Some questions [Archive]

John Nada

29th October 2014, 03:42

Here is my question for all self-proclaimed Socialists, it doesn't matter if you are Titoist, Maoist, Stalinist, Leninist, Marxist, Pol Pot supporter, etc. How would everything work in your utopia country? I am not Capitalist but I am studying Socialism and I was just thinking, what if your revolution (that is if you believe in revolutionary Socialism) succeeded and you have taken over the government, then what do you do? What is the actual plan? It would be interesting if you were successful with your revolution and didn't know what to do afterwards. Is Socialism actually possible? Can it really work? How would you make it work? Exactly what is your plan and how would you implement Socialism after you've taken over the government?Fixed that for you.

One of the founders of Marxism, Engels, wrote a book on that called Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm) .TL/DR First there was the French Revolution, which overthrew the aristocracy. This occurred during the Industrial Revolution. Factories created a mass of workers. Some early utopian socialist tried to implement some reforms and an idealized variant of socialism. They were capitalist, not working class, and try as they might, opperated within the confines of capitalism.

Next advances in science changed the realm of philosophy, challenging the old metaphysical ideas. A materialist perception of the universe(in the philosophical sense, not consumerist) arouse.

Lastly, throughout history, in ancient times there were slaves and masters, in feudal serfs and lords, and finally in capitalism the bourgeoisie(the capitalist, those who own the means of production) and proletariat(workers, who's only means of survival is selling their labor, if they're lucky).

Antagonism arises due to the fact that the capitalist want's to make money, the workers only gets a small part of the profits they just made for said capitalist, and has to buy it back from the capitalist. In this frenzy of competition between businesses seeking money you get a cycle of recessions. Monopolies arise and basically become the new nobility

However, this new circumstance creates the conditions for a new way to run things. Industry, science, and mass production makes large scale cooperation possible.The boss needs the workers, but the workers don't need the boss. Workers can produce for the common good, not for some rich people who wants to screw them over at any chance they can. For the first time in written history we can have a classless society, based on human needs and not making for for profit. It'll be the end of having poor people dying in the street in the name of capital, of using the wipe of poverty and the fear of it to sell yourself, end of wars between nations at the behest of their rulers, and end the oppression once and for all.
I basically just want to know if Socialism is even possible in the real world or if you're all just day-dreamers. No offense. That's what I mean though. If you can tell me what your plan is and how you plan to implement it then I will be greatful, and I am seriously considering becoming a Socialist. I want to get the answer to this question right from the Socialists themselves.I think so. We don't need some autocrat ordering us around to work, under the pretense of a false chose and some "sacred" right to force people to work for them or else. Technology can aid us in creating a world where no one has to go without just because laws declaring some with ownership of capital more worthy of life than millions of poor people. I don't think this capitalist way will lead anywhere but towards destruction(Recessions, fascism, war, global warming). I don't see any other way.
Also, for you self-proclaimed Social Democrats, is a Social Democracy even possible? I thought Socialism was about centralization. How exactly would a Social Democracy work? If I did become a Socialist, I would probably be a Social Democrat since I believe strongly in direct Democracy. I thought Socialism was more about big government though. Please correct me if I am wrong!

Thank you.Won't find any open social democrats here. They do not believe in direct democracy. They want the same state, just with welfare to make it a little more bearable and buy time.

Social democracy used to refer to actual socialist, but many of them were exposed as fakes due to supporting WWI and just about every war afterwards, suppressing revolutionary socialist in the process. The "true socialist" broke away from those parties. It used to still mean those who thought that you could work in the system and pursuer a path towards socialism through slowly evolving capitalism with some reforms. Later they called for keeping capitalist oppression, but just make it a little nicer with some welfare. Now many of those same social democratic parties are competing with conservatives over who can dismantle the gains won through reform of workers and persecuted people.

Socialism isn't about big government. Quite the opposite. It's about dismantling the state, all states ASAP. It's about everyone owning property in common. You'll still have personal property, but private property where someone gets to exploit people will be a thing of the past. Direct democracy to the max.

Sabot Cat

29th October 2014, 04:38

Firstly, I like your avatar- it's very cute. ^_^

Secondly, I won't be answering your questions point by point, and just try to explain my position as a socialist better through one question:

Also, for you self-proclaimed Social Democrats, is a Social Democracy even possible? I thought Socialism was about centralization. How exactly would a Social Democracy work? If I did become a Socialist, I would probably be a Social Democrat since I believe strongly in direct Democracy. I thought Socialism was more about big government though. Please correct me if I am wrong!

I too, strongly believe in direct democracy, which is why I support socialism.

Let me explain: in capitalism, the wealthiest- and hence most powerful- people don't get to their positions by elections or assent from most people in a given community. However, from these positions of power they can make a democracy service their interests to the exclusion of the vast majority of people through lobbying certain policies they favor, advertising their favored candidates, etc. In such a way a democracy becomes a plutocracy, or rule by the moneyed few instead of by the people as a whole.

How can we prevent this?

Simple: prevent the disproportionate accumulation of resources by abolishing private property and allowing resources to be controlled socially- the social in socialism. This doesn't mean we should give the government power over all things, or we'd be right back where we started. 'Private property' also doesn't include, say, your toothbrush, because these kind of personal possessions don't contribute to the oppressive social dynamics of capitalism.

Instead, it means that all productive property, such as the factories and the railroads, are to be controlled by the people themselves. Workers, who give value to the economy through their labor, would manage their own workplaces through democratic or otherwise consensual means. In capitalism, workers' livelihoods are in the hands of bosses, who are again, not elected or consented to rule over them. But in socialism, there are no rulers of any kind to control you like this, as you make all of the pertinent decisions in your workplace with those you work with.

Furthermore, no one starves to death when there's enough resources to feed everyone, or dies of curable diseases because they can't afford vaccinations, like how it is in contemporary capitalism. Food, water, medical care and more are given on the basis of need, as a moneyed few are no longer controlling the resources and preventing people from having access to them. Some socialists, heading off any potential tragedy of the commons or free rider problem, suggest that we distribute resources - or at least those that are particularly scarce - on the basis of one's labor, but others disagree.

In any case, I hope this was helpful and I further hope you stick around long enough to learn more about this. :)

Chomskyan

29th October 2014, 07:34

In the States, Social Democracy is enough to get you painted red.

Socialism is about decentralization, not centralization. Decentralizing political and economic power and putting it into the hands of the vast majority of common people.

RevolutionaryThinker

29th October 2014, 19:09

So, the workers themselves own the means of production right? Well that doesn't make any sense to me. How is that even going to work? Please explain to me in great detail.

Illegalitarian

29th October 2014, 19:58

So, the workers themselves own the means of production right? Well that doesn't make any sense to me. How is that even going to work? Please explain to me in great detail.

Ok, this is a bit simplified mind you, but.. say you worked in a factory that produces.. let's say shoes.

You and your fellow workers would "own" this factory in common. That is to say, no one would truly "own" it, but everyone who wanted to work there in order to make shoes could (with training obviously).

So you and a bunch of other cats decide you want to make shoes with this factory: You would produce the shoes, distribute them to a place where those who need them can acquire them (just as we do now), and take for yourself that which you need. No bosses, no being paid only a scant amount of money for your labor, alienating you from your work, but rather, you and your fellow workers would own your own labor, not to rent out, but to be proud of, do do as you wish with, to master as your own.

I you're interested in the finer details of worker's self-management, it would be a horizontalist organization of workers coming together and deciding the specifics of production. No managers (though there may be directly-elected delegates, who could be instantly recalled if need be), no bosses, just the workers coming together to preform socially necessary (work that must be done for society to function) labor and then whatever else they may wish to produce.

RevolutionaryThinker

29th October 2014, 20:12

Ok, this is a bit simplified mind you, but.. say you worked in a factory that produces.. let's say shoes.

You and your fellow workers would "own" this factory in common. That is to say, no one would truly "own" it, but everyone who wanted to work there in order to make shoes could (with training obviously).

So you and a bunch of other cats decide you want to make shoes with this factory: You would produce the shoes, distribute them to a place where those who need them can acquire them (just as we do now), and take for yourself that which you need. No bosses, no being paid only a scant amount of money for your labor, alienating you from your work, but rather, you and your fellow workers would own your own labor, not to rent out, but to be proud of, do do as you wish with, to master as your own.

I you're interested in the finer details of worker's self-management, it would be a horizontalist organization of workers coming together and deciding the specifics of production. No managers (though there may be directly-elected delegates, who could be instantly recalled if need be), no bosses, just the workers coming together to preform socially necessary (work that must be done for society to function) labor and then whatever else they may wish to produce.

Thank you for that. What if they were all greedy workers though and sell the shoes for high prices? Like what we have now kind of. If that sounds idiotic I am so sorry, I am trying my best to understand. I appreciate you explaining this to me.

John Nada

29th October 2014, 23:27

So, the workers themselves own the means of production right? Well that doesn't make any sense to me. How is that even going to work? Please explain to me in great detail.I'm curious, how do you think capitalism works, in great details if you can? What's "good"(doesn't have to be morally right) and bad about capitalism to you? Capitalism is something that came up fairly recently in all of human history(200-300 years vs tens of thousands of years without it). Do you think it can go on indefinitely? Can it be replaced?

RevolutionaryThinker

29th October 2014, 23:29

There is nothing good about Capitalism. I'm not sure if it can be replaced.

DDR

30th October 2014, 02:45

There is nothing good about Capitalism. I'm not sure if it can be replaced.
Such a sad world we live in that we can imagine endless post-apocalyptic scenarios but not a modern society whithout capitalism.

GiantMonkeyMan

30th October 2014, 03:04

There is nothing good about Capitalism. I'm not sure if it can be replaced.
The ancient Greek philosophers couldn't envisage a society without chattel slavery, something that's been found false for around two hundred years, so you're in good company.

Illegalitarian

30th October 2014, 03:09

Thank you for that. What if they were all greedy workers though and sell the shoes for high prices? Like what we have now kind of. If that sounds idiotic I am so sorry, I am trying my best to understand. I appreciate you explaining this to me.

There's no such thing as a dumb question.

Well, since capitalism is dead and rotting in the ground, there is no more wage labor, no more commodity production. Everything that is produced is produced not for profit, but to be distributed to different places in order to fulfill needs.

So a group of workers may produce shoes as per my last example, and then distribute them around the world, to places where there is a demand for such shoes, simply to meet that demand. That's the economic maxim of communism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. In other words, your put forth what labor you're able to, and in exchange you have access to the goods produced by everyone else. This is known by some as gift economics, most simply explained as bartering with your labor, I would suppose.

In conclusion, there is no money in a communist society, so not only is there no need to sell anything, but no ability, even.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

30th October 2014, 12:00

So, the workers themselves own the means of production right? Well that doesn't make any sense to me. How is that even going to work? Please explain to me in great detail.

I notice that Illegalitarian has already answered this, but to be perfectly honest, I don't agree with the answer. Groups of workers owning "their own" means of production would lead to either a market system, or a non-market system where the separate groups of workers would not know how much to produce or where to send the final product to.

For most socialists, workers' ownership of the means of production means that the workers own the means of production as a class (in the transitional period). In socialism, in the absence of classes, this becomes social ownership of the means of production. Society as a unit owns the means of production and directs their employment.

Presumably, as it would be impractical for all seven billion of us to work on economic planning, society would delegate this responsibility to a smaller body, a planning collegium of some description. This collegium would assess the demand for consumer goods and so on - for example, it might turn out that the projected demand for dildoes in the next planning period is X units. Then it would calculate how many units of raw materials and intermediary goods are necessary to meet this demand - for example, Y units of plastic - and set the targets for the various production units. This economic plan would then go to a vote - society could either accept it, modify it, or reject it (because, for example, the planners intend for a lot of people to work in the plastic industry, but no one really wants to do it).

RevolutionaryThinker

30th October 2014, 15:15

The ancient Greek philosophers couldn't envisage a society without chattel slavery, something that's been found false for around two hundred years, so you're in good company.

Good point. I just need to learn more about Socialism.

RevolutionaryThinker

30th October 2014, 15:16

There's no such thing as a dumb question.

Well, since capitalism is dead and rotting in the ground, there is no more wage labor, no more commodity production. Everything that is produced is produced not for profit, but to be distributed to different places in order to fulfill needs.

So a group of workers may produce shoes as per my last example, and then distribute them around the world, to places where there is a demand for such shoes, simply to meet that demand. That's the economic maxim of communism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. In other words, your put forth what labor you're able to, and in exchange you have access to the goods produced by everyone else. This is known by some as gift economics, most simply explained as bartering with your labor, I would suppose.

In conclusion, there is no money in a communist society, so not only is there no need to sell anything, but no ability, even.

I get it! Well, that actually sounds like it could work - and thank you for explaining that to me.

RevolutionaryThinker

30th October 2014, 15:19

I notice that Illegalitarian has already answered this, but to be perfectly honest, I don't agree with the answer. Groups of workers owning "their own" means of production would lead to either a market system, or a non-market system where the separate groups of workers would not know how much to produce or where to send the final product to.

For most socialists, workers' ownership of the means of production means that the workers own the means of production as a class (in the transitional period). In socialism, in the absence of classes, this becomes social ownership of the means of production. Society as a unit owns the means of production and directs their employment.

Presumably, as it would be impractical for all seven billion of us to work on economic planning, society would delegate this responsibility to a smaller body, a planning collegium of some description. This collegium would assess the demand for consumer goods and so on - for example, it might turn out that the projected demand for dildoes in the next planning period is X units. Then it would calculate how many units of raw materials and intermediary goods are necessary to meet this demand - for example, Y units of plastic - and set the targets for the various production units. This economic plan would then go to a vote - society could either accept it, modify it, or reject it (because, for example, the planners intend for a lot of people to work in the plastic industry, but no one really wants to do it).

Another interesting answer. Thank you!

Illegalitarian

30th October 2014, 19:26

I notice that Illegalitarian has already answered this, but to be perfectly honest, I don't agree with the answer. Groups of workers owning "their own" means of production would lead to either a market system, or a non-market system where the separate groups of workers would not know how much to produce or where to send the final product to.

For most socialists, workers' ownership of the means of production means that the workers own the means of production as a class (in the transitional period). In socialism, in the absence of classes, this becomes social ownership of the means of production. Society as a unit owns the means of production and directs their employment.

I said:

You and your fellow workers would "own" this factory in common. That is to say, no one would truly "own" it, but everyone who wanted to work there in order to make shoes could (with training obviously).

Which was my poorly articulated way of saying what you just said :grin:

Presumably, as it would be impractical for all seven billion of us to work on economic planning, society would delegate this responsibility to a smaller body, a planning collegium of some description. This collegium would assess the demand for consumer goods and so on - for example, it might turn out that the projected demand for dildoes in the next planning period is X units. Then it would calculate how many units of raw materials and intermediary goods are necessary to meet this demand - for example, Y units of plastic - and set the targets for the various production units. This economic plan would then go to a vote - society could either accept it, modify it, or reject it (because, for example, the planners intend for a lot of people to work in the plastic industry, but no one really wants to do it).

Yeah this is basically how I imagine it. It would clearly have to be a decentralized model, trying to run it all from the top down would be a fucking nightmare I'd say, due to the impossibility of economic calculation on that level (something Trotsky pointed out years before the fascist minister of economics Mises did)

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

30th October 2014, 20:17

I didn't mean to imply that planning would or can be decentralised - nor did Trotsky for that matter (Trotsky criticises quite a few aspects of Soviet economic planning in "The Revolution Betrayed", from the lack of democracy to a lack of a reliable currency, but centralisation is not one of them - and in fact it was Trotsky himself who laid the foundation for centralised planning in the Soviet Union with Order 1042). What I meant to say is that it is likely that, instead of an entire society of seven billion people participating in the construction of the economic plan, this task will be delegated to a subordinate body of some sort. But this body would operate on the central level (it will plan production for the entire global society, not one region or raion) - it will have to, as the flow of goods is already global in scope, even under decaying capitalism.

(Just to illustrate: I am writing this while sipping rum from Cuba, mixed with Cola from Austria and a lemon from Azerbaijan of all places. So demand in Croatia would have an impact, in socialism, on production in Cuba, unless you think that in socialism we will only drink "local" rums, something I sincerely hope will not be the case.)

In any case, my "detailed" answer was in fact very superficial. I claim extenuating circumstances, but let's try to give a more detailed answer this time.

To reiterate, then: for most of us socialists, socialism is a global, classless, stateless society based on the social control of the means of production and a rational planning of the process of production, with free access to the social product available to any member of society.

Now, as for details, I think PT and I can agree that it is best to start at the arse end, so let's consider distribution. If, in the socialist society, I want a banana, what do I do? Well, at the risk of sounding inane, I go to a distribution centre of sorts - a supermarket without prices - and I take a banana.

That is it.

There is no rationing, no prices, no money, whether overt or covert. You take what you want.

Data about your "purchases" - things you took from the distribution centres - can then be used to predict demand in the next planning period (say, a year or so). There are numerous ways of doing so: monitoring the flow of goods out of the distribution centres is an obvious method (obviously if no one is buying Toilet Paper Type 7 from the Markitsch-Bozanitsch Design Bureau, it might be time to slash the targets for that type of toilet paper in the next plan). There are other methods: we can assume, for example, that demand scales more-or-less linearly with population and changes as the average age changes (older people probably buy slightly more condoms than people in the 0-14 years age group).

I'm not going to advocate any of these methods as I am not an economist, but obviously there is more than one option.

Now, assuming we have predicted the demand (and added a buffer just to be on the safe side as a matter of basic prudence), we (or rather the Planning Collegium of the Central Soviet or however the planning body will please to call itself) can predict the need for intermediate industrial goods (things like ingots of various metals) and raw materials (things like ore) - assuming we know the details of the technical process involved, it's easy to take that, on average, producing X units of aluminium foil takes X' units of aluminium ingots which in turn need X'' units of bauxite, X''' units of electricity and so on.

Then (and after solving the transportation problem, which will probably be a bother), these targets are communicated to the production units - i.e. Bauxite Mine 708 needs to produce 7 tonnes of bauxite ore.

Assuming of course society in general, whether directly by some sort of referendum or by way of a delegated representative body, approves the plan.

In the production units, people would work according to their desires - there would be no money, no salaries and no rationing, so people would only work if they want to, and they would work in whatever branch of human activity they find enjoyable at the moment. Work discipline (which would still exist of course - everyone would have the right to choose where to work and whether to work, but obviously they wouldn't have the prerogative to for example fall asleep on the assembly track without notifying anyone else and ruin the batch of products for everyone else) would presumably be maintained by some combination of workers' committees, representatives of the communal councils, and inspectors and overseers appointed by the centre.

Services would be organised by individual people who want to preform the service, and society would ensure they have the required tools and skills, as well as ensure their services are up to a standard. Society would also make it easier for people to contact authorised service-providers.

And that is, more or less, what the public authorities in socialism would do - obviously this is significantly different than the modern state, which exists to enforce the rule of a minority of capitalists over the rest of society, enforce the horrible oppression of women and minorities and so on.

In socialism there would be no police, no courts, no prisons, no military etc. There would be a militia, of sorts, composed of the armed members of society, but this would be extremely informal and useless in socialism as such. In the unlikely event that one person would try to kill or hurt another, they would be stopped by other people witnessing the event (and probably by their intended victim as well).

And, hm, I think that's about it? I would like to add that the family as such would not exist - not only would women have full control over their sexuality and reproductive capacities, and there would be no oppression of or even singling out of those whose lifestyles are incompatible with the bourgeois family, things like housework would be socialised and the raising of children would be a social endeavour.

Anything else?

RevolutionaryThinker

30th October 2014, 20:23

There's no such thing as a dumb question.

Well, since capitalism is dead and rotting in the ground, there is no more wage labor, no more commodity production. Everything that is produced is produced not for profit, but to be distributed to different places in order to fulfill needs.

So a group of workers may produce shoes as per my last example, and then distribute them around the world, to places where there is a demand for such shoes, simply to meet that demand. That's the economic maxim of communism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. In other words, your put forth what labor you're able to, and in exchange you have access to the goods produced by everyone else. This is known by some as gift economics, most simply explained as bartering with your labor, I would suppose.

In conclusion, there is no money in a communist society, so not only is there no need to sell anything, but no ability, even.

So what about the people that don't want to work? Will they not have access to the goods produced by everyone else?

Illegalitarian

30th October 2014, 20:51

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

30th October 2014, 21:54

I agree with pretty much all of that aside from what seems to be an implication that production will take place from the top-down, and would not be kind of as it is now, with distribution and production taking place in many different places, with a coordinated effort between different centers of production and distribution

(are you seriously in Cuba right now drinking rum you lucky shit? Ugh :mad: )

No, I am currently in Croatia, drinking rum made in Cuba. You can buy it relatively cheap here. That was sort of my point: we live in a world where Cuban rum can be found in Croatia, factories in China use Congolese copper to make electronics for consumers in France and so on. How would a decentralised system handle this, if not through some sort of market mechanism? And markets are what they have now - and they're not really good, are they?

I don't think central planning is "top-down", as if someone proclaimed themselves dictator and started barking out targets. It is "bottom-up" in the sense that data is collected from the basic level of individual consumers choosing to consume such-and-such products, and it is "bottom-up" in the sense that in socialism, any plan would be subject to democratic control.

GiantMonkeyMan

30th October 2014, 22:44

So what about the people that don't want to work? Will they not have access to the goods produced by everyone else?
Nah, anyone can still have access to whatever they want no matter how much or little work they've done. There would be a difference in the concept of 'work' however. No-one's going to be spending ten hour days cleaning up rubbish or whatever like they are forced to do in capitalism because the productive forces of humanity don't require people to work that hard for so little reward. There are hundreds of perfectly useless jobs that people are doing today that could either be completely automated or gotten rid of altogether (selling insurance springs to mind - a perfect example of a useless job providing a useless service that can only exist in a world dominated by money). Society could be organised in such a way as to ensure that everyone has the most free time to do whatever the fuck they want in life whilst planning to do the boring jobs in as little time or with as much automation as possible sort of like organising a cleaning rota in a house but on a larger scale and in new dynamic ways.

So if you want to spend a day doing nothing but reading a book whilst sat in your underwear? Go for it. That sort of freedom to do whatever you want can't exist in a world where everyone has the chains of bills, rent, the need to buy food etc over their heads. As Terry Eagleton said:

"Marx's goal is leisure, not labor. The best reason for being a socialist, apart from annoying people you happen to dislike, is that you detest having to work. Marx thought that capitalism had developed the forces of production to the point at which, under different social relations, they could be used to emancipate the majority of men and women from the most degrading forms of labor."

Illegalitarian

30th October 2014, 23:25

No, I am currently in Croatia, drinking rum made in Cuba. You can buy it relatively cheap here. That was sort of my point: we live in a world where Cuban rum can be found in Croatia, factories in China use Congolese copper to make electronics for consumers in France and so on. How would a decentralised system handle this, if not through some sort of market mechanism? And markets are what they have now - and they're not really good, are they?

Through simply gauging demand from information from-below as you put it, and then supplying goods to meet those demands, the same as what happens now, I'd imagine.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

30th October 2014, 23:52

Through simply gauging demand from information from-below as you put it, and then supplying goods to meet those demands, the same as what happens now, I'd imagine.

But what happens now doesn't really work for us, does it?

I mean, you need to take into demand the global demand. And then you need to set targets throughout the globe because it makes no sense for a factory in the Amazon region to try to meet the same global demand as a factory in the Central Black Soil region - it would mean massive and undesirable redundancies.

Transportation also needs to be arranged on a global level etc.

So you would either have various decentralised bodies tripping over each other, or one global planning authority. I don't understand why people have a dislike for centralism, when the various regions of the world can't be viewed as separate economic units, and production in them can't be planned in isolation from other regions.

Lord Testicles

30th October 2014, 23:57

I don't understand why people have a dislike for centralism, when the various regions of the world can't be viewed as separate economic units, and production in them can't be planned in isolation from other regions.

I imagine most people have an aversion to centralism because it suggests that the ability to make decisions is taken away from them and given to some central governing body. That's my two cents.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

31st October 2014, 00:08

I imagine most people have an aversion to centralism because it suggests that the ability to make decisions is taken away from them and given to some central governing body. That's my two cents.

Possibly, but at the risk of sounding cliched, that is an extremely petit-bourgeois way of viewing things. I can't make decisions about the global economy in any case - since no one has as of yet died to make me the pharaoh of the world, and such a thing is in fact unlikely, and if I am given the prerogative to make decisions about "my" means of production in "my" workplace, that is effectively private property.

But what people ostensibly propose is not private property but "decentralised planning". Is a decision made by the raion planning board in Neuchatel somehow more "mine" than a decision made by the global planning board in Addis Abeba? I think not.

Of course, in a centralist system every member of society contributed by participating in public debate and decision-making. That democracy thing that many people claim to be enthusiastic about, you know.

Illegalitarian

31st October 2014, 00:22

But what happens now doesn't really work for us, does it?

I mean, you need to take into demand the global demand. And then you need to set targets throughout the globe because it makes no sense for a factory in the Amazon region to try to meet the same global demand as a factory in the Central Black Soil region - it would mean massive and undesirable redundancies.

Transportation also needs to be arranged on a global level etc.

So you would either have various decentralised bodies tripping over each other, or one global planning authority. I don't understand why people have a dislike for centralism, when the various regions of the world can't be viewed as separate economic units, and production in them can't be planned in isolation from other regions.

Distribution wise? Yeah, it does... you just went into great detail, something about bananas, lemons, cuba, croatia.. remember?

Capitalism of course means that not everyone gets access to distributed goods, but of course, this is an issue fixed with its death.

Possibly, but at the risk of sounding cliched, that is an extremely petit-bourgeois way of viewing things. I can't make decisions about the global economy in any case - since no one has as of yet died to make me the pharaoh of the world, and such a thing is in fact unlikely, and if I am given the prerogative to make decisions about "my" means of production in "my" workplace, that is effectively private property.

But what people ostensibly propose is not private property but "decentralised planning". Is a decision made by the raion planning board in Neuchatel somehow more "mine" than a decision made by the global planning board in Addis Abeba? I think not.

Of course, in a centralist system every member of society contributed by participating in public debate and decision-making. That democracy thing that many people claim to be enthusiastic about, you know.

you're a petite bourgeois way of looking at things.

Centralized planning of production puts the power in the hands of a few and is pretty inefficient, as well as anti-democratic (who gets to plan production? How is this decided? Where is it planned at? Lots of power put into the hands of only a few people, or organizations, which entirely defeats the purpose and leads to absurd hoop-jumping for something that could be made simple by keeping production and distribution networks that we have now)

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

31st October 2014, 00:42

Distribution wise? Yeah, it does... you just went into great detail, something about bananas, lemons, cuba, croatia.. remember?

Capitalism of course means that not everyone gets access to distributed goods, but of course, this is an issue fixed with its death.

Yes, but apart from the obvious problems of the present system of global distribution (just consider the flow of medicine into Africa - or the flow of foodstuffs out of famine-afflicted areas), it relies crucially on price signals. Without price signals, Coca Cola wouldn't know how many litres of Coke it needs to send to Croatia (for example).

Obviously in socialism there are no prices and no price signals, unless you think calculating indicative prices is jolly good fun (for the rest of us it's a combination of market inefficiency and soul-crushing boredom of tax forms).

And that's not the only problem. In capitalism, production is not planned. Again, Coca Cola decides to manufacture X units of Coke, and it buys the ingredients off the market. If the ingredients aren't on the market, though luck. That's not how socialism works, though.

you're a petite bourgeois way of looking at things.

Centralized planning of production puts the power in the hands of a few and is pretty inefficient, as well as anti-democratic (who gets to plan production? How is this decided? Where is it planned at? Lots of power put into the hands of only a few people, or organizations, which entirely defeats the purpose and leads to absurd hoop-jumping for something that could be made simple by keeping production and distribution networks that we have now)

If you think these production and distribution networks are optimal, why fight for socialism? The rest of the argument does not follow. If there is democratic oversight, how does central planning "put... power in the hands of a few"? The people who would work in planning bodies would be technicians, clerical workers and so on, not some omnipotent high council of nebulous evil. If the central democratic organs of society - whether some sort of (necessarily technological) plenum or a delegated central council or whatever - want to discard their plan, fire them and throw them to the wolves, they can do that. Except the last part, hopefully.

As for the inefficiency of central planning, the actual facts seem to suggest otherwise. Even laughably bad approximations to central planning in limited regions in the context of a global market have outpreformed market economies.

GiantMonkeyMan

31st October 2014, 01:22

I think the discussion about centralisation and decentralisation is largely arbitrary. Communities, workplaces, whatever, will largely run themselves but if community A wants to build a hydro-electric dam that might effect the crop irrigation of community B then there needs to be some level of globalised discussion and communication to organise and plan to ensure that all people living in this global society can contribute and are not affected by various developments negatively. I call that having a centralised planned economy. It needs to be global and it needs to be effective but does that mean it has to be top-down oriented? Nonsense. It would just be an administration tool, not a class hierarchy enforced by a state.

John Nada

31st October 2014, 03:11

Here's some of what Engels said about scientific socialism:
When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: "a free State", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.
This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every 10 years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face-to-face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production burst the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly-accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialized appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today, and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now, for the first time, here, but it is here. [5]

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history,pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.
III. Proletarian Revolution — Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and this the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism. http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Is there really a contradiction between a centralized plan and a decentralize plan? I don't think so. There's obviously going to be some kind of coordination going on. And if people on a micro level don't have a say or go along, the central plan would be useless. It won't be some evil dictator with facial hair or a small committee of old guys. It'll be democratic. However, architects, engineers, programers, office staff and safety inspectors probably will still be a job. Would it be undemocratic if the engineer said that this is the most safe and effective way to do the job? I don't think so. Hopefully, without having the choose between working now for immediate survival or get an education, and without suppression of poor nations' public eduction, the number of trained experts will increase. Still this won't be an excuse for them to collect rent from those that are now considered "unskilled", many of which do require a particular skill. The difference is that it'll be geared towards collective social production.

I kind of understand both sides. The side that's against central planning is probably afraid that the central planners might lose touch with the people and take on the role of the bourgeoisie, and restore capitalism. On the other hand, proponents of central planning might think that if there isn't strong coordination between people, you end up with unequal development. The work site is managed democratically by it's workers, however they becomes something like shareholders of Valve compared to less prosperous areas where it's more like day-labor, restoring capitalism. Now, I'd hope that after the final victory of the global socialist revolution it'd be a dumb question to think about restoration of capital, like taking about the restoration of feudalism. So I'd guess it's more a question of how it'll turn out when socialism is achieved.

I think 870's, and I kind of think this too, opposition to "decentralized planning" and "worker's self-management" is that both have been used in former, at least nominally, worker's states as slogans by opportunist to dress up their capitalist "reforms". It was promoted as something better for the workers to "teach them to be economic and efficient", but was a prelude to privatization.

Illegalitarian

31st October 2014, 04:10

Yes, but apart from the obvious problems of the present system of global distribution (just consider the flow of medicine into Africa - or the flow of foodstuffs out of famine-afflicted areas), it relies crucially on price signals. Without price signals, Coca Cola wouldn't know how many litres of Coke it needs to send to Croatia (for example).

Shortages have everything to do with the manner in which things are distributed - on a for profit basis - it has nothing to do with distribution systems themselves.

The calculation argument makes no sense because it's an argument against a moneyless, non-market system, or systems where money has little relevance on the consumer level. If you accept this fallacious argument, you can't believe socialism is viable on any level, since decentralized or not, there will be no wage labor or generalized commodity production in such a system.

It may have been a valid discussion back in the day, but productive forces have developed beyond the point where we need price signals to tell us where demand is.

And that's not the only problem. In capitalism, production is not planned. Again, Coca Cola decides to manufacture X units of Coke, and it buys the ingredients off the market. If the ingredients aren't on the market, though luck. That's not how socialism works, though.

KKKoca Cola plans the manufacture of X units of Coke based on available resources, their prices, and a series of other externalities. That's the funniest thing about ancraps who rail against planned systems when capitalism is arguably the most planned out economic model that could ever be, to be as efficient as it is.

If you think these production and distribution networks are optimal, why fight for socialism? The rest of the argument does not follow. If there is democratic oversight, how does central planning "put... power in the hands of a few"? The people who would work in planning bodies would be technicians, clerical workers and so on, not some omnipotent high council of nebulous evil. If the central democratic organs of society - whether some sort of (necessarily technological) plenum or a delegated central council or whatever - want to discard their plan, fire them and throw them to the wolves, they can do that. Except the last part, hopefully.

Because optimal distribution networks that were built by the capitalists are being used for the accumulation of capital, not for distribution based on need.

So in your system, some delegates council would be elected by everyone in the world and they would be over global distribution.. how? Why? What's the practicality of this?

As for the inefficiency of central planning, the actual facts seem to suggest otherwise. Even laughably bad approximations to central planning in limited regions in the context of a global market have outpreformed market economies.

Except that... they haven't. What are you talking about?

I think 870's, and I kind of think this too, opposition to "decentralized planning" and "worker's self-management" is that both have been used in former, at least nominally, worker's states as slogans by opportunist to dress up their capitalist "reforms". It was promoted as something better for the workers to "teach them to be economic and efficient", but was a prelude to privatization.

It's not some sneaky sneaky in-roader trick though, worker's self-management was a Marxist concept, and advocated by pretty much every other anarchist and communist theorist for forever.

I'm not saying that every single decision ever should have to be voted upon by everyone or some such, I'm merely advocating worker's self-management, work places communicating and planning production/distribution among each other to optimally distribute resources evenly to everyone, among other things.

I think the discussion about centralisation and decentralisation is largely arbitrary. Communities, workplaces, whatever, will largely run themselves but if community A wants to build a hydro-electric dam that might effect the crop irrigation of community B then there needs to be some level of globalised discussion and communication to organise and plan to ensure that all people living in this global society can contribute and are not affected by various developments negatively. I call that having a centralised planned economy. It needs to be global and it needs to be effective but does that mean it has to be top-down oriented? Nonsense. It would just be an administration tool, not a class hierarchy enforced by a state.

Which is all well and good, but I think 870 is advocating economic activity at this global level rather than administration of certain incidents that involve several parties so to speak

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

31st October 2014, 12:30

Shortages have everything to do with the manner in which things are distributed - on a for profit basis - it has nothing to do with distribution systems themselves.

Even if I concede that, the problem remains: the distribution networks developed by capitalists, you claim, are optimal. But none of these distribution networks include significant amounts of needed medicine going to Africa. None of them include a large flow of consumer electronics to the people of Afghanistan. And so on. I think it is pretty obvious that these networks are not optimal.

But there is a deeper problem. The capitalist distribution networks you mention have quite a lot to do with the for-profit nature of production under capitalism. That is literally how they are organised - to maximise or attempt to maximise the rate of profit for the enterprises engaging in long-distance movement of goods. Without prices, they would not work.

The calculation argument makes no sense because it's an argument against a moneyless, non-market system, or systems where money has little relevance on the consumer level. If you accept this fallacious argument, you can't believe socialism is viable on any level, since decentralized or not, there will be no wage labor or generalized commodity production in such a system.

No, I think the "economic calculation argument" is the worst sort of guff; if anything you can prove that capitalism has a far worse calculation problem than socialism could ever have. But that's not what I am talking about. You mentioned capitalist distribution networks - I simply pointed out that these can't function without price signals and you can't have price signals under socialism. Even if you want to calculate those monstrous indicative prices, these aren't really backed by anything.

So you can't just transpose capitalist mechanisms to the socialist society. Socialism changes everything.

It may have been a valid discussion back in the day, but productive forces have developed beyond the point where we need price signals to tell us where demand is.

I don't think there ever was a need for price signals, not in the twentieth century at least. That's besides the point. I never said socialism needs price signals. I said that capitalist distribution networks need price signals.

The centre can "see" global demand directly - for example, by collating information about the flow of various goods out of the distribution centres. But local bodies by definition can't, they can only see a part of that demand (at best). So how do they get information about demand outside "their" region? The same question can be asked about natural resources, labour, production etc.

KKKoca Cola plans the manufacture of X units of Coke based on available resources, their prices, and a series of other externalities. That's the funniest thing about ancraps who rail against planned systems when capitalism is arguably the most planned out economic model that could ever be, to be as efficient as it is.

You could use the same argument to "prove" that any economy is planned, since people and groups of people make plans. That might be useful if one wishes to argue against an-caps - although why anyone would want to do so is beyond me - but it makes economic planning a meaningless term (if every economy is planned, it doesn't make any sense to single any of them out as planned).

Economic planning is not simply making plans. I rather like the definition Mandel, in one of his fits of orthodoxy, gives in his reply to A. Nove:

"We have been using the term ‘planning’. But the concept itself needs to be more precisely defined. Planning is not equivalent to ‘perfect’ allocation of resources, nor ‘scientific’ allocation, nor even ‘more humane’ allocation. It simply means ‘direct’ allocation, ex ante. As such, it is the opposite of market allocation, which is ex post. These are the two basic ways of allocating resources, and they are fundamentally different from each other – even if they can on occasion be combined in precarious and hybrid transitional forms, which will not be automatically self-reproducing. Essentially they have a different internal logic. They generate distinct laws of motion. They diffuse divergent motivations among producers and organizers of production, and find expression in discrepant social values."

Direct allocation of resources ex ante - that is not something that happens in capitalism on a generalised level, the level of the entire society. Some industrial planning happens in factories, but when we talk about a planned economy we talk about generalised planning. The difference between planning in individual factories and generalised planning is as great as the difference between commodity production in a slave-owning society and generalised commodity production under capitalism.

So in your system, some delegates council would be elected by everyone in the world and they would be over global distribution.. how? Why? What's the practicality of this?

The practicality is that the centre, as I said, has access to information about the state of the global productive forces and the global demand for consumer goods. But where's the practicality of the sort of decentralised planning you propose? How would the planning council of the Neustrian Rayon or whatever be able to assess the demand for Neustrian wood, for example?

Except that... they haven't. What are you talking about?

Well, for example, consider the status of railway stock before and after Trotsky centralised all railway planning in his office by way of Order 1042. Or consider the ability of the imperial army to procure food and equipment, and the ability of the Red Army to do the same in the period of Military Communism. Consider the growth and the achievements of the Soviet economy during the period where something resembling a planned economy was in place, and the widespread destitution after this was replaced by market mechanisms.

It's not some sneaky sneaky in-roader trick though, worker's self-management was a Marxist concept, and advocated by pretty much every other anarchist and communist theorist for forever.

So, and this is an honest question, how many socialist theorists advocating "workers' self-management" can you cite, before the Second World War? I can think of one - assuming overt social-democrats are excluded - and that's Bernstein.

Likewise with "decentralised planning". If I'm not mistaken, the first to make "decentralised planning" their watchword were the former right wing of the SFIO, grouped as the Union Jean Jaures. I'm not saying that the people who advocate decentralisation are reformists (or fascists, which most UJJ members became), but it does cast some doubts on the claim that workers' self-management and decentralised planning have been advocated by socialists "for forever" and that central planning and social oversight are later inventions.

Which is all well and good, but I think 870 is advocating economic activity at this global level rather than administration of certain incidents that involve several parties so to speak

I am no more advocating global economic activity than I am advocating that the Pannonian Plain exist. Global economic activity is already a fact, and unless you think socialism will retard the forces of production, it will remain a fact in socialism. The question is how this global economic activity will be organised. Will each region or locale do as it pleases with only sporadic coordination, or will a global economy be brought under the purview of a global body?

Illegalitarian

31st October 2014, 20:29

Even if I concede that, the problem remains: the distribution networks developed by capitalists, you claim, are optimal. But none of these distribution networks include significant amounts of needed medicine going to Africa. None of them include a large flow of consumer electronics to the people of Afghanistan. And so on. I think it is pretty obvious that these networks are not optimal.

Then we create distribution networks that fulfill these needs. It's not that complicated.

But there is a deeper problem. The capitalist distribution networks you mention have quite a lot to do with the for-profit nature of production under capitalism. That is literally how they are organised - to maximise or attempt to maximise the rate of profit for the enterprises engaging in long-distance movement of goods. Without prices, they would not work.

The networks.. the connections between different suppliers and producers, are built on profit, absolutely, but to suggest that without profit they don't work is, again, an implication that somehow the network is inherently connected to price and we would have to scrap them because of that. That's just simply not true, just because such networks are geared towards profit today doesn't mean it's impossible to use these networks for need.

No, I think the "economic calculation argument" is the worst sort of guff; if anything you can prove that capitalism has a far worse calculation problem than socialism could ever have. But that's not what I am talking about. You mentioned capitalist distribution networks - I simply pointed out that these can't function without price signals and you can't have price signals under socialism. Even if you want to calculate those monstrous indicative prices, these aren't really backed by anything.

So you can't just transpose capitalist mechanisms to the socialist society. Socialism changes everything.

Obviously I'm not talking about selling shit to people, I am talking only about the supplier-producer connections and how decentralized production and distribution is now, and how those specific producer-distributor networks can easily be utilized in a socialist system.

The centre can "see" global demand directly - for example, by collating information about the flow of various goods out of the distribution centres. But local bodies by definition can't, they can only see a part of that demand (at best). So how do they get information about demand outside "their" region? The same question can be asked about natural resources, labour, production etc.

Again this doesn't hold water because we can look at distribution and production today, which takes place everywhere on a decentralized level, and still coordinated everything quite well, aside from the inefficiencies caused from profit-motivated production. We can literally look at society today and see that this is false, we can look at the very example you gave, of goods being distributed everywhere from around the world, and see that this assertion, is false. In a priceless world this sort of information would be digitized, and if it can be digitized it can be accessed by anyone anywhere, the same way planning works now.

You could use the same argument to "prove" that any economy is planned, since people and groups of people make plans. That might be useful if one wishes to argue against an-caps - although why anyone would want to do so is beyond me - but it makes economic planning a meaningless term (if every economy is planned, it doesn't make any sense to single any of them out as planned).

Well, it kind of doesn't. All economic activity is planned, so it is kind of a useless term. Just because our system of planning is needs based doesn't mean that all economic activity is essentially planned.

Direct allocation of resources ex ante - that is not something that happens in capitalism on a generalised level, the level of the entire society. Some industrial planning happens in factories, but when we talk about a planned economy we talk about generalised planning. The difference between planning in individual factories and generalised planning is as great as the difference between commodity production in a slave-owning society and generalised commodity production under capitalism.

But both are still forms of planning, though. Of course there is a difference between the two, it's all about utilization though.

The practicality is that the centre, as I said, has access to information about the state of the global productive forces and the global demand for consumer goods. But where's the practicality of the sort of decentralised planning you propose? How would the planning council of the Neustrian Rayon or whatever be able to assess the demand for Neustrian wood, for example?

If the "centre" has such information it must be digitized, fed into a computer somewhere, which means that the planning council of a;dnja;kdn;sdj can just as easily access said information specifically for what they're producing and where they need to distribute it.

Well, for example, consider the status of railway stock before and after Trotsky centralised all railway planning in his office by way of Order 1042. Or consider the ability of the imperial army to procure food and equipment, and the ability of the Red Army to do the same in the period of Military Communism. Consider the growth and the achievements of the Soviet economy during the period where something resembling a planned economy was in place, and the widespread destitution after this was replaced by market mechanisms.

Or we could consider the fact that it was this central planning that made the Soviet economy so inefficient in the first place and was largely responsible for over and under production, misallocation of goods, shortages, etc.

So, and this is an honest question, how many socialist theorists advocating "workers' self-management" can you cite, before the Second World War? I can think of one - assuming overt social-democrats are excluded - and that's Bernstein.

Likewise with "decentralised planning". If I'm not mistaken, the first to make "decentralised planning" their watchword were the former right wing of the SFIO, grouped as the Union Jean Jaures. I'm not saying that the people who advocate decentralisation are reformists (or fascists, which most UJJ members became), but it does cast some doubts on the claim that workers' self-management and decentralised planning have been advocated by socialists "for forever" and that central planning and social oversight are later inventions.

Kropotkin? Bakunin? Goldman? Marx? Engels? Lenin? Trotsky? Are you saying that Marx did not advocate "free associations of producers", as he put it? That he didn't advocate the end of alienation and workers seizing control of the means of production?

This isn't even about planning, this is kind of communism 101. Worker's control over the means of production is kind of a big deal here, which naturally means that they manage the means of production, not GOSPLAN sitting in the capital of the new global proletariat people's republic in Belgrade.

[quote[The question is how this global economic activity will be organised. Will each region or locale do as it pleases with only sporadic coordination, or will a global economy be brought under the purview of a global body?[/QUOTE]

Coordination based on information available about available resources, demand of certain goods in certain areas, etc. To think that some big centre somewhere will plan the entire world's economy seems sort of dystopian and impractical.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

1st November 2014, 01:24

Then we create distribution networks that fulfill these needs. It's not that complicated.

Sure, but you're not really addressing my point. Distribution networks under capitalism are obviously not optimal from the standpoint of production for use.

The networks.. the connections between different suppliers and producers, are built on profit, absolutely, but to suggest that without profit they don't work is, again, an implication that somehow the network is inherently connected to price and we would have to scrap them because of that. That's just simply not true, just because such networks are geared towards profit today doesn't mean it's impossible to use these networks for need.

They aren't just geared toward profit, they depend on price signals crucially as the actors in these networks have only partial knowledge of the material situation of other actors. Without prices, Coca Cola ltd. could not assess how many litres of syrup it needs to send to Coca Cola Hellenic ltd. Nor could Coca Cola Hellenic decide how many bottles to send to Croatian markets.

Obviously I'm not talking about selling shit to people, I am talking only about the supplier-producer connections and how decentralized production and distribution is now, and how those specific producer-distributor networks can easily be utilized in a socialist system.

That's the point; they can't. These decentralised systems depend on price signals, without which they would be completely borked. The only connection between suppliers and producers is the market, which would not exist in socialism.

Again this doesn't hold water because we can look at distribution and production today, which takes place everywhere on a decentralized level, and still coordinated everything quite well, aside from the inefficiencies caused from profit-motivated production. We can literally look at society today and see that this is false, we can look at the very example you gave, of goods being distributed everywhere from around the world, and see that this assertion, is false. In a priceless world this sort of information would be digitized, and if it can be digitized it can be accessed by anyone anywhere, the same way planning works now.

The problem is, you're trying to disentangle economic activity under capitalism from the basic forms of the capitalist mode of production. "The profit motive" isn't some sort of external influence that perverts the otherwise socially optimal decentralised "planning" under capitalism, the law of value determines how capitalism operates.

Well, it kind of doesn't. All economic activity is planned, so it is kind of a useless term. Just because our system of planning is needs based doesn't mean that all economic activity is essentially planned.

I quite literally can't make sense of that, and to be honest it seems to be a very cheap trick - redefining words so that every economy is planned. It doesn't work since everyone knows what a "planned economy" is, and capitalism or the Mycenaean palace economy don't fit the bill.

Now as for the concrete proposal. You say:

If the "centre" has such information it must be digitized, fed into a computer somewhere, which means that the planning council of a;dnja;kdn;sdj can just as easily access said information specifically for what they're producing and where they need to distribute it.

For the record, I didn't make Neustria up, it was a real region. Two regions in fact, but the Lombards were simply posers.

Now let's suppose that the planning commission in Neustria has access to all of the information about global demand for the various goods - ignoring that it would be difficult to organise the collection of this information without central coordination. This commission can then calculate how many producer goods and raw materials the production units in Neustria need to fulfill that demand. If they know the technical ratios of input and outputs in the various global production units (since it is unlikely, no, ludicrous that Neustria would not have to import any of the producer goods or raw materials).

But obviously we wish to avoid overlap - it makes no sense for production units in Neustria to produce enough to cover the global demand, and for the production units in Austrasia to do the same, as well as the ones in Friuli and Arelat and...

So at this point we have several commissions that practically function as the global planning commission - since they have to send targets to production units throughout the world and require input from production units and distribution centres throughout the world - except each is autonomous. And they need to divide the workload between them.

Let's be honest here, does this sound like anything else than a recipe for disaster to you? Why have hundreds of bodies that all do the same thing, only each of them is going to make different decisions? That is the chief thing that perplexes me about "decentralisation" proposals: how in the name of Lenin's bald spot can anyone consider them superior to a simple solution where global tasks are done by global bodies?

Or we could consider the fact that it was this central planning that made the Soviet economy so inefficient in the first place and was largely responsible for over and under production, misallocation of goods, shortages, etc.

Ah, yes, the good old "people waiting in line for bread" argument. I don't know how anyone can still make that argument with a straight face when you take into account the actual impoverishment of workers in the former Eastern Bloc, which often includes literal starvation, after the reintroduction of the "superior, decentralised" capitalism.

Kropotkin? Bakunin? Goldman? Marx? Engels? Lenin? Trotsky? Are you saying that Marx did not advocate "free associations of producers", as he put it? That he didn't advocate the end of alienation and workers seizing control of the means of production?

So can you find quotes, by any of these figures, about "workers' self-management", decentralisation and so on? I think you will find that you can't. As I said, the workers seizing the means of production means that the workers as a class, seize the means of production as a unit, not that every group of workers seizes "their own" means of production. Likewise the free association of producers is free from the constraints of class society, not free in the sense that any petty group can do whatever the hell it wants; that's Proudhonism, not Marxism.

This isn't even about planning, this is kind of communism 101. Worker's control over the means of production is kind of a big deal here, which naturally means that they manage the means of production, not GOSPLAN sitting in the capital of the new global proletariat people's republic in Belgrade.

Marx didn't think so:

"The labour of supervision and management is naturally required wherever the direct process of production assumes the form of a combined social process, and not of the isolated labour of independent producers. However, it has a double nature.
On the one hand, all labour in which many individuals co-operate necessarily requires a commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and functions which apply not to partial operations but to the total activity of the workshop, much as that of an orchestra conductor. This is a productive job, which must be performed in every combined mode of production."

(Capital, v. III)

"In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production."

(Anti-Duhring)

"This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail. But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of the producers working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production: upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment."

(ibid)

Coordination based on information available about available resources, demand of certain goods in certain areas, etc. To think that some big centre somewhere will plan the entire world's economy seems sort of dystopian and impractical.

Again, I can't but marvel at people who think that central coordination is dystopian - it seems to me that their notion of socialism is not something I would call socialistic.

Illegalitarian

1st November 2014, 02:46

Sure, but you're not really addressing my point. Distribution networks under capitalism are obviously not optimal from the standpoint of production for use.

I did address the point: You have not shown this to be true, but rather, are citing problems unique to capitalism rather than issues unique to the distribution networks used here.

They aren't just geared toward profit, they depend on price signals crucially as the actors in these networks have only partial knowledge of the material situation of other actors. Without prices, Coca Cola ltd. could not assess how many litres of syrup it needs to send to Coca Cola Hellenic ltd. Nor could Coca Cola Hellenic decide how many bottles to send to Croatian markets.

Again, this is an odd argument because it's essentially arguing from the point of the Austrian economic calculation problem: If you think that without price signals distribution could not work, you're arguing against a moneyless system with no commodity production, not the decentralization of production.

In a communist system, price signals would be irrelevant. The data can be and would be gathered in far more efficient ways than price in order to gauge need.

That's the point; they can't. These decentralised systems depend on price signals, without which they would be completely borked. The only connection between suppliers and producers is the market, which would not exist in socialism.

That's kind of a silly claim. The market wouldn't exist? There are no markets, now? How are you defining market, exactly? All a market consists of is a network between buyers and sellers to facilitate change, buyers and sellers being swapped for producers and distributors in a socialist society. You're making the classic mistake of conflating "market" with generalized commodity production, something even so called "market socialists" do.

The problem is, you're trying to disentangle economic activity under capitalism from the basic forms of the capitalist mode of production. "The profit motive" isn't some sort of external influence that perverts the otherwise socially optimal decentralised "planning" under capitalism, the law of value determines how capitalism operates.

On an economic level, but we're talking about the networks created under capitalism itself, the "markets" if thats what you want to call them, the connections between distributors and producers based on demand, which would be needs-based, not profit-based, in communism. That you can't disconnect the two for some reason is perplexing to say the least.

I quite literally can't make sense of that, and to be honest it seems to be a very cheap trick - redefining words so that every economy is planned. It doesn't work since everyone knows what a "planned economy" is, and capitalism or the Mycenaean palace economy don't fit the bill.

It's more like pointing out the inane nature of phraseology for political brownie points rather than "redefining" anything. "planned economy" is a meaningless term.

Now let's suppose that the planning commission in Neustria has access to all of the information about global demand for the various goods - ignoring that it would be difficult to organise the collection of this information without central coordination.

It's easier for a central, international body to collect this information rather than the people who are right there? REALLY?

But obviously we wish to avoid overlap - it makes no sense for production units in Neustria to produce enough to cover the global demand, and for the production units in Austrasia to do the same, as well as the ones in Friuli and Arelat and...

Which is why they would only produce enough to meet the demand of whoever is requesting products produced in Neustria. If people in Austrasia want a specific good produced in Neustria, then they produce it and send it there, and so on and so forth. To claim that some centralized body could do all of this more efficiently is absurd and would require a massive body of people to complete a task that the working class in a given area could just as easily complete by communicating with other production units in other parts of the world by monitoring demand for whatever it is they produce.

Let's be honest here, does this sound like anything else than a recipe for disaster to you? Why have hundreds of bodies that all do the same thing, only each of them is going to make different decisions? That is the chief thing that perplexes me about "decentralisation" proposals: how in the name of Lenin's bald spot can anyone consider them superior to a simple solution where global tasks are done by global bodies?

"Why would anyone think that an extremely complicated task wouldn't be better handled by the people handling production and distribution than a global body that would handle all of it"

Ah, yes, the good old "people waiting in line for bread" argument. I don't know how anyone can still make that argument with a straight face when you take into account the actual impoverishment of workers in the former Eastern Bloc, which often includes literal starvation, after the reintroduction of the "superior, decentralised" capitalism.

So because neoliberal shock therapy collapsed the eastern bloc into chaos means that there were no shortages and problems due solely to central planning in the USSR and warsaw pact nations?

If you don't think there were shortages in these nations and huge problems with central planning I don't even know what to say. That's some real tankie stuff right there.

So can you find quotes, by any of these figures, about "workers' self-management", decentralisation and so on? I think you will find that you can't. As I said, the workers seizing the means of production means that the workers as a class, seize the means of production as a unit, not that every group of workers seizes "their own" means of production. Likewise the free association of producers is free from the constraints of class society, not free in the sense that any petty group can do whatever the hell it wants; that's Proudhonism, not Marxism.

"The land belongs to only those who cultivate it with their own hands; to the agricultural communes. The capital and all the tools of production belong to the workers; to the workers' associations . . . The future political organisation should be a free federation of workers." [Bakunin on Anarchy, p. 247]

"a society of equals, who will not be compelled to sell their hands and their brains to those who choose to employ them . . . but who will be able to apply their knowledge and capacities to production, in an organism so constructed as to combine all the efforts for procuring the greatest possible well-being for all, while full, free scope will be left for every individual initiative." [Kropotkin, Kropotkin: Selections from his Writings, pp. 113-4]

"The first requirement of Communism," she argued, "is the socialisation of the land and of the machinery of production and distribution. Socialised land and machinery belong to the people, to be settled upon and used by individuals and groups according to their needs." Nationalisation, on the other hand, means that a resource "belongs to the state; that is, the government has control of it and may dispose of it according to its wishes and views." She stressed that "when a thing is socialised, every individual has free access to it and may use it without interference from anyone." When the state owned property, "[s]uch a state of affairs may be called state capitalism, but it would be fantastic to consider it in any sense communistic." [Red Emma Speaks, pp.360-1]

I could go on, but do I really need to? You really think Lenin, Trotsky etc did not advocate the working class seizing the means of production and managing that production themselves?

What do you think communism is, exactly, when it comes to economic and social relations to production? Who do you believe manages and controls the means of production, who operates it, etc? Some giant robot computer somewhere? :unsure:

Marx didn't think so:

"The labour of supervision and management is naturally required wherever the direct process of production assumes the form of a combined social process, and not of the isolated labour of independent producers. However, it has a double nature.
On the one hand, all labour in which many individuals co-operate necessarily requires a commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and functions which apply not to partial operations but to the total activity of the workshop, much as that of an orchestra conductor. This is a productive job, which must be performed in every combined mode of production."

(Capital, v. III)

"In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production."

(Anti-Duhring)

"This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail. But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of the producers working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production: upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment."

(ibid)

Marx speaking about the working class seizing the means of production and controlling it as a class, thanks for proving my point I guess?

Again, I can't but marvel at people who think that central coordination is dystopian - it seems to me that their notion of socialism is not something I would call socialistic.

They're not the ones who are against the central idea of communist revolution: worker's seizing and controlling the means of production. :P

MonsterMan

1st November 2014, 08:34

high tech computers would sort out the central planning probs, for sure

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

1st November 2014, 09:42

I did address the point: You have not shown this to be true, but rather, are citing problems unique to capitalism rather than issues unique to the distribution networks used here.

Those distribution networks are part of capitalism. The "problems unique to capitalism" concern these networks as well since they are, well, capitalist. What you seem to be proposing is that they can somehow be "cut out" of capitalism and transplanted to socialism, which is outright idealism. A mode of production is not a haphazard combination of factors that can be neatly separated from one another; it is a totality with laws that are specific to that mode of production.

Again, this is an odd argument because it's essentially arguing from the point of the Austrian economic calculation problem: If you think that without price signals distribution could not work, you're arguing against a moneyless system with no commodity production, not the decentralization of production.

Without price signals, a decentralised method of distribution where the actors do not have complete information about economic factors like demand etc., would not work. A planned method of distribution is another thing entirely.

That's kind of a silly claim. The market wouldn't exist? There are no markets, now? How are you defining market, exactly? All a market consists of is a network between buyers and sellers to facilitate change, buyers and sellers being swapped for producers and distributors in a socialist society. You're making the classic mistake of conflating "market" with generalized commodity production, something even so called "market socialists" do.

Ah, and this is why we don't see eye-to-eye; you think markets, that is the exchange of commodities, are possible under socialism. Well, no, not really. Socialism replaces "the anarchy of the market" (as Engels puts it) with the rational planning of production.

It's more like pointing out the inane nature of phraseology for political brownie points rather than "redefining" anything. "planned economy" is a meaningless term.

And yet, everyone knows what people mean by the term. So it's not meaningless at all.

It's easier for a central, international body to collect this information rather than the people who are right there? REALLY?

The people "who are right there" (the planning commission in Neustria is "right there"? strange notion of "right there") can collect the information just as effectively as delegates of an international body, but in order to collate it and use it, they would need some form of central, international coordination.

Which is why they would only produce enough to meet the demand of whoever is requesting products produced in Neustria. If people in Austrasia want a specific good produced in Neustria, then they produce it and send it there, and so on and so forth. To claim that some centralized body could do all of this more efficiently is absurd and would require a massive body of people to complete a task that the working class in a given area could just as easily complete by communicating with other production units in other parts of the world by monitoring demand for whatever it is they produce.

This is a market system, as you yourself seem to acknowledge. It would have all of the faults of a market system - irrationality, the anarchy of production etc. - and it could have none of the benefits, as without a universal equivalent - money - markets would collapse. So here is the choice in stark contrast: planning or markets.

So because neoliberal shock therapy collapsed the eastern bloc into chaos means that there were no shortages and problems due solely to central planning in the USSR and warsaw pact nations?

If you don't think there were shortages in these nations and huge problems with central planning I don't even know what to say. That's some real tankie stuff right there.

There were shortages, on account of bureaucratic incompetence and graft, and on account of the level of development of Eastern Bloc nations (which were Third World nations in all but name). Central planning was not the problem - when it was destroyed, the economies of the Eastern Bloc collapsed. And the shortages tend to be exaggerated in Cold War social-democrat propaganda that most people here buy hook, line and sinker anyway.

I could go on, but do I really need to? You really think Lenin, Trotsky etc did not advocate the working class seizing the means of production and managing that production themselves?

They advocated the proletariat seizing the means of production, but explicitly not self-management (e.g. Lenin's statement about "a Soviet dictator" etc.) Of the quotes you've posted, only Bakunin's argues for anything similar. Kropotkin explicitly mentions "an organism", not a collection of petty cooperatives, and Goldman is talking about something else entirely - the difference between socialisation and nationalisation (under a bourgeois state, although Emma of course didn't think there could be a non-bourgeois state after capitalism has been overthrown).

What do you think communism is, exactly, when it comes to economic and social relations to production? Who do you believe manages and controls the means of production, who operates it, etc? Some giant robot computer somewhere? :unsure:

Society does. Not individual petty groups of workers.

Marx speaking about the working class seizing the means of production and controlling it as a class, thanks for proving my point I guess?

Except the control of the means of production by a class as opposed to "self-managed" workplaces is precisely what you dispute. Also note Marx's insistence on a separate managerial function even in socialism, against any notion of "workers' self-management". Or the insistence on a general social (which can only mean central) plan.

QueerVanguard

1st November 2014, 11:05

That's kind of a silly claim. The market wouldn't exist? There are no markets, now?

Will this silly pseudo "Marxist" Proudhonist horseshit never end on revleft? I mean its spreading like the plague, for fucks sake.

RevolutionaryThinker

1st November 2014, 20:23

high tech computers would sort out the central planning probs, for sure

That actually could work.

JTC

1st November 2014, 20:29

Co-ops is one possibility but there are other ideas floating around as well. Look up Mondragon

Illegalitarian

1st November 2014, 21:15

I think maybe you should tell me what you think worker's self-management means in great detail before responding to any of this. I suspect we may be advocating the same thing and could be talking past one another.

Those distribution networks are part of capitalism. The "problems unique to capitalism" concern these networks as well since they are, well, capitalist. What you seem to be proposing is that they can somehow be "cut out" of capitalism and transplanted to socialism, which is outright idealism. A mode of production is not a haphazard combination of factors that can be neatly separated from one another; it is a totality with laws that are specific to that mode of production.

Those networks are not an inherent part of capitalism though, it has more to do with technology advancing to the point where things can easily be shipped from here to there when they need to be. Capitalism is generalized commodity production through wage labor, it has nothing to do, as a mode of production, with the networks used to distribute goods, which isn't the same thing as the distribution method, of course.

Your argument boils down to "it existed during capitalism so it can't exist during socialism", which is actually the idealist point, that we would do away with productive forces just because they're "capitalist", which you seem to be defining as anything associated with modern day production.

Without price signals, a decentralised method of distribution where the actors do not have complete information about economic factors like demand etc., would not work. A planned method of distribution is another thing entirely.

You assume they wouldn't have complete information, yet, a centralized system would? Makes no sense

Ah, and this is why we don't see eye-to-eye; you think markets, that is the exchange of commodities, are possible under socialism. Well, no, not really. Socialism replaces "the anarchy of the market" (as Engels puts it) with the rational planning of production.

I think that the distribution of goods to the locations where said goods are demanded is possible under socialism. I'm aware that the "free market" wouldn't exist, but any network where goods are produced and distributed to meet demand is, indeed, a market.

The people "who are right there" (the planning commission in Neustria is "right there"? strange notion of "right there") can collect the information just as effectively as delegates of an international body, but in order to collate it and use it, they would need some form of central, international coordination.

"right there" as in, where the resources are, those collecting the information on said resources.

"The people on the ground could collect and compile the information just as efficiently but in order to use it they would need central, international coordination"

coordination? Of course there would need to be international coordination, you're, however, suggesting that a singular, international body, one council of delegates, would handle all economic calculation for the entire world, however, and that is what I am arguing against as absurd.

This is a market system, as you yourself seem to acknowledge. It would have all of the faults of a market system - irrationality, the anarchy of production etc. - and it could have none of the benefits, as without a universal equivalent - money - markets would collapse. So here is the choice in stark contrast: planning or markets.

Again you seem to have the notion that the distribution networks of a capitalist system would retain the attributes of the capitalist mode of production. This is a claim you've yet to substantiate.

There were shortages, on account of bureaucratic incompetence and graft, and on account of the level of development of Eastern Bloc nations (which were Third World nations in all but name). Central planning was not the problem - when it was destroyed, the economies of the Eastern Bloc collapsed. And the shortages tend to be exaggerated in Cold War social-democrat propaganda that most people here buy hook, line and sinker anyway.

You don't think a single council of people controlling the WORLDS production and distribution wouldn't fall to bureaucratic incompetence? There were shortages for this reason exactly, central planners couldn't even properly calculate need in a single country, much, much less the entire earth.

The death of central planning had nothing to do with the collapse of the eastern bloc economies. Their government and entire economic system was jerked out from under them all at once, of course their nations collapsed.

If you destroyed capitalism in America or anywhere else without replacing it properly with something else, our standard of living would collapse too. It doesn't mean capitalism is somehow a solution, though.

They advocated the proletariat seizing the means of production, but explicitly not self-management (e.g. Lenin's statement about "a Soviet dictator" etc.) Of the quotes you've posted, only Bakunin's argues for anything similar. Kropotkin explicitly mentions "an organism", not a collection of petty cooperatives, and Goldman is talking about something else entirely - the difference between socialisation and nationalisation (under a bourgeois state, although Emma of course didn't think there could be a non-bourgeois state after capitalism has been overthrown).

A society of equals applying their knowledge to production in an organism so constructed as to combine all the efforts for procuring the greatest possible well-being for all, while full, free scope will be left for every individual initiative. He is clearly advocating self management. This was one quote of many, I take it you've never read Kropotkin? His entire concept of mutual aid was based around the idea of self-management of resources, if you think he advocated a "soviet dictator" as Lenin did you've clearly not read much of his work. Not a collection of "petty cooperatives", but working class people handling production and distribution themselves to meet each other's needs.

As for Goldman, "Socialised land and machinery belong to the people, to be settled upon and used by individuals and groups according to their needs".. soooooo

Society does. Not individual petty groups of workers.

Groups of workers control the means of production and produce and distribute goods based on societal needs. It's a societal effort, it's not as if each group of workers can choose to do whatever nonsense they want with something, its not as if they "own" it, but rather, it is theirs to use, to complete socially necessary labor.

Except the control of the means of production by a class as opposed to "self-managed" workplaces is precisely what you dispute. Also note Marx's insistence on a separate managerial function even in socialism, against any notion of "workers' self-management". Or the insistence on a general social (which can only mean central) plan.

I do not dispute this, I dispute the notion that the working class would only be able to produce whatever this 'centre' tells them they can produce, that workers could not own their own labor, but rather, some council that lords above the entire planet, as you seem to be defending. This is not the socialization of labor, this is not the end of alienation, this is individual controlled and privately owned means of production by another name.

I see no insentience on a "managerial function" as an aside from the workers themselves, nor do I accept the notion that a general social plan must be central, that the working class cannot coordinate production and distribution without some global authority lording over it.

This is not what Marx or any other theorist ever advocated. You are taking a fringe, minority interpretation of the works of these people based on I'm not sure what.

Will this silly pseudo "Marxist" Proudhonist horseshit never end on revleft? I mean its spreading like the plague, for fucks sake.

Hahaha, Marxist proudhonist what? What's with those on the left and shouting strings of old dead European's names at people?

Well you're a Stirnerist Hegelian Bernstein revisionist and you will BURN when the revolution comes! :rolleyes:

MonsterMan

2nd November 2014, 05:56

Co-ops is one possibility but there are other ideas floating around as well. Look up Mondragon

Mondragon is interesting, though unfortunately seems to have gone the way of all socialist ventures in the capitalist world - ie: has been overrun by capitalist power

the only way is the overthrow of the current system

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

2nd November 2014, 12:27

I think maybe you should tell me what you think worker's self-management means in great detail before responding to any of this. I suspect we may be advocating the same thing and could be talking past one another.

No, I don't think so. "Self-management" or "autogestion" or however they're calling it this week is the notion that socialism amounts to individual groups of workers managing "their own" workplaces and interacting with other groups of workers through market relations.

Those networks are not an inherent part of capitalism though, it has more to do with technology advancing to the point where things can easily be shipped from here to there when they need to be. Capitalism is generalized commodity production through wage labor, it has nothing to do, as a mode of production, with the networks used to distribute goods, which isn't the same thing as the distribution method, of course.

So, what do you think "distribution networks" are? Because for most of us that phrase means the method by which commodities are distributed under capitalism - which relies on monetary calculations. Now you seem to be talking about ships. Of course we will have ships in socialism! We will have more ships than you could imagine. But saying that this solves the problem of distribution - or rather of the flow of goods between various production units and distribution centres - is inane.

In fact the most charitable way in which I can interpret your proposal is this: groups of workers will manage "their own" (we'll get to that) workplaces, and if they need X kilograms of lye, they will call their mates to supply them with X kilograms of lye.

Which is (1) obviously a market scheme (resources being distributed ex post); (2) a grossly inefficient market scheme, as the universal equivalent is not present and no monetary calculations are possible (until they are reintroduced as the system inexorably slides back into standard capitalism); (3) a scheme that retains the "anarchy of the market".

In fact, think about what you're saying: you're saying there is no contradiction between the socialised nature of large-scale industrial production and the anarchic methods of the market. Why, then, can capitalism not develop the means of production further? Why be a socialist, if it can?

Your argument boils down to "it existed during capitalism so it can't exist during socialism", which is actually the idealist point, that we would do away with productive forces just because they're "capitalist", which you seem to be defining as anything associated with modern day production.

Since "modern day production" is capitalist production. But the argument - people usually make the equally daft "well computers were also developed under capitalism" - doesn't make sense as the physical machinery etc. is not part of the mode of production. Methods of calculation and distribution are, and to think that they can simply be removed as if a mode of production is a modular construction that you can slot methods and institutions into or out of - well, let me ask you this, why, then, can't the bourgeois state be reformed into a "socialist state"? Or its apparatus made to serve the working class?

You assume they wouldn't have complete information, yet, a centralized system would? Makes no sense

Complete information defines the central level - if you have several organs that have complete information (and correspondingly a global scope when it comes to their activity) you have several central organs, each getting in the hair of the other, which is what some of your proposals seem to boil down to.

I think that the distribution of goods to the locations where said goods are demanded is possible under socialism. I'm aware that the "free market" wouldn't exist, but any network where goods are produced and distributed to meet demand is, indeed, a market.

Well, no. Markets are exchanges of commodities. Once again you seem to be redefining commonly understood terms.

"right there" as in, where the resources are, those collecting the information on said resources.

"The people on the ground could collect and compile the information just as efficiently but in order to use it they would need central, international coordination"

coordination? Of course there would need to be international coordination, you're, however, suggesting that a singular, international body, one council of delegates, would handle all economic calculation for the entire world, however, and that is what I am arguing against as absurd.

I imagine the council of delegates would appoint a planning body to take care of the technical details, then accept or reject its proposals. That's neither here nor there, however. The sort of coordination that is necessary to fully use information about the global productive forces is impossible without calculation at the central level - the global process of production is not a collection of processes going on in near-autarchic regions that exchange products only occasionally, but a single, integrated global process. Trying to plan "for" one region in isolation from the others is like trying to calculate the flow of water through one narrow strip of a river while completely ignoring the rest of the river - it can't be done.

You don't think a single council of people controlling the WORLDS production and distribution wouldn't fall to bureaucratic incompetence?

Well, no, the bureaucracy would not exist in socialism. There would exist office workers, but these would not form a special stratum. Graft would also be pretty much impossible, as you can't steal things that are being given away freely.

It is, of course, quite possible that an incompetent person - which would carry no stigma in socialism, I mean not everyone is cut out for every kind of job, right? - is appointed. That is why there would be the right of recall for any official of the socialist society.

There were shortages for this reason exactly, central planners couldn't even properly calculate need in a single country, much, much less the entire earth.

Of course they couldn't calculate need exactly, as the country was still a participant in the global market, and they were hampered at every step by the bureaucracy (it wasn't unknown for planners to end up dead whenever the bureaucracy had a fit of paranoia). Given their circumstances, these people preformed more than admirably and showed the superiority of even a mutilated form of planning to the market.

The death of central planning had nothing to do with the collapse of the eastern bloc economies. Their government and entire economic system was jerked out from under them all at once, of course their nations collapsed.

If you destroyed capitalism in America or anywhere else without replacing it properly with something else, our standard of living would collapse too. It doesn't mean capitalism is somehow a solution, though.

Of course it was replaced with something else - it was replaced by capitalism. Obviously the market mechanisms of the capitalist society weren't as successful at maintaining a decent standard of living for Soviet workers.

A society of equals applying their knowledge to production in an organism so constructed as to combine all the efforts for procuring the greatest possible well-being for all, while full, free scope will be left for every individual initiative. He is clearly advocating self management. This was one quote of many, I take it you've never read Kropotkin? His entire concept of mutual aid was based around the idea of self-management of resources, if you think he advocated a "soviet dictator" as Lenin did you've clearly not read much of his work. Not a collection of "petty cooperatives", but working class people handling production and distribution themselves to meet each other's needs.

Everybody advocates "working class people handling production and distribution themselves" - but there is quite the difference between working class people doing so as a unit, and individual groups of working class people (who are in this scenario behaving like the petite bourgeoisie) doing so. I recall Kropotkin being much in favour of the former - but it is possible I am being too kind, I haven't read anything by him for quite some time.

I do not dispute this, I dispute the notion that the working class would only be able to produce whatever this 'centre' tells them they can produce, that workers could not own their own labor, but rather, some council that lords above the entire planet, as you seem to be defending. This is not the socialization of labor, this is not the end of alienation, this is individual controlled and privately owned means of production by another name.

No, the workers would not "own their own labour", as ownership would be a thing of the past. Of course, any member of the socialist society would be free to work or to not work, as they please. But what they have no right to do is hold back the rest of society by misusing the means of production. These are social. They aren't "theirs" as if they were their property.

I see no insentience on a "managerial function" as an aside from the workers themselves[...]

Then you should read the quote again - "all labour in which many individuals co-operate necessarily requires a commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and functions which apply not to partial operations but to the total activity of the workshop, much as that of an orchestra conductor."

This is not what Marx or any other theorist ever advocated. You are taking a fringe, minority interpretation of the works of these people based on I'm not sure what.

Perhaps this is a minority position on this site, but that's because RevLeft is seriously disconnected from the actual socialist movement. That was the position of the Bolsheviks (in fact Lenin had to argue against Larin, Bukharin, Sokolnikov etc. pushing for immediate total planning by reminding them the Soviet Union was trying to survive, not building socialism immediately), it is the position of every Leninist group I know of, and it is the position of the more "Leninist" LeftComs at least.

Well you're a Stirnerist

Sir, there are children reading this.

Illegalitarian

2nd November 2014, 23:22

No, I don't think so. "Self-management" or "autogestion" or however they're calling it this week is the notion that socialism amounts to individual groups of workers managing "their own" workplaces and interacting with other groups of workers through market relations.

Those "market relations" have to exist in any society or else goods cannot be distributed or produced.

You're also wrong. No one is suggesting that workers "own" each individual factory or what have you for themselves, but rather, they use the means of production, in order to produce certain goods that are needed. That is literally all anyone means by "worker's self management".

So, what do you think "distribution networks" are? Because for most of us that phrase means the method by which commodities are distributed under capitalism - which relies on monetary calculations. Now you seem to be talking about ships. Of course we will have ships in socialism! We will have more ships than you could imagine. But saying that this solves the problem of distribution - or rather of the flow of goods between various production units and distribution centres - is inane.

The means by which distributors and producers communicate the flow of goods between one another. It only relies on monetary calculations, again, because these networks exist under the capitalist mode of production. Take that away and you take away the need for monetary calculation, saying that distribution "needs" calculation is simply false, as I said earlier, a point which I'm hoping you address finally in this post (I'm reading your post as I respond to it).

In fact the most charitable way in which I can interpret your proposal is this: groups of workers will manage "their own" (we'll get to that) workplaces, and if they need X kilograms of lye, they will call their mates to supply them with X kilograms of lye.

No no no, not "their own". We're not talking about distributism, we're talking about communism. Technically no one "owns" the means of production, but rather, people use them in common, to meet the basic needs of society. Those who use the means of production, when they need more materials to produce something, would in fact have to call up their friends and get them to send them said resources... that's just common sense, inescapable in any system.

Which is (1) obviously a market scheme (resources being distributed ex post); (2) a grossly inefficient market scheme, as the universal equivalent is not present and no monetary calculations are possible (until they are reintroduced as the system inexorably slides back into standard capitalism); (3) a scheme that retains the "anarchy of the market".

So what, in your ideal society, the bread bakers just magically poop a new oven, or yeast, etc, rather than it being shipped from somewhere else? What are you talking about?

In fact, think about what you're saying: you're saying there is no contradiction between the socialised nature of large-scale industrial production and the anarchic methods of the market. Why, then, can capitalism not develop the means of production further? Why be a socialist, if it can?

I'm saying that those who use the means of production will coordinate production and distribution in a communist society because that is the only real workable system in such a society. That is all I am saying.

Since "modern day production" is capitalist production. But the argument - people usually make the equally daft "well computers were also developed under capitalism" - doesn't make sense as the physical machinery etc. is not part of the mode of production. Methods of calculation and distribution are, and to think that they can simply be removed as if a mode of production is a modular construction that you can slot methods and institutions into or out of - well, let me ask you this, why, then, can't the bourgeois state be reformed into a "socialist state"? Or its apparatus made to serve the working class?

Computers are not part of the mode of production, and neither are the distribution networks. Again, you're not making it clear why this is, you just keep on insisting that it is.

Let me put it this way: The Soviet Union was, in fact, a capitalist state, by every definition of the word. Yet, distribution was handled by a committee of central planners, rather than a decentralized network of producers and distributors as we see in most other nations.

According to you, the latter is an integral part of capitalism, so the USSR, by definition, was not capitalist, since it did not use this method of production and distribution. This does not make sense.

A mode of production isn't modular, you can't build it piece by piece, but no one is suggesting such. You only think I am because you believe the distribution network, that is, the physical way in which goods are shipped and produced under capitalism, is a part of the mode of production in and of itself, which it is not.

Complete information defines the central level - if you have several organs that have complete information (and correspondingly a global scope when it comes to their activity) you have several central organs, each getting in the hair of the other, which is what some of your proposals seem to boil down to.

Well, again, you insist that a plethora of distributors all having access to the information required for efficient resource allocation would lead to all of them "getting in each others hair" while this centre would somehow be able to rise above it all, even though it would necessarily have to get its information from the most basic level of resource extraction anyways. This is a claim that contradicts itself.

Well, no. Markets are exchanges of commodities. Once again you seem to be redefining commonly understood terms.

Maybe among certain socialist circles but the universally understood definition of markets is a medium that facilitates demand and supply, where buyers and sellers interact. Of course, in a socialist society, there would be no buyers and sellers, but the function of consumption and distribution stay the same.

I would call that a market. Call it what you will, but that's the most commonly understood meaning.

I imagine the council of delegates would appoint a planning body to take care of the technical details, then accept or reject its proposals. That's neither here nor there, however. The sort of coordination that is necessary to fully use information about the global productive forces is impossible without calculation at the central level - the global process of production is not a collection of processes going on in near-autarchic regions that exchange products only occasionally, but a single, integrated global process. Trying to plan "for" one region in isolation from the others is like trying to calculate the flow of water through one narrow strip of a river while completely ignoring the rest of the river - it can't be done.

Where would this council of delegates come from, by the way? If you answer is from "soviets" or workers councils, you've entirely defeated your whole argument.

You assume that there would have to be some central body constantly calculating the production and consumption, constantly keeping up with resource allocation, with quantity, etc.. for the entire world, and yet, those who would have to collect said information handling this themselves on the most basic level of production, in accordance to the needs of others near by or across the world (I am not speaking of some localist venture) would be impossible?

Again, you also seem to think that this information about global production forces would be privileged information only one body could utilize, which does not make sense. If I belong to a group of workers using a factory that is producing lemons in Cuba, why then can we not distribute our lemons around the world to those who need them? Why can we not manage this system of distribution on our own and access global information on demand ourselves?

There's no logical reason why your centre can do this but those operating the means of production cannot. Workers are good enough to produce, but not quite smart enough to handle distribution, is that it? If so, your society sounds more like technocracy than socialism.

Well, no, the bureaucracy would not exist in socialism. There would exist office workers, but these would not form a special stratum. Graft would also be pretty much impossible, as you can't steal things that are being given away freely.

It is, of course, quite possible that an incompetent person - which would carry no stigma in socialism, I mean not everyone is cut out for every kind of job, right? - is appointed. That is why there would be the right of recall for any official of the socialist society.

A group large enough to handle the coordination of resource allocation for every area on earth populated by a human being would be inherently bureaucratic, and there's absolutely zero way these individuals could be recalled.

We're not talking about a rag tag group of youngins doing whatever they want, we are talking about a large body of men and women that the entire world economy is dependent upon. If they fuck up, shortages happen, or worse, the entire economy somehow gets screwed up and causes a huge schism that could lead to devastation. The HUGE amount of work that would go into managing the entire world's economy would create a new class of professionals, since such a task couldn't be handled by just anyone, and would centralize power in the hands of a few, because as I said earlier, recalling these individuals would be near impossible.

Who would you replace them with on such short notice? The newly elected individual would have to be trained to take their position, which could take anywhere from days to weeks, and in the mean time, their job is not being done, which is undoubtedly disrupting the well being of every living soul on earth.

This is why no one on the left that I've ever met advocates such a system and dismisses it as dystopian technocracy: because that is inherently what it is.

Of course they couldn't calculate need exactly, as the country was still a participant in the global market, and they were hampered at every step by the bureaucracy (it wasn't unknown for planners to end up dead whenever the bureaucracy had a fit of paranoia). Given their circumstances, these people preformed more than admirably and showed the superiority of even a mutilated form of planning to the market.

They still could have calculated the proper allocation of resources within their own borders, if such a system was workable. If by superiority you mean complete stagnation after the initial period of industrialization, followed by collapse, sure.

Of course it was replaced with something else - it was replaced by capitalism. Obviously the market mechanisms of the capitalist society weren't as successful at maintaining a decent standard of living for Soviet workers.

The Soviet welfare state did this, not central planning. If everyone in America was guaranteed housing, healthcare and food our standard of living would be much higher too.

Everybody advocates "working class people handling production and distribution themselves" - but there is quite the difference between working class people doing so as a unit, and individual groups of working class people (who are in this scenario behaving like the petite bourgeoisie) doing so. I recall Kropotkin being much in favour of the former - but it is possible I am being too kind, I haven't read anything by him for quite some time.

You're right.

I'm not advocating groups of people "owning" the means of production though. I don't mean that, say, me and all my mates who work at the factory would "own" the factory and it would be "ours" and no one elses, but rather, we would operate it, and we would distribute goods wherever they needed to be distributed to, and produce enough to meet basic needs.

Perhaps this is a minority position on this site, but that's because RevLeft is seriously disconnected from the actual socialist movement. That was the position of the Bolsheviks (in fact Lenin had to argue against Larin, Bukharin, Sokolnikov etc. pushing for immediate total planning by reminding them the Soviet Union was trying to survive, not building socialism immediately), it is the position of every Leninist group I know of, and it is the position of the more "Leninist" LeftComs at least.

All I know is the congress of soviets, managed and operated by the workers, were doing fine until the Bolsheviks showed up.

"Soviets without bolsheviks" wasn't a popular slogan among the working class for no reason ;)

Sir, there are children reading this.

True, Stirner is anarchism.. after dark :grin:

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

3rd November 2014, 00:36

Those "market relations" have to exist in any society or else goods cannot be distributed or produced.

This is blatantly false - markets were a minor element (if that) in the economies of pre-Roman Egypt and Minoan Crete, yet not only was there no shortage of goods in these states, the productive forces in Egypt and Crete were fairly well-developed for the period.

You're also wrong. No one is suggesting that workers "own" each individual factory or what have you for themselves, but rather, they use the means of production, in order to produce certain goods that are needed. That is literally all anyone means by "worker's self management".

They use "their" means of production as they see fit, which means they effectively own them, free from any social control.

The means by which distributors and producers communicate the flow of goods between one another. It only relies on monetary calculations, again, because these networks exist under the capitalist mode of production. Take that away and you take away the need for monetary calculation, saying that distribution "needs" calculation is simply false, as I said earlier, a point which I'm hoping you address finally in this post (I'm reading your post as I respond to it).

Take monetary calculation away and the same thing happens to those distribution networks you're so enthusiastic about that happens to a human whose brain has been taken away. They become Catholics collapse and die.

What utterly perplexes me is what you think would remain of the present distribution networks once monetary calculations and things that depend on monetary calculations have been removed.

No no no, not "their own". We're not talking about distributism, we're talking about communism. Technically no one "owns" the means of production[...]

The problem can be summed up with this: saying that no one owns the means of production in socialism, you feel the need to qualify this with a sneaky little "technically". So you think groups of workers would effectively own "their own" means of production - an impression that is only reinforced by how utterly opposed you are to any sort of central, non-market coordination.

but rather, people use them in common, to meet the basic needs of society. Those who use the means of production, when they need more materials to produce something, would in fact have to call up their friends and get them to send them said resources... that's just common sense, inescapable in any system.

No, I don't think that's "common sense" at all, just like it's not common sense to organise a big barbecue and show up with no food, no fuel and no cutlery, forcing everyone to wait while you phone up your mate Geoff so he can bring everything.

So what, in your ideal society, the bread bakers just magically poop a new oven, or yeast, etc, rather than it being shipped from somewhere else? What are you talking about?

It would be shipped from somewhere else - but it would be shipped according to a general social plan, with the distribution of yeast decided ex ante. As well as the targets for bread etc.

I'm saying that those who use the means of production will coordinate production and distribution in a communist society because that is the only real workable system in such a society. That is all I am saying.

You didn't answer the question. If there is no contradiction between the objective socialisation of modern industrial production and the anarchy of the market, then capitalism can develop the means of production further and socialism is a pious wish for a distant future.

Let me put it this way: The Soviet Union was, in fact, a capitalist state, by every definition of the word. Yet, distribution was handled by a committee of central planners, rather than a decentralized network of producers and distributors as we see in most other nations.

According to you, the latter is an integral part of capitalism, so the USSR, by definition, was not capitalist, since it did not use this method of production and distribution. This does not make sense.

"I believe A is false.
But X says A is true.
But I believe A is false.
So what X says does not make sense."

Well, again, you insist that a plethora of distributors all having access to the information required for efficient resource allocation would lead to all of them "getting in each others hair" while this centre would somehow be able to rise above it all, even though it would necessarily have to get its information from the most basic level of resource extraction anyways. This is a claim that contradicts itself.

Of course they would get in each others' hair. Without central coordination, how would distributor A and distributor B know how to divide demand between them? Inevitably they would send the same goods to the same people. Unless you want to make the entire system even more ramshackle by having people literally order things. With limited information about the state of the global economy (because no one is going to be looking at the technical factors for rubber production if they just want a gallon of oil for their restaurant, and in fact the de facto market would ensure the information is changing constantly).

I mean, really? This is simply the old fairy tale of the Invisible Hand that will make everything magically fine because hand-waving.

In contrast, a planning centre knows the entirety of the relevant information and sets a single plan for the entire economy, making any conflict impossible.

Maybe among certain socialist circles but the universally understood definition of markets is a medium that facilitates demand and supply, where buyers and sellers interact. Of course, in a socialist society, there would be no buyers and sellers, but the function of consumption and distribution stay the same.

No, I think most people would recognise that there were few or no markets in ancient Mediterranean palace economies or in the manors and other property of various feudal lords. It is only American right-"libertarians" who pretend markets are some timeless economic form that simply can't be abolished.

Where would this council of delegates come from, by the way? If you answer is from "soviets" or workers councils, you've entirely defeated your whole argument.

It would be elected somehow. How, I have no idea. Probably each delegate would be elected at-large, but it doesn't matter.

You assume that there would have to be some central body constantly calculating the production and consumption, constantly keeping up with resource allocation, with quantity, etc.. for the entire world, and yet, those who would have to collect said information handling this themselves on the most basic level of production, in accordance to the needs of others near by or across the world (I am not speaking of some localist venture) would be impossible?

Well, yes. It's the same reason why me and my mates can plan a barbeque together but if we stop talking to each other and just arrive at the site carrying what each of us thought the others might need, we're going to have too much salad, not enough mayonnaise, and no fuel unless we burn down the surrounding woodland. Which would all be irrelevant as no one would have remembered to bring minced meat fingers and we would all have to go home in shame.

Again, you also seem to think that this information about global production forces would be privileged information only one body could utilize, which does not make sense. If I belong to a group of workers using a factory that is producing lemons in Cuba, why then can we not distribute our lemons around the world to those who need them? Why can we not manage this system of distribution on our own and access global information on demand ourselves?

There's no logical reason why your centre can do this but those operating the means of production cannot. Workers are good enough to produce, but not quite smart enough to handle distribution, is that it? If so, your society sounds more like technocracy than socialism.

"Technocracy" is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot and can mean anything from a planned economy of any sort to Howard Scott's better fascism through engineering. A lot of the self-proclaimed technocrats are big fans of decentralisation - we had an entire Internet "movement" of those people here. They thought they could buy out capitalism. What a great bunch of comrades they were.

A group large enough to handle the coordination of resource allocation for every area on earth populated by a human being would be inherently bureaucratic, and there's absolutely zero way these individuals could be recalled.

We're not talking about a rag tag group of youngins doing whatever they want, we are talking about a large body of men and women that the entire world economy is dependent upon. If they fuck up, shortages happen, or worse, the entire economy somehow gets screwed up and causes a huge schism that could lead to devastation.

More likely they screw up the targets for gum arabica so the production of chewing gum happens partly out of buffer stock, which we of course keep as we're not idiots who think every prediction is going to turn out to be one hundred percent correct.

The HUGE amount of work that would go into managing the entire world's economy would create a new class of professionals, since such a task couldn't be handled by just anyone, and would centralize power in the hands of a few, because as I said earlier, recalling these individuals would be near impossible.

Who would you replace them with on such short notice? The newly elected individual would have to be trained to take their position, which could take anywhere from days to weeks, and in the mean time, their job is not being done, which is undoubtedly disrupting the well being of every living soul on earth.

None of this makes sense.

"The HUGE amount of work" would entail having someone check the figures coming in from the production units, some basic arithmetics, and probably running certain computer simulations. With enough patience, we could probably train a chimp to do it.

That is why socialism is possible: the tasks necessary for the administration of the production process are so basic that anyone can do them.

They still could have calculated the proper allocation of resources within their own borders, if such a system was workable. If by superiority you mean complete stagnation after the initial period of industrialization, followed by collapse, sure.

Stagnation was considered a sign of a mature economy at the time, and the collapse was political, not economic. If you compare the Soviet Union to capitalist countries with a similar level of development, the superiority of planning is obvious.

The Soviet welfare state did this, not central planning.

It doesn't really make sense to talk about "welfare" in the Soviet Union, but in any case the consumer goods did not coalesce out of the ether. They were produced according to plan.

All I know is the congress of soviets, managed and operated by the workers, were doing fine until the Bolsheviks showed up.

With all due respect, perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the historical facts. The soviets supported the chauvinist and imperialist Provisional Government for quite some time, and were led by such noted "workers" as the social-traitors Chernov and Tsereteli. They played no part in the economy. Neither did the factory committees, much, until the October Revolution.

"Soviets without bolsheviks" wasn't a popular slogan among the working class for no reason ;)

It wasn't a popular slogan among the working class at all, although it found resonance in such proletarian bastions as the White Movement and various outbreaks of peasant banditry.

Illegalitarian

3rd November 2014, 01:48

This is blatantly false - markets were a minor element (if that) in the economies of pre-Roman Egypt and Minoan Crete, yet not only was there no shortage of goods in these states, the productive forces in Egypt and Crete were fairly well-developed for the period.

You think this due to your definition of "market". I am merely talking about a medium where goods are produced and distributed. Call it Crazy Awesome Fun Time Goody-Goody-Sunshine if you want, but this is what I'm referring to when I say "markets".

They use "their" means of production as they see fit, which means they effectively own them, free from any social control.

That's pretty paternalistic liberal thinking. You believe that if left to their "own devices" those who operate the means of production would what, burn it down? They have to be "controlled", now? Of course, if those using the means of production were not using them to meet the needs of those who need their needs met, someone would eventually step up and put them in their place, but this is very unlikely and there is no need for a central body to "control" them.

Take monetary calculation away and the same thing happens to those distribution networks you're so enthusiastic about that happens to a human whose brain has been taken away. They become Catholics collapse and die.

What utterly perplexes me is what you think would remain of the present distribution networks once monetary calculations and things that depend on monetary calculations have been removed.

Says who? Did all of the fields lose their fertility when feudalism was done away with? Did peasants stop producing agricultural goods? The current mode of production develops productive forces, which does include technology, which has everything to do with the way goods are distributed, that is, how they are shipped. This doesn't go away just because price does, again, im not sure where you're getting this.

The problem can be summed up with this: saying that no one owns the means of production in socialism, you feel the need to qualify this with a sneaky little "technically". So you think groups of workers would effectively own "their own" means of production - an impression that is only reinforced by how utterly opposed you are to any sort of central, non-market coordination.

Well the common phrase is "working class "control" or "ownership" of the means of production". This is something socialists very commonly say, so the need for the word "technically" is not sneaky at all.

I think groups of workers would use the means of production to meed basic need. Don't tell me what I do and don't think, you petite bourgeois stalinist maoist lin baoist with Yugoslavian characteristics!

No, I don't think that's "common sense" at all, just like it's not common sense to organise a big barbecue and show up with no food, no fuel and no cutlery, forcing everyone to wait while you phone up your mate Geoff so he can bring everything.

hahaha, damn you

It is common sense, though. I mean you do not literally wait until the last minute and then literally call some guy to bring you all of the shit you need, but rather, you have distribution networks set up where you are receiving regular shipments of the resources required to produce things, just as we see today.

It would be shipped from somewhere else - but it would be shipped according to a general social plan, with the distribution of yeast decided ex ante. As well as the targets for bread etc.

Well, I don't disagree with that. I just disagree that this "general social plan" can't be worked out among those actually using the means of production rather than some huge centre.

You didn't answer the question. If there is no contradiction between the objective socialisation of modern industrial production and the anarchy of the market, then capitalism can develop the means of production further and socialism is a pious wish for a distant future.

I'm sure capitalism will develop the means of production further. After all, it has brought us quite a long way, depending on when the ol' girl gives out, the means of production might look completely different, as they did 100 years ago and 100 years before that.

This is non-sequitor though, just because we will likely advance technologically before socialism comes to be doesn't mean socialism will never come.

"I believe A is false.
But X says A is true.
But I believe A is false.
So what X says does not make sense."

That is in no way a response to what I said, don't dodge my point, you Kautskyist Proudhonian sea lion!

Of course they would get in each others' hair. Without central coordination, how would distributor A and distributor B know how to divide demand between them? Inevitably they would send the same goods to the same people. Unless you want to make the entire system even more ramshackle by having people literally order things. With limited information about the state of the global economy (because no one is going to be looking at the technical factors for rubber production if they just want a gallon of oil for their restaurant, and in fact the de facto market would ensure the information is changing constantly).

Oh no, not ordering things!

Again, none of this logically follows. You make this out as if it's some super complicated process that couldn't be accounted for by the very people engaging in production, yet when its handled by a central planning group, all of a sudden it's cake and pie. No one would have to look at the entire picture just to order a simple thing, they would simply check and see who is producing oil and then, you know, get the oil shipped there, on a regular basis perhaps.

I mean, really? This is simply the old fairy tale of the Invisible Hand that will make everything magically fine because hand-waving.

In contrast, a planning centre knows the entirety of the relevant information and sets a single plan for the entire economy, making any conflict impossible.

No invisible hand, just those who operate production and distribution creating shipping networks between one another to keep things running the way they need to. It's still planned, it's just not centrally planned.

Again it's kind of funny that you compare this to capitalists who think that capitalism is self-correcting and self-regulating then go on to state that a single body of individuals will run the entire economy of the whole world with no conflict, because... power.

No, I think most people would recognise that there were few or no markets in ancient Mediterranean palace economies or in the manors and other property of various feudal lords. It is only American right-"libertarians" who pretend markets are some timeless economic form that simply can't be abolished.

re: first response.

Well, yes. It's the same reason why me and my mates can plan a barbeque together but if we stop talking to each other and just arrive at the site carrying what each of us thought the others might need, we're going to have too much salad, not enough mayonnaise, and no fuel unless we burn down the surrounding woodland. Which would all be irrelevant as no one would have remembered to bring minced meat fingers and we would all have to go home in shame.

I am advocating that you and your mates plan the bbq together and decide who will bring what

you're advocating that a few people will determine who brings what to every bbq ever around the entire world.

"Technocracy" is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot and can mean anything from a planned economy of any sort to Howard Scott's better fascism through engineering. A lot of the self-proclaimed technocrats are big fans of decentralisation - we had an entire Internet "movement" of those people here. They thought they could buy out capitalism. What a great bunch of comrades they were.

What it means, however, is a group of highly skilled professionals who, due to their skill, are the only people who can operate major aspects of a society, and thus become a highly specialized ruling class.. which would inevitably arise out of such a situation.

More likely they screw up the targets for gum arabica so the production of chewing gum happens partly out of buffer stock, which we of course keep as we're not idiots who think every prediction is going to turn out to be one hundred percent correct.

Yeah but you're saying that because you're defending central planning. It could be a little fuck up, sure, but since a relatively small group of people are planning the entire world economy it's more likely that the fuck ups will be greater and in higher frequency and on a much larger scale than gum.

None of this makes sense.

"The HUGE amount of work" would entail having someone check the figures coming in from the production units, some basic arithmetics, and probably running certain computer simulations. With enough patience, we could probably train a chimp to do it.

That is why socialism is possible: the tasks necessary for the administration of the production process are so basic that anyone can do them.

Anyone can do them and yet you literally want a council of apes to do it. This is where the argument for centralization falls to pieces: if it's so simply and easy to handle, a planned economy, why can't the production units themselves take care of it? If it's all ran by computers anyways, those behind production could easily calculate what needs to go where.

Stagnation was considered a sign of a mature economy at the time, and the collapse was political, not economic. If you compare the Soviet Union to capitalist countries with a similar level of development, the superiority of planning is obvious.

Well seeing as how the USSR is dead and in the ground that sure was a shitty consideration, especially seeing as how no other maturing economy was seeing that level of stagnation.

Trying to separate the political from the economic is a fools errand. It was political largely due to the pressure coming from its rapidly deteriorating economic base, which was deteriorating largely in part due to the inefficiency of the planning committees, which war causing not only shortages, but a complete disregard of light industry and even heavy industry in the last decade or so.

It doesn't really make sense to talk about "welfare" in the Soviet Union, but in any case the consumer goods did not coalesce out of the ether. They were produced according to plan.

Which explains why they were in such scant supply and in such shoddy condition.

It makes perfect sense to talk about such, soviet social spending was out of this world, and did a lot of good for people. It kept them in work, it kept roofs over their head and food in their mouths.

With all due respect, perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the historical facts. The soviets supported the chauvinist and imperialist Provisional Government for quite some time, and were led by such noted "workers" as the social-traitors Chernov and Tsereteli. They played no part in the economy. Neither did the factory committees, much, until the October Revolution.

I'm not about to be lectured by a trot about historical facts wrt the russian revolution haha.

Some of the soviets did, but for the most part the soviets acted completely independent from Kerensky's government, and consisted of many agrarian units and a very large chunk of what little industrial production was going on at the time... months before Lenin came around.

It wasn't a popular slogan among the working class at all, although it found resonance in such proletarian bastions as the White Movement and various outbreaks of peasant banditry.

Such bastions of tsarist loyalism and petite bourgeois hoolaginism as the petrograd working class before the proto-cheka cracked down on them, and the plethora of anarchists and other communists who were put down by Trotsky and his dogs for not falling under the banner of the boles.

Creative Destruction

3rd November 2014, 02:07

Illegalitarian

3rd November 2014, 02:58

This is a rather broad definition of "markets," to the point where it becomes a meaningless word... as you all but admit here.

There's no real universal consensus on what the word means among economists or theorists, out of fairness I'm giving my definition and allowing anyone to call it whatever they will. The word itself is rather meaningless, it's the definition i care about.

Creative Destruction

3rd November 2014, 03:09

There's no real consensus on what the word means, out of fairness I'm giving my definition and allowing anyone to call it whatever they will. The word itself is rather meaningless, it's the definition i care about.

The word itself isn't meaningless at all. Simply: a market is a venue where commodities are assigned price and are exchanged. Since there are no commodities or commodity production in socialism, there is no market. You can call it whatever the hell you want, just as anything, but you'll have very little chance of being understood because that word does have a specific meaning and it doesn't fit the way you're using it, or want to use it.

Illegalitarian

3rd November 2014, 03:20

The word itself isn't meaningless at all. Simply: a market is a venue where commodities are assigned price and are exchanged. Since there are no commodities or commodity production in socialism, there is no market. You can call it whatever the hell you want, just as anything, but you'll have very little chance of being understood because that word does have a specific meaning and it doesn't fit the way you're using it, or want to use it.

Commodity production or not there must still be a network in which resources, goods etc are distributed and consumed. If you don't want to call that a market be my guest but I don't know many people that wouldn't be fine with calling such a thing just that.

Creative Destruction

3rd November 2014, 03:28

Commodity production or not there must still be a network in which resources, goods etc are distributed and consumed. If you don't want to call that a market be my guest but I don't know many people that wouldn't be fine with calling such a thing just that.

Some (many, actually) people think "socialism" are the Scandinavian countries. Many people think that Obama is a Marxist. That doesn't mean they're using the right definition of the words.

Illegalitarian

3rd November 2014, 03:56

I could say the same to you, but it would be frivolous intellectual circle jerkery and I've already said that 870 or anyone else may use another word for this, if they so choose.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

3rd November 2014, 11:57

You think this due to your definition of "market". I am merely talking about a medium where goods are produced and distributed. Call it Crazy Awesome Fun Time Goody-Goody-Sunshine if you want, but this is what I'm referring to when I say "markets".

So in other words, you claim that markets exist whenever goods are produced and distributed, which means you are using the term in a way that no one else, except for some of the Randroids, does. I mean, doesn't that fact at least hint to you that you might be doing something wrong?

It's essentially what Libertie76 was doing.

That's pretty paternalistic liberal thinking. You believe that if left to their "own devices" those who operate the means of production would what, burn it down? They have to be "controlled", now? Of course, if those using the means of production were not using them to meet the needs of those who need their needs met, someone would eventually step up and put them in their place, but this is very unlikely and there is no need for a central body to "control" them.

I don't think people have the right to come into my house and drink all my alcohol.

This does not mean I think this is a real possibility, that I can't sleep at night for fear of people breaking in and downing all my booze. I think people in the socialist society will have learned to effectively cooperate. Part of that process, however, is dispensing with localism and decentralism.

Says who? Did all of the fields lose their fertility when feudalism was done away with? Did peasants stop producing agricultural goods? The current mode of production develops productive forces, which does include technology, which has everything to do with the way goods are distributed, that is, how they are shipped. This doesn't go away just because price does, again, im not sure where you're getting this.

You haven't answered the question. What do you think remains of the distribution networks after monetary calculation has disappeared? Because right now the answer seems to be "ships". Which has nothing to do with what we're discussing - we have the technology to move goods around globally, the point is how we organise this movement.

Well the common phrase is "working class "control" or "ownership" of the means of production". This is something socialists very commonly say, so the need for the word "technically" is not sneaky at all.

Socialists say that when talking about the transitional period, where ownership still exists, as does the working class. In socialism there is no ownership and no working class.

I think groups of workers would use the means of production to meed basic need. Don't tell me what I do and don't think, you petite bourgeois stalinist maoist lin baoist with Yugoslavian characteristics!

"Basic needs", now? Why "basic" needs? The productive forces of the socialist society would be used to fulfill demand, whether the demand is for bread or 12-inch golden butt plugs.

hahaha, damn you

It is common sense, though. I mean you do not literally wait until the last minute and then literally call some guy to bring you all of the shit you need, but rather, you have distribution networks set up where you are receiving regular shipments of the resources required to produce things, just as we see today.

That's nice, but the question remains: how do you know how many resources you will need, where to order them from and so on? In capitalism this is calculated - just barely - on the basis of price signals. Now what you seem to be saying is that each individual workplace would work out how many units of producer goods they need, then work out where to order them and so on.

But their output - and thus their demand for producer goods - depends crucially on what other people are doing. And because of the haphazard, market nature of your proposal, this information changes constantly. By the time the Vorkuta Gold Mine n. 71 will have ascertained that the Gold Butt Plug Factory n. 84 needs X units of gold, and correspondingly ordered Y units of electricity, the demand will have changed. With each workplace acting alone, the plan could never be finalised, let alone carried out.

I'm sure capitalism will develop the means of production further. After all, it has brought us quite a long way, depending on when the ol' girl gives out, the means of production might look completely different, as they did 100 years ago and 100 years before that.

This is non-sequitor though, just because we will likely advance technologically before socialism comes to be doesn't mean socialism will never come.

Yeah, so it seems that you actually do think socialism is something that will happen in the far future and that in the meantime capitalism will run smoothly and develop the productive forces. Doesn't make a lot of sense to call yourself a socialist, then, does it?

That is in no way a response to what I said, don't dodge my point, you Kautskyist Proudhonian sea lion!

There is nothing to address. You take it for granted that the Soviet Union was capitalist; I deny that. The rest of your argument relies on that assumption, making it meaningless to me.

Oh no, not ordering things!

Again, none of this logically follows. You make this out as if it's some super complicated process that couldn't be accounted for by the very people engaging in production, yet when its handled by a central planning group, all of a sudden it's cake and pie. No one would have to look at the entire picture just to order a simple thing, they would simply check and see who is producing oil and then, you know, get the oil shipped there, on a regular basis perhaps.

Of course a simple process becomes complicated when it's done by several groups who communicate only sporadically and are each free to do as they please. Scale that up to thousands of groups with no constraints (in capitalism the necessity of keeping the average rate of profit high acts as a powerful constraint, ejecting enterprises out of the market when they screw up - here nothing of the sort would happen), and you get a recipe for disaster.

And of course it's not as simple as ordering oil and then everything is magically super. That oil comes from somewhere - the production unit needs raw materials and producer goods as well. When you order, are you using the resources that society has at its disposal effectively, or are you causing delays and so on.

I am advocating that you and your mates plan the bbq together and decide who will bring what

you're advocating that a few people will determine who brings what to every bbq ever around the entire world.

The chief point is that there are no barbeques. There is one global barbeque that is too much of a hassle for everyone to plan, so we delegate that responsibility to a group of people (as you generally do when planning a large gathering of any sort).

What it means, however, is a group of highly skilled professionals who, due to their skill, are the only people who can operate major aspects of a society, and thus become a highly specialized ruling class.. which would inevitably arise out of such a situation.

Again, you're missing the point. It is precisely the fact that the administrative tasks involved in planning a socialist society can be done by anyone that makes socialism possible. If one of the planners is removed, we could grab Joe MacExample from the streets, and if he knows basic arithmetics, the sort of things you learn in high school today, he would be able to do the job of the removed planner.

Yeah but you're saying that because you're defending central planning. It could be a little fuck up, sure, but since a relatively small group of people are planning the entire world economy it's more likely that the fuck ups will be greater and in higher frequency and on a much larger scale than gum.

That is why safeguards would be in place, from buffer stock to independent verification of the plans.

Anyone can do them and yet you literally want a council of apes to do it. This is where the argument for centralization falls to pieces: if it's so simply and easy to handle, a planned economy, why can't the production units themselves take care of it? If it's all ran by computers anyways, those behind production could easily calculate what needs to go where.

It wouldn't be "run by computers", that's a technocratic fantasy. A computer is a glorified calculator: it enables you to carry out several soul-crushingly tedious calculations quickly, but it won't solve your problem for you. And, again, yes, something that is simple when done by a single body becomes intractable when it is done by several groups communicating by Chinese whispers if that.

Well seeing as how the USSR is dead and in the ground that sure was a shitty consideration, especially seeing as how no other maturing economy was seeing that level of stagnation.

Trying to separate the political from the economic is a fools errand. It was political largely due to the pressure coming from its rapidly deteriorating economic base, which was deteriorating largely in part due to the inefficiency of the planning committees, which war causing not only shortages, but a complete disregard of light industry and even heavy industry in the last decade or so.

In fact, the state of the Soviet Economy in the last decade or so was much better than it was in the sixties for example - during the final years, a lot of plans failed on paper because the figures were unrealistically high, but the Soviet economy was a mature one, that suffered from missing a rare opportunity to introduce more thorough integration with the COMECON and cybernetic controls in the seventies, but that at least broke with the mad "fulfill the five-year plan in four years" thinking of the thirties, forties and fifties.

Which explains why they were in such scant supply and in such shoddy condition.

Here is an honest question: have you ever held a Soviet consumer product in your hand? I have, from some really lovely violins to binoculars with some of the best optics I have seen. In fact, here at Uni we still use Soviet and East German optics - they really were the best in their time (and it's not as if we can afford better).

The point being: don't believe every Cold War social-democrat fantasy about how people in the Soviet Union ate their own shoes after waiting in line for bread 25 hours a day.

I'm not about to be lectured by a trot about historical facts wrt the russian revolution haha.

Some of the soviets did, but for the most part the soviets acted completely independent from Kerensky's government, and consisted of many agrarian units and a very large chunk of what little industrial production was going on at the time... months before Lenin came around.

Apparently you do need to be lectured, as you don't seem to be aware of the fact that the first Congress of Soviets and the first VTsIK, led by the traitors Tsereteli, Chernov and so on, endorsed the entry of "socialist" ministers into the Provisional Government, that the soviets were geographic councils that had nothing to do with managing production and so on.

Such bastions of tsarist loyalism and petite bourgeois hoolaginism as the petrograd working class before the proto-cheka cracked down on them, and the plethora of anarchists and other communists who were put down by Trotsky and his dogs for not falling under the banner of the boles.

"Proto-CheKa"? You mean the commission of Bonch-Bruevich, founded to fight against drunkenness and disorderly conduct by soldiers in Petrograd? Here is our proletariat, apparently: drunk soldiers.

Sharia Lawn

3rd November 2014, 12:12

How do so many "socialists" who support markets under "socialism" end up on this forum?

Illegalitarian

4th November 2014, 00:32

So in other words, you claim that markets exist whenever goods are produced and distributed, which means you are using the term in a way that no one else, except for some of the Randroids, does. I mean, doesn't that fact at least hint to you that you might be doing something wrong?

It's essentially what Libertie76 was doing.

How pretty much everyone who isn't a marxist uses the word. The word isn't important to me, however, it's the definition, so call it what you like.

I don't think people have the right to come into my house and drink all my alcohol.

This does not mean I think this is a real possibility, that I can't sleep at night for fear of people breaking in and downing all my booze. I think people in the socialist society will have learned to effectively cooperate. Part of that process, however, is dispensing with localism and decentralism.

Yet you think they need a global council to keep basic economic activity afloat.

You haven't answered the question. What do you think remains of the distribution networks after monetary calculation has disappeared? Because right now the answer seems to be "ships". Which has nothing to do with what we're discussing - we have the technology to move goods around globally, the point is how we organise this movement.

The actual process of distributing those goods to where they need to go, the technology and logistics of shipping, that is what remains. I've stated this several times, sorry.

Socialists say that when talking about the transitional period, where ownership still exists, as does the working class. In socialism there is no ownership and no working class.

Very good.. no one said otherwise.

"Basic needs", now? Why "basic" needs? The productive forces of the socialist society would be used to fulfill demand, whether the demand is for bread or 12-inch golden butt plugs.

Basic needs and socially necessary labor would come first but obviously whatever people wanted produced would be produced.

That's nice, but the question remains: how do you know how many resources you will need, where to order them from and so on? In capitalism this is calculated - just barely - on the basis of price signals. Now what you seem to be saying is that each individual workplace would work out how many units of producer goods they need, then work out where to order them and so on.

Producers generally know how much of a resource they need to complete production, it's not hard, yes.

But their output - and thus their demand for producer goods - depends crucially on what other people are doing. And because of the haphazard, market nature of your proposal, this information changes constantly. By the time the Vorkuta Gold Mine n. 71 will have ascertained that the Gold Butt Plug Factory n. 84 needs X units of gold, and correspondingly ordered Y units of electricity, the demand will have changed. With each workplace acting alone, the plan could never be finalised, let alone carried out.

The gold mine already has a steady stream of gold going out to the butt plug factory as per the factory's need for gold, networks of distribution such as this will naturally form based on need. Demand doesn't need to be tracked in real time just as it doesn't now.

I guess nothing has to be distributed and no one has to contact each other in a centralized system. No such thing as distribution networks because everyone just magically makes whatever they need on the spot.

Yeah, so it seems that you actually do think socialism is something that will happen in the far future and that in the meantime capitalism will run smoothly and develop the productive forces. Doesn't make a lot of sense to call yourself a socialist, then, does it?

You're not a socialist unless you think socialism is going to happen tomorrow and technology will not develop further until then? LOL, what?

There is nothing to address. You take it for granted that the Soviet Union was capitalist; I deny that. The rest of your argument relies on that assumption, making it meaningless to me.

If you deny that the USSR was capitalist we have way more to talk about than post-capitalist socialist distribution models. I'm not arguing with weird trot notions of degenerated worker's states, though, so moving on:

Of course a simple process becomes complicated when it's done by several groups who communicate only sporadically and are each free to do as they please. Scale that up to thousands of groups with no constraints (in capitalism the necessity of keeping the average rate of profit high acts as a powerful constraint, ejecting enterprises out of the market when they screw up - here nothing of the sort would happen), and you get a recipe for disaster.

They communicate as needed and feed information into some sort of database about any sort of materials needed, appeals to complexity doesn't actually mean that it's as complicated as you want it to be.

The chief point is that there are no barbeques. There is one global barbeque that is too much of a hassle for everyone to plan, so we delegate that responsibility to a group of people (as you generally do when planning a large gathering of any sort).

Citation needed

Again, you're missing the point. It is precisely the fact that the administrative tasks involved in planning a socialist society can be done by anyone that makes socialism possible. If one of the planners is removed, we could grab Joe MacExample from the streets, and if he knows basic arithmetics, the sort of things you learn in high school today, he would be able to do the job of the removed planner.

Right, which also means your notion of planning being "too difficult to plan" for multiple production units is basically nothing.

It wouldn't be "run by computers", that's a technocratic fantasy. A computer is a glorified calculator: it enables you to carry out several soul-crushingly tedious calculations quickly, but it won't solve your problem for you. And, again, yes, something that is simple when done by a single body becomes intractable when it is done by several groups communicating by Chinese whispers if that.

Engaging in phraseology doesn't help your case I'm afraid, nor does it prove your continuous assertion that it would be just too difficult for multiple groups to organize and coordinate production and distribution.

This is the same logic authoritarians use, appeals to the simplicity of a larger body taking care of the problems that society as a whole can't, for literally no reason at all aside from "well they would trip over themselves" which is just tautology.

In fact, the state of the Soviet Economy in the last decade or so was much better than it was in the sixties for example - during the final years, a lot of plans failed on paper because the figures were unrealistically high, but the Soviet economy was a mature one, that suffered from missing a rare opportunity to introduce more thorough integration with the COMECON and cybernetic controls in the seventies, but that at least broke with the mad "fulfill the five-year plan in four years" thinking of the thirties, forties and fifties.

Much better at what? It certainly wasn't as productive, and it certainly wasn't as stable.

Here is an honest question: have you ever held a Soviet consumer product in your hand? I have, from some really lovely violins to binoculars with some of the best optics I have seen. In fact, here at Uni we still use Soviet and East German optics - they really were the best in their time (and it's not as if we can afford better).

I have, and they were, again, shoddy, awful electronics that did not hold a candle to their contemporaries.

The point being: don't believe every Cold War social-democrat fantasy about how people in the Soviet Union ate their own shoes after waiting in line for bread 25 hours a day.

Obviously the right blows this out of proportion, but to deny it entirely is to go against basic facts. Have you ever talked to someone who lived in the USSR? I'm guessing not, if you believe it was fine and dandy that that all of its problems were strictly political. Sorry, but that's just outright false.

Apparently you do need to be lectured, as you don't seem to be aware of the fact that the first Congress of Soviets and the first VTsIK, led by the traitors Tsereteli, Chernov and so on, endorsed the entry of "socialist" ministers into the Provisional Government, that the soviets were geographic councils that had nothing to do with managing production and so on.

Again this is just an outright denial of basic facts. Are you saying the soviets had no say in economic production, that there were no village and factory soviets that made up the base of the soviet congress? I uh.. don't really know what to say to that haha.

"Proto-CheKa"? You mean the commission of Bonch-Bruevich, founded to fight against drunkenness and disorderly conduct by soldiers in Petrograd? Here is our proletariat, apparently: drunk soldiers.

Sounds like a typical spart line I'd say: glorious bolsheviks v. drunk soldiers, no legitimate political struggle at all.

Illegalitarian

4th November 2014, 00:33

How do so many "socialists" who support markets under "socialism" end up on this forum?

You should probably read what I said before you attempt to label me a mutualist

John Nada

4th November 2014, 05:08

Some Marxists described socialism as being like a library(Luxembourg), a fire station(Bordiga) or a post office(I think Lenin). A library you take books you read and return them for others to read. A fire station puts out fires, regardless of the burning houses market. The post office sends and delivers the mail. I think these are pretty good analogies for how socialism could work.

Illegalitarian

4th November 2014, 05:12

Well said

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

4th November 2014, 11:12

How pretty much everyone who isn't a marxist uses the word. The word isn't important to me, however, it's the definition, so call it what you like.

No, that's the point. No one uses the word like that except for some American kiddie liberals. If you started talking about the palace economy of Crete in terms of a market, people would look at you like you're funny in the head.

Yet you think they need a global council to keep basic economic activity afloat.

Coordination at the central level is an integral part of cooperating. It's not a difficult concept. When you participate in the organisation of a large events, you cooperate with other people, of course, but this cooperation is coordinated at a "central" level. Generally speaking, the people involved decide on a group that is going to plan the event - determine the time and place, how many paper plates, cups, condoms, whatever need to be brought and by who, who is going to transport it all and so on.

The socialist society is pretty much that - members of society coming together to plan the process of production.

The actual process of distributing those goods to where they need to go, the technology and logistics of shipping, that is what remains. I've stated this several times, sorry.

The logistics is determined by price calculations. I mean, this is fairly elementary - do you think Coca-Cola Inc. sends crates of syrup into Greece because the people there really like Coca-Cola (ugh, watered-down Greek cola) and hope to make a profit? No, that's ridiculous. Or do you think they choose the most effective and the safest option when it comes to transport, instead of the cheapest one? You have a very rosy view of capitalism, it seems.

Producers generally know how much of a resource they need to complete production, it's not hard, yes.

Well, no, I realise people have this fetish for "local knowledge", but think about this a bit. Suppose I'm a worker in a candy factory. Without coordinating with other production units, I don't know how many units of candy the factory I'm working in needs to produce - or even what sort of candy, of what quality. And if I don't know that I don't know how many units of sugar, molasses and so on the factory I'm working in needs.

The gold mine already has a steady stream of gold going out to the butt plug factory as per the factory's need for gold, networks of distribution such as this will naturally form based on need. Demand doesn't need to be tracked in real time just as it doesn't now.

Because the system we have now works so bloody well, doesn't it? I mean, good grief, at this point your "socialism" really does look like a "fairer" capitalism.

How is the butt plug factory going to assess the need for their products? They would need to have access to information about the demand throughout the world. How would they divide this demand between themselves and other similar factories? How would they ensure that gold is being spent economically - that is, that it is going to factories with the highest output-input ratio first?

Your answer is apparently some sort of giant database. But if this database is to make sense - i.e. if it is not to be changed every second, rendering it meaningless - demand, production and the flow of goods need to be worked out for a definite period. And targets have to be set. So now you have all of the tasks of the central planning organs, except being done by people who are not in contact with each other most of the time.

Seriously, have you tried to organise anything like that? I have, and it was an exercise in phone-snapping frustration.

But no, if we delegate the task to a definite group of people, they will magically become the ruling class because to anarkids class is not about the relation to the means of production but disembodied "authority" that corrupts the hearts of men.

I guess nothing has to be distributed and no one has to contact each other in a centralized system. No such thing as distribution networks because everyone just magically makes whatever they need on the spot.

Seriously, at this point you're being deliberately daft. In a centralised system, targets are decided ex ante, and the producer goods are distributed to production units by schedule. What you propose is, as you say, pretty much what we have now, only there is no money to enable some modicum of calculation and no ejection of under-preforming enterprises from the market.

You're not a socialist unless you think socialism is going to happen tomorrow and technology will not develop further until then? LOL, what?

Not technology but the productive forces. And yes, if you think capitalism is doing peachy and socialism is something that will happen once we're all dead, you really aren't a socialist. I mean, I imagine generalised commodity production and wage labour would be abolished in the Kingdom of Heaven that Christians dream about; that doesn't make them socialists.

Citation needed

For what? The objectively socialised and global nature of modern industrial production? You might as well ask for citation that air is breathable and that biting fire will hurt you. But here (http://annualreview2013.arcelormittal.com/overview/financial-highlights), for example, is the situation in a sector as basic as steel production, using ArcelorMittal as an example. Take a look at the shipments and allocation of employees.

Right, which also means your notion of planning being "too difficult to plan" for multiple production units is basically nothing.

Well, no, because the difficulty comes from another source. It's not that multiple production units can't carry out the arithmetics, but that they can't coordinate effectively without a central coordination.

I have, and they were, again, shoddy, awful electronics that did not hold a candle to their contemporaries.

Alright, what specific electronics are you talking about? Because I remember USSR computers being actually quite decent (of course I saw them after they had become obsolete but I would say they were at least the equivalents of Amstrad's models).

Obviously the right blows this out of proportion, but to deny it entirely is to go against basic facts. Have you ever talked to someone who lived in the USSR? I'm guessing not, if you believe it was fine and dandy that that all of its problems were strictly political. Sorry, but that's just outright false.

Of course I have talked to people who lived in the former USSR. As well as in Democratic Germany, Bulgaria, a lot of people from the former Yugoslavia for obvious reasons, and some from Poland. Of course there were problems, but they were actually far milder than what happens in these countries today. Oh, sure, sometimes queues formed for bread. Today a lot of people don't have the money for bread, so they don't queue up. Some improvement.

Again this is just an outright denial of basic facts. Are you saying the soviets had no say in economic production[...]

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. It was only after the October Revolution that the soviets had some indirect influence via financial directorates. The soviets were geographic councils, and their functions were political. Hell, they weren't even exclusively proletarian and poor-peasant at first - there was a Union of Professionals that had a representative in the Petrograd Soviet under the Provisional government.

that there were no village and factory soviets that made up the base of the soviet congress?

There were village soviets. There were no factory soviets. Again, soviets were geographical. You seem to be confusing them with factory committees.

I uh.. don't really know what to say to that haha.

Well you could do yourself a favour and actually read about the period; that might dispel some mistaken notions you hold.

Sounds like a typical spart line I'd say: glorious bolsheviks v. drunk soldiers, no legitimate political struggle at all.

You talked about a "proto-CheKa". The CheKa was preceded by the commission of Bonch-Bruevich, which was formed to fight drunken behaviour by soldiers. It's not my fault you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.