" were allowed to have their own society, after that society failed within a few months, and could move on beyond its silly ancap phase.

I think there should also be a kind of pact where if one region makes something very egregious legal, that they can be isolated from the resources produced in other regions. For example, if a region is stupid enough to make clear cutting rainforest legal, the surrounding societies might use exit power, refusing to exchange resources with them until they ceased such operations. Such a system would by nature be motivated by reason. If a region cut ties with another reason over something that was obviously silly, then they might be seen as "bullies", and have their access to resources cut off from places that saw them as bullies, thereby deterring refusal to exchange resources over minor disagreements. However, if a region had good reason to cut ties with another autonomous region, then others might follow suit, leaving that offending region with few options but to cease their offensive activity, or better yet, not choose to allow such egregious activities in the first place. This horizontal exit power could be used to therefore deter black markets in general by the following process:

1) Politically isolate participants choosing to participate in black markets to a certain political region (they don't even all have to be in the same geographic location)
2) Cut ties with the newly autonomous black market region until they are forced to cease such activities, should they be deemed to be so offensive to begin with.

There are plenty of other ways of dealing with this too. Crime could also be punished by lowering the unit allowance on debit cards (so they'd have to risk more just to obtain some commonplace items), or by restricting access to freely available goods (but of course not essential ones), or even political exile on various time scales depending on the severity of an individual's offense.

I'm sure there are other viable ways as well, these are just the ones I've thought of previously.

[Zergling]

I think there should also be a kind of pact where if one region makes something very egregious legal, that they can be isolated from the resources produced in other regions. For example, if a region is stupid enough to make clear cutting rainforest legal, the surrounding societies might use exit power, refusing to exchange resources with them until they ceased such operations. Such a system would by nature be motivated by reason. If a region cut ties with another reason over something that was obviously silly, then they might be seen as "bullies", and have their access to resources cut off from places that saw them as bullies, thereby deterring refusal to exchange resources over minor disagreements. However, if a region had good reason to cut ties with another autonomous region, then others might follow suit, leaving that offending region with few options but to cease their offensive activity, or better yet, not choose to allow such egregious activities in the first place. This horizontal exit power could be used to therefore deter black markets in general by the following process:

1) Politically isolate participants choosing to participate in black markets to a certain political region (they don't even all have to be in the same geographic location)
2) Cut ties with the newly autonomous black market region until they are forced to cease such activities, should they be deemed to be so offensive to begin with.

There are plenty of other ways of dealing with this too. Crime could also be punished by lowering the unit allowance on debit cards (so they'd have to risk more just to obtain some commonplace items), or by restricting access to freely available goods (but of course not essential ones), or even political exile on various time scales depending on the severity of an individual's offense.

I'm sure there are other viable ways as well, these are just the ones I've thought of previously.
You had me up until this point. Why separate regions and give them that level of autonomy so early in the transition phase? It seems to me it would just create competition between the regions all over again and lead to a return to a market based system.

[helot]

This sounds weird based on the title alone, but hear me out.

So communism, of course, is supposed to function with the idea of "by each according to his/her own ability, to each according to his/her own need."

However, there might be some things where not everyone could could consume them at the levels that they might like sustainably. I think I've used this example before, but lets take airline flights. Imagine if you told everyone in the world that they could go on as many flights as they wanted, to places as far away as they wanted. First of all, an extreme amount of planes would need to be built extremely quickly (far faster than even during wars in the past that encouraged airplane production), even if there were waiting lists to get on flights. The amount of planes needed might not even be possible in and of itself. If it were, imagine the enormous, widespread, and detrimental environmental impact that would result from such an action. It wouldn't be good.

Even if you don't agree with my point about planes specifically, my point is that with at with at least some resources, either a) demand would exceed supply or b) meeting the demand would not be environmentally sustainable.

This inevitably calls for some type of regulation that would lower levels of consumption of these items.



I'll stop you there...

You know i've never seen it as a free for all even though i do endorse from each...according to each... from the moment the workers lay their hands on the MoP, hell i don't even look kindly on labour vouchers or anything (looks too much like trying to retain the wages system to me).

I do endorse people taking what they want limited only in that in which there isn't enough for everyone. Then it's a matter of rationing this scarce item according to need. I don't see what's so difficult or needing massive amounts of text to communicate.

[Skyhilist]

I do endorse people taking what they want limited only in that in which there isn't enough for everyone. Then it's a matter of rationing this scarce item according to need. I don't see what's so difficult or needing massive amounts of text to communicate.

If you read the whole post that's sort of what this is about.

First of all, the vast majority of items would be freely available, as I mention if you read what I've written.

The scarce (and environmentally sensitive resources) aren't distributed by labor vouchers. Every worker (working to their ability as a result of social conditions) gets the same allowance in terms of units. Obviously things will be distributed according to need, because people are going to spend units on the things that they need. And if the units are insufficient, there are opportunities for more to be allotted (as I mention), so that the units are sufficient to meet ones need. But generally since most items would be freely available anyways, this wouldn't be a problem. The things involving units that would be placed on debits cards wouldn't be for essential resources that people needed... it would be for extra stuff that they wanted. Please read the entire post first as I think I've addressed most, if not all of your concerns.

[Skyhilist]

You had me up until this point.

Well given that that was really more of a response to adipocere, I wouldn't really consider that to be part of the plan that I was trying to "get you" with, really just a response to a separate issue that adipocere had brought up. So if you disagree with that I hope that you don't let it automatically invalidate the original post.


Why separate regions and give them that level of autonomy so early in the transition phase? It seems to me it would just create competition between the regions all over again and lead to a return to a market based system.

Could you explain this? How would it create competition (and markets)? It wouldn't be like different nations. All regions would be united under socialism; they would just have slightly different rules and oriented around the production of slightly different things (e.g. the central valley in California might be more centered towards food production specifically and have certain things dealing specifically with it that wouldn't make sense for say, Alaska). I feel it necessary to have confederal regions because not everyone across the globe is going to agree about the best way to proceed with certain things. Different regions will likely have different commonly held ideas; each region should be able to pursue (within reason and socialism) their own ideas so that they don't feel as though they're subjected to someone else's idea's that don't represent their local society (which would cause more conflict and countless unnecessary examples of leftist infighting, with both words and likely violence).

[Zergling]

Could you explain this? How would it create competition (and markets)? It wouldn't be like different nations. All regions would be united under socialism; they would just have slightly different rules and oriented around the production of slightly different things (e.g. the central valley in California might be more centered towards food production specifically and have certain things dealing specifically with it that wouldn't make sense for say, Alaska). I feel it necessary to have confederal regions because not everyone across the globe is going to agree about the best way to proceed with certain things. Different regions will likely have different commonly held ideas; each region should be able to pursue (within reason and socialism) their own ideas so that they don't feel as though they're subjected to someone else's idea's that don't represent their local society (which would cause more conflict and countless unnecessary examples of leftist infighting, with both words and likely violence).Let us say the California region specializes in wine making and due to the climate, temperature, and a host of other things it makes very good wine. The Washington region also specializes in wine making however it has less ideal circumstances than California does. Now due to California wine being "better," people flock to have it and it creates more of a demand whereas Washington gets less and less people wanting it and that could create a huge issue with jobs people cut since not as many people are needed for making wine due to low demand and so forth.

How do you prevent this?

[Skyhilist]

Let us say the California region specializes in wine making and due to the climate, temperature, and a host of other things it makes very good wine. The Washington region also specializes in wine making however it has less ideal circumstances than California does. Now due to California wine being "better," people flock to have it and it creates more of a demand whereas Washington gets less and less people wanting it and that could create a huge issue with jobs people cut since not as many people are needed for making wine due to low demand and so forth.

How do you prevent this?

I'd say in that instance, Washington should simply expand on industries other than wine, and reduce the number of hours that people are working making wine because there isn't as much of a demand. It's not like California gets more stuff just because they live in a region with good wine. But say, wine demand is skyrocketing in California. Here's one solution that I see. Take the industries in California that can be done in other regions too (like, say, a factory that manufactures boxes), and move them to regions like Washington. The working hours required at places like this will replace the loss in work from them not having wine that is as good. The box making factories in CA are mostly converted into wine making factories to make up for the lost hours in that industry. Now both regions have the same amount of work but just have economies centered around different things. This would only be a preliminary problem anyways that could likely be worked out from the start since most regions will already know things like how popular their wine is compared to another famous wine region.

[Skyhilist]

Also, California wine could be shipped to anywhere where there was a demand for it in order to meet that demand. Why would someone move there just to get something that they can already have?

[Skyhilist]

Zergling: after examining what you have said in greater detail, I can see what you are getting at.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the following scenario would be one you might be expecting with the flaws you have pointed out:

1) Sacramento, CA (an arbitrary CA city, but go with it) has better wine than Seattle, WA (also arbitrary but in WA, so again, go with it).
2) Wine, under these circumstances is not a resource that falls under CATEGORY 1 (see edits to my initial post if you're confused). There is a unit price attached to wine.
3) The price of Sacramento wine increases as people get farther and farther away from Sacramento. This is due to the fact that the farther the wine needs to be transported, the more energy needs to be used.
4) In order to get wine for a less expensive cost, people in Seattle begin to move to Sacramento.

Now there is a problem. This will lead to empty factories and houses in Seattle, where Sacramento on the other hand might not have enough housing to fit all the new people who have been moving in.

Here's what some housing statistics throughout the course of a year in Sacramento might look like:

-Empty houses at the end of the year (assuming no one moved out of the city during the year): 20k
-Households moving out of Sacramento that year: 20k
-Total available households: 40k
-Households wanting to move into Sacramento from: 100K (we'll say, 10K from Seattle)


Clearly, the demand for housing (for incoming residents) exceeds the supply of housing for Sacramento. The available housing (with current technology) can only be increased sustainably to a limited extent and done upwards (skyscrapers and multi-story apartment buildings). Otherwise more expansion into the natural world would be required, which is not acceptable.

We can now determine that housing in Sacramento falls into CATEGORY 4 of the resource categories that I've created. There are now two ways to proceed.

The first way to proceed would be to give housing for new residents moving into Sacramento a unit cost. This would be a one time cost that people would face when moving into houses there. This would lower the incentive to move to Sacramento because not everyone would want to pay the amount required. The cost of moving there would be raised to the point that the households moving there were equal to or slightly lower than the amount of available houses available.

The second way to proceed would be to say that housing is a human right. This is of course true, but you also have to consider that housing would be guaranteed to any households who chose not to move to Sacramento, so it's not like they wouldn't have a chance for guaranteed freely available housing to begin with. However, if this determination were made, housing would be treated as an essential need, and therefore a unit cost would not be used. Instead a waiting list would be used to get houses in Sacramento.

The other city we have to deal with is Seattle. Thanks to the measures we've imposed in Sacramento, not quite as many people are leaving Seattle to move to Sacramento. This means fewer abandoned houses and factories. However, 10k households still left Seattle to go to Sacramento.

So Seattle's housing statistics might look something like this:

Empty houses at the end of the year (excluding the newly emptied ones of people who left during that year): 20k
Households leaving Seattle to go to Sacramento: 10K
Other households leaving Seattle: 30K
Total empty houses: 60k
People moving to Seattle (without economic incentive): 20K

Housing is freely available in Seattle because the supply exceeds the demand. This means that it will be placed under CATEGORY 1. The fact that there are is free housing with no waiting lists in Seattle, but not in Sacramento, will motivate more people to move to Seattle instead of Sacramento than they would have in the past. This should balance things out so that there are once again the same population levels (or near the same population levels) in Seattle as there were before people started flocking to Sacramento. This will in turn make it so that there are not abandoned and empty factories/workplaces, or at the very least lessen the numbers of abandoned and empty factories/workplaces. If there are still abandoned factories/workplaces in some areas, then that implies that the jobs from those factories have moved elsewhere, to other jobs. In this case, what should be done is that industries (that can be done in any region) should be distributed in their regions. So lets say wine is a growing industry in Sacramento, because there is a growing demand for wine. They would take an industry that they have but that could be done anywhere and eliminate or reduce it, like for example TV production. The factories that were once TV producing factories would be transformed into wine making and bottling factories. Simultaneously, the factories that would be being less needed and/or abandoned in Seattle would be transformed into something like TV producing factories, until the amount of work required of citizens in Seattle and Sacramento were more or less the same. Energy would be focused on new uses for any remaining abandoned workplaces after this transition.

So essentially, there's a balancing act involved to make sure everything stays as it should. We should also keep in mind that wine isn't meant to be a practical example and that the numbers I made up for "statistics" are completely arbitrary.

I know that this seems like a complicated and drawn out process. However, I think that things like this would only need to be utilized very rarely. It's highly unlikely that a single superior industry would cause huge amounts of people to migrate to that area and away from other areas, just so that they could slightly reduce the cost of CATEGORY 2-4 resources by lowering the transportation costs. This probably wont happen at all in fact, because transportation services will probably end up a CATEGORY 1 resource that is freely available, meaning that the cost for California wine in Seattle wont be any more than the cost of California wine in California. So this problem would occur either rarely, or not at all. For rare occasions where it did occur, there might not be a one size fits all solution and if there is, this might not be it. With all the people with capable minds, I am sure humanity would be able to find some plausible solutions that would occur rarely at most, should the one I have proposed not suffice. For this reason, the problems you've attributed to confederalism under this system seem very minor and come nothing close to being a deal breaker.

[Zergling]

That seems like a good response to the possible problem :thumbup1:

[ckaihatsu]

Hi, Sky, thanks for posting a link to this thread, from another, more-recent thread -- I think there should be more of this kind of thing, where people actually work-through *how* a post-capitalist social order could be done.

I have no issue with the implementation of debit-type cards -- that, too, is refreshing, to see a present-day technological "update", in terms of implementation, of historical political principles.

I also find it interesting the prominence you give to environmental concerns, though I tend to see such matters as being readily solved once the proletariat controls all of that in its own interests.

While I've taken some notes and have more to add, I'll limit myself to one *comprehensive* point for now -- my concern is with the oversight you indicate:





CATEGORY 2: The second group is naturally scarce, non-environmentally sensitive resources. These are resources where the demand exceeds the supply, but where if that demand was able to be met, it would be environmentally sustainable. These resources might include, for example, braces.




[T]hese resources would be evaluated by economists (in terms of their demand relative to their supply) and given a value in terms of units.





CATEGORY 4: The last category is of naturally scarce resources, that are also environmentally sensitive. These are resources where demand not only exceeds supply, but where even if that demand could be met, it would be inherently environmentally harmful. This category of resource is obviously the most problematic because it involves more than one problem that must be solved.




Resources falling into this category would once again be assigned a unit value. The difference is that this time the determination of the unit-based cost would need to be determined jointly by both environmental scientists and economists, both groups needing to cooperate.


While such oversight would be infinitely better than that currently existing under capitalism, I tend to be very skeptical of anything technocratic or bureaucratic-elitist -- the 'scientists and economists' in your proposition would have a very distinct, special societal role compared to everyone else.

Was wondering if you'd like to address this aspect at all.

[Tim Cornelis]

I disagree with the aspect of people voting for laws and making things illegal. Law should be divorced from political decision-making and instead we should have a customary law system.

(Also, random*, not arbitrary).

I also don't think when supply exceeds demand consumer goods can just be made freely available, but whatever.


Let us say the California region specializes in wine making and due to the climate, temperature, and a host of other things it makes very good wine. The Washington region also specializes in wine making however it has less ideal circumstances than California does. Now due to California wine being "better," people flock to have it and it creates more of a demand whereas Washington gets less and less people wanting it and that could create a huge issue with jobs people cut since not as many people are needed for making wine due to low demand and so forth.

How do you prevent this?

How could there even be unemployment? Wine production would fall, but those producers would simply be integrated into other producers' associations of their choosing.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I would hope economists would cease to exist in their profession post-capitalism. It really is a dismal 'science'.

Also, whilst I think we should applaud the sort of thinking that tries to solve the riddle of 'from each according to his ability...', I don't think we should use supply/demand to do it. The problem with scarcity should not be seen through the bourgeois notion of supply and demand, which intuitively separates the production process into two sections: those who produce, and those who consume. This barrier between the two necessarily leads to a democratic deficit within the production process - it is a somewhat un-practical analysis in that it assumes away the reality that, particularly in the sort of socialist society we envision, finished goods will be the product of democratic input from individuals and groups, not from the splitting of the production process into supply and demand, which necessarily leads to production decisions based on bureaucracy (i.e. we will decide for you what we want you to produce, and we will decide for you what we want you to consume etc.).

[Ocean Seal]

I would hope economists would cease to exist in their profession post-capitalism. It really is a dismal 'science'.
Economics cannot be called a science, but it really is quite useful even post-capitalism. The allocation of resources for developing production is something that we will seriously need to assess. Socialism won't just be a dream where we get all of our stuff for free, we need to figure out how to get that stuff.


Also, whilst I think we should applaud the sort of thinking that tries to solve the riddle of 'from each according to his ability...', I don't think we should use supply/demand to do it. The problem with scarcity should not be seen through the bourgeois notion of supply and demand, which intuitively separates the production process into two sections: those who produce, and those who consume. This barrier between the two necessarily leads to a democratic deficit within the production process - it is a somewhat un-practical analysis in that it assumes away the reality that, particularly in the sort of socialist society we envision, finished goods will be the product of democratic input from individuals and groups, not from the splitting of the production process into supply and demand, which necessarily leads to production decisions based on bureaucracy (i.e. we will decide for you what we want you to produce, and we will decide for you what we want you to consume etc.).
I can agree with this part, at the very least that supply demand production is fairly unnecessary because of the labor time calculation, but there will probably still be a number of scarce resources under socialism. We will need to organize the ways we use scarce goods to make them usable for all.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Economics cannot be called a science, but it really is quite useful even post-capitalism. The allocation of resources for developing production is something that we will seriously need to assess. Socialism won't just be a dream where we get all of our stuff for free, we need to figure out how to get that stuff.

I don't think there is much in mainstream economics, the social science, that we would want to carry forward. If we are to wish to use mathematics to help allocate scarce resources, then even if we call this subject 'economics', it will be completely different in content to what we currently call 'economics'.



I can agree with this part, at the very least that supply demand production is fairly unnecessary because of the labor time calculation, but there will probably still be a number of scarce resources under socialism. We will need to organize the ways we use scarce goods to make them usable for all.

Indeed, and it is important to understand that talk of 'post-scarcity' is utopian quackery. However, as i've said, supply/demand analysis is antithetical to democratic planning.

[Tim Cornelis]

I don't think there is much in mainstream economics, the social science, that we would want to carry forward. If we are to wish to use mathematics to help allocate scarce resources, then even if we call this subject 'economics', it will be completely different in content to what we currently call 'economics'.

Evidently, communist political economy attempts to solve the economic problems of the socialist mode of production (allocation of resources primarily, processing of statistical information and their application to this purpose) and capitalist economics seeks to solve the economic problems of the capitalist mode of production (unemployment, business cycles, inflation, or income inequality) and so logically they will completely different. That doesn't mean we should refrain from calling it economics (the study or conduct of the production and consumption of wealth) as it is both economics.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Evidently, communist political economy attempts to solve the economic problems of the socialist mode of production (allocation of resources primarily, processing of statistical information and their application to this purpose) and capitalist economics seeks to solve the economic problems of the capitalist mode of production (unemployment, business cycles, inflation, or income inequality) and so logically they will completely different. That doesn't mean we should refrain from calling it economics (the study or conduct of the production and consumption of wealth) as it is both economics.

Political economy =/= economics.

The latter has very little to do with any communist theories of how society might be organised. The very existence of 'the economy' is antithetical to our aims, so I don't see why we'd have an academic field devoted to studying something we don't want.

[Tim Cornelis]

@Chomsssky
Most goods are made of various resources. What if a good falls in multiple categories?


Political economy =/= economics.

The latter has very little to do with any communist theories of how society might be organised. The very existence of 'the economy' is antithetical to our aims, so I don't see why we'd have an academic field devoted to studying something we don't want.

An economy is the production and consumption of wealth.
Economics or political economy the study thereof.
Communism will have both.

Unless you don't want production and consumption of wealth you're wrong. It's quite annoying when I see communists saying this, it reeks of anti-intellectualism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

An economy is the production and consumption of wealth.
Economics or political economy the study thereof.
Communism will have both.

Wealth is a derivative of value, derived through exchange, which allows a unit value to be attached to a good (i.e. exchange value). This is unique to capitalism, and thus won't exist in a post-capitalist society.

Political economy and economics are two separate disciplines. Economics is a relatively new discipline, which is characterised by its attempts to scientifically find the most efficient and equitable outcomes (or outputs) for a given input, or set of inputs. One could go as far as saying that the history of Economics as a distinct academic discipline is bound up with the rise of capitalism from the late 19th century onwards, or perhaps even later. As such, when capitalism dies and is replaced, so Economics the academic discipline as we know it will have ceased to be useful.


Unless you don't want production and consumption of wealth you're wrong.

I want democratic control of the production process. I want an end to supply and demand. Economics as a discipline is, by its technocratic, pseudo-scientific nature, anti-democratic. And at the root of almost all orthodox economic theory is supply and demand.



It's quite annoying when I see communists saying this, it reeks of anti-intellectualism.

I hold a degree in Economics. I'm not trying to shoot myself in the foot. My point isn't against intellectualism per se. My point is that i'm against furthering a discipline that has outlived its usefulness. Orthodox Economics today doesn't come up with solutions; it is dismal social science riddled with quackery and corrupt, self-confirming, self-serving behaviour by individuals. It is part of the problem.

[Tim Cornelis]

Wealth is a derivative of value, derived through exchange, which allows a unit value to be attached to a good (i.e. exchange value). This is unique to capitalism, and thus won't exist in a post-capitalist society.

The 'communism-is-not-an-economy camp' is really into the redefining of words. Wealth = use-value or utility. A gift economy has no exchange yet it has wealth and is an economy.

An economy is the production and consumption of goods and services.

Communism will produce goods and services, communism will consume goods and services. Hence it is an economy.


Political economy and economics are two separate disciplines. Economics is a relatively new discipline, which is characterised by its attempts to scientifically find the most efficient and equitable outcomes (or outputs) for a given input, or set of inputs. One could go as far as saying that the history of Economics as a distinct academic discipline is bound up with the rise of capitalism from the late 19th century onwards, or perhaps even later. As such, when capitalism dies and is replaced, so Economics the academic discipline as we know it will have ceased to be useful.

No it's not. They're same thing, political economy has fallen out of use.


I want democratic control of the production process. I want an end to supply and demand.

That makes no sense. Supply is production of consumer goods, demand is the desire for consumer goods. A production process implies producing consumer goods (supply) for consumption (demand).


Economics as a discipline is, by its technocratic, pseudo-scientific nature, anti-democratic.

This is utterly ridiculous. Contemporary economics may be such and such, it doesn't mean economics is inherently so. Essentially, because the study of economic conduct in the capitalist mode of production has taken the form that it has, therefore there wont be any study of economic conduct in the socialist mode of production. The capitalist mode of production has given rise to this particular variant of economics, it doesn't mean that's all there is to economics.


And at the root of almost all orthodox economic theory is supply and demand.

What does that even mean? This seems oddly specific. That evil supply and demand!


I hold a degree in Economics. I'm not trying to shoot myself in the foot. My point isn't against intellectualism per se. My point is that i'm against furthering a discipline that has outlived its usefulness. Orthodox Economics today doesn't come up with solutions; it is dismal social science riddled with quackery and corrupt, self-confirming, self-serving behaviour by individuals. It is part of the problem.

Contemporary economics is a dismal science, that doesn't mean that the study of production and consumption in a communist society (i.e. communist economics) will be. It's like saying that academics in capitalism are conditioned by bourgeois ideology and that therefore communism will not have academics. Evidently, we will leave capitalist economics behind as it will be useless in the socialist mode of production which gives rise to entirely new economic problems.

Ultimately it's just semantics but it bothers me that such simplistic logic is applied. It just sounds really really stupid. T

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The 'communism-is-not-an-economy camp' is really into the redefining of words. Wealth = use-value or utility. A gift economy has no exchange yet it has wealth and is an economy.

Wealth will exist intrinsically, but in order to define it, one would have to define the intrinsic value of the good/product/resource one wishes to ascribe wealth to. Clearly, in a moneyless society, where exchange does not take place, there would be no need to do this. Ergo, 'wealth' per se would not actually exist in a moneyless society.


No it's not. They're same thing, political economy has fallen out of use.

They're patently not the same thing. Economics has moved in totally different directions (using quantitative methods of analysis, using cliometrics to analyse past societies etc.) to what political economy used to be. They are, IMO, different disciplines in the qualitative sense. 'New economics' is basically a pseudo-science; the numbers fit the conclusions and, as long as they do this, then the economists continue to purport their false theories of the economy based on this and that assumption. That was generally less of a phenomenon in the 19th century and before, when writing political economy was generally a more qualitative endeavour that relied on logic and rigour of argument as opposed to fitting numbers neatly into regression models.



That makes no sense. Supply is production of consumer goods, demand is the desire for consumer goods. A production process implies producing consumer goods (supply) for consumption (demand).

No. Supply/Demand analysis is the root of bourgeois economics. Its basic axiom is that the most efficient outcome in ALL situations is the equilibrium outcome (i.e. where supply = demand). This is basically bullshit, it is the basis of supply-side economics (i.e. neo-liberalism) and doesn't allow for any element of social justice, or equity in outcomes. It is a pile of crap.



What does that even mean? This seems oddly specific. That evil supply and demand!

If you really understood supply and demand analysis, you wouldn't scoff at the idea that it - as the main constituent part of bourgeois Economics - is the root of much evil.



Ultimately it's just semantics but it bothers me that such simplistic logic is applied. It just sounds really really stupid.

It's not semantics. You are being fucking bourgeois by refusing to let go of this notion that we can form a post-capitalist society based on the capitalist notion of supply and demand, and through using Economics as an academic discipline to plan the economy, rather than using democratic, inclusive means to do so.

[Sea]

The Washington region also specializes in wine making however it has less ideal circumstances than California does.Elitist snob. :glare:
Now due to California wine being "better," people flock to have it and it creates more of a demand whereas Washington gets less and less people wanting it and that could create a huge issue with jobs people cut since not as many people are needed for making wine due to low demand and so forth.

How do you prevent this?This is a non-issue, just as it is a non-issue under capitalism. How would the wine industry in a certain state grow so disproportionately for this to even be a problem? The only way for the situation you're describing to arise would be if first both WA and CA wine were just as good, and then suddenly WA wine became horrible and CA wine became awesome.

[ckaihatsu]

I would hope economists would cease to exist in their profession post-capitalism. It really is a dismal 'science'.




Also, whilst I think we should applaud the sort of thinking that tries to solve the riddle of 'from each according to his ability...', I don't think we should use supply/demand to do it. The problem with scarcity should not be seen through the bourgeois notion of supply and demand, which intuitively separates the production process into two sections: those who produce, and those who consume. This barrier between the two necessarily leads to a democratic deficit within the production process - it is a somewhat un-practical analysis in that it assumes away the reality that, particularly in the sort of socialist society we envision, finished goods will be the product of democratic input from individuals and groups, not from the splitting of the production process into supply and demand, which necessarily leads to production decisions based on bureaucracy (i.e. we will decide for you what we want you to produce, and we will decide for you what we want you to consume etc.).


I have to respectfully disagree and contend with your interpretation here, TB.

You're asserting that the mere *conceptualization* into 'supply' and 'demand' is problematic, when that is not necessarily the case. Of course a post-capitalist 'production' would be *democratic* -- and I, for one, have not proposed anything tantamount to a bureaucratic-collectivist administration.

[Skyhilist]

@Chomsssky
Most goods are made of various resources. What if a good falls in multiple categories?

I think it'd be best to just analyze such goods as a whole rather than analyzing their different parts. For example, suppose I have a TV. Instead of asking about each thing that it's made of, environmentalists would determine whether production of that TV overall is harmful environmentally, and if so, to what extent. Then, if it was harmful, the process would be taken to correct the part parts that were harmful to the environment so as would no longer have to be placed in the category of "environmentally sensitive" resources. This is when it would be appropriate to look at which specific parts had a negative environmental impact. Same thing should be done by economists to figure out supply relative to demand of the TV (for example), and then, if it couldn't be placed in the first category that I mentioned, figure out specifically what was going wrong.

[Skyhilist]

Also @The Boss here's the thing. You're going to have some resources where there aren't currently enough to go around to everyone who wants them. And note, I'm using the word "wants" not, "needs". Things can't be distributed according to need when no one really has a need for them.

So that leaves two options. A method similar to mine, or just rationing everything equally while trying to make it post-scarce.

Here's the problem with the latter approach. Suppose that I want a new flatscreen TV and a new smartphone. My neighbor wants both these things as well. For the sake of argument, lets assume that for both TVs and smartphone, there are more people who want them than there are currently TVs and iPhones to go around. Now, suppose that I really want a flatscreen TV but don't care as much about getting a new smartphone. But my neighbor really wants a smartphone and doesn't care as much about getting a flatscreen TV. Now, if we ration everything equally, both my neighbor and I have to wait months or even years possibly to get the things that we want. But, if we simply allow people to prioritize to lower consumption, then I might not want a smartphone enough to deplete the "points" that I have, but I definitely can and will get a TV right away because it's something that I really want, and I've prioritized it. The same is true with my neighbor for their smartphone. It seems obvious that this outcome is more preferable than just having to wait for possibly months or even years in some cases for certain resources instead of just being able to prioritize. Plus, keep in mind that it's only temporary. The goal is still post-scarcity.

[ckaihatsu]

[I]f we simply allow people to prioritize to lower consumption, then I might not want a smartphone enough to deplete the "points" that I have [...]





[O]n a technical / logistical note I'll point out that a blanket 'rationing' approach would *not* be very good because the 'credits' / points you outline here could *not possibly* apply to all goods on an even / proportional basis.

(For example, if the available supply of lithium-ion batteries was under-supplied by 25%, compared to the expressed demand for them, and the available supply of LED flashlights was under-supplied by *12%*, the two items would not be comparable in terms of demand, and a blanket point system would only *gloss over* this objective difference in demand for the two items.)


Questions for socialists?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/questions-socialistsi-p2711042/index.html#post2711042





The goal is still post-scarcity.

[Skyhilist]

[O]n a technical / logistical note I'll point out that a blanket 'rationing' approach would *not* be very good because the 'credits' / points you outline here could *not possibly* apply to all goods on an even / proportional basis.

(For example, if the available supply of lithium-ion batteries was under-supplied by 25%, compared to the expressed demand for them, and the available supply of LED flashlights was under-supplied by *12%*, the two items would not be comparable in terms of demand, and a blanket point system would only *gloss over* this objective difference in demand for the two items.)

What I'm talking about already addresses that though. To lower the consumption of anything to equal out the supply you can put a "price tag" on it (obviously no one makes money off the item, it just depletes someone's "points"), so that people will prioritize and less people will go after that thing. The higher the "price tag", the more that you lower consumption. So, in this case, you'd just give LED flashlights a lower "price tag" than lithium-ion batteries, because they're undersupplied by a lower amount. This is if we operated under the assumption of not treating something like a flashlight as a basic good/necessity that most people require, which I think it actually might be for a lot of people (which would warrant different treatment of the resource), but that's besides the point seeing as it's just an example.

[Skyhilist]

Also another idea would be to use rationing but combined with prioritizing. For example, you might create a queue of things that you want. Things that you put towards the top of the list (more important things) you'd be guaranteed to receive sooner, while things you put towards the bottom of the queue you might not receive as fast. For things that go together like flashlights + batteries, you'd have them deliver together and treat as one resource when rationing. I wouldn't be opposed to this approach either, although I don't think it could be nearly as exact in making sure not to run out or over-consume things that are already scarce or environmentally sensitive, so we'd need to be careful of that.

[Crabbensmasher]

Well, it's known that people will consume less if they know a surplus exists.

It may sound counterproductive, but maybe it's one of those ideas that are so crazy it might work:

Take a non-perishable item, for example, cans of tuna. Now, if there is a 'limit' on the amount of cans of tuna people can buy, it would seriously increase anxiety. People don't like feeling constrained, no matter how slight the constraint is. It's this whole idea of freedom. Here's a sub-example:

If I give you a bag of potato chips, and say that you can only have 100 chips, you would start worrying. You would literally be counting potato chips, making sure you had as many as you could without going over. On the other hand, if I gave you a bag of potato chips and said you could have as many chips as you wanted, then would you really eat 100? Probably not - 100 potato chips is a lot even if your hungry. So the point is, imposing a limit will cause anxiety, ultimately making the activity less enjoyable, and may actually cause you to eat MORE potato chips.

Now let's take that back to the example of the cans of tuna. Now, even though it may be in short supply/environmentally degrading, we could try at first to make many more than necessary. We'll make a whole pile of cans of tuna through any means necessary. Fish more than usual, produce more tin for the cans, etc etc, even if it's unsustainable.

So we have a giant pile of cans of tuna, more than anybody could ever use. I think if you do that just a few times, people would get the message and start buying less tuna. And if it's non-perishable, the surplus cans of tuna aren't even going to waste. At the end of the day, maybe 20 years down the road, people will perpetually be consuming less cans of tuna, and enjoying their tuna more than if there were limits imposed.

Obviously we'd have to make sure the tuna population would be able to survive the initial overfishing, but if they recovered sufficiently, they would be much better off in the long run. Also, this might be 'morally wrong', because ultimately, it's the illusion of freedom of tuna.

Just an idea. Probably very irresponsible, but it's worth being toyed around with. I think sociology could tell us a lot more tbh.

[Skyhilist]

I haven't seen any actual evidence to suggest that that would work, plus we're already on track to possibly have no fish in the ocean by 2050.

But food is obviously something that people need, not something that they just want, so it's not something you'd have to prioritize with to get, it's something that would be guaranteed to everyone. But really most if not all basic needs like food, shelter, etc. are already abundant enough where there's enough to go around. Most items that are naturally scarce aren't things that people actually need. Plus, we already spend money now (although it's much different than what I'm proposing), so we're already limited. This system basically guarantees you the majority of the things you have to buy now for free provided you work (if you're able-bodied and able to), and also gives you credit to spend on even more additional stuff; stuff which will only get less expensive over time. If anything that's going to reduce peoples stress.

I'm really not that nit-picky though, so long as a responsible and fair system is implemented to distribute naturally scarce and environmentally scarce resources that wont lead to overconsumption. This is just personally what I thought of.

[ckaihatsu]

What I'm talking about already addresses that though. To lower the consumption of anything to equal out the supply you can put a "price tag" on it (obviously no one makes money off the item, it just depletes someone's "points"), so that people will prioritize and less people will go after that thing. The higher the "price tag", the more that you lower consumption. So, in this case, you'd just give LED flashlights a lower "price tag" than lithium-ion batteries, because they're undersupplied by a lower amount. This is if we operated under the assumption of not treating something like a flashlight as a basic good/necessity that most people require, which I think it actually might be for a lot of people (which would warrant different treatment of the resource), but that's besides the point seeing as it's just an example.





Also another idea would be to use rationing but combined with prioritizing. For example, you might create a queue of things that you want. Things that you put towards the top of the list (more important things) you'd be guaranteed to receive sooner, while things you put towards the bottom of the queue you might not receive as fast. For things that go together like flashlights + batteries, you'd have them deliver together and treat as one resource when rationing. I wouldn't be opposed to this approach either, although I don't think it could be nearly as exact in making sure not to run out or over-consume things that are already scarce or environmentally sensitive, so we'd need to be careful of that.


Okay.

I don't want to be overly critical on any of this -- I think this is probably the best overall approach to a post-capitalist political economy that I've seen so far, aside from my own (see blog entry), but I *will* pose one issue with it:

How would points be assigned to individuals in the first place -- ?

If it's on a strictly across-the-board consistent basis -- say 100 points per person per month -- that would be very egalitarian, but it would be an overall (societal) *disincentive* towards new efforts at greater social coordination and experimental / speculative advancements in research and development.

And, conversely, if *increasing* rates of points could be obtained for increased amounts of work effort, *that* would be tantamount to the commodification of labor, since labor would be directly exchangeable for material rewards -- too close to a capitalistic market economy, in other words.

Part of the reason for using RevLeft so much is precisely for this question of a feasible political-logistical approach to a post-capitalist political economy, and why I've developed my own 'solution' for such, at my blog entry, blah blah blah....





Obviously we'd have to make sure the tuna population would be able to survive the initial overfishing, but if they recovered sufficiently, they would be much better off in the long run. Also, this might be 'morally wrong', because ultimately, it's the illusion of freedom of tuna.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture

[EoLE]

I've been thinking about these sorts of things myself lately (albeit from a left wing market anarchist perspective... I think, still not sure where I am on the anarchism spectrum).

I think a lot of people misunderstand the role that economic units like money once played before capitalists turned them towards the end of profit and exploitation. For one thing money used to be a kind of "stand in" for goods and services. A farmer might have harvested a corn crop but not needed anything just yet. By exchanging that crop for its equivalent in money the farmer could then go and purchase things later when necessary or desired. Holding onto the corn for that long would have seen it rot and go to waste.

Now obviously most of us on the far left don't want such an individualist market but according to the "from each-to each" condition it could be convenient to have some sort of central public trust that could create labour credits on the spot at someone's request which would just be numbers on an electronic swipe card just in case someone wants to turn in their work to a communal store but not claim back any wants or needs just yet. It would be a way of keeping record and proving that you truly are taking only what you need while also providing what you are able, digital records being available for public scrutiny to all.

[ckaihatsu]

Now obviously most of us on the far left don't want such an individualist market but according to the "from each-to each" condition it could be convenient to have some sort of central public trust that could create labour credits on the spot at someone's request which would just be numbers on an electronic swipe card just in case someone wants to turn in their work to a communal store but not claim back any wants or needs just yet. It would be a way of keeping record and proving that you truly are taking only what you need while also providing what you are able, digital records being available for public scrutiny to all.


I appreciate the overall ethos here, but my reservations from 6 months ago (post #35) haven't changed. The process of *quantifying* anyone's work into labor vouchers / points / tokens / whatever is problematic because there's no criteria proposed for how differing types of work would be valued in relation to each other (mining coal vs. picking berries, for example).

Here's an illustration of my critique:


Pies Must Line Up

http://s6.postimg.org/erqcsdyb1/140415_2_Pies_Must_Line_Up_xcf.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/erqcsdyb1/)

[bropasaran]

Some communities in Anarchist Spain that functioned according to anarcho-communism had the following mechanism:

Normal functioning is to agree on a common plan of production to satisfy needs of the people of the commune (or federation of communes), people sign up for this or that job that needs to be done, produce according to the plan, put all products in communal warehouses, and everyone takes what he wants with no charge. If some products start get scarce, they are rationed it in a certain way. Everyone gets a credit account with an amount of credits, scarce products get priced in those credits according to their scarcity- more scarce products costing more credits- and the scarce products get sold that way in the communal warehouses.

Another way of rationing that can be applied either on it's own or mixed with the previous one- scarce products are distributed according to a list for which people apply to, and then get ranked on it according to how much they need the product, however the people of the specific commune decide to measure that.

Once the scarcity passes, you go back to free access.

These "fail-safe" mechanisms are the answer to this objection to communism, which is basically the only real objection to it there is.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

You can't be serious about maintaining monetary transactions or debit cards?

It would maintain the necessary categories that allow capital to exist, the same relations between people mediated by a fetishised representative of something's value. I'm a bit rusty on this but it's something like that.

[ckaihatsu]

These "fail-safe" mechanisms are the answer to this objection to communism, which is basically the only real objection to it there is.


I'm *not* objecting to communism -- that's an overgeneralization, from my critique.





Some communities in Anarchist Spain that functioned according to anarcho-communism had the following mechanism:

Normal functioning is to agree on a common plan of production to satisfy needs of the people of the commune (or federation of communes), people sign up for this or that job that needs to be done, produce according to the plan, put all products in communal warehouses, and everyone takes what he wants with no charge.




If some products start get scarce, they are rationed it in a certain way. Everyone gets a credit account with an amount of credits,


This is where I have concerns -- what is "an amount", exactly -- ?

Are you saying that the mere process of formalization tends to inhibit selection and consumption -- is that it -- ? If so, it's the same as this argument, from before:





[T]o lower the consumption of anything to equal out the supply you can put a "price tag" on it (obviously no one makes money off the item, it just depletes someone's "points"), so that people will prioritize and less people will go after that thing. The higher the "price tag", the more that you lower consumption.


Regardless, the more-particular question of *how many* points would / should be assigned comes to the fore -- how is the number of points arrived-at, for any given person -- ?

Here's my critique of that approach, from earlier in the thread:





[O]n a technical / logistical note I'll point out that a blanket 'rationing' approach would *not* be very good because the 'credits' / points you outline here could *not possibly* apply to all goods on an even / proportional basis.

(For example, if the available supply of lithium-ion batteries was under-supplied by 25%, compared to the expressed demand for them, and the available supply of LED flashlights was under-supplied by *12%*, the two items would not be comparable in terms of demand, and a blanket point system would only *gloss over* this objective difference in demand for the two items.)





scarce products get priced in those credits according to their scarcity- more scarce products costing more credits- and the scarce products get sold that way in the communal warehouses.


This just begs the political-economy question because in effect this is simply reverting to the market mechanism, and I happen to want a lot of points so that I can buy more scarce products.





Another way of rationing that can be applied either on it's own or mixed with the previous one- scarce products are distributed according to a list for which people apply to,


This, itself, would be first-come-first-served, which is not so objectionable:





I think the quick, administrative answer might be basically 'first come, first served' -- even if it has to measured to a microsecond-point accuracy. One possible option might be a calendar-year timesharing, if the requesters are open to that.


---





and then get ranked on it according to how much they need the product, however the people of the specific commune decide to measure that.


The hazard with this is called 'groupthink' -- maybe the people of the specific commune wind up disproportionately favoring one person in particular with most of the goods that exists, and suddenly there's not enough of the stuff left over for *everyone else* who put themselves on the list.





Once the scarcity passes, you go back to free access.


Okay.

[Decolonize The Left]

While I admire the OP for the time and effort put into the idea, I believe we are looking at this backwards.

One cannot plan an economy when said economy is to be based upon conditions which do not yet exist. For the conditions which give rise to the economy in question (the overthrow/fall of capitalism, the possession of the means of production by the working class, the organization of said class in their own interest) necessarily establish the nature and process of the economy itself. One has the proverbial cart before the horse.

It is relatively useless and futile to abstract into a context which we cannot fully understand in any meaningful sense as our conclusions drawn will have no real relevancy. Our time would be better spent, in my humble opinion, working within our own context and figuring out how to change said context towards the better.

[Five Year Plan]

"Excuse me. Do you take Proletarian Express here?"

[ckaihatsu]

While I admire the OP for the time and effort put into the idea, I believe we are looking at this backwards.

One cannot plan an economy when said economy is to be based upon conditions which do not yet exist. For the conditions which give rise to the economy in question (the overthrow/fall of capitalism, the possession of the means of production by the working class, the organization of said class in their own interest) necessarily establish the nature and process of the economy itself. One has the proverbial cart before the horse.

It is relatively useless and futile to abstract into a context which we cannot fully understand in any meaningful sense as our conclusions drawn will have no real relevancy. Our time would be better spent, in my humble opinion, working within our own context and figuring out how to change said context towards the better.


From a past thread:





I'll respectfully point out that the 'higher stage' of communism, while desirable, sounds increasingly to me like a *religious* concept -- of heaven, the hereafter, etc. It doesn't help either us as revolutionaries or the cause of communism to adopt an abstract concept that also sounds "post-materialist" and makes us shut off our thinking about such a society *in* a realistic, materialist context.

The matter of material accounting -- with labor credits or whatever -- will remain a pressing question, along with the issue of luxury goods, and it would be better to be as decisive as possible on these, earlier rather than later.

We shouldn't be satisfied to pretend that there could be a point of historical *stasis* sometime in the future, post-revolution. With a fully liberated technological drive we would undoubtedly see a *faster* pace of developments, which would only *beg* the question of who-gets-what-and-when.

[Skyhilist]

I'm being accused of utopian blueprinting it seems. I don't think that's the case, because this plan doesn't assume things to be true that may or may not actually be true after a revolution. Regardless of the conditions that lead to the revolution, and the conditions after the revolution, resources that are naturally scarce (i.e. more demand than supply) will need to be distributed through some means other than "just take whatever" as can be done with post-scarce resources. That - and the fact that we need to strive to be sustainable, is all that this plan assumes about the type of world that will exist after a revolution.

[bropasaran]

You can't be serious about maintaining monetary transactions or debit cards?

It would maintain the necessary categories that allow capital to exist, the same relations between people mediated by a fetishised representative of something's value. I'm a bit rusty on this but it's something like that.
You know what else allows capital to exist? Humans. If we were to abolish humans, we would be pretty sure that capitalism wouldn't exist. This pop-economics nonsense wrapped in quasi-marxism about how commodity production is capitalism and therefore it should be abolished (instead of surpassed) makes the saying "throwing the baby out with the bath water" an understatement. Commodity production can exist without any capitalism and capitalism can exist without commodity production. Markets in themselves are not bad, capitalist, exploitative or whatever, they're just inefficient and unstable, market forms of socialism like anarcho-individualism and mutualism are not viable, but that doesn't make them non-socialistic.


I'm *not* objecting to communism
I didn't say you were. I just said that it's an objection to communism, which the OP mentions.


This is where I have concerns -- what is "an amount", exactly -- ?
Don't know why you would have concerns. "An amount" is whatever the commune decides, e.g. everyone gets 100 credits, and a scarce product X is assigned a price of 10 credits.


Are you saying that the mere process of formalization tends to inhibit selection and consumption -- is that it -- ?
Restriction of consumption (being given a certain amount of credits instead of having free access) by definition inhibits aggregate consumption.


his just begs the political-economy question because in effect this is simply reverting to the market mechanism,
No, it doesn't. It is called by some "artificial market" because something like money and prices exist, but it's not a market mechanism by a long shot, the prices are (decentrally) planned, the amount of credits everyone gets is planned, and it is enacted inside a system where the production is planned.


This, itself, would be first-come-first-served
No, it would not, exactly the opposite. The very point of the list existing is not to end up with first-come-first-served, but let anyone who wants the product sing up for it, and distribute it only after all the signed up are ranked.


The hazard with this is called 'groupthink'
That's always a hazard in any group, the only way to eliminate the hazard is to not have groups, which is worse then having the hazard.

[Decolonize The Left]

Originally Posted by ckaihatsu

I'll respectfully point out that the 'higher stage' of communism, while desirable, sounds increasingly to me like a *religious* concept -- of heaven, the hereafter, etc. It doesn't help either us as revolutionaries or the cause of communism to adopt an abstract concept that also sounds "post-materialist" and makes us shut off our thinking about such a society *in* a realistic, materialist context.

Very well, only I am not talking about a 'higher stage' of communism. I'm saying that communism represents a fundamentally different human context. We can't speak to what labor credits would look like in communism any more than a serf could speak of what derivatives would look like under capitalism. This is simple logic.


The matter of material accounting -- with labor credits or whatever -- will remain a pressing question, along with the issue of luxury goods, and it would be better to be as decisive as possible on these, earlier rather than later.

This is not a pressing question (evidence: everything), nor is it of interest to the working class what-so-ever. It is nothing other than abstract navel-gazing. The pressing question is: how do we get possession of the means of production. From this point and this point only can we can begin to discuss material accounting and luxury goods because it is only from this point that we have the physical means to discuss them. Until then this discussion will remain contextualized by capitalism and hence will exist within the very framework which it attempts to escape.


We shouldn't be satisfied to pretend that there could be a point of historical *stasis* sometime in the future, post-revolution. With a fully liberated technological drive we would undoubtedly see a *faster* pace of developments, which would only *beg* the question of who-gets-what-and-when.

When the working class possesses the means of production this discussion is moot one way or the other. Only then will actual discussion on this issue take place.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

You know what else allows capital to exist? Humans. If we were to abolish humans, we would be pretty sure that capitalism wouldn't exist.

Not "humans" but "workers". Not "abolish" but "supercede". Now what I just quoted makes sense. You're the one who put the word "abolish" into my mouth.

As for the rest, I didn't bother reading after "pop-economics". Your entire argument rests on a misinterpretation of my previous post.

[ckaihatsu]

Don't know why you would have concerns. "An amount" is whatever the commune decides, e.g. everyone gets 100 credits, and a scarce product X is assigned a price of 10 credits.


I'm sorry, but I still don't see how this is workable -- even with the best intentions and attentions I think that groupthink could easily be the shortcoming with this. In other words, if a commune decides that everyone gets 100 points and a scarce resource is equal to 10 points, there may be 1,000,000 people who would gladly put in their 10 points to get the scarce thing, but there happens to not be enough of it for a million people anyway -- that's why the whole points regime is *arbitrary* in relation to actual material quantities.





This just begs the political-economy question because in effect this is simply reverting to the market mechanism, and I happen to want a lot of points so that I can buy more scarce products.





No, it doesn't. It is called by some "artificial market" because something like money and prices exist, but it's not a market mechanism by a long shot, the prices are (decentrally) planned, the amount of credits everyone gets is planned, and it is enacted inside a system where the production is planned.


Whatever. It's far from being a solid approach.





No, it would not, exactly the opposite. The very point of the list existing is not to end up with first-come-first-served, but let anyone who wants the product sing up for it, and distribute it only after all the signed up are ranked.


Smacks of elitism -- again there's no criteria set for how either people or goods are to be 'ranked'.





That's always a hazard in any group, the only way to eliminate the hazard is to not have groups, which is worse then having the hazard.


But what you're saying *is* to leave it to the group -- the 'commune' -- and without any pre-specified criteria.

[ckaihatsu]

Very well, only I am not talking about a 'higher stage' of communism. I'm saying that communism represents a fundamentally different human context. We can't speak to what labor credits would look like in communism any more than a serf could speak of what derivatives would look like under capitalism. This is simple logic.



This is not a pressing question (evidence: everything), nor is it of interest to the working class what-so-ever. It is nothing other than abstract navel-gazing. The pressing question is: how do we get possession of the means of production. From this point and this point only can we can begin to discuss material accounting and luxury goods because it is only from this point that we have the physical means to discuss them. Until then this discussion will remain contextualized by capitalism and hence will exist within the very framework which it attempts to escape.



When the working class possesses the means of production this discussion is moot one way or the other. Only then will actual discussion on this issue take place.


Well, I'll respectfully differ with you -- I see material realities such as mass production, human needs, labor, and consumption as being quantities that will continue to exist, post-revolution. Therefore we can 'logically' discuss them in the here-and-now, in preparation for what the working class -- including ourselves -- may want to do regarding such productive dynamics.

I would rather be able to explain to someone what the proletariat would be able to do for itself, through its own political economy, while in-control-of the means of mass industrial production. My proposed framework is here:





communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

This is an 8-1/2" x 40" wide table that describes a communist-type political / economic model using three rows and six descriptive columns. The three rows are surplus-value-to-overhead, no surplus, and surplus-value-to-pleasure. The six columns are ownership / control, associated material values, determination of material values, material function, infrastructure / overhead, and propagation.

http://tinyurl.com/ygybheg

[bropasaran]

I'm sorry, but I still don't see how this is workable -- even with the best intentions and attentions I think that groupthink could easily be the shortcoming with this. In other words, if a commune decides that everyone gets 100 points and a scarce resource is equal to 10 points, there may be 1,000,000 people who would gladly put in their 10 points to get the scarce thing, but there happens to not be enough of it for a million people anyway -- that's why the whole points regime is *arbitrary* in relation to actual material quantities.
To presuppose such a disastrous scenario where a million people want something but there's enough only for a tiny number of people (otherwise the price of it would be 80 or 90 or 100 credits, being that scarcity is that huge because of the huge demand) would presuppose a total failure of the commune (of federation of communes, being that there's more then a million people there) to plan it's production. If this were to happen in a communist society, that communist society shouldn't think about fail-safes, but should start thinking about instituting markets in some sectors of it's economy; but I don't think anything like that would happen. When I'm talking about communism, I am presupposing a (anarcho) communist society with modern technology where planning production goes reasonably smoothly, meaning that appearances of scarcity are rare and minor.


Whatever. It's far from being a solid approach.
That's just your opinion. To which I can say whatever with much more justification then you can say that to a proposed system of anarchist economy given by anarcho-collectivists as a mechanism to be applied not just exceptionally but as a rule. I would rather point you to read books that explain Parecon, which goes into great detail and shows the solidness of that approach.


Smacks of elitism -- again there's no criteria set for how either people or goods are to be 'ranked'.
I don't see what's elitistic in a directly-democratic decetrally planned society deciding to distribute a scarce product to those it agrees need it the most, it's basically the exact opposite of elitism, and btw in perfect accord with the principle "to each according his needs".

[ckaihatsu]

To presuppose such a disastrous scenario where a million people want something but there's enough only for a tiny number of people (otherwise the price of it would be 80 or 90 or 100 credits, being that scarcity is that huge because of the huge demand) would presuppose a total failure of the commune (of federation of communes, being that there's more then a million people there) to plan it's production.


Okay, I don't mean to put forth a *disastrous* scenario -- rather, I'll just reiterate that 'points' are too arbitrary for accurately representing real demand across a wide variety of items (see post #40).

Would it really be equitable for the same 'points' to cover unmet mass demand for just-developed flying cars, for example, along with unmet mass demand for truffles or caviar -- ? The reasons for scarcity for each are vastly different, and using 'points' to represent an 'economic' status for anything is really just a money substitute, and still with no provision for how one acquires points in the first place.





My standing critique [...] is that a 'points system' doesn't go far enough because the question of how points are issued in the first place is intractable:




How would points be assigned to individuals in the first place -- ?

If it's on a strictly across-the-board consistent basis -- say 100 points per person per month -- that would be very egalitarian, but it would be an overall (societal) *disincentive* towards new efforts at greater social coordination and experimental / speculative advancements in research and development.

And, conversely, if *increasing* rates of points could be obtained for increased amounts of work effort, *that* would be tantamount to the commodification of labor, since labor would be directly exchangeable for material rewards -- too close to a capitalistic market economy, in other words.





If this were to happen in a communist society, that communist society shouldn't think about fail-safes, but should start thinking about instituting markets in some sectors of it's economy;


I find it less-than-encouraging that you, and other anarchists, would be so willing to use the market mechanism as a fall-back, albeit in dire circumstances.





but I don't think anything like that would happen. When I'm talking about communism, I am presupposing a (anarcho) communist society with modern technology where planning production goes reasonably smoothly, meaning that appearances of scarcity are rare and minor.


Of course.





Whatever. It's far from being a solid approach.





That's just your opinion. To which I can say whatever with much more justification then you can say that to a proposed system of anarchist economy given by anarcho-collectivists as a mechanism to be applied not just exceptionally but as a rule. I would rather point you to read books that explain Parecon, which goes into great detail and shows the solidness of that approach.


No, if it was only my opinion then you could dismiss it as such, but I'm actually making *arguments* that point to how the reasoning / rationale / premise underlying any 'points' system, including Parecon, is faulty.





Smacks of elitism -- again there's no criteria set for how either people or goods are to be 'ranked'.





I don't see what's elitistic in a directly-democratic decetrally planned society deciding to distribute a scarce product to those it agrees need it the most, it's basically the exact opposite of elitism, and btw in perfect accord with the principle "to each according his needs".


The reason I said it 'smacks of elitism' is because of the arbitrariness of social decision-making over material quantities -- you're actually ready to assign a blanket '100 points' to everyone *regardless* of actual material quantities on-hand. This requires a market-faith-like belief that everyone's acquisitive intentions will just somehow "match up" to what's out there, with no shortages or mismatches whatsoever as a result.

As soon as your new 'invisible hand' fails *once* to properly allocate everything, the social conditions for elitism will emerge as a consequence.

[EoLE]

I appreciate the overall ethos here, but my reservations from 6 months ago (post #35) haven't changed. The process of *quantifying* anyone's work into labor vouchers / points / tokens / whatever is problematic because there's no criteria proposed for how differing types of work would be valued in relation to each other (mining coal vs. picking berries, for example).

Here's an illustration of my critique:


Pies Must Line Up

http://s6.postimg.org/erqcsdyb1/140415_2_Pies_Must_Line_Up_xcf.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/erqcsdyb1/)

Nice visual. Very helpful. I guess one way of at least trying to keep on top of what you're talking about would be to have a simple, visual representation (something like what you have there) which initially would start off with the pies showing resources to which people would match the next level, their desired production, using resources available as a guide. Then as things like production and consumption etc are undertaken the database could be given live updates each day at the close of business at factories or in food markets etc showing, in real time, whether the pies are lining up as you say. This is one of the things that excites me most, how new technologies like the internet might alleviate some of the problems that socialist and communist experiments had in the past. Imagine how many deadly famines or wasteful surpluses could have been avoided in countries even as large as China and Russia if people from one end to the next could see supply emergencies in their infancy and start focusing more the very next day on production of things that were falling behind by taking excess labour from things that were being overproduced.
Eventually such a real time database could avoid the need for any mass gatherings of citizens to vote on production for the coming year. Even if you had to 'meet' online initially to get things running smoothly I bet once it was up and running the pies could eventually be made to line up. But as you say there is still the necessity of objectively defining some operational definitions for very important concepts like effort and credit.

[bropasaran]

Would it really be equitable for the same 'points' to cover unmet mass demand for just-developed flying cars, for example, along with unmet mass demand for truffles or caviar -- ?
I think that there cannot be such scarcities in properly organizad communist collective. I have noticed that a lot of communists haven't read Kropotkin and seem to have some picture of a planned economy being some caricature of USSR with everything being produced on a single plan, only without the party. The USSR didn't actually ever have such a system, nor will communism look like that supposed model minus the party. The commune will have a set of different, some connected, some not, production plans for basic needs, for stuff which have continuous and steady demand. The commune itself will decide what basic needs are, but supposedly that will encompas certain food, clothing, housing, furniture, infrastructure, and similar things, of course- both production and maintenance. Other things, like flying cars and maybe also truffles and caviar, will be produced not by the commune, but by production affinity groups (i'll abbreviate to PAG). E.g. Kropotkin gives the examples of pianos- pianos are not going to be produced by the commune as a whole, but by an affinity group of piano enthusiasts who will make pianos because they like pianos, and if someone wants a piano, he will join the piano PAG and ask for such an such a piano, the piano PAG will (make and) give him that piano, and presumably that person will contribute some labor the piano PAG to keep it going, as an act of reciprocity and desire that other people can have pianos too.


I find it less-than-encouraging that you, and other anarchists, would be so willing to use the market mechanism as a fall-back, albeit in dire circumstances.
You gave an example of basically a complete failure of not only communism but of planned economy in itself, so if that were to happen, the logical step would be to start introducing unplanned economy in certain sectors of production.


The reason I said it 'smacks of elitism' is because of the arbitrariness of social decision-making over material quantities
There basically only two options- either it's decided democratically, or it is decided by a minority that is ruling over the majority, in either case you can call it arbitrary. You seem to be calling "arbitrary" my view that it's the people of the commune that are supposed to decide, I don't see what would not be arbitrary- for me to in advance proclaim specific and supposedly necessarilly true answers to situations that some people in the future will have?

[ckaihatsu]

I think that there cannot be such scarcities in properly organizad communist collective. I have noticed that a lot of communists haven't read Kropotkin and seem to have some picture of a planned economy being some caricature of USSR with everything being produced on a single plan, only without the party. The USSR didn't actually ever have such a system, nor will communism look like that supposed model minus the party. The commune will have a set of different, some connected, some not, production plans for basic needs, for stuff which have continuous and steady demand. The commune itself will decide what basic needs are, but supposedly that will encompas certain food, clothing, housing, furniture, infrastructure, and similar things, of course- both production and maintenance. Other things, like flying cars and maybe also truffles and caviar, will be produced not by the commune, but by production affinity groups (i'll abbreviate to PAG). E.g. Kropotkin gives the examples of pianos- pianos are not going to be produced by the commune as a whole, but by an affinity group of piano enthusiasts who will make pianos because they like pianos, and if someone wants a piano, he will join the piano PAG and ask for such an such a piano, the piano PAG will (make and) give him that piano, and presumably that person will contribute some labor the piano PAG to keep it going, as an act of reciprocity and desire that other people can have pianos too.


Okay, acknowledged. I have no differences with this general approach, except to bring us back to the more-logistical aspect of how to handle a flood of demand for discretionary items like pianos.

If the piano enthusiasts make pianos because they *like* to make pianos, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will naturally make enough pianos to satisfy a mass demand for them. Of course I don't presume to say that I know the specifics of such, as to how long some might have to wait for their pianos, or if some kind of rationing would be advised as a deterrent, but nonetheless the question of how to handle such scarcities remains.

I'll maintain that a 'points' system is -- as far as I can see -- tantamount to having faith in the market system, and that's why I find that whole approach lacking.





You gave an example of basically a complete failure of not only communism but of planned economy in itself,


No, I didn't -- you're mischaracterizing it, and here's the proof:





Okay, I don't mean to put forth a *disastrous* scenario


---





so if that were to happen, the logical step would be to start introducing unplanned economy in certain sectors of production.


This is off-topic, to put it generously.

I don't think a once-socialist social order would *have* to regress to a more-backward mode of production, even in the midst of a natural catastrophe -- our world, for example, doesn't think of *slavery* as being the fall-back go-to method if all else fails, because it's simply too barbaric and anachronistic, regardless.





There basically only two options- either it's decided democratically, or it is decided by a minority that is ruling over the majority, in either case you can call it arbitrary. You seem to be calling "arbitrary" my view that it's the people of the commune that are supposed to decide, I don't see what would not be arbitrary- for me to in advance proclaim specific and supposedly necessarilly true answers to situations that some people in the future will have?


What I'm finding 'arbitrary' is the method proposed for handling scarcities around discretionary items -- the 'points' system -- as I've already explained.

[EoLE]

Other things, like flying cars and maybe also truffles and caviar, will be produced not by the commune, but by production affinity groups (i'll abbreviate to PAG). E.g. Kropotkin gives the examples of pianos- pianos are not going to be produced by the commune as a whole, but by an affinity group of piano enthusiasts who will make pianos because they like pianos, and if someone wants a piano, he will join the piano PAG and ask for such an such a piano, the piano PAG will (make and) give him that piano, and presumably that person will contribute some labor the piano PAG to keep it going, as an act of reciprocity and desire that other people can have pianos too.

I like the sound of that. I'd also have to assume that in a much more equitable system (without the huge administrative and production burden of a consumer culture of mass produced things we are manipulated into buying and which break soon after) there'd be much more free time on people's hands. We could decide on the things we actually need using the lower sections of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, especially the physiological needs like food, beverage, shelter etc. Then as you get up to some of the more individualist notions and esteem/self actualisation desires there could be, as you say, affinity groups or 'guilds' or whatever that work together to make their pianos, guitars, champagne, cigars or what have you. Even if these things became more popular and threatened to drag labour away from more necessary items (which could be monitored in close to real time statistics online by keeping track of production and consumption with daily updates) I guess you could attempt to lower demand and redirect production by adding a certain percentage of points or credits to the cost. You could create a commodity index based on, again, Maslow's hierarchy of needs or something like it that increased work credit price on objects the higher up you go towards things that are the luxuries of life.
PS Apologies to ckaihatsu for continuing to use vague, undefined words still like credit or points. We'll get there eventually :grin:

[Decolonize The Left]

Well, I'll respectfully differ with you -- I see material realities such as mass production, human needs, labor, and consumption as being quantities that will continue to exist, post-revolution. Therefore we can 'logically' discuss them in the here-and-now, in preparation for what the working class -- including ourselves -- may want to do regarding such productive dynamics.

I understand that, and I agree that these realities will continue to exist. My point is simply that a) we can't conceptualize how we will relate to them and b) we can't speak for the working class as a whole. It is almost assured that any movement out of capitalism will be nasty and unpleasant - I believe that what organizations of production, labor, and consumption that are produced by this movement will be many and confusing at first. There's no reason to believe why a plan today will be applicable then in any sense.


I would rather be able to explain to someone what the proletariat would be able to do for itself, through its own political economy, while in-control-of the means of mass industrial production. My proposed framework is here:

I'm not trying to be rude but have you ever actually showed that to a 'regular' working class person? I've been on this forum for some years now, studied politics and philosophy for many more, I've have had conversations with you, I like you, and even I couldn't get through a couple columns. I'll give it another go later but... it's pretty obscure.

[ckaihatsu]

PS Apologies to ckaihatsu for continuing to use vague, undefined words still like credit or points. We'll get there eventually :grin:


I'm duly incensed, of course.... (grin)

I can only repeat that I find the 'points' approach to be half-baked, at best.





I understand that, and I agree that these realities will continue to exist. My point is simply that a) we can't conceptualize how we will relate to them


I really don't see why not.





and b) we can't speak for the working class as a whole.


Not on its *behalf*, of course, but everything we do as revolutionaries is in the working class' *best interests*.





It is almost assured that any movement out of capitalism will be nasty and unpleasant - I believe that what organizations of production, labor, and consumption that are produced by this movement will be many and confusing at first. There's no reason to believe why a plan today will be applicable then in any sense.


I agree that any 'blueprint' *would* be premature and presumptuous. Mine is a *framework*, to address the material generalities that we both agree will continue to exist for humanity, regardless.





I'm not trying to be rude but have you ever actually showed that to a 'regular' working class person?


I *have* discussed the concepts with people on occasion, but I don't have the resources to make any routine of it. I may get to producing hardcopies of the diagrams to have with me at all times, for such occasions.





I've been on this forum for some years now, studied politics and philosophy for many more, I've have had conversations with you, I like you, and even I couldn't get through a couple columns. I'll give it another go later but... it's pretty obscure.


Well, I like you too -- I think it's the fur and aquatic environment.... (heh)

Let me know what eludes you and I'll be glad to fill-in as needed -- that's what a discussion board is for, after all...(!)

Here's a framework of the framework, if you will, to get you started on:


communist economy diagram UPDATE

http://s6.postimg.org/3n7vdvy7h/140509_communist_economy_diagram_UPDATE_xcf.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/3n7vdvy7h/)

[bropasaran]

except to bring us back to the more-logistical aspect of how to handle a flood of demand for discretionary items like pianos.
There is nothing to handle, the point of a planned economy is by definition to plan ahead. There is not going to be some "entrepreneurial" spirit of the commune to produce pianos and hope that there will be demand for them, the whole point of having a planned economy is to have a clearly expressed demand so as to meet it as efficiently as possible, which also means to have, as much as possible, explicit demand before the start of production. If in a single day a thousand people wake up and decide they want a piano, communism doesn't promise them pianos waiting for them, it just gives them them option to acqire pianos with the least amount of labor, waste and stress that is possible in the real world.


If the piano enthusiasts make pianos because they *like* to make pianos, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will naturally make enough pianos to satisfy a mass demand for them.If this becomes a problem, the piano PAG can say to newly joined members requesting a piano- if you can do some work, come and work with us, do an x amount of labor (having in mind that we have modern technology and that we're talking about communism, that x will probably be very little) on some job that contributes to making of pianos, and you can have the piano you want. Situation where someone would take the piano and then fail to contribute to the piano PAG could probably be prevented by informal social pressure.

In the small change that informal social pressure doesn't do it, explicit social pressure would do, e.g. another PAG could say to a new member requesting it's product- sorry, but what you did to the piano PAG was a dick thing to do, and we don't want to make this product for you until you go and apologize and help them out a little (and if that PAG too has a problem with having enough volunteer labor to make it's product, they could also ask new members to first contribute a little and then get the product they want).


I'll maintain that a 'points' system is -- as far as I can see -- tantamount to having faith in the market systemAs I already said- the points system isn't a market mechanism.


No, I didn't -- you're mischaracterizing it, and here's the proof:You said A. I said A amounts to B. You saying "A doesn't amount to B" isn't proof that A doesn't amount to B. And your A (there being a milion people demanding something that is so scarce that only a dozen or so people can have it) actually does amount to B (that community's total failure at planned economy). But whatever, this is totally besides the topic.


I don't think a once-socialist social order would *have* to regress to a more-backward mode of production, even in the midst of a natural catastrophe -- our world, for example, doesn't think of *slavery* as being the fall-back go-to method if all else fails, because it's simply too barbaric and anachronistic, regardless.You not only pressupose that markets per se are non-socialistic, you compare them with slavery? The first is simply not true, and the second is just silly. There is nothing un-socialistic about markets in themselves, in theory you could have market socialism (as for example anarcho-individualism and mutualism), and if they were by some miracle to be stable, you would have a totally socialistic system in which there would be nothing oppressive or exploitative.


What I'm finding 'arbitrary' is the method proposed for handling scarcities around discretionary items -- the 'points' system -- as I've already explained. No, you didn't explain, you just asserted that it's arbitrary.


I like the sound of that. I'd also have to assume that in a much more equitable system (without the huge administrative and production burden of a consumer culture of mass produced things we are manipulated into buying and which break soon after) there'd be much more free time on people's hands.
Kropotkin in 1892. thought that a 25-30 hour work week would be more then enough; in a communist community with modern technology, I think it's safe to assume that a 15 hour work week would be the maximum needed to fulfill the basic needs of all citizen, or maybe a 20 hour week, and I say this with the view that a large chunk of work would be the Homer Simpson jobs of sitting and looking over machines.

[ckaihatsu]

[T]he whole point of having a planned economy is to have a clearly expressed demand so as to meet it as efficiently as possible, which also means to have, as much as possible, explicit demand before the start of production.


Agreed. Here's from my framework (at post #49):





Material function

consumption [demand] -- All economic needs and desires are formally recorded as pre-planned consumer orders and are politically prioritized [demand]




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174





If this becomes a problem, the piano PAG can say to newly joined members requesting a piano- if you can do some work, come and work with us, do an x amount of labor (having in mind that we have modern technology and that we're talking about communism, that x will probably be very little) on some job that contributes to making of pianos, and you can have the piano you want. Situation where someone would take the piano and then fail to contribute to the piano PAG could probably be prevented by informal social pressure.

In the small change that informal social pressure doesn't do it, explicit social pressure would do, e.g. another PAG could say to a new member requesting it's product- sorry, but what you did to the piano PAG was a dick thing to do, and we don't want to make this product for you until you go and apologize and help them out a little (and if that PAG too has a problem with having enough volunteer labor to make it's product, they could also ask new members to first contribute a little and then get the product they want).


Okay, but what if the reality isn't pianos but something more technical and automated, like the making of microchips for computers -- ? The case could very well be that adding one-off individuals to the labor process wouldn't really be appropriate -- what's *really* needed is an 'upgrade' to a newer fabrication plant altogether, and that would require a more focused, dedicated, large-scale effort. Yet there's currently a 'backlog' of people who are dissatisfied with existing technologies and are mass-demanding the 'upgrade'.

Sure, you could say that if there's such a large population with the same desires then they should just go ahead and implement production for that, as they see fit. But those who are used to *using* technology may not necessarily be as knowledgeable about the *production* of that technology, and would basically have to acclimate themselves to current production techniques, get up-to-speed, etc. It would be questionable as to whether they could just 'step up to the workbench' and immediately be useful, contributing laborers in such a situation.

(I don't mean to argue for a continued specialization around matters of technical knowledge -- certainly a post-commodity social environment might very well implement the use of technology in entirely different ways from what we're used to seeing today.)


---





I'll maintain that a 'points' system is -- as far as I can see -- tantamount to having faith in the market system, and that's why I find that whole approach lacking.





As I already said- the points system isn't a market mechanism.


The points system is better described as 'market socialism', and a direct implication of that is the direct exchangeability of points for material goods, *without* the pre-planning that you've mentioned above. Market socialism is inherently contradictory because of this, because you can't have both a planned economy *and* an unplanned, pay-as-you-go points system.





You not only pressupose that markets per se are non-socialistic, you compare them with slavery? The first is simply not true, and the second is just silly. There is nothing un-socialistic about markets in themselves, in theory you could have market socialism (as for example anarcho-individualism and mutualism), and if they were by some miracle to be stable, you would have a totally socialistic system in which there would be nothing oppressive or exploitative.





What I'm finding 'arbitrary' is the method proposed for handling scarcities around discretionary items -- the 'points' system -- as I've already explained.





No, you didn't explain, you just asserted that it's arbitrary.


(See above.)

[EoLE]

The points system is better described as 'market socialism', and a direct implication of that is the direct exchangeability of points for material goods, *without* the pre-planning that you've mentioned above. Market socialism is inherently contradictory because of this, because you can't have both a planned economy *and* an unplanned, pay-as-you-go points system.

I take this point but I would suggest that it is both, a decentralised planned economy which begins from a direct democratic process of setting and then maintaining production targets (with things like the environment and 'social good' in mind etc) and then, yes, some limited allowance for 'free trade' among producers and providers of goods and services but only without the possibility of profit and with only an amount of credits that backs what they have produced in the recent past. In other words if you and your colleagues have produced 50,000 kg or oranges in an orange harvest you are recompensed the appropriate amount of credits. They are now yours to use how and when you wish. You have fulfilled your end of the 'from each' principle. You have a form of social proof of this and now you are easily and conveniently able to enact your rights to the 'to each' principle of socialism. This non-fiat (because it's backed by labour), non money (because it can't facilitate profit) type of digital medium is convenient because every harvest, every production of a commodity and every provision of a service will not align so perfectly on a single day every month or year or whatever so that everyone can be seen to be making a perfectly even or just close to perfectly even trade of labour at a local communal store. It would make the problem of non contributors potentially problematic, those who might be inclined to take advantage of everyone else's labour without exerting any or much of their own (in a sense they'd be the 'tiny capitalists' of socialism taking what they didn't earn). This was always one of the potential problems with 'from each- to each' in a large socialist society, just keeping track of things to making sure the value was being upheld. What is to be done with the lazy person? Forget that! In my mind the real problem is, in a commune of thousands or a wider region of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people how do you even identify them in order to deal with them in the first place?. With such a medium of exchange the entire public could have access to the public records. This transparency would incentivise honesty while making it possible to interview people who are falling behind or not working at all. Where once people might have talked of banishment or punishment these days we realise some people can be so chemically depressed they struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Or maybe they're bravely working through an injury or illness trying to keep up appearances and social status and need to be stopped working and given treatment and whatever form of 'welfare' this society will have until they're better.

[ckaihatsu]

The points system is better described as 'market socialism', and a direct implication of that is the direct exchangeability of points for material goods, *without* the pre-planning that you've mentioned above. Market socialism is inherently contradictory because of this, because you can't have both a planned economy *and* an unplanned, pay-as-you-go points system.





I take this point but I would suggest that it is both, a decentralised planned economy


(I'll never understand why 'decentralized' is always touted a *selling point*....) (Economically / materially speaking it's more human-labor-intensive, since there's necessarily more duplication-of-effort, from a greater number of smaller constituent units ('communes') operating in parallel -- since their collective / ground-in-common was not generalized and centralized to cover broader terrain.





which begins from a direct democratic process of setting and then maintaining production targets (with things like the environment and 'social good' in mind etc)


Agreed on this part.





and then, yes, some limited allowance for 'free trade' among producers and providers of goods and services but only without the possibility of profit


And I'd like Santa Claus to live in the neighborhood, but it's *not* gonna happen -- (!)

You can open the box just a crack and hope the genie doesn't get out, but it's not that kind of thing -- the genie, in this case being profit's degree of social hegemony, can't be 'disallowed', or 'ruled null and void', even with an otherwise egalitarian worker-run economy, because where's there's commodification, in any form, there's *profit* as an objective economic motivator. And profits currently drive social reproduction in our bourgeois age.

I'll take a moment here to brazenly plug my own creation:





I'll contend that I have developed a model that [...] uses a system of *circulating* labor credits that are *not* exchangeable for material items of any kind.




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673





and with only an amount of credits that backs what they have produced in the recent past.


Yeah, that rolls off the tongue real easy, but how does a collective political economy actually *make* the criteria to be used to assign formal valuations to real work contributed -- ?

And what might those criteria be?

Here's again from the intro:





In accordance with communism being synonymous with 'free-access', all material implements, resources, and products would be freely available and *not* quantifiable according to any abstract valuations. The labor credits would represent past labor hours completed, multiplied by the difficulty or hazard of the work role performed. The difficulty/hazard multiplier would be determined by a mass survey of all work roles, compiled into an index.

In this way all concerns for labor, large and small, could be reduced to the ready transfer of labor-hour credits. The fulfillment of work roles would bring labor credits into the liberated-laborer's possession, and would empower them with a labor-organizing and labor-utilizing ability directly proportionate to the labor credits from past work completed.





In other words if you and your colleagues have produced 50,000 kg or oranges in an orange harvest you are recompensed the appropriate amount of credits.


This form of 'credits' *are* exchangeable for goods (the oranges) and that means they're no different from today's currency. You'd need a state to issue it if it's to remain monolithic, and any restrictions to its free-flow would be *regulations* from the state, merely *mitigating* certain *parts* of capital, but that's about it, at best. Welcome to Stalinism and/or bourgeois social democracy.





They are now yours to use how and when you wish. You have fulfilled your end of the 'from each' principle. You have a form of social proof of this and now you are easily and conveniently able to enact your rights to the 'to each' principle of socialism.


Fetishize much -- ?





So material realities of how things are produced yields this statement to be based in *idealism* and *moralism*:





In Gotha, Marx says "The same amount of labor he has contributed to society will be returned in proportion."





In other words such a calculation would be impossible to arrive-at in the first place, for the same reasons that it's impossible to determine what fraction of a dollar today is labor-based (as opposed to exchange-value-based).

A simple argument against the conventional conception would be to ask how to handle the benefits of labor on an *inter-generational* basis -- should younger, incoming generations be obligated to rebuild the world anew, from scratch -- ? If not then they're obviously benefitting from *past labor*, which is disproportionate to the limited years of labor they could have possibly put in at such a young age.


---





This non-fiat (because it's backed by labour), non money (because it can't facilitate profit) type of digital medium is convenient because every harvest, every production of a commodity and every provision of a service will not align so perfectly on a single day every month or year or whatever so that everyone can be seen to be making a perfectly even or just close to perfectly even trade of labour at a local communal store.


How is it exactly that this form of money -- essentially -- would not be able to facilitate profit -- ?

And how is this screed any different from that of anarcho-capitalism -- !





It would make the problem of non contributors potentially problematic, those who might be inclined to take advantage of everyone else's labour without exerting any or much of their own (in a sense they'd be the 'tiny capitalists' of socialism taking what they didn't earn).


Isn't this just the *spitting image* of moralism -- your concern here is for the *abstract principle* of some ultra-meticulous conception of labor-for-material-exchange *justice*. According to this, EoLE, if materials somehow got into the hands of those who weren't really ever contributing labor, would that be something to be punished -- ? Would there have to be a state apparatus of some sort that would be impactful enough to establish the enforcement of a set of laws -- ?

(Not that I'm defending 'tiny capitalists' or any other kind.)





This was always one of the potential problems with 'from each- to each' in a large socialist society, just keeping track of things to making sure the value was being upheld.


My point exactly.





What is to be done with the lazy person? Forget that!


Oh, okay -- that clears that up.





In my mind the real problem is, in a commune of thousands or a wider region of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people how do you even identify them in order to deal with them in the first place?.


This is your only unresolved question -- a logistical one -- ? You're going to be sleeping very soundly tonight...! (grin)

Again:





I have developed a model that [...] uses a system of *circulating* labor credits




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673


So I mean to indicate that day-to-day *economic* activity could very well be on the basis of free-floating, liberated-labor credits that are *not* exchangeable for materials of any kind -- materials would be free-access anyway, per communism. These labor-hour-based labor credits would address the domain of liberated-labor *services* only, since all material production (as for tangible objects) would be defined in terms of (liberated) labor, anyway, per communism.

All *social* ('political') activity would "surround" any given point of production, informing it.


communist economy diagram UPDATE

http://s6.postimg.org/3n7vdvy7h/140509_communist_economy_diagram_UPDATE_xcf.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/3n7vdvy7h/)





With such a medium of exchange the entire public could have access to the public records.


Transparency is vital. But just its existence as an issue also shows the presence of a fundamental schism, or duality -- that of us-vs.-them, the people versus the state. As long as a conventional, commodity-production-based 'medium of exchange' exists, so will the state, and so will the schism of 'public-vs.-the-state', as around the issue of state records, or the existence of the state itself.





This transparency would incentivise honesty while making it possible to interview people who are falling behind or not working at all.


Again, you should be hearing yourself. This is Stalinism in a capsule.





Where once people might have talked of banishment or punishment these days we realise some people can be so chemically depressed they struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Or maybe they're bravely working through an injury or illness trying to keep up appearances and social status and need to be stopped working and given treatment and whatever form of 'welfare' this society will have until they're better.


How magnanimous of you, bureaucrat.

[EoLE]

Hey ckaihatsu,
So I think I left a huuuuuge amount of detail out in the post you responded to that caused most of your questions/critiques. Hopefully I can clear some things up but on the definition of 'money' I think you'll remain skeptical towards my notion of credits over yours which are not exchangeable for goods.

First of when I say decentralised I don't mean lots of individual communes/collectives/regions being totally independent of each other. Each local population could vote on their desired wants and needs then put that altogether and divide the labour among each other. It could be that one group is much larger and so all the smaller communes are having to produce a bit more but they'll still be recompensed for it. And no economic system I can imagine will be able to get around the 'country feeds the city' necessity without completely rethinking what a city is (which could also be a good thing, vast green spaces breaking up a metropolis, enough to grow crops for large populations). So I disagree that this would be more labour intensive. It could literally be done as one big vote on a national/subnational level I guess but just keep track of where votes came from in terms of demand so you knew what goods were to go where. The point is to use direct democracy, not a central bureau telling people what they will eat and use. The first part you agreed with is all I meant so maybe I didn't say it right. Maybe I'm still not saying it right haha.

Your contention that profit would be inevitable... I don't see how this is so if the credits are limited in their function (this is the most important part I left out) and if x amount of commodity a = 1 credit = x amount of commodity b. Now for perhaps the most important part I left out. And maybe the easiest way of demonstrating this is with a hypothetical walk through.

Let's say rather than waiting for revolution you and 9 others buy some land and begin producing 10 commodities to exchange with each other equally (yes for this to work you have to have solved the 'what is a credit worth in labour?' problem but it's a hypothetical so bear with me).

1. There's you, person A, producing commodity A and nine others. Person B who makes commodity B and so on through to person J who makes commodity J.

2. All ten of you, for simplicity's sake, finish a production run at the same time. You take your goods to the communal store. There you have, in place of any kind of central authority, a simple electronic funds transfer system you all know how to work. Based on how much labour credits are worth (and how much each of your different types of jobs earn you) you are each assigned the appropriate amount of credits into a debit card. The correct amount of credits are made there and then. Now let me make this clear. The credits have not been exchanged for your labour. They are your labour by proxy, because no one should have to carry around 10 tonnes of wheat to prove they're allowed some milk, honey, eggs and new shoes. But let's use the word exchange anyway and call that labour for credit the 'First Exchange'.

3. Now all ten of you are able to take as much from each other's goods as you need. Again, you are not 'spending money' you are exchanging labour for the equal amount of products of someone else's labour. The credits are like lubricant in a machine to facilitate the ease with which this exchange takes place. To imagine the necessity of this consider the unlikelihood that all ten of you are producing something that is completed at the exact same time. Production runs would be finishing at different times all over the place. This would be a way of keeping track of who still hasn't been recompensed for their labour from, say, two weeks earlier because they were living off what they already had while waiting for the new tomatoes and strawberry jam to come in. The credits go back into system they were created from and get deleted upon this, the Second Exchange (I don't know why I didn't say this last time. I remember meaning to). By deleting the credits after two such exchanges they have served the limited purpose of taking from each according to their means and redistributing to each according to their needs. This is what I mean when I say it isn't money because it isn't simply in circulation. As I understand it Marx would have agreed (though I really need to do some more reading on all of this).

And, again, with such a limited 'life span' I don't see how these credits could be turned to profit if the problem of parity was solved, ie x amount of commodity a = 1 credit = x amount of commodity b.
If you received your credits for your x amount of commodity A then tried to convince person G to give you x amount of commodity G + 3 so that you could sell the surplus 3 to person C, yes this would net you profit but everyone would see what you were trying to do and quickly shut it down.


Yeah, that rolls off the tongue real easy, but how does a collective political economy actually *make* the criteria to be used to assign formal valuations to real work contributed -- ?

And what might those criteria be?

I've looked over your blog a few times now. I really like it. And along with the problem you raise above, yes the other big one is... what the hell is a credit!?!? It isn't enough to rest an entire system on such an arbitrary notion in the way capitalism now does its economic units. I mean, what the hell is a 'dollar' or 'yen' or 'euro' except whatever you can get for it today based on the utter chaos and circular reason that is marginal utility which can go and change tomorrow? At least money used to be 'worth' something, even if I'm dejected by humanity's obsession with shiny mental in the ground. Maybe a better example is when money in Europe was closely tied to corn.


This form of 'credits' *are* exchangeable for goods (the oranges) and that means they're no different from today's currency.

I hope you would agree now, based on the two exchange life span of each credit, that it is not an exchangeable currency. Not even for your oranges or the labour which produced them. The credits are your labour, so long as you need them to be until your needs and wants are met. Then the credit 'effigy' is burned because it is no longer required.


You'd need a state to issue it if it's to remain monolithic, and any restrictions to its free-flow would be *regulations* from the state, merely *mitigating* certain *parts* of capital, but that's about it, at best. Welcome to Stalinism and/or bourgeois social democracy.

Hopefully this is cleared up too. From a small commune or collective of 10 people right up to 10,000 people this could literally be done on computers, swipe card machines and one debit card each. The higher the population the more devices/cards you would need (and maybe some people would need to work at the markets as clerks, paid by the group as a whole as a public servant) but if the programming was coded properly and the machines were always running and/or backed up it would not require top down government of any kind so far as I can see. Run by locals, for locals.

Next, I'm not sure I understand your concerns regarding the 'moralising' of people giving and taking fairly. I thought that was the whole point of socialism. Is it 'moralising' to complain about the exploitation of labour by capital? If not then how is it different from complaining about loafers that don't contribute to the communal store but take what they want? (like I said, 'tiny capitalists').


Again, you should be hearing yourself. This is Stalinism in a capsule.

How magnanimous of you, bureaucrat.

When I say interview I don't really mean 'interview'. There wouldn't be a car battery involved. Will mental illness still be recognised in your paradigm? What about hairline fractures? I mean geez, even in an individualist capitalist society someone still comes and knocks on your door to see if you're okay if you haven't come to work for two days lol. Not everyone will perform at an optimal level, hell just adjust that into production from the get go for all I care, make everyone else work a little harder to pick up the slack. I guess I used a poor choice of words with too little elaboration but conflating checking on co-workers with Stalinism is a bit much. Maybe I haven't been clear enough on something else too, that I wouldn't advocate for a state. This could all be done, as I say, by co workers at a local community level. Or if you worked alone there'd still be people who noticed you haven't been going to work or dropping off your produce at the store, such as friends, neighbours, whoever. If nothing else you could also vote on a condition in the beginning that if anyone consistently under produces compared to the average for their industry their recompense per hour could be capped at a lower rate so they're not getting the same credits for less work. There's multiple non tyrannical solutions that all begin with a limited or non existent state bureaucracy. But this is all predicated on being able to identify such drops in productivity or non contributors in an eventually large workforce. Data collation of outgoing and incoming credits would allow this.

[ckaihatsu]

Hey ckaihatsu,
So I think I left a huuuuuge amount of detail out in the post you responded to that caused most of your questions/critiques. Hopefully I can clear some things up but on the definition of 'money' I think you'll remain skeptical towards my notion of credits over yours which are not exchangeable for goods.


Okay....





First of when I say decentralised I don't mean lots of individual communes/collectives/regions being totally independent of each other. Each local population could vote on their desired wants and needs then put that altogether and divide the labour among each other.


Okay, with this kind of arrangement there'd be the issues of federalism -- whether one local population's vote (to produce and consume what they want) would be able to stand up against the overall, *multi*-communal plan, or not.

If things *could* happen the way you're describing it, with a fully equitable pooling of liberated labor, resources, assets, and consumption, then great -- I'll just remind that, whatever the scale, the 'Pies Must Line Up' condition would have to be satisfied (from post #37) as a matter of material reality.





It could be that one group is much larger and so all the smaller communes are having to produce a bit more but they'll still be recompensed for it.


'Recompensed for it' -- ??

This is why I'm so critical of decentralization -- because it just immediately brings back commodification into the whole mix, because of a lack of political centralization. How else could these disparate 'communes' interact economically, if not with some kind of medium-of-exchange, or commodification, in other words.





And no economic system I can imagine will be able to get around the 'country feeds the city' necessity without completely rethinking what a city is (which could also be a good thing, vast green spaces breaking up a metropolis, enough to grow crops for large populations).


Okay, good point.





So I disagree that this would be more labour intensive. It could literally be done as one big vote on a national/subnational level I guess but just keep track of where votes came from in terms of demand so you knew what goods were to go where. The point is to use direct democracy, not a central bureau telling people what they will eat and use.


I don't think *anyone* is suggesting a substitutionist 'central bureau' -- what centralization *means* is more like your 'one big vote', which would have to be over some kind of all-encompassing blueprint-like plan, I'd assume.

(A greater agreement and cohesion in the post-capitalist political economy would lessen reliance on strictly economic-exchange instruments, like money -- which is supposed to be the whole point, anyway.)





The first part you agreed with is all I meant so maybe I didn't say it right. Maybe I'm still not saying it right haha.

Your contention that profit would be inevitable... I don't see how this is so if the credits are limited in their function (this is the most important part I left out) and if x amount of commodity a = 1 credit = x amount of commodity b. Now for perhaps the most important part I left out. And maybe the easiest way of demonstrating this is with a hypothetical walk through.

Let's say rather than waiting for revolution you and 9 others buy some land and begin producing 10 commodities to exchange with each other equally (yes for this to work you have to have solved the 'what is a credit worth in labour?' problem but it's a hypothetical so bear with me).

1. There's you, person A, producing commodity A and nine others. Person B who makes commodity B and so on through to person J who makes commodity J.

2. All ten of you, for simplicity's sake, finish a production run at the same time. You take your goods to the communal store. There you have, in place of any kind of central authority, a simple electronic funds transfer system you all know how to work. Based on how much labour credits are worth (and how much each of your different types of jobs earn you) you are each assigned the appropriate amount of credits into a debit card. The correct amount of credits are made there and then. Now let me make this clear. The credits have not been exchanged for your labour. They are your labour by proxy, because no one should have to carry around 10 tonnes of wheat to prove they're allowed some milk, honey, eggs and new shoes. But let's use the word exchange anyway and call that labour for credit the 'First Exchange'.

3. Now all ten of you are able to take as much from each other's goods as you need. Again, you are not 'spending money' you are exchanging labour for the equal amount of products of someone else's labour. The credits are like lubricant in a machine to facilitate the ease with which this exchange takes place. To imagine the necessity of this consider the unlikelihood that all ten of you are producing something that is completed at the exact same time. Production runs would be finishing at different times all over the place. This would be a way of keeping track of who still hasn't been recompensed for their labour from, say, two weeks earlier because they were living off what they already had while waiting for the new tomatoes and strawberry jam to come in. The credits go back into system they were created from and get deleted upon this, the Second Exchange (I don't know why I didn't say this last time. I remember meaning to). By deleting the credits after two such exchanges they have served the limited purpose of taking from each according to their means and redistributing to each according to their needs. This is what I mean when I say it isn't money because it isn't simply in circulation. As I understand it Marx would have agreed (though I really need to do some more reading on all of this).

And, again, with such a limited 'life span' I don't see how these credits could be turned to profit if the problem of parity was solved, ie x amount of commodity a = 1 credit = x amount of commodity b.
If you received your credits for your x amount of commodity A then tried to convince person G to give you x amount of commodity G + 3 so that you could sell the surplus 3 to person C, yes this would net you profit but everyone would see what you were trying to do and quickly shut it down.


The issue regarding a decentralized approach isn't even with whether profit-making could be regulated out of existence, or not -- it's about whether the economics used would really match-up to material realities or not. So while the multi-communal plan could very well work out on a *social* level, the question is what happens to the multi-currency (essentially) plan if real-world *material* conditions fluctuate somewhat away from initial collective *social* expectations.





I've looked over your blog a few times now. I really like it. And along with the problem you raise above, yes the other big one is... what the hell is a credit!?!?


Thank you.





It isn't enough to rest an entire system on such an arbitrary notion in the way capitalism now does its economic units. I mean, what the hell is a 'dollar' or 'yen' or 'euro' except whatever you can get for it today based on the utter chaos and circular reason that is marginal utility which can go and change tomorrow?


Yup.





At least money used to be 'worth' something, even if I'm dejected by humanity's obsession with shiny mental in the ground. Maybe a better example is when money in Europe was closely tied to corn.


You're now starting down the path of arguing for stronger currency valuations, which is in effect arguing for monetarism -- which is what the state's imperialism upholds.





I hope you would agree now, based on the two exchange life span of each credit, that it is not an exchangeable currency.


Your conception *does* function on the basis of exchanges, even if the tokens themselves don't circulate -- it's more like a multi-currency model done with bookkeeping.





Not even for your oranges or the labour which produced them. The credits are your labour, so long as you need them to be until your needs and wants are met. Then the credit 'effigy' is burned because it is no longer required.


You're just describing and relying on the technique of bookkeeping, in the place of freely-circulating currencies.





Hopefully this is cleared up too. From a small commune or collective of 10 people right up to 10,000 people this could literally be done on computers, swipe card machines and one debit card each. The higher the population the more devices/cards you would need (and maybe some people would need to work at the markets as clerks, paid by the group as a whole as a public servant) but if the programming was coded properly and the machines were always running and/or backed up it would not require top down government of any kind so far as I can see. Run by locals, for locals.


I have no concern over the potential *logistics* for such -- again, the real question is what happens when material realities diverge from economic expectations and planning.





Next, I'm not sure I understand your concerns regarding the 'moralising' of people giving and taking fairly. I thought that was the whole point of socialism. Is it 'moralising' to complain about the exploitation of labour by capital?


It's not abstract moralizing to struggle against capitalism's inherent exploitation and oppression of the working class, because everyone who works for the means of life and living has an *objective interest* to do so, and to not be exploited or oppressed.





If not then how is it different from complaining about loafers that don't contribute to the communal store but take what they want? (like I said, 'tiny capitalists').


The difference is that once the working class has full control of society's productive implements it could no longer be exploited or oppressed, since classes would no longer exist. 'Loafers' would not be detrimental because individual 'loafers' could not detract from collective production -- and/or the means to it -- in the least. They *wouldn't* be 'tiny capitalists' because they wouldn't have private property rights to own any means of production or to employ / exploit labor.





When I say interview I don't really mean 'interview'. There wouldn't be a car battery involved. Will mental illness still be recognised in your paradigm? What about hairline fractures? I mean geez, even in an individualist capitalist society someone still comes and knocks on your door to see if you're okay if you haven't come to work for two days lol. Not everyone will perform at an optimal level, hell just adjust that into production from the get go for all I care, make everyone else work a little harder to pick up the slack. I guess I used a poor choice of words with too little elaboration but conflating checking on co-workers with Stalinism is a bit much. Maybe I haven't been clear enough on something else too, that I wouldn't advocate for a state. This could all be done, as I say, by co workers at a local community level. Or if you worked alone there'd still be people who noticed you haven't been going to work or dropping off your produce at the store, such as friends, neighbours, whoever.


Okay.





If nothing else you could also vote on a condition in the beginning that if anyone consistently under produces compared to the average for their industry their recompense per hour could be capped at a lower rate so they're not getting the same credits for less work.


Note that you're now having to give your attention to the matter of upholding currency valuations -- this is how an economics gets 'separated' from the underlying labor that produced its valuations, and becomes a thing unto itself. Those who consistently concern themselves with the realities of economic / financial valuations have interests that differ from those who make their living from their own wage-income.





There's multiple non tyrannical solutions that all begin with a limited or non existent state bureaucracy. But this is all predicated on being able to identify such drops in productivity or non contributors in an eventually large workforce. Data collation of outgoing and incoming credits would allow this.


Again, decentralization necessitates exchanges, which necessitates commodification.


---


Pies Must Line Up

http://s6.postimg.org/erqcsdyb1/140415_2_Pies_Must_Line_Up_xcf.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/erqcsdyb1/)





Nice visual. Very helpful. I guess one way of at least trying to keep on top of what you're talking about would be to have a simple, visual representation (something like what you have there) which initially would start off with the pies showing resources to which people would match the next level, their desired production, using resources available as a guide. Then as things like production and consumption etc are undertaken the database could be given live updates each day at the close of business at factories or in food markets etc showing, in real time, whether the pies are lining up as you say. This is one of the things that excites me most, how new technologies like the internet might alleviate some of the problems that socialist and communist experiments had in the past. Imagine how many deadly famines or wasteful surpluses could have been avoided in countries even as large as China and Russia if people from one end to the next could see supply emergencies in their infancy and start focusing more the very next day on production of things that were falling behind by taking excess labour from things that were being overproduced.
Eventually such a real time database could avoid the need for any mass gatherings of citizens to vote on production for the coming year. Even if you had to 'meet' online initially to get things running smoothly I bet once it was up and running the pies could eventually be made to line up. But as you say there is still the necessity of objectively defining some operational definitions for very important concepts like effort and credit.


Sorry, I overlooked this post of yours from before. Thanks for the contribution of vision here, and I agree with your conception of administrative possibilities through the use of data technologies.

I have to note, though, that the 'Pies' illustration is also a *critique*, on any conceivable use of 'labor vouchers', which would include your commodity-based 'credits'.

[EoLE]

ckaihatsu,
One problem I am having with your blog is what the credits are for exactly. The language is a bit technical and I'm not sure exactly what your labor credits can be used for. Are they turned in in exchange for the ability to play a role in commanding production? Sorry if I'm missing something really obvious to people who are more familiar with Marxism but the language isn't all that clear to me.

[ckaihatsu]

ckaihatsu,
One problem I am having with your blog is what the credits are for exactly. The language is a bit technical and I'm not sure exactly what your labor credits can be used for. Are they turned in in exchange for the ability to play a role in commanding production? Sorry if I'm missing something really obvious to people who are more familiar with Marxism but the language isn't all that clear to me.


No prob -- here's the basic idea:





[D]ay-to-day *economic* activity could very well be on the basis of free-floating, liberated-labor credits that are *not* exchangeable for materials of any kind -- materials would be free-access anyway, per communism. These labor-hour-based labor credits would address the domain of liberated-labor *services* only, since all material production (as for tangible objects) would be defined in terms of (liberated) labor, anyway, per communism.


Let me put it this way: These days labor produces what? -- goods and services. Both goods as well as services are commodities. But without commodification any more, a *post*-capitalist, communist-type *planned* economy would no longer have 'goods' in the sense of 'commodities' or 'products'. All materials, including what we know today as goods, commodities, and products, would basically just be 'free stuff', or 'common-use materials', under communism.

So without 'materials' ('products') to attach exchange-values to, (since they're free-use in communism), the only real *variable* left would be liberated-labor.

According to the premise of free-use people could not be *coerced* into providing work effort (liberated labor), but they would have free use of whatever implements and materials they could find available, for their own efforts and ends.

So an implication of this brings us to the question of whether or not humanity could readily satisfy its common humane needs from the materials of the earth if the corporation-spawning profit-accumulation system was no more. If you think there *would* be a sufficiency, even if it required individuals' own efforts for themselves, mostly, then the question after that becomes *how much* cooperation would be called-for, for how-much "extra" production that was more-discretionary than food and shelter (etc.).

Whatever this 'extra' production is -- to advance civilization, etc. -- could realistically be seen in terms of labor roles and actual-work liberated-labor work hours.

Get it -- ? The whole realm of 'commodity products' would then be:





communist administration -- Assets and resources have no quantifiable value -- are considered as attachments to the production process




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174


And, so:





Propagation

labor [supply] -- Workers with past accumulated labor credits are the funders of new work positions and incoming laborers -- labor credits are handed over at the completion of work hours [...]

[EoLE]

So if I'm understanding you correctly people who earn these credits they've earned can give them to others in exchange for services in the form of socially necessary labour? And then the people who earn those credits through socially necessary labour can then commission others to do likewise so that services are provided alongside common use goods?
That sounds fine but your system too would need to discern some sort of parity of exchange among different forms of labour to ensure that x amount labour performed by someone in the field of a is equal to x amount of labour performed by someone in the field of b (let's say a and b are agriculture and education). Otherwise if done poorly it could lead to people feeling as though they are subjectively profiting or being cheated by unequal exchanges of labour. And so this leads back to the need for an objective medium of exchange which can ensure parity (that is to say 'labour', 'labour hours', 'credits' and 'effort' etc all need to be more than just hollow words).

So if, as you say, services are exchanged for credit in this way doesn't that commodify labour as a good as well which would be subject to subjective theory of value if not quantified right? If you were going to commodify anything wouldn't it be better to do it to goods rather than labour or risk the return of exploitation and unequal exchange? My system of exchange would commodify both I guess but with profit taken out of the equation (as I've asserted by removing exploitation from labour in production and maintaining the equal zero sum game of market exchange that even capitalism has) wouldn't it go back to just a larger scale version of ancient barter? What would be the threat or implication of commodification of labour in your system or my system if there is no more exploitation of labour or profit? (ie if words like labour and credit were defined properly to avoid subjective theory of value being used to cheat each other). And extending this reasoning what threat would be posed in my system if x amount of commodity a = 1 credit = x amount of commodity b (all rooted in the labour theory of value rather than subjective theory of value which creates an indecipherable mess of commodities all given their value in relation to each other).

I really need to get into some actual Marx but I've got my school reading to do at the moment as well as stuff I've already started in my free time reading (Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and introductory economics stuff). When I'm done with those I might move on to Ricardo and Das Kapital, which is pretty intimidating!

[ckaihatsu]

So if I'm understanding you correctly people who earn these credits they've earned can give them to others in exchange for services in the form of socially necessary labour? And then the people who earn those credits through socially necessary labour can then commission others to do likewise so that services are provided alongside common use goods?


Yes, correct -- the labor-hour-based labor credits would be able to operate at any scale, large or small.





That sounds fine but your system too would need to discern some sort of parity of exchange among different forms of labour to ensure that x amount labour performed by someone in the field of a is equal to x amount of labour performed by someone in the field of b (let's say a and b are agriculture and education). Otherwise if done poorly it could lead to people feeling as though they are subjectively profiting or being cheated by unequal exchanges of labour. And so this leads back to the need for an objective medium of exchange which can ensure parity (that is to say 'labour', 'labour hours', 'credits' and 'effort' etc all need to be more than just hollow words).


Yes, exactly, and this part addresses that:





labor [supply] -- Labor credits are paid per hour of work at a multiplier rate based on difficulty or hazard -- multipliers are survey-derived




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174


The whole idea behind these circulating labor-hour credits is to provide 'parity', by acknowledging and factoring-in the objectively differing nature of various work roles, which vary by hazard and difficulty.





So if, as you say, services are exchanged for credit in this way doesn't that commodify labour as a good as well which would be subject to subjective theory of value if not quantified right?


I'm arguing that liberated labor *wouldn't* be commodified as a result because it would all be *discretionary*, with enough of a 'base' of a gift economy to provide for everyone's basic humane needs, as a foundation. Without the existence of any social coercion to force labor, labor could not be exploited, and so could not be commodified.

One's own provision of one's own liberated labor would be based on knowing that someone / others have already put in a proportional amount of liberated-labor effort themselves, for the production of non-commodity goods.

You're arguing that if all of this is small-scale enough -- say one-to-one -- that it would in effect *be* commodification, since the production of goods from Person 'A' empowers Person 'A' to request a certain amount of goods from Person 'B's efforts.

But I'm arguing that this would *not* be commodification, since the goods from Person 'A' would never be valued *in terms of* any other goods, as from the goods that Person 'B' produced. I won't bicker over semantics -- if you would like to think of this as some kind of closed-universe set of linkages of liberated-labor that is all "commodified" in relation to each other, go right ahead and think that -- the objective difference, though, is that each provision of liberated-labor is *ephemeral* and is in no way a *persistent* formal value the way capital is, since one *forfeits* their credits as soon as appropriate liberated labor is supplied in return.





If you were going to commodify anything wouldn't it be better to do it to goods rather than labour or risk the return of exploitation and unequal exchange?


I think *precluding* commodification is the overall point here, and it would be impossible to commodify 'only' goods while "not-commodifying" labor, since the two would be inextricably linked through the existence of exchange values inherent to the production of commodities.

So in other words, if someone wanted jewelry, the only way to procure it -- aside from my model of labor-hour credits -- would be to go through the markets, and in doing so the prospective acquirer would be examining abstracted *exchange values* (prices) as a matter of course. What would yield a lower *price* than the increased exploitation of the labor that went into its creation -- ?

On the other hand, labor-hour-backed labor credits would confer a *non*-monetary equivalence of labor effort, *without* commodification. Someone who wanted jewelry would have to either find some that's not being actively claimed for personal usage, would have to make it themselves from available free-access resources, or would have to show to someone that they have already put in comparable work effort for the common good, through labor credits in-hand that they would be willing to hand over for the sake of someone's willing attention to jewelry-production, on a limited basis.

(I'll add / note that the backdrop to all of this is the free-access availability of the means of life and living to all, so that no one is under any *coercion* to work for their biological and social existence.)





My system of exchange would commodify both I guess but with profit taken out of the equation (as I've asserted by removing exploitation from labour in production and maintaining the equal zero sum game of market exchange that even capitalism has) wouldn't it go back to just a larger scale version of ancient barter?


I see where you're coming from with this, but my concern is that as long as exchange values exist, so will commodification, too -- as you've acknowledged here. (Also, market exchange is *not* a 'zero-sum game', because of the existence of finance.)

While those of your position -- 'market socialism' -- would *like* for profit to be socially ruled-out, I'm maintaining that the line between a "no-profit" 'grand barter system', and the manifested practice of profit-accumulation, would be too thin for it to be practical and realistic. (Consider that exchange values don't even need the instrument of money -- bartering activities could be done in such a way as to incrementally increase one's value of holdings, known as arbitrage.)


One red paperclip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip





What would be the threat or implication of commodification of labour in your system or my system if there is no more exploitation of labour or profit?


If there's exchange values, either explicit or implicit, then there's commodification. My labor credits system doesn't allow for exchangeability between liberated labor and materials, so there's no commodification.





(ie if words like labour and credit were defined properly to avoid subjective theory of value being used to cheat each other).


I don't understand what you're saying here.





And extending this reasoning what threat would be posed in my system if x amount of commodity a = 1 credit = x amount of commodity b (all rooted in the labour theory of value rather than subjective theory of value which creates an indecipherable mess of commodities all given their value in relation to each other).


I think you're *meaning* to say that all labor should be 'socially necessary labor', as under market socialism -- and this is the glass-half-full, or *positive* aspect to market socialism, that the worker-based *political* economy would be mostly deterministic over social production.

But I remain dismissive of the contention that the worker-democratic aspect of this would be able to hold up to the universe of implicit exchange values contained within all goods in such a social order. Depending on actual circumstances people might find it easier to just manipulate the implicit exchange values, through the practice of barter / exchanges, than to contribute to efforts for a common-minded planned production -- as is the case today.





I really need to get into some actual Marx but I've got my school reading to do at the moment as well as stuff I've already started in my free time reading (Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and introductory economics stuff). When I'm done with those I might move on to Ricardo and Das Kapital, which is pretty intimidating!