Building the New From Within the Old

[Social Greenman]

There is one question that has been on my mind is that how is a new society and new economics are to be built within the shell of the existing one?
What are we to do since the "one percent" has gotten the upper hand though years of planning and implementing their agenda?

[ckaihatsu]

There is one question that has been on my mind is that how is a new society and new economics are to be built within the shell of the existing one?
What are we to do since the "one percent" has gotten the upper hand though years of planning and implementing their agenda?


Why don't you kick things off -- what do *you* think...?

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

There is one question that has been on my mind is that how is a new society and new economics are to be built within the shell of the existing one?
What are we to do since the "one percent" has gotten the upper hand though years of planning and implementing their agenda?

Why do you think a new society can be built in the shell of the old one, and why do you think that would be a good thing to do?

As for "one percent", that's not a class description...

[BIXX]

As for "one percent", that's not a class description...

It's good enough, yo. Of course they aren't the only problem but for a newcomer that's good enough.

(OP, most people here prefer "bourgeoisie" to 1% or anything like that- however, use what you like/feel is accurate).

On topic: do you mean communes within capitalism? Using bourgeois frameworks like the state and hierarchy to aid us? Or some more situationist idea where you create a situation that "reawakens authentic desires" instead of the commodity desire we feel now?

In other words, there are many ways your question can be interpreted- would you mind clarifying.

[Red Economist]

would suggest turning the banks into planning agencies (under socialism of course) given they control pretty much everything anyway, abolishing money and putting all the computing power used to crash stock markets to work on allocating the physical quantities required round the economy.

As far as I know most attempts at moneyless economies ended badly, but you can dream...

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

It's good enough, yo. Of course they aren't the only problem but for a newcomer that's good enough.

(OP, most people here prefer "bourgeoisie" to 1% or anything like that- however, use what you like/feel is accurate).

The bourgeoisie is not "the 1%" - nonproletarian elements in most "Western" societies are probably somewhere in the 30-60% range, and much higher in regions of late capitalist development, and the bourgeoisie itself probably makes up as much as 20% of the population. The problem with the "1%" slogan is not only that "the 99%" are comprised of the petite bourgeoisie as well as the proletariat, it is also that "the 1%" are a small minority of the bourgeoisie. Communists don't fight only the largest bourgeois, or even just "corporations".


would suggest turning the banks into planning agencies (under socialism of course) given they control pretty much everything anyway, abolishing money and putting all the computing power used to crash stock markets to work on allocating the physical quantities required round the economy.

I men, obviously the spetsy who formerly worked in banks will be important in the planning bodies, as spetsy, not as managers or supervisors, and for a time there might even be banks in the dictatorship of the proletariat, but that's not really "building a new society in the shell of the old" - the proletariat can't do that, since it doesn't have the relative independence of e.g. the bourgeoisie in late feudalism.

[Social Greenman]

Thank you all for responding. That's fair ckaihatsu. What do I think? Well, it would be an opinion of course but my answer should cover all the responses. I realize that the proletariat does not have the freedoms that the capitalist had under late feudalism. But I am convinced that capitalism won't die out anytime soon. It has the people behind it to morph it into whatever is necessary to maintain control world wide. That is to say it can survive any crises and use force if there is the need. I am sure they would prevent any type of conditions that would end up being their demise. I am also sure that they know Marx's--and other peoples writings--to stay in control.

The 1% comment I made was used because it is in general use of the public. I do know that the percentage is higher and the fight against them would apply also. Do I think that we should have a moneyless society? I can't imagine that anymore than I can imagine anything without a capitalist framework. And believe me all people don't know of any other system and would always fall back to the framework of capitalism even when governments are over thrown. The Soviet model turned into a disaster so that's out of the question. China is capitalistic and they are much better at the game. Is this why Nixon went to China?

What to do? It falls back on to the workers does it not? I will say that I agree with Richard Wolf of worker cooperatives. People have to know how to run things on a collective level and not rely so much on a political party or government--I don't mean to sound Republican here. Workers have to build a framework somehow and I don't believe it would be a moneyless framework either. Perhaps a electronic labor based money system and not bitcoin though encryption would be necessary. That is if society agrees to use it. I also agree with Jacque Fresno on highly self sustaining cities that would be eco friendly. But I don't agree with him or Peter Joseph that people would volunteer for work. People do need an incentive to make things happen.

We need to experiment with what could work and discard those things that don't. It easy to be a critic but not so easy to do something that might trigger a revolution, a new direction. That, of course, is just my opinion

[ckaihatsu]

Workers have to build a framework somehow and I don't believe it would be a moneyless framework either.


Okay, on this main point of yours here I'll say that I'm in agreement that a strictly 'moneyless' approach wouldn't be feasible, and that's because it would tend to keep production 'localist' -- here's a model of it, for the sake of illustration:


Rotation system of work roles

http://s6.postimage.org/6pho0fbot/2403306060046342459_Gtc_Sd_P_fs.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/6pho0fbot/)


And here's the critique of it:





[E]ven though it's moneyless, in practice it would tend to be too *inflexible* and *restrictive* for the participants since they would be "stuck" both economically and politically in it, due to the economic aspects and political aspects being *fused together* as one and the same.

(In other words, if everyone in the work-role rotation basically approved of its 'politics' -- what it's producing -- they may *not necessarily* like its *economics*, meaning what they're getting from that production, in regards to their own personal needs. And, obversely, if a participant happened to like the work-role rotation *economically*, meaning what they're getting personally from the group's collective production, they may not also like it *politically*, in terms of that same output for the greater public good. Either way they'd basically be stuck having to "like" the output both on a societal level *and* on a personal level, due to its inherent inflexibility.)





Perhaps a electronic labor based money system and not bitcoin though encryption would be necessary.


Would you like to elaborate on this -- ? (Also you may want to see my blog entry.)





We need to experiment with what could work and discard those things that don't. It easy to be a critic but not so easy to do something that might trigger a revolution, a new direction. That, of course, is just my opinion


Trial-and-error may be an acceptable approach for most endeavors, but when it comes to the entire world's liberated production I think we need to be far more conscious and decisive, in advance -- or at least as much as possible.

[aristos]

I think the only remaining "shell of the existing order" will be the technology (blueprints, factories, infrastructure, etc.) that have been accumulated over all these millenia. The actual organizational structure has to be build from the ground up. However, it's not realistic, nor prudent to simply smash the old and hope for the best. The organisational structure of the new will have to simply be an expansion and sophistication of the already existing organizational structure of the group(s) who actually engineer the overthrow of capitalism.


Trial-and-error may be an acceptable approach for most endeavors, but when it comes to the entire world's liberated production I think we need to be far more conscious and decisive, in advance -- or at least as much as possible.

I'd say that the most rational approach would be to portion the liberated territories into semi-autonomous areas each of which has a slightly different (or at times even paradigmatically different) approach to social and technical organisation. The actual paradigms to be tested would be either assigned "scientifically-randomly" taking into view the particular circumstances of each region, or where it makes sense democratically. After a pre-defined trial period the results would be compared and then what seems to work best then implemented across the entire post-capitalist territory.
Thus the earth would not only be a place we inhabit but a kind of a gigantic socio-economic simulator.

[Social Greenman]

What electronic labor currency would be like: People in their own collectives would decide on what they make per hour--direct or indirect labor. Workers would be paid when their earnings are deposited into their accounts. Products would be sold at stores but something different happens. What is deducted from a workers account does not change hands. It simply disappears when the transaction is complete. The workers takes his product paid in full. Of course the clerk is paid by labor time as well. Why do this? No one will be able to get rich. Society would be more equitable.

[ckaihatsu]

What electronic labor currency would be like: People in their own collectives would decide on what they make per hour--direct or indirect labor. Workers would be paid when their earnings are deposited into their accounts. Products would be sold at stores but something different happens. What is deducted from a workers account does not change hands. It simply disappears when the transaction is complete. The workers takes his product paid in full. Of course the clerk is paid by labor time as well. Why do this? No one will be able to get rich. Society would be more equitable.


While I happen to *like* the idea of a grand inter-subjective range of relative pay scales, I think that there would most likely be a few wrinkles along the way, such as if / when people misestimate what their labor value is worth, relative to everyone else's. Even if this happens, though, we might just say that people could then 'fine-tune' the number values for each work role, in relation to everyone else's, so that some standards could be arrived-at over successive rounds of adjustment.

This could easily be *politically* problematic, though, because ultimately each person would be arguing for *their own* personal decision over their own personal rate of pay. People might *honestly* over- or underestimate what their labor value is worth in comparison to the next person, and would genuinely want to stick with it, regardless.

When it came out in the news that someone only picked daisies for their work and commanded a whopping 300% above the median pay rate for it -- acquiring a deposit of uranium ore with their earnings -- things could then become quite messy, very quickly.

My more *general* critique of (many) proposed post-capitalist economic approaches is that they all presume conventional work roles as we're used to seeing now -- commodified, specialized, often fixed, when in reality I think social relations would have transcended such a backward social arrangement:

( From another thread: )





[A] post-capitalist society would certainly be beyond our *current* capacities for information-sharing, cooperation, and social work roles.

Just as advancing beyond feudalism turns everyone into a king or queen, the advancing of society beyond the chaotic market mechanism would turn everyone into a co-manager / co-administrator, so that specialized roles such as 'electrician' or 'plumber' would be transcended, to arrive-at 'a near-zero-collective-maintenance of electricity supply', and 'a near-zero-collective-maintenance of water supplies and sewage treatment', respectively.

Just as any given subject of study today has been generalized and liberated to an online collection of instantly available Wikipedia pages, all situations requiring 'social order' for a proletarian-based world population would be far more a matter of general *work-cooperation*, than a matter of circumscribed fixed commodified professional individual identities.




[I]t's the *politicization* of whatever hole-needs-filling issue that would become paramount and defining, moreso even than the skill / expertise / experience / labor / work / effort arguably required for correcting the situation.

I say this because 'full automation' is an axiom of communism, meaning that if the collectivist politics work out (pragmatically) well to address the situation then the rest is easy from there -- instead of localist, site-specific electrical repairs being required, perhaps such a society has already made wireless electricity available everywhere that's uninterruptable, and as accessible and usable as a wi-fi connection is today.


So, SG, here's from my own proposal, on the same issue of "pay rates":





Determination of material values

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




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 -- underfunded projects and production runs are debt-based and will be noted as such against the issuing locality




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




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

[Social Greenman]

Sorry for not being here. I was under doctor's care for over two weeks and I was not able to do much. Getting old sucks. At any rate,

Aristos wrote: I think the only remaining "shell of the existing order" will be the technology (blueprints, factories, infrastructure, etc.) that have been accumulated over all these millenia. The actual organizational structure has to be build from the ground up. However, it's not realistic, nor prudent to simply smash the old and hope for the best. The organisational structure of the new will have to simply be an expansion and sophistication of the already existing organizational structure of the group(s) who actually engineer the overthrow of capitalism.

>>I agree up to a point. It will be built from the ground up but capitalism would be gradually phased out rather than overthrown which would be done politically and economically.<<

ckaihatsu wrote: While I happen to *like* the idea of a grand inter-subjective range of relative pay scales, I think that there would most likely be a few wrinkles along the way, such as if / when people misestimate what their labor value is worth, relative to everyone else's. Even if this happens, though, we might just say that people could then 'fine-tune' the number values for each work role, in relation to everyone else's, so that some standards could be arrived-at over successive rounds of adjustment.

>>My reply: What may be an answer to this problem of labor value is a industrial union government framework which, in my opinion, would determine pay scale based on the degree of physical and mental labor is involved. A shitty laborious job would pay more than a desk job for example. Pay scale could also be determined by one person one vote. <<

This could easily be *politically* problematic, though, because ultimately each person would be arguing for *their own* personal decision over their own personal rate of pay. People might *honestly* over- or underestimate what their labor value is worth in comparison to the next person, and would genuinely want to stick with it, regardless.

>>My response: Does it really have to be "political" ? I think it is more economic than political and I think economics and politics should be separate but that is just my opinion. I do think that a collective decision made through the government of labor (union) would solve much of what the pay scales would be. Sorry, your 8 1/2 x 11 would not show on my screen. <<

When it came out in the news that someone only picked daisies for their work and commanded a whopping 300% above the median pay rate for it -- acquiring a deposit of uranium ore with their earnings -- things could then become quite messy, very quickly.

>>My response: What your wrote is a "what if" line of thought. The deposit of any type of ore is common property and I do think that this socialist type of economy would be resource based rather than capital based. We have to take care of our only home which is Earth.<<

My more *general* critique of (many) proposed post-capitalist economic approaches is that they all presume conventional work roles as we're used to seeing now -- commodified, specialized, often fixed, when in reality I think social relations would have transcended such a backward social arrangement:

>>My reply: I agree there will be a different social relations in a post capitalist system. It would work more in line with nature rather than against it. But getting to A to B to C and so on will have to be done in the real world rather than on the web.

[ComradeOm]

I'm generally not in the habit of quoting dead Russians but Preobrazhensky's comments on the economic preconditions of capitalism socialism are still very relevant today. The second paragraph is the key passage.


Capitalist production arises and develops within the womb of feudal society, or of feudal society which has been half disintegrated by commodity economy, many decades before the bourgeois revolutions. This fully applies to the development of merchant capital, as the necessary preliminary stage of capitalist production. It applies also to the first steps of manufacture in England and to the first steps of capitalist machine industry on the Continent. Capitalism was able to pass through its period of primitive accumulation in the age of absolutism in politics and of simple commodity production and feudal-serfdom relations in the economic sphere.

Bourgeois revolutions begin after capitalism has gone far in building up its system in the economic sphere. The bourgeois revolution is only an episode in the process of bourgeois development, which begins long before the revolution and goes on more rapidly after it. The socialist system, on the contrary, begins its chronology with the seizure of power by the proletariat. This follows from the very essence of the socialist economy as a single complex which cannot be built up molecularly within the world of capitalism. While merchant capital could develop in the pores of feudal society, while the first capitalist enterprises could function without coming into irreconcilable contradiction with the existing political structures and property-forms, the complex of socialist production can appear only as a result of a breaking through of the old system all across the line, only as a result of social revolution.

This fact is of colossal significance for understanding not only the genesis of socialism but also the entire subsequent process of socialist construction. Conversely, insufficient understanding of this essential nature of socialism has led and still leads a number of comrades into a purely philistine, and sometimes directly reformist, conception of the Soviet economy and its paths of development.

Essentially Preobrazhensky's point was that the "new society and new economics" cannot "be built within the shell of the existing one".

Capitalism could develop within "the pores of feudal society" because it was not fundamentally in conflict with feudalism. There was competition yes, hence later bourgeois revolutions, but the establishment of a factory did not prevent an older landed estate from functioning. In contrast, the proletariat is a creation of capitalism and the fundamental source of capitalist wealth. It's organisation into self-governing collectives is simply incompatible with continued bourgeois rule.

Hence the reality that the task of 'socialist construction' is one that begins in earnest post-revolution. Prior to that the overriding task remains the political overthrow of the bourgeoisie; a revolution rather than 'gradual phasing out'.

[Q]

I'm generally not in the habit of quoting dead Russians but Preobrazhensky's comments on the economic preconditions of capitalism socialism are still very relevant today. The second paragraph is the key passage.



Essentially Preobrazhensky's point was that the "new society and new economics" cannot "be built within the shell of the existing one".

Capitalism could develop within "the pores of feudal society" because it was not fundamentally in conflict with feudalism. There was competition yes, hence later bourgeois revolutions, but the establishment of a factory did not prevent an older landed estate from functioning. In contrast, the proletariat is a creation of capitalism and the fundamental source of capitalist wealth. It's organisation into self-governing collectives is simply incompatible with continued bourgeois rule.

Hence the reality that the task of 'socialist construction' is one that begins in earnest post-revolution. Prior to that the overriding task remains the political overthrow of the bourgeoisie; a revolution rather than 'gradual phasing out'.
This is fundamentally true, but it contains an important undervaluation.

Revolutionary crises come and go. It is up to the balance of forces to see what happens with them. If today a revolutionary crisis would happen in the west (ie. the old order could no longer go on in the old way), it would most likely end in disaster as reactionary forces fill the power gap. The working class is too feeble to pose any real threat at this point. Even more likely, given that there aren't any real contenders for power outside the existing order (in a few countries fascists pose some threat, but outside this there is none), any crisis of the old order wouldn't be able to fully develop towards a revolutionary crisis.

Not for nothing a proper revolutionary crisis contains four important elements:
1. a regime crisis of confidence (Kautsky); the regime is split; there is a crisis in the regime (Lenin).
2. a regime hostile to the people (Kautsky); the middle class is wavering between the revolutionary forces and the ruling class (Lenin, using a formulation more apt for a peasant country)
3. a party of irreconcilable opposition (Kautsky); the existence of a revolutionary party and leadership (Lenin)
4. mass support given to the party (Kautsky); the working class is ready to fight and make the greatest sacrifices (Lenin)

If 3 and 4 don't exist, the full potential of 1 and 2 will not develop. It has to be said that these conditions do not only apply to Marxist parties. I think the Muslim Brotherhood is posing a threat to much of the Middle Eastern regimes for exactly these conditions.

The reason I'm mentioning this, is that both Kautsky and Lenin did not simply wait for the revolution to come. They aimed, both in legal and in underground circumstances, to build a party that consisted of the masses of the working class or at least one where the masses could identify with their party but couldn't join it due to said underground conditions.

This immediately poses two issues:
1. This takes a lot of time, decades, to build.
2. On a purely 'political' basis, it is impossible to build such mass support, outside revolutionary times (by which time it will be too late because of point 1).

What then would be our strategy? Orthodox Marxists aim to build a mass party-movement. The movement consists of a plethora of working class organisations - like coops, unions, educational collectives and community homes - which organise the masses. The party then offers the political heart around which the whole project revolves, putting it into a context of democracy, internationalism and an independent proletarian position against bureaucracy, nationalism and clas collaboration. There is a strong unity between these two components: Without aiming to convince the movement of the communist programme, the party can only be either a sect or a parliamentary sell-out; without the party, the movement cannot exist as a coherent movement at all, merely live in the shadows of what capital deems 'possible', a movement governed by trade union bureaucracies and disparate charities.

Especially within the cooperative part of the party-movement, our class can experiment with need-based economics, collective decisionmaking and social planning. Not quite unimportant for a class that aims to built a radically new society for when it takes power itself. Although, until it actually has taken power, it will be limited by the constraints of capital, depending on its size increasingly/decreasingly so. You cannot simply deny wages, currency and the like.

So, to conclude, yes, you are absolutely right that we can only start to reform society when we take political power. However, in order for our class to be able to even pose this question is has to organise itself as a class, with its own proletarian political agenda, well before any potential revolutionary crisis even appears on the horizon.

[ckaihatsu]

While I happen to *like* the idea of a grand inter-subjective range of relative pay scales, I think that there would most likely be a few wrinkles along the way, such as if / when people misestimate what their labor value is worth, relative to everyone else's. Even if this happens, though, we might just say that people could then 'fine-tune' the number values for each work role, in relation to everyone else's, so that some standards could be arrived-at over successive rounds of adjustment.





>>My reply: What may be an answer to this problem of labor value is a industrial union government framework which, in my opinion, would determine pay scale based on the degree of physical and mental labor is involved. A shitty laborious job would pay more than a desk job for example. Pay scale could also be determined by one person one vote. <<


While I appreciate the recognition of varying degrees of difficulty in various work roles here, SG, I'm of the firm position that even a *proletarian-minded* administrative hand on a post-capitalist economy is untenable, because any and all types of 'economy democracy' in reality amount to *market socialism*.

I mean to say that even if pay scales were democratically (socially) determined, that doesn't mean that the resulting labor market would attract liberated labor in sufficient amounts to fulfill outstanding mass demand -- liberated laborers might, for example, continue to overwhelmingly favor lower-skilled and lower-rate positions, consistently eschewing higher-skill and higher-rate ones, because they would be able to live to their desires without taking on the additional work risk / efforts.

The use of any kind of *subjective* valuations -- consensus pay-rates / points / vouchers / etc. -- is inherently intractable since the valuations arrived-at may not necessarily correspond / correlate-to actual *material* quantities. Sure, an administration could be perfectly precise in setting pay rates according to the shittiness or non-shittiness of various work roles, and all those pay rates may be in perfect relation to each other, but that still doesn't *fulfill* that all needed labor roles will be staffed correspondingly to the sliding scale of pay rates, and that's because ultimately it's just a market -- like a layer of vacuum between demand and supply.





I'll contend that I have developed a model that addresses all of these concerns in an even-handed way, and 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


Btw, this topic of discussion is also taking place at another thread:


Work Initiative and Wages in Socialist Society

http://www.revleft.com/vb/work-initiative-and-t188058/index.html


I recently developed a new graphic illustration that pertains to this topic:


Pies Must Line Up

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


---





This could easily be *politically* problematic, though, because ultimately each person would be arguing for *their own* personal decision over their own personal rate of pay. People might *honestly* over- or underestimate what their labor value is worth in comparison to the next person, and would genuinely want to stick with it, regardless.





>>My response: Does it really have to be "political" ? I think it is more economic than political and I think economics and politics should be separate but that is just my opinion. I do think that a collective decision made through the government of labor (union) would solve much of what the pay scales would be. Sorry, your 8 1/2 x 11 would not show on my screen. <<


Whatever you want it call it, "political" or otherwise, the aforementioned problematic dynamic would still be a potential.

Sorry about the technical problems -- it's also here, as plain text:





communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors




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


---





When it came out in the news that someone only picked daisies for their work and commanded a whopping 300% above the median pay rate for it -- acquiring a deposit of uranium ore with their earnings -- things could then become quite messy, very quickly.





>>My response: What your wrote is a "what if" line of thought. The deposit of any type of ore is common property and I do think that this socialist type of economy would be resource based rather than capital based. We have to take care of our only home which is Earth.<<


This whole *area* of discussion is a gigantic 'what-if' -- the 'what-if' of socialism itself, which is worth theorizing-on any day of the week because of its paramount social importance to the world.

I'll note that you're advocating socially-determined pay rates -- what, then, would workers do, if not purchase materials (of various types) with their pay -- ? Granted, uranium ore would probably be off the list, but my point remains that (possibly large) differentials could exist between compensation for labor, and what such pay could command through such a system of market socialism.

If a proletarian-type administration *didn't* cover the entire planned economy with the precise weighting of various types of liberated labor *exactly appropriately* there would be weak spots of malfunctioning that would only invite the re-emergence of black markets as a stop-gap. Needed labor could / would then be sourced directly, bypassing the administration's planned economy.


---





My more *general* critique of (many) proposed post-capitalist economic approaches is that they all presume conventional work roles as we're used to seeing now -- commodified, specialized, often fixed, when in reality I think social relations would have transcended such a backward social arrangement:

( From another thread: )





[A] post-capitalist society would certainly be beyond our *current* capacities for information-sharing, cooperation, and social work roles.

Just as advancing beyond feudalism turns everyone into a king or queen, the advancing of society beyond the chaotic market mechanism would turn everyone into a co-manager / co-administrator, so that specialized roles such as 'electrician' or 'plumber' would be transcended, to arrive-at 'a near-zero-collective-maintenance of electricity supply', and 'a near-zero-collective-maintenance of water supplies and sewage treatment', respectively.

Just as any given subject of study today has been generalized and liberated to an online collection of instantly available Wikipedia pages, all situations requiring 'social order' for a proletarian-based world population would be far more a matter of general *work-cooperation*, than a matter of circumscribed fixed commodified professional individual identities.




[I]t's the *politicization* of whatever hole-needs-filling issue that would become paramount and defining, moreso even than the skill / expertise / experience / labor / work / effort arguably required for correcting the situation.

I say this because 'full automation' is an axiom of communism, meaning that if the collectivist politics work out (pragmatically) well to address the situation then the rest is easy from there -- instead of localist, site-specific electrical repairs being required, perhaps such a society has already made wireless electricity available everywhere that's uninterruptable, and as accessible and usable as a wi-fi connection is today.





>>My reply: I agree there will be a different social relations in a post capitalist system. It would work more in line with nature rather than against it. But getting to A to B to C and so on will have to be done in the real world rather than on the web.


I'll respectfully acknowledge your 'let the revolution decide these things' sentiment, since it's valid. I, obviously, differ, myself, since I, for one, would rather have a clear and precise sense of exactly what it is that we represent.





So, SG, here's from my own proposal, on the same issue of "pay rates":





Determination of material values

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




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 -- underfunded projects and production runs are debt-based and will be noted as such against the issuing locality




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




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

[Die Neue Zeit]

This is fundamentally true, but it contains an important undervaluation.

Revolutionary crises come and go. It is up to the balance of forces to see what happens with them. If today a revolutionary crisis would happen in the west (ie. the old order could no longer go on in the old way), it would most likely end in disaster as reactionary forces fill the power gap.

Comrade, that would be just a generic political crisis. Just because the old order could no longer go on in the old way doesn't mean that the political crisis at hand is revolutionary. You backtracked yourself later, and superbly I might add, in your post. Revolutionary crises may or may not be synonymous with revolutionary periods, but the former exist only within the latter.


This immediately poses two issues:
1. This takes a lot of time, decades, to build.
2. On a purely 'political' basis, it is impossible to build such mass support, outside revolutionary times (by which time it will be too late because of point 1).


Don't you mean during revolutionary times? That would be too late, not well, well beforehand.

[Q]

Comrade, that would be just a generic political crisis. Just because the old order could no longer go on in the old way doesn't mean that the political crisis at hand is revolutionary. You backtracked yourself later, and superbly I might add, in your post. Revolutionary crises may or may not be synonymous with revolutionary periods, but the former exist only within the latter.



Don't you mean during revolutionary times? That would be too late, not well, well beforehand.
Do we really have to have this discussion on two spots (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=19090)? :p

[Die Neue Zeit]

You blogged it, comrade, so I obliged. :D

[bropasaran]

There is one question that has been on my mind is that how is a new society and new economics are to be built within the shell of the existing one?
I guess that the social enterprises are the smallest step in the direction away from capitalism, a little bigger would be consumer coops, including their sub-type credit unions (mutual banks). There are cases where there is participatory budgeting in some localities, and democratization of municipalized firms, those are cool things happening. There are multiple types of worker ownership schemes, community ownership and various mixes between the two. An important non-economic institution that goes about building the new society within the shell of the old is democratic education, there are various democratic schools / Modern schools.

If you're interested in a theoretical view of credit unions and coops from an anarchist perspective, check out these essays:

J.5.5 What forms of co-operative credit do anarchists support? (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secJ5.html#secj55)
J.5.6 Why are mutual credit schemes important? (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secJ5.html#secj56)
J.5.8 What would a modern system of mutual banking look like? (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secJ5.html#secj58)
J.5.9 How does mutual credit work? (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secJ5.html#secj59)
J.5.10 Why do anarchists support co-operatives? (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secJ5.html#secj510)


This site has resources about many strategies/ models that offer mild to full alternatives to capitalist way of organizing: http://community-wealth.org/

Most famous of these models is the so called Cleveland model. Favorites for libertarian socialists would certainly be the models that combine worker and community ownership and control of production and distribution, but I think it's safe to say that we should have a continuum of support for all of those models.

Also, this site has a big resource base about how to get involved into planting the seeds of the future society of self-management and solidarity within the present society: http://www.shareable.net/how-to-share

[ComradeOm]

What then would be our strategy? Orthodox Marxists aim to build a mass party-movement. The movement consists of a plethora of working class organisations - like coops, unions, educational collectives and community homes - which organise the masses. The party then offers the political heart around which the whole project revolves, putting it into a context of democracy, internationalism and an independent proletarian position against bureaucracy, nationalism and clas collaboration. There is a strong unity between these two components: Without aiming to convince the movement of the communist programme, the party can only be either a sect or a parliamentary sell-out; without the party, the movement cannot exist as a coherent movement at all, merely live in the shadows of what capital deems 'possible', a movement governed by trade union bureaucracies and disparate charities.Unless you're suggesting that a SPD-ish 'state within a state' should form the nucleus of a post-revolutionary society (and I sincerely hope that this is not the case) then I don't see the relevance.

The party is, as Gramsci would say, the germ of a future society but no more than that. The political tasks of revolution of course begin long before the event itself but that is not the same as socialist construction. Unions, cultural clubs, etc, have value in the sense that they develop the capabilities of the proletariat as a class in preparation for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. No question. But this is fundamentally different from the actual building of the new socialist society, which only begin post-revolution.

To go back to history, the bourgeoisie's political revolutions of the 19th C only confirmed and accelerated the supremacy of the bourgeoisie. The actual capitalist mode of production had coexisted with feudalism for decades previously. That is not and cannot be the case with socialism. The socialist mode of production will be born in the revolution and not beforehand.

Everything we do has to be seen in that light. All our political activities are in preparation for the real work post-revolution. Now that doesn't for a second mean that the proletariat shouldn't organise itself as a class (obviously) but, in terms of this thread, this is not a matter of a new society or mode of production developing within the old.

[Q]

Unless you're suggesting that a SPD-ish 'state within a state' should form the nucleus of a post-revolutionary society (and I sincerely hope that this is not the case) then I don't see the relevance.
I go to some length to quote Kautsky and equate his position with that of Lenin (also an Erfurtian, as Lars Lih would put it). Of course I'm talking about the pre-war SPD model. I'm not sure how this conclusion can be at all avoided.

So please, tell us why you "sincerely hope that this is not the case".


The party is, as Gramsci would say, the germ of a future society but no more than that. The political tasks of revolution of course begin long before the event itself but that is not the same as socialist construction. Unions, cultural clubs, etc, have value in the sense that they develop the capabilities of the proletariat as a class in preparation for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. No question. But this is fundamentally different from the actual building of the new socialist society, which only begin post-revolution.
We actually agree here. The party-movement can only be seed that can only fully start to grow on the soil of revolution.


Everything we do has to be seen in that light. All our political activities are in preparation for the real work post-revolution. Now that doesn't for a second mean that the proletariat shouldn't organise itself as a class (obviously) but, in terms of this thread, this is not a matter of a new society or mode of production developing within the old.
Again, we agree.

[ComradeOm]

I go to some length to quote Kautsky and equate his position with that of Lenin (also an Erfurtian, as Lars Lih would put it). Of course I'm talking about the pre-war SPD model. I'm not sure how this conclusion can be at all avoided.

So please, tell us why you "sincerely hope that this is not the case"I was hoping to give you the benefit of the doubt. Just in case you weren't really holding up a horribly failed model as something to emulate.

The SPD illustrates exactly why its dangerous to place too much emphasis on pre-revolution activity. Neither the character nor telos of the SPD's 'state within a state' was truly revolutionary. Instead the SPD 'movement' was, like a pearl, a way of insulating itself from a hostile environment. Like any such self-defence measure it was fundamentally turned inwards on itself and had little was say to the rest of society. It consumed a vast amount of energy for nothing.

Hannah Arendt probably put it best in one of her essays:

It seemed to its members that the Party could 'provide within itself a superior alternative to corrupt capitalism'. By keeping the 'defences against society on all fronts intact', it generated that spurious feeling of 'togetherness'... It was obvious that the more the Party increased its numbers, the more surely its radical elan was 'organised out of existence'. One could live very comfortably in this 'state within a state' by avoiding friction with society at large, by enjoying feelings of moral superiority without any consequences. It was not even necessary to pay the price of serious alienation since this pariah society was in fact but a mirror image, a miniature reflection of German society at large. The blind alley of the German Socialist movement could be analysed correctly from opposing points of view - either Bernstein's revisionism... or those who were not merely alienated from bourgeois society but actually wanted to change the world.

Arendt goes on to note, as many others have, that "Bernstein and Kautsky had in common their aversion of revolution; the 'iron law of necessity' was for Kautsky the best possible excuse for doing nothing". I like Hannah, even if I don't always agree with her.

Here I agree with her. Even leaving aside that it was eventually twisted to serve the counter-revolution, the immense SPD apparatus was ultimately an end in itself. It didn't liberate the working class or provide an avenue through which they could emancipate themselves. Instead it served as an alternative Germany; a voluntary prison that made the Empire more tolerable but achieved little else. It was an evolutionary dead-end or, as Arendt puts it, a "blind alley".

So such a web of organisations might serve as training school for party bureaucrats but little else. It's a million miles away from the foundations of a socialist society.

[Social Greenman]

Hello, I am at the library so be patient with my replies please. :)

ckaihatsu wrote:>>While I appreciate the recognition of varying degrees of difficulty in various work roles here, SG, I'm of the firm position that even a *proletarian-minded* administrative hand on a post-capitalist economy is untenable, because any and all types of 'economy democracy' in reality amount to *market socialism*.<<

I was not trying to advocate a post market socialism I was stating that in order to build in the real world there has to be experimental models which, unfortunately, has to work within the actually existing framework of capitalism. Here in the U.S. there is a more of a "me" attitude rather than a "we". Building co-ops on a industrial union model is one idea to attain a sense that what we all do together benefits all and society. At least a framework would exist with this model which would include local, regional, national, and International planning. I hope it goes more to resource economic system. To begin building within a capitalist framework there has to be an overall acknowledgment that we all live within capitalism and that we all are subject to the conditions of that system--is that fair enough?

ckaihatsu wrote:>>I mean to say that even if pay scales were democratically (socially) determined, that doesn't mean that the resulting labor market would attract liberated labor in sufficient amounts to fulfill outstanding mass demand -- liberated laborers might, for example, continue to overwhelmingly favor lower-skilled and lower-rate positions, consistently eschewing higher-skill and higher-rate ones, because they would be able to live to their desires without taking on the additional work risk / efforts.<<

I see your pie chart resembles the I.W.W.'s
Father Thomas J. Haggerty's Wheel


http://www.iww.org/graphics/objects/wheel.jpg

I understand what you wrote my friend. I am all for a living wage too. fair wages don't exist under capitalism but what I advocate is not based on extremes. I do acknowledge that there will be many complexities and bumps along the road. By the way, I am more of a Deleonist. I am very open minded to discuss rather than to debate over who is right or wrong. Whatever works best and benefits all is my motto.

Thank you impossible for the links. I like the idea of what going on in Cleveland, Ohio.

[ckaihatsu]

Hello, I am at the library so be patient with my replies please. :)


Okay, you get special 'library' consideration.... (grin)





While I appreciate the recognition of varying degrees of difficulty in various work roles here, SG, I'm of the firm position that even a *proletarian-minded* administrative hand on a post-capitalist economy is untenable, because any and all types of 'economy democracy' in reality amount to *market socialism*.





I was not trying to advocate a post market socialism I was stating that in order to build in the real world there has to be experimental models which, unfortunately, has to work within the actually existing framework of capitalism.


It sounds like you're talking about more of a *transitional* model, which can be initiated in the present-day context of capitalism, and which would provide a path to a much more worker-centric kind of control, for all of society.

For this I'll proffer the following model that posits a unique 'global syndicalist currency' for the sake of retaining the full labor value of workers' efforts, outside of the capitalist economy. This global syndicalist currency would parallel the incremental collectivization of the world's means of mass (industrial) production by the proletariat, building a material basis for increasing social and productive class independence from the capitalist commodity system. (See the link for a text-only version of the graphic.)


[7] Syndicalism-Socialism-Communism Transition Diagram

http://s6.postimage.org/jy0ua35yl/7_Syndicalism_Socialism_Communism_Transiti.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/jy0ua35yl/)


http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2246003&postcount=19





Here in the U.S. there is a more of a "me" attitude rather than a "we". Building co-ops on a industrial union model is one idea to attain a sense that what we all do together benefits all and society. At least a framework would exist with this model which would include local, regional, national, and International planning. I hope it goes more to resource economic system. To begin building within a capitalist framework there has to be an overall acknowledgment that we all live within capitalism and that we all are subject to the conditions of that system--is that fair enough?


Certainly -- you may want to elaborate on your 'building co-ops on [an] industrial union model' here.

Regarding the various-scales aspect, I have the following graphic illustration for your consideration:


Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy

http://s6.postimage.org/ccfl07uy5/Multi_Tiered_System_of_Productive_and_Consumptiv.j pg (http://postimage.org/image/ccfl07uy5/)


---





I mean to say that even if pay scales were democratically (socially) determined, that doesn't mean that the resulting labor market would attract liberated labor in sufficient amounts to fulfill outstanding mass demand -- liberated laborers might, for example, continue to overwhelmingly favor lower-skilled and lower-rate positions, consistently eschewing higher-skill and higher-rate ones, because they would be able to live to their desires without taking on the additional work risk / efforts.





I see your pie chart resembles the I.W.W.'s
Father Thomas J. Haggerty's Wheel


No, it doesn't -- not at all.





I understand what you wrote my friend. I am all for a living wage too. fair wages don't exist under capitalism


Yes.





but what I advocate is not based on extremes. I do acknowledge that there will be many complexities and bumps along the road. By the way, I am more of a Deleonist. I am very open minded to discuss rather than to debate over who is right or wrong. Whatever works best and benefits all is my motto.


Well at this point we're very close to just talking past each other. Feel free to address any of the content I've provided on this thread.

[sixdollarchampagne]

First, thanks to ComradeOm for quoting Preobrazhensky, whose writing shed some light on the question, and to comrade Q for pointing out the importance of party-building.

It would be interesting to know where the phrase, "Building the new within the shell of the old" actually came from. I am betting that it originated in leftist syndicalism, probably in the IWW, and refers concretely to organizing workers under capitalism; in that case, there is no big problem with the phrase as a slogan.

Responding amicably to something Social Greenman wrote, I think the Russian experience, which is full of lessons for people today, cannot simply be thrown out the window, but must be closely studied. If I remember what I read years ago, one of the earliest decrees that Lenin signed, was on "workers' control."

[Social Greenman]

Been sick again. Capitalist health care is hazardous to anyone's health. What I had could have been taken care of two weeks ago. But when profits involved you get the idea. See you all next week I hope--Social Greenman.