Consensus in communist society.

[IbelieveInanarchy]

I was wondering what your views are on consensus in decision making in a communist society. For example, we all agree private capital should be socialized and we like values such as equality and liberty(i assume). But how do we implement this equality, it is just a broad principle we have but how on earth will we make a plan to reach this? There are infinitely much plans to solve any idea, and how could we reach consensus on these topics. For example when we want to build a railway, i will say it should lead to location A, but you might want B and yet another one C. Isnt the only possibility that we appoint some 'expert' and let him decide where it should go, and should we have any say in what actually happens with the railway since we delegated this task to the expert? Maybe it is only possible to get 40% support for idea A and 30% for B and C. How would we decide such stalemates?

I have difficulty putting this question into words properly and im happy to elaborate if it is unclear. The main question is: how do we come from general principles to coherent plans which satisfy everyone, or at least a big part of the people.

[jdneel]

A central planning committee would be chosen by the workers. Advice would be solicited from several experts. The committee would choose what they deem the best plan and finally the plan would be presented for approval of the people in a plebiscite.

Sent from my SM-S920L using Tapatalk

[The Intransigent Faction]

I'm not in the most awake frame of mind which I'd like to be to offer more in-depth input, if necessary (and my internet will be temporarily going down tonight), but this is an important question. I may edit this reply soon.

Suffice it to say, for now, as I've said before:


At least for a transitional period, we need some kind of central aggregation of information and some form of common management to ensure we know who's producing what and where.

Further, let's once again turn to Bakunin:


In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer.

On top of this, it's not hard to conceive of voluntary public consultations in which interested parties could share their concerns with a panel of experts.

This would be distinct from two other approaches:
A) Careerist demagogues taking an approach which may not make the most logistical sense but which has the support of "constituents".
B) Bureaucrats lacking any background or technical expertise and detached from the practical consequences of their decisions.

Instead, a socialist approach would bring expertise to those among the masses who take an interest in an issue. This way we have the benefit of expertise without the "ivory tower" detachment from practical consequences (recognizing, after all, that while expertise best informs these decisions, they're designed in socialism to benefit the people).

As to the exact procedure, I have no blueprint for exactly how any given decision might be put to a vote and what percentage could be appropriately called decisive approval or rejection. I do think accountable (chosen by and in some way including workers) administrative bodies at a regional and local level could come up with general guidelines.

[(A)]

I am; like brad half asleep and headed to work but anyhow. About the Bakunin quote;


In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer.

The quote makes it pretty clear who the authority on given matter we should defer to; Those involved. When we need boots the bootmakers are the ones who we should rely upon.
In the matter of building houses it are those who build houses who should manage the building of houses and so on.

It is also not hard to conceive a economy where the production of goods is managed by the producers of the goods based on the direct demand from the community.
There is no complicated math or framework that needs implementing; the system already exists now...

All we have to do is socialize it.

The vast global market that capitalism has created already contains in itself the framework for a worker managed economy; The goal of socialism has always been the rule of the working class over the economy.
We already have the framework for that economy; it is simply a matter of the workers seizing control over the economy and abolishing the state which prevents us from overthrowing the owners of capital.

No centralism is feasible as we know for a fact that the workers can and must form a dictatorship over the means of production to unsure worker rule.
The way that the workers organize Is up to them; not us.

ALL we should be focused on is the actual revolution that liberates us from the dictatorship of the capitalist; the state.
Planning the society that will follow the end of capitalism is not our goal; Creating that society now, is; or are we not supposed to be revolutionaries?

[IbelieveInanarchy]

All very good points, thanks for that. I get that people who make the houses should be involved in the overall production of houses. But my point is more that how many should be produced. For houses this is easy, build as many houses as there are people who want to live in houses. But for example food, how do we determine if we grow 100 turnips instead of 200 potatoes. Or should there be some ration or should we just produce a lot of everything and throw the excess away? For these smaller 'units' demand changes from year to year. With demand i mean here if people prefer to eat rice or potatoes, these preferences change over years and it seems to me that you will always have to produce an excess and throw that away. This also happens under capitalism, and maybe it is just inherent to any good which is mass-produced.
These objections seem to be petty of course, but I still wonder how people can centrally plan what and how much of a good, with fluctuating demand, should be produced. My own 'solution' is to just produce an excess, i would like to hear what you think should be done.

[The Intransigent Faction]

I am; like brad half asleep and headed to work but anyhow. About the Bakunin quote;

The quote makes it pretty clear who the authority on given matter we should defer to; Those involved. When we need boots the bootmakers are the ones who we should rely upon.
In the matter of building houses it are those who build houses who should manage the building of houses and so on.

This is fair, however I think one point deserves emphasis: As they exist now, and as they would exist in socialism, industries are interlinked. The process of bootmaking can and should involve input not just from bootmakers, but from those who might be researching sturdier materiel to use, or who might be designing more advanced machinery for the process, or even those who need specially-tailored boots. Bootmaking may not be the ideal modern example for this, but I think my point is clear.


It is also not hard to conceive a economy where the production of goods is managed by the producers of the goods based on the direct demand from the community.
There is no complicated math or framework that needs implementing; the system already exists now...

No, I can assure you, we are not living in a system in which the production of goods is managed by the producers of goods based on direct demand. This should be obvious enough, so I'll just emphasize here the difference between actual demand (communities' needs) and "effective demand" backed by purchasing power in a capitalist market system.


All we have to do is socialize it.

The vast global market that capitalism has created already contains in itself the framework for a worker managed economy; The goal of socialism has always been the rule of the working class over the economy.
We already have the framework for that economy; it is simply a matter of the workers seizing control over the economy and abolishing the state which prevents us from overthrowing the owners of capital.

If


the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.

then the same obviously holds true for existing capitalist market-economic machinery. I had typed this out and lost it, but in short: It's not a matter of acquisition. It's one of acquisition and reorganization. It should be rather obvious that this is necessary for moving from a for-profit to a for-community-needs economy. We aren't just going to storm the offices of a venture capitalist and have workers take over doing the same thing they did.


No centralism is feasible as we know for a fact that the workers can and must form a dictatorship over the means of production to unsure worker rule.
The way that the workers organize Is up to them; not us.

ALL we should be focused on is the actual revolution that liberates us from the dictatorship of the capitalist; the state.
Planning the society that will follow the end of capitalism is not our goal; Creating that society now, is; or are we not supposed to be revolutionaries?

I don't want to carry the same debate from another thread over to this one, so I'll keep this short: There will be an element among the revolutionary class which is more practiced in administrative work. It's not difficult to see such an element playing its part in "socially necessary unproductive labour" just as bootmakers make boots. Such work, of course, need not be an exclusive pursuit, which helps blur the lines between a "central bureaucracy" and the people as a whole. People can have hobbies, after all. Far from being unfeasible, an organic centralism will be necessary for reasons I've stated elsewhere.

As I said, I have no blueprint for specific procedural details of post-revolution production (nor could an honest revolutionary provide one) but that doesn't prevent us from providing some kind of answer beyond shrugging our shoulders when asked how things might look after the revolution. After all, revolutions are tumultuous and "What would you replace this with?" is a question revolutionaries have faced and will continue to face. We will want to minimize that tumult. That said, this is to be developed in practice (praxis!), not speculated about without action. The most honest answer we can give is "We have ideas, but we'll flesh them out together as we go."

As for production of excess, well, if it's something we can keep in storage until demand fluctuates upward, I don't see a problem with that. If we're talking about perishable goods, or even a fluctuating demand for services, yes I suppose an adjustment period to meet changed demand, even with some forecast available, is necessary. The difference, of course, is excess would actually be excess...beyond people's actual needs rather than beyond what's profitable for a capitalist. Certainly, we could find alternative uses for some of the excess as well.

[(A)]

But for example food, how do we determine if we grow 100 turnips instead of 200 potatoes.

This is rather silly; I mean the person who works in the feild must decide what he plants. No logical being with suggest that the decision over what root vegetable to plant should be up to a central authority.
The workers are the only possible legitimate authority over the work.
As production is decided today the demand for a particular good can and will influence the workers production. A market where production is requested from the community (demand) and production met by the workers (Supply). This system is already proven to work; we just need to remove the system of Capitalistic control over that system. Turn all production over to worker control.


As they exist now, and as they would exist in socialism, industries are interlinked. The process of bootmaking can and should involve input not just from bootmakers, but from those who might be researching sturdier materiel to use, or who might be designing more advanced machinery for the process, or even those who need specially-tailored boots. Bootmaking may not be the ideal modern example for this, but I think my point is clear.


And their is nothing wrong with that. What would be wrong is if the production of boots was dictated by some comity rather then those directly producing boots.
Their is absolutely no other way a socialist/communal economy can function; The workers must control their production or its not socialism.

I am not saying that the workers CANT centralize the market of supply and demand so that all industry's know what is needed; I am saying that the people who produce are the only ones who may dictate production. The workers dictatorship over the means of production must be absolute. Only the workers have the right to control the means of production.


No, I can assure you, we are not living in a system in which the production of goods is managed by the producers of goods based on direct demand.

I know our school system sucks here in Canada but you should learn to read Eh!

I never said that we had a socialist economy; I said that the system already exists. The system for A direct democratic economy exists within the globalized market that capitalism created.
Our goal has never been to destroy the economy but to seize it. The freed market; a economy without capitalists. Worker control over all existing and future industry.

And before you start in about money; Markets not need money. You can still have a market system without the use of currency as the market is simply production based on direct demand from the consumer in comparison with a centralized economy where the producer is directed by a government authority that has control over production & supposedly accounts for all of society's needs.

Centralism can not coexist along with the dictatorship of the proletariat unless the proletariat decide to organize as one big Union themselves; which I see as an impossibility as it would reduce the efficiency of the globally distributed worker controlled economy.

[ckaihatsu]

I was wondering what your views are on consensus in decision making in a communist society. For example, we all agree private capital should be socialized and we like values such as equality and liberty(i assume). But how do we implement this equality, it is just a broad principle we have but how on earth will we make a plan to reach this? There are infinitely much plans to solve any idea, and how could we reach consensus on these topics. For example when we want to build a railway, i will say it should lead to location A, but you might want B and yet another one C. Isnt the only possibility that we appoint some 'expert' and let him decide where it should go, and should we have any say in what actually happens with the railway since we delegated this task to the expert? Maybe it is only possible to get 40% support for idea A and 30% for B and C. How would we decide such stalemates?

I have difficulty putting this question into words properly and im happy to elaborate if it is unclear. The main question is: how do we come from general principles to coherent plans which satisfy everyone, or at least a big part of the people.


This is an excellent topic for discussion, and I think it actually paves-the-way as an example of how such matters could be handled -- a post on RevLeft to kick-off general discussion, that is.

You're using a good example / scenario, too, one that *can't* be resolved at any localist scale. Something like transportation *has* to be expansive, interconnected, generalized, and as efficient as possible for less continuous waste.

In line with the model (http://www.revleft.com/vb/entries/1174-revolutionary-policy-*solution*-(communist-supply-amp-demand)) that I developed and advocate, I'll say that local resident-type groups would be fine even though they'd all be geographically balkanized from each other -- the goal would be for all localities / groups to come to some conclusions of their own at the local level, and then, with all of these discussions always being publicly available, the next step would be to *generalize* the topic and participant content at 'higher levels', or broader, pan-locality scales. The process could reiterate in exactly the same way as at the initial local level, but with more content and sentiment being available, for more-refined and more-deterministic kinds of discussion (perhaps over a region or even a continent).





A central planning committee would be chosen by the workers. Advice would be solicited from several experts. The committee would choose what they deem the best plan and finally the plan would be presented for approval of the people in a plebiscite.

Sent from my SM-S920L using Tapatalk


I have a standing concern -- not a 'dealbreaker' -- with this conventional approach since a 'planning committee', even if not-static, would be too substitutionist (especially compared with the available communication logistics of direct mass-participation, as here at RevLeft, as outlined above). I acknowledge that the conventional approach would probably be the quickest and most-decisive, though.





I'm not in the most awake frame of mind which I'd like to be to offer more in-depth input, if necessary (and my internet will be temporarily going down tonight), but this is an important question. I may edit this reply soon.

Suffice it to say, for now, as I've said before:





At least for a transitional period, we need some kind of central aggregation of information and some form of common management to ensure we know who's producing what and where.


On this point I'd say that everything could just be published to the Internet (and with distributed public hardcopy printing services across the landscape), so that nothing would be opaque to the public.





Further, let's once again turn to Bakunin:





In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer.


You seem to be implying that revolutionary society should defer to *administrative*-type workers for matters of administration, but this is the very definition of *specialization*, which is definitely anti-communism and substitutionist. I do not favor the use of any kind of *institutions* for matters of social administration.





On top of this, it's not hard to conceive of voluntary public consultations in which interested parties could share their concerns with a panel of experts.

This would be distinct from two other approaches:





A) Careerist demagogues taking an approach which may not make the most logistical sense but which has the support of "constituents".


This reflects my concern precisely -- any administrative *institution* would inherently have social *clout* and would be open to the dynamic of *politicking* over personnel positions instead of dealing with the issues in a professional, dispassionate way.





B) Bureaucrats lacking any background or technical expertise and detached from the practical consequences of their decisions.


This, too, is a hazard to any revolutionary society -- the revolution is only successful to the extent that mass *participation* is present. The use of any 'experts' or 'professional administrators' means that mass participation would drop-off due to lack of *needed* inputs from everyone, while what's better would be a constantly continuous 'bottom-up' process of social administrative involvement.





Instead, a socialist approach would bring expertise to those among the masses who take an interest in an issue. This way we have the benefit of expertise without the "ivory tower" detachment


Yes.





from practical consequences (recognizing, after all, that while expertise best informs these decisions, they're designed in socialism to benefit the people).

As to the exact procedure, I have no blueprint for exactly how any given decision might be put to a vote and what percentage could be appropriately called decisive approval or rejection. I do think accountable (chosen by and in some way including workers) administrative bodies at a regional and local level could come up with general guidelines.


The guidelines from my model that speak to this are here:





communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors




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




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


---





I am; like brad half asleep and headed to work but anyhow. About the Bakunin quote;





In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer.





No centralism is feasible as we know for a fact that the workers can and must form a dictatorship over the means of production to unsure worker rule.
The way that the workers organize Is up to them; not us.


But with this you're being abstentionist on the topic of this thread: How would a decisive consensus be reached on some common societal issue like mass transportation -- ?

Without *some* kind of a top-down perspective the society would have to *incrementally* include input from various localities, at *best*, with no guarantee of any agreement on particulars from all of the areas affected.





All very good points, thanks for that. I get that people who make the houses should be involved in the overall production of houses. But my point is more that how many should be produced. For houses this is easy, build as many houses as there are people who want to live in houses. But for example food, how do we determine if we grow 100 turnips instead of 200 potatoes. Or should there be some ration or should we just produce a lot of everything and throw the excess away? For these smaller 'units' demand changes from year to year. With demand i mean here if people prefer to eat rice or potatoes, these preferences change over years and it seems to me that you will always have to produce an excess and throw that away. This also happens under capitalism, and maybe it is just inherent to any good which is mass-produced.
These objections seem to be petty of course,


No, this post-capitalist issue is *not* petty at all -- it's not just organic materials like food that would potentially be wasted, but also people's (liberated) *labor* and *time* as well, for the production of that unused excess.





but I still wonder how people can centrally plan what and how much of a good, with fluctuating demand, should be produced. My own 'solution' is to just produce an excess, i would like to hear what you think should be done.


The premise of my model, above, is that goods / resources / materials could realistically be produced without limits using full-automation in a post-capitalist context (no commodification). So we need to think in terms of how to handle societal *abundance*, something that capitalism is unable to do since it's fundamentally *scarcity*-oriented. (It creates *artificial scarcity* rather than let prices / exchange-values drop to zero since there's no profits to be made then.)

But the model estimates that one thing *could* very well be scarce in a post-capitalist / post-commodity environment, and that would be liberated labor itself. We shouldn't expect everyone to *want* to work once they've actually been *liberated* from that obligation which is all-too-present today.

'Planning' is just a matter of inputting and aggregating information:





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




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


People can spin-off 'proposals' based on any empirical data / information, and then these proposals could likewise be mass-ranked, iterated daily, for a full picture of political sentiment to be seen by anyone.


---





I am; like brad half asleep and headed to work but anyhow. About the Bakunin quote;

The quote makes it pretty clear who the authority on given matter we should defer to; Those involved. When we need boots the bootmakers are the ones who we should rely upon.
In the matter of building houses it are those who build houses who should manage the building of houses and so on.


Yes, society ultimately defers to those who are available and willing to do the actual work for the common good.





This is fair, however I think one point deserves emphasis: As they exist now, and as they would exist in socialism, industries are interlinked. The process of bootmaking can and should involve input not just from bootmakers, but from those who might be researching sturdier materiel to use, or who might be designing more advanced machinery for the process, or even those who need specially-tailored boots. Bootmaking may not be the ideal modern example for this, but I think my point is clear.


This already exists -- it can be encapsulated with the term 'industry', as in 'the shoe industry', meaning the larger specific work culture.





It is also not hard to conceive a economy where the production of goods is managed by the producers of the goods based on the direct demand from the community.
There is no complicated math or framework that needs implementing; the system already exists now...


There's still the question of how the exact *work roles* (etc.) would be collectively decided-on.

My own approach is this, from a past thread:





[T]he layout of *work roles* would be the 'bottom' of 'top-down' (though collectivized) social planning, and would be the 'top' of 'bottom-up' processes like individual self-determination.


---





I don't want to carry the same debate from another thread over to this one, so I'll keep this short: There will be an element among the revolutionary class which is more practiced in administrative work. It's not difficult to see such an element playing its part in "socially necessary unproductive labour" just as bootmakers make boots. Such work, of course, need not be an exclusive pursuit, which helps blur the lines between a "central bureaucracy" and the people as a whole. People can have hobbies, after all. Far from being unfeasible, an organic centralism will be necessary for reasons I've stated elsewhere.


'Organic centralism' sounds a *lot* better than any 'administrative workers' -- indicating class-like specialization -- or an institutional 'central bureaucracy', for the same reason.





As I said, I have no blueprint for specific procedural details of post-revolution production (nor could an honest revolutionary provide one) but that doesn't prevent us from providing some kind of answer beyond shrugging our shoulders when asked how things might look after the revolution. After all, revolutions are tumultuous and "What would you replace this with?" is a question revolutionaries have faced and will continue to face. We will want to minimize that tumult. That said, this is to be developed in practice (praxis!), not speculated about without action. The most honest answer we can give is "We have ideas, but we'll flesh them out together as we go."

As for production of excess, well, if it's something we can keep in storage until demand fluctuates upward, I don't see a problem with that. If we're talking about perishable goods, or even a fluctuating demand for services, yes I suppose an adjustment period to meet changed demand, even with some forecast available, is necessary. The difference, of course, is excess would actually be excess...beyond people's actual needs rather than beyond what's profitable for a capitalist. Certainly, we could find alternative uses for some of the excess as well.


Yes, but this is proposing a *logistical* approach for an issue that's really *socio-political* (administrative) at heart.

Sure, some produced materials like food could undoubtedly be repurposed elsewhere, but we shouldn't *rely* on this 'back-door' trick when the better thing to do would be to improve our collective administrative ability so that we're not scrambling at the end-side of things to repurpose excess materials that have been produced.





But for example food, how do we determine if we grow 100 turnips instead of 200 potatoes.





This is rather silly; I mean the person who works in the feild must decide what he plants. No logical being with suggest that the decision over what root vegetable to plant should be up to a central authority.
The workers are the only possible legitimate authority over the work.
As production is decided today the demand for a particular good can and will influence the workers production. A market where production is requested from the community (demand) and production met by the workers (Supply). This system is already proven to work; we just need to remove the system of Capitalistic control over that system. Turn all production over to worker control.


No, the market system, in *any* implementation*, inherently gives rise to *exchange values* (explicit or implicit), which is a chipping-away-at, and even *undermining* of the communist principle of producing for the sake of human *need*.

[jdneel]

I found your reply very interesting and thought provoking. Because I grew up before the home computer, I sometimes overlook the possibilities of modern mass communication and how it could lead to mass democracy. Why use a planning committee when it could be presented directly to the masses?

Sent from my SM-S920L using Tapatalk

[ckaihatsu]

I found your reply very interesting and thought provoking. Because I grew up before the home computer, I sometimes overlook the possibilities of modern mass communication and how it could lead to mass democracy. Why use a planning committee when it could be presented directly to the masses?

Sent from my SM-S920L using Tapatalk


Thanks, jdneel.

The model / framework I developed and advocate has 'stages' of qualitative collective advancement for any given 'plan' (and it would be up to liberated workers, via their pooled earned labor credits to 'fund' incoming liberated-labor for any highly-mass-prioritized plan, or not, or *any* plan that's been finalized to a 'policy package' degree of completeness.

Out of all of the rank-item *types* -- 'initiative', 'demand', 'proposal', 'project', 'production run', 'funding', 'debt issuance', 'liberated-labor internal', 'policy package', 'order', 'request', and 'slot donation' -- the 'stages' would be 'initiative', 'demand', 'proposal', 'project' or 'production run', 'funding' (if needed), 'debt issuance' (if any), 'liberated-labor internal', and 'policy package' (finalized):


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/)


Here are the fields of the database as seen in the background of the graphic:




ISSUER

AUTOMATIC TIMESTAMP UPON RECEIPT (YYYYMMDDHHMM)

ACTIVE DATE (YYYYMMDD)

FORMAL-ITEM REFERENCED (OR AUTOMATICALLY CREATED), IF ANY

FORMAL-ITEM NUMERICAL INCREMENT, 001-999, PER DAY, PER UNIQUE GEOGRAPHIC UNIT

GEOGRAPHIC LEVEL INTENDED-FOR ('HSH', 'ENT', 'LCL', RGN', 'CTN', 'GBL')

GEOGRAPHIC SOURCE UNIQUE NAME, ABBREVIATED

FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME_BIRTHYEAR(YY)

INDIVIDUAL'S ITEM RANKING, 0001-9999 (PER DAY)

RANK-ITEM TYPE ('INI', 'DMN', 'PRP', 'PRJ', PDR', 'FND', 'DTI', 'LLI', 'PLP', 'ORD', 'REQ', 'SLD')

TITLE-DESCRIPTION


WORK ROLE NUMBER AND TITLE

TENTATIVE OR ACTUAL HAZARD / DIFFICULTY MULTIPLIER

ESTIMATE-OF OR ACTUAL LABOR HOURS PER SCHEDULED WORK SHIFT

TOTAL LABOR CREDITS (MULTIPLIER TIMES HOURS)

ACTUAL FUNDING OF LABOR CREDITS PER WORK SHIFT (FUNDING ITEM REFERENCE REQUIRED)

SCHEDULED DISCRETE WORK SHIFT, BEGINNING DATE & TIME

SCHEDULED DISCRETE WORK SHIFT, ENDING DATE & TIME

AVAILABLE-AND-SELECTED LIBERATED LABORER IDENTIFIER


DENOMINATION

QUANTITY, PER DENOMINATION

TOTAL LABOR CREDITS PER DENOMINATION

SERIAL NUMBER RANGE, BEGINNING

SERIAL NUMBER RANGE, ENDING


---


And here are some past thoughts on the topic of communications technologies:




Maybe consider what the state is *for* -- what is its material function in society -- ?

Basically it's *coordination*, something that people are far more technically able to do than ever before, with Internet communication technologies.

While hobbyist types self-coordinated to bring the online commons into existence from decades ago, the conventional world is still using antiquated 'political representative' kinds of substitutionist roles, and private control of the means of mass production.

So if today's software developer employees can be thought of as 'workers' -- which they are, depending on how they're paid -- then why wouldn't all other workers, white- and blue-collar, be able to coordinate just as well, to effect production of all kinds, for society's benefit -- ?

One may realize that the state's traditional function of 'social / political hub' no longer has a monopoly on social communications since people are more able than ever before to communicate and organize very organically, without formal institutional structures. And, since the bourgeois state only serves to uphold private property, we can empirically prove that the state is no longer realistically needed since producers can simply self-organize to effect whatever production they / we think is best.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/threads/192780-State-Withering-Away?p=2826899#post2826899




This is a popular proposal on RL, but it still involves resources being allocated ex post. Furthermore, the effects propagate through the entire economy (to the extent that it makes sense to talk about an economy in socialism) in an uncontrolled manner. Obviously producing one loaf of bread doesn't just mean pressing a button on the bread-loaf-summoning machine; it involves producing additional grain, replacement mill parts (with enough loaves of bread), chemical fertiliser, water etc. etc. For production to function smoothly, without delays and scarcity, this movement of producer goods needs to be planned, and for that to happen demand needs to be assessed ex ante. (This is also why the Stalinist "complete the five-year plan in four years" campaign was destructive; an economy requires balance between its various parts and when one sector of the economy grows ahead of all the others, it creates problems.)

http://www.revleft.com/vb/threads/194274-Efficient-Economic-Planning?p=2856050#post2856050


Understood, but I'll have to reiterate, in other terms -- you're showing a *classical* understanding and/or an *abstraction* of a workflow pipeline, that, in operation, would simply be operating.

Think of it, if you would, more in terms of a pump that's pulling liquid upwards -- initially for awhile energy will have to be spent just to get the existing pocket of air expelled while pulling the waterline up, but once the water itself is being pumped up and out, it's *working*. It's operational and will be flowing indefinitely as long as there's water to be pumped.

So obviously the analogy is to the world's productive activities and capacities, post-capitalism. Really, existing communications technology could just handle all of the workflow complexities you've described. You seem to be almost *mystifying* the subject matter by using the term 'uncontrolled manner' -- is it *really* 'uncontrolled', because that would then imply that supply-chain ripple effects could always potentially be 'uncontrollable', which would suck for us.

Worse, it's a two-fer -- how exactly would resources still have to be allocated *ex post*, if no markets are being used? Either planning is done upfront, or it isn't.

A 'rolling inventory' / stock-control system would be cascading, just as you've laid out, with zero cause for anxiety, because newer, complexity-type approaches to this functioning could conceive of a 'boot-up' period (the water being pulled up, displacing the air) where significant productivity would *not even be expected*. (Basically a practically neverending cascading-pipelines-of-production socialism would just be 'off-line', as it is now, unfortunately, until everything got linked up the way -- or ways -- it needs to be in order to be humming along.)

This is a logistical way of saying that the workers themselves know, and would know, the best ways to interact with co-producers, and so, over time, certain *patterns* of linked productive behaviors would be ongoing, to effect total production. Our collective interest is in *optimizing* this entire arrangement of productive capacities, necessarily on a worldwide geographical scale. And, once done, all that would be required would be the consistent supply of all requisite inputs, for desired output. Regular-type changes over time, trends, shifts, etc., wouldn't cause the slightest hiccup because the system operates *recursively*, constantly communicating cascading information about the system upstream (and publicly) -- with an unfailingly dependable, always-virtually-realtime live set of info at hand there'd be no problems with anything unexpected.

It wouldn't even be an exaggeration to say that the system could even recover fairly quickly from catastrophic events -- natural disasters -- without the conventionally-expected human intervention of programming work to 'bug fix' the entire program. The obvious analogy -- and precedent -- is the network of the Internet itself. Certainly it could be set up for certain nodes to affect other nodes, perhaps in a cascading arrangement, mirroring empirical reality and developments as humanly necessary / required.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/threads/194274-Efficient-Economic-Planning?p=2856111#post2856111

[The Intransigent Faction]

This is an excellent topic for discussion, and I think it actually paves-the-way as an example of how such matters could be handled -- a post on RevLeft to kick-off general discussion, that is.

You're using a good example / scenario, too, one that *can't* be resolved at any localist scale. Something like transportation *has* to be expansive, interconnected, generalized, and as efficient as possible for less continuous waste.

In line with the model (http://www.revleft.com/vb/entries/1174-revolutionary-policy-*solution*-(communist-supply-amp-demand)) that I developed and advocate, I'll say that local resident-type groups would be fine even though they'd all be geographically balkanized from each other -- the goal would be for all localities / groups to come to some conclusions of their own at the local level, and then, with all of these discussions always being publicly available, the next step would be to *generalize* the topic and participant content at 'higher levels', or broader, pan-locality scales. The process could reiterate in exactly the same way as at the initial local level, but with more content and sentiment being available, for more-refined and more-deterministic kinds of discussion (perhaps over a region or even a continent).





I have a standing concern -- not a 'dealbreaker' -- with this conventional approach since a 'planning committee', even if not-static, would be too substitutionist (especially compared with the available communication logistics of direct mass-participation, as here at RevLeft, as outlined above). I acknowledge that the conventional approach would probably be the quickest and most-decisive, though.








On this point I'd say that everything could just be published to the Internet (and with distributed public hardcopy printing services across the landscape), so that nothing would be opaque to the public.








You seem to be implying that revolutionary society should defer to *administrative*-type workers for matters of administration, but this is the very definition of *specialization*, which is definitely anti-communism and substitutionist. I do not favor the use of any kind of *institutions* for matters of social administration.








This reflects my concern precisely -- any administrative *institution* would inherently have social *clout* and would be open to the dynamic of *politicking* over personnel positions instead of dealing with the issues in a professional, dispassionate way.





This, too, is a hazard to any revolutionary society -- the revolution is only successful to the extent that mass *participation* is present. The use of any 'experts' or 'professional administrators' means that mass participation would drop-off due to lack of *needed* inputs from everyone, while what's better would be a constantly continuous 'bottom-up' process of social administrative involvement.





Yes.





The guidelines from my model that speak to this are here:













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But with this you're being abstentionist on the topic of this thread: How would a decisive consensus be reached on some common societal issue like mass transportation -- ?

Without *some* kind of a top-down perspective the society would have to *incrementally* include input from various localities, at *best*, with no guarantee of any agreement on particulars from all of the areas affected.





No, this post-capitalist issue is *not* petty at all -- it's not just organic materials like food that would potentially be wasted, but also people's (liberated) *labor* and *time* as well, for the production of that unused excess.





The premise of my model, above, is that goods / resources / materials could realistically be produced without limits using full-automation in a post-capitalist context (no commodification). So we need to think in terms of how to handle societal *abundance*, something that capitalism is unable to do since it's fundamentally *scarcity*-oriented. (It creates *artificial scarcity* rather than let prices / exchange-values drop to zero since there's no profits to be made then.)

But the model estimates that one thing *could* very well be scarce in a post-capitalist / post-commodity environment, and that would be liberated labor itself. We shouldn't expect everyone to *want* to work once they've actually been *liberated* from that obligation which is all-too-present today.

'Planning' is just a matter of inputting and aggregating information:







People can spin-off 'proposals' based on any empirical data / information, and then these proposals could likewise be mass-ranked, iterated daily, for a full picture of political sentiment to be seen by anyone.


---





Yes, society ultimately defers to those who are available and willing to do the actual work for the common good.





This already exists -- it can be encapsulated with the term 'industry', as in 'the shoe industry', meaning the larger specific work culture.





There's still the question of how the exact *work roles* (etc.) would be collectively decided-on.

My own approach is this, from a past thread:





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'Organic centralism' sounds a *lot* better than any 'administrative workers' -- indicating class-like specialization -- or an institutional 'central bureaucracy', for the same reason.





Yes, but this is proposing a *logistical* approach for an issue that's really *socio-political* (administrative) at heart.

Sure, some produced materials like food could undoubtedly be repurposed elsewhere, but we shouldn't *rely* on this 'back-door' trick when the better thing to do would be to improve our collective administrative ability so that we're not scrambling at the end-side of things to repurpose excess materials that have been produced.








No, the market system, in *any* implementation*, inherently gives rise to *exchange values* (explicit or implicit), which is a chipping-away-at, and even *undermining* of the communist principle of producing for the sake of human *need*.

Interesting points. Just to clarify a couple of things:

I thought I'd made this clear, but when I mention "administrative workers", I'm not referring to some kind of exclusive class, merely people in the capacity of doing "socially necessary unproductive labour." It's not a matter of exclusionary specialization. It's just reflective of some people taking more of an interest in such "planning" than others, and perhaps choosing to devote their time to "socially necessary unproductive labour". There's no reason to expect everyone to be equally interested in the day-to-day goings-on of "the shoe industry". The point is to "abolish the antithesis between mental and physical labour", while as you said, deferring to those able and willing. We can do so, as I said, in a way which overcomes "ivory tower detachment."

As for such an industry already existing, my point was the same as your last point above: It's not a matter of workers seizing and running the market system. It was also a qualification to Bakunin's statement. "Deferring to the authority of the bootmaker" doesn't mean the bootmaker could or should ignore anyone with relevant input into the bootmaking process.

One obvious change would be around information: Capitalist markets are set up to demand a certain degree of secrecy or a claim of ownership around innovations. Sure, this doesn't indefinitely stop them from being generalized, but in a socialist economy this would if anything happen much faster. New, efficient methods of production could and should be shared for the benefit of communities rather than guarded for competitive advantage, and industry should be organized to allow for this. The same would apply to all stages of the productive process. Our aim is to seize the means of production, but also to do away with the current system's legal and other barriers to a truer socialization of production and put in place means to better facilitate it.

[ckaihatsu]

Interesting points. Just to clarify a couple of things:

I thought I'd made this clear, but when I mention "administrative workers", I'm not referring to some kind of exclusive class, merely people in the capacity of doing "socially necessary unproductive labour." It's not a matter of exclusionary specialization. It's just reflective of some people taking more of an interest in such "planning" than others, and perhaps choosing to devote their time to "socially necessary unproductive labour". There's no reason to expect everyone to be equally interested in the day-to-day goings-on of "the shoe industry". The point is to "abolish the antithesis between mental and physical labour", while as you said, deferring to those able and willing. We can do so, as I said, in a way which overcomes "ivory tower detachment."


Okay.

I think we need to distinguish in terminology the difference between the [1] liberated workers' intrinsic 'administrative component' of their day-to-day work, as with a shoe factory calling around to find out where to get necessary component materials from, for a supply-chain link, and [2] the willful, voluntary step of taking on 'socially necessary unproductive labor', which might be more like putting-out-feelers for the collective construction of a new leather-tanning facility, as a future nearby more-reliable source of supply-chain input to the end-product shoe-assembly factory in which this person works.

I have to note that this inherent dichotomy *could* potentially be a source of social friction if not addressed as an element of its own. For example, perhaps the person looking to 'beef up' productive capacity, as with the building of a new supply-chain feeder factory (for leather for shoes) does that kind of more-macroscopic activity *a lot* -- not to where their regular shoe-making work role suffers, but to where it becomes a regular pattern of chosen socio-political involvement and a source of personal pride.

Given this situation there would be little to stop such a person from 'lording' their individual socio-material involvement over others (who didn't contribute such social inputs), beyond a basic sense of 'professionalism'. In other words they would want to display and be-acknowledged-for some kind of 'socio-political capital' due to the time and efforts they consistently contributed to the greater good. And it would be a fair claim, considering these extra voluntary efforts of 'socially necessary unproductive labor'.

The hazard, of course, is that this kind of 'specialized' activity, when seen in various individuals over the whole social landscape, would altogether constitute a population subset of 'movers and shakers' compared to the average person who probably *wouldn't* take on such additional involvement and social responsibilities.

How should a post-capitalist society handle this kind of dynamic, so that socially necessary / discretionary unproductive labor would still be contributed, but without unintentionally funnelling such co-participants into an informal, separatist-type 'specialists' demographic that would begin to have *institutional*, class-like interests of its own as a special group that did such discretionary tasks in lieu of broader-based social activity over the same -- ?

Within the context of my framework, such intrinsic mover-and-shaker types would be constrained to specific 'proposals' and 'policy packages' (finalized proposals) that would be subject to mass-approval (through mass-prioritizations) and the availability and willingness of liberated labor to implement any given plan.





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


In this way such 'proponents' would be fundamentally prevented from general group-'personnel' status that would lead into a separatist standing *institution* of such types. Proponents would have to basically politically *commodify* themselves according to this-or-that plan, and would rise or fall in reputation according to that plan's success.





As for such an industry already existing, my point was the same as your last point above: It's not a matter of workers seizing and running the market system. It was also a qualification to Bakunin's statement. "Deferring to the authority of the bootmaker" doesn't mean the bootmaker could or should ignore anyone with relevant input into the bootmaking process.


Certainly, because that's what *I* got -- 'input into the bootmaking process'. (heh)

Yes, of course, the nature and meaning of 'industry' would change considerably in the transition from capitalism to socialism.





One obvious change would be around information: Capitalist markets are set up to demand a certain degree of secrecy or a claim of ownership around innovations. Sure, this doesn't indefinitely stop them from being generalized, but in a socialist economy this would if anything happen much faster. New, efficient methods of production could and should be shared for the benefit of communities rather than guarded for competitive advantage, and industry should be organized to allow for this. The same would apply to all stages of the productive process. Our aim is to seize the means of production, but also to do away with the current system's legal and other barriers to a truer socialization of production and put in place means to better facilitate it.


Yes. Definitely.