Distribution in Communism? [Archive]

robbo203

7th September 2014, 10:37

Production is based on what the community believes is needed based on past trends, anticipating the future, etc. The way your local supermarket works now is a good example of central planning in action. Late spring it starts to stock far more burgers and steaks than normal because of the increased demand anticipated for BBQ season. This doesn't mean I have to buy steaks (I may even be a vegetarian) and so I won't. Much the same as your pencil example.

Thats is not a good example of "central planning in action" at all, The opposite is true. It is a good example of polycentric planning rather than unicentric central planning in action since presumably your supermarket acts relatively independently of other businesses in deciding how many burghers and steaks it stocks for the BBQ season. In other words it is not instructed from on high as to how many of these things it must stock.

Classic central planning means literally a single society wide plan which strives to consciously plan in advance the total pattern of production and to determine in advance the output targets of literally millions of different products. That presupposes a one single global planning authority which by definition precludes the very idea of multiple planning agencies acting on their own initiative such as your supermarket.

Of course the idea is completely absurd and totally impractical in a complex large scale society. I would argue, moreover, that it is also totally incompatible with the way in which a non-market socialist economy needs to be organised. That must necessarily involve polycentric planning where the total pattern of production is inevitably arrived at spontaneously , (as opposed to being pre-planned), against the background of those completely non-market socialist relationships that would exist between mutiple planning agencies in the form of millions of production units and distribution centres scattered across the face of the globe

adipocere12

7th September 2014, 11:27

Habbash

7th September 2014, 11:37

There is no 'government'.

We plan how many pencils we need. I presume you mean by not wanting to use a pencil that you want to use a ball-point pen instead (rather than say a banana or a cat). So, no, there's no requirement for you to take a pencil. Why would that be necessary? We just have to make sure that we have some pencils, and some ball-point pens. You pick up what you need from the - I'm going to use a word here that makes perfect sense to me but may not to you - 'store'. As in, 'place where things are stored'.

Let's say you live in a community of 250 people. That community has a 'store'. It's a distribution centre for stuff that is made outside of your community. It has pencils and pens. You go and get what you need. If the store finds that at the end of the month, it's short of pens (because you keep taking them and let's face it, sometimes pens go missing in holes and down the back of the sofa) but has plenty of pencils, then more pens will be ordered next month but not pencils. There's no reason why this process can't happen automatically.

But how would that fit with the whole 'to each his own' idea? I mean, what if my contribution to society is low? Would distribution apply differently to me as it would to someone else? What would be the criteria for even deciding what my contribution equates in terms of goods and services?

robbo203

7th September 2014, 11:40

I was thinking more in terms of the supermarket store and it's relationship with its own head office. The amount of BBQ stuff to buy and when is worked out algorithmically based on the factors I've already mentioned. The result will be different per store but the algorithm will be the same and planned and approved but central office.

Sure, I understand what you saying but I just really wanted to draw your attention to the fact that what is classically meant by "central planning" is something totally different to what a lot of people seem to mean by central planning which turns out out to be nothing more than a more "centralised" form of planning without any suggestion of there being one single worldwide plan for the entire world economy. In fact, what they are advocating is a more centralised form of polycentic planning - meaning fewer but bigger plans interacting with each other - and nothing more than that. That is at least technically feasible - whether is is desirable is another matter. Classic central planning, on the other hand, is neither

adipocere12

7th September 2014, 11:56

Ohh ok. So you agree with me that the model is an example of how distribution might work, in answer to the OP's question?

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

7th September 2014, 11:58

Distribution in (the higher phase of) communism is free - there is no rationing or mechanisms resembling purchasing, people take what they please from the social product.

robbo203

7th September 2014, 12:07

Ohh ok. So you agree with me that the model is an example of how distribution might work, in answer to the OP's question?

If what you are suggesting is a sort of self regulating system of stock control responsive to shifts in the pattern of demand then, yes, I would go along with what you suggest. Except, of course, in socialism there is no market and no market demand unlike in the case of your contemporary supermarket. Rather it would be a case of what people are actually "demanding" - taking gratis from the distribution store - in the light of their own self determined needs

edit: I think the point is not so much the relationship with the supermarket's Head Office that is significant here as its relationship with its suppliers. As I understand it, individual supermarkets have a certain amount of autonomy in the matter of ordering fresh stock from its suppliers but the selection of stock tends to be more centrally imposed throughout the supermarket chain in question becuase of economies of scale vis a vis wholesalers. Which is why at least here in Spain if you go to, say, a Mercadona supermarket in Granada it is likely to stock more or less the same products as one in Malaga and even the aisles will tend to be arranged in the same predictable fashion

adipocere12

7th September 2014, 12:14

Yup, that's exactly it.

ckaihatsu

8th September 2014, 07:40

Hello,

So a question that's been bugging me was how a communistic society would distribute the wealth? Would it be based upon contribution?

Here's from a past thread:

"The same amount of labor he has contributed to society will be returned in proportion."

[S]uch 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.

If it is, then who decides what the contribution is? If the government decides to manufacture pencils, what would happen to those pencils? Would they get distributed to EVERYONE? What if dislike the use of pencils and don't want it? I'm having trouble picturing the 'automated' society in communism, that's all. I'd appreciate any responses.

Thanks!

I think a good place to start is with the conception of the free-access gift economy -- if capitalism was overthrown and the world was left with its remnants, would a strictly organic, voluntarism-based, emergent-only social order be possible, *and* also fulfill everyone's basic needs -- ? And how complex a civilization could it potentially / possibly produce -- ? (What would be its 'ceiling', in terms of bulk mass production and complexity of production -- ?)

I like to think that, yes, the world could *easily* work to humanely meet everyone's basic human needs at a sufficient level, using this approach -- and besides being virtually overhead-free, it could also 'scale upward', for greater quantitative (and possibly qualitative) outputs, to realize greater efficiencies of scale, over time.

The *downside* is what the right loves to crow about -- the so-called 'free rider problem', meaning that there is nothing to prevent someone from just enjoying free access to freely available goods and services while contributing nothing to social production themselves. I find this to be a rather *economistic* argument myself, since I think most people would be socially contributing as a matter of course, regardless -- it could even be argued that one would have to be *intentionally* asocial and deliberately assholish to make the 'free rider' situation happen, thus making the whole argument a rather *artificial* one.

But a valid *implication* of the gift economy is that there wouldn't be much collective-based *incentive* for more-complex organizing, as for more-complex mass production. While no one would be *obligated* to work in order to live -- a definite step-up from what we have today -- the *flipside* is that no one would be incentivized to *organize* at broader scales, to advance the quality of civilization. Everyone could just do what is 'socially necessary', in the most rudimentary sense of the word, and that's all.

My *own* concern with the gift economy has to do with how it would be inadequate to handle situations of objective material scarcity, as for particular 'luxury'- / specialty-type goods and services.

And, separately, there's also the issue of one having to 'fuse' their economic and political interests together at the gift-economy workplace -- too much like labor alienation -- due to the lack of a flexible currency-type economics because of the system's strict moneylessness:

[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.)

Dave B

8th September 2014, 19:32

People talk about the problem of luxury products/consumption in free access socialist etc which is fair enough.

But I think what is often missing is practical examples.

What is often missed I think with luxury is the difference between use of and access to, as opposed to exclusive personal ownership.

Thus there is difference between wanting to ride about on a powerful motorbike, a stretch limousine or Rolls Royce; and having one permanently parked outside your house.

Or for that matter Immelda Marcos and her 7000 pairs of shoes.

Which is interesting because ‘shoes’ were a free access Marxist paradigm re not enough to go around.

The counter argument being everybody at the end of the day only has one pair of feet.

When it comes to immediate consumption and thus ‘destruction’ of luxury products we are generally limited to food and drink mostly, which is highly subjective.

Lots of the older members of the British working class, like my mother, think all these new fangled luxury foods like, garlic, hummus and Taramasalata are poison.

I would hope that people in free access socialism would want to consider how much labour time went into producing something as part of their decision to consume it.

So I think all consumption products should have a labour time value tag attached to it.

I think luxury products in free access socialism are not one category or class of materials/problems.

They need to be broken down then dealt with on a category by category basis.

Eg I think some things just won’t be produced at all.

Blake's Baby

11th September 2014, 09:39

But how would that fit with the whole 'to each his own' idea? ...

What does 'to each his own' have to do with distribution in a socialist society?

...I mean, what if my contribution to society is low? Would distribution apply differently to me as it would to someone else? What would be the criteria for even deciding what my contribution equates in terms of goods and services?

If you're such an inveterate piss-taker that your community decides to throw you out, then, I guess you don't get access to anything.

My advice is, don't take the piss.

Not everyone agrees with my analysis there. But I think it's something that will be decided on a case-by-case basis. I can see conditions when whole communities might decide that some people just don't deserve anything because they won't contribute anything.

ckaihatsu

11th September 2014, 14:05

What does 'to each his own' have to do with distribution in a socialist society?

If you're such an inveterate piss-taker that your community decides to throw you out, then, I guess you don't get access to anything.

My advice is, don't take the piss.

Not everyone agrees with my analysis there. But I think it's something that will be decided on a case-by-case basis. I can see conditions when whole communities might decide that some people just don't deserve anything because they won't contribute anything.

This is sad, and very un-communistic in spirit -- it's an appeal to petty authoritarianism, even.

The economic focus *shouldn't* be on a person, as for a capitalism-like *commodification* of the individual, but rather should be about how to distribute the *bounty* of collectivist production so that there's no scarcity or economic decision-making forced as a matter of circumstance in the first place.

Trap Queen Voxxy

11th September 2014, 16:06

Hello,

So a question that's been bugging me was how a communistic society would distribute the wealth? Would it be based upon contribution? If it is, then who decides what the contribution is? If the government decides to manufacture pencils, what would happen to those pencils? Would they get distributed to EVERYONE? What if dislike the use of pencils and don't want it? I'm having trouble picturing the 'automated' society in communism, that's all. I'd appreciate any responses.

Thanks!

It would be base upon needs or wants of the people. Scarcity of commodities is actually artificially created. Removing this uneven level of social distribution you would have a gift economy. I think having a Jetson like distribution system would ideal and I think we're not to far off from this actually being a feasible possibility.

Yes, I thinks doctors and custodial technicians should be equal

vijaya

12th September 2014, 23:34

Lots of the older members of the British working class, like my mother, think all these new fangled luxury foods like, garlic, hummus and Taramasalata are poison.

A socialist economy without hummus is a nightmarish dystopia. I'd emigrate to the capitalist Lunar colonies just to nipple on some chickpea goodness. ;)

Joking aside, some very interesting contributions to this thread. I'm liking the practical examples people are using which I often find are omitted from general Marxist discussion.

Hatshepsut

13th September 2014, 00:24

Rather it would be a case of what people are actually "demanding" - taking gratis from the distribution store - in the light of their own self determined needs

Distribution in (the higher phase of) communism is free - there is no rationing or mechanisms resembling purchasing, people take what they please from the social product.

The *downside* is what the right loves to crow about -- the so-called 'free rider problem',

This was a real problem in the Soviet Union, which apparently didn't reach the higher phase of communism and didn't dispense with money. The early Soviet days were brutal and lots of forced labor was employed while the country industrialized, then went to fight the German invasion. After the war things became more normal, with best standards of living probably achieved in the 1980s right before the collapse.

Ckaihatsu already disposed of the free-rider problem. It exists; people can live off the effort of others sometimes, but it's less of a problem than right-wingers think. Simple social pressure effectively dissuades freeloading. People who do it have no friends and no respect, and if it's persistent enough, they may get cut off by the rest of the group. Social pressure works best in small communities. However, it works fairly well even in big places like the USA--under a rubric called "work ethic."

The Soviet Union probably had a better work ethic than it gets credit for, and provided rewards for individual performance, such as medals and vacations to the Black Sea.

Nothing is for free. A society can make allocations without money fairly efficiently; ancient Egypt had lots of scribes with papyrus spreadsheets all over the place. At any rate, most people are required to work in any economy, communist or not, unless there's good reason. However, in a communist society no worker is thrown out on the street via unemployment--the society guarantees a place and useful work to do for everyone who is willing. The ideal is "from each according to their ability," so that no one is required to do things that physically or mentally wreck them. People won't be put outdoors cutting sugarcane 14 hours a day so that others can hog out on sugar every day--I imagine communism will ask people to moderate their consumption of material things and substitute human contact for it.

The real problem in the Soviet Union was a modern economy's complexity. There's an enormous input-output matrix where the product of one industry (vulcanized rubber) becomes an input for another (tires). With the 5-year plans, they kept overproducing some stuff and underproducing other stuff and their system kind of choked on that. I'm not as sure how that issue would be resolved; although there is enough technology now to permit a plan to be updated in real time as bottlenecks are detected.

ckaihatsu

13th September 2014, 05:37

At any rate, most people are required to work in any economy, communist or not, unless there's good reason.

This is an inversion of real conditions -- the question, for *any* civilization / society, is 'What is there to work *for*?'

The construction of your concept is problematic because it takes constant labor inputs to be an a-priori *given*, like the rising of the sun in the morning, when in reality there needs to be large-scale socio-political discussion and planning so that people's work and life-time isn't simply wasted in roles / jobs that are socially superfluous and meaningless.

The early-to-middle 20th century was very much about *industrialization*, and then was about modernization to some degree after that, but I'd say that the world has definitely plateaued now in terms of what mass efforts are needed for, if anything.

Sure, the current capitalism-based economy will continue to grind on, to mechanically extract profits if it can, but overall world growth is stagnant and the stock markets are presently a giant bubble of sheer speculation.

The real problem in the Soviet Union was a modern economy's complexity. There's an enormous input-output matrix where the product of one industry (vulcanized rubber) becomes an input for another (tires). With the 5-year plans, they kept overproducing some stuff and underproducing other stuff and their system kind of choked on that. I'm not as sure how that issue would be resolved; although there is enough technology now to permit a plan to be updated in real time as bottlenecks are detected.

An economy's degree of complexity is *not* a problem in and of itself -- you're noting certain bureaucratic issues that existed under Stalinism, but that's hardly inherent to any complex economy simply because it happens to be fairly complex.

The fSU went down to what could be called 'mismanagement', but it was also trying to keep up with the West in the missile race, too.

The 'blueprint'-type approach that you're alluding to has been discussed at length here at RevLeft and found to be wanting as a method, though you're noting that current technologies could make *any* complex planning much more fluid and responsive due to our abilities to stay on top of massive amounts of real-world data in realtime.

Logistical mechanics aside, though, what would be / is-needing of far more attention is the question of *political* logistics, meaning how a global society would approach the issue of a mass-cooperative consciousness and hands-on planning once off of the 'auto-pilot' mechanism of the markets.

I have my own ideas, of course, which are at my blog entry.

Hatshepsut

13th September 2014, 17:17

Scarcity of commodities is actually artificially created.
:grin: Very true!

I have my own ideas, of course, which are at my blog entry.
:grin: You do have an interesting and thoughtful blog entry:

“Mass demand…would have no special claim over any liberated labor and would have no means by which to coerce it… The administration of all of this would be dependent on the conscious political mass struggle.”
I think we agree that large-scale economic decisions shouldn’t be made behind closed doors in boardrooms by plutocrats in stovepipe hats, the way it’s being done under global capitalism. You are quite correct to imply that mass demand is currently created by capitalism via marketing. Liberated labor can’t be coerced when it’s no longer alienated from what it makes, as it is under capitalism today as well as in Marx’s day.

The other sentence says that there will be an administration and that administration will be political. I don’t have as much education as you do and my understandings are probably defective. Yet I’m given to understand that politics is ugly—hence the word “struggle.” The only actual precedents for gift economies based on reciprocal altruism I’m aware of are the hunter-gatherer bands anthropologists discuss, who don’t have formal production systems. All states, past or present, that I know about have certainly been coercive, even the ones that have consultative governance.

Administration is expensive; the difficulties it involves shouldn’t be underestimated. The problem for communism will be avoiding the Stalinist centralization your blog entry mentions. Your blog entry’s proposed solution in part uses

“labor credits the liberated-laborer's possession, [that] empower them with a labor-organizing…ability”
which I take to mean small decision-making bodies where voting weights are determined by how many labor credits the voting worker has earned. I don’t know how this will work in practice, in the context of a modern economy. I do agree that workers and not private bosses should have final voice regarding working conditions, yet that leaves the management problems themselves still unsolved.

The construction of your concept is problematic because it takes constant labor inputs to be an [I]a priori given…
I don’t take labor inputs as givens, but only assert that they are proportional to output.

Getting rid of profit, and getting rid of the special class that lives on profit without doing any work, is needed and will help reduce the burdens of labor. Oddly, despite concentration of wealth, profit represents only ten to twenty percent of the total income stream in the capitalist economy—whether income is measured in kind or in money. Wealth then concentrates because this profit is surplus, not used to meet the needs of the profiteer, so it can pile up. The cruel finance system with its compound interest abets this process.

Perceptions of scarcity in modern consumerism are indeed created by marketing as capitalism simultaneously keeps a hammerlock over the entire production and distribution system. Yet the laws of physics don’t suggest abundance can come effortlessly, so that if society prioritizes making work optional, it will likely have to accept modest standards of living and material consumption. Which may not be a bad thing.

ckaihatsu

13th September 2014, 21:27

:grin: You do have an interesting and thoughtful blog entry:

Yup, thanks -- gotta start *somewhere*...(!)

“Mass demand…would have no special claim over any liberated labor and would have no means by which to coerce it… The administration of all of this would be dependent on the conscious political mass struggle.”

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=11269

I think we agree that large-scale economic decisions shouldn’t be made behind closed doors in boardrooms by plutocrats in stovepipe hats, the way it’s being done under global capitalism. You are quite correct to imply that mass demand is currently created by capitalism via marketing. Liberated labor can’t be coerced when it’s no longer alienated from what it makes, as it is under capitalism today as well as in Marx’s day.

Yes, agreed.

The other sentence says that there will be an administration and that administration will be political. I don’t have as much education as you do and my understandings are probably defective. Yet I’m given to understand that politics is ugly—hence the word “struggle.” The only actual precedents for gift economies based on reciprocal altruism I’m aware of are the hunter-gatherer bands anthropologists discuss, who don’t have formal production systems. All states, past or present, that I know about have certainly been coercive, even the ones that have consultative governance.

I think the difference is that today there is a plethora of *options*, whereas in the past, without the need / economics for technological development, things were mostly satisfactory, and static.

(A treatment of potential gift economies is at post #13.)

We should strive, I think, for a kind of post-capitalist *co*-administration -- one that is massively parallel with close to a 100% participation rate. In this way administration wouldn't be a specialized *separate entity*, but instead would be a regular ingrained part of everyday social life.

Administration is expensive; the difficulties it involves shouldn’t be underestimated. The problem for communism will be avoiding the Stalinist centralization your blog entry mentions. Your blog entry’s proposed solution in part uses

“labor credits the liberated-laborer's possession, [that] empower them with a labor-organizing…ability”

which I take to mean small decision-making bodies where voting weights are determined by how many labor credits the voting worker has earned.

Interesting -- I hadn't actually thought of it that way, with voting. Here's from the model itself:

labor [supply] -- Labor supply is selected and paid for with existing (or debt-based) labor credits

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

labor [supply] -- Work positions are created according to requirements of production runs and projects, by mass political prioritization

labor [supply] -- All workers will be entirely liberated from all coercion and threats related to basic human living needs, regardless of work status -- any labor roles will be entirely self-selected and open to collective labor organizing efforts on the basis of accumulated labor credits

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

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

I don’t know how this will work in practice, in the context of a modern economy. I do agree that workers and [I]not private bosses should have final voice regarding working conditions, yet that leaves the management problems themselves still unsolved.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'management problems' in a post-capitalist context -- certainly liberated laborers would be able to collectively do decision-making over their own pooled labor. My model systematizes such social functioning based on this principle of 'liberated, uncoerced self-organization of labor', as can be seen from the excerpts above.

The construction of your concept is problematic because it takes constant labor inputs to be an a priori given…

I don’t take labor inputs as givens, but only assert that they are proportional to output.

This is a *very* elastic term -- 'proportional' -- since, due to infrastructure / automation, discrete labor inputs can extend *far* into the future, as with the examples of plumbing, sewers, hot-water heaters, electrical wires, the Internet, etc. -- the communist cause presses for an indefinite *expansion* of this dynamic, so that (past) labor becomes virtually imperceptible and negligible while the *benefits* of such extend outward, everywhere, for people's unlimited convenience.

Currently private interests would rather *hold back* advances in technological development and usage, so as to continue the labor-input process unnecessarily, so as to realize profits from its continuous commodification.

Getting rid of profit, and getting rid of the special class that lives on profit without doing any work, is needed and will help reduce the burdens of labor. Oddly, despite concentration of wealth, profit represents only ten to twenty percent of the total income stream in the capitalist economy—whether income is measured in kind or in money. Wealth then concentrates because this profit is surplus, not used to meet the needs of the profiteer, so it can pile up. The cruel finance system with its compound interest abets this process.

Perceptions of scarcity in modern consumerism are indeed created by marketing as capitalism simultaneously keeps a hammerlock over the entire production and distribution system.

Yes, agreed on all of this.

Yet the laws of physics don’t suggest abundance can come effortlessly, so that if society prioritizes making work optional, it will likely have to accept modest standards of living and material consumption. Which may not be a bad thing.

I'll respectfully disagree here, due to my reasoning above -- technology needs to be *liberated* so that humanity can finally realize its full, untapped potentials, as for mostly work-optional living, with no compromise over ease and enjoyment.

Hatshepsut

14th September 2014, 00:31

...technology needs to be liberated so that humanity can finally realize its full, untapped potentials, as for mostly work-optional living, with no compromise over ease and enjoyment.
This proposition looks okay. Right now technology is buttoned up by patents held in private hands, or by secrecy, when it should be part of the knowledge commons. I'll postpone the management and politics questions for now since they're more complex.

:star2: As a learning question, I confess I don't yet understand how labor credits work. I have the chart from your profile page. It shows that they are held by individual workers and that each credit can buy only some quantity of another worker's time.

Marx's Capital, which I've started on, discusses exchange valuation of commodities (goods freely exchanged between people) in terms of the "labour time socially necessary" (Part. 1, Sec. 1) required to make the commodities. So, although the exchange value inherent in commodities is measurable by labor, the units of labor credit would still seem to be exchangeable for commodities, as well as for other labor.

:star2: If so, then the following:

Marx's use value of commodities is measurable by demand, and capitalist skimming extends beyond rents and interest--enabled by private ownership and moneyholding already present in a feudal system--to the production process itself, as "with reference to use value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to [exchange] value it counts only quantitatively" (Sec. 2). In other words, the capitalist is skimming off a difference between the use value and exchange value of a commodity, because labor is not convertible into use value in Marx's analysis. This last form of skimming is profit.

Yet any middle player can profit on use over exchange values, even without private property, in the same way, as long as labor and commodities are interconvertible.

In light of this, is your restriction of labor credit, to exchange only for labor (not commodities), designed to prevent this skimming? Or is there another reason for it?

ckaihatsu

14th September 2014, 01:22

This proposition looks okay. Right now technology is buttoned up by patents held in private hands, or by secrecy, when it should be part of the knowledge commons. I'll postpone the management and politics questions for now since they're more complex.

Yup. Okay.

:star2: As a learning question, I confess I don't yet understand how labor credits work. I have the chart from your profile page. It shows that they are held by individual workers and that each credit can buy only some quantity of another worker's time.

Correct.

Marx's Capital, which I've started on, discusses exchange valuation of commodities (goods freely exchanged between people) in terms of the "labour time socially necessary" (Part. 1, Sec. 1) required to make the commodities. So, although the exchange value inherent in commodities is measurable by labor, the units of labor credit would still seem to be exchangeable for commodities, as well as for other labor.

Please note:

[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. 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.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=11269

So this means that the 'labor credits' implementation would *not* commodify labor, and/or be compatible with commodity production, because the resulting production would be entirely free-access, per communism.

:star2: If so, then the following:

Marx's use value of commodities is measurable by demand, and capitalist skimming extends beyond rents and interest--enabled by private ownership and moneyholding already present in a feudal system--to the production process itself, as "with reference to use value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to [exchange] value it counts only quantitatively" (Sec. 2). In other words, the capitalist is skimming off a difference between the use value and exchange value of a commodity, because labor is not convertible into use value in Marx's analysis. This last form of skimming is profit.

Yet any middle player can profit on use over exchange values, even without private property, in the same way, as long as labor and commodities are interconvertible.

Correct, and this is why a lateralist patchwork 'market socialism' is problematic and invalid.

In light of this, is your restriction of labor credit, to exchange only for labor (not commodities), designed to prevent this skimming? Or is there another reason for it?

Correct, and I appreciate your attentions here.

In a post-capitalist context there would be no commodities, and so goods-and-services would reduce to *only* *services*, or 'liberated services' (labor), as for a gift-economy-type free-access production of materials.

Wherever an ad hoc gift economy production could happen organically my entire 'communist supply & demand' 'labor credits' system would *not* be necessary, and would be superfluous. But -- if there happened to be a *scarcity* of some kind of liberated labor, or if people felt that not all work roles could be considered equivalent per-hour, then that's what my framework has been developed to address.

Ledur

14th September 2014, 20:25

ckaihatsu

14th September 2014, 21:33

ckaihatsu,

How do you prevent that these labour credits aren't commodified in a market?

For example, I need someone to fix my computer. I'd look for someone who exchanges his/her service for less credits.

I really don't see that as being a problem -- the index of multipliers onto labor-hours would serve as a general guide, but nothing would prevent people from determining their own rates for their own liberated labor.

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

It wouldn't be the *commodification* of labor, though, because there'd be no inter-exchangeability with materials, and no finance would be objectively needed or allowed. Liberated labor could only be measured, through the use of labor credits, in relation to other liberated labor, at the time of its completion (according to a prior agreed-upon plan, of any scale / scope).

So, to give a scenario, let's say some kind of goods -- paper, perhaps -- become scarce in a certain area. The question, then, would be 'How do we get production going so that paper is no longer scarce?' The answer would be to source new supplies of paper either locally or from afar (internally or externally). If the people experiencing scarcity can readily handle the production needed to fulfill their own needs for paper, locally, then great -- they'll do that, on freely available implements, perhaps including others nearby to grow the scope of the plan a little, and soon their paper scarcity will be a thing of the past.

If they *cannot*, though, for whatever reason, produce the needed paper locally, then their production needs will be more complex, and they'll have to generalize production across or "above" with other localities. If the problem regards *infrastructure* then they can hopefully coordinate to use the *machinery* they need that is located elsewhere -- part of the worldwide communist commons -- perhaps with their own liberated labor. If they, for whatever reason, *cannot* use their own liberated labor for the paper production that they need, then they may have to request the liberated-labor of *others*, perhaps at the locality of the machinery that they plan to use.

But why should *others* -- who do not necessarily need paper, and could probably readily produce their own, anyway, using the equipment local to themselves -- *labor* for those of a different locality? If those who need paper could, in turn, provide *their* liberated labor -- perhaps for *cloth* production -- to those who would produce paper for them, then there's an *even swap* of liberated labor, and both parties would be satisfied, without even having to use labor credits or anything else, at all.

But -- if the respective *quantities* of production were significantly different, involving significantly different amounts of liberated labor on either part, or the *types* of liberated labor involved were *qualitatively* different, involving *proportionately more effort* for one locality's work roles versus the others', then *that's* where the 'labor credits' system could be used to even things out overall.

So perhaps those who need paper production, from another locality's liberated laborers, find that there's nothing they can provide *in return*, in the way of their own liberated labor. They *could*, using the labor-credits system, actually go into *debt*, of whatever amount of labor credits that the other locality is willing to agree to, for the necessary liberated-labor, for the paper production. This debt of labor credits would be publicly displayed, probably by both localities, and it would serve as a concrete *political* designation of that locality lacking some degree of *political credibility* in the world, at least until its liberated laborers could find some way to provide their liberated labor to others (other localities), to bring in labor credits to erase the debt.

Nothing in the way of finance, or financing, would be relevant or applicable in this post-capitalist social environment because all material quantities are strictly and simply reducible to the supply of liberated labor. A locality *could* hypothetically go deeper and deeper into further debt, but it could only happen if several separate localities *saw* the deepening debt (worsening political credibility), and, for whatever reason(s), *still* collectively decided to provide their own liberated labor anyway, with just a promise in return.

Those people *of* a locality in debt would be publicly / formally noted as such, and could not just 'skip-out' from under the obligations of debt they've benefitted from, from being a part of that locality. There might be a formal worldwide norm of having to 'cash out' from any locality that's currently in debt (since those of a locality were necessarily part of the decision-making process to have their locality go *into* debt in the first place). So someone wanting to change localities, *out of* a locality that's in debt, would probably have to pay-in their individually-proportionate share of the debt in labor credits, before their name could be formally 'cleared' in the eyes of the world.

In this way no one would be 'stuck' anywhere, and any amounts of debt on the locality and/or the individual, would not affect their freedoms of life and living in the least, since they would still be able to partake of the world's free-access materials and goods. It would only be their access to further liberated-services (the work of others) that would be negatively affected by their worsening of their own political credibility.

[G]iven that a locality is treated as a cohesive entity for the purposes of political and economic needs and demands, and that a locality may not actually *remain* cohesive, as per the above, the question may arise how a locality's accumulated debt of labor credits would then be handled if its own population is continually dispersing and re-forming.

So one could argue that a locality could just announce all kinds of local projects and production runs, run up a sizeable debt of labor credits to pay the liberated laborers, and then after enjoying the benefits of that labor its residents would simply disperse from the locality, leaving it uninhabited and in debt.

To address this potential scenario there could be a regulation that ties all individuals, by name, to any given locality -- any individual who would want to leave the locality would have to either pay their individually-proportionate share of the locality's outstanding debt of labor credits, or else -- for exceptional circumstances -- that same portion of debt would be assigned to that individual for wherever they happened to be after leaving.

On the converse, if someone wanted to move *to* a locality that had a debt, they would implicitly be assuming their individually-proportionate share of that locality's total debt of labor credits.

Localities would only be able to *issue* and *work off* debts in their locality's name -- liberated laborers holding labor credits of their own in a locality that has no debt are considered as individuals with their own personal labor credits, with none of those labor credits seen as being with the locality as a whole, as might be imagined.

(BTW, I understood that market for goods is a thing of the past in your system).

Yep. (Which means that people would no longer be at a loss for the *materials* of life and living because there would be no markets for such, and therefore no artificial scarcity.)

ckaihatsu

14th September 2014, 23:06

Marx's use value of commodities is measurable by demand, and capitalist skimming extends beyond rents and interest--enabled by private ownership and moneyholding already present in a feudal system--to the production process itself, as "with reference to use value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to [exchange] value it counts only quantitatively" (Sec. 2). In other words, the capitalist is skimming off a difference between the use value and exchange value of a commodity, because labor is not convertible into use value in Marx's analysis. This last form of skimming is profit.

As a sidenote I'd like to point out that there *is* a distinction to be made about the term 'skimming' -- which, technically, indicates an *upward-pooling* of value, as was done by the bureaucratic-collectivists / Stalinists of the former USSR.

To be precise, the correct term here is 'expropriation', to arrive at 'capitalist expropriation', and *not* 'capitalist skimming', since the institution of private property actually *removes* value from the economic system, and *doesn't* *pool* it whatsoever, as for a collectivist infrastructure, however poorly administered (as by the Stalinists).

The Modern Prometheus

15th September 2014, 03:59

Kropotkin touched alot on this issue in Mutual aid: A Factor in Evolution. Basically people needs have to be looked after before their wants are. Which can be done much more easily in Today's society as we have more then enough wealth to go around much unlike the early part of the 20th century.

Basically it can be summed up as "to each according to his ability and to each according to his needs"

cyu

15th September 2014, 23:39

ckaihatsu

15th September 2014, 23:52

ckaihatsu,

How do you prevent that these labour credits aren't commodified in a market?

For example, I need someone to fix my computer. I'd look for someone who exchanges his/her service for less credits.

Been thinking about this a bit more, Ledur, and it *is* conceivable that someone *could* be motivated to try the practice of arbitrage on labor credits themselves....

(But first, to take your scenario more literally, see the following thread....)

computer technical support thread

http://www.revleft.com/vb/computer-technical-support-t160520/index.html

So, it might be possible that those who make it their business to be in-the-know happen to see that in the near future there will be a significant *decrease* in the labor supply of computer technicians (maybe due to population trends, whatever). They might offer to provide *guarantees*, through coupons issued, that allow people to lock-in *current* rates of labor credits for computer technician services, knowing that the "market" rate for such will go up in the future. (And, by having more labor credits on-hand sooner, can then effect more projects and production runs quickly, for whatever localities, so that those localities don't have to go into debt for the same. The labor credits could be regained, and with a "profit", from kickbacks from those liberated laborers brought onto the projects, possibly at inflated rates.)

I can only say that the only thing to preclude this kind of operating would be the everyday norms of such a society -- hopefully the prospect of locality debt *wouldn't* carry a stigma, but would instead be a social incentive to larger-scale organizing and coordinating. So where several localities realize that computer-technician rates might be going up in the near future, they might communicate to see what social activities -- like providing more, advanced hardware and skill-sharing -- could be encouraged to reinvigorate the general computer-repair *culture*, so as to forestall liberated-labor shortages and their knock-on effects in the larger society.

ckaihatsu

16th September 2014, 00:09

If you've never read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed I'd encourage you to give it a read, and decide for yourself whether you like the system described or not. Personally I think it's pretty cool.

Another (maybe different) way to imagine distribution is to consider how food is distributed from a typical family refrigerator to other members of the family. I doubt even 10% of pro-capitalists attempt to implement a market system within their own family. And how do pro-capitalists attempt to implement distribution of health care within their family? I'd bet far more than 90% do it "to each according to their need" - they're petite communists without even realizing it :lol:

Without having read the work, I'd like to note that the differences I have with anarchists in general is that they tend to be very localist, small-scale-minded, resource-anxious, and eschewing of further technological development.

I'll reiterate that:

[D]ue to infrastructure / automation, discrete labor inputs can extend *far* into the future, as with the examples of plumbing, sewers, hot-water heaters, electrical wires, the Internet, etc. -- the communist cause presses for an indefinite *expansion* of this dynamic, so that (past) labor becomes virtually imperceptible and negligible while the *benefits* of such extend outward, everywhere, for people's unlimited convenience.

As a worldwide society we should be thinking more in terms of how to *satisfy* material needs and desires so that such can be *out of the way*, freeing us to socialize as we'd like, in whatever work-optional ways we'd like.

Hatshepsut

17th September 2014, 15:39

If you've never read The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1975), I'd encourage you to give it a read...

...someone could be motivated to try the practice of arbitrage on labor credits themselves....

...anarchists...tend to be very localist, small-scale-minded...eschewing...technological development.
Le Guin takes up the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the notion that our linguistic categories determine how we think. For example, if use value isn't in our vocabulary, we can't talk about labor the same way Marx did. And when discussing capitalism, Marx took for granted Western concepts of property where there is a written title, courts to adjudicate title issues, and police forces to enforce property laws and defend property from aggression aimed at it.

I think the management problem has been touched on by now. Someone will begin arbitrage activity on the labor credits the very same day. You can count on it. The problem with utopian communism is it ignores human psychology and relies on goodwill and cooperative spirit to make everything work. Real-world applications can't do that, and no past economic system has been based on anything resembling the proposed labor credits.

Wherever there is a farm field, a house, or a factory, someone with a gun must defend it, and someone with authority, a boss, must tell other people what they can and can't do with that field, house, or factory. Effective control over something is the antithesis of democracy. Yet a factory must operate in a controlled manner even if it's formally owned by the proletariat as a commons.

The anarcho-primitivists are correct as far as that the only stateless human societies known are hunter-gatherer bands who have no technology beyond the stone age. They didn't have settled assets requiring management or military force to preserve. Every other type of economy is too complex to run on this organic basis. Oddly, the ability to be a manager or boss is really a skill; not many people do it well, since good bosses do listen and use persuasion and politeness more than orders. They still retain that power to fire, however.

:star2: I'm not attacking your ideas, or attacking you personally. I don't agree with the primitivists—humanity is committed to technology for better or worse. Technology alleviates scarcity and promotes comfort, which in turn alleviates anger and violence of the kind you see in deprived societies. Abolishing large personal stockpiles of wealth limits envy. With less resentment circulating around, less coercion is needed. Policy and problem solving strategy can be agreed on democratically by workers in many situations. Bosses can be elected and serve for term, so they don't get too power-happy.

I like a lot of what I see here, about liberating work from its slave-like "commodity" status. Practical problems of favoritism, patronage, and individual efforts to get ahead of the game still remain, and have to be solved some way. The reactionary view holds they are impossible to solve. That view is wrong, but it has a point. I guess it's just that I think these problems are hard to solve, and should not be dismissed lightly. Higher communism is possible, but will require many generations to achieve. It takes time to make new kinds of cooperation become cultural traits.

ckaihatsu

17th September 2014, 18:16

Le Guin takes up the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the notion that our linguistic categories determine how we think. For example, if use value isn't in our vocabulary, we can't talk about labor the same way Marx did.

This is known as 'idealism' -- wherever words alone are imagined to trump actual material conditions, and real-world social relations.

Obviously 'use value' *is* in our vocabulary, and if it wasn't then someone would invent it, or a term like it, since actual conditions need to be referred to somehow, as in making the distinction between use-values and exchange-values.

And when discussing capitalism, Marx took for granted Western concepts of property where there is a written title, courts to adjudicate title issues, and police forces to enforce property laws and defend property from aggression aimed at it.

'Took for granted' is a strange expression here, since private property, the state, etc., *are* the real conditions that he theorized about.

I think the management problem has been touched on by now. Someone will begin arbitrage activity on the labor credits the very same day. You can count on it. The problem with utopian communism is it ignores human psychology and relies on goodwill and cooperative spirit to make everything work. Real-world applications can't do that, and no past economic system has been based on anything resembling the proposed labor credits.

You're correct -- no past economic system *has* been based on anything that's really communistic, including my proposed labor credits, and that's the whole point. A worldwide proletarian revolution is a *prerequisite* for anything that would be a modern commons, including the collectivist control of social production.

This is what makes the communist cause / project absolutely *different* from anything before, because there would *be no* 'management problem', as you've expressed. There would *be no* ego-centric, sheerly individualistic 'human psychology' because the revolutionary society would have been borne out of 'goodwill' and 'the cooperative spirit' to make everything work, instead of relying on granular private interests, all in contention with all others, as we have today (more-or-less).

So in this way communism *isn't* utopian in the sense of 'idealism' as I've defined above, because it's not about finding the correct linguistic overlay to use for everyone to be correctly "re-programmed" and "managed", as from above -- instead it's a *mass-conscious*, *mass-willful* response to worsening objective conditions under capitalism. In this way it's not like anything that's happened before because humanity has never collectively discussed and coordinated production outside of separatistic private property interests.

Wherever there is a farm field, a house, or a factory, someone with a gun must defend it, and someone with authority, a boss, must tell other people what they can and can't do with that field, house, or factory. Effective control over something is the antithesis of democracy. Yet a factory must operate in a controlled manner even if it's formally owned by the proletariat as a commons.

Well you're *implying* the existence of private property, with your defining of 'a farm field', 'a house', and 'a factory' -- in a *post*-capitalist context those would undoubtedly be parts of a larger social consciousness -- if you will -- to be designated more as 'farming land of good fertility encompassed within GPS coordinates xxx.xxx yyy.yyy (etc.), and 'a house that's part of the living commons at blah blah blah', and 'a general machine-tool-based factory shop, for personnel of about 50, at the address of yadda-yadda'.

And I really don't see how 'effective control', as on a collectivist basis of whatever scale, is 'the antithesis of democracy' -- certainly the bourgeois revolutions of past centuries have introduced the world to a certain *form* of democracy over *governing institutions*, to some degree -- historically limited to white land-owning men -- so, by extension, why couldn't similar, and better, forms of democracy be used over the process of *industrial production*, and more -- ?

The anarcho-primitivists are correct as far as that the only stateless human societies known are hunter-gatherer bands who have no technology beyond the stone age. They didn't have settled assets requiring management or military force to preserve.

Every other type of economy is too complex to run on this organic basis.

That's arguable, since the prevailing ethos of a successful anti-capitalist world revolution could certainly be the social consciousness for such -- again, see the previous post about potential 'gift economies', at post #13.

Oddly, the ability to be a manager or boss is really a skill; not many people do it well, since good bosses do listen and use persuasion and politeness more than orders. They still retain that power to fire, however.

:star2: I'm not attacking your ideas, or attacking you personally. I don't agree with the primitivists—humanity is committed to technology for better or worse. Technology alleviates scarcity and promotes comfort, which in turn alleviates anger and violence of the kind you see in deprived societies. Abolishing large personal stockpiles of wealth limits envy. With less resentment circulating around, less coercion is needed.

This following part...

Policy and problem solving strategy can be agreed on democratically by workers in many situations.

...*Contradicts* what you asserted earlier, that:

Effective control over something is the antithesis of democracy. Yet a factory must operate in a controlled manner even if it's formally owned by the proletariat as a commons.

---

Bosses can be elected and serve for term, so they don't get too power-happy.

If people have the adequate time and information to stay up-to-date on the (political) issues of the day, whatever they may be, so as to make good, well-informed decisions regarding the selection or dismissal of their political representatives, then they obviously have enough time and information to simply *forward* their opinions and decisions regarding policy and problem-solving, into an entirely *collective* process.

These days our communications technology greatly facilitates such a bottom-up collective decision-making process, *without* having to depend on any (necessarily substitutionist) political representatives of *any* kind.

4. Ends -- Flat, all-inclusive mode of participation at all levels without delegated representatives

[In] this day and age of fluid digital-based communications, we may want to dispense with formalized representative personages altogether and just conceptualize a productive entity within a supply chain network as having 'external business' or 'external matters' to include in its regular routine of entity-collective co-administration among its participants.

Given that people make *points* on any of a number of *issues*, which may comprise some larger *topics* -- and these fall into some general *themes*, or *categories* -- wouldn't this very discussion-board format of RevLeft be altogether suitable for a massively parallel (ground-level) political participation among all those concerned, particularly workers, for *all scales* of political implementation -- ?

I think there's conventionally been a kind of lingering anxiety over the political "workload" that would confront any regular person who would work *and* wish to have active, impacting participation in real-world policy, along the lines of the examples you've provided for this thread's discussion.

But I'll note that, for any given concrete issue, not everyone would *necessarily* find the material need to individually weigh in with a distinct proposal of their own -- as I think we've seen here from our own regular participation at RevLeft, it's often the case that a simple press of the 'Thanks' button is all that's needed in many cases where a comrade has *already* put forth the words that we would have said ourselves, thereby relieving us from the task of writing that sentiment ourselves.

Would concrete issues at higher, more-generalized levels be so different, so inaccessible to the regular, affected person on the ground? Wouldn't the information gathered within such an appropriate thread of discussion "clue everyone in" as the overall situation at that level -- say, from the participants of several different countries -- ?

I'll ask if delegated representatives *are* really required anymore when our current political vehicle, the Internet-based discussion board, can facilitate massively participatory, though orderly and topic-specific conversations, across all ranges of geography and scales of populations.

tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-concise-communism

I like a lot of what I see here, about liberating work from its slave-like "commodity" status.

Wage labor *is* commodified since it is bought and sold on the market, and it *is* slave-like since people have *no alternatives* to participation in the money economy -- either they have already-existing money, or they have to sell their own labor for money.

Practical problems of favoritism, patronage, and individual efforts to get ahead of the game still remain, and have to be solved some way. The reactionary view holds they are impossible to solve. That view is wrong, but it has a point. I guess it's just that I think these problems are hard to solve, and should not be dismissed lightly. Higher communism is possible, but will require many generations to achieve. It takes time to make new kinds of cooperation become cultural traits.

*Or* -- the workers of the world will, at more-or-less the same time, and in great numbers, see that the capitalist system is failing and is untenable, especially for their own, workers' interests. Revolutions often happen quickly and are not always well-foreseen.

ckaihatsu

18th September 2014, 01:38

Someone will begin arbitrage activity on the labor credits the very same day. You can count on it.

About this specifically -- if there was enough of a communal, collectivist ethos to bring humankind beyond the separatism of capitalism's micromanaged, competing private interests, such a society might simply make a requirement / regulation that *all* significantly large-amount proposed transactions go through the regular locality prioritization-sorting process. This would be similar to today's financial reporting regulations.

So:

consumption [demand] -- Every person in a locality has a standard, one-through-infinity ranking system of political demands available to them, updated daily

consumption [demand] -- Basic human needs will be assigned a higher political priority by individuals and will emerge as mass demands at the cumulative scale -- desires will benefit from political organizing efforts and coordination

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

consumption [demand] -- A regular, routine system of mass individual political demand pooling -- as with spreadsheet templates and email -- must be in continuous operation so as to aggregate cumulative demands into the political process

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

Just as most people would find it out-of-the-norm today to accept large denominations from a single individual, the norm of a post-capitalist society would be to handle large-ish concerns on a *mass* basis, as with the standard cumulative-prioritization of all locality-local individual economic orders and/or political demands.

So our hypothetical wheeler-dealer from post #30 would probably set off alarm bells *everywhere*, especially in a social context that had no norms for individualistic profit-making in the first place, nor markets for goods to enable it, either. If someone was so ambitious as to be known around so many mover-and-shaker circles (for / of liberated labor), their exceptional efforts would *still* be constrained to their own physical limits, of course, and would still be inter-dependent through coordinating with other particularly-dedicated liberated-labor types.

Some supercharged hero would, in the end, be limited to their own political / administrative initiatives, most likely in concert with like-minded proponents, and would still necessarily be operating in a *very*-distributed fundraising social environment -- since labor credits can't be leveraged and financially inflated beyond one's own actual liberated-labor inputs.

Hatshepsut

18th September 2014, 14:34

A leader can be elected democratically. A written law or policy can be voted on democratically. It's the enforcement that is not democratic. Once you elect leaders, they have to have final say, or they are not leaders. A written law is enforced by a police officer, who doesn't ask you if you want to obey. That's what I meant by it.

You can of course remove a leader or police officer if you don't like them, provided you persuade a majority of voters. But while they are in office, they are not democrats. They are rulers.

The topic isn't philosophy so I won't go into idealism or materialism. The concept of property isn't as easy as it looks. Is the owner the person with a piece of paper saying so? It's easy to say something is public property and belongs to everyone, but it's really controlled. For example, a police officer can order you to leave a public park that theoretically belongs to you and the rest of the public. The officer doesn't have to give a reason or explain things. In a way, the officer really "owns" the park, even if temporarily.

Who's going to notice the activity at Trading Post #30 and do anything about it? The traders may have friends who protect them. It's even possible to create a private money system with secret banks if the state refuses to issue money. Secret banking already exists in Karachi, Pakistan and other place, to allow illegal activities to escape official monitoring. These banks don't need money, they write their own letters of credit. Finally, if something is done about Post #30, it's police who have to go do it, and the handcuffs aren't very democratic.

ckaihatsu

19th September 2014, 00:07

A leader can be elected democratically. A written law or policy can be voted on democratically. It's the enforcement that is not democratic.

I'll tend to agree, though it *should* be the case that the policy regarding enforcement is provided-for as an integral part of the social policy itself.

Once you elect leaders, they have to have final say, or they are not leaders.

But their 'leadership' is derived from the consent of the governed (and/or its acquiescence) -- so another way of putting it is that 'leaders' are a *convenience* of sorts for those who put them there.

This theory of consent is historically contrasted to the divine right of kings and has often been invoked against the legitimacy of colonialism.

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

The question -- wherever leaders are allowed into positions -- is whether that convenience is worth the inherent trade-off of a certain *passive-ness* on the part of those who give their consent to such leadership.

Sure, I understand that most people probably don't want to deal with issues of political and social policy on a daily basis -- but if they don't, as is the case, then those who *do* handle such matters will naturally gravitate into positions of power and privilege because they're *unchecked* by the larger population.

A written law is enforced by a police officer, who doesn't ask you if you want to obey. That's what I meant by it.

You can of course remove a leader or police officer if you don't like them, provided you persuade a majority of voters. But while they are in office, they are not democrats. They are rulers.

Okay, I agree here.

The topic isn't philosophy so I won't go into idealism or materialism. The concept of property isn't as easy as it looks. Is the owner the person with a piece of paper saying so? It's easy to say something is public property and belongs to everyone, but it's really controlled. For example, a police officer can order you to leave a public park that theoretically belongs to you and the rest of the public. The officer doesn't have to give a reason or explain things. In a way, the officer really "owns" the park, even if temporarily.

I agree with you on the definition of empirical 'private property' 'ownership', but will *disagree* on the subject of *public* property, since there's nothing to say that there should be *no* policy whatsoever over public spaces and institutions. But, that said, I have to add that, currently, 'public' property and institutions are still under the aegis of the *state*, so it could just as well be called 'state property', and seen as being regulated according to the laws of the bourgeois state.

Who's going to notice the activity at Trading Post #30 and do anything about it? The traders may have friends who protect them. It's even possible to create a private money system with secret banks if the state refuses to issue money. Secret banking already exists in Karachi, Pakistan and other place, to allow illegal activities to escape official monitoring. These banks don't need money, they write their own letters of credit. Finally, if something is done about Post #30, it's police who have to go do it, and the handcuffs aren't very democratic.

I don't know what you mean to say with your scenario of "Trading Post #30" -- I mentioned *a* 'post #30' in my last post (#34), by which I meant to reference a prior post of mine in this thread, post #30. It can be found at this link:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2787554&postcount=30

ckaihatsu

19th September 2014, 00:27

I'll follow-up on my 'no representatives needed' line (from post #33) with the 'Prioritization Chart' graphic / process, below....

If people have the adequate time and information to stay up-to-date on the (political) issues of the day, whatever they may be, so as to make good, well-informed decisions regarding the selection or dismissal of their political representatives, then they obviously have enough time and information to simply *forward* their opinions and decisions regarding policy and problem-solving, into an entirely *collective* process.

These days our communications technology greatly facilitates such a bottom-up collective decision-making process, *without* having to depend on any (necessarily substitutionist) political representatives of *any* kind.

[17] Prioritization Chart

http://s6.postimg.org/8yk8c84xd/17_Prioritization_Chart.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/jy5fntvcd/full/)

Ledur

30th September 2014, 18:16

I really don't see that as being a problem -- the index of multipliers onto labor-hours would serve as a general guide, but nothing would prevent people from determining their own rates for their own liberated labor.

Ok.

It wouldn't be the *commodification* of labor, though, because there'd be no inter-exchangeability with materials, and no finance would be objectively needed or allowed. Liberated labor could only be measured, through the use of labor credits, in relation to other liberated labor, at the time of its completion (according to a prior agreed-upon plan, of any scale / scope).

Labour could be sold in a market, then it is a commodity, despite abundance of material goods. Maybe the solution is a network of mutual reciprocity, without labour-hours accounting?

So, to give a scenario, let's say some kind of goods -- paper, perhaps -- become scarce in a certain area. The question, then, would be 'How do we get production going so that paper is no longer scarce?' The answer would be to source new supplies of paper either locally or from afar (internally or externally). If the people experiencing scarcity can readily handle the production needed to fulfill their own needs for paper, locally, then great -- they'll do that, on freely available implements, perhaps including others nearby to grow the scope of the plan a little, and soon their paper scarcity will be a thing of the past.

If they *cannot*, though, for whatever reason, produce the needed paper locally, then their production needs will be more complex, and they'll have to generalize production across or "above" with other localities. If the problem regards *infrastructure* then they can hopefully coordinate to use the *machinery* they need that is located elsewhere -- part of the worldwide communist commons -- perhaps with their own liberated labor. If they, for whatever reason, *cannot* use their own liberated labor for the paper production that they need, then they may have to request the liberated-labor of *others*, perhaps at the locality of the machinery that they plan to use.

But why should *others* -- who do not necessarily need paper, and could probably readily produce their own, anyway, using the equipment local to themselves -- *labor* for those of a different locality? If those who need paper could, in turn, provide *their* liberated labor -- perhaps for *cloth* production -- to those who would produce paper for them, then there's an *even swap* of liberated labor, and both parties would be satisfied, without even having to use labor credits or anything else, at all.

But -- if the respective *quantities* of production were significantly different, involving significantly different amounts of liberated labor on either part, or the *types* of liberated labor involved were *qualitatively* different, involving *proportionately more effort* for one locality's work roles versus the others', then *that's* where the 'labor credits' system could be used to even things out overall.

So perhaps those who need paper production, from another locality's liberated laborers, find that there's nothing they can provide *in return*, in the way of their own liberated labor. They *could*, using the labor-credits system, actually go into *debt*, of whatever amount of labor credits that the other locality is willing to agree to, for the necessary liberated-labor, for the paper production. This debt of labor credits would be publicly displayed, probably by both localities, and it would serve as a concrete *political* designation of that locality lacking some degree of *political credibility* in the world, at least until its liberated laborers could find some way to provide their liberated labor to others (other localities), to bring in labor credits to erase the debt.

Nothing in the way of finance, or financing, would be relevant or applicable in this post-capitalist social environment because all material quantities are strictly and simply reducible to the supply of liberated labor. A locality *could* hypothetically go deeper and deeper into further debt, but it could only happen if several separate localities *saw* the deepening debt (worsening political credibility), and, for whatever reason(s), *still* collectively decided to provide their own liberated labor anyway, with just a promise in return.

Those people *of* a locality in debt would be publicly / formally noted as such, and could not just 'skip-out' from under the obligations of debt they've benefitted from, from being a part of that locality. There might be a formal worldwide norm of having to 'cash out' from any locality that's currently in debt (since those of a locality were necessarily part of the decision-making process to have their locality go *into* debt in the first place). So someone wanting to change localities, *out of* a locality that's in debt, would probably have to pay-in their individually-proportionate share of the debt in labor credits, before their name could be formally 'cleared' in the eyes of the world.

In this way no one would be 'stuck' anywhere, and any amounts of debt on the locality and/or the individual, would not affect their freedoms of life and living in the least, since they would still be able to partake of the world's free-access materials and goods. It would only be their access to further liberated-services (the work of others) that would be negatively affected by their worsening of their own political credibility.

I understood, people from different communes would have to exchange things. You suppose they would exchange the labour credits, and it's ok. By the way, I'm not against a common unity (money), or barter, or gift-like reciprocity, when there's a surplus of paper in commune A and a surplus of clothes in commune B. In this case, there's any oppression whatsoever of a capitalist class. Inside each commune, distribution would be according to need, but among communes (or among different federations with other mode of production), each one could specialise its production and exchange products. Eventually, some communes would agree that surpluses would be given to other communes according to need, and you'd have the same mode of production everywhere, eliminating the old "exchange".

Been thinking about this a bit more, Ledur, and it *is* conceivable that someone *could* be motivated to try the practice of arbitrage on labor credits themselves....

So, it might be possible that those who make it their business to be in-the-know happen to see that in the near future there will be a significant *decrease* in the labor supply of computer technicians (maybe due to population trends, whatever). They might offer to provide *guarantees*, through coupons issued, that allow people to lock-in *current* rates of labor credits for computer technician services, knowing that the "market" rate for such will go up in the future. (And, by having more labor credits on-hand sooner, can then effect more projects and production runs quickly, for whatever localities, so that those localities don't have to go into debt for the same. The labor credits could be regained, and with a "profit", from kickbacks from those liberated laborers brought onto the projects, possibly at inflated rates.)

I can only say that the only thing to preclude this kind of operating would be the everyday norms of such a society -- hopefully the prospect of locality debt *wouldn't* carry a stigma, but would instead be a social incentive to larger-scale organizing and coordinating. So where several localities realize that computer-technician rates might be going up in the near future, they might communicate to see what social activities -- like providing more, advanced hardware and skill-sharing -- could be encouraged to reinvigorate the general computer-repair *culture*, so as to forestall liberated-labor shortages and their knock-on effects in the larger society.

I think of one solution: when someone is highly specialised and is very demanded by society, he/she would share skills with others, and those who have the same interests would choose to work in that field. Society would benefit from more supply of this kind of skill, and the original person would feel less pressure to meet demands.

Ledur

30th September 2014, 19:13

Distribution in a communist society

Based on "rationing" (or "access").

From http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionI4:

To indicate the relative changes in scarcity of a given good it will be necessary to calculate a "scarcity index." This would inform potential users of this good whether its demand is outstripping its supply so that they may effectively adjust their decisions in light of the decisions of others. This index could be, for example, a percentage figure which indicates the relation of orders placed for a commodity to the amount actually produced. For example, a good which has a demand higher than its supply would have an index value of 101% or higher. This value would inform potential users to start looking for substitutes for it or to economise on its use. Such a scarcity figure would exist for each collective as well as (possibly) a generalised figure for the industry as a whole on a regional, "national," etc. level.

In this way, a specific good could be seen to be in high demand and so only those producers who really required it would place orders for it (so ensuring effective use of resources). Needless to say, stock levels and other basic book-keeping techniques would be utilised in order to ensure a suitable buffer level of a specific good existed. This may result in some excess supply of goods being produced and used as stock to buffer out unexpected changes in the aggregate demand for a good.

Such a buffer system would work on an individual workplace level and at a communal level. Syndicates would obviously have their inventories, stores of raw materials and finished goods "on the shelf," which can be used to meet excesses in demand. Communal stores, hospitals and so on would have their stores of supplies in case of unexpected disruptions in supply. This is a common practice even in capitalism, although it would (perhaps) be extended in a free society to ensure changes in supply and demand do not have disruptive effects.

Example:
- In the price system, price of meat is $10.
- In the in natura system, access to meat is 5kg per capita per month (5kg pcpm)

Demand UP
Price system - people give more value to meat, evaluate their purchasing power and decide to spend more on meat.
- Inventories are depleted faster than replenished
- Price raises ($12)
- Guide suppliers to deliver more units
- After a while: balance of supply and demand (inventories replenished = depleted)
- More products delivered at a higher price

In natura system - people give more value to meat and decide to consume closer to the limit:
- Inventories are depleted faster than replenished
- Scarcity index of meat > 1, access to meat is kept at 5kg pcpm
- Guide suppliers to deliver more units
- After a while: balance of supply and demand (inventories replenished = depleted)
- More products delivered, scarcity index of meat = 1, access kept at 5kg pcpm

Demand DOWN
Price system - people give less value to meat and decide to spend less on meat.
- Inventories are replenished faster than depleted
- Price falls ($8)
- Guide suppliers to deliver fewer units
- After a while: balance of supply and demand (inventories replenished = depleted)
- Less products delivered at a lower price

In natura system - people give less value to consume meat and decide to consume closer to the limit:
- Inventories are replenished faster than depleted
- Scarcity index of meat < 1, access to meat is kept at 5 kg pcpm
- Guide suppliers to deliver fewer units
- After a while: balance of supply and demand (inventories replenished = depleted)
- Less products delivered, scarcity index of meat = 1, access kept at 5kg pcpm

Supply UP
Price system - A change in suppliers caused more availability of meat, lowering the price of suppliers.
- Inventories are replenished faster than depleted
- Price falls ($8)
- Guide suppliers to deliver more units
- After a while: balance of supply and demand (inventories replenished = depleted)
- More products delivered at a lower price

In natura system - A change in suppliers caused more availability of meat and the scarcity index of suppliers was < 1:
- Inventories are replenished faster than depleted
- Scarcity index of meat < 1, access to meat is raised (7kg pcpm)
- Guide suppliers to deliver more units
- After a while: balance of supply and demand (inventories replenished = depleted)
- More products delivered, scarcity index of meat = 1, new access is 7kg pcpm

Supply DOWN
Price system - A change in suppliers caused less availability of meat, increasing the prices of suppliers.
- Inventories are depleted faster than replenished
- Price raises ($12)
- Guide suppliers to deliver fewer units
- After a while: balance of supply and demand (inventories replenished = depleted)
- Less products delivered at a higher price

In natura system - A change in suppliers caused less availability of meat and the scarcity index of suppliers was > 1:
- Inventories are depleted faster than replenished
- Scarcity index of meat > 1, access to meat is reduced (4kg pcpm)
- Guide suppliers to deliver fewer units
- After a while: balance of supply and demand (inventories replenished = depleted)
- Less products delivered, scarcity index of meat = 1, new access is 4kg pcpm

ckaihatsu

30th September 2014, 19:53

It wouldn't be the *commodification* of labor, though, because there'd be no inter-exchangeability with materials, and no finance would be objectively needed or allowed. Liberated labor could only be measured, through the use of labor credits, in relation to other liberated labor, at the time of its completion (according to a prior agreed-upon plan, of any scale / scope).

Labour could be sold in a market, then it is a commodity, despite abundance of material goods.

No, as I already mentioned it's *not* a commodity, *because* of the abundance of material goods -- especially the ones critical to regular life and living.

So, in other words, if a locality was looking for workers for a construction project and there was a neighboring locality known for its legacy of good construction workers, those liberated laborers could *easily* say 'no' to any offers and it wouldn't impact their lives for the worse in the least. They would still have their housing, their movement, their sustenance, etc., because those resources couldn't be *denied* to them on the basis of their work status, and also because there's *no commodification* of materials.

This position of mine is reflected in my 'communist supply & demand' model:

labor [supply] -- All workers will be entirely liberated from all coercion and threats related to basic human living needs, regardless of work status -- any labor roles will be entirely self-selected and open to collective labor organizing efforts on the basis of accumulated labor credits

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

---

Maybe the solution is a network of mutual reciprocity, without labour-hours accounting?

You're suggesting an inter-bartering network, with discrete transactions over time that would have to be kept-track-of somehow (because while person 'A' wants something from person 'B', it's not necessarily the case that person 'B' wants something equivalent from person 'A' at the exact same time) -- this implies *centralization* of some sort, for the area / members covered by this network, for the sake of administration.

With this as a given, my concern / argument is this: How would a new proposed available work effort be 'valued' in relation to everything else, and in relation to what's outstanding on-the-books -- ? If I'm new to the network and I make it known that I can fix computers for anyone who needs it, how can I be assured that whatever efforts I provide to the network will be properly valued for what I want *from* the network -- ? It may very well be the case that *many* people need their computers fixed while what's being offered in return is not of any interest to me. This would *especially* be the case for a localist-type network that's on the *smaller* size in scale.

And my critique of the 'localist' approach is that there wouldn't be enough *flexibility* for a full, varied, robust economics:

[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.)

By using labor-hour credits as the basic unit of measurement for a post-capitalist economics, a *standard* is set that is *universal* and can be transported anywhere in the world, regardless of past labor history or future labor needs:

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

---

I understood, people from different communes would have to exchange things. You suppose they would exchange the labour credits, and it's ok.

No, you're misunderstanding here. You had it more-accurately above, with this:

Labour could be sold in a market [...] despite abundance of material goods.

Once there's an *abundance* of material goods nothing 'material' would need to be 'exchanged' any longer -- it, instead, would be *distributed*, according to people's needs. This 'distribution' would presumably not require (liberated) labor, due to the full automation of transportation networks, and/or would only require *negligible* amounts of liberated labor, since such distribution would be a part of the regular functioning of the communist-type infrastructure -- it would be a regular, routine thing, probably covered by the basic 'gift economy'. (Or it could be a part of the labor credits economy.)

By the way, I'm not against a common unity (money), or barter, or gift-like reciprocity,

This is apparent from the position you put forth above:

Maybe the solution is a network of mutual reciprocity, without labour-hours accounting?

---

when there's a surplus of paper in commune A and a surplus of clothes in commune B. In this case, there's any oppression whatsoever of a capitalist class. Inside each commune, distribution would be according to need, but among communes (or among different federations with other mode of production), each one could specialise its production and exchange products.

Again, no exchanges would be objectively required -- either the abundant material is appropriately distributed -- even inter-communally -- or else there's a *lack* of sufficient products, in which case *production* would have to be initiated, to *produce* a sufficient quantity.

We differ on how the liberated labor for any 'production' would be socially valued (in a consistent way).

Eventually, some communes would agree that surpluses would be given to other communes according to need, and you'd have the same mode of production everywhere, eliminating the old "exchange".

This is more on-point, but again, liberated labor has to be both *liberated* (self-determining), and *socially valued* (according to its actual discrete inputs), but without *commodifying* it (valuing it in terms of the materials it produces, since that can be simply be made abundant and value-less).

I think of one solution: when someone is highly specialised and is very demanded by society, he/she would share skills with others, and those who have the same interests would choose to work in that field. Society would benefit from more supply of this kind of skill, and the original person would feel less pressure to meet demands.

Sure, but there's no guarantee that this informal social propagation of skill sets would be *sufficient* for society's general needs -- if some highly-specialized very-demanded labor is insufficient in supply (like that for a societal administration), then that readily becomes the basis of an elitist bureaucratic political control of the rest of society since that type of person is necessarily looked-to and depended-on by so many other people.

ckaihatsu

30th September 2014, 23:29

To indicate the relative changes in scarcity of a given good it will be necessary to calculate a "scarcity index."

This is all well and good, as far as any 'market socialism' can go, but what's left out of the equation is *liberated labor*, and how *that* would be 'priced'.

If meat happens to be in relatively short supply, does that mean that the 'price' for butchers will automatically go up, thus encouraging more people to step into that role -- ?

It actually doesn't matter either way, because any 'price' for labor implies *wage labor*, and a *market* for labor (in relation to other commodified goods and services). So then we're right back at capitalism, even if it's been reformed somewhat by the one-time, ephemeral collectivization of production goods.

As soon as the supply of money in circulation begins to wane, for any reason, a valid political call would arise to *increase* the volume of money in circulation, and this could happen artificially (fiat currency), or by the selling-off of formerly collectivized production goods and property, since many will begin to wonder why such is 'out of circulation' while money is in short supply.

Ledur

1st October 2014, 01:22

This is all well and good, as far as any 'market socialism' can go, but what's left out of the equation is *liberated labor*, and how *that* would be 'priced'.

If meat happens to be in relatively short supply, does that mean that the 'price' for butchers will automatically go up, thus encouraging more people to step into that role -- ?

It actually doesn't matter either way, because any 'price' for labor implies *wage labor*, and a *market* for labor (in relation to other commodified goods and services). So then we're right back at capitalism, even if it's been reformed somewhat by the one-time, ephemeral collectivization of production goods.

I proposed a system of distribution for final consumer goods only. Labour is an input, hence it's part of the allocation of resources process. There's nothing that resembles capitalism here.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough. I was comparing distribution under the price system to a possible way to distribute the social product under communism.

__________________________

In my opinion, this distribution system fits well in robbo203's system of self-regulating stocks (even though he doesn't like controlled distribution, he advocates free distribution).

But his article was about allocation of resources, not distribution.

Forget a little about distribution, let's focus on allocation in order to answer your question about labour. There's a part of robbo's article called law of minimum, which says that, in an environment without prices, the scarciest input will limit the output.

I'll try to join the "scarcity index" and the "law of minimum", and use some numbers.

For example, to produce X you need inputs A, B and C.

1000 units of X = 15 units of A + 50 units of B + 5 units of C

Suppose that you usually produce 1000 units of X in a month. You call your suppliers. The scarcity index of each input is:
A: 0,80
B: 0,70
C: 1,25

Scarcity index (demand/supply) of C is 1,25. That means C must save their stock and can't deliver you 5 units. This time, C will hand you over 1/1,25 = 0,8*5 = 4 units.

All your production will respect your scarciest input (unless you can change the industrial process, but let's suppost it's not the case), and you can only produce 80% of the usual output:

800 units of X = 12 units of A + 40 units of B + 4 units of C

Finally you have to signal ahead this scarcity to your "customers". Scarcity index of X is 1,25. Production units ahead of X expected 1000 units, but only 800 units will be distributed accordingly.

note: I think the scarcity index is the perfect substitute for prices and a complete solution to the Economic Calculation Argument.

__________________________

Now suppose that C is liberated labour and X is meat, to be delivered to a single distribution center, and there aren't any nearby meat suppliers. The meat unit needed 5 butchers, but this month one got ill. X (meat) is a consumer good. On the distribution center's shelves, this month we'll have 800kg of meat instead of 1000kg. Usually 950-960kg are depleted, and the demand hasn't changed. However supply went DOWN. Scarcity index of meat now is 1,25. Using some sort of algorithm, the new "access" to meat will be 4,5kg/person/month, instead of 5kg/person/month. That prevents the stocks to be depleted before the end of this month.

In a market system, in the same situation, less meat would be sold at a higher price. Some people would not buy meat because of their low purchasing power, even if they needed meat. In this "access" or "rationing system", some vegetarians would not have meat anyway, but everyone who need meat would have acccess to it until the end of the month, even though in a slighter less quantity.

As you can see, the rationing is for consumer goods only, not labour, other inputs, nor other intermediate production units. These will rely only on the scarcity index.

ckaihatsu

1st October 2014, 01:51

Oh, okay -- yes, my mistake -- your layout shows a *comparison*, scarcity index vs. capitalist prices. Got it.

My remaining concerns, then, would be about how economic *initiatives* might be accomplished, as for anything new, which would have 'perfect scarcity', by definition. It looks like the self-regulating stocks / inventory control system is good for anything that's already established, but how would consumer preferences, as for something novel, be introduced and incorporated into this whole schema?

Another concern is about how things for production and distribution would be 'scaled-up', to provide economies-of-scale over larger geographic areas -- can you speak to this at all?

Ledur

1st October 2014, 03:18

My remaining concerns, then, would be about how economic *initiatives* might be accomplished, as for anything new, which would have 'perfect scarcity', by definition. It looks like the self-regulating stocks / inventory control system is good for anything that's already established, but how would consumer preferences, as for something novel, be introduced and incorporated into this whole schema?

A production unit might try a new product and sketch a delivery plan (some units/period of time). If it was accepted by critics, demand would skyrocket. The scarcity index (demand/supply) is high. Rationing would be high as well, like 1 unit/year. This value is either arbitrarily assigned, or falls into some category of goods, democratically decided (for example: a new gadget - once a year; a new car - once every 5 years, etc).

The scarcity index is high, hence the producers would increase production until the scarcity index gets close to 1. If materials/labour are easy to find, if the item doesn't cause pollution or other externalities, the easiest solution is to share the recipe to idle manufacturers (this would be FAR easier in communism, because in capitalism people don't share technology).

Another concern is about how things for production and distribution would be 'scaled-up', to provide economies-of-scale over larger geographic areas -- can you speak to this at all?

I don't know if I got it right... If it's a high-demanded product, hierarchical distribution centers (local, regional, global) would track supply and demand within the region. If it's a low-demanded product, distribution could be direct from the production unit to the final consumer.

ckaihatsu

1st October 2014, 04:19

A production unit might try a new product and sketch a delivery plan (some units/period of time). If it was accepted by critics, demand would skyrocket. The scarcity index (demand/supply) is high. Rationing would be high as well, like 1 unit/year. This value is either arbitrarily assigned, or falls into some category of goods, democratically decided (for example: a new gadget - once a year; a new car - once every 5 years, etc).

The scarcity index is high, hence the producers would increase production until the scarcity index gets close to 1. If materials/labour are easy to find, if the item doesn't cause pollution or other externalities, the easiest solution is to share the recipe to idle manufacturers (this would be FAR easier in communism, because in capitalism people don't share technology).

Okay -- the only thing with this is that it's strictly 'gift economy', meaning sheerly organic-voluntarist-type liberated labor. There are no societal-type incentives for people to commit to more-difficult or more-distasteful labor roles.

If there's huge demand for a new gadget or car there could very well be a gap between the quantity of demand and the actual willing liberated labor to *satisfy* that demand -- many, who even have the required talents and skills for such work, could just say 'meh' and nothing would be different for them whether they did the work or not.

I'll have to note that, with my model, those who commit to difficult and/or hazardous work roles *do* get particular consideration, through higher rates of labor credits earned:

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

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

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

So this approach addresses material scarcity through socially-sanctioned incentives for the liberated labor that *alleviates* such material scarcity. Work roles that are more-difficult, more-hazardous, and/or more-demanded would see increasing rates of labor credits offered per hour of liberated labor, and those who *earn* such labor credits would realize an increasing share of control over *future* uses of liberated labor, limited to the actual amount of labor credits earned.

---

I don't know if I got it right... If it's a high-demanded product, hierarchical distribution centers (local, regional, global) would track supply and demand within the region. If it's a low-demanded product, distribution could be direct from the production unit to the final consumer.

Okay -- I ask because my impression is that much of the anarchist-type economics I've come across has been basically *localist* and *lateralist* in description. This is the first I'm hearing of larger-scale distribution centers, and you're essentially saying that it would happen on an as-needed basis.

To clarify the last part, though, it's not that *direct-distribution* would vary according to scale -- certainly it doesn't matter what the product is, or where it is in the supply chain, it would still be provided directly *downstream* to the next 'node', or to the end-user consumer. What *would* vary according to scale would be the *production* aspect, as for larger productive-type operations that could cover *several* localities, all the way up to regional, and even global, levels.

Ledur

2nd October 2014, 18:58

ckaihatsu

2nd October 2014, 19:47

Okay -- the only thing with this is that it's strictly 'gift economy', meaning sheerly organic-voluntarist-type liberated labor. There are no societal-type incentives for people to commit to more-difficult or more-distasteful labor roles.

Precisely. A communist society should organize and decide what to do with unbalanced supply and demand regarding labour, specially those undesired tasks.

Certainly -- collectivism implies a mass-conscious, 'hands-on' approach to all societal matters. It should be favored, if at all possible.

*However*, that said, the reality could very well turn out to be one of an impasse regarding a sufficiently evenly-shared distribution of work roles. If people feel that favoritism or elitism of some sort exists within a certain post-capitalist arrangement, the 'labor credits' method is meant to provide a complex-type addressing of a complex-type situation.

I like your approach. Labour notes could be a solution.

Thanks -- that's labor *credits*, not labor *notes*.

(It's not generic, because most conceptions of labor *notes*- / vouchers-type systems are *non-circulating*, while my 'labor credits' *do* circulate.)

In a communist society, work is voluntary. But the undesired tasks must be done, even if no one wants to do them. Labour notes is an incentive, I agree, but I think that rotating tasks is also a solution for two reasons. First, if everyone try those tasks, perhaps someone would appreciate it after doing it a couple of times? Then we have a volunteer, much better than someone filling that task by the need of "earning" some extra credits. The second benefical side of rotating these tasks is that when the more people put their hands dirty, the more chances someone would share ideas to ameliorate that task or even automate it.

My critique here is that any work-role rotation system will probably be limited by the geographic / physical-space constraints of the work involved -- that means it's necessarily *circumscribed* to a particular location and might not be easily generalizable, as with lateral-type linking-up with other, like locations.

Also, my previous 'fused' critique from post #40 still stands:

[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.)

That said, I think that incentives other than labour credits could be given. For example, less working hours.

This makes no sense since it's *contradictory* to the premise of an equitably-shared rotation of work roles -- if *one* person is allowed to work fewer hours, then, by extension, *everyone* in that rotation should be able to reduce their hours by the same amount as well. And, this, of course, might make for an *insufficient* amount of work output in relation to the tasks at hand.

---

Okay -- I ask because my impression is that much of the anarchist-type economics I've come across has been basically *localist* and *lateralist* in description. This is the first I'm hearing of larger-scale distribution centers, and you're essentially saying that it would happen on an as-needed basis.

Yes, I'm assuming that we have a large area, with thousands or millions. A large federation. We might have several anarchist communes, but when we reach this situation, I think they would join together, because a bigger region with a single communist mode of production would be better (more efficient) than smaller communes trading, in my opinion.

Let me ask you this: Would the point of the initial 'smaller communes' be for *trade*, as in *exchanges*, or would they be for respective *production* and *direct-distribution*?

I ask because when the 'large federation' of 'several anarchist communes' is formed, how would it be any *different* than if those several communes just remained the same, *without* federating -- ?

How would the 'bigger region' with a 'single communist mode of production' operate exactly, compared to the existing patchwork of 'smaller communes trading' -- ?

To clarify the last part, though, it's not that *direct-distribution* would vary according to scale -- certainly it doesn't matter what the product is, or where it is in the supply chain, it would still be provided directly *downstream* to the next 'node', or to the end-user consumer. What *would* vary according to scale would be the *production* aspect, as for larger productive-type operations that could cover *several* localities, all the way up to regional, and even global, levels.

Ah ok.. I agree, I haven't thought this way.

(Okay -- this part is relevant to the preceding part.)

acandleinthedark

3rd October 2014, 21:46

But how would that fit with the whole 'to each his own' idea? I mean, what if my contribution to society is low? Would distribution apply differently to me as it would to someone else? What would be the criteria for even deciding what my contribution equates in terms of goods and services?

If by "the whole 'to each his own' idea" you're referring to "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", you might not be thinking through that quote fully enough.

The way I might put it differently: Everyone contributes what they can to the best of their ability - and not everyone will be able to contribute as much as some, but that's okay - and if they avail themselves of the dignified standard of living, good nutrition, "getting what they need (to not just survive, but thrive, to carry on their work)" they'll be best positioned to contribute to their maximum potential.

So to answer your questions:

I mean, what if my contribution to society is low?
So what if it is? Maybe by getting what you need, your contribution will improve over time.

Would distribution apply differently to me as it would to someone else?
Instead of thinking of distribution in this way you should be thinking of people going to the "store", as someone has already called it, and getting the things you need to lead a fulfilling, productive life. You can decide for yourself whether you need hundreds of shoes to live a meaningful existence. I suspect in a communist society you'd find more interesting projects to occupy your time.

Ledur

4th October 2014, 13:11

We can't think of a detailed blueprint of a communist society. But knowledge, tech and sciences would be people's heritage. All knowledge would be open source, and everyone, regardless of educational level, would contribute. So I don't think we could talk about people contributing more or less to society. Even if someone is less productive, for some reason, others would help and make a good environment, so everyone could use their full potential.

Ledur

4th October 2014, 15:34

*However*, that said, the reality could very well turn out to be one of an impasse regarding a sufficiently evenly-shared distribution of work roles. If people feel that favoritism or elitism of some sort exists within a certain post-capitalist arrangement, the 'labor credits' method is meant to provide a complex-type addressing of a complex-type situation.

Ok.

Do you suppose people would vote democratically how these labour credits would be earned?

This makes no sense since it's *contradictory* to the premise of an equitably-shared rotation of work roles -- if *one* person is allowed to work fewer hours, then, by extension, *everyone* in that rotation should be able to reduce their hours by the same amount as well. And, this, of course, might make for an *insufficient* amount of work output in relation to the tasks at hand.

Actually I tried to give two separate steps of one possible solution. First, less desirable jobs would have less working hours. Second, if unfilled tasks still didn't have volunteers, these tasks would be equally shared by everyone. So yes, everyone works a couple of hours in undesired tasks, but the amount of total working hours in them would obviously be sufficient to fill society's needs.

Let me ask you this: Would the point of the initial 'smaller communes' be for *trade*, as in *exchanges*, or would they be for respective *production* and *direct-distribution*?

I don't know, that depends on how ancom would born. Internally, they'd be direct distribution. What I can't answer is about the size of these communes. If a large area (with millions of inhabitants) decided to be ancom in a single big commune, this single area would trade with the rest of the world. Another possibility is, in the same area, people decided to be ancom, but instead of a single giant commune, they decided to be independent, and then they'd "trade" among themselves and with the rest of the world as well.

I ask because when the 'large federation' of 'several anarchist communes' is formed, how would it be any *different* than if those several communes just remained the same, *without* federating -- ?

I tried to answer you above.

How would the 'bigger region' with a 'single communist mode of production' operate exactly, compared to the existing patchwork of 'smaller communes trading' -- ?

Direct distribution vs exchange.

ckaihatsu

4th October 2014, 22:09

Ok.

Do you suppose people would vote democratically how these labour credits would be earned?

There are at least two 'senses' of this -- one is in terms of the projects and production runs planned, which is addressed by this aspect of the model:

labor [supply] -- Work positions are created according to requirements of production runs and projects, by mass political prioritization

Another sense of it is in terms of the *rate* of labor credits earned, for whatever work role. For this there's a society-wide collective institution of mass surveys for every work role that people depart from -- it would yield a massively 'inter-subjective' index on the hazard / difficulty factor for each and every work role, hopefully without requiring too much administrative overhead.

This work role index would be the go-to reference -- like a 'blue book' for buying and selling today -- for setting a rate of labor credits for any given work role, at any scale. It wouldn't be set-in-stone, though, and people might deviate from the index's values as the particulars of the situation warranted.

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

---

Ok.

Actually I tried to give two separate steps of one possible solution. First, less desirable jobs would have less working hours. Second, if unfilled tasks still didn't have volunteers, these tasks would be equally shared by everyone.

This is still problematic because of labor having to be 'liberated' -- you're assuming that [1] everyone would *agree* that 'these tasks' need to be done, and [2] that everyone would be willing and able to share those tasks equally. There could very well be objective limitations of physical and geographic space where, for the tasks at-hand, it would be a 'gray area' as to whether to call for more participation from those local to the tasks, or to put a call out for *extra* labor from *outside* the immediate environs. (An example could be about the upkeep and refurbishing of some building, perhaps.)

In either case there's a *mismatch* between the 'democratic' process and the 'willing labor' process -- it's unclear how these (unfilled) tasks got to be *designated* as such, but the social process for formally declaring them as 'tasks' should match-up with the social process that ascertains the available and willing liberated labor for the same.

So yes, everyone works a couple of hours in undesired tasks, but the amount of total working hours in them would obviously be sufficient to fill society's needs.

This sounds too much like a 'decree' than a collective-derived addressing of actual realities and material logistics.

---

Let me ask you this: Would the point of the initial 'smaller communes' be for *trade*, as in *exchanges*, or would they be for respective *production* and *direct-distribution*?

I ask because when the 'large federation' of 'several anarchist communes' is formed, how would it be any *different* than if those several communes just remained the same, *without* federating -- ?

How would the 'bigger region' with a 'single communist mode of production' operate exactly, compared to the existing patchwork of 'smaller communes trading' -- ?

Ok.

I don't know, that depends on how ancom would born. Internally, they'd be direct distribution. What I can't answer is about the size of these communes. If a large area (with millions of inhabitants) decided to be ancom in a single big commune, this single area would trade with the rest of the world. Another possibility is, in the same area, people decided to be ancom, but instead of a single giant commune, they decided to be independent, and then they'd "trade" among themselves and with the rest of the world as well.

Ok.

I tried to answer you above.

Ok.

Direct distribution vs exchange.

What I'm hearing -- and please correct me on any misunderstanding here -- is that, no matter what the size, each commune would provide a direct distribution of its production *internally* to within its boundaries, while making certain goods available for exchanges *externally*, to other communes.

If this is the case then this is basically a patchwork *syndicalism*, and is not full communism. The existence of *any* exchanges, anywhere, implies an implicit *valuation* taking place, since communes could very well find themselves in competition with other ones, for the production of something for export. (One commune might be able to produce the thing for *less* in commensurate exchange, than another.)

Communism implies a full, unvarying 'direct distribution' so as to avoid any kind of exchanges whatsoever, so as to obviate exchange values entirely.

GanzEgal

5th October 2014, 12:28

But how would that fit with the whole 'to each his own' idea? I mean, what if my contribution to society is low? Would distribution apply differently to me as it would to someone else?
To each according to his need is unrelated to contribution of the individual. It is only related to needs, wishes, desires.

If the society were moneyless, to such an extent that no credits or quotas or consumption statistics are calculated, then consumption would be unlimited and uncontrolled, so it cannot be related to work contribution in any way.

Personally I am not intersted in a moneyless society. I believe that quotas should exist, to equally distribute the limited economic resources that exist. For example, if the total housing in the world is 80 sqm x world population, I would like to impose a quota that each person has the right to 80 sqm of accommodation. Otherwise a few people taking a large mansion for theirpersonal use would mean that the last ones in the queue would receive very little housing units, or more probably, we would run out of housing before the queue ends.

As for measuring work contribution, we must remember that humans aren't born equal, some are smarter and stronger, some are or become weak, sickly and stupid. That presents a philosophical problem for rewarding individuals for the amount or quality of their work. It would be a bit like rewarding individuals for their inborn abilities, which they did nothing to deserve. Nobody deserved to be born smarter or weaker than the others.

Nevertheless, I recognize the need to set skill requirements for jobs, so a person who wants to do a certain intersting job, must acquire the required skill level for it. Working time is something that we can relatively fairly reward people for. I would specify a minimum working time, something like 20 hours per week for example, which entitles a person to basic housing, food and clothing. Most people would choose to work 30 - 40 hours per week, to gain more credits for a higher standard of living. A larger home, a better computer, a larger television, or whatever. The most ambitious ones would work 50 - 60 hours per week, to trade off more of their leisure time to a yet higher standard of living.

ckaihatsu

5th October 2014, 21:40

As for measuring work contribution, we must remember that humans aren't born equal, some are smarter and stronger, some are or become weak, sickly and stupid. That presents a philosophical problem for rewarding individuals for the amount or quality of their work. It would be a bit like rewarding individuals for their inborn abilities, which they did nothing to deserve. Nobody deserved to be born smarter or weaker than the others.

Most people would choose to work 30 - 40 hours per week, to gain more credits for a higher standard of living. A larger home, a better computer, a larger television, or whatever. The most ambitious ones would work 50 - 60 hours per week, to trade off more of their leisure time to a yet higher standard of living.

These two portions contradict each other since not-rewarding people according to the amount or quality of their work means not-basing a better quality of life on the hours per week that people work.

I've come to see the core contradiction as being this (from a recent post at another thread):

Would this compensation be decided-on in relation to the labor contributed, or would it be decided-on in relation to the 'value' / worth of the compensation-value itself, meaning the range of goods and services that could be obtained with it -- ?

- If the subsidies are in relation to the *labor inputs*, then that effectively *commodifies* labor, since workers will be looking to see the relative *levels* of compensation given for whatever work inputs, over time. People will know what kinds of work are rewarded more than others and that will be a labor *market* of sorts.

- If the subsidies are in relation to the *compensation value* (goods and services exchangeable for it), then that's effectively *market socialism* since the subsidies now function as cash and will circulate at-will, independently of any and all pre-planning.

The problem with every compensation-for-labor proposal I've seen is that there's a *direct exchangeability* of labor for material rewards, which effectively *commodifies labor*.

I've been advocating my own proposal throughout this thread, of course, which is outlined at post #40.

GanzEgal

5th October 2014, 22:36

not-rewarding people according to the amount or quality of their work means not-basing a better quality of life on the hours per week that people work.

(...) The problem with every compensation-for-labor proposal I've seen is that there's a *direct exchangeability* of labor for material rewards, which effectively *commodifies labor*.

I've been advocating my own proposal throughout this thread, of course, which is outlined at post #40.
Your proposal assumes that material goods will become so abundant that offer surpasses any and all demand. I assume that this will never happen, not in a meaningfully near future anyway, so even if such circumstances were possible and thus relevant for a future generation 500 years after our own era, unlimited abundance of material goods is for our generation and the soon coming generations impossible, and thus irrelevant.

If, when, and as long as material goods will be a limited resource, their distribution needs to be regulated, if we wish to achieve economic equality between citizens. My arguments focus on such a reality, where material goods are limited and need to be regulated. It is mot meaningful for us to debate about economic politics, if we place our policy recommendations into radically different circumstances, so that a policy designed for one type of circumstances would be irrelevant in the other very different circumstances. If we want to debate, we will have to agree what circumstances our debate takes place in.

Under circumstances where material goods are limited, I believe that a significant number of the voting population would be willing to organize labour market and commodity market in such a way that work is rewarded by the hour, who works more gets rewarded more highly. Basic existence might be provided by the state without any work, and persons documentably unable to work, because of sickness etc, would get rewarded equally as the statistically average worker.

I have philosophical objections to rewarding skill with a higher salary per hour (or more work credits, whatever the term will be), because I perceive that high skill requires favourable inborn qualities, which the skilled person has not deserved, neither has an untalented person deserved to be born untalented.

But I have no objections to rewarding longer working hours with a higher salary (or standard of living, whatever the term will be), because it seems to me that every person who is fit to work, can equally decide to work shorter hours and enjoy longer leisure time, or sacrifice more of his leisure time and work longer hours. Rewarding longer working hours seems fair to me, because the sacrifice is quite the same for every individual, regardless of inborn qualities, only excluding persons who are unfit to work and therefore don't get the choice to sacrifice and therefore earn more (or less) than the average worker.

ckaihatsu

7th October 2014, 00:29

Your proposal assumes that material goods will become so abundant that offer surpasses any and all demand.

Actually, no, I *don't* make any such assumptions. The proposal is referenced at post #40, and is also referenced in this post -- you'll see no mention of any assumed material abundance as a given.

What you *may* have been referring to at post 40 is this part:

Labour could be sold in a market, then it is a commodity, despite abundance of material goods.

No, as I already mentioned it's *not* a commodity [in the 'labor credits' framework], *because* of the abundance of material goods -- especially the ones critical to regular life and living.

---

So this *is* in line with the *definition* of communism -- that a collectivized society would (certainly) be able to be self-sustaining, otherwise it wouldn't be worth it in the first place.

Personally I do think that a basic 'gift economy' of sheer voluntarism, to-and-from the commons of collectivized goods and services, would be possible and doable, for everyone's basic humane needs.

I think you're missing-out on the *purpose* of communism -- over capitalism -- which is to *eliminate scarcity*. This is what motivates revolutionary activity today, and would continue to be the driving force even after capitalism is usurped, through to the fulfillment of every person's every conceivable material need and want.

Here's from post #45:

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

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

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

So this approach addresses material scarcity through socially-sanctioned incentives for the liberated labor that *alleviates* such material scarcity. Work roles that are more-difficult, more-hazardous, and/or more-demanded would see increasing rates of labor credits offered per hour of liberated labor, and those who *earn* such labor credits would realize an increasing share of control over *future* uses of liberated labor, limited to the actual amount of labor credits earned.

---

I assume that this will never happen, not in a meaningfully near future anyway, so even if such circumstances were possible and thus relevant for a future generation 500 years after our own era, unlimited abundance of material goods is for our generation and the soon coming generations impossible, and thus irrelevant.

(Everyone's entitled to their opinion.)

If, when, and as long as material goods will be a limited resource, their distribution needs to be regulated, if we wish to achieve economic equality between citizens.

'Economic equality between citizens' is *not* communism.

My arguments focus on such a reality, where material goods are limited and need to be regulated. It is mot meaningful for us to debate about economic politics, if we place our policy recommendations into radically different circumstances, so that a policy designed for one type of circumstances would be irrelevant in the other very different circumstances. If we want to debate, we will have to agree what circumstances our debate takes place in.

Under circumstances where material goods are limited, I believe that a significant number of the voting population would be willing to organize labour market and commodity market in such a way that work is rewarded by the hour, who works more gets rewarded more highly. Basic existence might be provided by the state without any work, and persons documentably unable to work, because of sickness etc, would get rewarded equally as the statistically average worker.

I have philosophical objections to rewarding skill with a higher salary per hour (or more work credits, whatever the term will be), because I perceive that high skill requires favourable inborn qualities, which the skilled person has not deserved, neither has an untalented person deserved to be born untalented.

But I have no objections to rewarding longer working hours with a higher salary (or standard of living, whatever the term will be), because it seems to me that every person who is fit to work, can equally decide to work shorter hours and enjoy longer leisure time, or sacrifice more of his leisure time and work longer hours. Rewarding longer working hours seems fair to me, because the sacrifice is quite the same for every individual, regardless of inborn qualities, only excluding persons who are unfit to work and therefore don't get the choice to sacrifice and therefore earn more (or less) than the average worker.

I'll leave the following for your consideration:

'How would an individual obtain goods in a feasible post-capitalist social order, in a socially acceptable way, without having to work.'

And, to address this, my conception of such a social order *would* readily allow individuals to receive goods *without* providing work themselves, *because of* the existence of machinery that doesn't require much work-effort input to produce mass quantities of manufactured goods.

Here's the "proof", in steps:

Material function

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

Determination of material values

consumption [demand] -- Basic human needs will be assigned a higher political priority by individuals and will emerge as mass demands at the cumulative scale -- desires will benefit from political organizing efforts and coordination

Ownership / control

communist administration -- All assets and resources will be collectivized as communist property in common -- their use must be determined through a regular political process of prioritized demands from a locality or larger population -- any unused assets or resources may be used by individuals in a personal capacity only

Infrastructure / overhead

communist administration -- Distinct from the general political culture each project or production run will include a provision for an associated administrative component as an integral part of its total policy package -- a selected policy's proponents will be politically responsible for overseeing its implementation according to the policy's provisions

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

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

So, in brief, this means that any one person's demands would only be their own, but, depending on what's demanded, they may resonate with the same, or similar, demands of many others.

If the goods that someone wanted were commonly demanded and routinely produced then it would just be a matter of making sure that the number of units produced would be adequate to satisfy one's own personal requirements -- I'd imagine this would simply be an administrative matter of contacting those whose policy package it is that's actively in use, to have production bumped-up accordingly. I doubt that additional labor credits would have to be considered for this, since you're only one person, and the additional production to cover one person would be negligible.

So we can see that the key variable here is 'which goods'. If the request / demand can be satisfied with already-existing mass production, then there you have it -- no work needed on your part, and you get what you want, subject to the real-world political process.

The downside is that it *would* still require you to be part of a *social-political* process, since the context is a *political economy*, unless regular practices included producing significant surpluses of whatever, for those like yourself to just find and take from.

At *worst* you might have to deal in a more-involved way with those whose policy package is being used, to have it favorably amended, and/or to deal with the liberated laborers themselves, to ask them to run a larger batch, for your personal benefit.

GanzEgal

7th October 2014, 10:16

Personally I do think that a basic 'gift economy' of sheer voluntarism, to-and-from the commons of collectivized goods and services, would be possible and doable, for everyone's basic humane needs.
For the basic human needs only, quite easily. Porridge and sausages to eat, a set of clothes to wear, and a Japanese capsule hotel to sleep in.

But people want much more than this, so it is necessary to theorize how to achieve much more than this.

I think you're missing-out on the *purpose* of communism -- over capitalism -- which is to *eliminate scarcity*.
Scarcity is an ambiguous word. You probably refer to "poverty", not having enough for the basic necessities of life. The other meaning is "not infinite", "having a limit". By this meaning, scarcity always exists, because the material universe is finite, nothing exists in infinite amounts.

'Economic equality between citizens' is *not* communism.
Hmmm.

Economic equality between citizens would be a moral reason to support Socialism. Lack thereof might be a reason to oppose it. Usually the lower end of economically inequal circumstances tends to criticize and oppose the economic system. Frustration about the present economic inequality is _the_ reason why most people who are interested in Socialism, are interested in Socialism.

What type of inequality would exist in Communism? Experts of some professional skill having a higher standard of living than others? Or members of some local community producing a higher standard of living among themselves than members of some other local community? Or some other mechanism that causes long-term economic inequality?

ckaihatsu

7th October 2014, 10:55

For the basic human needs only, quite easily. Porridge and sausages to eat, a set of clothes to wear, and a Japanese capsule hotel to sleep in.

But people want much more than this, so it is necessary to theorize how to achieve much more than this.

Yep -- agreed. I've said as much here (at another thread):

My framework [...] addresses the *outer reaches* of what a strictly moneyless communistic 'gift economy' could conceivably cover. Some on the revolutionary left have suggested that perhaps a *remnant* of the former markets could exist within a post-capitalist social order, to cover luxury / specialty production, since such might be *unaddressed* by the more mass-oriented mainstream gift economy.

However, a regular market-based approach to luxury / specialty production could very well be more cumbersome than it's worth -- it would be tolerating a kind of exchange-values-based 'black market' within an otherwise free-access social paradigm.

My 'labor credits' is meant to acknowledge a post-capitalist liberated-labor on its own terms, without resorting to backsliding to any system of exchange values.

---

Scarcity is an ambiguous word. You probably refer to "poverty", not having enough for the basic necessities of life. The other meaning is "not infinite", "having a limit". By this meaning, scarcity always exists, because the material universe is finite, nothing exists in infinite amounts.

Yes, I agree with your two denotations -- we can talk about a general, 'starving' 'scarcity', or a 'per-item' scarcity. I've responded to the latter topic at another thread we've been using, with the 'Swiss watch for everyone' example:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2791467&postcount=39

Hmmm.

Economic equality between citizens would be a moral reason to support Socialism. Lack thereof might be a reason to oppose it. Usually the lower end of economically inequal circumstances tends to criticize and oppose the economic system. Frustration about the present economic inequality is _the_ reason why most people who are interested in Socialism, are interested in Socialism.

Certainly -- no argument here.

What type of inequality would exist in Communism? Experts of some professional skill having a higher standard of living than others? Or members of some local community producing a higher standard of living among themselves than members of some other local community? Or some other mechanism that causes long-term economic inequality?

By definition the *only* material "inequality" that should exist in communism would be one that's *directly caused* by personal preferences regarding one's own lifestyle.

GanzEgal

7th October 2014, 19:44

ckaihatsu

7th October 2014, 21:25

By definition the *only* material "inequality" that should exist in communism would be one that's *directly caused* by personal preferences regarding one's own lifestyle.

If this ideal is taken seriously, in a world where scarcity of material goods exists, and different workers and factories produce goods or services with varying productivity, only a centralized government or distribution system would be able to harmonize the differences in standard of living that gets produced by different labour units.

I think you're retaining a private-property conception of consumption here, for a *post*-capitalist social context.

If, as you're positing, various locales would produce varying kinds of output -- a perfectly reasonable line of reasoning -- that doesn't mean that each locale would necessarily 'build up' its own character of *consumption* based on that local output. The point, overall, would be to eliminate scarcity on a free-access / direct-distribution basis, so patterns of consumption could be quite *independent* of local productivity.

A particular locale might become known for its *productive* traditions, such as logging for a forest-type area, but in terms of *consumption* people would mix-and-match whatever they like from wherever they could find it, most likely including products from around the world as well.

Without centralized harmonization, some local units would be able to produce a higher standard of living among themselves than some other local units. Then also hereditary inequality would creep in, as some children would be born to parents living in affluent labour units, and some would be born to parents in poorer labour units.

You're making it sound like everyone would be fenced-in, into prison labor camps or something.

There's no reason why productive units couldn't freely pick-and-choose from many neighboring (and beyond) sources of upstream supplies, and make their productivity available on a broad geographic basis as well.