Why I gave up on traditional communism [Archive] - Page 2

ckaihatsu

12th September 2015, 16:58

Is there a percentage of people who do not need to contribute to society, before society faces a problem?

It's a damn good question, one worth contemplating for anyone who's considered the possibility of a better world.

I tend to think of it as a radial-central 'core' of life-necessities 'gift'-production for society (food, etc.), with all else being on the outer 'periphery' of this circular area -- thus more-discretionary, less-socialized production, and more of a gray-area in terms of participation and availability of goods.

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No prob -- it's not an either-or.

The 'enterprising fellow's unique insight would not have to be automatically *discarded* -- it would just have to become part of the general discussions going on, probably internally to liberated-labor, regarding work roles at-play, their proposed funding, and potential personnel choices.

But it also would not have to be accepted either.
So now society has limits on progress, on advancements, placed before it.

You're implying that, under capitalism, any individual volition for 'innovation' / progress / advancements is somehow unchecked and entirely free to flourish. This is more *mythology* than anything else, since one must either have capital of one's own or else one must make commitments to *others* for *their* capital and participation.

Post-capitalism, one's initiatives would *necessarily* have to be socialized, for anything beyond personal / small-scale. Doubtlessly this kind of process would be relatively more *enabled* since all of society's productive implements, as for prototyping, etc., would be commonly available. The rest would be social.

One would think that the use of 25 trucks was also the result of "collectively-conscious social planning." The point simply was in agreement with you-- full trucks means no problems (in socialist thinking). Yet as I have said this is not necessarily true, since there is no way to compare the use of the resources of those 25 trucks and drivers with other needs in society.

Well, yet again, we're decidedly at an impasse on this 'philosophical' issue:

(It's [...] not a given that any particular use of labor in one location would automatically, necessarily cause a *shortage* somewhere else.)

I'll ceaselessly copy-and-paste the following excerpt as a standing point of position:

I'll maintain that this is virtually *philosophical* (one's 'outlook'), because it could very well be the case that the world gets to a point where no one *wants* to do any work, and hardly any further work *gets* done, and yet everyone is able to live healthily and contentedly -- all of your concerns over the abstract logistics of 'scarcity' and 'production' would be rendered *moot* in such a world.

Yet again, all these techniques and logistics are designed in the service of production for profit. It cannot simply be "used" for other ends. Changes must occur.

Yeah, I'm certain there would be some adaptations made of existing practices, for the collectivist / socialist social context.

One would hope that the surgeon does not consult discussion boards when deciding upon his next incision.

Nice red-herring, but society's need for expertise does not automatically necessitate *specialization*, as into any singular person (a personified basis of social elitism).

Here's my position on this kind of thing, from a past thread:

[W]e might go so far as to look at any given workplace generically, as a series of *situations* (events), through time, with corresponding *issues* from the same. Nowadays it would be entirely feasible to address the *issues* themselves, from a broad-based participation (even bringing in input from arbitrary persons who are so interested and relevant to the situation, over the Internet). The overhead of a hierarchical social relations can be obviated entirely, leaving a 'prevailing informed sentiment' (for lack of a better term) that would be the deciding / determining direction for any given issue.

Obviously this is more suited to a *post*-class-structured societal norm, but it's *logistically* doable, conceivably, at least.

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(It's also not a given that any particular use of labor in one location would automatically, necessarily cause a *shortage* somewhere else.)

Completely true. But again, a capitalist society has systems where one can make such a determination.

Glad to hear it, and your point is understood, likewise, but I'll maintain that the cost of 'profit' (from investment funds, for resulting actual production) is too much of a subtraction for an economic system to continue-with. Socialism exists as a socially preferable alternative to the kind of social organization for production yielded by the profit motive.

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I'm just addressing the potential *implications* of a post-capitalist economy of circulating labor credits -- again, any similarities to capitalism are unintended and unfortunate, but can be differentiated by anyone who *pays attention* to the differences, which are profound.

Which is what (in this instance)?

There's no 'instance' here -- we're not discussing any scenario around this particular paradigmatic point.

The differences, labor-credits vs. profit-motive, are the ways in which the means of mass production are controlled -- collectively, by social plan, and ultimately by liberated-labor, versus private control, by ownership of capital, and exploitation of labor.

The *products* of production are free-access and direct-distribution under socialism / communism, versus according to monetary valuations, under capitalism. (Etc.)

workers negotiate with employers as to how much compensation is earned for a particular task completed. Granted, the use of the compensation is extremely limited, but then that has to be examined as to the impact those restrictions have on the likelihood that labor credits will solve the problem they are supposed to solve.

Knock yourself out. (Maybe try positing some sample scenarios, as ever.)

So which is it? Does "liberated labor" work wherever they wish, however they, whenever they wish, or does "liberated labor" work where they have been "socially organized"?

These two distinct motivations are not necessarily mutually exclusive -- perhaps liberated-labor winds up consistently organizing itself *internally*, either with the vehicle of labor credits, or without, or some combination of both.

Or perhaps liberated labor is relatively more *passive* and looks to larger social initiatives (as from a locality, or localities) for its impetus for organizing itself. Or maybe it's a combination of both 'internal' and 'societal', for some complex emergence resulting from a mixture of both.

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I *never* advance the use of labor credits as a foregone *necessity* -- I've regularly repeatedly mentioned the possibility of using *zero* labor credits, meaning the default gift-economy-type of sheerly voluntary liberated labor of communism. If people don't need to use labor credits in order to build a shoe factory, then they *don't* -- that's the empirical situation.

I understand this. Labor credits are the fall back-- the theory being nothing ever works 100%, nothing is perfect.

Yes. The principle is this:

The overall situation is one of somehow reconciling / meshing-together a material *unwanted* factor, 'distasteful tasks', with a socially *wanted* factor, the *labor* for those distasteful tasks.

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There *are no* 'limits' placed on anyone who possesses labor credits in-hand (resulting from their own past work done, by definition) -- that person could use them to effect production on an extremely small scale, for personal ends, perhaps activating only one liberated-laborer.

Correct-- they become a capitalist, and direct the productive forces over that which they control.

*Incorrect*.

This aspect of the model regards 'labor':

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

And this aspect of the model regards the means of mass production:

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

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

So the meaning is that anyone with labor credits can only 'select' / *request* others for proportionate efforts / labor, going-forward, to the extent of the finite 'empowerment' that their labor credits in-hand confer. (Example: 1000 labor credits -yields- 200 labor hours of a task, by one or more available-and-willing liberated laborers, if that task has a multiplier of '5'.)

( The material output from this "hired" labor can only go so far for *one* individual, since there are no private accumulations, and any given individual can only consume so much themselves: )

consumption [demand] -- Individuals may possess and consume as much material as they want, with the proviso that the material is being actively used in a personal capacity only -- after a certain period of disuse all personal possessions not in active use will revert to collectivized communist property

Their use of any productive assets (means of mass production) and resources / goods / materials, will be limited to the empirical reality that such assets and resources are otherwise *not being used*, and would not be proscribed or regulated by any other socio-political processes of that society -- such as a *larger* collective plan for production underway that would utilize those same assets and resources.

(This is hardly the social environment of that of a capitalist.)

But only partially. Apparently there are now size considerations involved.

Certainly the relative *scale* of any given productive plan would be relevant, in relation to any 'competing' plans that would utilize the same assets and/or resources. (A larger-scale initiative for food production that coordinates greater numbers of people, for greater output of food per square-foot of area, and per-worker, and per-consumer, would certainly override any *smaller*, *less-efficient* plans for the same.)

BTW-- if only one liberated laborer is activated, doesn't that mean by definition that person now has 100% control over the labor being activated?

We've covered this already:

OK-- the worker with labor credits cannot in fact use those labor credits to direct production in a certain way.

No, not in the sense of being managerial or administrative -- the benefit from having labor credits is in directing *where* to put them, which work roles to pick for what projects, and also in 'choosing' (requesting) exactly which workers / persons should fill those assigned (budgeted-for) work roles.

Workers who are actively at-work can be *self*-managerial and *collectively* self-administrative, as in all matters directly related to their work and how it's done.

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Why would a person who has worked t earn labor credits give it somebody else?

That's how it works:

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

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And this goes back to what I have asked before- What can that one activated liberated laborer do with labor credits that he CANNOT do without them?

(Please make sure you get the kind of answer you're looking for on this one. I'll answer as directly as I can.)

Anyone who has earned labor credits has the advantage of activating liberated-labor that would *require* labor credits for *their* potential work / labor-power.

For example maybe someone has sought out more-difficult tasks, ones that have higher per-hour multiplier rates attached to them, for the purpose of earning a substantial bundle of labor credits for themselves. Now, with the labor completed and these labor credits in-hand they put the call out for a particular design to be carved onto a flat cliff-face of bluffs at a particular location.

This is the kind of project that would *not* be taken up on a collective basis, usually, and is obviously particular to this one individual. As long as there were no general socio-political *objections* to it, this person could realize the completion of this kind of project by using their earned labor credits for the activation of a non-standard kind of labor.

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Or that person could *pool* their labor credits with those of *numerous* other people, similarly, to effect production on a *mass* scale -- perhaps for a *gargantuan* project that activates liberated labor simultaneously on all continents, spanning several decades.

Perhaps this group of labor-credit-possessing workers do all the requisite planning for this on the back of a napkin, *internally*. Or perhaps the 'plan' is coordinated at broader scales, including those who may *not* possess labor credits themselves (as from the larger locality, or localities).

Yes-- this otherwise known as a corporation.

Well, *no*, because there would be no *standing body*, or *institution*.

The usage of requisite productive assets (factories, etc.) and natural resources, etc., would all have to be reconciled on a collective social basis, and not on a joint-stock, *private* basis, as is the process for corporations.

Hatshepsut

12th September 2015, 17:11

Is there a percentage of people who do not need to contribute to society, before society faces a problem?

Yes indeed, and it begins when there is one such person. And then two, then millions. Marxism's motto is "From each according to ability, to each according to need." Capitalism regards unemployment as normal, from there dividing into a social welfare camp which desires that the noncontributors receive state social benefits and a libertarian camp which prefers leaving that function up to voluntary charity, with no provisions should charity fall short.

Yet Marxists think that nearly everyone can contribute to society in some way, and want to put the unemployed and old to work. In view of what they are able to do. We wouldn't have 75-year senior citizens trying to earn survival on a warehouse floor they once worked at as often happens in American capitalism today. Or put into a care home because that's the only way they can qualify for Medicaid even though they don't yet need 24-hour care and could live at home. They might be watching children or minding a library circulation desk, tasks we mainly employ the young to do now. Or, if health too poor, allowed to decline and pass in their own dwelling instead of an institution.

Capitalism, while it has performed better than Soviet-style planning bureaus in the past, still doesn't believe in efficient allocation of resources from the standpoint of society as a whole. Instead, it optimizes allocation on what is profitable in the short run based on the dollar votes of consumers, relying for labor discipline on the wolf at the doors of those not earning dollars.

Unlike ckaihatsu I can't claim to offer a detailed solution to the problems involved, though I can suggest a few elements we might see: A block captain who assesses the abilities and needs of others in the neighborhood, informs them of available jobs, assigns work if needed, and provisions them from the common weal. So communism requires some to decide for others as previous economic systems do. Where it differs is that the block captain position will likely rotate frequently, perhaps by drawing lots so as to eliminate patronage, and that everyone on the block will attend and participate in the block committee meetings. A similar committee structure may be replicated at higher geographic levels. This is roughly the Cuban model. Going beyond current Cuban practice, labor freedom can be accommodated by mobility options, where workers can join the worksite of their choice and move from one site to another at intervals if they desire. Today, workers can't leave jobs for fear of unemployment and losing health insurance.

A parallel organization of industry with rotating plant captains and plant committees seems likely as well, this structure reduplicated at higher economic scales with agriculture treated like any other productive sector.

I doubt a frictionless utopia will arrive; I anticipate communism having its own trials. Yet it will end the exploitation where the bulk of returns from economic growth accrue to 15% of the population as is happening in the USA, allowing all of society to share roughly equally when society prospers, and requiring all to suffer equally when times are hard.

ckaihatsu

12th September 2015, 17:13

If the use of labor credits can solve problems in allocating labor in areas of production, why can't it also solve problems of production in the use of other resources?
For example, if shoeworkers can negotiate how many labor credits per hour they would accrue in producing shoes, why can't they negotiate with people looking to acquire shoes how many labor credits it will cost them to get those shoes? Or the leatherworkers negotiate the amount of labor credits required in order to supply leather to the shoe workers?

I see no potential contradictions or problems with this -- whether a plan for collectivist production references *liberated-labor* in terms of labor credits per hour, and/or resulting *units of goods* per plan, makes no difference.

As with any kind of plan in general, one may want to start with the desired result ('x' number of pairs of shoes for 'y' number of people), and then work-backwards from there, to see what inputs would be required for that completion. (Various alternate plans could be considered as well, in parallel, before a final decision as to a plan is mass-approved, for implementation.)

So, to see this through, those wanting shoes could very well review various 'proposals' from varying groups of (competing) liberated laborers, to find whatever proposal best suited their needs-in-common. These consumers would have to find the necessary funding of sufficient labor credits to activate the particular kind of liberated labor that their plan would require -- they could always appeal to the (presumably larger) locality for it to collectively issue a *debt* of labor credits, if need-be.

Certainly, there would be no claim that problems in production could only be in labor and never in products produced by said labor?

I don't quite understand what you may mean with this -- you may want to rephrase.

ckaihatsu

12th September 2015, 18:12

In most cases it is. In some cases, however, it is part of production, e.g. when a new game is made, playtesting is part of the production process.

Acknowledged.

I suspect new games will still be made in socialism. The gameplay video is the same, I suppose - here the intention is to produce a use-value. Sometimes that doesn't work out - you produce a shoddy steel beam or whatever.

Exactly -- I chose that example to illustrate its inherent 'gray area' nature -- I mentioned that it's 'unknowable' as to whether any given gameplay video would have use-value, or not.

Alright, but again, is that such a problem? First of all it's extremely difficult to quantify the benefit, if any, of certain actions. Even if someone doesn't enter a profession based on their degree, they can still prove useful in their chosen line of work, e.g. a physicists who ends up working as a biologist (it's been known to happen).

Second, the fact is most people don't need to do the sort of industrial labour we all recognise as productive, e.g. smelting iron or building robots. In fact most people today don't work in these branches, or in the notoriously backward agriculture, and still production in many branches of the economy exceeds what is necessary to satisfy human need (see for example the EU and its mountains of butter). So why worry about things like this? It would be truly nightmarish if our productive forces were such that people getting the "wrong" degree is a concern.

My aim was to show that, post-capitalism, there would be socially 'unproductive' (liberated) labor, as well as socially productive (liberated) labor.

I'm not sure what you're arguing-for -- I acknowledge the productive nature of most 'service' work roles, but it looks like you're trying to 'corral-in' *all* work-efforts, to make them all arrive at being 'productive' labor, regardless.

I'm not 'worried', I'm trying to be *thorough* in attending to the empirical likelihood that -- for example -- many gameplay videos posted to the Internet, with the intention of providing use-values, to aid others with their video-game playing skills, may actually *not* confer such intended use-values. Such, then, would be 'unproductive labor' in the making of such gameplay videos.

Yes, and then it doesn't get done. I don't think everything is going to go smoothly all the time - you can't guarantee that. But if you somehow get people to repair the house even though they don't really want to, what you will get is substandard labour. People work best when they work out of nothing but their own desires.

I don't disagree -- but, as you're acknowledging, there will be an 'outlying periphery' (if you will) of tasks that may not go smoothly, or may not even be attended to *at all*. The labor-credits-for-liberated-labor is meant to address those 'outlying' areas that may not otherwise be addressed, if all liberated labor was by individual volition only.

As I said, I think you actually presented several models of how labour-credits would work (which is not a criticism, mind).

If I may, my singular model of 'labor credits' *is* singular and consistent. Please see:

A post-capitalist political economy using labor credits

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

communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

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

If I understood one of them correctly, the labour-credits would be a sort of opt-out mechanism if I don't want to do work someone conceives as necessary.

No, that's not it at all -- *no one* has command-power over anyone else. Hence the term 'liberated labor'.

(We know that sheerly voluntary liberated labor would be sufficient in quantity, by default, for everyone's basic humane needs, without any use of labor credits, so that no one would be under any duress for their basics of life and living.)

Labor credits would be an 'additive' to the baseline gift-economy mode of production that we call 'communism'.

And since I don't want to repair statues of Tuđman or whatever, I would conceivably have to stock up on them.

No, there would be nothing 'mandatory' about labor credits -- they only function on an *internal* basis for liberated-labor itself, and only apply to liberated-labor labor *hours*, and to nothing else.

Or alternately, you proposed once that labour-credits would be used to access decisionmaking. But alright, then I have to stock up if I want to contribute to how my immediate environment develops.

Since labor credits are internal to liberated-labor, one *may* want to participate in the labor-credits economy if one wanted to be active in decision-making matters *around* such (labor-credit-using) societally productive activities -- that would require *labor* to be contributed to the common good, to the (proportional) extent of labor credits received in-turn. So 'stocking up' on labor credits would require a substantial amount of work-effort contributed over time, for whatever ratios ('multipliers') of labor credits per-hour, depending on the actual work role. (More hazardous and/or difficult work roles have higher multipliers, per-hour.)

With relatively more labor credits stocked-up one could then 'select' / request future liberated-labor, going-forward, which would be a relatively greater 'say' on how the immediate, and larger, social (and physical) environment develops.

You may have been thinking-of / referencing this part, from earlier in the thread:

In a labor-credits communist-type society people could live perfectly fine lives without the least duress or want, and *not* work at all or use labor credits, and it wouldn't matter whatsoever or affect their lives deleteriously.

Those who *did* decide to use part of their life-time by working to contribute to the social commons could do so as a part of the zero-labor-credits default communist 'gift economy', or they could do so *with* the circulation of labor credits, depending on actual real-world circumstances (the particular layout of any given labor-credits circulation).

If society could 'reproduce its labor', or continuously move-forward into the future, *without* the use of labor credits, either for the most part, or entirely, then *good* -- that's the point.

If society *used* a circulation of labor credits, for whatever reason, as part of its gift economy, and that allowed it to continuously move-forward into the future, then, *good* -- that's the point as well. (Recall that *with* the labor credits no goods / resources / materials, or productive assets, are being commodified in any kind of way, so the 'gift economy' would be absolutely untainted by the societal practice of using labor credits -- everything would be 'free-access' and 'direct-distribution'.)

The *difference* is that, *with* labor credits, those who *participate* in the labor-credits 'production culture' would be *far* more determining, collectively, in direct proportion to hours, and difficulty/hazard, of work contributed, than anyone who *didn't* participate with their liberated-labor.

Any mass projects that needed funding (meaning requiring liberated labor for construction) and couldn't find people to contribute work for *zero* labor credits would, of necessity, have to turn to those who *have* done work in the past and who thus have collections of personal labor credits in-hand. Any arbitrary group of people with labor credits would, as a self-conscious group, be in a greater material position to fund or not-fund any given socio-political initiative -- like a mass public infrastructure project -- than anyone who *didn't* have labor credits.

On the whole, over decades and centuries of societal time, those in the labor-credits production-culture would undoubtedly be the real movers-and-shakers of society itself, continuously determining what it looked like physically, and how it did things like transportation, energy, materials, etc.

Generally the problem is that if labour-credits are useful then people need to have them

But in a post-capitalist social context, especially, 'need' is *relative*, as in need-versus-want.

You're implying that the existence of labor credits would lend towards a *social status* around their possession -- which is certainly worth mentioning. I'll only say that if that *did* happen to turn out to be the case it might not be a *bad* thing, given the overall collectivist social environment. Recall that labor credits in-hand represent actual past work done, for the common, collectivist good. The *function* of labor credits is to *activate* additional liberated labor, going-forward, but if people wanted to *hang onto* them, *without* putting them back into circulation (to effect labor), perhaps for the sake of 'social status', then they could certainly do that, and their past work done for the social good (for those labor credits) would be the real-world *tangible* aspect of that 'social status' -- not such a bad thing.

(some need is satisfied by having l-cs, not necessarily the bare biological necessities of daily reproduction of life), if people don't really need them then they're not really useful.

Agreed.

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Absolutely -- my own concerns, and the impetus for the development of this whole labor-credits thing, has really been to address the *finer points*, and the *gray areas*, where cases may not be so clear-cut as 'garbage'.

Yes, but I don't think there is a need for a formal mechanism to do this. It's something people will have to work out themselves.

I'll respectfully, politely *disagree* -- note the part near the beginning, about 'things not going smoothly', or real social need that may go unaddressed by individual volition alone.

As with BB, I'll invoke this 'principle':

The overall situation is one of somehow reconciling / meshing-together a material *unwanted* factor, 'distasteful tasks', with a socially *wanted* factor, the *labor* for those distasteful tasks.

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I was contrasting socialism with capitalism, but I think this does raise a legitimate question: how is this model of labour-credits, where resources seem to be allocated ex post in some way, going to mesh together with planning where resources are allocated ex ante?

Certainly.

There's no 'ex post' approach to resources -- they would be addressed *the same as* all other planning, *upfront*:

communist administration -- All assets and resources will be collectivized as communist property in common -- their use must be determined through a regular political process of prioritized demands from a locality or larger population [...]

And:

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

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

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They are free to ignore it (but obviously no society is going to allow someone to e.g. come into a factory and wreck it - people are free to do with their time what they please, but they're not free to do with the means of production that are under the control of society as they please, and if they try anything stupid the other workers will likely stop them), but why would they?

There is no state, no government over men in the socialist society. So the people who work can't be coerced by anyone. Yet they need to eat, they need to drink, to have shelter etc. - so they will come together and decide, obviously through some form of delegation, how to act so as to fulfill their needs. It's like organising a barbecue; you can't arrest people for not listening to the people who are coordinating everyone's efforts, but most people still listen. Because they want a barbecue.

The role of the capitalist is to extract surplus value for the MCM' cycle. None of that exists in the socialist society. Neither does bureaucracy as a separate institution, although administration exists - and anyone can participate in it.

ckaihatsu

19th September 2015, 00:24

Couple points of clarification:

[I]nstead of leaving the situation to whatever existing labor credits can be scraped-together from this-or-that person around the shoe factory, the situation would be called to the attention of the locality's formal agenda

By using the term 'agenda' I don't mean to suggest that every / any locality would be so *institutionalized* and/or formal as to even have a regularly scheduled, repeating meeting time -- weekly, or whatever -- so as to draw up a proper agenda. Such a practice would be strictly *optional* from the point of view of the framework itself. (Note / consider that the functioning of the framework as described would yield a number of mass-prioritized proposed items, at whatever stages of maturity or completion -- in other words a number of agenda-like items, from a mass basis, would be 'emergent' and easily seen to be popular or not, on a daily basis.)

communist administration -- All assets and resources will be collectivized as communist property in common -- their use must be determined through a regular political process of prioritized demands from a locality or larger population [...]

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

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

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

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[T]here *are no* 'limits' placed on anyone who possesses labor credits in-hand (resulting from their own past work done, by definition) -- that person could use them to effect production on an extremely small scale, for personal ends, perhaps activating only one liberated-laborer.

Or that person could *pool* their labor credits with those of *numerous* other people, similarly, to effect production on a *mass* scale -- perhaps for a *gargantuan* project that activates liberated labor simultaneously on all continents, spanning several decades.

I happened to find an excellent image, a 3D fractal, that well-illustrates how we might imagine the tiered-scale structure of a post-capitalist social organization of productivity -- just imagine if greater extents of coordination took place going *inwards* towards the earth's center, with a full global *centralization* being at the exact *center* of the globe:

http://www.incendia.net/wiki/images/0/0c/Apollonian_I.png

Baseball

19th September 2015, 16:07

[QUOTE=Xhar-Xhar Binks;2850971]

They are free to ignore it (but obviously no society is going to allow someone to e.g. come into a factory and wreck it - people are free to do with their time what they please, but they're not free to do with the means of production that are under the control of society as they please, and if they try anything stupid the other workers will likely stop them), but why would they?

What does "wreck" in this context mean? Why are we worried only people from outside the factory?

What does it mean when it is said that "society" will stop them (I thought there were no "socialist police?)?

There is no state, no government over men in the socialist society. So the people who work can't be coerced by anyone. Yet they need to eat, they need to drink, to have shelter etc. - so they will come together and decide, obviously through some form of delegation, how to act so as to fulfill their needs.

What do you mean by "delegation"? What is delegated?

It's like organising a barbecue; you can't arrest people for not listening to the people who are coordinating everyone's efforts, but most people still listen. Because they want a barbecue.

Ahhh!! So there will be people in charge who will issue orders.

The role of the capitalist is to extract surplus value for the MCM' cycle. None of that exists in the socialist society. Neither does bureaucracy as a separate institution, although administration exists - and anyone can participate in it.

The role of the capitalist is to coordinate production. Which, as you concede, is a job which the socialist society will need as well.

Baseball

19th September 2015, 16:18

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2850976]

You're implying that, under capitalism, any individual volition for 'innovation' / progress / advancements is somehow unchecked and entirely free to flourish. This is more *mythology* than anything else, since one must either have capital of one's own or else one must make commitments to *others* for *their* capital and participation.

Post-capitalism, one's initiatives would *necessarily* have to be socialized, for anything beyond personal / small-scale. Doubtlessly this kind of process would be relatively more *enabled* since all of society's productive implements, as for prototyping, etc., would be commonly available. The rest would be social.

What is it that you suppose labor credits are? It is "capital" which one then can funnel in a direction that that person wishes to direct it.

The differences, labor-credits vs. profit-motive, are the ways in which the means of mass production are controlled -- collectively, by social plan, and ultimately by liberated-labor, versus private control, by ownership of capital, and exploitation of labor.

Supposedly, one is allowed to use labor credits to "choose" (hire) workers in order to utilize production in a certain direction.
Its not clear how this translates into control as per "social plan."

These two distinct motivations are not necessarily mutually exclusive -- perhaps liberated-labor winds up consistently organizing itself *internally*, either with the vehicle of labor credits, or without, or some combination of both.

Yet again, what do labor credits allow to happen that cannot happen without?

Baseball

19th September 2015, 16:21

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2850980]I see no potential contradictions or problems with this -- whether a plan for collectivist production references *liberated-labor* in terms of labor credits per hour, and/or resulting *units of goods* per plan, makes no difference.

As with any kind of plan in general, one may want to start with the desired result ('x' number of pairs of shoes for 'y' number of people), and then work-backwards from there, to see what inputs would be required for that completion. (Various alternate plans could be considered as well, in parallel, before a final decision as to a plan is mass-approved, for implementation.)

So, to see this through, those wanting shoes could very well review various 'proposals' from varying groups of (competing) liberated laborers, to find whatever proposal best suited their needs-in-common. These consumers would have to find the necessary funding of sufficient labor credits to activate the particular kind of liberated labor that their plan would require -- they could always appeal to the (presumably larger) locality for it to collectively issue a *debt* of labor credits, if need-be.

No. I asked why labor credits could not be used for the actual aquisition of the shoe.

Shoe customer: I want a pair of shoes.
She worker: Give me 5 credits and those shoes are yours

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

19th September 2015, 18:25

What does "wreck" in this context mean? Why are we worried only people from outside the factory?

"Wrecking", here, means damaging the machinery in the factory or otherwise impeding its functioning. And who said we were only "worried" by people "outside" the factory? In socialism, first of all, there is no "inside" and "outside" in this sense, there are no factory jobs and people outside them. Second, we're not worried. Most likely, to the extent that these sort of things happen in socialism, they will happen by mistake. The point was to establish the principle that the people who work in factories, etc., do not own "their" workplaces, the means of production they use. (Because a lot of people here have the mistaken idea socialism is self-management.)

What does it mean when it is said that "society" will stop them (I thought there were no "socialist police?)?

There aren't. If someone is causing problems in a factory, the people who work there will probably see them out. There's no need for a police force, socialist or otherwise (also the point was that a "socialist police" is an oxymoron).

What do you mean by "delegation"? What is delegated?

As it's impractical to place seven billion people in one room to discuss issues of social import, most likely there will be a collegium of delegates discussing issues on our behalf. If we feel they are not representing us correctly, we recall them.

Ahhh!! So there will be people in charge who will issue orders.

Well, yes. Why are you framing this debate as if we were extreme dogmatic anarchists? (Well, to be fair a lot of Internet anarchists seem to want more interference in the life of the individual than we do, only it's 'community' interference as if that makes any bloody difference.) Of course, targets have to be set, schedules drawn up, quality standards set and so on. When we talk about the freedom of the socialist society, we're not talking about everyone fucking off to their shack in the woods to engage in petty production like some postmodern Robinson Crusoe. We're talking about the end of government over men, and the voluntary submission of workers to the social planning of production.

The role of the capitalist is to coordinate production. Which, as you concede, is a job which the socialist society will need as well.

The role of the capitalist is not just to coordinate production, because otherwise Minoan palatial officials would have been capitalist, and many capitalists in fact don't coordinate production but leave the task to their various executives and managers.

ckaihatsu

19th September 2015, 18:26

What is it that you suppose labor credits are? It is "capital" which one then can funnel in a direction that that person wishes to direct it.

You're not appreciating that a socialist society -- with or without labor credits -- would *collectivize* all social production, which implies that no one would 'own' anything, as we're used to going-with in our present-day society.

With no private interests there's no longer any need for *capital* of any kind, because everything becomes measured according to its *use value*, instead of according to the abstracted realm of capital-based *exchange values*.

With no more 'capital', people are free to (collectively) self-organize over whatever productive assets (factories, etc.) are available -- just imagine if everything of importance was suddenly turned over to the public domain and was only available through mutual cooperation with others.

I can definitively say that labor credits are *not* 'capital', because there's absolutely no ownership and/or finance involved.

If no one can claim private ownership over *anything* (besides personal possessions), then what *privilege*, exactly, could labor credits conceivably confer -- ? One could *pretend* that labor credits confer *power*, like money / capital does today, but, at the end of the day, how could that possession of labor credits really change anyone's behavior, in a power-like way -- ?

No one would be dispossessed in the *least* if they passed someone by who happened to have *many*, many labor credits to their name. If they *relented* and came to some kind of *terms* with that person to *earn* some of those labor credits, they wouldn't be any 'wealthier', because anything they may have needed or wanted was probably *already available*, through the world's public commons. They couldn't directly *buy* anything with their labor credits, because no one 'owns' anything to 'sell', in the first place.

The only thing that labor credits would be good for would be to *direct production* in some direction, possibly for one's own satisfaction (if that particular something wasn't already being produced, and perhaps no one readily wanted to produce it voluntarily, offhand). But this *doesn't* make it equatable to capital.

Supposedly, one is allowed to use labor credits to "choose" (hire) workers in order to utilize production in a certain direction.
Its not clear how this translates into control as per "social plan."

Yeah -- we've covered this already:

So which is it? Does "liberated labor" work wherever they wish, however they, whenever they wish, or does "liberated labor" work where they have been "socially organized"?

These two distinct motivations are not necessarily mutually exclusive -- perhaps liberated-labor winds up consistently organizing itself *internally*, either with the vehicle of labor credits, or without, or some combination of both.

Or perhaps liberated labor is relatively more *passive* and looks to larger social initiatives (as from a locality, or localities) for its impetus for organizing itself. Or maybe it's a combination of both 'internal' and 'societal', for some complex emergence resulting from a mixture of both.

---

These two distinct motivations are not necessarily mutually exclusive -- perhaps liberated-labor winds up consistently organizing itself *internally*, either with the vehicle of labor credits, or without, or some combination of both.

Yet again, what do labor credits allow to happen that cannot happen without?

Yeah, you just asked this, and I answered:

And this goes back to what I have asked before- What can that one activated liberated laborer do with labor credits that he CANNOT do without them?

(Please make sure you get the kind of answer you're looking for on this one. I'll answer as directly as I can.)

Anyone who has earned labor credits has the advantage of activating liberated-labor that would *require* labor credits for *their* potential work / labor-power.

For example maybe someone has sought out more-difficult tasks, ones that have higher per-hour multiplier rates attached to them, for the purpose of earning a substantial bundle of labor credits for themselves. Now, with the labor completed and these labor credits in-hand they put the call out for a particular design to be carved onto a flat cliff-face of bluffs at a particular location.

This is the kind of project that would *not* be taken up on a collective basis, usually, and is obviously particular to this one individual. As long as there were no general socio-political *objections* to it, this person could realize the completion of this kind of project by using their earned labor credits for the activation of a non-standard kind of labor.

---

I see no potential contradictions or problems with this -- whether a plan for collectivist production references *liberated-labor* in terms of labor credits per hour, and/or resulting *units of goods* per plan, makes no difference.

As with any kind of plan in general, one may want to start with the desired result ('x' number of pairs of shoes for 'y' number of people), and then work-backwards from there, to see what inputs would be required for that completion. (Various alternate plans could be considered as well, in parallel, before a final decision as to a plan is mass-approved, for implementation.)

So, to see this through, those wanting shoes could very well review various 'proposals' from varying groups of (competing) liberated laborers, to find whatever proposal best suited their needs-in-common. These consumers would have to find the necessary funding of sufficient labor credits to activate the particular kind of liberated labor that their plan would require -- they could always appeal to the (presumably larger) locality for it to collectively issue a *debt* of labor credits, if need-be.

No. I asked why labor credits could not be used for the actual aquisition of the shoe.

Shoe customer: I want a pair of shoes.
She worker: Give me 5 credits and those shoes are yours

It's like asking why we don't just *grab stuff*, today -- I'm in need of shoes, so why don't I just go to wherever I can find them, maybe even on someone's feet, and just *take* them for myself -- ?

Sure, society could *conceivably* actually work like this, where impetuousness *reigns*, and it would be commonly understood that someone who needs something more *should* just go ahead and take it, there on the spot, from someone else who is presumably not as needy or desperate.

So why *don't* we do things this way -- ? Why do we use *money* -- ? Why don't we just cooperate to make thrift stores into the size of football fields -- ?

My *point* is that society could look all *kinds* of ways, but one way would be for people to formally acknowledge each other's *liberated labor* with the passing-forward of labor credits, to 'free' the production that results, for the common good of whoever needs and/or wants those goods that are produced.

If you want to *twist* the meaning of 'labor credits' around to make it sound like it should function exactly like *money*, I can't stop you, but all you're doing is just going off on your own trip.

(Your scenario of an individual 'buying' shoes is just too miniscule to address as-is -- why wouldn't people get the shoes they *want*, *instantly*, from already-existing supplies -- ? And why would *one particular individual* need to receive '5 credits' for their passing-along of a pair of shoes -- ? It sounds like a retail-fetish, when, post-capitalism, people could earn labor credits for their part in the larger scope of socialized, collectivized production, whether that's *making* or *passing-along* shoes to others.)

(I mean to say that such retail-like individualized attention, as over a store counter, would probably not be needed, post-capitalism -- I would think that automated *deliveries* to one's location would be the norm, and/or there'd be local *warehouses* of the greatest variety of goods, already produced and available, to cover most common needs. For more specialty-type productivity, labor credits could be used to address less-common requests for less-common types of liberated labor and production.)

I'll *also* add that there probably wouldn't be a situation of someone just *sitting* on a pair of shoes, waiting for someone else to come along so as to 'sell' those shoes to them -- either shoes would be pre-ordered / pre-planned, before being produced, or else items would become part of the world's *commons*, and would be entirely for-the-taking, as with natural resources. Such things don't require a retail clerk. No one could *hoard* shoes -- one would have to be actively using them for themselves or else they'd just be *available* and up-for-grabs, no labor credits needed.

ckaihatsu

20th September 2015, 22:56

As it's impractical to place seven billion people in one room to discuss issues of social import, most likely there will be a collegium of delegates discussing issues on our behalf. If we feel they are not representing us correctly, we recall them.

I'll note for the record that this is a particularly *political*-sided approach to the question of how to ascertain a popular will for the purposes of mass intentions.

It's *conventional*, and -- I would argue -- *outdated*, given the globalized digital communications technologies that are now commonplace.

Regardless, at best *any* politics is going to be limited to the mass participation of people on the ground themselves anyway, by definition -- for example there can't be a revolution if people aren't taking active interests and roles over political matters, in their own best interests as a class.

Given a discussion-board format like RevLeft, there *could* feasibly be 7 billion people taking active daily roles themselves in politics, if everything is organized by geography and topic, as by discussion threads.

Here's an illustration, f.y.i.:

labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

http://s6.postimg.org/jjc7b5nch/150221_labor_credits_framework_for_communist_su.jp g (http://postimg.org/image/p7ii21rot/full/)

The 'delegated' approach also suffers from inherent structural shortcomings, *even if* we situate it in the context of a fully socialized mode of collective production:

Some would argue that just the *existence* of a 'collegium of delegates' is too close to being a stratification in society, like that of class or caste. Whoever happened to be raised to that role, in that organization, would find themselves in a *specialization*, regardless of how long or short their tenure turned out to be -- it would be too close to a kind of *substitutionism*, in other words, even if they *were* immediately recallable.

The 'delegated' approach is also very *administration*-sided and doesn't inherently address matters of *labor* -- it suffers from the 'furs for everyone' problematic, where a prevailing egalitarian ethos might readily call for luxuries to be made available to everyone, as with furs, but the issue of *labor* for such a realization could easily be overlooked and unaddressed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-concise-communism

Tim Redd

21st September 2015, 22:10

Taking your points not particularly in order: you have no evidence that 'human nature is competitive, or at least tribal', because there isn't any, that's just an article of faith on your part.

There are acts of competition between humans, however establishing how much is in born and how much it's due to social factors is problemmatic. Nevertheless scientists are studying cases and related laws everyday and they are indeed finding out what affects what and the role and relationship between nature and nurture on nearly every issue known.

And importantly, there are many acts of cooperation and altruism between humans and indeed these are necessary for the establishment and maintenance of small and large social formations. Natural selection works to create and build cooperation and altruism between humans among other traits as well.

No-one needs to put forward the point of view [o]f capital, as capital doesn't have a point of view. People do, and people are the ones that do the work, not machines.

Well individuals like actual capitalists and their ideologists, groups, parties and institutions do reflect the social purpose, role and behavior of capital. These elements provide the "point of view" of capital.

And machines do in fact preform actions that create profit with or without people alongside. Indeed in Capital Marx says that in many cases the worker is an appendage of the machine.

Overall I agree with you that we are not doomed to be dominated by the selfish ideology that underlies capitalism and all class societies.

Tim Redd

22nd September 2015, 05:31

Anyone who has earned labor credits has the advantage of activating liberated-labor that would *require* labor credits for *their* potential work / labor-power.

For example maybe someone has sought out more-difficult tasks, ones that have higher per-hour multiplier rates attached to them, for the purpose of earning a substantial bundle of labor credits for themselves. Now, with the labor completed and these labor credits in-hand they put the call out for a particular design to be carved onto a flat cliff-face of bluffs at a particular location.

This is the kind of project that would *not* be taken up on a collective basis, usually, and is obviously particular to this one individual. As long as there were no general socio-political *objections* to it, this person could realize the completion of this kind of project by using their earned labor credits for the activation of a non-standard kind of labor

This practice of labor credits off the top to me sounds like it's best limited to the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat (dotp) which allows bourgeois right to exist in various circumstances - even on a large industrial scale like those of computer industries that hire hundreds of thousands of workers in the era of the dotp (socialism).

But let me think about it more. For now it sounds out of kilter as a practice taking place during the post-dotp stage - i.e classless and exploitation free communism.

ckaihatsu

22nd September 2015, 20:40

This practice of labor credits off the top to me sounds like it's best limited to the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat (dotp)

Yeah, I get that a lot -- just *say* it, Tim: 'Gee, that's a cute idea, so we'll keep it around for when the bourgeoisie is still a problem. Once things are settled, though, good luck and don't let the door hit you on the way out.'

= D

which allows bourgeois right to exist in various circumstances - even on a large industrial scale like those of computer industries that hire hundreds of thousands of workers in the era of the dotp (socialism).

But let me think about it more. For now it sounds out of kilter as a practice taking place during the post-dotp stage - i.e classless and exploitation free communism.

I *think* it could be viable, post-dotp, just on the basis of its material-accounting quality -- wouldn't even a fully-fledged communist society still be doing record-keeping of some sort -- ? Then it would either be labor credits, or the exact same process, but with *zero* labor credits formally noted.

You're welcome.

Tim Redd

23rd September 2015, 02:51

ckaihatsu

23rd September 2015, 11:35

This practice of labor credits off the top to me sounds like it's best limited to the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat (dotp) which allows bourgeois right to exist in various circumstances - even on a large industrial scale like those of computer industries that hire hundreds of thousands of workers in the era of the dotp (socialism).

Indeed when someone receives credits based upon what they have put in to society, that is clearly an instance of bourgeois right operating. That makes it a vald practice for the dotp (socialism), but not the higher stage of communism.

Tim Redd, meet Tim Redd.

x D

No, you're *arbitrarily* ascribing 'bourgeois right' to the functioning of labor credits.

Note that the circulation of any / all labor credits would be strictly *internal* to a post-capitalist liberated labor, so there's absolutely *nothing* bourgeois about it.

ckaihatsu

23rd September 2015, 12:15

To clarify, during the dotp the places / instances where 'labor credits' *could* conceivably be used would be wherever the proletariat has liberated the means of production. Wherever the proletariat *controls* means of production and uses it *not* to produce commodities, but for themselves and for the general good, would be an 'economic' area that could possibly benefit from the circulation of labor credits.

(The advantage could be for *expediency*, for example, where perhaps some infrastructure has been liberated but some of the constituent work roles involved are persistently understaffed. If time was not available and other matters were pressing, there could be an *economic* effort around the area to make sufficient labor credits available at a certain per-hour rate to anyone who would fill the unwanted work roles.)

Here's a timeline, for temporal perspective:

[7] Syndicalism-Socialism-Communism Transition Diagram

http://s6.postimg.org/z6qrnuzn5/7_Syndicalism_Socialism_Communism_Transiti.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/jy0ua35yl/full/)

(Note that the graphic was done before the development of 'labor credits', so the 'global syndicalist currency' mentioned within can be considered as a *placeholder* for 'labor credits' -- obviously labor credits are *not* 'currency' of any kind since they aren't exchangeable for goods/resources/materials.)

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

23rd September 2015, 13:08

Sorry, I have to keep this a bit short.

I'll note for the record that this is a particularly *political*-sided approach to the question of how to ascertain a popular will for the purposes of mass intentions.

It's *conventional*, and -- I would argue -- *outdated*, given the globalized digital communications technologies that are now commonplace.

Regardless, at best *any* politics is going to be limited to the mass participation of people on the ground themselves anyway, by definition -- for example there can't be a revolution if people aren't taking active interests and roles over political matters, in their own best interests as a class.

Given a discussion-board format like RevLeft, there *could* feasibly be 7 billion people taking active daily roles themselves in politics, if everything is organized by geography and topic, as by discussion threads.

But at the present level of development of the productive forces, production planning can't be constrained to one geographic region. Whatever production process we're talking about, chances are it will require inputs from other regions, or that some of its outputs will be needed in other regions.

Likewise targets have to be set at the same time, otherwise you end up with targets constantly changing, so the production units can't even figure out what they're supposed to be doing (if they receive a target of X units of goods one day and Y units the next day, Z units after that, etc.).

The 'delegated' approach also suffers from inherent structural shortcomings, *even if* we situate it in the context of a fully socialized mode of collective production:

Some would argue that just the *existence* of a 'collegium of delegates' is too close to being a stratification in society, like that of class or caste. Whoever happened to be raised to that role, in that organization, would find themselves in a *specialization*, regardless of how long or short their tenure turned out to be -- it would be too close to a kind of *substitutionism*, in other words, even if they *were* immediately recallable.

The 'delegated' approach is also very *administration*-sided and doesn't inherently address matters of *labor* -- it suffers from the 'furs for everyone' problematic, where a prevailing egalitarian ethos might readily call for luxuries to be made available to everyone, as with furs, but the issue of *labor* for such a realization could easily be overlooked and unaddressed.

And I think these people would be wrong - it's not stratification to have someone represent a certain section of people at the central level. Unless people think any sort of hierarchy entails social stratification, which seems ridiculous to me - and unworkable. Even in socialism, for example, there will be managerial tasks; in the factories and other production units, and in the larger social structures that the various branches of industry will be organised in, the equivalent of the glavki and tsentry etc.

The job of the delegate would be to communicate with the people they're representing, of course, which would include issues of willingness to preform certain kinds of work.

ckaihatsu

23rd September 2015, 13:50

Sorry, I have to keep this a bit short.

No prob.

But at the present level of development of the productive forces, production planning can't be constrained to one geographic region. Whatever production process we're talking about, chances are it will require inputs from other regions, or that some of its outputs will be needed in other regions.

I'm not suggesting that any planning or production should be limited to any one geographic area.

From post #256, there's a good depiction of what a localities-to-centralized "topography" could look like:

http://www.incendia.net/wiki/images/0/0c/Apollonian_I.png

It would 'read' as 'Do everything you can for local self-sufficiency first, and then communicate with nearby entities and localities, at a formally more-generalized level. Discuss what kinds of work-in-common could be coordinated across entities / localities, to realize greater scales of efficiency. The future products and benefits of all now-generalized work will be distributed to all co-participating entities and localities. Once this new level of broader cooperation and coordination has been established, stabilized, and routinized, the 'level' should look-around to find similar, nearby 'levels', for new discussions and coordinations at even-broader scales, eventually all the way up to the global scale.

Likewise targets have to be set at the same time, otherwise you end up with targets constantly changing, so the production units can't even figure out what they're supposed to be doing (if they receive a target of X units of goods one day and Y units the next day, Z units after that, etc.).

Again, I'm not suggesting any kind of lateral 'patchwork' of strictly ground-level, syndicalist-type inter-networking.

For any given entity, though, a simple input-output matrix would suffice, even if available resources are somewhat in flux -- obviously any given item could be a limiting factor curtailing production, so there would be inherent incentive for cross-cooperation and the firming-up of supply chains, for reliability of final outputs, to end-recipients.

And I think these people would be wrong - it's not stratification to have someone represent a certain section of people at the central level. Unless people think any sort of hierarchy entails social stratification, which seems ridiculous to me - and unworkable. Even in socialism, for example, there will be managerial tasks; in the factories and other production units, and in the larger social structures that the various branches of industry will be organised in, the equivalent of the glavki and tsentry etc.

The job of the delegate would be to communicate with the people they're representing, of course, which would include issues of willingness to preform certain kinds of work.

I'm not summarily *dismissive* of the conventional 'delegated' approach, but I don't *favor* it, either, due to the *risk* of some kind of social stratification being a potential in that kind of arrangement.

I prefer a 'per-policy-package' approach, where any administrative-type duties would be constrained to the implementation of the specific (mass-approved) policy itself, the way the constituent work-roles are:

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

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

Baseball

24th September 2015, 01:44

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2851672]You're not appreciating that a socialist society -- with or without labor credits -- would *collectivize* all social production, which implies that no one would 'own' anything, as we're used to going-with in our present-day society.

I appreciate that this is the objectives of socialism.
However, I deny this is the result.

With no private interests there's no longer any need for *capital* of any kind, because everything becomes measured according to its *use value*, instead of according to the abstracted realm of capital-based *exchange values*.

Socialism always deal with capital. It deals with "things." It calls it something else, but the substance remains.

With no more 'capital', people are free to (collectively) self-organize over whatever productive assets (factories, etc.) are available -- just imagine if everything of importance was suddenly turned over to the public domain and was only available through mutual cooperation with others.

A capitalist paying a worker a wage to do a particular task is an example of "mutual cooperation."
It's tough to imagine if everything of importance was turned over to public domain-- it means nothing one cannot explain what and how people mutually cooperate in such a situation.

I can definitively say that labor credits are *not* 'capital', because there's absolutely no ownership and/or finance involved.

Labor credits are supposedly earned by workers through work. Is it now claimed that those workers who have earned credits through work, do not actually own those credits? If so, by what right can they claim to use them to direct production?

Baseball

24th September 2015, 01:47

I *think* it could be viable, post-dotp, just on the basis of its material-accounting quality -- wouldn't even a fully-fledged communist society still be doing record-keeping of some sort -- ? Then it would either be labor credits, or the exact same process, but with *zero* labor credits formally noted.

What do labor credits have to do with accounting in a full fledged communist society? I thought they were voluntary.[QUOTE]

Baseball

24th September 2015, 01:51

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852003]

It would 'read' as 'Do everything you can for local self-sufficiency first, and then communicate with nearby entities and localities, at a formally more-generalized level. Discuss what kinds of work-in-common could be coordinated across entities / localities, to realize greater scales of efficiency. The future products and benefits of all now-generalized work will be distributed to all co-participating entities and localities. Once this new level of broader cooperation and coordination has been established, stabilized, and routinized, the 'level' should look-around to find similar, nearby 'levels', for new discussions and coordinations at even-broader scales, eventually all the way up to the global scale.

OK-- you are talking trade here. The folks in Florida will supply the oranges; the fellows in Maine the potatoes.
Currency tends to be the best way to coordinate such exchanges.

ckaihatsu

24th September 2015, 02:27

You're not appreciating that a socialist society -- with or without labor credits -- would *collectivize* all social production, which implies that no one would 'own' anything, as we're used to going-with in our present-day society.

I appreciate that this is the objectives of socialism.
However, I deny this is the result.

Which part or parts do you deny as the result:

- That a socialist society would collectivize all social production

- That in a socialist society no one would own anything

---

With no private interests there's no longer any need for *capital* of any kind, because everything becomes measured according to its *use value*, instead of according to the abstracted realm of capital-based *exchange values*.

Socialism always deal with capital. It deals with "things." It calls it something else, but the substance remains.

Socialism deals with 'things', yes -- goods, resources, materials, and productive assets (factories, etc.).

In what way do any of these function in the way that capital does?

---

With no more 'capital', people are free to (collectively) self-organize over whatever productive assets (factories, etc.) are available -- just imagine if everything of importance was suddenly turned over to the public domain and was only available through mutual cooperation with others.

A capitalist paying a worker a wage to do a particular task is an example of "mutual cooperation."

It's *not* materially mutual, because the worker is being *exploited* by only being paid a wage, instead of sharing in the full revenue from the sale of the commodities that they created in the first place.

[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

http://s6.postimg.org/nzhxfqy9d/11_Labor_Capital_Wages_Dividends.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/f4h3589gt/full/)

---

It's tough to imagine if everything of importance was turned over to public domain-- it means nothing one cannot explain what and how people mutually cooperate in such a situation.

Yes, one *can* explain how people mutually cooperate in such a situation -- we have the build-up and development of the Internet itself, for example, for the most part.

---

I can definitively say that labor credits are *not* 'capital', because there's absolutely no ownership and/or finance involved.

Labor credits are supposedly earned by workers through work.

Not 'supposedly' -- labor credits *are* earned by workers through their providing of socially necessary labor, by definition.

Is it now claimed that those workers who have earned credits through work, do not actually own those credits? If so, by what right can they claim to use them to direct production?

If you want to say that workers 'own' labor credits, that's tolerable -- 'possess' would be better.

But you're not making your case that labor credits in any way behave the way that capital does.

---

What do labor credits have to do with accounting in a full fledged communist society? I thought they were voluntary.

Yes, they would be. The labor credits themselves, as an instrument, are part of a larger post-capitalist model, or framework, called 'communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors'. Here are a couple of relevant excerpts:

labor [supply] -- Workers with past accumulated labor credits are the funders of new work positions and incoming laborers -- labor credits are handed over at the completion of work hours -- underfunded projects and production runs are debt-based and will be noted as such against the issuing locality

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

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

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

---

It would 'read' as 'Do everything you can for local self-sufficiency first, and then communicate with nearby entities and localities, at a formally more-generalized level. Discuss what kinds of work-in-common could be coordinated across entities / localities, to realize greater scales of efficiency. The future products and benefits of all now-generalized work will be distributed to all co-participating entities and localities. Once this new level of broader cooperation and coordination has been established, stabilized, and routinized, the 'level' should look-around to find similar, nearby 'levels', for new discussions and coordinations at even-broader scales, eventually all the way up to the global scale.

OK-- you are talking trade here. The folks in Florida will supply the oranges; the fellows in Maine the potatoes.
Currency tends to be the best way to coordinate such exchanges.

Actually it *isn't* trade, because there's no mention of trade or exchanges of any kind:

The future products and benefits of all now-generalized work will be distributed to all co-participating entities and localities.

Baseball

24th September 2015, 14:17

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852061]Which part or parts do you deny as the result:

- That a socialist society would collectivize all social production

- That in a socialist society no one would own anything

Both

Socialism deals with 'things', yes -- goods, resources, materials, and productive assets (factories, etc.).

In what way do any of these function in the way that capital does?

They have to be dealt with.

It's *not* materially mutual, because the worker is being *exploited* by only being paid a wage, instead of sharing in the full revenue from the sale of the commodities that they created in the first place.

That's fine-- a critique of how people cooperate in a capitalist society.

But it is still an explanation of how it happens- regardless of your opinion about it.
At best, you have said that people will "co-operate" in a socialist society by working however and whatever they wish to do, and that somehow that will result in a world of good and plenty. When it doesn't, as you have wisely allowed, since after all nothing is perfect, you have allowed for a system of "labor credits" to seal the deal.

[
Yes, one *can* explain how people mutually cooperate in such a situation -- we have the build-up and development of the Internet itself, for example, for the most part.

What are you talking about? The internet is built up and run as per capitalist design.

Not 'supposedly' -- labor credits *are* earned by workers through their providing of socially necessary labor, by definition.

If you want to say that workers 'own' labor credits, that's tolerable -- 'possess' would be better.

OK-- so the worker can "possess" labor credits-- but can "own" a toothbrush.
What's the difference?

But you're not making your case that labor credits in any way behave the way that capital does.

You already have made the argument--- ie potential workers negotiating with the possessers of labor credit adequate compensation for work being directed.
Labor credits thus must have an exchange value.

Yes, they would be. The labor credits themselves, as an instrument, are part of a larger post-capitalist model, or framework, called 'communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors'. Here are a couple of relevant excerpts:

But since they are not mandatory, how can they be relied upon for accounting purposes?

Actually it *isn't* trade, because there's no mention of trade or exchanges of any kind:

There is no mention of it true. But this is what it is in reality.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

24th September 2015, 15:08

OK-- you are talking trade here. The folks in Florida will supply the oranges; the fellows in Maine the potatoes.

See, I think this is the chief problem in this discussion. You equate everything with the specific form it takes in capitalist society, for example management of production with ownership (although even in late capitalism, these two functions are largely separate), movement of goods with trade, and so on. It enables to you claim victory "for cheap", but ultimately it undermined your point entirely. Using your definition, there will be "trade" in the socialist society (in fact the socialist society will depend on trade as we will take the global flow of goods and extend it, deepen it), but all that means is that stuff will move around. Well, yes, socialism, we propose, will be a modern industrial society, not a collection of autarkic little garrison-states some seem to imagine. That doesn't mean there will be an exchange of equal values, as value will not exist in socialism.

So let's forget terms like "capitalism", let's be really descriptive for a moment. The crux is the following claim:

Currency tends to be the best way to coordinate such exchanges.

And now, what does "best" mean? If "best" means "resulting in the greatest profit", then sure. That's what we've been saying all the time. But if "best" means most conductive to the satisfaction of human need, then this is patently not the case. Trade does not result in massive stocks of food reaching Africa, the Levant, and so on, for example.

ckaihatsu

25th September 2015, 00:32

I appreciate that this is the objectives of socialism.
However, I deny this is the result.

Which part or parts do you deny as the result:

- That a socialist society would collectivize all social production

- That in a socialist society no one would own anything

Both

Yup -- see, you can't deny the 'result' of any of it because it hasn't happened yet.

---

Socialism deals with 'things', yes -- goods, resources, materials, and productive assets (factories, etc.).

In what way do any of these function in the way that capital does?

They have to be dealt with.

Okay, but that's not saying much -- sure, inanimate objects of all kinds have to be 'dealt with', since we have the capabilities of manipulating them, while those materials cannot move on their own.

You're obviously not making your case that 'things' are in any way inherently like capital.

---

It's *not* materially mutual, because the worker is being *exploited* by only being paid a wage, instead of sharing in the full revenue from the sale of the commodities that they created in the first place.

That's fine-- a critique of how people cooperate in a capitalist society.

But it is still an explanation of how it happens- regardless of your opinion about it.

It's not simply my 'critique' or my 'opinion' -- the *point*, again, is that labor is *objectively* being ripped-off for every hour of work that it does, universally.

At best, you have said that people will "co-operate" in a socialist society by working however and whatever they wish to do, and that somehow that will result in a world of good and plenty. When it doesn't, as you have wisely allowed, since after all nothing is perfect, you have allowed for a system of "labor credits" to seal the deal.

Yeah -- I'm glad you agree, but I don't think you fully understand the *function* of labor credits. (You may want to explain how they operate, in your own words, for verification.)

---

What are you talking about? The internet is built up and run as per capitalist design.

I'll disagree and invoke 'GNU' here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU

---

I can definitively say that labor credits are *not* 'capital', because there's absolutely no ownership and/or finance involved.

Is it now claimed that those workers who have earned credits through work, do not actually own those credits? If so, by what right can they claim to use them to direct production?

If you want to say that workers 'own' labor credits, that's tolerable -- 'possess' would be better.

But you're not making your case that labor credits in any way behave the way that capital does.

OK-- so the worker can "possess" labor credits-- but can "own" a toothbrush.
What's the difference?

Why are you going off on a tangent now -- ?

You wanted to somehow say that labor credits were like capital, and now you're abandoning your own argument.

---

But you're not making your case that labor credits in any way behave the way that capital does.

You already have made the argument--- ie potential workers negotiating with the possessers of labor credit adequate compensation for work being directed.
Labor credits thus must have an exchange value.

Nope -- not at all, because labor credits only pertain to liberated-labor *hours*, and to nothing else. There's no exchangeability with goods/resources/materials, or productive assets (as in financialization), so there are no commodities, and thus no exchange values.

Labor credits effectively only reference a discrete portion of *past work done*, under universal conditions of liberated labor and free-access / direct-distribution. They provide a formal social recognition of liberated labor *contributed*, to serve as a basis for a *like portion* of *additional* liberated labor, going-forward. (Nothing more.)

---

labor [supply] -- Workers with past accumulated labor credits are the funders of new work positions and incoming laborers -- labor credits are handed over at the completion of work hours -- underfunded projects and production runs are debt-based and will be noted as such against the issuing locality

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

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

But since they are not mandatory, how can they be relied upon for accounting purposes?

In all situations where a number of labor credits would be relevant, but not actually needed, the same general process could be maintained, except to note an *initiative* (of 'zero' labor credits, as a placeholder), instead of having to determine actual *numbers* of labor credits.

So, regarding the aspects in the excerpts above:

- Workers might formally 'account' for who they're 'selecting' / requesting for new work roles, even if no labor credits have to be passed forward.

- A locality might note that insufficient numbers of people are stepping forward to staff whatever popular and called-for projects are out there, and so might 'casually' acknowledge that favors would be due from the people of the locality if others from *outside* the locality would now step-up to do the labor that's basically outstanding and lacking (in lieu of using labor credits).

- And, of course, liberated labor would *always* be self-organizing, with or without labor credits as an instrument.

---

Actually it *isn't* trade, because there's no mention of trade or exchanges of any kind:

There is no mention of it true. But this is what it is in reality.

Nope -- just because you assert something or say that 'The sky is falling' doesn't make it so. (You may want to put forward an argument here.)

Baseball

25th September 2015, 19:13

[QUOTE=Xhar-Xhar Binks;2852125]See, I think this is the chief problem in this discussion. You equate everything with the specific form it takes in capitalist society,

Not at all.
what i am saying is that there will always be problems and issues to be overcome in production in any society- and this includes a socialist society.
The reply here from socialists is often a variation of "No shit, sherlock." Further elucidation tends to become "we'll figure it out later" or that in the socialist society "stuff will move around" along with the coup d'grace 'there are people starving in Africa."

But none of that says anything about socialism. CKaihatsu is trying to make an argument as to how a socialist society might function, how it might achieve its objectives when facing problems and challenges.
It's not my fault that his solutions for the socialist society in meeting such challenges are remarkably similliar to how such challenges might be resolved in a capitalist society.

But I think what it has to do with is that the socialist is wrong in his analysis of capitalism. The "problems" supposedly created by capitalism (and thus will supposedly dissappear in the socialist world) are in fact problems will exist in any modern production, and it is simply how capitalism is choosing to resolve it.

ckaihatsu

25th September 2015, 19:36

CKaihatsu is trying to make an argument as to how a socialist society might function, how it might achieve its objectives when facing problems and challenges.
It's not my fault that his solutions for the socialist society in meeting such challenges are remarkably similliar to how such challenges might be resolved in a capitalist society.

For the record, I *dispute* your characterization that my labor credits approach / solution is 'remarkably similar to [...] capitalist society'.

You *still* haven't recognized the function of labor credits by their actual definition, and instead you continue to impute your *own* characterization of them which is inaccurate and incorrect.

You can't borrow-from my model if you're misrepresenting it in the first place.

WideAwake

25th September 2015, 22:22

You are right about how people in USA and in other countries are competitive, mysanthropists, ignore others, evade others, evade eye-contact with their own neighbors, social contact with their own neighbors, because I think that humans behave by imitation, copying others and emulating others. So for instance, for example, if an altruist, sociable, friendly loving person moves into the USA (where the majority is mysanthropist and loners) after a couple of months, or years that same friendly loving person, will experience a metamorphosis into an evil mysanthropist person (like most people in USA are)

Another theory of why most american citizens are so unfriendly, cold, narcissists, unloving and lack solidarity for others. Is that according to marxism the masses, the general population of a society have the same behaviour and same way of life of their own ruling classes. (And we all know that the behaviour pattern and philosophy of thinking of imperialist fascistic totalitarian governments like the Roman Empire, British Empire and the current USA Empire is not very loving, it is a doctrine and theory of life of invading other countries, killing people, and stealing the wealth and resources of other weaker nations. (And that's why most people in America are in their personal lives, so invaders, so imperialists, so individualist so lacking in love for others, and why there is so much fascist bullying in the general population of America, and why there is an epidemia of bullying people in the last years in many schools of USA (because that's the natural philosophy of life of the US Imperialist capitalist plutocratic government

So you are right about the behaviour of people, the behaviour of people, the way people are (individualists or loving and sociable) are social construct, are created, and not natural in their genes

I read that one of the main objectives of the dictatorship of the proletariat temporary stage, is to destroy all the un-human, un-loving, narcissists and personality disorders that people have thbat are caused by oligarchic plutocratic social orders that humans have had for the last 5000 years, to be replaced by new values, and a brand new way of life in the world, where humans would see other humans of the whole planet as their own brothers and sisters

Human nature is competitive because that is how society operates. We don't have a natural predisposition to become competitive outside the fact that it is a possibility of behavior. For that behavior to become reality...the conditions need to actually require it and it needs to systematically be encouraged by them. We stop being competitive when we don't need to be competitive or when we benefit more from not being competitive.

ckaihatsu

25th September 2015, 22:33

You are right about how people in USA and in other countries are competitive, mysanthropists, ignore others, evade others, evade eye-contact with their own neighbors, social contact with their own neighbors, because I think that humans behave by imitation, copying others and emulating others. So for instance, for example, if an altruist, sociable, friendly loving person moves into the USA (where the majority is mysanthropist and loners) after a couple of months, or years that same friendly loving person, will experience a metamorphosis into an evil mysanthropist person (like most people in USA are)

Another theory of why most american citizens are so unfriendly, cold, narcissists, unloving and lack solidarity for others. Is that according to marxism the masses, the general population of a society have the same behaviour and same way of life of their own ruling classes.

So you are right about the behaviour of people, the behaviour of people, the way people are (individualists or loving and sociable) are social construct, are created, and not natural in their genes

I read that one of the main objectives of the dictatorship of the proletariat temporary stage, is to destroy all the narcissists and personality disorders that people have thbat are caused by oligarchic plutocratic social orders that humans have had for the last 5000 years, to be replaced by new values, and a brand new way of life in the world, where humans would see other humans of the whole planet as their own brothers and sisters

Sorry, but I'm going to have to take exception to this interpretation / position....

If we think of the Western Hemisphere as historically / culturally being the 'New World', in terms of historical-deterministic progress, there's nothing *inherently* wrong with 'individualism', per se.

Sure, to the extent that such 'individualism' undermines *class consciousness* and working-class *solidarity*, you're correct.

But in terms of *lifestyle* and living, your value-judgment is *arbitrary* and basically societal-philosophical. We could have an *entire world* of individualistic-type people, and still have communism, if all *production* was collectivist in nature.

I'll argue that the qualitative *flipside* of 'competitive misanthropy' is 'cutting-edge individualistic free-thinking', unhampered by tradition and heritage.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

26th September 2015, 00:00

I'm not suggesting that any planning or production should be limited to any one geographic area.

From post #256, there's a good depiction of what a localities-to-centralized "topography" could look like:

http://www.incendia.net/wiki/images/0/0c/Apollonian_I.png

It would 'read' as 'Do everything you can for local self-sufficiency first, and then communicate with nearby entities and localities, at a formally more-generalized level. Discuss what kinds of work-in-common could be coordinated across entities / localities, to realize greater scales of efficiency. The future products and benefits of all now-generalized work will be distributed to all co-participating entities and localities. Once this new level of broader cooperation and coordination has been established, stabilized, and routinized, the 'level' should look-around to find similar, nearby 'levels', for new discussions and coordinations at even-broader scales, eventually all the way up to the global scale.

And my point is that (1) there is no reason to start from one locality and generalise up to the global level, because we already live in a world where goods move around on the global level, and (2) it won't work, anyway. Given the current cultural and technical level of humanity, localities can't be self-sufficient or near-self-sufficient. I don't think that's a bad thing. Even if it was feasible to produce most goods consumed by a typical person locally, we would still lose the massive efficiency provided by economies of scale. Besides the global circulation of goods means an immense advance of human culture, as well as being conductive to the further development of science, technology etc.

Also, how is this coordination between local units supposed to work in practice? Because there are really only two ways, as I see it; either the two units make plans according to existing need, or the units in question barter. If the latter, this ultimately reduces to an exchange of values, a market. If the former, then everything needs to be generalised to the global level, which is where most of the flow of goods actually happens. So in the end we have a central plan, made with some pretty artificial constraints.

Again, I'm not suggesting any kind of lateral 'patchwork' of strictly ground-level, syndicalist-type inter-networking.

For any given entity, though, a simple input-output matrix would suffice, even if available resources are somewhat in flux -- obviously any given item could be a limiting factor curtailing production, so there would be inherent incentive for cross-cooperation and the firming-up of supply chains, for reliability of final outputs, to end-recipients.

Given any geographic region, or really, any set of productive units, you can calculate an input-output matrix. You just arrange the technical coefficients. But the problem is (1) that without planning globally, you can't know the output vector (the quantitative need for every good), and (2) if you assess the output vector by people placing orders, i.e. diachronously, then the inputs can't be calculated because the outputs are constantly changing.

I'm not summarily *dismissive* of the conventional 'delegated' approach, but I don't *favor* it, either, due to the *risk* of some kind of social stratification being a potential in that kind of arrangement.

I prefer a 'per-policy-package' approach, where any administrative-type duties would be constrained to the implementation of the specific (mass-approved) policy itself, the way the constituent work-roles are:

But where is the social stratification? Even if there is no voting, no delegation, if there is simply one "social brain" which perpetuates itself by cooptation, which I think is the extreme only some Bordigists advocate, there is still no stratification as there is no differential access to the necessities of life, but free access. The member of the most restrictive "social brain", even if they hold their position at the pleasure of other members and no one else, does not have higher status than the person who works in the factory, or who does not work. Anything they can do other people can do as well; anything they can consume other people can consume also. They are an administrator, someone appointed by society to oversee its interests and draw up plans for social production.

Not at all.
what i am saying is that there will always be problems and issues to be overcome in production in any society- and this includes a socialist society.
The reply here from socialists is often a variation of "No shit, sherlock." Further elucidation tends to become "we'll figure it out later" or that in the socialist society "stuff will move around" along with the coup d'grace 'there are people starving in Africa."

But none of that says anything about socialism. CKaihatsu is trying to make an argument as to how a socialist society might function, how it might achieve its objectives when facing problems and challenges.
It's not my fault that his solutions for the socialist society in meeting such challenges are remarkably similliar to how such challenges might be resolved in a capitalist society.

But I think what it has to do with is that the socialist is wrong in his analysis of capitalism. The "problems" supposedly created by capitalism (and thus will supposedly dissappear in the socialist world) are in fact problems will exist in any modern production, and it is simply how capitalism is choosing to resolve it.

Ckaihatsu has their own view on how a socialist society might function. I disagree - in fact I agree with some of your criticisms here that it all sounds too close to the market, to the exchange of values. But you go further than criticising ckaihatsu - not that I think all your criticisms are spot-on, but that's material for another discussion. You stated, for example, that "currency" (surely trading) was the best method of organising the global flow of goods. Well, demonstrate that it is. You dismissively refer to the fact that some (in fact, a large number of) people in Africa starve, but why is that so, if the exchange of equal values is the best way to organise the allocation of goods (from the perspective of human need because we're not interested in any other perspective)?

We don't propose that "shit" will simply "move around" - we will plan how it will move around, consciously, and from the standpoint of human need. We figure out how much goods are needed and where and draw up a plan for their production and distribution. If people in Africa need grain, and they certainly seem like they could use some, then we calculate how much grain is needed, communicate that to the plantations and the food processing factories and arrange a schedule for their transport.

Our response is along the lines of "no shit, Sherlock" when you try to prove that there will be administration, management and planning in socialism. Well, yes, that's the point, socialism tears down the government over men undertaken by the state, the parasitic excrescence of civil society, in order to institute the strictest administration, the most thorough planning, of how things are made. We aren't abstract anti-authoritarians who think any functional hierarchy is an awful imposition.

ckaihatsu

26th September 2015, 00:45

And my point is that (1) there is no reason to start from one locality

Not *one* locality, literally -- *all* localities, as the graphic depicts (the tiniest spheres).

Realistically, we might even seriously take it down to the *individual* level -- why, in a post-commodity social context, shouldn't *every person* know how to provide for themselves from the unfettered access to natural resources -- ?

and generalise up to the global level, because we already live in a world where goods move around on the global level, and (2) it won't work, anyway. Given the current cultural and technical level of humanity, localities can't be self-sufficient or near-self-sufficient. I don't think that's a bad thing. Even if it was feasible to produce most goods consumed by a typical person locally, we would still lose the massive efficiency provided by economies of scale.

How can you be arguing against *local self-sufficiency* -- ? -- !

Shouldn't any given local area be able to produce foodstuffs *for itself*, at very least to demonstrate that it knows how to do such, as a proven capability to a more-generalized production -- ? (Not to mention for a real-world situation where productive networks should happen to go-down for any given reason -- such as natural disasters, being cut-off from other localities, etc.)

Besides the global circulation of goods means an immense advance of human culture, as well as being conductive to the further development of science, technology etc.

No argument.

Also, how is this coordination between local units supposed to work in practice? Because there are really only two ways, as I see it; either the two units make plans according to existing need, or the units in question barter. If the latter, this ultimately reduces to an exchange of values, a market. If the former, then everything needs to be generalised to the global level, which is where most of the flow of goods actually happens. So in the end we have a central plan, made with some pretty artificial constraints.

As a reminder:

I'm not suggesting that any planning or production should be limited to any one geographic area.

[...] Once this new level of broader cooperation and coordination has been established, stabilized, and routinized, the 'level' should look-around to find similar, nearby 'levels', for new discussions and coordinations at even-broader scales, eventually all the way up to the global scale.

---

Given any geographic region, or really, any set of productive units, you can calculate an input-output matrix. You just arrange the technical coefficients. But the problem is (1) that without planning globally, you can't know the output vector (the quantitative need for every good), and (2) if you assess the output vector by people placing orders, i.e. diachronously, then the inputs can't be calculated because the outputs are constantly changing.

No, it's not that the input *can't* be calculated, it's just that, compared to a potential *global* scale, the various local-scale inputs would simply be relatively more *inefficient*. (As an illustrative example, consider if everyone had to provide strictly *for themselves*, individually, in a communist-type context -- it would be feasibly *possible*, in terms of inputs and outputs, but it would be achingly *inefficient* compared to *any* degree of scaling-up.)

Sure, you're saying that, globally, it would be a 'closed system', with a final knowable ceiling on all possible outputs. But, *up* to that point, sub-global networking for production would be doable, but just with more redundancy of productive effort as compared to a fully globalized production.

While I'm all-for a global centralization, I think that such a position as a political 'ultimatum' is problematic because it tends to override local self-determination. That's why I argue for a ground-level self-sufficiency *first*, so that local-type expertise can be solidified and demonstrated, so as to eventually *add* to a fully globalized coordination.

---

I'm not summarily *dismissive* of the conventional 'delegated' approach, but I don't *favor* it, either, due to the *risk* of some kind of social stratification being a potential in that kind of arrangement.

I prefer a 'per-policy-package' approach, where any administrative-type duties would be constrained to the implementation of the specific (mass-approved) policy itself, the way the constituent work-roles are:

But where is the social stratification? Even if there is no voting, no delegation, if there is simply one "social brain" which perpetuates itself by cooptation, which I think is the extreme only some Bordigists advocate, there is still no stratification as there is no differential access to the necessities of life, but free access. The member of the most restrictive "social brain", even if they hold their position at the pleasure of other members and no one else, does not have higher status than the person who works in the factory, or who does not work. Anything they can do other people can do as well; anything they can consume other people can consume also. They are an administrator, someone appointed by society to oversee its interests and draw up plans for social production.

That's great and everything but what you're ignoring is the 'administrator's daily personal experience of social life as compared to any other person's -- their position would give them a much different *perspective* on social matters than the average worker, which would be problematic. Even with the best journalism and information available on all social-collective matters, the *role* of the 'administrator', however fleeting, would still be *specialized* compared to anyone else who's *non*-administrating.

My unique approach is to *curtail* that administrative role as much as realistically possible, all the way down to the 'per-project' scale, which parallels all *other* work roles that would be constitutive of that same project.

Ckaihatsu has their own view on how a socialist society might function. I disagree - in fact I agree with some of your criticisms here that it all sounds too close to the market, to the exchange of values.

Well, no one -- not BB or TR or you -- has delineated how the instrument of my 'labor credits' could possibly constitute an 'exchange' of 'values'.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

26th September 2015, 13:38

Not *one* locality, literally -- *all* localities, as the graphic depicts (the tiniest spheres).

Realistically, we might even seriously take it down to the *individual* level -- why, in a post-commodity social context, shouldn't *every person* know how to provide for themselves from the unfettered access to natural resources -- ?

Of course every person would know how to provide for themselves. This is generally true even today (although providing for oneself is not always possible). But it's not possible to plan production and distribution at the individual level, and it's not possible to plan production and distribution at the level of individual localities, no matter what their number is.

How can you be arguing against *local self-sufficiency* -- ? -- !

Shouldn't any given local area be able to produce foodstuffs *for itself*, at very least to demonstrate that it knows how to do such, as a proven capability to a more-generalized production -- ? (Not to mention for a real-world situation where productive networks should happen to go-down for any given reason -- such as natural disasters, being cut-off from other localities, etc.)

It's not that I'm arguing against local self-sufficiency, although I would definitely argue against attempts to achieve it. It's just that with the current cultural and technical level of humanity, such self-sufficiency is impossible. Take food, for example. Given the present variety of the human diet, there is simply no way to grow all of the food that will be consumed locally, or even most of it. And even the food that can be grown locally it is more efficient to grow elsewhere. You could grow wheat around New York, for example, and around Washington, New Jersey etc. - or you could grow wheat on large-scale operations in the Midwest, in Canada etc., and ship it to New York etc. That way you're getting more in terms of material outputs (i.e. wheat) for less material inputs (land, fertilizer, fuel etc.).

This is not to say that stocks shouldn't exist for the event of disasters and so on. But any region of the world that is cut off from the rest of the world for an extended period of time is going to fare badly. Besides the global circulation of goods, services and people is not an incidental feature of the socialist society but the glue that holds it together.

No, it's not that the input *can't* be calculated, it's just that, compared to a potential *global* scale, the various local-scale inputs would simply be relatively more *inefficient*. (As an illustrative example, consider if everyone had to provide strictly *for themselves*, individually, in a communist-type context -- it would be feasibly *possible*, in terms of inputs and outputs, but it would be achingly *inefficient* compared to *any* degree of scaling-up.)

That's not the entire story, though. The point is that, given modern conditions, you need to know about demand outside any given region as well. I.e. if we take the present area of Pakistan, for example, and assess the in-region demand for mangoes, we will end up producing too little mangoes, because we haven't factored in the immense demand for mangoes outside the region.

Sure, you're saying that, globally, it would be a 'closed system', with a final knowable ceiling on all possible outputs. But, *up* to that point, sub-global networking for production would be doable, but just with more redundancy of productive effort as compared to a fully globalized production.

While I'm all-for a global centralization, I think that such a position as a political 'ultimatum' is problematic because it tends to override local self-determination. That's why I argue for a ground-level self-sufficiency *first*, so that local-type expertise can be solidified and demonstrated, so as to eventually *add* to a fully globalized coordination.

Of course it overrides local self-determination, but socialism in general overrides local self-determination, just as it overrides any form of self-management. Socialism is the socialisation of the means of production - the real locus of decision-making, then, is society as a unit, "Social Man", and not any unit of lesser scope.

That's great and everything but what you're ignoring is the 'administrator's daily personal experience of social life as compared to any other person's -- their position would give them a much different *perspective* on social matters than the average worker, which would be problematic. Even with the best journalism and information available on all social-collective matters, the *role* of the 'administrator', however fleeting, would still be *specialized* compared to anyone else who's *non*-administrating.

Why would that be the case? Again, the experience of the administrator and of the person who works in the factory would be generally identical - they would live in the same sort of housing, would have been raised by the same socialised institutions, they would have the same access to goods and so on. But in the morning, or in the evening, or whenever, one would go to work in the factory and the second would sit down with their colleagues to draw up a plan. The second one would not have any authority over the first, unless you consider communicating targets to be a form of authority.

ckaihatsu

26th September 2015, 14:33

Of course every person would know how to provide for themselves. This is generally true even today (although providing for oneself is not always possible). But it's not possible to plan production and distribution at the individual level, and it's not possible to plan production and distribution at the level of individual localities, no matter what their number is.

Well, this is a rather *academic* detour, but, in the abstract, I have differences here -- again, an atomized / granular approach to socialized production could certainly take place, hypothetically, but it would just suck. The result would be the equivalent of stocking a museum based on whatever a local collection of artists happened to produce for that month -- more 'emergence' than 'planning'.

It's not that I'm arguing against local self-sufficiency, although I would definitely argue against attempts to achieve it. It's just that with the current cultural and technical level of humanity, such self-sufficiency is impossible. Take food, for example. Given the present variety of the human diet, there is simply no way to grow all of the food that will be consumed locally, or even most of it. And even the food that can be grown locally it is more efficient to grow elsewhere. You could grow wheat around New York, for example, and around Washington, New Jersey etc. - or you could grow wheat on large-scale operations in the Midwest, in Canada etc., and ship it to New York etc. That way you're getting more in terms of material outputs (i.e. wheat) for less material inputs (land, fertilizer, fuel etc.).

This is not to say that stocks shouldn't exist for the event of disasters and so on. But any region of the world that is cut off from the rest of the world for an extended period of time is going to fare badly. Besides the global circulation of goods, services and people is not an incidental feature of the socialist society but the glue that holds it together.

No argument, but I'm also looking at this *qualitatively* -- what are the human body's requirements for a basic nutrition, and how can that threshold be supplied, either locally or collectively pan-locally -- ?

If an area is cut-off it *should* be able to be self-sufficient, at least for awhile -- that's my argument. This productive capacity could also potentially be an addition to a broader networking of production (if it's not too labor-intensive).

That's not the entire story, though. The point is that, given modern conditions, you need to know about demand outside any given region as well. I.e. if we take the present area of Pakistan, for example, and assess the in-region demand for mangoes, we will end up producing too little mangoes, because we haven't factored in the immense demand for mangoes outside the region.

This is practically a strawman formulation -- again:

I'm not suggesting that any planning or production should be limited to any one geographic area.

[...] Once this new level of broader cooperation and coordination has been established, stabilized, and routinized, the 'level' should look-around to find similar, nearby 'levels', for new discussions and coordinations at even-broader scales, eventually all the way up to the global scale.

---

Of course it overrides local self-determination, but socialism in general overrides local self-determination, just as it overrides any form of self-management. Socialism is the socialisation of the means of production - the real locus of decision-making, then, is society as a unit, "Social Man", and not any unit of lesser scope.

I'm not arguing for local self-determination as *juxtaposed* to global collective production, I'm saying that local knowledge and expertise would be *relevant* in the process of a post-capitalist globalization -- perhaps an initial local self-sufficiency would be a *demonstration* of what's possible / potential, especially if any local liberated-labor was to be involved.

So, for example, if an area was generally considered to be good for soy production but the people of that area were more interested in producing *corn* -- for some reason -- then there would be a socio-political *discrepancy* there. In terms of decision-making how should this be addressed -- ?

Why would that be the case? Again, the experience of the administrator and of the person who works in the factory would be generally identical - they would live in the same sort of housing, would have been raised by the same socialised institutions, they would have the same access to goods and so on. But in the morning, or in the evening, or whenever, one would go to work in the factory and the second would sit down with their colleagues to draw up a plan. The second one would not have any authority over the first, unless you consider communicating targets to be a form of authority.

I'm sorry, but I do see differences in social experience here, due to the differences in the scale of subject-matter involved -- the person who works in the factory would know the *factory*, undoubtedly, but the *administrator* would be privy to information about an *expanse*-worth of factories for a broad geographic area.

Again, the *better* approach is to de-institutionalize the 'administrator' role, down to the fate of whatever policy package (for social production) may be mass-approved, or not, for actual implementation.

Baseball

27th September 2015, 03:10

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852276] That's why I argue for a ground-level self-sufficiency *first*, so that local-type expertise can be solidified and demonstrated, so as to eventually *add* to a fully globalized coordination.

but what you're ignoring is the 'administrator's daily personal experience of social life as compared to any other person's -- their position would give them a much different *perspective* on social matters than the average worker, which would be problematic. Even with the best journalism and information available on all social-collective matters, the *role* of the 'administrator', however fleeting, would still be *specialized* compared to anyone else who's *non*-administrating.

How does one have "local-type expertise" without being specialized in that which one is expert?

Why would an administrator's knowledge need to be curtailed? Why is that an advantage, yet not true in other areas of work?

Baseball

27th September 2015, 03:17

Why would that be the case? Again, the experience of the administrator and of the person who works in the factory would be generally identical - they would live in the same sort of housing, would have been raised by the same socialised institutions, they would have the same access to goods and so on. But in the morning, or in the evening, or whenever, one would go to work in the factory and the second would sit down with their colleagues to draw up a plan. The second one would not have any authority over the first, unless you consider communicating targets to be a form of authority.

Why can't the workers get their information from newspapers and websites?
What is it that you think an administrator will do?

Baseball

27th September 2015, 03:35

[QUOTE]We don't propose that "shit" will simply "move around" - we will plan how it will move around, consciously, and from the standpoint of human need. We figure out how much goods are needed and where and draw up a plan for their production and distribution. If people in Africa need grain, and they certainly seem like they could use some, then we calculate how much grain is needed, communicate that to the plantations and the food processing factories and arrange a schedule for their transport.

Its not just the people in Africa needs grain-- the people in America need it also. The difference is that the problem in Africa is more acute and self-evident-- not that the problem in America is non-existent.

And why assume that to "communicate" results in your desired result? What happens when "communication" fails?
Describe "communication."

Our response is along the lines of "no shit, Sherlock" when you try to prove that there will be administration, management and planning in socialism.

That's fine. So then one needs to examine how management functions in a socialist society.
The job of administtration is to see to it that job is done properly. If the job of administrator in a socialist society is simply to ratify whatever the workers at his particular factory or work setting wish to do, then why bother with an administrator?

Well, yes, that's the point, socialism tears down the government over men undertaken by the state, the parasitic excrescence of civil society, in order to institute the strictest administration, the most thorough planning,
of how things are made.

And all these are mere suggestions to the workers-- there is no socialist police to enforce the "strictest administration" or the "most thorough planning".

We aren't abstract anti-authoritarians who think any functional hierarchy is an awful imposition.

hierarchy of what?

Baseball

27th September 2015, 03:47

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852193]
Nope -- not at all, because labor credits only pertain to liberated-labor *hours*, and to nothing else. There's no exchangeability with goods/resources/materials, or productive assets (as in financialization), so there are no commodities, and thus no exchange values.

Labor credits effectively only reference a discrete portion of *past work done*, under universal conditions of liberated labor and free-access / direct-distribution. They provide a formal social recognition of liberated labor *contributed*, to serve as a basis for a *like portion* of *additional* liberated labor, going-forward. (Nothing more.)

Labor credits themselves have value because they can be used to steer production in the direction the possesser of the credits desire-- assuming he or she can find labor willing to work for labor credit compensation being offered.

- Workers might formally 'account' for who they're 'selecting' / requesting for new work roles,

But why bother? Who cares if Joe from next store is working in the airplane factory as opposed to the asphalt factory? What is it that we are doing here?

- A locality might note that insufficient numbers of people are stepping forward to staff whatever popular and called-for projects are out there, and so might 'casually' acknowledge that favors would be due from the people of the locality if others from *outside* the locality would now step-up to do the labor that's basically outstanding and lacking (in lieu of using labor credits).

So rather than paying immigrants for needed labor, the society will owe some unspecified favor.

-
And, of course, liberated labor would *always* be self-organizing, with or without labor credits as an instrument.

Correct-- which continues to make the the relevence of labor credit inscrutable.

ckaihatsu

27th September 2015, 06:45

How does one have "local-type expertise" without being specialized in that which one is expert?

Certainly people aren't limited to just *one area* of knowledge -- for example someone may do well at their job, and know many aspects of it, especially over time, while having one or more *personal* interests, with accompanying knowledge and expertise in *those* areas as well.

Why would an administrator's knowledge need to be curtailed? Why is that an advantage, yet not true in other areas of work?

'Advantage' is abstract and ill-defined here....

What I'm saying is that, at the ground-level, as in a factory, there would structurally be more likelihood of *redundancy* over the internal work roles involved. Over time everyone in the factory would become familiarized with all aspects and tasks involved in the factory's overall functioning, and all workers would also build-up *proficiency* at all constituent tasks as well.

In a *socialist* context this is a *good* thing, because a greater general proficiency among all would equate to a generally more-capable workforce, for all of society. (In the *capitalist* context, of course, any perceived 'redundancy' of abilities among the workers is simply seen as unnecessary *expense*, prompting firings.)

However, the 'administrator's role tends to be far less structurally *overlapping* with that of other administrators -- arguably -- and tends / would-tend to be more *turf*-oriented. A collectivized society would have a common interest in *generalizing* the social function of 'administrator' so that it *doesn't* become specialized, specially-assigned, and/or turf-oriented. Greater general social *participation* in such roles / duties would *cut-against* all such dynamics tending towards specialization and elitism.

So the 'advantage' would be to *all of society* if social administration was *generalized* as much as possible -- preferably on a per-project basis, I'll argue.

(This isn't to say that any given administrator's *knowledge* should be 'curtailed', exactly -- it's more to do with limiting their *potential for institutionalization* as an individual.)

Labor credits themselves have value because they can be used to steer production in the direction the possesser of the credits desire-- assuming he or she can find labor willing to work for labor credit compensation being offered.

No argument.

---

- Workers might formally 'account' for who they're 'selecting' / requesting for new work roles, even if no labor credits have to be passed forward.

But why bother? Who cares if Joe from next store is working in the airplane factory as opposed to the asphalt factory? What is it that we are doing here?

Information for coordination and collective 'social planning', in general -- (I can't speak to any potential *particulars*, obviously).

---

- A locality might note that insufficient numbers of people are stepping forward to staff whatever popular and called-for projects are out there, and so might 'casually' acknowledge that favors would be due from the people of the locality if others from *outside* the locality would now step-up to do the labor that's basically outstanding and lacking (in lieu of using labor credits).

So rather than paying immigrants for needed labor, the society will owe some unspecified favor.

Again, I can't speak to *specifics* -- however those of a post-capitalist society work-it-out, with or without labor credits, would be entirely up to *that* society, and not this one.

('Immigrants', though, in such a social context, is problematic, since the term itself implies *nationalism*, which would be non-existent in a global socialist society -- there would *be no* national borders.) (Instead, we might think of the situation as being one of in-group, out-group, without clear geographic physical boundaries.)

---

- And, of course, liberated labor would *always* be self-organizing, with or without labor credits as an instrument.

Correct-- which continues to make the the relevence of labor credit inscrutable.

Hardly -- as mentioned in the past the usage of circulating, labor-hour-based labor credits would decisively address the realistic possibility of certain kinds of distasteful work roles being *socially necessary* but *understaffed* in a (socialist) society that uses no coercion of any sort in order to force labor participation:

The overall situation is one of somehow reconciling / meshing-together a material *unwanted* factor, 'distasteful tasks', with a socially *wanted* factor, the *labor* for those distasteful tasks.

Anglo-Saxon Philistine

30th September 2015, 14:47

Well, this is a rather *academic* detour, but, in the abstract, I have differences here -- again, an atomized / granular approach to socialized production could certainly take place, hypothetically, but it would just suck. The result would be the equivalent of stocking a museum based on whatever a local collection of artists happened to produce for that month -- more 'emergence' than 'planning'.

Here I have to admit I'm not following you. What do you mean by an "atomised/granular" approach to production? Surely we can agree that it is impossible to plan things on an individual ("atomised") level? What you're describing seems like an inversion of planning - we produce what we can and we consume what we produce. But I don't think that amounts to socialised production - if socialised production is generalised planning (as the short-term, market-constrained planning that capitalists undertake is transformed into generalised, long-term planning for need when society takes the entire stock of the means of production under its control), this is generalised anarchy of production.

No argument, but I'm also looking at this *qualitatively* -- what are the human body's requirements for a basic nutrition, and how can that threshold be supplied, either locally or collectively pan-locally -- ?

In most cases it can't, particularly not if we're talking about a healthy, diverse diet that corresponds to the current cultural level - or to the higher levels that human society will reach in socialism, as cultures become interpenetrated and lose distinction. An area that is suitable for fishing will not be suitable for large-scale grain cultivation, for example.

If an area is cut-off it *should* be able to be self-sufficient, at least for awhile -- that's my argument. This productive capacity could also potentially be an addition to a broader networking of production (if it's not too labor-intensive).

But why would an area be cut off from the rest of the world for so long that its production capacities become an issue? I can understand things like hurricanes and so on, but what you're talking about would have to take months at least (and of course, if we're talking about natural disasters, it's very difficult to predict just what areas will be cut off and you have no guarantee that areas will correspond to what you consider localities).

This is practically a strawman formulation -- again:

I don't think it is. You're saying that plans would be made at the local level then collated upwards, if I've understood you correctly. But in fact you can't really make plans at the local level and expect them to survive intact. In the end you have a general social plan, only you took an extremely roundabout way of getting there, and as a result the plan is artificially constrained.

I'm not arguing for local self-determination as *juxtaposed* to global collective production, I'm saying that local knowledge and expertise would be *relevant* in the process of a post-capitalist globalization -- perhaps an initial local self-sufficiency would be a *demonstration* of what's possible / potential, especially if any local liberated-labor was to be involved.

But any productive potential is also non-local. Bauxite extraction in Brazil is useless without aluminum smelting in Iceland and so on.

So, for example, if an area was generally considered to be good for soy production but the people of that area were more interested in producing *corn* -- for some reason -- then there would be a socio-political *discrepancy* there. In terms of decision-making how should this be addressed -- ?

That depends on how important it is to grow soy in that area. Ultimately, people in socialism will have the prerogative to do with themselves what they please. But they will not have the prerogative to do whatever they please with the means of production. These are held in common - to the extent that we can use ownership as a metaphor here, they're everyone's. So if it's a priority area, people who want to grow corn (I think the example is stretched to say the least) will be found.

I'm sorry, but I do see differences in social experience here, due to the differences in the scale of subject-matter involved -- the person who works in the factory would know the *factory*, undoubtedly, but the *administrator* would be privy to information about an *expanse*-worth of factories for a broad geographic area.

For the entire globe! As I said, production in the modern world is global; you extract bauxite in Brazil or Australia then smelt it in Iceland and send it to France to produce airplanes that are needed in Poland. But if the person who works in the factory wants to, they can also access the data. One thing about socialist administration is that it's all public. And completely transparent - which doesn't mean just publishing the data but presenting them so that they're understandable to everyone.

Again, the *better* approach is to de-institutionalize the 'administrator' role, down to the fate of whatever policy package (for social production) may be mass-approved, or not, for actual implementation.

This once again runs into the problem of diachronicity. Instead of regular rhythms of planning and production, and administrative continuity, you get a constantly changing situation.

Why can't the workers get their information from newspapers and websites?

They can. And presumably they will. But there need to be official channels of communication - which today would presumably be electronic for reasons of convenience if nothing else. What happens if one newspaper prints that the new target for steel is 137 035 999 173, and another that it's 137 035 999 139, for example?

What is it that you think an administrator will do?

In the text you quoted, I was talking about a hypothetical "social brain" of the sort Bordiga talks about. I don't think that's a good model as you completely lose participation of workers in the factories, mines etc. As for what administrators, executives, planners and so on would do, quite a lot of things I would imagine. Planners and statisticians would have to calculate the inputs needed to fulfill projected need and estimate that need in the first place. Inspectors would have to see to the maintenance of infrastructure and quality standards. Executives of large production syndicates (I'm using Preobrazhensky's term here; in the USSR these were called glavki or centres) would have to deal with matters of research and development, standardisation, "marketing" (letting the rest of society know there are new products on offer) and so on.

Its not just the people in Africa needs grain-- the people in America need it also. The difference is that the problem in Africa is more acute and self-evident-- not that the problem in America is non-existent.

Yes, and the allocation of grain in present society obviously does not satisfy human need. If it did, the agricultural overproduction of Europe would be shipped to Africa, not destroyed to keep prices high. So the question is, why do you think "currency" is the "best way" to arrange the distribution of goods?

And why assume that to "communicate" results in your desired result? What happens when "communication" fails?
Describe "communication."

What does it mean for communication to fail? Did someone cut the phone wires or what?

Communication is literally that - the planning commission calculates that the need for steel units is X, this is distributed throughout factories and a message is sent to a given factory that their target is X'.

That's fine. So then one needs to examine how management functions in a socialist society.
The job of administtration is to see to it that job is done properly. If the job of administrator in a socialist society is simply to ratify whatever the workers at his particular factory or work setting wish to do, then why bother with an administrator?

What you're describing is the job of a manager or foreman - higher administrators like executives and so on rarely bother with these things. And yes, the socialist society will still need managers, overseers and so on - to coordinate the efforts of people working in the various production units. Everyone is free to work where they please, or not at all. But once they enter the factory they're not free, by the nature of modern production, to do whatever. The manager is there to coordinate your effort and the effort of other workers - just as a conductor coordinates the efforts of various musicians.

And all these are mere suggestions to the workers-- there is no socialist police to enforce the "strictest administration" or the "most thorough planning".

There doesn't have to be. People are not idiots; as a species we are more than capable of working together. It's one of the few advantages we have over most of the rest of the animal kingdom.

hierarchy of what?

Hierarchy of positions. For example, the executives at the head of the steel production syndicate might want to form working groups on quality control, metallurgy etc., whose members are then subordinate to them when carrying their tasks out. These in turn might form lesser working bodies, and so on. That is necessary in any industrial society.

ckaihatsu

30th September 2015, 17:05

Here I have to admit I'm not following you. What do you mean by an "atomised/granular" approach to production? Surely we can agree that it is impossible to plan things on an individual ("atomised") level? What you're describing seems like an inversion of planning - we produce what we can and we consume what we produce. But I don't think that amounts to socialised production - if socialised production is generalised planning (as the short-term, market-constrained planning that capitalists undertake is transformed into generalised, long-term planning for need when society takes the entire stock of the means of production under its control), this is generalised anarchy of production.

It's not an important point, and I have no argument. I meant to indicate a hypothetical societal arrangement that would be post-capitalism -- no oppression or private ownership -- but that would be unplanned, granular, and fully emergent regarding production. (I'm not advocating it.)

---

[I]'m also looking at this *qualitatively* -- what are the human body's requirements for a basic nutrition, and how can that threshold be supplied, either locally or collectively pan-locally -- ?

In most cases it can't, particularly not if we're talking about a healthy, diverse diet that corresponds to the current cultural level - or to the higher levels that human society will reach in socialism, as cultures become interpenetrated and lose distinction. An area that is suitable for fishing will not be suitable for large-scale grain cultivation, for example.

Again, I'm not arguing *against* centralization, but it seems that *all* areas could be 'beefed up' in terms of what they *could* potentially produce themselves, for foodstuffs. (Consider today's building-based vertical farming, artificial ponds dug for aquaculture, whatever.)

But why would an area be cut off from the rest of the world for so long that its production capacities become an issue? I can understand things like hurricanes and so on, but what you're talking about would have to take months at least (and of course, if we're talking about natural disasters, it's very difficult to predict just what areas will be cut off and you have no guarantee that areas will correspond to what you consider localities).

Just sayin' -- and now *this* subtopic is becoming academic.... Would a post-capitalist social order want to improve all 'localities' for their respective local potentials for production -- ?

If I were 'there' I'd *argue for* such a 'developmental' phase, but from the vantage point of 'here' it's entirely a postulation.

I don't think it is. You're saying that plans would be made at the local level then collated upwards, if I've understood you correctly. But in fact you can't really make plans at the local level and expect them to survive intact. In the end you have a general social plan, only you took an extremely roundabout way of getting there, and as a result the plan is artificially constrained.

I'm not arguing for anything to be more drawn-out, time-consuming, or laborious than it needs to be -- I don't argue for a 'mandatory' dictatorship-of-the-proletariat stage, no matter what, and I won't argue for a "necessary" localities-to-centralization generalization configuration over time, either.

If actual real-world conditions would show that a general (global) social plan could be effected immediately, then obviously that's what should happen. But if, for whatever reasons, such *wasn't* possible immediately, then socialized production *might* be possible at *lesser* scales, at more localized levels, until such *could* be generalized to the global level as quickly as possible.

You're correct in that 'plans' at more-localized scales are not *meant* to be intact / set-in-stone. They may be *appropriate*, though, for a certain period of time -- and even *work* / be functional -- until the time that such plans could be *discarded*, in favor of *new* plans that are formulated in-common, at broader scales of cooperation and participation.

But any productive potential is also non-local. Bauxite extraction in Brazil is useless without aluminum smelting in Iceland and so on.

Aside from the sourcing of actual *mineral deposits*, I don't see why any given type of production has to be so *geographically fixed*, as you're indicating. Couldn't aluminum smelting potentially be done *anywhere*, if proper facilities are constructed for it -- ?

'Globalization' is an *optimum*, but not a *necessity* -- given a post-capitalist social order people may actually *eschew* much of the long-distance transportation that is integral to today's market-based production. More-local production -- especially for the basics of life and living -- may be *favored* by a post-capitalist ethos, at least initially.

That depends on how important it is to grow soy in that area. Ultimately, people in socialism will have the prerogative to do with themselves what they please. But they will not have the prerogative to do whatever they please with the means of production. These are held in common - to the extent that we can use ownership as a metaphor here, they're everyone's. So if it's a priority area, people who want to grow corn (I think the example is stretched to say the least) will be found.

Well, this is the kind of thing that interests me -- how would decision-making, especially over various overlapping scales -- be determined on a post-capitalist, mass basis -- ?

(I have my own approach, of course, based on one or more localities' mass-prioritizations.)

For the entire globe! As I said, production in the modern world is global; you extract bauxite in Brazil or Australia then smelt it in Iceland and send it to France to produce airplanes that are needed in Poland. But if the person who works in the factory wants to, they can also access the data. One thing about socialist administration is that it's all public. And completely transparent - which doesn't mean just publishing the data but presenting them so that they're understandable to everyone.

Yes, but in practice I think people would be most concerned with whatever their daily routines brought them in front of, even if the information was in the public domain for all to see.

Again, I'm arguing for a *social* process that is dynamically all-inclusive, as with social-politics around any given *policy package*, from the local level and broader.

Perhaps workers around the local bauxite operations in Brazil and Australia have been in communication about their industry, and many voices are calling for the smelting to be done *locally*, near the respective bauxite *mines*.

This would necessitate a 'project' for the construction of each additional smelting plant, with the 'administration' over each project to be circumscribed to the *project itself* -- with completely transparent information about all of it along-the-way, of course.

So with this situation, XXB, could you really have an argument or position *against* it, yourself -- ?

Can you invoke 'global production' to realistically argue against *expanded capacity* somewhere, wherever it may happen to be -- ? (What if this subsequent additional capacity had the effect of somewhat *localizing* the production of a particular something, according to the expressed intent of those people there, at that locality -- would that be a 'problem' -- ?)

---

Again, the *better* approach is to de-institutionalize the 'administrator' role, down to the fate of whatever policy package (for social production) may be mass-approved, or not, for actual implementation.

This once again runs into the problem of diachronicity. Instead of regular rhythms of planning and production, and administrative continuity, you get a constantly changing situation.

I think we may be thinking of different *time scales* here -- I have no problem with a 'settled', stable configuration of productive networks, globally administrated in common.

But in terms of *getting there*, I don't think the *transition* would be a simple two-step, capitalism-to-communism changeover, especially if local, 'soy-versus-corn' concerns are to be taken into consideration.

(Consider that, once capitalism is overthrown, *all of production* would suddenly be 'up for grabs', so-to-speak -- there would *have* to be, in my estimation, a period of settling the local-to-global dynamic of *scale*, necessarily.)

Tim Redd

1st October 2015, 03:58

...obviously labor credits are *not* 'currency' of any kind since they aren't exchangeable for goods/resources/materials.)

On the contrary, labor credits commit various social resources to some goal decided by the trustee of the labor credits.

ckaihatsu

1st October 2015, 11:20

On the contrary, labor credits commit various social resources to some goal decided by the trustee of the labor credits.

You're *overstating* things, TR -- your statement doesn't *overturn* mine, or in any way prove that labor credits *are* currency.

Possessing labor credits doesn't *automatically* commit anyone's liberated-labor (the only 'social resource' that pertains to the use of labor credits), because no one is automatically *obligated* to commit their labor just because someone offers to pass-along their labor credits for such.

And 'trustee' is definitely an *inappropriate* term, since it implies a large accumulation of capital-type funds -- the money, or 'currency' of capitalism.

You may be meaning 'possessor' or 'past earner' of the labor credits.

Baseball

2nd October 2015, 01:43

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852731].

Possessing labor credits doesn't *automatically* commit anyone's liberated-labor (the only 'social resource' that pertains to the use of labor credits), because no one is automatically *obligated* to commit their labor just because someone offers to pass-along their labor credits for such.

Nobody is obligated in a capitalist society to commit their labor just because somebody offers to pay.

And 'trustee' is definitely an *inappropriate* term, since it implies a large accumulation of capital-type funds -- the money, or 'currency' of capitalism.

It implies a greater ability to influence and direct production

Baseball

2nd October 2015, 01:51

[QUOTE]Yes, but in practice I think people would be most concerned with whatever their daily routines brought them in front of, even if the information was in the public domain for all to see.

This is true.

Again, I'm arguing for a *social* process that is dynamically all-inclusive, as with social-politics around any given *policy package*, from the local level and broader.

Which squares how with the claim people would generally be concerned about that which is front of them?

Perhaps workers around the local bauxite operations in Brazil and Australia have been in communication about their industry, and many voices are calling for the smelting to be done *locally*, near the respective bauxite *mines*.

This would necessitate a 'project' for the construction of each additional smelting plant, with the 'administration' over each project to be circumscribed to the *project itself* -- with completely transparent information about all of it along-the-way, of course.

It is completely understandable that the bauxite workers would wish to continue mine bauxite, would probably support other bauxite workers around the globe in their efforts to continue to produce bauxite.
It is after all, what they see in front of them.

And no doubt the buggy workers wished to keep on making buggies, and the typewriter people wish to continue to make typewriters. It was, after all, what they saw in front of them.

Baseball

2nd October 2015, 02:11

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852412]Certainly people aren't limited to just *one area* of knowledge -- for example someone may do well at their job, and know many aspects of it, especially over time, while having one or more *personal* interests, with accompanying knowledge and expertise in *those* areas as well.

What is your objection to people with speciailized knowledge in some aspect of production?

'Advantage' is abstract and ill-defined here....

You defined that it is "problematic" when administrators have greater knowledge of the field, of the totality of production...

What I'm saying is that, at the ground-level, as in a factory, there would structurally be more likelihood of *redundancy* over the internal work roles involved. Over time everyone in the factory would become familiarized with all aspects and tasks involved in the factory's overall functioning, and all workers would also build-up *proficiency* at all constituent tasks as well.

OK-- jacks of all trades, and masters of none.
But why is it a problem when there are highly skilled in certain tasks, but who otherwise are not skilled in others?

In a *socialist* context this is a *good* thing, because a greater general proficiency among all would equate to a generally more-capable workforce, for all of society.

One would rather think that, over a time, a collection of jacks would slow down progress, slow down training and skills to future workers, who do not have the benefit of learning from masters of a skill.

(In the *capitalist* context, of course, any perceived 'redundancy' of abilities among the workers is simply seen as unnecessary *expense*, prompting firings.)

The correct way to look at this is that this frees up labor to work and apply their skills elsewhere, in other endeavors.

However, the 'administrator's role tends to be far less structurally *overlapping* with that of other administrators -- arguably -- and tends / would-tend to be more *turf*-oriented. A collectivized society would have a common interest in *generalizing* the social function of 'administrator' so that it *doesn't* become specialized, specially-assigned, and/or turf-oriented.

Why would the collectivized society have such an interest?

Information for coordination and collective 'social planning', in general -- (I can't speak to any potential *particulars*, obviously).

Planning what? By whom? People can't be forced to work anywhere, so what is exactly is being planned?

Again, I can't speak to *specifics* -- however those of a post-capitalist society work-it-out, with or without labor credits, would be entirely up to *that* society, and not this one.

That answer is such a cop-out.
The suggestion to solve the problem is to import labor, with various schemes. One of which s to pay people. Which is fine.
Except that this solution is substantively no different than how a capitalist society might solve the problem. Which is also fine because it is a rational way of solving the problem

Hardly -- as mentioned in the past the usage of circulating, labor-hour-based labor credits would decisively address the realistic possibility of certain kinds of distasteful work roles being *socially necessary* but *understaffed* in a (socialist) society that uses no coercion of any sort in order to force labor participation:

Its never been explained that labor credits solves anything, much less decisively. All its been suggested is that labor credits allow some individuals to control some of the means of production.

Baseball

2nd October 2015, 02:38

[QUOTE=Xhar-Xhar Binks;2852639]

That depends on how important it is to grow soy in that area. Ultimately, people in socialism will have the prerogative to do with themselves what they please. But they will not have the prerogative to do whatever they please with the means of production. These are held in common - to the extent that we can use ownership as a metaphor here, they're everyone's. So if it's a priority area, people who want to grow corn (I think the example is stretched to say the least) will be found.

Via "communication", no doubt.
Labor credits are a form of communication, asking pretty please will you work in the corn fields, is a form of communication, putting a gun to somebody's head and saying work in the cornfields is also a form of communication.

For the entire globe! As I said, production in the modern world is global; you extract bauxite in Brazil or Australia then smelt it in Iceland and send it to France to produce airplanes that are needed in Poland.

Yep-- the decision of the bauxite workers in Brazil as to how they choose to work cannot be be the final word. Which requires a little more explanation beyond people "will be found" when it comes to growing corn as opposed to soy.

This once again runs into the problem of diachronicity. Instead of regular rhythms of planning and production, and administrative continuity, you get a constantly changing situation.

It is true that a "constantly changing situation" is a problem for socialist planning.
The bigger problem is that life is a "constantly changing situation." In this sense, socialism has a problem with people.

They can. And presumably they will. But there need to be official channels of communication - which today would presumably be electronic for reasons of convenience if nothing else. What happens if one newspaper prints that the new target for steel is 137 035 999 173, and another that it's 137 035 999 139, for example?

Ok-- and those administrators would need to have authority to compel the workers in their charge in the direction of the administrator to be the correct figure.

What you're describing is the job of a manager or foreman - higher administrators like executives and so on rarely bother with these things. And yes, the socialist society will still need managers, overseers and so on - to coordinate the efforts of people working in the various production units. Everyone is free to work where they please, or not at all. But once they enter the factory they're not free, by the nature of modern production, to do whatever. The manager is there to coordinate your effort and the effort of other workers - just as a conductor coordinates the efforts of various musicians.

And how much authority, and for what, over the workers in their charge do these managers have? Can the manager unilaterally adjust the work patterns of his workers? Unilaterally increase the numbers of his workers, or decrease its numbers?

There doesn't have to be. People are not idiots; as a species we are more than capable of working together.

What does this even mean? Somebody puts a gun to my head, I suspect the two of us will be capable of working together. No doubt, however, this not what you mean.

ckaihatsu

2nd October 2015, 06:16

Possessing labor credits doesn't *automatically* commit anyone's liberated-labor (the only 'social resource' that pertains to the use of labor credits), because no one is automatically *obligated* to commit their labor just because someone offers to pass-along their labor credits for such.

Nobody is obligated in a capitalist society to commit their labor just because somebody offers to pay.

But this ground-level perspective ignores the *broader* fact that everyone needs *some kind* of money in order to survive and live in capitalist society -- it's unavoidable. So for the vast majority who don't have means of their own, they / we *are* obliged to commit our labor when someone offers to pay. (No one who needs money can turn down job offers indefinitely.)

---

And 'trustee' is definitely an *inappropriate* term, since it implies a large accumulation of capital-type funds -- the money, or 'currency' of capitalism.

You may be meaning 'possessor' or 'past earner' of the labor credits.

It implies a greater ability to influence and direct production

In the context of a collectivist production those who may happen to have labor credits in their possession (from past work done, by definition), may *not necessarily* be in a better position to influence and direct production -- this is because the real-world situation may be that of a subsequent (mass) project being done *without them*, where everything just comes together in the default communist gift-economy type of way. (In other words if there's sufficient liberated labor who feels that they don't *require* labor credits for whatever work roles they're committing to, then obviously those who *have* labor credits to put towards those work roles for the project would simply be *irrelevant*, no matter *how many* labor credits they happened to have.)

---

Yes, but in practice I think people would be most concerned with whatever their daily routines brought them in front of, even if the information was in the public domain for all to see.

This is true.

Again, I'm arguing for a *social* process that is dynamically all-inclusive, as with social-politics around any given *policy package*, from the local level and broader.

Which squares how with the claim people would generally be concerned about that which is front of them?

The idea here is that people would be *inherently* socially involved around anything that happened to be *both* 'in front of them' -- meaning job-related -- *and* was 'local' to them -- meaning in their physical vicinity.

Nowadays that's obviously *not* the case, since plenty of things transpire around us (physically) without requiring our own actual participation -- which is *not* a reasonable, rational state of affairs -- while things we *are* involved with, around our professional occupations, are *not transparent* -- *also* an unreasonable and irrational state of affairs.

The intersection / combination of 'physically local' and 'work-related' should be the *most empowering* combination of objective factors, so that one would have all the relevant real-world information related to that situation, *and* the work would directly be a dynamic part of that local situation.

---

Perhaps workers around the local bauxite operations in Brazil and Australia have been in communication about their industry, and many voices are calling for the smelting to be done *locally*, near the respective bauxite *mines*.

This would necessitate a 'project' for the construction of each additional smelting plant, with the 'administration' over each project to be circumscribed to the *project itself* -- with completely transparent information about all of it along-the-way, of course.

It is completely understandable that the bauxite workers would wish to continue mine bauxite, would probably support other bauxite workers around the globe in their efforts to continue to produce bauxite.
It is after all, what they see in front of them.

And no doubt the buggy workers wished to keep on making buggies, and the typewriter people wish to continue to make typewriters. It was, after all, what they saw in front of them.

Okay -- it's unclear what point you may be trying to make with this.

---

Certainly people aren't limited to just *one area* of knowledge -- for example someone may do well at their job, and know many aspects of it, especially over time, while having one or more *personal* interests, with accompanying knowledge and expertise in *those* areas as well.

What is your objection to people with speciailized knowledge in some aspect of production?

It's here:

[A] collectivized society would have a common interest in *generalizing* the social function of 'administrator' so that it *doesn't* become specialized, specially-assigned, and/or turf-oriented. Greater general social *participation* in such roles / duties would *cut-against* all such dynamics tending towards specialization and elitism.

---

Why would an administrator's knowledge need to be curtailed? Why is that an advantage, yet not true in other areas of work?

'Advantage' is abstract and ill-defined here....

You defined that it is "problematic" when administrators have greater knowledge of the field, of the totality of production...

You're mixing-up 'knowledge' with 'jurisdiction' (so-to-speak) -- the concern here isn't with anyone's particular 'knowledge' -- especially since all operational information would be in the public domain, anyway -- the concern is with 'turf':

(This isn't to say that any given administrator's *knowledge* should be 'curtailed', exactly -- it's more to do with limiting their *potential for institutionalization* as an individual.)

---

What I'm saying is that, at the ground-level, as in a factory, there would structurally be more likelihood of *redundancy* over the internal work roles involved. Over time everyone in the factory would become familiarized with all aspects and tasks involved in the factory's overall functioning, and all workers would also build-up *proficiency* at all constituent tasks as well.

OK-- jacks of all trades, and masters of none.

This is an unkind characterization that borders on being a *slur* of anyone who's involved their life in their work to any significant degree. (Meaning that work-involved people have most likely picked up a *variety* of work-related skills, with one or some at the 'mastery' level -- your demeaning description of this is unwarranted.)

You're showing a dismissiveness towards the material potential for a site-situated *collectivism* over production, which is what we'd expect from your (anti-collectivist) politics.

But why is it a problem when there are highly skilled in certain tasks, but who otherwise are not skilled in others?

I'm not framing any of this part in the context of being any kind of 'problem'.

Collectivism -- particularly in a particular physical location over time -- means that people's various skills can *complement* and *reinforce* each other, especially if the people can be *socially empowered* themselves from the same (not exploited on the products of that cooperation).

---

In a *socialist* context this is a *good* thing, because a greater general proficiency among all would equate to a generally more-capable workforce, for all of society.

One would rather think that, over a time, a collection of jacks would slow down progress, slow down training and skills to future workers, who do not have the benefit of learning from masters of a skill.

You're displaying a *fetish* over specialization, as though 'knowledge' and 'expertise' *must* be individuated into specific individuals, for its realization in production.

As a counter-example, consider an 'instruction manual' for any given machine or piece of equipment at a workplace -- this is a *person-independent* *resource*, which can be consulted by *anyone*, for acquiring some amount of 'new' information, and even expertise, about something work-related.

We can picture the diffusion of knowledge and expertise as being 'pyramid'-shaped, where the base indicates the *broadness* of scope covered -- as to many people -- with the height indicating *skill*, or 'mastery'.

Your inclination is to argue for a 'higher' pyramid, at the expense of its base, while a more-*collectivist* approach is to argue for a *broader base*, bringing in more participation, even if it means that the 'heights' will be initially lower.

---

(In the *capitalist* context, of course, any perceived 'redundancy' of abilities among the workers is simply seen as unnecessary *expense*, prompting firings.)

The correct way to look at this is that this frees up labor to work and apply their skills elsewhere, in other endeavors.

I'll consider this to be an objectively 'half-valid' point, depending on the circumstances, but, of course, what's *really* the underlying point of it is that the *workers themselves* are not the ones who have the collective administrative decision over this matter of who among them stays and who leaves.

---

However, the 'administrator's role tends to be far less structurally *overlapping* with that of other administrators -- arguably -- and tends / would-tend to be more *turf*-oriented. A collectivized society would have a common interest in *generalizing* the social function of 'administrator' so that it *doesn't* become specialized, specially-assigned, and/or turf-oriented. Greater general social *participation* in such roles / duties would *cut-against* all such dynamics tending towards specialization and elitism.

Why would the collectivized society have such an interest?

It's by-definition -- 'collectivized' means 'according to the collective', so anything that cuts-against this 'principle', or dynamic, as the consolidation of power around any single individual would be, would be *contrary* to 'collectivism'.

So the 'advantage' would be to *all of society* if social administration was *generalized* as much as possible -- preferably on a per-project basis, I'll argue.

---

Information for coordination and collective 'social planning', in general -- (I can't speak to any potential *particulars*, obviously).

Planning what? By whom? People can't be forced to work anywhere, so what is exactly is being planned?

I dunno -- you want to pick a scenario -- ?

---

- A locality might note that insufficient numbers of people are stepping forward to staff whatever popular and called-for projects are out there, and so might 'casually' acknowledge that favors would be due from the people of the locality if others from *outside* the locality would now step-up to do the labor that's basically outstanding and lacking (in lieu of using labor credits).

So rather than paying immigrants for needed labor, the society will owe some unspecified favor.

Again, I can't speak to *specifics* -- however those of a post-capitalist society work-it-out, with or without labor credits, would be entirely up to *that* society, and not this one.

That answer is such a cop-out.
The suggestion to solve the problem is to import labor, with various schemes. One of which s to pay people. Which is fine.
Except that this solution is substantively no different than how a capitalist society might solve the problem. Which is also fine because it is a rational way of solving the problem

Your facile parallel-making aside, you're again ignoring that the entire *social context* is different, and is not compatible with that of capitalist ownership.

In a *collectivist* context a 'locality' -- ultimately a group or collection of people -- would only be directly 'using' or 'exploiting' others *exactly* like themselves (in economic terms), if the people of that locality didn't do the work *themselves*, for their own primary benefit.

I'll invoke the 'furs for everyone' problematic here, where a locality / population might popularly call for an egalitarian-minded *redistribution* of luxury items, like furs.

In this (extrapolated) scenario let's say that only *half* of the people in the locality who want furs actually *get* furs, from the initial redistribution (political-logistical technicalities aside) -- that leaves the people of the *other half* of the locality who *want* furs, but which aren't forthcoming from existing supplies.

Perhaps this entire locality is an *urban* area, with no 'forest' or 'woodlands' around which would be the typical area for the procurement of furs -- should everyone from this urban locality mobilize themselves to travel out in numbers to find areas in which to hunt and trap, etc., or would there be a better solution in *socializing* liberated-labor somehow, as with the people in other areas that *are* in forests, woodlands, etc. -- ?

The people of the urban locality can't just say 'Get us furs', because they have no grounds to just request the liberated labor of others, with no material regard for it and the products of it.

Hence we're back at the initial situation of a post-capitalist 'informal favor-swapping', or the use of formal labor credits.

---

- And, of course, liberated labor would *always* be self-organizing, with or without labor credits as an instrument.

Correct-- which continues to make the the relevence of labor credit inscrutable.

Hardly -- as mentioned in the past the usage of circulating, labor-hour-based labor credits would decisively address the realistic possibility of certain kinds of distasteful work roles being *socially necessary* but *understaffed* in a (socialist) society that uses no coercion of any sort in order to force labor participation:

The overall situation is one of somehow reconciling / meshing-together a material *unwanted* factor, 'distasteful tasks', with a socially *wanted* factor, the *labor* for those distasteful tasks.

Its never been explained that labor credits solves anything, much less decisively. All its been suggested is that labor credits allow some individuals to control some of the means of production.

Your assertion here was that the instrument of labor credits is 'inscrutable', while you *just* described them as being that they 'allow some individuals to control some of the means of production'.

I'll clarify / mop-up here....

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

labor [supply] -- Only active workers may control communist property -- no private accumulations are allowed and any proceeds from work that cannot be used or consumed by persons themselves will revert to collectivized communist property

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

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

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

Baseball

2nd October 2015, 15:39

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852800]But this ground-level perspective ignores the *broader* fact that everyone needs *some kind* of money in order to survive and live in capitalist society -- it's unavoidable. So for the vast majority who don't have means of their own, they / we *are* obliged to commit our labor when someone offers to pay. (No one who needs money can turn down job offers indefinitely.)

However, the socialist system needs people to commit their labor.
I understand that labor credits are designed as a way to get people to get people to commit their labor when they might not otherwise have.
But in order for that to work, those credits themselves must have value, they must result it is possesser gaining something he or she would have been unable to obtain without it.
You have said it allows the posseser to gain personal, or as a group pooling their credits, control of some aspect of the means of production.
But this must mean that there are means of production which are not socialized, or which are not committed to a plan. Otherwise, there is nothing available for the posseser of labor credits to direct.
But how does the existence non-socialized production and means of production without any set plans for production fit with the theory and objective of socialism?

In the context of a collectivist production those who may happen to have labor credits in their possession (from past work done, by definition), may *not necessarily* be in a better position to influence and direct production -- this is because the real-world situation may be that of a subsequent (mass) project being done *without them*, where everything just comes together in the default communist gift-economy type of way. (In other words if there's sufficient liberated labor who feels that they don't *require* labor credits for whatever work roles they're committing to, then obviously those who *have* labor credits to put towards those work roles for the project would simply be *irrelevant*, no matter *how many* labor credits they happened to have.)

This situation is simply that the person with labor credits cannot find labor to work for whatever credits the posseser is offering.

It's here

OK-- knowledge is elitism.

You're mixing-up 'knowledge' with 'jurisdiction' (so-to-speak) -- the concern here isn't with anyone's particular 'knowledge' -- especially since all operational information would be in the public domain, anyway -- the concern is with 'turf':

Why wouldn't the skilled pipefitter object to the skilled plasterer fitting pipes?
Anyone can read a book, i suppose, but isn't it better to have people who have years of experience at a particular, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel?

---

This is an unkind characterization that borders on being a *slur* of anyone who's involved their life in their work to any significant degree. (Meaning that work-involved people have most likely picked up a *variety* of work-related skills, with one or some at the 'mastery' level -- your demeaning description of this is unwarranted.)

Excuse me, it is *you* not I who is suspicious of people who have a "mastery" of some job or task (remember, it leads to elitism, which must be avoided). It is you, not I, who says that everyone should learn a little bit of something and that society is stronger for it. hence, "jack of all trades and master of none." If people are true masters of a task, great. But that requires years of focus and work at that task, to the exclusion of other tasks and jobs, a state of affairs which you have explained can be a problem for the socialist society.

You're showing a dismissiveness towards the material potential for a site-situated *collectivism* over production, which is what we'd expect from your (anti-collectivist) politics.

So which is a better situation... everyone learning a little bit of something, or some people being completely masterful on one or two things?

I'm not framing any of this part in the context of being any kind of 'problem'.

Is "elitism" a problem for a socialist society, or not?

You're displaying a *fetish* over specialization, as though 'knowledge' and 'expertise' *must* be individuated into specific individuals, for its realization in production.

I believe it is good to have people who know their jobs, who are masters of it.

As a counter-example, consider an 'instruction manual' for any given machine or piece of equipment at a workplace -- this is a *person-independent* *resource*, which can be consulted by *anyone*, for acquiring some amount of 'new' information, and even expertise, about something work-related.

Certainly-- entry level work. Everyone starts somewhere.

We can picture the diffusion of knowledge and expertise as being 'pyramid'-shaped, where the base indicates the *broadness* of scope covered -- as to many people -- with the height indicating *skill*, or 'mastery'.

The person who spent 20 years being a painter, or a carpenter is most likely going to have greater knowledge than the newbie. That one person can have more of a positive effect at work than 10 people who have some passing knowledge of the task.

Your inclination is to argue for a 'higher' pyramid, at the expense of its base, while a more-*collectivist* approach is to argue for a *broader base*, bringing in more participation, even if it means that the 'heights' will be initially lower.

The pyramid proposed is inverted. The tip is the person who is diffusing the knowledge outwards, to the base.
Yet anyone could probably lay out a row of stone. The pinnacle, the tip, comes from the person who can design the pyramid so as not to collapse.

I'll consider this to be an objectively 'half-valid' point, depending on the circumstances, but, of course, what's *really* the underlying point of it is that the *workers themselves* are not the ones who have the collective administrative decision over this matter of who among them stays and who leaves.

this is more of an XXB critique-- what exactly do these administrators do--

---

I'll invoke the 'furs for everyone' problematic here, where a locality / population might popularly call for an egalitarian-minded *redistribution* of luxury items, like furs.

In this (extrapolated) scenario let's say that only *half* of the people in the locality who want furs actually *get* furs, from the initial redistribution (political-logistical technicalities aside) -- that leaves the people of the *other half* of the locality who *want* furs, but which aren't forthcoming from existing supplies.

Perhaps this entire locality is an *urban* area, with no 'forest' or 'woodlands' around which would be the typical area for the procurement of furs -- should everyone from this urban locality mobilize themselves to travel out in numbers to find areas in which to hunt and trap, etc., or would there be a better solution in *socializing* liberated-labor somehow, as with the people in other areas that *are* in forests, woodlands, etc. -- ?

The people of the urban locality can't just say 'Get us furs', because they have no grounds to just request the liberated labor of others, with no material regard for it and the products of it.

Hence we're back at the initial situation of a post-capitalist 'informal favor-swapping', or the use of formal labor credits.

Its the same relationship. What you are saying is that it makes more sense for people who are skilled in trapping furs, to be the ones who trap animals for fur. They will send something concrete (the furs) which the folks in the city want in exchange for something they want that the folks in the city can provide. But that "something" the city has is vague. And who says the city in which these people who want the furs reside, have it?
Labor credits can help solve the problem, yes (i'll give you a fur, you give me five credits), but in reality that is just 'money' which socialism is supposedly against. And then one has to deal with all the 'problems" of money (as defined by the socialist) that supposedly exists in a capitalist society.
You are describing trade here Chris, but with the handicap that there is no real way to 'communicate' the various needs the two parties in question have.

Your assertion here was that the instrument of labor credits is 'inscrutable', while you *just* described them as being that they 'allow some individuals to control some of the means of production'.

Its inscutable in the sense of what i said in the first paragraph, it gives individuals control over some aspect of the means of production.

ckaihatsu

2nd October 2015, 17:33

But this ground-level perspective ignores the *broader* fact that everyone needs *some kind* of money in order to survive and live in capitalist society -- it's unavoidable. So for the vast majority who don't have means of their own, they / we *are* obliged to commit our labor when someone offers to pay. (No one who needs money can turn down job offers indefinitely.)

However, the socialist system needs people to commit their labor.

It's interesting that you're flitting back-and-forth across the two contexts, capitalism and socialism.

I understand that labor credits are designed as a way to get people to get people to commit their labor when they might not otherwise have.
But in order for that to work, those credits themselves must have value, they must result it is possesser gaining something he or she would have been unable to obtain without it.
You have said it allows the posseser to gain personal, or as a group pooling their credits, control of some aspect of the means of production.

No, you just asserted this in your previous post, and I provided this clarification:

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

labor [supply] -- Only active workers may control communist property [...]

---

But this must mean that there are means of production which are not socialized, or which are not committed to a plan. Otherwise, there is nothing available for the posseser of labor credits to direct.
But how does the existence non-socialized production and means of production without any set plans for production fit with the theory and objective of socialism?

You're attempting to make it sound as though labor credits are used to access means of production (factories, equipment, machinery, etc.), when that's *not* the case:

[L]abor credits only pertain to liberated-labor *hours*, and to nothing else. There's no exchangeability with goods/resources/materials, or productive assets (as in financialization), so there are no commodities, and thus no exchange values.

Labor credits effectively only reference a discrete portion of *past work done*[...]

This situation is simply that the person with labor credits cannot find labor to work for whatever credits the posseser is offering.

So here's a succinct scenario that repudiates all of your baseless contentions:

- A locality of tens or hundreds of thousands collectively decides that all of their major commercial (steel-framed) buildings can be repurposed for doing vertical farming, for food production. While many from this locality have already participated on various projects throughout their lives and have various personal accumulations of labor credits to their name, this vertical-farming construction project is wildly popular within the locality and there are plenty of people -- thousands, even tens of thousands -- who simply want to be a part of it, with their own efforts.

Interestingly there's a 'gray area' in this formally-mass-approved policy package regarding the implementation of vertical farming in formerly commercial office-type buildings -- any office buildings that are *two* stories or less will *not* be proactively covered by the planning of this policy package.

With society's superseding of all financial transactions there's hardly any use any more of office-type environments -- virtually all of the smaller-sized office buildings are now *unused*, and currently unaddressed by any policy packages, either from the locality or at any other ('higher' / 'broader') level. So there's now *dozens*, maybe even *hundreds* of small office buildings in the vicinity that are abandoned, mostly intact, and unused -- and unaddressed.

The vertical farming mass project has kicked off a veritable *cultural event*, and many who are not even participating in it are inspired nonetheless -- many more turn their attentions to the unused office buildings that are either 1 or 2 stories tall. Many don't want to be part of the mass project on the larger buildings, but want to do *something* vertical-farming-related, as with the *smaller* buildings. Since nothing has been *planned* for these buildings, the people of the locality (and beyond, as well) are able to use them as desired, on an ad-hoc basis.

Many who have done work in the past and have labor credits to their name decide to initiate small-scale 'mini-projects' of indoor farming inside many of the 1- and 2-story unused office buildings. They're not interested in getting their hands dirty, though -- they're more into the 'civic' aspect of it -- and so they put forward their own labor credits to bring on 'new' liberated-laborers who are willing to construct and set-up all of the equipment for these indoor farms.

After some weeks and months of this the result is that the mass project is well underway, with all major commercial buildings filled, with crops growing steadily and the first harvest anticipated. In the small office buildings there are similar results, except that a *few dozen* of them are still intact and untouched -- it turns out that some who had been offering their labor credits for work to get indoor farming going were *unable* to find anyone willing to do that kind of work for those labor credits offered.

The locality's press covers this phenomenon as a major news item for awhile, and it spurs a political initiative on the part of some of the prospective funders -- they formally propose to the people of the whole locality that the locality should *issue a debt of labor credits* to whatever extent is needed to mobilize liberated-labor to tend to all *still-abandoned* buildings, for the sake of growing crops.

(And, for the sake of an ending here, let's say it all goes perfectly and after awhile nothing is left unaddressed or underutilized.)

---

It's here:

[A] collectivized society would have a common interest in *generalizing* the social function of 'administrator' so that it *doesn't* become specialized, specially-assigned, and/or turf-oriented. Greater general social *participation* in such roles / duties would *cut-against* all such dynamics tending towards specialization and elitism.

OK-- knowledge is elitism.

No -- again:

(This isn't to say that any given administrator's *knowledge* should be 'curtailed', exactly -- it's more to do with limiting their *potential for institutionalization* as an individual.)

---

Why wouldn't the skilled pipefitter object to the skilled plasterer fitting pipes?
Anyone can read a book, i suppose, but isn't it better to have people who have years of experience at a particular, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel?

You have an 'either-or' ('atomized') mentality here -- why wouldn't the skilled pipefitter *help* the skilled plasterer to *learn* how to fit pipes -- ? (And vice-versa.)

'Reinventing the wheel' is a dodge, or disingenuous, at best, considering that you've already acknowledged that society *does* have a process of *diffusion* of knowledge over time:

[O]ver a time, a collection of jacks would slow down progress, slow down training and skills to future workers[...]

---

Excuse me, it is *you* not I who is suspicious of people who have a "mastery" of some job or task (remember, it leads to elitism, which must be avoided). It is you, not I, who says that everyone should learn a little bit of something and that society is stronger for it. hence, "jack of all trades and master of none." If people are true masters of a task, great. But that requires years of focus and work at that task, to the exclusion of other tasks and jobs, a state of affairs which you have explained can be a problem for the socialist society.

Excuse *me*, but you keep insisting on conflating 'knowledge' with 'turf' -- the two are *not* the same thing.

Yet again:

(This isn't to say that any given administrator's *knowledge* should be 'curtailed', exactly -- it's more to do with limiting their *potential for institutionalization* as an individual.)

For the record I am politically *indifferent* as to any given person's level of skill at whatever -- it's not a *political* issue. Also, politically, I have no prescriptions as to *lifestyle* -- whether people should spend their time 'learn[ing] a little bit of something', or 'years of focus and work at that task, to the exclusion of other tasks and jobs', or nothing at all.

You're also mixing-up *administrative* duties with that of conventional work roles.

So which is a better situation... everyone learning a little bit of something, or some people being completely masterful on one or two things?

No comment.

Is "elitism" a problem for a socialist society, or not?

You're defining 'elitism' as being the result of 'mastery', which is *outside of* a *political* context -- 'elitism', in the *political* sense, has to do with 'administrative turf', as in 'What productive processes is that administrator responsible for'.

I believe it is good to have people who know their jobs, who are masters of it.

Good for you.

Certainly-- entry level work. Everyone starts somewhere.

Your concern is more with the *individual* and their skill, which isn't a political matter.

The person who spent 20 years being a painter, or a carpenter is most likely going to have greater knowledge than the newbie. That one person can have more of a positive effect at work than 10 people who have some passing knowledge of the task.

Okay.

The pyramid proposed is inverted. The tip is the person who is diffusing the knowledge outwards, to the base.
Yet anyone could probably lay out a row of stone. The pinnacle, the tip, comes from the person who can design the pyramid so as not to collapse.

Interesting.

---

[W]hat's *really* the underlying point of it is that the *workers themselves* are not the ones who have the collective administrative decision over this matter of who among them stays and who leaves.

this is more of an XXB critique-- what exactly do these administrators do--

This is the *socialist* critique of capitalism and capital-based ownership and management, over labor -- as things are it's private *management* that hires-and-fires, while those doing the actual *work*, the workers, do *not* have a say over their own collective personnel composition.

Its the same relationship. What you are saying is that it makes more sense for people who are skilled in trapping furs, to be the ones who trap animals for fur. They will send something concrete (the furs) which the folks in the city want in exchange for something they want that the folks in the city can provide. But that "something" the city has is vague. And who says the city in which these people who want the furs reside, have it?

That would just have to be communicated and worked-out in common -- remember people *are* able to communicate to each other, and in mass-collated kinds of ways, as well.

Labor credits can help solve the problem, yes (i'll give you a fur, you give me five credits),

This is a further *misrepresentation* of how labor credits function -- there's no commodification, as in exchanges of labor credits for goods. What would have to be worked-out is whether fur-acquiring liberated labor would be socially definable in 'labor credits', per hour, for a given situation / project, or if such labor hours could be directly 'swapped' for commensurate activities, per hour, as from those of a city.

but in reality that is just 'money' which socialism is supposedly against.

This is a strawman formulation -- labor credits are not 'money'.

And then one has to deal with all the 'problems" of money (as defined by the socialist) that supposedly exists in a capitalist society.
You are describing trade here Chris, but with the handicap that there is no real way to 'communicate' the various needs the two parties in question have.

Nope -- no trade.

What's being gauged is *liberated labor*, per hour, in relation to *other kinds* of liberated labor, per hour.

Its inscutable in the sense of what i said in the first paragraph, it gives individuals control over some aspect of the means of production.

Incorrect.

The means of production are *collectivized*, and have nothing to do with labor credits. Note:

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

Baseball

3rd October 2015, 16:43

So here's a succinct scenario that repudiates all of your baseless contentions:

- A locality of tens or hundreds of thousands collectively decides that all of their major commercial (steel-framed) buildings can be repurposed for doing vertical farming, for food production. While many from this locality have already participated on various projects throughout their lives and have various personal accumulations of labor credits to their name, this vertical-farming construction project is wildly popular within the locality and there are plenty of people -- thousands, even tens of thousands -- who simply want to be a part of it, with their own efforts.

Interestingly there's a 'gray area' in this formally-mass-approved policy package regarding the implementation of vertical farming in formerly commercial office-type buildings -- any office buildings that are *two* stories or less will *not* be proactively covered by the planning of this policy package.

With society's superseding of all financial transactions there's hardly any use any more of office-type environments -- virtually all of the smaller-sized office buildings are now *unused*, and currently unaddressed by any policy packages, either from the locality or at any other ('higher' / 'broader') level. So there's now *dozens*, maybe even *hundreds* of small office buildings in the vicinity that are abandoned, mostly intact, and unused -- and unaddressed.

The vertical farming mass project has kicked off a veritable *cultural event*, and many who are not even participating in it are inspired nonetheless -- many more turn their attentions to the unused office buildings that are either 1 or 2 stories tall. Many don't want to be part of the mass project on the larger buildings, but want to do *something* vertical-farming-related, as with the *smaller* buildings. Since nothing has been *planned* for these buildings, the people of the locality (and beyond, as well) are able to use them as desired, on an ad-hoc basis.

Many who have done work in the past and have labor credits to their name decide to initiate small-scale 'mini-projects' of indoor farming inside many of the 1- and 2-story unused office buildings. They're not interested in getting their hands dirty, though -- they're more into the 'civic' aspect of it -- and so they put forward their own labor credits to bring on 'new' liberated-laborers who are willing to construct and set-up all of the equipment for these indoor farms.

After some weeks and months of this the result is that the mass project is well underway, with all major commercial buildings filled, with crops growing steadily and the first harvest anticipated. In the small office buildings there are similar results, except that a *few dozen* of them are still intact and untouched -- it turns out that some who had been offering their labor credits for work to get indoor farming going were *unable* to find anyone willing to do that kind of work for those labor credits offered.

The locality's press covers this phenomenon as a major news item for awhile, and it spurs a political initiative on the part of some of the prospective funders -- they formally propose to the people of the whole locality that the locality should *issue a debt of labor credits* to whatever extent is needed to mobilize liberated-labor to tend to all *still-abandoned* buildings, for the sake of growing crops.

Nothing has been refuted there.
What is being said there is that nothing is perfect-- which is certainly reasonable a claim. So somebody with labor credits offers those credits to get labor to work in some of these buildings. But for whatever reason (maybe because the labor credits have no 'official' value-- offering old pieces of wallpaper in exchange for the work would be as constructive), the workers aren't flocking in. So the solution is for the community to print out more credits and since they almost certainly able to print sufficient credits to find liberated labor.
The problem being described is that there is insufficient pay being offered to do the work. The solution is a government backed loan so as to convince the workers to come in.
Its the same solution as has been found in capitalist societies. You are calling it different, no doubt the mechanics are different, but it is the same concept.

Question in general: As the community is all excited and mobilized for this new undertaking, what's happening in those endeavors the community was previously undertaking?

Baseball

3rd October 2015, 17:02

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852828]

You have an 'either-or' ('atomized') mentality here -- why wouldn't the skilled pipefitter *help* the skilled plasterer to *learn* how to fit pipes -- ? (And vice-versa.)

Of course-- but while the pipefiter is spending teaching his apprentice the ropes, he cant be as effective and efficient.
And vice versa.

'Reinventing the wheel' is a dodge, or disingenuous, at best, considering that you've already acknowledged that society *does* have a process of *diffusion* of knowledge over time:

That is true. But you are arguing that is more important for people to know a little bit of everything rather than a lot about one or two things. As such, the knowledge that exists and diffused over tie is of a lesser quality.

Excuse *me*, but you keep insisting on conflating 'knowledge' with 'turf' -- the two are *not* the same thing.

When it comes administration, it can indeed be the same thing.
And indeed, it is a problem for the socialist society.
Yet by limiting the reach of the administrator (his knowledge) the socialist society creates problems for itself.

I am politically *indifferent* as to any given person's level of skill at whatever -- it's not a *political* issue. Also, politically, I have no prescriptions as to *lifestyle* -- whether people should spend their time 'learn[ing] a little bit of something', or 'years of focus and work at that task, to the exclusion of other tasks and jobs', or nothing at all.

OK-- but you have argued that the work site is stronger whenever everyone knows a little bit off all the various job, or task, functions.

You're defining 'elitism' as being the result of 'mastery', which is *outside of* a *political* context -- 'elitism', in the *political* sense, has to do with 'administrative turf', as in 'What productive processes is that administrator responsible for'.

What productive process is that administrator responsible for?

A question asked in light of this comment of yours:

This is the *socialist* critique of capitalism and capital-based ownership and management, over labor -- as things are it's private *management* that hires-and-fires, while those doing the actual *work*, the workers, do *not* have a say over their own collective personnel composition.

That would just have to be communicated and worked-out in common -- remember people *are* able to communicate to each other, and in mass-collated kinds of ways, as well.

saying i'll take five labor credits for one fur, is communication.
Such communication is not available in the socialist system. That's fine.

So now we are left with communication via barter, which is woefully inefficient. Barter also requires commodification of products, which socialism is also supposedly against.

The window of what and how socialism communicates is rapidly closing.

This is a further *misrepresentation* of how labor credits function -- there's no commodification, as in exchanges of labor credits for goods. What would have to be worked-out is whether fur-acquiring liberated labor would be socially definable in 'labor credits', per hour, for a given situation / project, or if such labor hours could be directly 'swapped' for commensurate activities, per hour, as from those of a city.

Nope. Because the people in the city want the furs. they don't care how many hours of labor it took to get that fur to them. Likewise, whatever item the country wishes from the city.

ckaihatsu

3rd October 2015, 17:43

Nothing has been refuted there.

To clarify, what I meant by 'refuted' is the scenario shows that labor credits aren't *necessary* for 'control of the means of production', since anyone who *wants* to refurbish a building or turn it into an indoor farm would be able to do so.

The larger buildings are covered by policy, in this case, and all who worked on them didn't require labor credits for their participation / 'control' over the means of mass production, the buildings.

Another point is that the smaller buildings *aren't* covered by policy, so it could be said that they're not 'socialized'. Yet it wouldn't be a problem -- unless it *was*. (Meaning that if abandoned office buildings or whatever else was left unused and 'unsocialized' by socialism, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem as long as there was no issue with their deterioration -- only if something, like the deterioration of a building, *was* socially significant, then it *would* be an 'issue' or a 'problem', and would then *have* to be 'socialized' as such.)

What is being said there is that nothing is perfect-- which is certainly reasonable a claim. So somebody with labor credits offers those credits to get labor to work in some of these buildings. But for whatever reason (maybe because the labor credits have no 'official' value-- offering old pieces of wallpaper in exchange for the work would be as constructive), the workers aren't flocking in.

You're implicitly comparing 'labor credits' to 'fiat currency' now, which is *also* inaccurate and invalid.

With socialism there *is no* government -- we might think of a 'prevailing social ethos' that would enable / empower *anyone* to make a public 'socio-political' case out of anyone's behavior that was problematic, for whatever reason, but the concept of a 'standing government' would be entirely proscribed by a socialist-type society.

With no government there's no 'currency', either of a regular kind, or of the 'fiat' kind -- this means that 'official' 'old pieces of wallpaper' simply *don't pertain* to a socialist-type social arrangement, whether that society would use labor credits or not.

If labor credits *are* used, there would be a formal, socially-significant process that would bring them into being:

[E]very debt issuance of labor credits by any locality is a public event, with full disclosure of the creation of the labor credits -- they all have serial numbers stamped on them so they can be traced back to the locality they were issued from, and tracked indefinitely like license plates on cars.

The people of any locality can collectively decide to issue *any number* of labor credits -- but it's a *political* act since they're expecting their "local brand" (by serial numbers) to be honored at face value by everyone else in the world. The people of that issuing locality haven't done *any work* for their issuing of those labor credits, and everybody knows it because it's all part of the public record.

What that locality *could* do is send enough of its own people out to anywhere else, to do work and bring labor credits from outside back to their own locality, so as to show real backing for the batch of labor credits that they issued from debt. That, too, would be part of the public record.

The 'locality debt' aspect would be in *political* terms -- 'reputation' -- since a locality's act of issuing a new batch of labor credits through debt issuance would effectively be the *direct exploitation* of liberated labor since there's no reciprocity of labor effort on the part of those in that locality.

All that the locality's population would have to do to correct things would be to search out opportunities to earn labor credits from *outside* their own locality, and then to bring that 'x' amount of labor credits back to their locality to cancel out the debt.

Similarly, two localities could coordinate to issue identical numbers of labor credits at the same time, and then to 'earn' each other's labor credits at about the same time, thus nullifying both respective debts at once. (The physical labor credits would then remain in general circulation afterwards, unencumbered by any underlying debt.)

---

So the solution is for the community to print out more credits and since they almost certainly able to print sufficient credits to find liberated labor.

But there isn't any single *monolithic* 'community', as you keep harboring -- that means there's no single overarching 'government', either, as we're used to under capitalism.

Different 'localities' / communities could issue their own 'brands' of labor credits, and there would be individual-community *reputations* tied to each kind of 'brand' (by serial numbers).

If this worldwide socialist global order *really* got its shit together, there might just be *1* 'brand' of labor credits, since all continents would have ongoing healthy terms of cooperation and coordination with each other, 'down' to all localities, so that only one 'brand' of labor credits was needed -- it would imply no outstanding debts from anywhere, and an economic soundness (regarding treatment of liberated labor) that was global in scale.

The problem being described is that there is insufficient pay being offered to do the work. The solution is a government backed loan so as to convince the workers to come in.

Wrong again -- no government, no institutions, no 'currency', no 'pay', no finance, no monolithic 'community'.

Its the same solution as has been found in capitalist societies. You are calling it different, no doubt the mechanics are different, but it is the same concept.

BB, you keep wanting to just *gloss over* any distinctions between capitalism and socialism, but you don't follow-up with any sound descriptions of *how* socialism could possibly retain the instruments of capitalism.

Question in general: As the community is all excited and mobilized for this new undertaking, what's happening in those endeavors the community was previously undertaking?

There's enough people for both, let's say. (grin)

ckaihatsu

3rd October 2015, 18:05

Of course-- but while the pipefiter is spending teaching his apprentice the ropes, he cant be as effective and efficient.
And vice versa.

Yeah, but 'efficiency' isn't everything -- you've already recognized 'diffusion of knowledge', for instance.

That is true. But you are arguing that is more important for people to know a little bit of everything rather than a lot about one or two things. As such, the knowledge that exists and diffused over tie is of a lesser quality.

No, I never indicated that -- you're imputing such, and here's the proof:

So which is a better situation... everyone learning a little bit of something, or some people being completely masterful on one or two things?

No comment.

---

[Y]ou keep insisting on conflating 'knowledge' with 'turf' -- the two are *not* the same thing.

When it comes administration, it can indeed be the same thing.
And indeed, it is a problem for the socialist society.
Yet by limiting the reach of the administrator (his knowledge) the socialist society creates problems for itself.

You're attempting to *sidestep* the inherent problems of individuating skill / expertise, as we see in the institutionalization of 'administration' -- a socialist society *wouldn't* have such a problem because the idea is to *collectivize* and *generalize* such control as much as possible, over as many people as possible.

Interestingly you're forced to *defend* the capitalist-type *administration* of government, which you otherwise seem to be so *contrary* to, when it comes to *economics*.

---

For the record I am politically *indifferent* as to any given person's level of skill at whatever -- it's not a *political* issue. Also, politically, I have no prescriptions as to *lifestyle* -- whether people should spend their time 'learn[ing] a little bit of something', or 'years of focus and work at that task, to the exclusion of other tasks and jobs', or nothing at all.

OK-- but you have argued that the work site is stronger whenever everyone knows a little bit off all the various job, or task, functions.

There's no *contradiction* here -- there's no 'but'.

In *material* terms, more material productivity, by whatever means, is better, but *politics* doesn't address that -- it addresses how productivity is *socially organized*.

---

You're defining 'elitism' as being the result of 'mastery', which is *outside of* a *political* context -- 'elitism', in the *political* sense, has to do with 'administrative turf', as in 'What productive processes is that administrator responsible for'.

What productive process is that administrator responsible for?

Pick a scenario.

A question asked in light of this comment of yours:

This is the *socialist* critique of capitalism and capital-based ownership and management, over labor -- as things are it's private *management* that hires-and-fires, while those doing the actual *work*, the workers, do *not* have a say over their own collective personnel composition.

That would just have to be communicated and worked-out in common -- remember people *are* able to communicate to each other, and in mass-collated kinds of ways, as well.

saying i'll take five labor credits for one fur, is communication.

Those aren't labor credits in the real definition, since labor credits only apply to liberated-labor *hours*, and not to goods -- there's no commodification.

Such communication is not available in the socialist system. That's fine.

The 'mass-collated' communication that would be available to a socialist-type system is this:

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

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

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

---

So now we are left with communication via barter, which is woefully inefficient. Barter also requires commodification of products, which socialism is also supposedly against.

You're arbitrarily asserting 'barter' while ignoring what's being presented to you.

The window of what and how socialism communicates is rapidly closing.

You're just talking to yourself at this point.

---

This is a further *misrepresentation* of how labor credits function -- there's no commodification, as in exchanges of labor credits for goods. What would have to be worked-out is whether fur-acquiring liberated labor would be socially definable in 'labor credits', per hour, for a given situation / project, or if such labor hours could be directly 'swapped' for commensurate activities, per hour, as from those of a city.

Nope. Because the people in the city want the furs. they don't care how many hours of labor it took to get that fur to them. Likewise, whatever item the country wishes from the city.

If everyone was *this* callous and egocentric then there wouldn't be socialism in the first place.

Tim Redd

4th October 2015, 11:45

With socialism there *is no* government -- we might think of a 'prevailing social ethos' that would enable / empower *anyone* to make a public 'socio-political' case out of anyone's behavior that was problematic, for whatever reason, but the concept of a 'standing government' would be entirely proscribed by a socialist-type society.

You are incorrect about there being no government during socialism. Marx spoke of transition period called the dictatorship of the proletariat (dotp) between capitalism (which most Marxists call socialism) and communism where classes are abolished, all exploitation and oppression are eliminated and there is no longer a political state.

Practicing your concept of labor credits is inappropriate if you are saying it applies during communism. There is no place for individual or non-social direction of the means of production during communism or even in a majority of cases in socialism for that matter.

Btw, socialism (the dotp) may contain simultaneously many different kinds of modes of production including the capitalist mode of production. A major goal of the dotp, among many others, is to leverage the various modes to realize classless, non-bourgeois right, communism that practices economics based upon "from each according to ability and to each according to need".

ckaihatsu

4th October 2015, 15:48

You are incorrect about there being no government during socialism. Marx spoke of transition period called the dictatorship of the proletariat (dotp) between capitalism (which most Marxists call socialism) and communism where classes are abolished, all exploitation and oppression are eliminated and there is no longer a political state.

Acknowledged.

Practicing your concept of labor credits is inappropriate if you are saying it applies during communism. There is no place for individual or non-social direction of the means of production during communism or even in a majority of cases in socialism for that matter.

You're making the same mistake as BB in equating the use of labor credits to the (collective) control of means of mass production. Here's the same excerpt from the model, for clarification:

communist administration -- All assets and resources will be collectivized as communist property in common -- their use must be determined through a regular political process of prioritized demands from a locality or larger population [...]

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

So the proof is to ask 'Could social direction of the means of production take place *without* the use of labor credits?', and the answer is 'yes'.

Labor credits would pertain to matters of liberated-labor *supply*, if such happens to be lacking for any given project, for whatever reason.

I'll also point out that you're too prescriptive regarding *scale* -- the means of production would *most likely* be used collectively, on mass scales, but there *could* be production at smaller scales as well, probably for *non-critical* types of production. Obviously larger-scale organization of projects, including liberated labor, would override smaller-scale, or individual, claims to the means of production. (And large-scale projects could potentially benefit from the pooling of labor credits, for ground-level organization of liberated labor.)

Btw, socialism (the dotp) may contain simultaneously many different kinds of modes of production including the capitalist mode of production. A major goal of the dotp, among many others, is to leverage the various modes to realize classless, non-bourgeois right, communism that practices economics based upon "from each according to ability and to each according to need".

Agreed.

Baseball

10th October 2015, 17:23

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852951]
You're making the same mistake as BB in equating the use of labor credits to the (collective) control of means of mass production. Here's the same excerpt from the model, for clarification:

It is understood that that is the objective.
But simply saying that labor credits will function in a certain manner because we will design things that way doesn't really say anything.

So the proof is to ask 'Could social direction of the means of production take place *without* the use of labor credits?', and the answer is 'yes'.

And the responding question remains: 'What do labor credits allow to happen, then CANNOT happen without them?"

The answer, as you have said, it gives workers a chance to direct labor toward some aspect of production, which, in the judgement of the person with the labor credits, is otherwise lacking.
But in order to do this, there must be an ability to claim resources, of whatever stripe.

Now, you have said that whatever is left over from production, is fair game for all. So the person who wants to direct labor to make clothes might have access to leftover cotton. But he has no greater claim than anyone else to that cotton- he can't use the labor credits to get cotton (theoretically-- but if labor credits are a boon, its not clear why the cotton folks wouldn't simply hold back some of their product and exchange the cotton for credits). So it would seem being able to direct labor via labor credit has certain structural limitations in expecting it to solve the problems for which it supposedly exists.

And remember-- the whole purpose of labor credits is to solve a problem that will reasonably arise in production-- pegging labor toward needed production. However, socialism is about production for use-- theoretically there should not be left over stuff that has no "use" (granted of course that nothing is perfect).
So we are left with a situation when there is not much in the way of "stuff" for labor to use when directed by a person with labor credits.

Baseball

10th October 2015, 17:45

[QUOTE=ckaihatsu;2852905]Yeah, but 'efficiency' isn't everything --

That's fine and fair enough.
But remember-- socialism is supposed to a superior way of economic and political organizing. If we are going to say it doesn't really matter how effective and efficient such is in a socialist society, then certainly it is reasonable to question the accuracy and truth of its claims.

You're attempting to *sidestep* the inherent problems of individuating skill / expertise, as we see in the institutionalization of 'administration' -- a socialist society *wouldn't* have such a problem because the idea is to *collectivize* and *generalize* such control as much as possible, over as many people as possible.

But that isn't an answer. All that says is that we will have a bunch of people who know a little about this running around.
While at the same time saying its better for people to have expertise in certain areas.

There's no *contradiction* here -- there's no 'but'.

In *material* terms, more material productivity, by whatever means, is better, but *politics* doesn't address that -- it addresses how productivity is *socially organized*.

It does address it-- you are claiming that what is ECONOMICALLY sensible, can POLITICALLY be a problem for the socialist society.

Those aren't labor credits in the real definition, since labor credits only apply to liberated-labor *hours*, and not to goods -- there's no commodification.

Yes, POLITICALLY is doesn't fly.
ECONOMICALLY, it does fly.

The use of labor credits is supposed to be a benefit to society.
Is exchanging furs for labor credits economically harmful? How so? What if it spurs a desire to produce more furs?

The 'mass-collated' communication that would be available to a socialist-type system is this:

Yes-- however the purpose of the labor credit is to solve the problem when this ranking system doesn't quite work as advertised.

If everyone was *this* callous and egocentric then there wouldn't be socialism in the first place.

I want a computer so I can go on the internet for recreation and enjoyment. Why am I egocentric or callous because I do no consider how many hours of work was put in to build that computer. I work also. We all work. What are we all supposed to do?

ckaihatsu

10th October 2015, 22:31

It is understood that that is the objective.
But simply saying that labor credits will function in a certain manner because we will design things that way doesn't really say anything.

Okay, then why bother planning for *anything*, with that kind of dismissiveness -- ?

Just because someone says something 'doesn't really say anything', according to you.

---

So the proof is to ask 'Could social direction of the means of production take place *without* the use of labor credits?', and the answer is 'yes'.

Labor credits would pertain to matters of liberated-labor *supply*, if such happens to be lacking for any given project, for whatever reason.

And the responding question remains: 'What do labor credits allow to happen, then CANNOT happen without them?"

Yeah, we've been through *this* already.... (It's interesting that you don't ask any follow-up, clarifying questions, instead preferring to just wait for awhile and then repeat the question all over again.)

Yet again, what do labor credits allow to happen that cannot happen without?

Yeah, you just asked this, and I answered:

And this goes back to what I have asked before- What can that one activated liberated laborer do with labor credits that he CANNOT do without them?

(Please make sure you get the kind of answer you're looking for on this one. I'll answer as directly as I can.)

Anyone who has earned labor credits has the advantage of activating liberated-labor that would *require* labor credits for *their* potential work / labor-power.

For example maybe someone has sought out more-difficult tasks, ones that have higher per-hour multiplier rates attached to them, for the purpose of earning a substantial bundle of labor credits for themselves. Now, with the labor completed and these labor credits in-hand they put the call out for a particular design to be carved onto a flat cliff-face of bluffs at a particular location.

This is the kind of project that would *not* be taken up on a collective basis, usually, and is obviously particular to this one individual. As long as there were no general socio-political *objections* to it, this person could realize the completion of this kind of project by using their earned labor credits for the activation of a non-standard kind of labor.

---

The answer, as you have said, it gives workers a chance to direct labor toward some aspect of production, which, in the judgement of the person with the labor credits, is otherwise lacking.

Well, this is a rather *dramatic* take on the situation (that 'judgment' is 'lacking', according to the person using labor credits), since your assertion may or may *not* be the actual reality -- it's *not necessarily* the case that use of labor credits indicates a collective 'lack of judgment' on the part of society.

(In other words the scenario could be very *small-scale*, in which case things would look very similar to a simple cash transaction today, but without private property, of course. Or the scenario might be *large-scale*, with labor credits being used not to substitute for collectivist judgment or planning as much as to simply be a means of 'opting-in' across a broad terrain -- possibly over the entire world.) (Certainly collectivist planning could be done over the whole world *without* using labor credits, but for matters of selecting / requesting liberated-labor *on the ground*, in all respective locales, the passing-forward of labor credits would ensure a more localist-type involvement over such issues of 'personnel'.)

But in order to do this, there must be an ability to claim resources, of whatever stripe.

Please note:

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

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

labor [supply] -- Only active workers may control communist property -- no private accumulations are allowed and any proceeds from work that cannot be used or consumed by persons themselves will revert to collectivized communist property

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

---

Now, you have said that whatever is left over from production, is fair game for all. So the person who wants to direct labor to make clothes might have access to leftover cotton.

This part is 'gray area' -- what you're saying is *factually* correct, but in practice anyone who had regular needs or wants for cotton consistently would simply put that on their 'daily prioritization list' so that it would be formally entered into the social / political process, to be fulfilled by collectivist production. If this was more of a 'one-off' where they're kicking a few labor credits to someone for something to be made for them in particular then your description would be more applicable, but if this was more of a regular small-scale endeavor over time then it would definitely require a continuous supply of cotton from the larger society for its operation.

But he has no greater claim than anyone else to that cotton- he can't use the labor credits to get cotton

Correct.

(theoretically-- but if labor credits are a boon, its not clear why the cotton folks wouldn't simply hold back some of their product and exchange the cotton for credits).

The cotton folks couldn't hold back some of the product and exchange the cotton for credits because the cotton isn't *theirs*, or anyone's, to do that with -- no one would have that kind of discretion to (note this) *artificially* hold back production when the point of producing cotton is for *making it available* and *not* for holding-it-back.

You're perfectly describing all that's wrong with commodity production, where the free flow of production *must* be artificially dammed-up, to manifest the 'hoarding' dynamic (private-property), to create artificial scarcity and more demand than there would normally be if the products of production were simply made available without concern for exchange-values.

So it would seem being able to direct labor via labor credit has certain structural limitations in expecting it to solve the problems for which it supposedly exists.

You repeatedly assert that labor credits could or would be used in exchanges-for-goods (as commodities), and then advance a whole line of return-to-exchange-values, on the *basis* of that.

There are no 'structural limitations' to the use of labor credits for what their *purpose* is for, which is for the selection / requesting of available-and-willing liberated labor in a societal context of collectivist production.

And remember-- the whole purpose of labor credits is to solve a problem that will reasonably arise in production-- pegging labor toward needed production.

'Pegging' is less-than-accurate, since it implies 'directing' labor, which could not be the situation, since everyone / all liberated labor would have absolutely *zero* obligation to the overall society to participate, and would be under no duress to do so, either.

Your statement would be fine by substituting 'selecting / requesting labor [for]', instead of 'pegging'.

However, socialism is about production for use-- theoretically there should not be left over stuff that has no "use" (granted of course that nothing is perfect).

Correct.

(We might, for the sake of illustration, think of every produced good, beginning with initially-sourced resources, as having an RFID chip implanted in it, so that every piece of material introduced into social circulation could / would be actively *tracked*, with nothing 'falling through the cracks'.)

So we are left with a situation when there is not much in the way of "stuff" for labor to use when directed by a person with labor credits.

You're making it sound as though *all stuff* is directed only by those who possess labor credits, when that's *not* the case -- this brings us full-circle back to the original 'flaw', or misconception:

You're making the same mistake as BB in equating the use of labor credits to the (collective) control of means of mass production.

Again, see the excerpts from the model provided above, and note the clarification I gave to TR:

So the proof is to ask 'Could social direction of the means of production take place *without* the use of labor credits?', and the answer is 'yes'.

Labor credits would pertain to matters of liberated-labor *supply*, if such happens to be lacking for any given project, for whatever reason.

---

Yeah, but 'efficiency' isn't everything -- you've already recognized 'diffusion of knowledge', for instance.

That's fine and fair enough.
But remember-- socialism is supposed to a superior way of economic and political organizing. If we are going to say it doesn't really matter how effective and efficient such is in a socialist society, then certainly it is reasonable to question the accuracy and truth of its claims.

Socialism *would* be a superior way of economic and political organizing, compared to capitalism's use of exchange values.

This doesn't mean that efficiency would be *paramount* -- the yardstick wouldn't be 'effectiveness and efficiency' in terms of *bulk production*, but rather in terms of *workers' control* (empowerment in participation).

---

You're attempting to *sidestep* the inherent problems of individuating skill / expertise, as we see in the institutionalization of 'administration' -- a socialist society *wouldn't* have such a problem because the idea is to *collectivize* and *generalize* such control as much as possible, over as many people as possible.

But that isn't an answer. All that says is that we will have a bunch of people who know a little about this running around.
While at the same time saying its better for people to have expertise in certain areas.

No, I'm saying that your entire *mindset* is one of 'knowledge and expertise can only be statically fixed in individuals, and is necessarily limited to them'.

Keep in mind that collectivism also means the collectivization of all knowledge and expertise as well, so that something like Wikipedia could be the *starting point* -- if something more than an encyclopedia was needed the call would be put out, and those who could contribute -- as on a discussion board -- would, for the benefit of all.

---

For the record I am politically *indifferent* as to any given person's level of skill at whatever -- it's not a *political* issue. Also, politically, I have no prescriptions as to *lifestyle* -- whether people should spend their time 'learn[ing] a little bit of something', or 'years of focus and work at that task, to the exclusion of other tasks and jobs', or nothing at all.

OK-- but you have argued that the work site is stronger whenever everyone knows a little bit off all the various job, or task, functions.

There's no *contradiction* here -- there's no 'but'.

In *material* terms, more material productivity, by whatever means, is better, but *politics* doesn't address that -- it addresses how productivity is *socially organized*.

It does address it-- you are claiming that what is ECONOMICALLY sensible, can POLITICALLY be a problem for the socialist society.

Where's the "problem" -- ?

If it's materially / 'economically' sensible for everyone at a workplace to be able to cover all work roles there, how is that in any way a 'political' problem -- ?

---

Those aren't labor credits in the real definition, since labor credits only apply to liberated-labor *hours*, and not to goods -- there's no commodification.

Yes, POLITICALLY is doesn't fly.
ECONOMICALLY, it does fly.

The use of labor credits is supposed to be a benefit to society.
Is exchanging furs for labor credits economically harmful? How so? What if it spurs a desire to produce more furs?

BB, just because you want labor credits to function like capitalist currency doesn't mean that that's how they're *meant* to function -- we could try using a baseball in a football game, for example, but that doesn't mean the resulting gameplay is in any way the same as football (American or English, take your pick).

---

The 'mass-collated' communication that would be available to a socialist-type system is this:

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

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

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

Yes-- however the purpose of the labor credit is to solve the problem when this ranking system doesn't quite work as advertised.

No, that's *incorrect* -- the mass-collated rankings *complement* the circulating economy of labor credits, because the daily mass demands indicate *collective will*, something we don't have available to ourselves today even though it's currently technically possible.

If people see that dairy products like ham and yogurt are being mass-demanded, and there's sufficient voluntary participation to readily make them available, then labor credits wouldn't be needed *whatsoever*.

The ranking system is simply a *mass collation*, or tally, of the entries provided for the respective ranking positions of #1, #2, #3, etc. -- there's nothing to 'not-work' about it, given today's common capacities for computation:

[F]or any given day any proposal's mass-rank would be seen from the proposal's rank-slot (#1, #2, #3, etc.) that received the most *cumulative* rankings for that slot.) (Imagine a distribution curve here, showing the distribution of individual rank-slot rankings from #1 on the left, to 'infinity' on the right, with quantities-of-each-rank-slot going upward, for any given calendar period of individual days.)

---

Nope. Because the people in the city want the furs. they don't care how many hours of labor it took to get that fur to them. Likewise, whatever item the country wishes from the city.

If everyone was *this* callous and egocentric then there wouldn't be socialism in the first place.

I want a computer so I can go on the internet for recreation and enjoyment. Why am I egocentric or callous because I do no consider how many hours of work was put in to build that computer. I work also. We all work. What are we all supposed to do?

I say 'callous and egocentric' because you said that considerations of *how many hours* it took to get furs wouldn't be respected in the active coordination of furs-from-the-country-for-labor-from-the-city.

If labor hours aren't *respected* and consciously taken into account then it *isn't* socialism -- labor hours, and even the hazards and difficulties of varying *kinds* of work effort, would be the very *basis* of a collectivist productivity, and would have to be explicitly gauged for any kind of project, large or small, as with the use of labor credits.

Alessandro

13th October 2015, 08:50

Lord Testicles

13th October 2015, 13:23

It's unrealistic to expect everybody on earth to put aside their personal interests and desires for the sake of global good.

We'll that's an odd thing to say since workers all around the world are expected to put aside their personal interests, not for a "global good" but for the "good" of a handful of owners. If self interest was such a strong motivator then Capitalism would have crumpled decades ago.

ckaihatsu

13th October 2015, 20:38

The tragedy of the commons has to be true to some extent. It's unrealistic to expect everybody on earth to put aside their personal interests and desires for the sake of global good. You can say that the pursuit of self interest is a behaviour taught and learned in capitalist society till the cows come home but I suspect the people who say this don't even believe it themselves. It strikes me as a form of denial comparable to fanatical Christians refusing to believe that the world wasn't created 5000 years ago. The animals we evolved from are guided by self interest so unless you want to believe that humans have somehow transcended our DNA then you are going to have to allow for some limits regarding the amount of altruism you can expect in a society of individuals. As a general rule I think it's reasonable to expect that people will act in a way that benefits a community when it also benefits themselves. A lot can be achieved with this kind of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours behaviour. But the profit motive has to be catered to some extent. Whether it's money or something else, there has to be some reward for people who work harder or smarter etc. My issue with capitalism is the way it rewards people whose pursuit of happiness destroys the environment or other peoples lives.

I think there's an overlooked distinction to be made here -- 'self-interest' vs. 'self-centeredness'.

You're mitigating the 'self-centeredness' aspect by referring to community-type cooperative behavior that winds up being 'win-win' for everyone -- which is accurate. In this way 'self-interest', as for food, shelter, etc., can be satisfied *beyond* the self, because if everybody does it for everybody else then everybody has it, for them-*selves*.

But often *any* amount of cooperation is summarily derided as angelic-only 'altruism', and the basic biological 'self-interest' is fully conflated with a twisted, extreme kind of 'self-centeredness' that could *never* give way to any kind of social coordination, not even for public roads or parks or *anything*.

Once 'self-centeredness' is firmly in-place as the operational meaning of 'self-interest', the boom is then lowered and the 'tragedy of the commons' is finally trotted out as the main showpiece -- suddenly we're made to concur that *of course* any commonized, *social* approach to administration / management is *bound* to fail because, after all, each and every one of us is *self-centered*, hopelessly, and would only run ragged over any fragile peace that was delicately accomplished in 'the commons' since temper tantrums and brattiness would be inevitable from *any one* of us human beings, which would be more than ample for chaos to rule.

Regarding *different levels* of per-person productivity, I would suggest that liberated laborers (post-capitalism) could simply establish *ratios* for this-kind-of-labor-for-that-kind-of-labor, per hour, and even down to the specificity of this-person's-labor-for-that-person's-labor.

I've gone on at length in this thread about my proposed 'labor credits' framework, so I won't elaborate on it in this post.