Division of Labor

[NovelGentry]

This came up in another thread, so I figured I'd bring it here for some serious discussion. After I had made the following statements:


Again, you talk about the expansion of a franchise, but you expand it only so far as you are capable of seeing it reasonable, for you, that is within the realm of the trade itself. The "shoe-makers" -- as if there is some defined group of who is to be a shoemaker.

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide responded:


Because there is.

And there always will be. No matter how "evolved" society or economics become, no matter how much we "multi-task" the fact that we have both been using the work "doctor" throughout this conversation shows that we both realize that, ultimately, people can only do so much.

Can people do more thant one thing? Of course, but that thee number of things they can do is always finite. That is, you can be a doctor, a tailor, and a candle-stick maker, but you're still a doctor, tailor, and candle-stick maker. You still have defined occupational industrial concerns. And as long as humans are mortal, that will always be so.

In general response: If there was misunderstanding on how I view division of labor because of the use of the term "doctor" there's probably a lot more misunderstanding to come. Where the difference in our opinions can be seen... why you uphold "Because there is" and I say you can destroy the conceivable bounds of division of labor is seen in the argumen itself -- not in simple terms.

I see the doctor as being able to be a shoemaker, as well as a pilot if he wanted, as well as plenty of other things. It is not for us to say how he divides his time.

Of course the number is finite, no one can argue that, but that has nothing to do with the division of labor we are talking about. If you do not understand the concept of division of labor, or what Adam Smith proposed, you shouldn't be talking about it. It has nothing to do with no one being able to do everything they wish they could do. It has nothing to do with mental or physical limitations, or time limitations in a day. It has everything to do with boxing people into roles, for the sake of efficient production.

You uphold this tradition, even if less strictly as someone like Smith did. You admit people can do more than one thing. But the minute the doctor wishes to make his shoes, he becomes limited by the shoemakers -- the rest of society and the productive forces keep him in check according to what you would have. "Ok doctor! you've made 7 pairs now... time to give up the machine!" "But I want to make shoes for lots of people!" "You can't make shoes, your a doctor." This is not what you said, but what you set comes dangerously close to upholding such foolishness. And the mans role as a "doctor" supersedes any other role which he could take in society. This is wrong, and at that, it's sad.

I then continued:


Again, division of labor becomes FOOLISH to uphold, so why uphold that the division of labor should in turn uphold any other ruling? The doctor can be a shoe-maker, as any other shoe-maker could be a doctor. It becomes pointless to draw such boundaries.

To which he rebutted:



Ah!

I think this is the major issue of contention: is division of labour nescessary.

Clearly, you would say no. Indeed you find it "FOOLISH". I can hardly see how it is avoidable. As I said above, so long as the abilities of humanity are finite so are its occupational options. So long as we only have 24 hours in the day, there are only so many things we can do.

"Division of labour" has gotten a bad name by the abuses carried out in its name under capitalism, but the simple fact is that it has always been a part of human history, and will continue to be so long as we live in an advanced society.

The only alternative is...what? Hermitage? Autarky?

As long as we live in complex modern societies in which we are interreliant and inter-dependent, different people will do diffrernt things. You're right "the doctor can be a shoe-maker, as any other shoe-maker could be a doctor", but they ae on or the other. In some exeptional instances, they could, I suppose be both, but then that is what they are, and they are not a computer technician. They could, I suppose, do that as well but then that is what they are.

No matter how many proffessions, no matter how many jobs, they will always always ALWAYS be categorizable.

Basically, this entire discussion comes to practicality. I understand that you seek to "revolutionize" production, all of us on this website do. But the fact is that society cannot control every aspect of production and, in the end, local worker control is inevitable.


And again, division of labor is not about only being able to do so much in one day. Division of labor is a capitalist concept, at least in it's current form. As smith pointed out, the guilds of previous days had division of labor, much like how you want it. The shoemaker was the shoemaker, the doctor was the doctor. Capitalist division of labor goes further. You now have doctor and nurse, who perform different functions, more, you have doctor, nurse, nurses aid, and medical technician (oh my). Within shoemaking you have those who separate and mold the materials, or cut the materials, and those who sew, and those who box.

THIS, is what division of labor is, on both levels. Again, nothing to do with how much time you have in a day, or whether or not you're even capable of learning everything you want to do. It is the difference between a natural limitation of your own ability, or a limitation placed on you by society for the sake of efficiency and creating said roles.


In some exeptional instances, they could, I suppose be both, but then that is what they are, and they are not a computer technician.

Why is this an exceptional instance? Everyone with hobbies carries extensive skill sets. I myself would enjoy teaching, but I can work on computers (in all different ways): programming, networking, web design, graphic design. I'd like to write too. I really love to cook, and I'm quite good at that too, can I not cook for others? Am I a teacher and that is all? Am I a computer programmer and that is all? Am I a network admin and that is all? Am I a writer and that is all? Am I a cook and that is all? Or am a quite possibly all these things?

Capitalism forces division of labor. It is a necessary position that I acquire a job, in a certain field, and this becomes my "career." This becomes what I am. You seek to do the same, not by any threat of a boss, but by limiting the means. The shoemakers controls the means to make the shoes. The coat makers will control the means to make the coats. The electrical engineers will control the means to make electronics. And so it goes.

Whether or not you can slap labels on someone, one or ten, again, does not do with the division of labor. Up until now the move from feudal times with the guilds of handicraftsmen, journeymen, masters, etc to capitalism has increased division of labor. We should seek to decrease division of labor and actively push for people to be educated in a number of fields. Imagine EVERYONE had a limited amount of medical training and could help when emergencies arose? We can do this, because of the organizational role that society can take -- that was Marx's original point in the quote I mentioned earlier.

It is not a question of "Will someone always be something or a set of somethings." It's a question of, do we put the things in place that push them into that role and do not allow him to escape. By controlling means of production even by the workers of a given "field," you DO.

WIth that response said, I'd like to get other people's reponses on the existing material (quotes) in this new thread, and general responses to how you feel on the division of labor.

[LSD]

This came up in another thread, so I figured I'd bring it here for some serious discussion.

I was just about to do the same thing! :lol:

It's definitely a subject worth discussing in depth.


Of course the number is finite, no one can argue that, but that has nothing to do with the division of labor we are talking about. If you do not understand the concept of division of labor, or what Adam Smith proposed, you shouldn't be talking about it.

Clearly neither of us are proposing a capitalistic environment, nor a return to classical liberalism. I'm using division of labour as a short-hand for saying that people should have specific defined occupations.


I see the doctor as being able to be a shoemaker, as well as a pilot if he wanted, as well as plenty of other things. It is not for us to say how he divides his time.

Well, to a certain degree it is.

Certainly, it is requisite that he preform some productive occupation. Whether it be doctor or pilot or both. As long as he is working for society, it is none of our concern, but if he chose to spend his time eating flowers...

For a communist society to function, it must have pre-arranged occupations which it considers essential and which the society has democratically so elevated. In addition to one (or many of course) of these occupations, one is free to do whatsoever one pleases so long, of course, as one does not hurt others in the process.

Once we accept (and really how can we not?) this fundamental premise, it is clear that, while our hypothetical doctor can be a pilot and a shoemaker and a fireman, he is still preforming specific defined labour that the society in question considers valuable. His time is very much the concern of society, as is the rest of society's time of concern to him.


You uphold this tradition, even if less strictly as someone like Smith did. You admit people can do more than one thing. But the minute the doctor wishes to make his shoes, he becomes limited by the shoemakers -- the rest of society and the productive forces keep him in check according to what you would have. "Ok doctor! you've made 7 pairs now... time to give up the machine!" "But I want to make shoes for lots of people!" "You can't make shoes, your a doctor."

As you admit, this is an caricaturization of my viewpoint, but to a certain degree it is correct. As I've said numerous times, the doctor can makes shoes, he make many shoes, indeed he can be a shoe-maker in addition to being a doctor. But you wish to eliminate the categories alltogether and I propose that this is impossible. You want the doctor/shoe-maker to not be a doctor/shoe-maker, to have no label and to not be at all limited to one or two or 50 occupations. This cannot work.

Categorization is essential in order to maintain organiztion, efficiency, and quality.

Organizationally, it is nescessary to ensure that essential occupations, which will be nearly all occupations of course, are sufficiently present and distributed. If there are "no doctors" how do we assure that there are enough...doctors? Surely everyone cannot undergo the extensive trainging required, certainly not the training for specialization. It may seem to be only "bookkeeping", but it is a matter of human survival. Communism still needs organizational logic to assure that fundamental needs are met. This requires maintaining adequate levels of nescessary workers in nescessary fields.

Furthermore, there is the issue of primary employment. Regardless of how many "hobbies" one has, and regardless of the theoretical economic model one subsits within, the limitations of humanity in a modern technological society will always narrow the number of occupations that one can be both expert and experienced in. I'm not saying that the number is one, I'm just saying that its severly limited. No matter how "rennaissance" one is, there is simply a finite limit in how much one can focus ones energies. This means that even if one had 700 jobs, one of them would always come first.

In terms of efficiency, I know its the "bad word" or communism, but to a certain degree it is nescessary. Yeah, it shouldn't be the priority, and yeah, interests of democracy and freedom come first, but efficiency is not a negative.

Without efficient production, we will waste resources, labour, time, energy, divert machines and materials, and adversely affect all of society. It is essential that all industries be run as well as reasonably possible. This means that people must focus on particular tasks. Not only while on the job, but in terms of picking a job. If one is engaged in 800,000 occupations, one is not focusing ones energies!

Now, free time is free and I am not proposing that people be "restricted" to only performing tasks related to their chosen profession, far from it, But they must have a chose profession!



It is not a question of "Will someone always be something or a set of somethings." It's a question of, do we put the things in place that push them into that role and do not allow him to escape. By controlling means of production even by the workers of a given "field," you DO.

"not allow them to escape"?

How so? We're not talking about capitalism here! If one wishes to pursue alternative education and change ones chosen career, one will be perfectly free to do so! What one cannot do, however, is to not have any chosen career. To be a dabbler and a dilatante and a "jack of all trades".

Doing a "little of this and a little of that" may sound especially romantic and somehow anti-capitalistic, but it is just plain impractical.


Why is this an exceptional instance? Everyone with hobbies carries extensive skill sets.

Of course, but that doesn't mean that they could do all of these things professionally. The fact that I enjoy singing does not make me a professional singer, nor does playing baseball make me a professional baseballer. Hobbies are hobbies because they are tasks which we enjoy not which we are expert in. Yes, of course, there are many who are expert in activities which are not their chosen profession and doubtlessly this will continue to be the case, but this does not mean that they do not have a primary employment!

What you need to understand is that for many their occupation is not at all what they would like to be doing. This is, of course, a feature of capitalism. In a communist environment, people would be able to chose occupations that they enjoy, and top that with hobbies that they enjoy. If these hobbies are societally benneficial than all the better, but there will be no such requirement. There will, however, be a requirement that their occupation of note be approved and nescessary and recognized.


And the mans role as a "doctor" supersedes any other role which he could take in society. This is wrong, and at that, it's sad.

The role of doctor does not "superscede" his many other roles, it stands beside them.

...but he is a doctor. He isn't a doctor "before" a father or lover or friend or environmentalist... but he is a doctor. It in no way diminishes those other roles to add one more to the list.

But you cannot eliminate roles from society! They are as much a part of human society as language. Certainly some day things could change, but not in any forseeable future. The limitations of humanity are simply such that there will always be primary tasks and primary responsibilites.

We call it division of labour.

[OleMarxco]

Originally posted by "Myself"
I have thought about a problem of Communism: How do we justify treating all "classes" of workers the same when, eventually, the doctor is doing more aid to humanity than the shoe-worker: The shoe-maker produces shoes - Which we CAN use, and is very handy, but not necessarily "must-have". However a doctor can save your life - Although "don't-have" to live, and could just die. How do we meet this problem? Giving them equal pay, equal power and position to each-other in the industry, even if "to each according to their need" but the need for a Doctor just happens to be greater than shoes. Everyone could go in socks or bare-footed if they wanted, but we are still mortal so Doctors -are- kind of more "important". How do we manage to reward "according to their ability" just as much as the shoe-producer withouth the Doctor feeling undervalued?

This question was left un-answered in the other thread, the one about private properity. I also think it suits this thread more, seeing now as things have, sort of, "moved" to here. So...well, please give it a shot? ;)
And all of this tedious "doctor/shoemaker"-bullshit is giving me the blue balls, hah. Hate to say I am almost guilty of, kinda "inventing" that example, but can I claim ownership? Hell no, in a Communism, everything's shared, yo. Hahahahah. Too bad for me...and my greed for worldly possesions.

[LSD]

How do we manage to reward "according to their ability" just as much as the shoe-producer withouth the Doctor feeling undervalued?

Because such valuations are societal inventions and not a feature of humanity. Capitalism tells us that we should be "paid" for our work in some sort of meritocratic continuum of worth, but that's just capitalism.

Communism gives everything to everyone. That is, there isn't any "more" that we can give to one person in contrast with another. Everyone has equal access to the same public goods / resources / materials / etc... and the doctor can't, even theoretically, argue for more.

Indeed, once you eliminate latent capitalistic thinking, you realize that there's no reason to assume the doctor would even want more! Once he has everything he needs and everything he reasonable wants, what does he care what the shoe-maker down the road has?


How do we justify treating all "classes" of workers the same when, eventually, the doctor is doing more aid to humanity than the shoe-worker

We "justify" it by realizing that the nature of ones occupation, no matter how essential or needed, has no bearing on the fundamental rights of every human being.

The connection between "job" and "pay" is an artificial construct.


And all of this tedious "doctor/shoemaker"-bullshit is giving me the blue balls, hah.

Well, your hypothetical has given rise to a fascinating discussion on the need for Division of Labour, so "feel proud"! :lol:!

[NovelGentry]

Clearly neither of us are proposing a capitalistic environment, nor a return to classical liberalism. I'm using division of labour as a short-hand for saying that people should have specific defined occupations.

But a "specific defined occuption" is merely a label. It is necessary for conversation (maybe), and that is about all. What matters is not what you are called, but more specifically what you do. But if what you do or are capable of doing goes far beyond any single goal, such as I showed with myself, there is no point to having any "specific defined occuption" as a label or otherwise.


Well, to a certain degree it is.

Certainly, it is requisite that he preform some productive occupation. Whether it be doctor or pilot or both. As long as he is working for society, it is none of our concern, but if he chose to spend his time eating flowers...

For a communist society to function, it must have pre-arranged occupations which it considers essential and which the society has democratically so elevated. In addition to one (or many of course) of these occupations, one is free to do whatsoever one pleases so long, of course, as one does not hurt others in the process.

While it may be a concern, it is not for us to say how he actually goes about it. Furthermore, it is not our concern for specific individuals, if it was, how do we decide who is to fulfill the role of doctor, etc? Our concern is that there is enough doctors. There is no way we can force people into the position of doctor, and no reason we should. Instead, we identify there is a need, and people fulfill that need if THEY choose to do so.

Again, the perspective and oversight might be a concern of society, but the resolution is not founded by society dictating the role of a single person. There is a HUGE difference.

If the man works as a doctor for 15 years, and suddenly decides to become a pilot, we should be aware, and seek to maintain adequate amount of doctorsto see to society in a reasonable fashion, but we cannot force him back into his position -- that would be outrageous.

And again, this is what I said -- It is not for us to say how he divides his time. -- it may be our concern, but it is not for us to say.


Once we accept (and really how can we not?) this fundamental premise, it is clear that, while our hypothetical doctor can be a pilot and a shoemaker and a fireman, he is still preforming specific defined labour that the society in question considers valuable. His time is very much the concern of society, as is the rest of society's time of concern to him.

We can always describe what a person is doing. The question is can we allot a person's labor power to specific tasks. Does society have a say in that? I think not, or I think it shouldn't anyway. You are in essence redefining division of labor as definition of labor. Even if a person were to do EVERYTHING for themselves (and thus, for that person there would be no division of labor), being completely self-sufficient, you could still define their tasks and their labor, and you could still define the time they put to each, thus seeing their own individual "division of labor."

This is not what division of labor means, however, in the traditional sense. Instead we are talking about the division of labor across society. So that labor is so divided that our tasks become increasingly more specific, and thus, increasingly easier, and thus less and less skillfull in their requirements. This is something that can ultimately be done away with.


As you admit, this is an caricaturization of my viewpoint, but to a certain degree it is correct. As I've said numerous times, the doctor can makes shoes, he make many shoes, indeed he can be a shoe-maker in addition to being a doctor. But you wish to eliminate the categories alltogether and I propose that this is impossible.

But the categorization is merely a label. What I wish to eliminate is the borders upheld through such categorization. Saying the doctor is not a shoemaker and thus has no role in working with the means of production for shoes -- that is crap. You then divide the means of produciton and control over them by this trade. This is completely and utterly backwards.

I serve to say there is nothing that says a doctor is NOT a shoe-maker... or cannot be... or should not be able to become. Whether you call him a doctor, or a shoemaker does not matter, it is just a label.

My question to you is this, do you propose that the doctor be seen as a doctor and thus ONLY be given a role in determining resolutions to issues relating to the medical care aspects? Even if he has a place as a shoemaker? Even if he is to become a pilot? Even if agricultural work affects his life?

One must picture society as a single, living breathing organism. The separate trades are it's arms and it's legs, and it's mouth, etc. One picks the food, while the other consumes it. One sews the clothes, while the whole is dressed in them.. etc. But you cannot presume the arm that picks the food has no responsibility for feeding the mouth. Nor can you presume the arm is free from the decisions of the mouth. If the mouth does not consume, the arm will surely become weak and die.

This is my point, the division of labor is one that we uphold division for the sake of organizational roles. The organizational role, however, can come from the society (the body) as a whole. Indeed it should and MUST if we are to ensure equality. Because of this, the arm in particular never needs to worry solely about whether it is being fed -- but at the same time, knows that if it does not do it's duty, the mouth will never consume.

This is not the conscious thinking of a self-sustaining individual -- it simply happens. It works, almost like magic. It is not thought of, because it is foolish to think about that relationship between your arm and your mouth, and unnecessary for it to function.

Much the same, the relationship between all these different trades and productive forces and laborers need not be thought about. Nor must they be controlled separate or alienated from society. Nor must they be a division in itself -- instead they are a portion of the whole, and the very separate parts of this body are now seen as a single body in total. The hand is not only a productive force to build tools, it is a means by which people are fed (it builds the tools for agriculture). The eyes are not only a means to perceive the ongoings of the world, but to perceive the direction one takes.

Assuming a division of labor assumes a division between these varying parts of society, and that one man lost from one is just that, a man lost, rather than a man gained in another aspect. It assumes there is no role in the doctor deciding what food is produced, yet he is a portion of the population which consumes the food. Under capitalism this is treated as a market mechanism... if people don't want it, it won't sell. But under capitalism, a better product may come along one takes the place, often times from a completely different group of people and thus a completely different portion of society. We need this fluidity too. We need to be able to say that there is no monopoly of mechanics over car production, or a monopoly of farmers over food production, or a monopoply of sewers over clothes production.

The easiest way to destroy this is not only by destroying the separation and alienation of these different trades, and thus the control over these trades, but by destroying the division in these trades on the individual level. The doctor SHOULD be spending time as a farmer. The teacher SHOULD be spending time as a shoemaker. And they should all be spending time as the same things one another are doing. Why should a doctor not teach medicine to students?

Does this mean we all do a little bit of everything? No. That would be crazy and inefficient at the same time. But we need not uphold a division of labor in any sense of the word. If someone WANTS to do a little bit of everything, they can.


You want the doctor/shoe-maker to not be a doctor/shoe-maker, to have no label and to not be at all limited to one or two or 50 occupations. This cannot work.

No, no label is necessary in any sense, except maybe for debate (as we are using here). But what you propose "cannot work" can work. It can work so long as society plays the role of coordinator. That is, so long as it is the responsibility of all people to say "Look, we don't have enough doctors... we need more doctors." And then the equal responsibility of all those who can serve as doctors to get up and go help at the hospitals.

This is my point. With the division you propose, the pool of doctors and medical workers is already in the health industry -- those coming in from the outside are not seen as contributors to the overall medical attention availability, but instead as those looking to "use the means of production" or in this case a means of service. But in using those means they are producing or in this case servicing. And you're right, with your line of thinking this cannot work -- because there is no attention paid outside of the medical field to what is needed in the medical field, and according to you, there SHOULDN'T BE. Instead you say it should be only the responsibility of those working there... blah. You're only limiting the possibilities.

And why you are doing this I cannot grasp or comprehend. When you destroy that division of labor, and make it societies concern overall, when you can focus on a true community and hence communal aspect, to the necessities of the people, then you can service them and see to them with all the efficiency you would need, regardless of whether people are slotted "specific defined occupations."

The commune is economic organization, but it does not envelope a single trade alone. It envelops the society which it's given productive forces maintains directly. Thus it is economic organiztion because it is organized to maintain production and consumption as a self-sustaining organism (see the analogies made above).


Organizationally, it is nescessary to ensure that essential occupations, which will be nearly all occupations of course, are sufficiently present and distributed

Of course, but there is no way to force someone to maintain such an occupation. And ask yourself, what is the best tool for deciding that ALL occupations are sufficiently presented and distributed within a given society? Why... society itself of course.


If there are "no doctors" how do we assure that there are enough...doctors?

I'm really confused at why you bring this up. Are you proposing that you force people into a role of doctor? If there are no doctors it's because no one wanted to be a doctor -- there's not much we can do about it. The only way to avoid this is with trade incentives... under capitalism, doctors are ensured because they get paid good money. Under communism, it would be social responsibility that makes someone become a doctor. Understanding there is a need.

Lastly this is not a situation where all the sudden you one day say "hey, there's no doctors" -- it would be an ongoing realization that more doctors were dying/retiring than there were replacing them. As such, socially responsible people would begin training.

Bug again, this is not specifically an aspect of the division of labor, more it is something of a side effect. If everyone has even a limited amount of medical training, the necessity for a "doctor" or someone labelling themselves as a "doctor" is unnecessary for a larger portion of ailments and injuries.

And this is where Smith was WRONG on some levels. There are certain positions where the best result is not to divide labor and thus the skill to perform it, but distribute it and teach it as widely as possible. This is where Marx points out the educational requirements. The bourgeoisie creates this general education, because people need certain levels of basic skills, and they do this out of something of a necessity for their new labor tactics alone. It's no longer just pull a lever on a machine... now kids are being trained with computers because that is the new lever so to speak. This ia reversal of Smith's position, showing that the division of labor, and the said training for that type of labor, has to grow back outwards at the onset of such technological change. By the time society has advanced to communism -- computer knowledge will be so wide spread that probably EVERYONE will be a programmer -- and technology to facilitate programming will make it even more possible.

This is of course my greater point. That the division of labor is unnecessary and, more, obsolete in the face of technological advancement and changes in the material conditons.

I'm not gonna argue any further, cause I believe I've made a very strong point, and quite frankly, I don't feel like typing any more on this subject. The issue is as scientific as any other, and has material basis like any other, to which I think I have just made a substantial point on.

[LSD]

But a "specific defined occuption" is merely a label. It is necessary for conversation (maybe), and that is about all. What matters is not what you are called, but more specifically what you do. But if what you do or are capable of doing goes far beyond any single goal, such as I showed with myself, there is no point to having any "specific defined occuption" as a label or otherwise.

Yes there is!

Because there are specific nescessary tasks which are essential for the subsistance of society and there are tasks which are...not. While most of us are indeed capable of preforming numerous taks, in a communist society, one of these tasks must be both in a preapproved list of nescessary occupations and be our primary occpupational responsibility. The "label" is about more than a name, its about priority. We need to have a specific are in which our energies are targeted.

Indeed, as you yourself admit, focus is essential:

Does this mean we all do a little bit of everything? No. That would be crazy and inefficient at the same time. But we need not uphold a division of labor in any sense of the word. If someone WANTS to do a little bit of everything, they can.

And what if everyone wants to do a "little of everything"? What happens then?

It is essential that everyone have specific occupational responsibilities and that these responsibilities are in areas which society has found to be essential in nature.For society to function we need to have people who are both expert and experienced in their particular fields and who devote their time to that field. Can some people be experts in numerous fields, of course, but for the sake of both simplicity and ensuring a well-run society, we should keep the number of primary occupations to one. This assures both that people are concentrating on particular areas and that inter-co-ordination can function smoothly.

Again, this does not mean that people will not be free to do as they will on their free time. In fact it is more thank likely that many will conduct activities which are socially benneficial; writing music, writing software. But their occupation must be clearly dilineated. That area which is their primary duty must be clear, not only so as to assure both organizational and structural functioning, but to ensure personal responsibility.


But the categorization is merely a label. What I wish to eliminate is the borders upheld through such categorization. Saying the doctor is not a shoemaker and thus has no role in working with the means of production for shoes -- that is crap.

A doctor could have a role in working with shoes, should he be a shoe-maker, but he is a doctor first and he works with shoes with the permission of the shoe-making collective. He could become a shoe-worker in addition to being a doctor, but it would be much simpler to do it on his free time as there would be less shoe-related resonsibilities and pressures.

...and responsibility is the point here. The reason why we need to keep labour divided is that the more work is spread around, the less responsible the individual workers become. That is, if I'm only making shoes every so-often 'cause it's kinda' like fun or whateva... I'm probably not going to meet production requirements. How can we ensure that the needed level of production is...produced? Scarcity will always be a problem and there will always be a requisite level of production required. Allowing specific labours to be completely diffused makes it impossible for effective co-ordination or organization.

You propose that "society" will organize...but how does that work? Once the people realize that they need 500 shoes by next April, how is the subsequent labour assigned? How do you ensure that enough shoes are made .... or that too many aren't made? Resources are finite, wasting them on creating unnescessary products is almost as bad as producing too few. We critisize capitalism for artificially increasing demand ... but how is overproduction because of inept communication any better?


This is my point, the division of labor is one that we uphold division for the sake of organizational roles. The organizational role, however, can come from the society (the body) as a whole. Indeed it should and MUST if we are to ensure equality. Because of this, the arm in particular never needs to worry solely about whether it is being fed -- but at the same time, knows that if it does not do it's duty, the mouth will never consume.

This is not the conscious thinking of a self-sustaining individual -- it simply happens. It works, almost like magic. It is not thought of, because it is foolish to think about that relationship between your arm and your mouth, and unnecessary for it to function.

"almost like magic".

:( Sorry, but real life doesn't work like this. Work has to be co-ordinated and arranged and planned. My body works because there is only one mind! If each of my neurons was capable of individual thought, I would never do anything. You cannot treat society like a "living being", it isn't. It's a society of living beings. Yes, I understand you're trying to use an analogy, but it's a very flawed one. You see the arm doesn't have a voice in what my leg does and my heart doesn't have a role in what my sphincter does. Every part of my body has a specific task and does it alone, it reaps the bennefits of the labour of the other organs, but it is responsibile for and it controls one task/area alone. Far from being a model for diffuse influence, the human body is a paragon of division of labour.

But, let's put this "human body" comparison aside, and examine the actual functioning of a theoretical human society. If we follow your plan, there is no real functional co-ordination. Without defined responsibilites, you're creating a world of hobbiests and dilletantes, each working, to their limited skills, on their limited project. The only alternative, within your frame, is to create co-ordination between everyone who works (sometimes or always) in a field.

...and what does this accomplish? By creating such meetings and planning and organization (which are nescessary for functional production) you are effectively creating the very same categorization that you're seeking to avoid!!


This is my point. With the division you propose, the pool of doctors and medical workers is already in the health industry -- those coming in from the outside are not seen as contributors to the overall medical attention availability, but instead as those looking to "use the means of production" or in this case a means of service. But in using those means they are producing or in this case servicing. And you're right, with your line of thinking this cannot work -- because there is no attention paid outside of the medical field to what is needed in the medical field, and according to you, there SHOULDN'T BE. Instead you say it should be only the responsibility of those working there...

Because while those using these tools of production might indeed be serving society, they might not. They have neither the organiztion nor, most of the time, the expertise / experience to use those tools in a manner which actually provides the bennefits that those working in that field prioritarily can.

Dilletante production doesn't work. Yes, if you go down to the hospital and start hooking up IVs for people, you're preforming a service, but first you'd have to coordinate with the the staff already there to find out what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and when it needs to be done. What you're talking about is basically what, in a capitalist world, we would call "volunteer work". Yeah, it helps, and yeah it will be useful but it doesn't and won't replace persistant staff. Those who know the field, know the patients, know the environment and have the training and experience and, most of all, the focus.


While it may be a concern, it is not for us to say how he actually goes about it. Furthermore, it is not our concern for specific individuals, if it was, how do we decide who is to fulfill the role of doctor, etc? Our concern is that there is enough doctors. There is no way we can force people into the position of doctor, and no reason we should. Instead, we identify there is a need, and people fulfill that need if THEY choose to do so.

'm really confused at why you bring this up. Are you proposing that you force people into a role of doctor? If there are no doctors it's because no one wanted to be a doctor -- there's not much we can do about it. The only way to avoid this is with trade incentives... under capitalism, doctors are ensured because they get paid good money. Under communism, it would be social responsibility that makes someone become a doctor. Understanding there is a need.

We can, of course, limit the available occupations in times of need. If 50% of the population is making shoes, the community must close shoe-making as an available option, at least until the field clears up.

But this can only happen if production is divided and clearly dilineated if we follow your model of dillitante production, there is no way to control such things and, as bizarre as it seems, we could end up with a population composed entirely of shoemakers. Now, this possibility, of course, is remote and the example an exageration but it is a relevent example of why it is nescessary to divide labour. In order for society to assure that labour is distributed in such a way as essential needs are being met and particual fields are not being overworked, there must be clear lines from which to work.


Bug again, this is not specifically an aspect of the division of labor, more it is something of a side effect. If everyone has even a limited amount of medical training, the necessity for a "doctor" or someone labelling themselves as a "doctor" is unnecessary for a larger portion of ailments and injuries.

Basic emergency management care should be a widely taught skill and indeed will be, but this does not reduce the need for doctors.

Certainly certain skills can be spread around, and the more people understand computers, say, the less there is for technical support (and some of us will be out of a job... :lol:), but there will always be a need for required skills. If more people understand computers, software will become more complex, knowledge more specialize and we will still need people to diagnose specific problems. Now, technical support will not be an essential occupation, but cariologist will! And no matter how well trained the people are in CPR, we will always need cardiologists ... and oncologists ...and gynocologists ...and neurologists.


This is of course my greater point. That the division of labor is unnecessary and, more, obsolete in the face of technological advancement and changes in the material conditons.

...no it isn't.

Sure, there are some examples in which that's true, but most of those are not in essential areas.

You see the key essential production spheres are all tangible physical production models. Areas in which, despite heavy technologization, there will always be a nescessity for physical involvement. In fact the more technologized they become (robotics, automation, etc...) the more need there is for complete organization! One can hardly have an assembly plant in ones kitchen and therefore the factory is irremovable, for the present at least.

Now, I know, your model of dilletante production would be that people can simply come in and out of this factory looking for an empty chair, sitting down and woriking for a while...or whatever. THAT'S NOT PRODUCTION! That's barely even dilletante production! How can we possible maintain any production schedule without co-ordination! You propose that people comming to the facotry need not even tell anyone that their comming!

It is concievable, within your model, that 50,000 people, each thinking their the only one, will all be producing 5 paird of shoes each, even though the actual number of shoes needed is less than 10,000!

How would anyone know? If asking the professional shoe-makers is only a "courtesy" than organiztion is functionally impossible. You cannot run production like this.


Even if a person were to do EVERYTHING for themselves (and thus, for that person there would be no division of labor), being completely self-sufficient, you could still define their tasks and their labor, and you could still define the time they put to each, thus seeing their own individual "division of labor."

Yes, division of labour in some way will always be with us. But we are both talking about something far more societal that this.

I understand that you hope for a world in which production doesn't need to be managed, in which work does not need to be controlled, and everyone has a voice in everything. But the basic limits of humanity prevent it. This isn't a "human nature" lecture, it's not about some "animal trait" or "evolutionary need", this is about something fare more basic: logic.

Production cannot occur without organization and organization is functionally impossible within a dilletante production model without formalizing the dabblers and creating the very structure that dilletante production is trying desperately to avoid.

Division of labour is not capitalistic. It has been used by capitalism, but it has been used for the same reason that water has been used by capitalism:

It can't be gotten rid of.

[redstar2000]

Tough call!

There seems to be considerable strength in the arguments by both sides.

One possibility that I would suggest is a distinction between occupations that do require extended training and expertise and those that don't.

Some people, we know, are drawn "early" towards a heavily specialized and difficult profession -- they find it fascinating and spend almost every waking hour pursuing further knowledge and expertise. Anyone trying to "make them do" something outside their field of interest is resented and the alternative activity itself is regarded as a damn nuisance or worse.

Others are not so drawn; they enjoy a variety of semi-specialized tasks in a variety of settings...they get restless and bored if required to do "the same thing" all the time. "Locking them in" to a specialized role is a kind of cruelty.

Being a doctor or other kind of professional scientist is very demanding and it's difficult for me to see what else they could do besides practice their profession or teach others to practice it.

But there are many "ordinary" jobs that people could rotate between on a frequent basis; e.g., one could be a bus driver on Monday, a clerk at a public library on Tuesday, a groundskeeper at a park on Wednesday, a bartender on Thursday, etc., etc. There is some expertise required...but not a great deal.

I can even imagine a veteran doctor wanting to take a "working vacation" in some productive activity completely divorced from the field of medicine...a way of resting his mind and clearing his head. Perhaps he'd find it soothing to tend a shoe-making machine for a month or two.

But if not, that would be ok too.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[The Grapes of Wrath]

Interesting topic indeed. While I must admit I didn't read all of everyone's replies, I have to say that both arguments have their merits, just as Redstar said.

It seems that division of labor is a circumstancial term. It seems that if you have that do something these productive things during some amount of time, that is your occupation, that is how you are divided in the labor group.

I think that division of labor is not a term to force someone into something. If everyone has the opportunity to work towards a specific job of their choosing, then they are divided in labor by that occupation. However, if one decides to change their occupation, they thus are changing their position in the labor pool. However, they are still in a division of labor.


I guess that is what everyone was getting at.

TGOW

[NovelGentry]

Because there are specific nescessary tasks which are essential for the subsistance of society and there are tasks which are...not.

Right, and society can and will assure these necessary tasks are seen to.


While most of us are indeed capable of preforming numerous taks, in a communist society, one of these tasks must be both in a preapproved list of nescessary occupations and be our primary occpupational responsibility.

Again you frighten me with your statements. Preapproved by who? Who decides the necessary occuptions? Is medical work more necessary than sanitary work? Lack of either can cause premature death. What is life without the arts?

I'll keep away from the list of "primary occupational responsibilities" personally -- I don't believe such nonsense is necessary or even in the spirit of communism.


The "label" is about more than a name, its about priority. We need to have a specific are in which our energies are targeted.

Indeed, as you yourself admit, focus is essential:

What I admit is that such diversion could cause problems. What I refuse to admit is that we should push people into roles that are "primary occuptional responsibilities" or "legitimate primary occuptions." If everyone WANTS to do everything, there is nothing we can do, nor do we force everyone to do a little bit of everything. The fact is, we should not be forcing someone into any role, whether it be a position where htey do a bit of everything or a position where they always do the same thing. That is for them to decide.

Society as a whole will fulfill it's necessities because if it does not, it will perish. People will suffer if no one wants to grow food -- and to alleviate that suffering, which will incur in everyone's life, peole will grow food. I thought this level of volunteerism and consciousness was something we all accepted?


And what if everyone wants to do a "little of everything"? What happens then?

I don't know, the tarot cards give me no clues. What happens then for your system? We take a vote and force people to work?


It is essential that everyone have specific occupational responsibilities and that these responsibilities are in areas which society has found to be essential in nature.

No, it is not. As I have already made abundently clear, multiple and equal choices for where your labor power is exerted are perfectly fine and feasible. It is not the responsibility of anyone to ensure we have these specific responsibilities, it is our responsibility simply to ensure that someone is fullfilling these -- and if not, find people who will, not force people who can.


For society to function we need to have people who are both expert and experienced in their particular fields and who devote their time to that field.

Why do you presume it is impossible to become an expert in more than one field. And ys, they devote their time, but not all their time, or even a majority of their time. If you can become an expert on bio-engineering by studying one hour a day for a year, praise be to you. If someone proves themself capable in a field, they will have the respect and admiration of others in and outside that field who depend on their brilliance -- why is any required devotion necessary outside of what the person is willing to devote?

Keep in mind, I'm not saying we discourage this kind of expertise. I'm simply saying we don't coerce these roles either way. There is no need to make somoene a jack of all trades master of none, and there is no need to make someone a master of one trade, useless in all others. It is a personal decision where you labor power is devoted to -- and depending on what you decide and how you present yourself, society will look upon you with pride or disdain, but either way, they cannot purposefully point where you must go.


Can some people be experts in numerous fields, of course, but for the sake of both simplicity and ensuring a well-run society, we should keep the number of primary occupations to one.

For the sake of simplicity? It is quite simple to understand how someone can have multiple functions in society, and for that matter how multiple poeple can have multiple functions, and see how that society can work. If you have 10 people originally spending 8 hours a day as doctors, you can see 20 people devoting 4 hours to medical work and 4 hours to something else, who are capable of maintaining the same level of society. Or 40 people who spend only 2 hours a day doing it. It's simple addition and maybe single variable equations -- nothing complex about understanding equal labor proportions with varying laborers.

As far as "ensuring a well-run society" -- maybe you would prefer a centralized planned economy in the hands of the state. No doubt you could have economic experts who will ensure a well-run society and know how to do it!


But their occupation must be clearly dilineated. That area which is their primary duty must be clear, not only so as to assure both organizational and structural functioning, but to ensure personal responsibility.

You've still given no clear reason as to why this MUST be the case. I've said 1,000 times, the opposite is true when society as a whole functions as the organizer and coordinator -- when people are conscious and aware of what is necessary and are conscious and aware of who can get it done, who can help, what it will take, etc... no such problems will arise. And this type of society can allow free laborers who carry a multitude of fields in their interest to work freely within society in all of these fields, and acquire freely from society the goods and services of their fellow laborers, as they acquire from them.

The organizational and structural functioning is inherent in necessity. As for ensuring personal responsibility, I can't think of any better way to ensure personal responsibility than for people to become conscious of their role and their contirbution and thus their responsibility to society.

But by maintaining these "primary occuptions" and trade separations, they don&#39;t really do this. Their actions are accountable only within their trade groups and the trade group as a whole may be accountable to society, but the person&#39;s direct role and understanding does not develop. They become extremely alienated, much like they do under capitalist society "You could never understand my situation... I&#39;m a <insert random field here> -- the things I deal with..."


A doctor could have a role in working with shoes, should he be a shoe-maker, but he is a doctor first and he works with shoes with the permission of the shoe-making collective.

Why is he a doctor first? Who the hell says he is? Maybe he doesn&#39;t want to be a doctor at all anymore. Please leave rest (the control over means of production argument) to the other thread.


...and responsibility is the point here. The reason why we need to keep labour divided is that the more work is spread around, the less responsible the individual workers become. That is, if I&#39;m only making shoes every so-often &#39;cause it&#39;s kinda&#39; like fun or whateva... I&#39;m probably not going to meet production requirements. How can we ensure that the needed level of production is...produced? Scarcity will always be a problem and there will always be a requisite level of production required. Allowing specific labours to be completely diffused makes it impossible for effective co-ordination or organization.

It only makes it impossible if you uphold that organization and coordination to the hands of the specific trades. If you&#39;d drop that silly nonsense and realize it is the responsibility of the society as a whole, you can see quite clearly how the division of labor can disappear to almost any extent it wishes to.

The reason this is not possible in capitalism is because we uphold private property, and there is no social ownership of the means of production, nor is their social responsibility in the minds of the all workers.

You cannot see how it would work because you refuse to get by this trade organizational role and the control that it enforces. But it is as simple as this: If workers within a single trade, are capable of organizing to meet the necessities in that line of production, by coordinating and organizing together. The workers of a given section of society, or even the world as a whole, are capable of organizing to meet the necessities in every line of production, by coordinating and organizing together.

You will admit the former is true, why not the latter? Because it&#39;s a bigger scale? too big of a scale? Well the capitalists would say the same about what you propose. Workers? Manage the needs and production of a "company" successfully? nonsense, you need a CEO and a board to do that. Or so they say. And so you say, Society? Manage the needs and production of society successfully? nonsense, you need trade organization and coordination to do that&#33;


You propose that "society" will organize...but how does that work?

The same way you propose the separate trades will organize and coordinate. Democracy, consciousness, and familiarity.


Once the people realize that they need 500 shoes by next April, how is the subsequent labour assigned?

It&#39;s not "assigned." When the people realize they need 500 shoes by next April they go to the shoe factory and start making shoes. Whether this be the existing people making shoes, or them plus 20 volunteers, to ensure the work gets done. People who can do the work can take it upon themselves, and the people who can help them can take it upon themselves to help them.

How does it work under what you propose? "Society" calls up the shoe makers and says "we need 500 shoes." And the shoemakers say "ok, we&#39;ll have to get some more guys" and then puts up a "help wanted" sign? Interviews some of the people who have had some experience making shoes and decides who can "come on board."??


How do you ensure that enough shoes are made .... or that too many aren&#39;t made?

How does anyone ensure enough shoes are made? There is no boss of the shoe makers who can force all of them to work. The shoe makers could be told that 500 shoes are needed by April and they could all stop making shoes the next day. Then what? Then a bunch of volunteers from other fields come together and say "We&#39;ll make the shoes" but the shoemakers say "Nope... we control the factory -- sorry, you guys don&#39;t know how to use the machines, you&#39;ll just break them."

No one can definitively ensure such a thing without some seriously forced labor. What can happen is those who are currently producing shoes and get together with whatever volutneer labor force has decided to help out (cause obviously they need help if they can&#39;t meet the needs) and decide from there the best possible way to try and meet that necessity. But this remains 100% equal and democratic... the existing shoemakers are not given votes where the volunteer laborers are not -- and as it stand, the volunteer laborers have become "shoe makers" just the same as the existing shoemakers are shoemakers by their own desire to be so.

Overproduction is not a problem. It is never a problem, in any field... why would it be? What does it matter if you overproduce food? What does it matter if you overproduce something storable? That kind of concern only exists in capitalism, where overproduction means lost profits.


Resources are finite, wasting them on creating unnescessary products is almost as bad as producing too few.

This would be true if such product surplus could never be used. But it can be stored and used later when it is necessary. This occurs in pretty much any field you can think of from shoemaking to lumber to electronics to furniture and on and on.


We critisize capitalism for artificially increasing demand ... but how is overproduction because of inept communication any better?

I&#39;m not sure why it would be from inept communication. With society playing a very active role in determining it&#39;s necessity, you&#39;d see far less inept communication, especially when compared to shoemakers simply deciding how much will be produced for society. As I noted before, the decision of how much to produce requires no special skill, it is a simple numbers game, and production and consumption can be seen 1 to 1, clear as day with recorded production and distribution and consumption at the individual level. This information is public, widely available, and easy to understand whether you&#39;re a shoemaker or a machinist.

Workers can get together and use this information to determine the general need, if there is shown to be greater need, they can produce with the demand itself. They coordinate with the people supplying them raw material, and the too coordinate with the distributors of said product, and they too coordinate with the consumers of said products. Again, the whole of society.

This doesn&#39;t require voting, it&#39;s simple numbers, but in the event of scarcity their distribution too works on numbers, and the organizational role of society can become quite formal.

Have you ever been to a local town-meeting where you lived? For example, a school board/parent/teacher meeting too organize an activity? It would really help you understand how this kind of thing can function. No rocket science necessary. Town meetings in general are interesting.


Sorry, but real life doesn&#39;t work like this.

I didn&#39;t say it was magic. I said it&#39;s almost like magic.


Work has to be co-ordinated and arranged and planned.

Agreed.


My body works because there is only one mind&#33;

And without your legs to walk to food, hands to catch/harvest it, mouth to consume it, stomach to digest it, blood to carry nutrients, heart to pump blood, lungs for the oxygen to respirate it... your brain would die.

Your body works in total. And your mind, whether you want to believe it or not, is part of your body.


Yes, I understand you&#39;re trying to use an analogy, but it&#39;s a very flawed one. You see the arm doesn&#39;t have a voice in what my leg does and my heart doesn&#39;t have a role in what my sphincter does.

No, but they all have a role in ensuring the survival of one another, and thus the body as a whole. If your heart fails, your lungs won&#39;t do much good. Nor will your sphincter.


Every part of my body has a specific task and does it alone, it reaps the bennefits of the labour of the other organs, but it is responsibile for and it controls one task/area alone.

Right. And like I said, the methods of the production itself is should always be determined by the laborer&#39;s doing that production. Expanding people&#39;s roles into different forms of labor does not change this. Someone who is a doctor, shoemaker, machinist, teacher, etc.. would have equal say in the shoemaking process as the man who is a shoemaker, a farmer, and programmer, and a writer.

However, the necessity for that function, is a necessity of the body as a whole. Your heart does not pump so that only your heart can survive. It pumps to sustain all other organs as well. It is a perfect analogy, because this necessity creates the interdependence, and it shows that, while you heart does not tell your liver what to do, without proper blood flow, it&#39;s NOT going to do it.

This equates nicely to the role society takes in productoin. Society does not tell the shoemakers how to make shoes, the doctors how to heal, the machinists how to weld, etc.. but it is society they make shoes for, heal, and weld for. And without society they could not make shoes, heal, and weld.

As separate as our organs are, it is the body as a whole that we are concerned with. And our body as a whole that we take concern for. I do not think about keeping my heart alone alive and willfully allow myself to go blind and starve. But in rough times, it is my entire body, or at least what I willfully control of it which will focus on a key issue -- when I cut myself, my hands apply pressure, my eyes show me where, my nerves make me aware, the blood clots, etc. All hands focus on the immediate issue, which becomes a threat. If no attention is given, the wound could be infected, and it would consume my body and the body as a whole would die.

Just like at points of scarcity, society will give attention. Workers will share responsibility, from across the board, and SHOULD. Resources will be pooled, to ensure that this one danger to society does not cause a problem later. Not enough shoes means those without shoes who need them for what they do cannot do their jobs, if they do not do their jobs, others might not be able to do theirs, and so on and so on.

Given that there are billions of people around the world, it is not so sensitive. By isolating control and denying societies role, you do the equivalent of saying the body has been pierced in the heart, and the legs do not run to the hospital, the mouth and voice box do not scream for help, the hands do not attempt to relieve the issue (or stop it initially), etc. Sure they will be affected, but you&#39;ve given them no role in helping that aspect.


Far from being a model for diffuse influence, the human body is a paragon of division of labour.

But we do not think in terms of our heart alone, our lungs alone, our legs alone. We think in terms of the body as a whole. As I said, it is not something we are particularly conscious of. It would not matter to you if your heart did the work of both your heart and your lungs, or maybe even your sphincter -- you&#39;d still focus on your body as a whole. If our legs were as versatile as our arms, and feet as hands, that too would make no difference. There is nothing lost or gained in this, merely changed.

You see society the way it is, and you cannot conceive of society without these divisions. I see something completely different, and thus it is a way society CAN be, and I believe WILL be. And in it&#39;s novelty it shares little with the current perceived necessities.


If we follow your plan, there is no real functional co-ordination.

Why do you keep assuming this? I&#39;m not talking about abolishing organization, I&#39;m talking about expanding it to all those who the organizational decisions affect.


Without defined responsibilites, you&#39;re creating a world of hobbiests and dilletantes, each working, to their limited skills, on their limited project. The only alternative, within your frame, is to create co-ordination between everyone who works (sometimes or always) in a field.

I&#39;m creating a society of free laborers, who are free to choose what they will be expert in, and what they will be hobbyists in. Each working to whatever level and with whatever skills they choose to equip themselves with, on whatever projects they decide. I believe they will decide projects based on the needs of society, but also based on their own personal desire to achieve certain successes with what they do.

The coordination and organization is informal for the most part. Someone entering the biotech field, becomes educated, and talks to his teacher (for example) who also happens to work at a pharmeceutical research center. That preson joins him in his research and they go on to do many great things in the field of cancer treatment. The local farmers have made it apparent the can&#39;t keep up to food demand, so people head towards the farm, breaking away from other works to answer the necessity of food. Two guys don&#39;t really feel they have a position in "educated labor" (for whatever reason) so they go down to the shoe plant, talk to the shoe makers and maybe train along side some of them to understand how to do this, and then join in the productive force.

All very good examples of the kind of informality and free range the laborers under communism should, and I believe will have. The real functional coordination you are looking for comes with control (which as you have shown in the other thread, it something you&#39;re in favor of between trades). I see control acceptable only within the productive method itself. From the example above, the agricultural workers + volunteers organize and vote on the specifics of what they are doing, to ensure the need is met as soon as possible.


...and what does this accomplish? By creating such meetings and planning and organization (which are nescessary for functional production) you are effectively creating the very same categorization that you&#39;re seeking to avoid&#33;&#33;

The categorization I seek to avoid is control. Control which says "we need shoemakers" when what we need is simply people to make shoes. You do not cut a difference, nor do you see the possibility that someone other than a shoe maker could make shoes (individually or as part of a volunteer labor force which complements them). I do see this possibility, further, I feel it is good for society.

The "meetings" which would be held would be the meetings of those, again, who the labor process affects; the laborers themselves in terms of method, and society in terms of access and control. The organization is natura. The coordination comes from consciousness and public record.

I fail to see how this creates categorizations. The only people free to turn themselves into a categorized worker is the worker who decides to take on a single function and role. It is by no means necessary that they do this given this kind of coordination and organization, and it is down right wrong if they are forced to do it.


Because while those using these tools of production might indeed be serving society, they might not. They have neither the organiztion nor, most of the time, the expertise / experience to use those tools in a manner which actually provides the bennefits that those working in that field prioritarily can.

I would hope they would seek out how to do it properly. I&#39;m under the impression you do not think too highly of people. All I can picture going on in your head is this view of 20 village idiots walking into a shoe factory and sewing strips of leather one on top of the other and walking away with a block of leather. Or trying to produce shoes, and having them end up with no bottoms, toes, or proper lace holes.

I&#39;ve never met a guy that didn&#39;t know anything about fixing cars who wanted to be a mechanic.


Yes, if you go down to the hospital and start hooking up IVs for people, you&#39;re preforming a service, but first you&#39;d have to coordinate with the the staff already there to find out what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and when it needs to be done.

Where did I ever propose otherwise?


What you&#39;re talking about is basically what, in a capitalist world, we would call "volunteer work". Yeah, it helps, and yeah it will be useful but it doesn&#39;t and won&#39;t replace persistant staff.

I wasn&#39;t aware there was any OTHER kind of work under communism. The difference is, volunteer work becomes the norm.


Those who know the field, know the patients, know the environment and have the training and experience and, most of all, the focus.

This is an incomplete sentence. So let me finish it for you: Those who know the field, know the patients, know the environment and have the training and experience and, most of all, the focus, are all volunteers under communism. They may be persistent volunteers, but they do not own the hospital, they do not control the hospital. They work with one another because it is a necessity to do so -- to organize, and to coordinate. Because they ALL realize they will get no where if they&#39;re all switching the same IV bags one right after another and never doing anything else.

So they pull together and coordinate these people. Those people who want to help, show up and say, what can I do? If their help is not needed, maybe they could replace a tired worker. Not to go back to the issue of control -- but this is not the equivalent of our previous argument. The equivalent argument here would be if a patient showed up and wished to utilize the machines to take their blood pressure, wanted to utilize and IV and a the stint to treat themselves... and the workers at the hospital said "No."


We can, of course, limit the available occupations in times of need. If 50% of the population is making shoes, the community must close shoe-making as an available option, at least until the field clears up.

Carefully read your own statement. My problem with this is this maintains the very same style of thinking in capitalist society.

"There&#39;s too much production and oversupply going on here... so we&#39;ll stop hiring, maybe even lay off some people here or there."

If 100% of the population wants to make shoes, let them make shoes. And we will all starve. This is THEIR decision, an unconscious one, but it remains in their hands. Necessity will and can self-regulate society. There is no need for society to say "stop making shoes, we need more farmers." They will know it by the emptiness of the produce shelves, and bareness of their meat feezers.


But this can only happen if production is divided and clearly dilineated if we follow your model of dillitante production, there is no way to control such things and, as bizarre as it seems, we could end up with a population composed entirely of shoemakers.

Because we shouldn&#39;t be controlling such things. Nor do we need to consciously control such things. Again, I don&#39;t think you think too highly of people... you seem to think they will just all become shoe makers like mindless drones and not a single one will stop to think "Wait... where am I going to get food from?"

You don&#39;t want to get rid of the boss. You want to change who the boss is. All well and good for some advancment, but it&#39;s not communism. You see the boss as necessary -- you see this control as one of the most necessary things. The poor and helpless whole of society cannot understand and cater to it&#39;s own needs, so it needs each group of people in the different fields to understand the needs of society and cater separate and independent of society as a whole. You replace the single boss or board, with the laborers of trade. You uphold the division of labor because you have to, because it&#39;s the only conceivable efficient means when this type of control is present. But I recommend we abolish both.

You really do feel the role of the boss is necessary, you&#39;re just pissed at who the boss is.


Now, this possibility, of course, is remote and the example an exageration but it is a relevent example of why it is nescessary to divide labour.

It is not relevent, nor is it even a good example of why it is necessary to divide labor. It is a poor example which assumes society is too stupid to figure itself out in total, so it must depend on divided fields to figure out each separate portion of societies needs. Shoemakers determine how many people NEED to work as shoemakers to fulfill their determined NEED for shoes in society... and so on for every field and every "acceptable primary occupation" and it&#39;s equivalent means of production.

You&#39;ve still given no real answer to why this is necessary other than effectively saying the members of society are so stupid they will all produce shoes and no one will make food or that people will go off and just sew leather together in the hope that they make a wearable shoe for them or for osmeone else because they think it "might be fun."

it would appear you maintain three necessities:

1) division of labor -- saying that if we do not divide labor everyone will do the same thing, or everyone will do everything and thus no one will know any extensive information about anything in particular.

I know an extensive amount about computers, and yet I also want to go to school fo English and become a teacher. I could both teach and maintain small to moderate size networks. I will not grow incapble of this the minute I become an English teacher. It is doubtful I will be any more capable in one than the other, in fact, but this does not mean I am not capable in either. Quite the contrary, I will be extremely capable in both.

I would like to find a job (under capitalism) that incorporates all of my skills. I would take multiple jobs, but capitalists don&#39;t like the idea of a guy working part time at those kinds of positions, they start to feel it won&#39;t really matter if they fire you and then they got nothing to threaten you with.

Gaining more knowledge will not destroy the knowledge I currently have. If I become more intelligent in another field, I do not lose my tact for computers.

2) control over the division of labor by society -- saying that if there are too many shoemakers society will close shoemaking and people will slide into other positions.

This one is just hilarious and feeds off the idea that we&#39;re too stupid to see someone needs to do other things too.

3) control over the means of production within a field -- this is upheld by division of labor. You cite that people will have acceptable primary occuptions, and this is the fields that they no doubt will have a portion of control over the means of production in. That is, the person who maintiansa primary acceptable occuption of "shoemaker" has a say in the democratic decisions of other shoemakers who can use the shoe factory.

This is something of a double dependent. Without the division of labor upheld, there is no means to tell who is in these fields, or who is a "primary" in these fields and thus who controls the means. Without control over the means, division of labor has no role.

The dependence of these things on one another in both forward and reverse order is the point I made earlier, that it is the only means which makes any "sense" for the type of control you present. Division of labor wouldn&#39;t make any sense in the lack of control I present -- it would seem out of place, if not rediculous.


In order for society to assure that labour is distributed in such a way as essential needs are being met and particual fields are not being overworked, there must be clear lines from which to work.

Like I said, if you want this to be really efficient you can centralize it in the hands of a state or something. A bureacratic organization who&#39;s single goal is to determine these necessities and ensure that distributed labor force and draw the clear lines from which to work.

This way here trades don&#39;t even have to coordinate with one another. Machinists don&#39;t have to talk to the refineries for the metal supplies -- they just get what&#39;s shipped, and the refinery ships what they are told to. It&#39;s all within that centralized group -- makes things, nice, simple, easy, really efficient. Workers really don&#39;t even worry about any organization, why should they? they can stick to what they do best, doing their job. Their job isn&#39;t to organize though... unless they&#39;re some sort of "organizer" -- so leave the job of organizing to a separate "organizing" body&#33;

Of course, that&#39;s not what you want. You&#39;re willing to go as far as giving that control and organizational role to each separate trade for their given field. And their fedreation will then be the whole of working society (and with any luck the whole of society). I go one step further, and give the control and organizational role to the whole of society, cross trade, no pseudo federation necessary. The federation is already made clear by the inherent social relations we have to one another as dependent producers and consumers.


Basic emergency management care should be a widely taught skill and indeed will be, but this does not reduce the need for doctors.

I didn&#39;t say it would. I said the need for a doctor would be removed from a larger portion of ailments and treatements. It&#39;d be like if diabetes patients were never trained how to inject themselves or they never made it easy to take in, but had to see a doctor every time.

Does it reduce the need for doctors? No. Doctors (quite possibly the same amount) are still more than necessary to treat a vast amount of things that are not so easily learned or done. But it does reduce the need for a doctor to give insulin shots.


Certainly certain skills can be spread around, and the more people understand computers, say, the less there is for technical support (and some of us will be out of a job... laugh.gif), but there will always be a need for required skills. If more people understand computers, software will become more complex, knowledge more specialize and we will still need people to diagnose specific problems. Now, technical support will not be an essential occupation, but cariologist will&#33; And no matter how well trained the people are in CPR, we will always need cardiologists ... and oncologists ...and gynocologists ...and neurologists.

This is proven wrong in the existing society itself. People may have been able to regularly inject themselves with insulin, but blood sugar tests way back in the day needed to be performed by nurses... technology changes this. You are wrong to say that more knowledge has increased the complexity, the opposite is proven true. As the vast majority of people have picked up computers they continue to be easier and easier to use (even fringe software without a wide "joe user" base). Higher level languages have taken the place of lower level languages as computers have become faster, and more resources are open to languages which have more internal means for doing things easily for programmers.

One day there will be a take home cardio test to determine if you have clogged arteries, measure blood flow, detect heart murmers, and diagnose you quickly and accurately so that you may get the necessary treatment. Surely you may still need a doctor to treat you (depending too on how that has advanced) but saying these things will not change with time? You won&#39;t need a cardiologist to diagnose, only treat, and eventually, maybe not even that.

This is seen in existing fields, and the nature of work itself changes as more and more things become automated. For all this talk of shomaking, I highly doubt humans will have any active role in such production by the time communism roles around.


You see the key essential production spheres are all tangible physical production models. Areas in which, despite heavy technologization, there will always be a nescessity for physical involvement. In fact the more technologized they become (robotics, automation, etc...) the more need there is for complete organization&#33; One can hardly have an assembly plant in ones kitchen and therefore the factory is irremovable, for the present at least.

But whether or not you need humans in that factory is another question. I forget which car company did it, but recently some car company showed proof of concept (if not is actively using) an all robotic productoin line. Cars are created start to finish by computer. Other forms of manufacturing do not take this route because there is cheap labor available. It&#39;s cheaper to move where that labor is (the third world) than to invest in means to escape that variable capital which can be so iffy for profit margins.

There is no reason not to advance society in these ways when we can. And much of this may happen under socialism, which maintains much more of a division of labor, control, and even private property -- but you&#39;re stuck using all these archaic checks and balances for a society that will not even be limited by them.

Even still, there will be work to be done. But the division of labor crumbles with technological advancement -- there is absolutely no denying this in modern history. At first it is established in primitive industrialization, and then it goes the way of the dinosaur and dissolves back to the point where there is none. Again, the computer replaces the lever. The at home blood sugar test. The 3D printer article that was up in science & environment. All of these are examples that attack the roles of certain people, and in particular the division of labor. It&#39;s unlikely a cardiologist (prior to take home tests) would have spent time taking your blood sugar... a nurse would have done so, or even a nurses aid. This is a divison of labor -- and one that is partially abolished in the advent of simpler and more widely available medical technology.

I see you denying this, but I don&#39;t see how you can be.


Now, I know, your model of dilletante production would be that people can simply come in and out of this factory looking for an empty chair, sitting down and woriking for a while...or whatever. THAT&#39;S NOT PRODUCTION&#33; That&#39;s barely even dilletante production&#33; How can we possible maintain any production schedule without co-ordination&#33; You propose that people comming to the facotry need not even tell anyone that their comming&#33;

Whoa nelly.

For starters. What I propose does allow someone to go to a factory, look for an empty chair, and start making what they wish. This does not mean I propose this as the overall productive force. Nor do I even propose this as a feasible thing for a person to do. They should organize with exiting workers and people there. The difference between me and you is you want it so they HAVE to. You want the existing laboreres to be the gateway people, to be the controllers of these means, and thus, the top level decision makers. I want no such control to exist.

I don&#39;t propose anyone should just go to the factory, do what they want, not talk to anyone and not tell anyone. Quite the contrary, I say they should call, ask if there&#39;s any available room or if they could squeeze in some time on some of the machines, etc. If the answer is yes, go down there, talk to the people around and see what&#39;s available and then find their time around the existing production. That is what I propose should happen, but again, I propose this is a courtesy. A courtesy I believe all should and will take, but one which I do not believe is enforcable in any way.

You say it won&#39;t matter, and it will become the de facto. But again, if people respect it out of courtesy or even tradition, but have every right to ignore that courtesy or tradition, that is different than being required to adhere to the word of the producers on hand. The means of production is no one&#39;s to control, nor is any other aspect of property which has such a social condition (which just so happens to be all forms of property). Indeed, any attempt to control property should be seen as *criminal.*


It is concievable, within your model, that 50,000 people, each thinking their the only one, will all be producing 5 paird of shoes each, even though the actual number of shoes needed is less than 10,000&#33;

It&#39;s conceivable everyone will just drive off a cliff thinking their life is meaningless too. It&#39;s conceivable none of us will ever leave our rooms and just starve to death in there. It&#39;s conceivable, even though we can talk, that we never will again, and humans in the future will not even have voiceboxes&#33; And even if we want to efficiently coordinate, we could not.

Guess what else is conceivable though: That people will be respectful of one another, that people will be class conscious, as well as trade conscious and individually conscious, that people will seek to organize and coordinate with other members of society who can help them and who work in the same field, that people will realize what the needs of society as a whole are and organize to meet those needs first and foremost. I find all of these things far more conceivable than the idea that division of labor and control over the means of production by workers in a given field is necessary.

It is conceivable peole have IQs greater than that of grapefruits.


How would anyone know?

Ask one another? Bring it up at the democratic assembly? Look at public production records? Lots of ways you could find out -- if you made no attempt to find out, you would never know. Just like if a group of shoe makers made no attempt to find out their targer number of consumers they would never know how much to make. Communication must exists regardless of the forms production takes.


If asking the professional shoe-makers is only a "courtesy" than organiztion is functionally impossible.

No, it&#39;s not impossible. More, it&#39;s not improbable.


You cannot run production like this.

I alone cannot and should not run productoin like anything. But you remain confused -- while this is 100% possible and the right of every person to utilize the means of production in this form, that is not the form that I propose production to take.


Yes, division of labour in some way will always be with us. But we are both talking about something far more societal that this.

My point is that division of labor is not in some way always with us. My point is very simply that you&#39;re confusing definition of labor for division of labor. Simply because you can describe what someone does, even if that someone does everything, does not mean there is division of labor. When you accept society as a whole to be the productive force, division of labor becomes irrelevent. It need not be thought about and it need not be studied, and the idea that it breeds efficiency and is a necessary function of production need never be examined.


I understand that you hope for a world in which production doesn&#39;t need to be managed, in which work does not need to be controlled, and everyone has a voice in everything. But the basic limits of humanity prevent it. This isn&#39;t a "human nature" lecture, it&#39;s not about some "animal trait" or "evolutionary need", this is about something fare more basic: logic.

Logic is well and good. But logic is founded with social influence. I much rather base what I say on material conditions.

For example, it is logical under capitalism to maintain division of labor -- for those in control of production. You believe this also be logical under communism -- no doubt because you see it as simple "logic." But it is the logic of today.

Under the current material conditions, division of labor is a necessity, but it is a dying one. Control doesn&#39;t even play into it, that is a complete and utter social condition which is in essence free to take multiple forms under any given set of material conditions. We know it to take fairly specific forms, but theoretically you could of had guild ownership of property rather than aristocratic ownership in feudal times. But the necessity, even the responsibility, that the division of labor serves becomes something of a joke in light of advancing productive forces and the role of easier, faster, and better technology in production itself.

The system you present is logical. It&#39;s logical for the current form of society -- and like I said, much of what you said is extremely applicable to mid term socialism. And certainly this society MUST see socialism before communism (at least if you believe in a transitional phase). So yes, it is logical, logical for how we see the world today, and fits right in to that transitonal phase. But I don&#39; consider it logical far beyond this society. As social relations to the means of production change, when revolution occurs, and as technology progresses now, and afterwards, what you are proposing will at some point seem very illogical.


Production cannot occur without organization and organization is functionally impossible within a dilletante production model without formalizing the dabblers and creating the very structure that dilletante production is trying desperately to avoid.

Again, I&#39;m not "avoiding" any of these things you think I am. The only thing I am maintaining here is that the control you present will not exist. Whether or not it will not exist because the division of labor doesn&#39;t exist is a different question. It&#39;s difficult to say what would come first. I would imagine that the division of labor would begin to dissolve, and as such, control itself would dissolve. Again, if you cannot determine who is the shoemaker, you cannot determine who is in control of the means of producing shoes.


Division of labour is not capitalistic. It has been used by capitalism, but it has been used for the same reason that water has been used by capitalism:

Of course not. Division of labor existed in all previous societies. Even primitive tribal organization that closely resembled "communist" production and sharing, etc. I&#39;m not so sure that&#39;s a positive thing to be saying though. I would seek to shake off earlier models as well as all aspects of earlier models as quickly as possible.

But in terms of the level of division of power that we see today. That IS capitalistic. The levels we see today are unique to capitalism, and unique to the productive methods of capitalism. If you tried to apply this division of labor to a society like feudalism the rapid growth an increase in technology would blow the bounds of fedual control under the king/queen and the aristocracy so fast that it could hardly even be considered a "period" in history. It&#39;d be more like an instance.

But socialism and the event of communism are really resolutions to the thousands of years of class struggle. When you think about it, they resolve finite models to infinite models.

For example... all pevious societies maintained limited ownership over the means of production. Communism develops total social ownership of the means of production.

History thus far has witnessed the futher dividing of labor. Division of labor is more fine grained under capitalism than it was feudalism, and it was more under feudalism than previous societies.
Communism develops maybe out of this growing finite division, a position where peoples roles in society now overlap, the division has become so great that each "section" now overlaps in terms of laborer&#39;s responsibilities.

These examples are likw when you look at circles. They have so many sides, that they become one sided, or at least, single faced. Increasing the spread of ownership and the availability of property, furhter and further dividing labor, all these to points where they&#39;re no longer even perceived.


It can&#39;t be gotten rid of.

I theorize it can, but only time will tell for sure.

[OleMarxco]

You might be a &#39;jack of all trades&#39; as you might call it that&#39;s nothing wrong with but not many things in the same day, but one job one day, just as RedStar said. There would be people filling that positions one day, and the next day they - the same people - are "exchanged" to be some other job. Circulating work. You and I can be everything - as practical, right-thinking people we are? I hope so....there&#39;s no "persistant expert"-staff, everyone will learn everything in time.

P.S.; Just look at the top of the page.....Eh&#33; Shoe ad&#39;s&#33; ;)

[NovelGentry]

You might be a &#39;jack of all trades&#39; as you might call it that&#39;s nothing wrong with but not many things in the same day, but one job one day, just as RedStar said. There would be people filling that positions one day, and the next day they - the same people - are "exchanged" to be some other job. Circulating work. You and I can be everything - as practical, right-thinking people we are? I hope so....there&#39;s no "persistant expert"-staff, everyone will learn everything in time.

Why just a day though? See, I don&#39;t see why the limitation is placed. Why would it be OK to tend to different jobs every day but not... say... multiple jobs within a day. I don&#39;t see what makes it possible to organize one way and not another. For certain positions it may be feasible to have multiple jobs within an hour even.

Those who are currently in such tedious positions that they are only a minor fraction of the work in their workplace will grow, become more responsible and deal with more things -- the most tedious stuff, if indeed such things need to still exist, can be reserved for the technology which makes them possible or for those willing to do it out of necessity.

And with time and more changes in technology, these divisions will only become more and more blurry, and people will push to have fullfilling lives and positions in the workforce. Shoemaker is a poor term even in capitalist society, the division of labor makes you not a shoemaker, but only a portion of a shoemaker. One man is the man who seals the sole another sews one strap, and still another sews another, while someone else sews the tongue on the shoe. This is what we can and should abolish, this is the division of labor that becomes so obsolete, but too the division between trades. Again, technology changes all that.

[LSD]

Redstar2000:


But there are many "ordinary" jobs that people could rotate between on a frequent basis; e.g., one could be a bus driver on Monday, a clerk at a public library on Tuesday, a groundskeeper at a park on Wednesday, a bartender on Thursday, etc., etc. There is some expertise required...but not a great deal.

Yes, I can see that would work, and I have no problem with such a model.

I don&#39;t care so much that permanent roles are created so long as there is functional division to ensure proper organization and responsibility. Job rotation works fine for me&#33;


can even imagine a veteran doctor wanting to take a "working vacation" in some productive activity completely divorced from the field of medicine...a way of resting his mind and clearing his head. Perhaps he&#39;d find it soothing to tend a shoe-making machine for a month or two.

I think that would be fine as well, we can all use a break&#33; I just think that if he wishes to do so, he should have the permission of the shoe-making workers first.


NovelGentry:


My point is very simply that you&#39;re confusing definition of labor for division of labor. Simply because you can describe what someone does, even if that someone does everything, does not mean there is division of labor.

No, of course not, but I think we both know that I am proposing formal primary occupations; responsibilities that come first and foremost and are ones chief occupational goal and come before anything else that one might do in the rest of ones time. That is division of labour and I believe it to be nescessary...

...but you don&#39;t, so let&#39;s address your reasons:


Again you frighten me with your statements. Preapproved by who? Who decides the necessary occuptions? Is medical work more necessary than sanitary work? Lack of either can cause premature death. What is life without the arts?

Preapproved by society. Otherwise there is no way to assue that essential work is done. Everyone must perform an occupation that society has democratically decided to be a nescessary one. Beyond that, of course, people can do as they will. Art, music, software, dancing, sitting on the grass smoking a pipe, it doesn&#39;t really matter, but they must preform that primary occupation. Assuming that somehow these jobs will "just get done" without such a policy is ludicrous.


Society as a whole will fulfill it&#39;s necessities because if it does not, it will perish.

Then it will perish.

We cannot trust that things will just "work themselves out". We have to organize and plan. Democratically, of course, but plan nonentheless.


I didn&#39;t say it was magic. I said it&#39;s almost like magic.

No, it is not. As I have already made abundently clear, multiple and equal choices for where your labor power is exerted are perfectly fine and feasible. It is not the responsibility of anyone to ensure we have these specific responsibilities, it is our responsibility simply to ensure that someone is fullfilling these -- and if not, find people who will, not force people who can.

And how do we "find people"? More importantly who "finds people"?

Again you seem to expect that society will "work almost like magic", but it won&#39;t. It will only work if it is founded on well-reasoned logical rational planning and collective organization. This means that we must understand that certain occupational responsabilities are essential and others are not. The first duty of a society is therefore the ensure that such essential occupations are done. This can easily done by simply making it mandatory that in order to bennefit from the collecitve resources of society, one must contribute to those resources (unless one legimitately cannot, and such cases would, of course, be considered by the entire community) by providing a service which society has deemed to be essential.


Why do you presume it is impossible to become an expert in more than one field. And ys, they devote their time, but not all their time, or even a majority of their time. If you can become an expert on bio-engineering by studying one hour a day for a year, praise be to you. If someone proves themself capable in a field, they will have the respect and admiration of others in and outside that field who depend on their brilliance -- why is any required devotion necessary outside of what the person is willing to devote?

Because beyond mere expertese, comes functional expertese. Experience and history and specific level knowledge of not only the area in question, but the specific tools, factories, people, personalities, resources, problems, and minutae of the local industry.

Furthermore, even more important than expertese is responsibility:

The organizational and structural functioning is inherent in necessity. As for ensuring personal responsibility, I can&#39;t think of any better way to ensure personal responsibility than for people to become conscious of their role and their contirbution and thus their responsibility to society.

...well I can&#33;

Make them responsible for their production. "Responsible to society" is a hopelessly nebulous concept. We&#39;re all "Responsible to society", but it doesn&#39;t mean that any of us know what the fuck it means. The point is that dilletante production means that producers are not responsible to their tasks. It&#39;s productive responsibility that concerns me, not social.

I know, I know, you consider productive and social responsibility to be the same issue... but they&#39;re not. Responsibility to society means that that which you do you do for others and your ultimate purpose is the betterment of all. Fine. We agree on that, but that does not address the issue of functional productive responsibility. That is, if bad shoes are being made, who is responsible? If there is no clearly defined group of shoe-makers (and yeah, I&#39;m as tired of this example as you are, but its what we&#39;ve got to work with) then, theoretically no one is. You would propose, I imagine, that everyone get togther and decide to make shoes differently, but, again, this is a meaningless gesture. Without a formal institutionalized division, and with no one to specifically charge with this change, some might start making shoes, some might not change, and some might start making worse shoes.

And the problem of responsibility goes on. Beyond the question of production problems, comes the question of production crises. If there are no specific primary responsibilites, what happnes when there is a need for a major production increase, or change, or redirection? If the people who are making shoes are a diffused group of disorganized dilletantes who crank out shoes between writting lyrics for their pop-band and performing rectal surgery, they do not have the directed energy or the directed concentration to makes such changes.

You have suggested that people would "rise" to meet the needs, but you have not suggested how this would occur. If all the people who want to make shoes are already doing so (since there are no formalized occupational roles), who is going to "take up the slack"? People with no experience? Without any defined roles, who will decide which of them can and cannot be trusted to produce immediately, and which need training? From your paradigm, I would imagine no one&#33; Since to limit use of the means of production to anyone is an affront to you, I imagine we would be seeing a great deal of bad shoes being made when the "people rise", but not any actual solution to the problem at hand.


So they pull together and coordinate these people. Those people who want to help, show up and say, what can I do? If their help is not needed, maybe they could replace a tired worker.

No one can definitively ensure such a thing without some seriously forced labor. What can happen is those who are currently producing shoes and get together with whatever volutneer labor force has decided to help out (cause obviously they need help if they can&#39;t meet the needs) and decide from there the best possible way to try and meet that necessity. But this remains 100% equal and democratic... the existing shoemakers are not given votes where the volunteer laborers are not -- and as it stand, the volunteer laborers have become "shoe makers" just the same as the existing shoemakers are shoemakers by their own desire to be so.

It&#39;s not "assigned." When the people realize they need 500 shoes by next April they go to the shoe factory and start making shoes. Whether this be the existing people making shoes, or them plus 20 volunteers, to ensure the work gets done. People who can do the work can take it upon themselves, and the people who can help them can take it upon themselves to help them.

Which "people"?
How many?
When do they go?
What about the work they were doing otherwise?
Who organizes the increased labour pool?
Who ensures proper training?
Who ensures proper use of the machines?
Who ensures quality control?
Who reorganizes the production effort?
Who manages orientation?
Who organize replacements for the outgoing labour pool?
Who reorganizes the labour for the other productions?
Who organizes the transfer of labour to compensate for the transfer of labour?
Who co-ordinates transportation?
Who co-ordinates the incomming workers with the previous workers?
Who decides the new distribution of resources in regards to the new production requirements?
Who assures that production does not outstrip material gathering?
Who handles questions?
Who monitors the quality of the "volunteer" workers?

etc...

If your answer is "society"... you don&#39;t have an answer. Someone has to be on the scene to make these determinations, maybe a group of someones. Who will it be? Who could it be? You probably wouldn&#39;t even allow such issues to be detemined as it somehow infringes on the peoples rights to to anything they want to.

The "rise up" model, again, works for a revolution, but not for making shoes. This is even more hopelessly idealistic then your dilletante production pardigm. Expecting that the need will somehow be answered by a sufficient number of able workers, without this having an effect on alternate sectors is ...laughable. Again, you&#39;re looking at societ as the magic human boy in which things "just work" and "just work together". Compared with society, the human body is a ludicrously simply organism, but, more importantly a highly organized one.

I know you claim that you are not elminating organization, but I cannot see how you can hope to have any pre-organization or true co-ordination if anyone can head down to the factory and start hammering away without so much as a word to the workers at that factory&#33; You called such basic communication a "COURTESY&#33;&#33; Well that "courtesy" is the underpinning that keeps society working, if we make it optional, we prevent productive organization. Yet another reason why dilletante production doesn&#39;t work.


But by maintaining these "primary occuptions" and trade separations, they don&#39;t really do this. Their actions are accountable only within their trade groups and the trade group as a whole may be accountable to society, but the person&#39;s direct role and understanding does not develop. They become extremely alienated, much like they do under capitalist society "You could never understand my situation... I&#39;m a <insert random field here> -- the things I deal with..."

Come on, that&#39;s ludcrious. People across trade lines are perfectly friendly today. One of my best friends is an engineer, another a mathematician, I have never felt "alienated" because we enjoy different kinds of work.

Yeah, so a doctor might not understand the specific problems that a shoe-maker is having that day...but so what? That will happen no matter what&#33; Even under your proposoal, everyone won&#39;t be doing everything, so some people will always be experiencing problems / work that others do not.

Primary occupations divides labour, but it does not need to divide society beyond that.


You cannot see how it would work because you refuse to get by this trade organizational role and the control that it enforces. But it is as simple as this: If workers within a single trade, are capable of organizing to meet the necessities in that line of production, by coordinating and organizing together. The workers of a given section of society, or even the world as a whole, are capable of organizing to meet the necessities in every line of production, by coordinating and organizing together.

:lol: The fact that something can work on a small scale does not mean in and of itself that it must work on a larger scale. The reason that co-ordination works withint a labour context is that everyone is directly involved with the same effort and, furthermore, are directly affected byt the labour process.

Those outside of the production effort are affected by the production result and therefore should have a say in such, which they do by communicating need and want. But the fact that they are affected by the result does not mean that they should have a say in the production itself when they are not themeselves a part of this production. To do otherwise leaves the workers at the mercy of a general public which, for the most part, is completely uninvoleved in their labour. Your replacing a single detatched boss with a group of ditatched bosses, but your doing nothing for the workers themselves.


Overproduction is not a problem. It is never a problem, in any field... why would it be? What does it matter if you overproduce food? What does it matter if you overproduce something storable? That kind of concern only exists in capitalism, where overproduction means lost profits.

Be reasonable, the fact that something is true under capitalism does not mean that it must be false under communism&#33; We don&#39;t want overproduction because it means a misdiversion of resources, material, and labour&#33; There is only so much rubber / plastic / metal / oil / water / etc... that we can gather in a given period and using those resources on that which we do not need means that they are not going to that which we do&#33;

Overproduction causes problems all the way down the line by forcing workers in other sectors to work longer and harder to compensate for the mismangement of productin twice as many of X as we need. If this happens in one industry, it causes problems, but if, as you suggest, we elminate worker categorization, this will happen in all industries and collapse the economy.


But we do not think in terms of our heart alone, our lungs alone, our legs alone. We think in terms of the body as a whole. As I said, it is not something we are particularly conscious of. It would not matter to you if your heart did the work of both your heart and your lungs, or maybe even your sphincter -- you&#39;d still focus on your body as a whole.

But the heard doesn&#39;t to the work of the lungs, it does the work of the heart and while the entire body relies on both organs to do their specific work, that specific work is highly specialized.


No, but they all have a role in ensuring the survival of one another, and thus the body as a whole. If your heart fails, your lungs won&#39;t do much good. Nor will your sphincter.

Exactly, each organ relies on the result of the other ogans&#39; work, and control the distribution to those other organs, but they do not control the production process itself. The heart only cares that liver purifies to blood, it doesn&#39;t care how it does it.

Face it, your analogy doesn&#39;t work.


I&#39;m creating a society of free laborers, who are free to choose what they will be expert in, and what they will be hobbyists in. Each working to whatever level and with whatever skills they choose to equip themselves with, on whatever projects they decide. I believe they will decide projects based on the needs of society, but also based on their own personal desire to achieve certain successes with what they do.

You&#39;re creating a society of hobbiests and dilletantes with no responsibility or accountability.


The categorization I seek to avoid is control. Control which says "we need shoemakers" when what we need is simply people to make shoes.

Because we do need shoemakers and not simply people to make shoes. People "who make shoes" might be able to make a shoe, but they do not have the organization, co-ordination, responsibility, accountability, or focus that a shoe-maker has. You see the role is about more than the function, its about creating a sense of speific function and specific responsibility, something which a dilletante productionist can never have. No matter how many shoes you make, if you&#39;re just doing it &#39;cause whateva, you do not feel personally responsible for that product. Sure, you might want to make a good product ... or not, whatevaaaaaaaa...., right?

We need that the people who make shoes are people who other people who makes shoes have found to be sound and qualified. We need that the people who make shoes follow the plan and the organization and the structure that is needed to ensure that enough is produced ...but not too much. We need that the people who make shoes are personally responsible for those shoes and care about that above other productions or hobbies.

We need shoe-makers and not "people who make shoes".


I wasn&#39;t aware there was any OTHER kind of work under communism.

Under your model, no. But your model isn&#39;t communism, its a variant, sure enough, but don&#39;t project your dilletante production paradigm to all of communism&#33;


If 100% of the population wants to make shoes, let them make shoes. And we will all starve. This is THEIR decision, an unconscious one, but it remains in their hands.

Well if 100% of people want to do anything there isn&#39;t anyone who can stop them, by definition.

But, real life is more complex than this. What if 39% of people want to be agricultural engineers, when there is only a need for 8% and meanwhile only 3% of people are making clothing while there is a need for 9%. I guess you would say that the 61% have no recourse but to accept the decision of the minority and ...what? Make clothing in their spare time in addition to whatever else their doing? Just to deal with 39% of the population that has decided to be ornery?

Sorry, but that arrangement won&#39;t last long. The majority would soon become fed up and demand that some of these agricultural engineers start "pulling their weight". I don&#39;t know what they&#39;d do in your paradigm, maybe start a war or something.

Within a division of labour model, however, the answer is simple.


Because we shouldn&#39;t be controlling such things. Nor do we need to consciously control such things. Again, I don&#39;t think you think too highly of people... you seem to think they will just all become shoe makers like mindless drones and not a single one will stop to think "Wait... where am I going to get food from?"

They&#39;ll probably expect to be getting that food from the farmers, not realizing that while there are farmers, there aren&#39;t enough of them. Or even if they do realzie that there aren&#39;t enough of them, they&#39;ll expect someone else to help out, while they go make shoes.


Of course, that&#39;s not what you want. You&#39;re willing to go as far as giving that control and organizational role to each separate trade for their given field. And their fedreation will then be the whole of working society (and with any luck the whole of society). I go one step further, and give the control and organizational role to the whole of society, cross trade, no pseudo federation necessary.

And if such a model could actually work, I&#39;d be all for it, but you haven&#39;t actually shown a workable system, rather you&#39;ve presented your variant of dilletante production with some metaphors about the human body and something about a circle. Without formalized primary responsibilites and without those responsibilities being clearly dilineated by society so as to ensure that only nescessary work is included, all production, all production, is subject to luck.

The people miiiiiight "rise up" today, or they might not. They miiiiiight produce enough shoes, or they might not. The doctor miiiiight know what he&#39;s doing, or he might not. Formalized insitutionalized labour division don&#39;t only assure responsibility, they ensure accountability. That means that quality is assured.

You might not care if your shoes are the best quality, but I bet you care if your heart surgeon is. If there isn&#39;t a formal group of doctors, or heart surgeons I suppose, who is going to enforce quality?

"Society"?

Will everyone get together an "acredit" doctors? Most people don&#39;t know how to judge if a doctor is any good, I certainly don&#39;t. If the doctors don&#39;t have the final say, then it&#39;s up to people who don&#39;t know to say if your doctor should be practicing medicine. I know you&#39;ll say that the doctors will be heavily consulted, but under your paradigm everyone has a right to say and everyone has a right to use the tools of produciton, no matter how inept, no matter how unskilled.

A patient cannot know if the doctor performing his surgery is any good, and in a world where that doctor could be a shoe-maker who decided to "try his hand at heart surgery", I can tell you I&#39;d avoid going to the hospital&#33;&#33;

Would this happen a lot? I don&#39;t know.

I think that most people are honest and well-meaining and it is unlikely that people will pretend to be qualified doctors to be malicious, but there are antisocial personalities and there are stupid people who think they know what they&#39;re doing...but don&#39;t. Between the evil and the stupide and the crazy, there is a rather substantial risk that if anyone can use the tools of production, my doctor is completely incompetent... so I die.

It, therefore, must be up to the people who know how. Only they can make the determination of who can and who cannot work the means of production, otherwise people die.


I don&#39;t propose anyone should just go to the factory, do what they want, not talk to anyone and not tell anyone. Quite the contrary, I say they should call, ask if there&#39;s any available room or if they could squeeze in some time on some of the machines, etc. If the answer is yes, go down there, talk to the people around and see what&#39;s available and then find their time around the existing production. That is what I propose should happen, but again, I propose this is a courtesy. A courtesy I believe all should and will take, but one which I do not believe is enforcable in any way.

Not in your paradigm, but certainly in mine.


It only makes it impossible if you uphold that organization and coordination to the hands of the specific trades.

Well, that&#39;s what we&#39;re discussing. Should such decisions be made by the specific workers or not.

To be frank, your model scares me deeply. You have no accountability, no responsilibty[/b], and no true co-ordination. Anyone who can pick a scalpel can head down to the hospital and start cutting into my lung. If we follow your plan, there will be no production, too much production, or, most likely, a combination of the two.

Failing produciton and dying patients. Sorry, but that&#39;s not my idea of communsim

[OleMarxco]

Don&#39;t you think you&#39;re being a bit too harsh on this lad, now? ;)
He could change. And as for all we know, we don&#39;t know if this would fail.
But theoretically, I see your point. There should be supervisors, not diletants.

[NovelGentry]

Yes, I can see that would work, and I have no problem with such a model.

I don&#39;t care so much that permanent roles are created so long as there is functional division to ensure proper organization and responsibility. Job rotation works fine for me&#33;

It&#39;s not about "formal job rotation" -- it&#39;s about the freedom offered. Don&#39;t confuse what I&#39;m talking about for simply giving people more things to do, or if they want more things to do simply shifting them around on a time schedule.

You say you don&#39;t care so much that permanent roles are created, but that is precisely what you care about. And even if people take on more than one role, you want these roles to be as permanent as possible, because it is the only way you believe society can conceivably organize.

And why shouldn&#39;t you believe this? It&#39;s how you&#39;re convinced the world works through capitalism. There are rigid rules, and if you break the rules you&#39;re "fired." Don&#39;t show up for work and you&#39;re "fired." Permanence is mandatory to a very shocking degree for the type of organization and responsibility (aka: control) that you feel is necessary.


but I think we both know that I am proposing formal primary occupations

Of course we both know this... that&#39;s my entire problem with what you&#39;re saying. "Formal primary occuptions" -- Maybe we&#39;ll have welfare too for people who can&#39;t get jobs in "formal primary occuptions" because there&#39;s already too many people in them.

We&#39;re sorry... there&#39;s too many doctors... maybe you could be a teacher. We&#39;re sorry... there&#39;s too many teachers... maybe you could... Such division of labor and protection there of WILL become coercive.

"So Bill, why&#39;d you decide to become a public works officer? Just like shovelling shit?"
"Nah, I tried to do a bunch of other formal primary occupations, but there was no need for me there, and the existing workers in those fields wouldn&#39;t really let me practice what I learned."


responsibilities that come first and foremost and are ones chief occupational goal and come before anything else that one might do in the rest of ones time.

aka: Roles which fulfill true necessity.

What you fail to realize is that necessity creates these roles... the roles are not made for necessitie&#39;s sake. It is the fact that it is "necessity" which creates them in the first place. People fulfill the role to fulfill need -- you don&#39;t NEED to tell people or guide people or ensure people are doing these things. They HAVE to do these things, or else they die.


That is division of labour and I believe it to be nescessary...

Division of labor is exactly what it says it is... division of labor. Whether that be dividing tasks by general groupings "What are you? I&#39;m a medical worker," dividing them by specific fields "What are you? I&#39;m a cardiologist," or dividing them by task "What are you? Well there&#39;s not really a name for it, but I&#39;m the person who slides the probe through you so the doctor can see what&#39;s wrong with your heart." That is the idea of division of labor. It&#39;s much more cold and tedious for manufacturing, but you get the idea.

But hey... where there used to be a guy to bolt on tires in the assembly line, now that&#39;s robotic... so people don&#39;t need that division of labor. Instead of a person screwing nuts on bolts, or even a person who assembles the undercarriage, or even a person who assembles the car, you are now a car maker. You are a part of the process as a whole, designing, engineering, and pulling it all together, indeed, building too. THIS BECOMES POSSIBLE.

There is respectability to your work, you can take pride in the whole, and you can say "this is our work." Your are not just an easily replacable piece of a machine. Your work becomes meaningful and labor becomes fulfilling to our full interests. Did you ever wonder why some people really hate their jobs under capitalism? It&#39;s not just cause it&#39;s a job... it&#39;s because they&#39;re pushed into the most tedious and monotonous task possible and they repeat that task, day in and day out. There is no change, there is barely any challenge.

But this is changing now... even under capitalism. And again, through technology. Programs are not assembly line built... there&#39;s not one guy who adds the loops, another who adds the debug lines, another guy doing conditionals, a few guys who do different parts on algoritims. This doesn&#39;t mean there is no division... there is still one team doing the UI, another team doing R&D, another that actually programs it, maybe another team separate from the underlying parts of the program that creates a library for it or a general API. So you still see division of labor, but not so much. And this changes in any field where the productive forces are less and less human -- which with the right technology can be and will be all fields.

To destroy division of labor is not as simple as just saying you have more than one job. It is going far more in depth to the purpose of your job. Sure you&#39;re a shoemaker, what part of shoemaking do you do? Or do you make the whole shoe? Doubtful.

From Smith&#39;s Wealth of Nations:


The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day labourer, as coars and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production.

That is the division of labor. They are all "coatmakers" but no one in the whole bunch of them can actually say "I made the coat." Production is SOCIAL. Whether or not you accept that social production does not matter, you refuse to recognize it&#39;s nature within the general production of society&#39;s needs -- and this is just a SINGLE product.

Instead you will have the shepherds who determine control over the sheep, the sorter and wool comber who determine the means of creating the raw wool, the dyer, scribbler, spinner, and weaver who determine the means of production for the separate pieces of material, the fuller and dresser as the "coatmakers" themselves, who are more appropriately tailors and who control the means of production in sew and dress itself.

We know why capitalism maintains these... they are all separate businesses, they can all sell between themselves and increase profit on top of profit on top of profit. There is money to be made in selling sheep -- there is money to be made in selling wool -- there is money to be made in selling woollen clothe -- there is money to be made selling a woollen jacket. And you presume to uphold such divisions for what? Organization and coordination? They are a HINDERANCE. Why separate? Who better to organize and coordinate the production of sheep and raw wool into a jacket than the same people working in all aspects.

You have no other reasoning for this, other than your confusion and "logic" as you put it. You see capitalism and you say "this is necessary" -- it is "part of their efficiency" -- it becomes obvious, to you anyway, that this is the means by which we can organize and coordinate, because capitalism obviously can organize and coordinate this way... etc..etc.

To be frank, I find it pathetic.


Otherwise there is no way to assue that essential work is done.

"Essential" work is assured to be done because it is essential. Need self-regulates, whether you&#39;d like to believe so or not. We&#39;ve seen what happens when need isn&#39;t allowed to self regulated, when planned economies force collectivize and tell people what will be good for them -- "this is what you need&#33;&#33; if you do this, you will be ok."


Everyone must perform an occupation that society has democratically decided to be a nescessary one.

Unacceptable and foolish at that.

"Today&#39;s issue is: is goat hurding a necessary function for society?"
"All in favor?"
"All opposed?"

Necessary jobs are decided by necessity and nothing more. You&#39;re thinking about it too much.


Assuming that somehow these jobs will "just get done" without such a policy is ludicrous.

Obviously, cause if me and a bunch of friends were out in the woods and we didn&#39;t have a policy that told us "you need to gather or grow food." We&#39;d starve. The only thing ludicrous here is your believe that society cannot gauge necessity without policy.


Then it will perish.

Of course, cause they never had the policy&#33; Watch out folks, you&#39;re all idiots&#33;

If these responses seem like jokes, that is, not at all serious. It&#39;s because I refuse to take this kind of nonsense seriously.


We cannot trust that things will just "work themselves out". We have to organize and plan. Democratically, of course, but plan nonentheless.

Organizing and coordination is "working themselves out." In case you weren&#39;t aware, humans communicate to solve problems that relate to one another. Planning is fine too, so long as the planning doesn&#39;t begin to limit people. The minute you limit people wanting to work -- where they can go, what they can do, you&#39;ve established a boss. You propose that each field of workers is the boss over it&#39;s industry... I propose society as a whole is the boss over all industry, as all industry maintains social relations beyond a single field.

The reason I&#39;m having such a difficult time even understanding what you want is because I cannot even picture the "shoemakers" as a separate force... from society or from other laborers. This is class consciousness, as opposed to trade consciousness. It is not "I am a shoemaker you are a doctor" -- it is "We are workers."

Above and beyond the objective reasons for division of labor under capitalism, remember that division of labor divides laborers. If we all were given equal responsibility and respect and opportunity -- if we were truly all equal we&#39;d already have a unified working class.

Maybe your idea is a protection mechanism or something... a means to ensure our solution to capitalism isn&#39;t so shockingly different that we scare the people. But I sure as hell hope it&#39;s nothing short of shockingly different. Maybe it is because you too are scared to admit that everything you take for granted as organizational or coordinating aspects of labor are complete bullshit maintained for the sole purpose of profit and exploitation.

Again, I&#39;m not opposed to organization. I&#39;m opposed to the idea of thinking division of labor is an inherent necessity of organization -- more, I think it&#39;s a hinderance to more advanced forms of organization made possible through technology.

Isn&#39;t this a very strong premise of Marxism (I don&#39;t know, maybe you&#39;re not a Marxist) -- but the idea that the social relations we see now are outgrown by the material conditions themselves? That we have no choice to change? The old constructs we place become obsolete -- it&#39;s the whole drive of scientific socialism. If you ignore this or deny these premises you fall back to strictly moral arguments -- your ideas seem backwards and archaic to me because you think in terms of this society.


And how do we "find people"? More importantly who "finds people"?

People find themselves. Tell me, what makes someone decide to become a farmer rather than a computer programmer? Under your system that is. Society says they have to? Explain this please. Society says "if you do not become a farmer, we will all die." Well why the hell don&#39;t the others become farmers?

This is my point. Need will regulate this, if farmers are needed, people will become farmers. They do not need society to convene and tell them this. Or they will grow food locally or they will get togehter with some friends and say, maybe we can go give a hand to the people farming down there. And lots of people will do this, not just one group, but very small diverse groups... and they&#39;ll all go down to the farms and say "What can we do to help?" The farmers need not hang a giant sign "help wanted" or ring an emergency bell.

Why will they do this? Need dictates that they do. Not only does need dictate that they do, but social responsibility and fellowship dictate that they do. Once they are there they don&#39;t just all run out on the farm with tractors and start havesting crops that aren&#39;t even full grown yet... that would be stupid, and they all understand it would be. They don&#39;t just dig up existing crops and start planting others... they don&#39;t just run out to a bare patch and plant others. They coordnate THERE, and then. And this is the laborer coordination, but at this point they are ALL farmers. And now they ALL have a say in the organization and method of production.

If more people come than is necessary, they all need to do less work. If 20 people could be used for 6 hours a day, 40 could be used for 3, or 80 could be use for one and a half. There&#39;s no need to say "sorry, we have too many farmers&#33;" And in their free time they will take up other tasks -- THIS is the destruction of that division -- and although this kind of organization and "free for all" workmanship may seem like a utopian dream to you, it is not -- it already occurs. It occurs in every workplace already when people get together and say "hey, look, we&#39;re really behind over here, could you help us out."

I used to work nightshifts at a retail store doing stocking, and there were always other sections that needed help. It was not the bosses who came around and said "you, go there." We talked to one another, we said "hey, what&#39;s the best way to get this done... if everyone works over here first and then we all shift over there, we know we can get it done faster than if we&#39;re all separate. Why?

When the bosses did come around to dicatate things, they always threw a wrench in the spokes. We already had it figured out, we knew who was good with what, and we worked it all up together -- the bosses came and simply said "Look, you go to sports, there&#39;s no one in sports." But had they just let us go, in 10 minutes there would have been 10 people in sports.

It&#39;s not even "democratic" -- that&#39;s not even the word for it. It&#39;s simply naturalistic. The only time you need to take a vote is when there is disagreement -- which didn&#39;t happen frequently where I was working, but it does happen.

Aside from that it just flows "like magic." Anyone who has ever held a position as a worker should be able to understand and relate to the kind of organization and coordination that happens -- without voting, without bosses, without the "existing workers of the field" holding control over means of production.

Everyone becomes a worker the minute they decide they want to do these things. Capitalism fears this -- it would rather you find a career. Stick to this... don&#39;t help your friend at work, the company isn&#39;t paying you ... they&#39;re liable for anything that happens.. blah blah blah. There&#39;s too much thought, too much control. They tried to organize it and coordinate it so much, and did so by placing all these restrictions that they actually hold it back.

And every day that control (which is indeed a function of the division of labor) becomes obsolete. I don&#39;t know WHY you look to uphold that garbage. It&#39;s boring and it&#39;s reactionary.

I&#39;m really done with this conversation.

[LSD]

It&#39;s not about "formal job rotation" -- it&#39;s about the freedom offered. Don&#39;t confuse what I&#39;m talking about for simply giving people more things to do, or if they want more things to do simply shifting them around on a time schedule.

Whoa... that wasn&#39;t my idea it was Redstar2000&#39;s, talk to him about it.


You say you don&#39;t care so much that permanent roles are created, but that is precisely what you care about. And even if people take on more than one role, you want these roles to be as permanent as possible, because it is the only way you believe society can conceivably organize.

I care that functional roles be created, such that when you&#39;re making shoes, you&#39;re a shoe-maker. But if you want to change careers after 20 years, I really don&#39;t give a damn, jsut so long as when you are working in a specific industry you are a part of that industry specifically.


What you fail to realize is that necessity creates these roles... the roles are not made for necessitie&#39;s sake. It is the fact that it is "necessity" which creates them in the first place. People fulfill the role to fulfill need -- you don&#39;t NEED to tell people or guide people or ensure people are doing these things. They HAVE to do these things, or else they die.

Yes, but each individual person doesn&#39;t "HAVE to do these things", they just know that someone else does. Again, you don&#39;t answer the fundamental problem with "rise up" thinking: how do you ensure that the right number of people "rise up"? If your answer is that it "works like magic" ...you don&#39;t have an answer.

If there are no division among workers and everyone is doing a bit of everything, then everyone is already doing something when this increased need arrises. Accordingly, everyone will think that they&#39;re doing quite enough and they really don&#39;t have the time and maybe Fred down the street should "rise up" and start farming ...as well as making shoes ...and bricks ...and software ...and practicing cardiology on the side.


Necessary jobs are decided by necessity and nothing more. You&#39;re thinking about it too much.

And you&#39;re not thinking about it enough. Such issues are complex, it isn&#39;t just a matter of assuming that the jobs that are needed will get done because everyone has a different idea of what&#39;s needed and everyone has a different idea of what the priority should be.


Obviously, cause if me and a bunch of friends were out in the woods and we didn&#39;t have a policy that told us "you need to gather or grow food." We&#39;d starve.

A society of thousands or millions is not "you and a bunch of friends". It is far more complex and, more importantly, impersonal. If you&#39;re sitting around with 4 friends it&#39;s easy to see what immediately needs to be done. but even then the 5 of you have to get together and discuss who&#39;ll do what. In a society of tens of thousands, it&#39;s hard to even figure out what needs to be done&#33; And, more importantly, harder to figure out who should do it.

In a small group work is easily distributed, in a MASSIVE one, like a community, it&#39;s much more difficult. You cannot rely on people to "rise up" as most people will not know the immediate needs and those that do will, often legitimately, assume that others are fulfiling that need, and even if they know that others are not they will believe that they are not the proper ones to do it&#33;

Am I saying that your system will result in immediate mass starvation? Of course not. But I am saying that it is insustainable as it will lead to widespread production problems as too much of X is made, too few of Y, and none of Z.


People find themselves. Tell me, what makes someone decide to become a farmer rather than a computer programmer? Under your system that is.

They become a farmer because they are interested in farming I&#39;d assume, it&#39;s really up to them. The reason they cannot become a computer programmer professionally is that it is not a needed occuaption. This does not mean that they cannot program computers&#33; It just means that they&#39;ll have to do that (along with singing and writing opera) in their free time, of which they&#39;ll have much more, by the way.


Well why the hell don&#39;t the others become farmers?

Many of them have, undoubtable, but the rest are working in other essential occupations. That&#39;s the point&#33; With everyone working needed labour firstly and engaging in all other work secondly and voluntarily we reduce the needed labour substantially.

But first, everyone needs to be working at at least one needed occupation&#33;


"Essential" work is assured to be done because it is essential. Need self-regulates, whether you&#39;d like to believe so or not.

Sometimes, on a small-scale, maybe...

..but to assume that society will simply "like magic" organize itself without any...um...organization seems hopelessly naive to me. Expecting that people will work in needed areas because they know its needed assumes that everyone in that society thinks the same and knows innately that which is needed. People aren&#39;t that similar or that intuned. Needed occupations must be communaly decided, otherwise it is VERY likely that needed occupations will go unfilled, or, more likely, be underfilled.

If it is never dicussed, how do we know that there really are enough microbiologists? If no one is counting, and no one is calculating, and no one is really considering microbiologist to be a valid category anyways.... we&#39;ll never know&#33; Need simply does not take care of itself&#33; Otherwise, there would be no such thing as need. Needs can be overcome and solved, but it takes organization and planning, and it takes primary thinking. It takes prioritizing. Resources / materials / labour all have to go to essential requirements first, because theyr&#39;e all limited. If we don&#39;t differentiate between essntial occupations and hobbies and both recieve equal treatement, you&#39;ll see hobbies improve ...along with the death rate.


There is respectability to your work, you can take pride in the whole, and you can say "this is our work." Your are not just an easily replacable piece of a machine. Your work becomes meaningful and labor becomes fulfilling to our full interests.

But this cannot happen under dilletante production&#33;

If everything produced is produced with only half-interest and limited skill, there is no respectability, certainly no accountability&#33; If someone isn&#39;t a shoe-maker but just "someone who makes shoes", there&#39;s a very reasonable chance they&#39;re just doing it for kicks and don&#39;t give a damn. Now, there is no problem with this, if it&#39;s a hobby, but there is a problem if this is how you plan to manage all production for everything&#33;


Aside from that it just flows "like magic."

In the end, this is your argument in a nutshell. You expect things to work ...because you expect them to work. But you haven&#39;t addressed the simple basic problems with your model that I&#39;ve repeated time and again:1) How do you account for accountability?

How do you know that your doctor is skilled and qualified if there is not an association of medical professionals to make such judgements?
The same for every other industry.

2) How do you account for responsibility?

How can you assure that the people working the producton are genuinely able and genuinely focused on their product if everyone is doing it in their spare time?

3) How do you assure that needed occupations are done?

You&#39;ve said that need "takes care" of need, but in a large society of many, how do you assure that people are genuinely producing that which needs to be produced, and how do you assure that resources are going to essential production before others?

4) How do you co-ordinate and organize production?

I know you said you are not opposed to organization, but if production conciousness disappears, how can you possibly run an organized production effort?
If everyone is producing whatever they feel like that day, whenever they feel like it how can a production plan function?Your idea is beautiful in its own way and very idealistic, but it is simply not practical. There is no way to maintain accountability and organization if workers are not specifically focused on their specific production, at least at a functional level. There is no way to ensure co-ordination and responsibility if there is not a clear dileaniation of role. Communism as much as any other society needs to ensure that production and labour occur and occur in the right way, for the right things. Your plan simply does not do this. Division of labour is not capitalist and it isn&#39;t reactionary and it isn&#39;t "bland".

It&#39;s just human.

[NovelGentry]

I&#39;m quite certain you don&#39;t even understand what I&#39;m saying -- this is proven in much of your response... some choice phrases. Let me give you some simple answers to some of these phrases, and then you can go back and try and fill yourself in.

In response to "in their spair time"

It is not in their spare time. This is their time, there is no spare time, there is no work time... there is just time and what people do to fill that time, a portion of which will be producing. Spare time is something we look forward to under capitalism.

In response to "but in a large society of many"

Production for necessities is obviously localized, and where it can be localized is tied with the nearest possible place it can exist. Large society does not decide the necessities of large society, nor does it concern itself with them. This is the whole idea of the "commune" afterall.

In response to "If production consciousness disappears"

It doesn&#39;t disappear, on the contrary, it becomes so wide spread that organization is simply something people do. Consciousness is increased SO MUCH that everyone is conscious and thus no single group must be conscious for another.

In response to "If everyone is producing whatever they feel like"

People are not just producing what they feel like. They are producing what they need.

In response to "If everything produced is produced with only half-interest and limited skill"

It&#39;s not. It&#39;s produced with full interests, the full interests of everyone too, because these products work in the full interest of everyone. See: above about productive consciousness. Half interest disappears completely -- as does any partial interest, because no one is there to dictate what you do. Why people are interested is another story altogether. As far as limited skill, such ideas too dissolve with the division of labor. You are not in a position to make a shoe and be of limited skill in making it, because in order to make it, you have to be capable of fulfilling the requirements of the job as a whole -- not just sewing. With division of labor you can be a master of sewing and utterly poor at making clothing, destory the division of labor, and you must embrace the full production.

A nurse is a doctor with limited skill. A spot welder is a machinist with limited skill. A wrenchman is a mechanic with limited skill.

What I propose abolishes the idea of limited skill.

[LSD]

You&#39;re still not addressing the critical points.


In response to "in their spair time"

Yes, I understand that your production model abolishes the principle of "spare time", I was just using it as a short-hand.


People are not just producing what they feel like. They are producing what they need.

They are?&#33;?

I thought they were producing what "society" needs. Tell me your not proposing autarky&#33; Surely people won&#39;t be making "only what they need"? And if not ...then we come into the problems of organization and priority yet again. Everyone&#39;s oppinion of what is needed is different. There are as many "need lists" as there are people and accodingly assuming that people will properly produce what is needed without a consensus as to what exactly that means, is naive and dangerous.

Society must elect what jobs are nescessary, and ensure those are done and recieve the priority of labour and materials. Once that is done, people can be free to do what they will with the public resources, now assured that the essential has been taken care of and they don&#39;t have to constantly worry that maybe I really should be farming right now ...or making shoes. Your plan creates a terrified society, never quite sure if enough is really being done. Without prior assurance that needed occupations are being done, you&#39;re creating a constant latent fear that the community will soon "run out". That is not the foundation for a long-lasting society&#33;


Production for necessities is obviously localized, and where it can be localized is tied with the nearest possible place it can exist. Large society does not decide the necessities of large society, nor does it concern itself with them. This is the whole idea of the "commune" afterall.

Many nescessities cannot be localized, oil drilling or steel mining for instance. Furthermore, even if you subdivide the society such that we&#39;re only dealing with hundreds instead of thousands, it&#39;s still too complex and too large to simply assume that production will "take care of itself". You still need to ensure the priority of resource and the priority of labour.

If you keep subdividing society, eventually you end up at one person, but one person making everything they themselves need is autarky and is hopelessly inefficient and wholly unreasonably. So we compromise somewhere between the entire community and the individual ...but we&#39;re still dealing with a fairly large number of people. And no matter how small the society-group we&#39;re talking about, in order for that group to sustain itself in the long term, resources and labour must go to needed production before they go to others. I know, you think that this will simply happen because people know what they need ....but the truth is more complicated. Yes, people know what they need, but they don&#39;t nescessarily know what everyone else does. If everyone is producing everything themselves and prioritising as they see fit than it is very possible that someone might put just as much labour and just as many resources into building a yacht as he does into building houses.

It is essential that society dilineate needed labour from that which is not, such that that work is done and organized and has a queue priority. After that, everyone is free to do as they wish with the public goods, reasonable speaking.

This is the only way a communist sytem could work&#33; If we don&#39;t assure needed production occurs first there really is no way to ensure that ...it occurs at all. And it isn&#39;t that I think that people are "stupid" or "blind" and "won&#39;t notice" if they run out of food, it&#39;s just that individually, people are not good at complex long-term planning and socio-resource use analysis. Often times, we don&#39;t know if there will be enough food. Furthermore, your solution in time of crisis is your bizarre "rise up" model, in which you assume that in the case of an increased need for a resource, people will simply start producing in that industry "almost like magic". But you do not account for where those people are comming from, nor the labour they were previously doing, nor how to ensure that this "rising up happens at all&#33;


Why people are interested is another story altogether. As far as limited skill, such ideas too dissolve with the division of labor. You are not in a position to make a shoe and be of limited skill in making it, because in order to make it, you have to be capable of fulfilling the requirements of the job as a whole -- not just sewing.

...or you think you do.

Since, you&#39;re abolishing specialization and direct worker control of industry there&#39;s no quality control. There is no guarantee that this hypothetical individual can "make a whole shoe", merely that he thinks trying might be fun. You&#39;re not abolioshing limited skill, in fact you&#39;re expanding it. Sure, the experienced can still teach the novice, but by making the means of production for everything open to everyone, there is no way to assure that someone knows what they&#39;re doing before they sit down to make shoes.

Again, this may not really matter to you in terms of shoes because ....they&#39;re just shoes, but it almost certainly matters in terms of your doctor and your fireman and your surgeon... professions who&#39;s responsibility is to save lives. If people are performing those occupations without proper training or without proper knowledge --and under your plan, people will be doing just that --people will die. As i said earlier between the antisocial and the insane and the simply misguided there will always be a portion of the population that either out of malice or out of pure well-intentioned stupidity attempts to perform tasks of life an death without knowing how to do them properly.

If health professionals don&#39;t have the final say in who can or who cannot be one of them, who does? Scarily, by your argument no one&#33; You propose that no one can restrict the use of the means of production and accordinly anyone who wants can pick up a scalpel and start cutting. Even if you reformed this obviously dangerous position and said, as you often have, that "society" would make such judgement, you must realize that the vast majority of people are not capable of deciding who would and who would not make a good doctor ...or nurse ...or fireman.

Yeah, if someone has killed people, it&#39;s an easy matter to say they should no longer be allowed to preform surgeries ....but who&#39;s to say when such deaths were the unavoidable nature of medicine and when they are due to incompetence? The only people in the position to make such judgments are the other doctors.

I imagine that at this point you&#39;d suggest that the doctors would be "consulted" in such decisions, but only as a "courtest". What this means is that, again, the general public is being asked to make decision in areas which it knows nothing about, and a charismatic and apolegetic sounding "doctor" could get away with...well...murder.


I&#39;m quite certain you don&#39;t even understand what I&#39;m saying

I think you&#39;ve made your point quite clear, and I&#39;ve tried to address the relevent points, but you have still not responded to the simply flaws that your plan contains: accountability, respopnsibility, production needs, and organization. I&#39;m not going to reiterate the details of each, I think I&#39;ve done that enough, you can just look at my last post to see a more detailed breakdown of each point.

[NovelGentry]

You&#39;re still not addressing the critical points.

Nor are you, you&#39;d just like to think you are.


Yes, I understand that your production model abolishes the principle of "spare time", I was just using it as a short-hand.

Fair enough, but I think it&#39;s a term we should pull away from when discussing communist production.


I thought they were producing what "society" needs. Tell me your not proposing autarky&#33;

Well if you understand that people is plural, you might not of even had to think that I was proposing autarky.

People produce what society needs. -- It&#39;s really a very simple statement, and true in all spheres of production.


Surely people won&#39;t be making "only what they need"?

I would hope people are making what they (people) need.


Everyone&#39;s oppinion of what is needed is different.

No, it&#39;s not. Need is a very objective thing, both individually and socially. I&#39;ve heard people in OI try to argue the same thing by talking about Ferraris and Diablos, we laugh at them there -- can we laugh at you too?


There are as many "need lists" as there are people and accodingly assuming that people will properly produce what is needed without a consensus as to what exactly that means, is naive and dangerous.

And the combination of everything on these "need lists" maintains the social need. Not everyone needs insulin, but some people do, thus the production of insulin is a social need. When you accept that I am talking about treating the entire whole of society as a single being, that is, a single being with needs, and a single being that supplies its needs, etc... then we can move on.

You&#39;re breaking my arguments down and trying to make it look like I&#39;m focusing on the individual. This is not the case.. quite the contrary, I&#39;m focusing on society as a whole, and am willing to refuse to recognize it&#39;s even made up of individuals. Why do I do this? Because it is the way we work as social creatures.

Unless an individual IS supplying everything that they specifically need, they are intwined with society. Because without one individual who is farming food, the individual making the insulin that keeps the farmer alive dies (he starves). And without that other person making the farmer&#39;s insulin, he dies. We are dependent on one another -- plain and simple. We are dependent because we can&#39;t all be masters of every trade. What I tend to realize, that you do not, is that some guy off the street with no clue how to make insulin is not going to walk into a lab and try and make it, more, even if he does, no one who needs insulin is going to be acquiring it off this one guy and necessarily assuming it&#39;s legitimate. Why would they? They can just as easily acquire it from a local distribution center that deals medical supplies.


Society must elect what jobs are nescessary

So let&#39;s see... say 30% of the population needs insulin, and the other 60% doesn&#39;t, and they decide that insulin is not a need... I guess those people with diabetes are shit out of luck eh? Remember those flaws I was talking about? This is one of them.

What happens is, your answer to this is the same as mine. The difference is, I remove the formal bullshit that isn&#39;t necessary. Very few people in that 60% are going to say "fuck people with diabetes" -- instead, they are going to recognize that people need it, and as such they will "elect" it, under your system, as a necessity. So what your real answer to this is, "People are going to recognize it as a need." You put the same faith in people recognizing this as I do. But if we realize that people will recognize it as a need, why the hell do we have to put it to a vote?

So under my system you scratch the idea of "electing necessity" and realize that people will understand the necessity. Oh, but here&#39;s the best part. Under my system, the 30% of people with diabetes can produce their own insulin if others refuse&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33; Under your system, they can only do this is they are "drug makers" so to speak. For you, if they aren&#39;t drug makers, they have no real say, but of course, their say is when they all "vote it as a necessity." But again, they are not a majority, so you put the same exact faith in those who do not need insulin to realize the need that others have on it as I do. Your formal "votes of necessity" and control over the means of drug production by the "drug makers" becomes superfluous at best, and a danger to those who need insulin at worst. Remember when I said you&#39;re making this too complex, thinking about it too much? This is why.

Why you maintain these things, I do not know. Again, I can only presume that you are so stuck in the bourgeois line of thinking that you really think this kind o bullshit is necessary for society to function. It isn&#39;t. What it IS necessary for is maintaining control over the means of production, upholding the social condition of private property, all things that I would really hope we&#39;ve done away with by the time communism rolls around.


Once that is done, people can be free to do what they will with the public resources

But your drug makers determine when it&#39;s done, and thus, unless they say it&#39;s done, it&#39;s not really done. So this "free to do" time may never come. And the diabetes sufferers may never see their insulin. But of course, they&#39;ll appeal to society to push the drug makers to make it, they will "elect the necessity." It&#39;s like a merry-go-round of bureacratic bullshit that boils down to the exact same faith I have, that the majority of people will decide it is necessary, and they will ensure it&#39;s made, and they will do so regardless of whether they have diabetes. How they ensure enough is made, or not too much is made (and wasting resources as you put it), and that it gets to the right places is a COMPLETELY different realm of organization.

It needs not "drug makers" (division of labor) or an "election of necessity" (control over the means of production) to happen.


now assured that the essential has been taken care of and they don&#39;t have to constantly worry that maybe I really should be farming right now ...or making shoes.

I can&#39;t help but laugh at this. The mental image in my head is that you think everyone is going to be sitting around thinking about what they should be doing, and there will be so much chaos and confusion that nothing will ever really develop. Again, organization is inherent in the production, why? Because that is how we produce. Socially speaking, we look to one another and coordinate. My example of where I worked was to point this out. We do it because it makes all our lives easier -- the sour grape over in the corner who sits about and says "well I&#39;m gonna do my own stuff" is, just that, a sour grape who sits in the corner. Such people will not be respected, liked, and will probably even be "made fun of" (as I think RedStar puts it).

Strangely, these sour grapes in capitalism are usually the boss, the only thing is, under capitalism, they have control over you and are protected by the state. Under communism they will have control over no one, and in fact, the greater portion of society will have control over them, because they are dependent on the products of society to survive (unless they truly are a master of all trades).

This is the check and balance, but it is informal and it is inherent in the mode of production itself. It does not need to be written as "policy" and it doesn&#39;t need to be put to a vote.


Your plan creates a terrified society, never quite sure if enough is really being done.

Much like before, I can pretty much only laugh. But let me attempt to respond meaningfully. If you recall on the thread that developed into the question of control, I mentioned that the works of all these means of production (resources consumed both in means of production and raw materials, labor time, number of laborers, product output, etc..), the are all recorded and public, they are open, transparent to the world. Not to mention scarcity becomes quite visible in other ways (if it ever will be a problem).

Further, we are not isolated human beings. You proposed that I needed to learn humility on the other thread, but it is an extremely arrogant person, not a humiliated one who cannot ask for help. Or who thinks they are "the only ones who can make shoes" and thus the "only ones who can control the means of shoe production." People are not idiots, if someone can be trained quite rapidly how to inject someone, or take blood pressure, or set an IV, or do CPR, they can help at a hospital. Are they picking up the scapal and cutting? No. Nor do I think the patient would allow it.

My plan creates a society that is knowledgeable about the productive forces, who realizes that production IS a part of their life. Their "spare time" is thus filled with all productive efforts. No line needs to be drawn between when I maintain computers for a hospital and when I&#39;m at home writing a novel or when I&#39;m at the school teaching either of those skills. It is all time, and it is all productive time. It is all time that I am aware of what is needed, and all time that I fulfill what is needed. I will not sit and worry about whether enough food is being produced, but when the farmers need help, I will be there.

How will I know they need help? Well, if they are humiliated enough, they will make society aware of it.


Without prior assurance that needed occupations are being done, you&#39;re creating a constant latent fear that the community will soon "run out".

And how do you assure these things? You "elect necessity" right... but how do you assure there are enough farmers? You can see how many farmers there are, and how much they produce, and how much is consumed, but as I just mentioned, these things are made transparent under my system as well. That, however, is not assuring the occuptions are being done -- it is keeping tabs on how many people are doing it, and if there&#39;s not enough, sounding an alarm.

But what happens when you sound the alarm? Under my society, I propose that the assurance of what needs to be done will be assured by people&#39;s volunteerism, that they will recognize the necessity and assure to themselves and society as a whole that it is done. What do you propose, forced labor?

Again, you&#39;re talking about being conscious -- how conscious anyone decides to be is up to them. If people in a commune regularly get together to tell everyone what is needed, what isn&#39;t, where things are lacking, where there is surplus, then they are consistently conscious (assuming they go to these meetings). If people are constantly worried and "terrified" as you put it, they can go to the farms and the factories, etc, and they can look at the records, and ask the people there "is there anything I can do?"

This is as much as any system, with the exception of capitalism, that the necessary things are being done. But let&#39;s look at how capitalism does it for a minute.

1. Private interests hold the means of production (needed to survive).
2. When there is too much production and not equal consumption, they will fire people.
3. When there is not enough, they will hire people.
4. If you do not do SOMETHING, you cannot survive (as you make no money and can&#39;t buy the things you need)
5. The necessary labor is determined by a market. People will buy up what they need/want, and all the previously mentioned aspects roll into it. If more people need/want it, more buy it, companies hire more to keep up with the damand, and because they&#39;re selling they remain profitable. When demand subsides, they lay people off, or try to find cheaper production (third world markets, etc).

Now, maybe I&#39;m confused at what your proposting, but let&#39;s take a look at what I think we know so far about your paradigm.

1. Social (but still limited and private) interests hold the means of production; shoemakers control the shoemaking means, doctors control the hospitals/drug labs.
2. When there is too much production and not equal consumption, they stop allowing people in or whatever. As you said, if 50% of the people are shoemakers, they will not allow any more people access to shoemaking equipment, or society simply wont&#39; allow any more people to be trained in shoemaking (somehow... maybe they&#39;ll de-elect it as a necessity).
3. When there is not enough, they will ??? Ask for more people to come help? Work longer hours? Re-elect it as a necessity?
4. If you do not do one of these "necessary primary occupations" you cannot consume the products of society, that&#39;s correct right?
5. What is necessary is determined by voting. If 60% of the population seems to be eating OK, and 40% doesn&#39;t, that 60% can deem more food production is not necessary.

To me, your system is pretty much just as frightful. It&#39;s only saving grace is that workers are actually determining these things... but they are workers divided by "fields." You presume if 40% aren&#39;t eating well, the 60% will vote to increase food production. Where as my system would allow the 40% to grow their own damn food -- and again, the only way you can ensure that under your system is if they are all farmers, or else the farmers (if they&#39;re part of the 60%) can limit their access to the means of production.

This is messy, prone to the same types of problems capitalism is, with the exception of "expanding the boss class" -- etc. The interesting part is, that it is BETTER than capitalism. Initially it gives more power... but hey, back in the day capitalism actually had not so bad social mobility. Those at the bottom could rise to the top. But now the top is so set in stone, and the bourgeoisie shrinks in size as companies buy up one another, multinationals form, etc.. while the proletariat grows and grows.

Your system maintains classes, or at the very least, the possibility that they will be recreated -- it TRULY TRULY does. They are not apparent at first, but neither is the bourgeoisie/proletariat split at the beginning of capitalism. You put your good faith in people tha they will elect the proper necessities, etc..etc.. and hope that the shoemakers will be fair in allowing use, and if not, hope that the majority will be fair in allowing use.

The only threat the underclass can muster is to stop working in their respective fields, since the members of the upper class too depend on their labor... but doesn&#39;t that sound familiar too.

Reasonable socialist production must open up the means of production to all -- organization and coordination can be kept with democratic means but strict control must become essentially "illegal." Whether it be by the people in the field or even by a large portion of society. The best mechanism I see for doing this is what I mentioned in the other thread, limiting the democratic decisions in the various aspects to those who it affects.

Again, insulin production can be the concern of those producing insulin and those in need of insulin. Food production, the concern of society at large. You can have federated labor forces to organize and coordinate this, and under socialism an "administrative" -- a function of the state that maintains the means to organize and coordinate held accountable to the producers and consumers themselves. When this organization becomes natural or when technology makes it possible to destroy even this level of control -- then, and ONLY then, can you achieve communism.


Many nescessities cannot be localized, oil drilling or steel mining for instance.

Of course not... although, on oil drilling I would hope that by the time communism rolls around we&#39;ve abolished this dependence, assuming it&#39;s even still available.

And again, you have organization and coordination from this, but at a larger level. Where local production makes sense, you maintain it, for such things where it doesn&#39;t you federate the communes themselves, NOT the separate fields of production.

Even with this federation, you cannot limit the actual access to these things. How does one determine who controls the iron ore -- or even the land it&#39;s on? This is not justifiable in any sense. So if someone wants to head on over to where there&#39;s a large deposit of iron and start mining, they CAN. Does this mean they will have to or even that they will? No, hopefully it would never come to that. But the possibility must be open, and any partial control must be abolished.

(these arguments should really have been on the other thread, which is why I said it wasn&#39;t necessary to develop this any further -- control over production and division of labor are two separate aspects, even though you do not see them as one. But hopefully I have shed some light on why this is the case, whether or not you&#39;ll "buy" it or not, is another story).


Furthermore, even if you subdivide the society such that we&#39;re only dealing with hundreds instead of thousands, it&#39;s still too complex and too large to simply assume that production will "take care of itself".

It is not so simple as "taking care of itself" -- what I mean by such statements is that it society will become homogenous in this regard, and that the bureaucracy and control you offer is obsolete. The organization and coordination, which you feel requires the division of labor, can exist outside of these classic roles. When it "takes care of itself" is when you have this synthesis, it is merely a means of saying society has become so adept at maintaining its needs and wants, whether it be through simple practice or through technological advancement, that it no longer needs to maintain itself through a portion of society. Society takes care of itself, need self regulates it -- this means that you need not to divide productive forces and allow them to maintain control for the sake of supplying society, nor do you need to "elect necessity," but instead society maintains it&#39;s own control over all aspects of it&#39;s necessity, and necessity is determined quite simply by need (which again, is objective).

You cannot do this if people do not necessary have access to the means of production to produce what they need. Which is the case in the paradigm you offer. It&#39;s not to say they won&#39;t have access, but they don&#39;t necessarily have access and there is some policy, written or unwritten, which deems this to be proper.


You still need to ensure the priority of resource and the priority of labour.

Of course, my question is who ensures it. Your response for certain aspects is the individual laborers combined socially in their respective fields. My response is, everyone.


If you keep subdividing society, eventually you end up at one person, but one person making everything they themselves need is autarky and is hopelessly inefficient and wholly unreasonably.

I&#39;m not subdividing, you&#39;re saying I&#39;m subdividing and trying to pass it off as truth. You bring up the issue of a single laborer wanting to use the means of production for his own ends, and I simply do not believe it will occur -- nor CAN it occur. Because his labor is STILL social labor, and thus the product of his labor is still up for SOCIAL consumption, not individual consumption.


So we compromise somewhere between the entire community and the individual ...but we&#39;re still dealing with a fairly large number of people.

YOU compromise and to what end I cannot possibly conceive. WE do not.


And no matter how small the society-group we&#39;re talking about, in order for that group to sustain itself in the long term, resources and labour must go to needed production before they go to others.

Needed production determined by "elected necessity" -- yeah, we get it already.


I know, you think that this will simply happen because people know what they need

I think it will happen because people need what they need. Knowing what they need is consciousness, and while I do believe everyone will be so conscious, what actually enforces it is the fact that they need what they need, not that they know it.

Knowing what they need keeps it running smoothly, needing what they need keeps it running.


Yes, people know what they need, but they don&#39;t nescessarily know what everyone else does.

Which is precisely why EVERYONE needs equal access to the means of production and resources. Because there is no guarantee that society will make what you need, nor is there any guarantee that the shoemakers will make enough shoes for the doctors, or that the doctors will treat anyone else by the shoemakers. Your solution to this is the threat of no longer providing that labor. But in no longer providing that labor you don&#39;t allow the shoemakers to provide that labor for themselves, because the doctors control the means.

So you assume that greater society will step in and "enforce it with democracy" -- and they will. I have no doubt that they will, but if society as a whole plays the role to begin with it never comes down to that. Further, even if it does come down to that, your response is that society elects necessity to determine smooth operation, and society enforces what it elects. While what I propose says that no portion of society can enforce control over the means of production to deprive another portion of society. Whether it be the people in the field, or 60% vs 40%.

Of course, they can attempt to enforce it anyway. Civil war could spring up and society could be divided again and no matter what the policy is, no one can stop that. So what we are left with is still that blind faith that people will work for and with one another, with respect for one another, etc. But you present some kind of law and order... to pretend you can prevent these things. You try to control something that is not yours to control by saying "the shoemakers will decide who accesses the means of making shoes." You create a hierarchy of control -- it&#39;s the immediate decision of the shoemakers, which society can then override, which a portion of society could then attempt to override anyway with force.

You pretend it&#39;s about organization when it&#39;s really about control I&#39;m not saying you&#39;re in favor of control.. this is what you carry over from capitalism.

It is little different than when the capitalist say "you need a boss to tell people what to do or else nothing will get done right... there will be no organization... no coordination." I do appologize for my "attack" against you on the other thread -- but I cannot consider this "communist" nor can I consider anyone who supports it "communist."

Maybe you simply weren&#39;t conscious that what you were saying really is just another form of the same. Like I said, you replace the boss, the single boss, with trades as bosses. You use the very similar arguments as capitalists. The boss becomes the workers in the trade, the separation between the boss and the workers becomes the separation between the trade and society, and you uphold it all with wild arguments about the division of labor and it&#39;s inherent organizational property, etc.

No doubt you will come back with arguments against my arguments, and keep up to more of the same. Or maybe you&#39;ll revise a thing or two here or there and hope it&#39;s more acceptable, etc... but it&#39;s not acceptable to me, in any form. The means of production must be in the hands of the social total, because they are social products, the products they create are social products, and too must be in the hands of the social total. What makes this all work is consciousness, respect, and the looming threat of unfulfilled necessity. But instead of that threat coming from a boss, you give that power to the trade, the only thing I trust with the power to threaten us with lack of necessity is necessity itself.

This is the most natural state of man, and it is where we are most free. However, instead of being individually threatened by necessity and material survival, we are socially threatened. Instead of individually releiving the burdens of necessity, we do so socially. These ideas and philosophical points are littered throughout Marx&#39;s writing.

I won&#39;t continue on, because there will be a lot of repeat stuff, so make your rebuttal, and that will be where this debate (at least between you and me) can end.

[LSD]

But what happens when you sound the alarm? Under my society, I propose that the assurance of what needs to be done will be assured by people&#39;s volunteerism, that they will recognize the necessity and assure to themselves and society as a whole that it is done.

And how many people will "volunteer"?
What happens to the labour they were doing before?
How do you assure that enough people are volunteering?
How do you assure that too many aren&#39;t?

...and most importantly how do you assure that the peopple "volunteering" know what the hell they&#39;re doing?

Again, your "rise up" paradigm is not a plan. Assuming that if a need arises, it wil "just get filled" is hopelessly naive. Most people will asume that other people will "rise up" and take care of the problem, unless there&#39;s constant monitoring, it&#39;s unlikely that most people will even know there is a problem. And if you use some sort of "public awareness campaign" to spread the news, there is the very real risk that too many people will quit what they were doing otherwise and start "volunteering" in whatever sector the sudden need arose in. Overproduction is a potential problem, we&#39;ve covered this already, and so is the underproduction that will be caused by the sudden movement of labour from countless industries (since you&#39;ve state that in your model, everyone will be doing many things) into one.

Within a division of labour model, when an increased need arises, the labourers in that field, who are constantly monitoring the industy inquestion, quickly realize the problem and inform the society. If they has previously closed admittance they will of course open it, if not they will simply encourage people to join. But before anyone can join they must be properly trained, instructed, and approved by the collective in question, they must also adhere to the collective decisions of that industry, which they are now a part of making of course. Together, the workers in the relevent industry increase production and solve the crisis.

Simple, easy, tidy, practical.


No, it&#39;s not. Need is a very objective thing, both individually and socially. I&#39;ve heard people in OI try to argue the same thing by talking about Ferraris and Diablos, we laugh at them there -- can we laugh at you too?

Objective need is an objective concept, subjective need is not. That is, a group of people comming together can rationally agree on what is needed and what is not. But you cannot assume that all people individually will come to the same determinations on their own. It is practically assured that, even if they agree on the "big 4" --food, shelter, water, power-- they will disagree on the "lesser" stuff. And some may even disagree on the big stuff&#33;

It is certainly concievable that some "primitavist" out there does not consider electriticity to be a need, maybe there&#39;s a nudist who thinks that closthing isn&#39;t needed, maybe there&#39;s a vegetarian who thinks that meat isn&#39;t, maybe a vegan who thinks that eggs aren&#39;t, maybe a naturalist who thinks that antibiotics aren&#39;t, maybe a Christian Scientist who thinks that medicine isn&#39;t, maybe a nut who thinks that water isn&#39;t...

Yeah, those are extreme examples, and for the most part most people will agree on most things. Which is why voting works&#33; Comporomise means that the rational though-out concensus idea wins out. But, you&#39;re assuming that individual production without prior prioritization will somehow work just as well. That a sort of mass subconcious will emerge and that generally, what most people think they need will generally be produced ...generally. That might work, it might not. It certainly would lead to a wasting of resources as there would be marked overproduction and consistant underproduction, but even more importantly, as I&#39;ve said before, is priority.

But I&#39;ll go deeper into that next.


So under my system you scratch the idea of "electing necessity" and realize that people will understand the necessity. Oh, but here&#39;s the best part. Under my system, the 30% of people with diabetes can produce their own insulin if others refuse&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33; Under your system, they can only do this is they are "drug makers" so to speak. For you, if they aren&#39;t drug makers, they have no real say, but of course, their say is when they all "vote it as a necessity." But again, they are not a majority, so you put the same exact faith in those who do not need insulin to realize the need that others have on it as I do. Your formal "votes of necessity" and control over the means of drug production by the "drug makers" becomes superfluous at best, and a danger to those who need insulin at worst. Remember when I said you&#39;re making this too complex, thinking about it too much? This is why.

I&#39;ve said it before and I&#39;ll say it again, if your model had any chance of working, I&#39;d be all for it. You&#39;re right, it doesn&#39;t take that much thinking and it does appear to be simple on the surface, but it simply isn&#39;t workable. You&#39;re assuming both that enough insulin will be made and that not too much insulin will be made but offer no system to ensure either. The point of collectively voting to make insulin as a needed good isn&#39;t so that people know that insulin is important, you&#39;re right, that goes without saying. It&#39;s so that you can assure that labour and resources are prioritized for insulin and therefore you assure that it is made.

You talk about the 30% of people making insulin on their own, but what you don&#39;t realize is that inslulin isn&#39;t that easy to make. You can&#39;t simply cook it up in your kitchen, one must go down to the biochemical plant and use the complex tools there to slowly carefully create the needed insulin. But... what if the machines / tools are already in use?

You propposed that 60% of people could "vote against" making insulin, I ask you what about the far more real threat, that of people simply not thinking about it. People are unlikely to conciously decide in a public assembly I WANT THOSE WITH DIABETES TO DIE, but they are quite likely, if they do not have diabetes themselves, to simply not consider it at all.

So, getting back to that biochemical plant, since everyone (in your plan) is entitled to use the means of production and there is no priority (since control is wrong), someone who is using the plant to make himself some LSD has equal rights as someone who needs to cook up some insulin. ...so how do we assure that there is enough time / labour / material / resources for the insulin? I&#39;m sure the guy making the LSD didn&#39;t mean to be malicious and if someone told him that he was using resources that Fred needed to save his life, he&#39;d have let Fred use the machines ...but he didn&#39;t know.

Biochemical labs, and the materials / tools within them are limited. If we do not prioritize their use, people will die.


What I tend to realize, that you do not, is that some guy off the street with no clue how to make insulin is not going to walk into a lab and try and make it, more, even if he does, no one who needs insulin is going to be acquiring it off this one guy and necessarily assuming it&#39;s legitimate. Why would they? They can just as easily acquire it from a local distribution center that deals medical supplies.

And how do they know that the person working in that "local distribution center" is making proper insulin? I though everone had "equal access" to the means of production?

The point is that in your model any product you use or service you recieve could have been made / preformed by an amteur or complete novice. Without the control you so critisize, there is no way to assure any degree of quality control. For the last 5 or 6 posts I&#39;ve been talking about the guy who walks into a hospital and starts performing heart surgery ...you haven&#39;t responded. I think I know why: within your paradigm, there is no response. It&#39;s a big gapping hole in your model and you don&#39;t want to deal with it.

Well, deal with it. It&#39;s there. If you do not control access to the means of production it is impossible to assure quality control. Period. There is simply no way around this fact. If the doctors cannot say No, then everyone, that&#39;s EVERYONE can do as they will on whomever they will. Do you want your ontologist to be a lunatic who&#39;s heard God tell him to practice medicine? Do you want your fireman to be a shoe-maker who thought he&#39;d put out fires for a day? Or do you want the people responsible for saving your life to know what they&#39;re doing?

If so, then you need to have accountability and quality control and that means organization, democracy, and control.

It means division of labour.


Reasonable socialist production must open up the means of production to all.

That&#39;s the heart of your argument, but it&#39;s also its fatal flaw. With diffused production comes the diffussion of responsibility, accountability, and organization. You say you don&#39;t want control of any sort beyond that exerted by society itself. The problem with this is that society itself is not an organized body in and of itself. It&#39;s a collection of individual people, each with their own concerns and their own problems and their own issues. Do they have common needs and common solutions? Of course. But that does not mean that the solutions will solve themselves.

This is one of the most indepth discussions I&#39;ve been in on this board, and I think we&#39;ve both covered a great deal of issues, but in the end, for me, it comes down to a relatively simple question: can your plan work?

Unfortunately the answer I always get is no. You haven&#39;t really offered a solution to any of the clear practical problems of your plan. You talk about people "rising up", but you don&#39;t say how it will happen. You say organization will still occur, but at the same time admit that such organization is unenforcable. You talk about "volunteerism", but offer no plan to manage it. You talk about democracy, but do nothing to support it. Ultimately, you want every person in a communist society to have equal access to the means of production such that everyone can produce everything they need and in so doing produce everything society needs as well. No labels, no categories, no controls.

It&#39;s a nice dream, but that&#39;s all it is.

Control is needed. More than that it&#39;s essential. I want controls on who my doctor is. I want controls on who&#39;s monitoring the quality of my water. I want controls on who&#39;s growing the food. People are not perfect and never will be. There will always be the disturbed, the cruel, the insane, and the stupid. And until that changes, control is needed.

It may not be pretty, but it&#39;s true.

[NovelGentry]

And how many people will "volunteer"?

Hopefully as many as possibly can.


What happens to the labour they were doing before?

They continue doing it.


How do you assure that enough people are volunteering?

How will you ensure enough people "want to join" (as you put it later)? refuse them such goods until they join?


How do you assure that too many aren&#39;t?

The more you have, the less labor time is required by each. How many there are does not become a problem unless it becomes a hinderance -- for example, 1,000 people on a factory floor meant to hold 100. In which case, you kindly tell people that their services are greatly appreciated, but that there is more than enough to fulfill the necessities now.

But it&#39;s not like 1,000 people just decide to show up either.

As I mentioned. Communication is the key to organization, we have phones, the internet, and by then, who knows what&#33; All of these questions can be speedily answered through these developed means of communication.


...and most importantly how do you assure that the people "volunteering" know what the hell they&#39;re doing?

Ask them. If they willingly admit to not knowing how to do something, show them.


Again, your "rise up" paradigm is not a plan.

Nor is it designed to be a plan -- planned economies, in the traditional sense of the words are crap. Cause someone does the planning, and unless you want to spend a LOT of time debating and drawing up plans, that someone is usually less than the whole.

What I propose is neither a market economy or a planned economy, but it is a economy which reacts based on very fundamental things, like necessity.


Assuming that if a need arises, it wil "just get filled" is hopelessly naive.

Assuming it will get filled regardless is naive. Again, the only solution to ensuring these needs are fulfilled is force or coercion. Capitalism keeps the bosses in control, and if you really want to be a doctor, but there&#39;s no more hospitals hiring, but you refuse to do anything else, you will starve. So you are "forced" or "coerced" into whatever role happens to make sense for profitability. You replace profitability with whim apparently, as necessity is not even determined by the people who need, but by a majority in all cases, even if that majority does not require said necessity.

Either way, if you&#39;d like to be a doctor and there&#39;s "too many doctors" at the moment, you&#39;re forced into another "primary occuption" (or whatever the term was). If you do not fill a primary occuption, you do not get the products of society. Kinda like how people flipping burgers at McDonalds aren&#39;t really necessary for the survival of society and thus they get paid absolutely shit -- from what you have said one can assume such people won&#39;t get a damn thing, as they aren&#39;t filling a primary occuption.

This doesn&#39;t really address what we know to be true from capitalism -- we have more workers than what is really needed to sustain society. The reasoning behind this is because technology allows one man to make the needs of many in meaningful time. So one can only assume a large part of the population will die under your system, given that all the primary occuptions will be full, and those who won&#39;t or can&#39;t work in primary occuptions are not allowed to acquire the products of society.


Most people will asume that other people will "rise up" and take care of the problem, unless there&#39;s constant monitoring, it&#39;s unlikely that most people will even know there is a problem.

There is constant monitoring. By the same people who are doing the monitoring under your system -- those currently working there. This isn&#39;t "eveyrone rise up and make a bunch of food, then everyone go back to your old jobs, then when we run out we&#39;ll rise up again." There will always be people fulfilling the necessary roles, hopefully it will be all people.

I&#39;m sure there are a select number of people who want to be shoemakers, but I can&#39;t picture nearly enough people want to be shoemakers that this will be their "primary occupation." That&#39;s just outrageous.

Most necessary production is boring and heartless. I never knew someone who really wanted to grow massive amounts of broccoli. Again -- I&#39;m sure there are some people who WANT to be farmers... they enjoy it, for whatever reasons. Capitalism deals with the lack of necessities in two ways. First and foremost, supply and demand determines that if there is not enough, only the richest will get it. Secondly, supply and demand determines that workers will shift towards farming, as businesses will pay farmers more money if they need incentives to hire more workers and maintain profits by producing enough.

You haven&#39;t really given a solid answer to how your system works. Again, you assure that people will be aware, and that someone will be in control... the shoemakers know when they dont&#39; make enough shoes and they "allow people in" or directly try and bring people in... but what if there are no people to be allowed in? Or no people who want to be brought in? Who the hell wants to make shoes?

Your system requires the same volunteerism as mine, unless again, you&#39;re willing to starve people, or not allow them shoes, unless they will be shoe makers. This is confusing to me, because what I see is a new class forming out of these "primary occupation" workers. They control the means of production, and before you know it, they control the products of that production (or maybe this was already assumed) -- so now, not only do the limit that people can or can&#39;t access these machines, they limit who gets the shoes... and then in doing so have a means to convince people to join the cause.


And if you use some sort of "public awareness campaign" to spread the news, there is the very real risk that too many people will quit what they were doing otherwise and start "volunteering" in whatever sector the sudden need arose in.

Again, you create the most hilarious pictures... like a red flare goes up and a banner flies across the sky saying "we need doctors" and all the farmers drop their hoes and turn down their tractors and start a massive exodus towards hospitals. This is utterly hilarious for starters, lastly it seems to ignore everything we know about current technology and means of communication.

There doesn&#39;t need to be a campaign, there can be a local planning board/forum (much like the board/forum we&#39;re on now) for each separate commune, and also for various federations. With various sections for "industries" etc... not only can it handle discussion, it can even do the voting. There can be advanced systems for creating tasks, within communes, like a "dotproject" site, so to speak, but more advanced and focused on general productions with much more options.

Tasks are set down, maybe even brought up months in advance and people sign on to these tasks... people can watch the progress. People can log on to the sites and see how many people worked on May 23rd, 2081 for example. They can see how many people checked in at the hospital that day, how many patients are checked in, patient per doctor ratios, etc.

There can be quick ways to search this information, compile it together and get a general picture. There can be general sites for posting news, requests, or any information about production. People can organize and discuss what will happen tomorrow today if they want, or discuss what should have been done in the past.

Not only will these methods keep communes organized, they will INCREASE, yes increase productivity and efficiency far beyond all the bullshit accountants and marketers of capitalism. More it will not even be slow as what you present -- which has to wait until the "shoemakers" realize they aren&#39;t going to be making enough shoes... and then they "inform society" and then society does what? Oh yes... hopes there&#39;s enough people who know about shoemaking to go help out.

Now they can go help out, but first they will open admittance and make sure they know who you are, and they&#39;ll make sure you got a bachelors in shoemaking too.

Really now... the only naive thinking here is presuming that when the world becomes communist we will somehow even have to be bothered with this kind of nonsense. A vast majority of this stuff should be automated by then, what things there are to do will be greatly advanced by technology to the point where large numbers of people can do them, and what specialty remains ("I&#39;m a shoemaker") will be cast only in history books.

Does this mean we don&#39;t need organization? No. We do, but again, the kind of organization can be ever present... and everyone can maintain conscious attitudes towards their communes, and even towards the world in general. Why do you worry about what&#39;s going on in Iraq right now (or maybe you don&#39;t, I don&#39;t know). Does it prevent you from doing your job? Do you ever get concerned with anything that doesn&#39;t directly affect you? Does that make you a constantly "terrified" person? Because you&#39;re interested in the world, in your local and global society? Do you feel concern for whether people are eating? Do you worry that 40,000,000 people in the US don&#39;t have healthcare (assuming you&#39;re from the US)? Why do you think about these things if you&#39;re not a doctor? If you could do something about it, would you? Well you can -- there are literally thousands of groups both national and global that attempt to bring medical care to those people who don&#39;t have it.

You present the human as some kind of droid, only able to handle limited programming, and the minute we start thinking about things outside of our line of work we explode -- or at the very least collapse to the point where we are incapable of handling even our normal tasks. Really... where is your mind?


Overproduction is a potential problem

The only place where overproduction is a potential problem is with non-replenishable goods. It is a HUGE problem in capitalism, because it represents lost profit. When we don&#39;t give two flying shits about profit cause money doesn&#39;t exist we can store lots of these things and all take vacations, or better yet, help in areas where more production is needed.

Technology should bring us to a point where most of the materials we use for a large amount of products is recycled. Energy should be a long past concern... etc. Lastly, overproduction is limited in various fields. You cannot make too many watches if there was not enough of their components made. You cannot make too much food if there is not enough tractors to cultivate and harvest it.

So we can see and identify where underproduction occurs by looking at where overproduction is unable to occur. Again, necessity is self regulating. If there is not enough food, the question to the answer "why?" can have more answers than you can shake a stick at. Famine, not enough workers, not enough seed, not enough plows, lack of water for irrigation, spoiling occuring, consumer waste or overconsumption, slow distribution to places not seeing it, and 1,000 variations of each. It is not as simple as farmers saying "we need more people farming." The more complex the product, the more complex the answers -- and no SINGLE field can answer every aspect.


and so is the underproduction that will be caused by the sudden movement of labour from countless industries (since you&#39;ve state that in your model, everyone will be doing many things) into one.

If everyone is doing many things they should not ever be doing one. So there is no mass exodus. Only when you have things like "primary occuptions" must you give up some of your time in one field to tend to another. If people are already spread across multiple fields, where labor time is taken from can be in the most subtle places, and is further spread across multiple fields. It is not the case that every shoemaker becomes a doctor when doctors are needed, or every doctor goes to farm when farmers are needed.

Trying to attribute this mass exodus flaw to my system is meaningless and foolish. As meaningless and foolish as it is to any other system. It&#39;s like saying that when a new market is created under capitalism, say, computer programming, that there are suddenly not enough farmers to make the food we need because everyone&#39;s flocking to computer science, not to mention it probably pays better.

Without coercion or force there is no way to determine what people will do, want to do, spend their time doing, or whether they even do something productive. And you&#39;ve still yet to give any specifics as to how you overcome this, other than making me aware that the only way to acquire products from society are by fulfilling a "primary occupation" and that how many people currently work in such fields is deemed by whether or not the people currently in that field have accepted them or opened up the means of production in any sense.

So of course a musician cannot sustain his life by being a musician alone, nor can a writer, or an artist, etc. Only those who fulfill a role in creating "elected necessity."

In essence you really do have a market, as much as it is planned by the workers in the fields and organized by them, supply and demand is very much still a mechanism and you maintain much of the anarchy of capitalist economics with all the messiness.

Because what happens when there&#39;s not enough shoes and not enough shoemakers? Who gets the shoes first? Those who work in the shoemaking business? Certainly those with "primary occuptions." What about the rest? Maybe they don&#39;t give a damn if they don&#39;t know how to make shoes, just let them at the means of production so they can TRY and make them for themselves... but no&#33;&#33;&#33;

As I said, I do not see strictly planned economies as any better really, they suffer a completely different flaw which can often be far worse.

You have a lot of questions for how my system works, and while some may need to be answered, and the finer points imagined, they are not questions that raise frightening answers as some of mine do. Answers which talk of control over means of production, limiting who can get what depending on whether or not they fulfill a primary role, and other such strange aspects.


Together, the workers in the relevent industry increase production and solve the crisis.

And what if they don&#39;t? What is society&#39;s alternative? What if the problem isn&#39;t enough workers, but that 95% of the people already in the industry are deciding things that turn out very wrong in the end? What does 1 or even 1,000 more workers mean to dilute these opinions in a 50,000 man work force for example. But maybe the people don&#39;t join to fix the problem... maybe they just join because it saves their own skin... they get first access to their products? no? I don&#39;t know.. this isn&#39;t really answered. But as people fulfilling "primary occuptions" they are certainly guaranteed at least equal access to those products over those who are not.


Simple, easy, tidy, practical.

It&#39;s not simple. It seems simple -- it seems it because there is control. So when something doesn&#39;t go right it can be blamed on someone... I believe you called it accountability. Rather than fixing the issue someone can be burned at the stake for it -- and that makes it simple and probably has a role in that word "tidy" too.

The reality is that it&#39;s very complex... it&#39;s complex to realize all the checks and balances... and it&#39;s complex to even think that there has to be so many checks and balances... my idea is far simpler, but you would call it overly simple. You would presume that it is so simple that it just can&#39;t work.

You presume need is not enough to determine productive placement... only the workers in the given field can determine such things&#33;&#33;&#33; They are the enlightened shoemakers, certainly no doctor could see that there are 500 pairs shoes and 1000 people and thus not enough shoes for people... of course he can&#39;t, he knows nothing of the field&#33;&#33;&#33; So we wait, for the watchful eye of the shoemaker to catch this undersupply and yell out to society "HELP WANTED&#33;" Then all the people with years of experience and degrees in shoemaking come running -- because they are not already in the field of shoemaking but are doing other "primary occuptions" -- WHOOPS... that doesn&#39;t make sense. Why would people who know how to make shoes be working as doctors? Division of labor my ass. So there IS NO ONE ELSE with the knoweldge of shoemaking, because everyone else is trained in whatever "primary occupation" they&#39;re doing, and they&#39;re concerned and worried with that. So the shoemakers say, well... we&#39;re gonna distribute shoes to ourselves first, cause we make em... and whatever is left we&#39;ll give back and society can ration how they see fit through democratic means and all -- If you guys want shoes you can train as shoemakers and become one of us. So people do, cause there&#39;s incentive now.. but they don&#39;t really give up their other job, cause they are worried that if they give up that, the same might occur there and they will lose rights to whatever product it produces. So now they divide their time or work two primary occuptions, which makes them more valuable to society, and thus allowed more from society.... and they keep all the things they used to do in their "spare time" in a little bag to carry around cause they no longer have time to do it.

But hey, maybe I&#39;m wrong on something here... I&#39;ll admit, I really can&#39;t conceive of what this is supposed to look like. Maybe there is some other means of ensuring there&#39;s enough shoemakers... maybe everyone picks straws and the shortest straw has to train as a shoemaker or something. There has to be some way to convince people to become shoemakers... no?

Or maybe they would just do it... volunteer so to speak... because they are conscious of the need -- hey, that sounds like my idea&#33; Oh, but it&#39;s not my idea, cause they obviously have to know what they&#39;re doing to be allowed to make shoes... but wait... they don&#39;t know what they&#39;re doing, because they never made shoes before, and they never learned how to make shoes because it wasn&#39;t until now that they needed to. So they can be trained by the people initially in the field... but why are they there? Oh, that&#39;s right, there were too many people in already existing primary occuptions, and since you need to fulfill a primary occuption in order to take back from these necessary goods, it was the only option left.

Cheers... You&#39;ve succeeded in upholding exchange value.


That is, a group of people comming together can rationally agree on what is needed and what is not. But you cannot assume that all people individually will come to the same determinations on their own.

I don&#39;t assume people will.. I hope that they will. But strangely, you hear assume that people as a whole will. Why is that? If 100% of the individuals who make up the whole cannot be assumed to come up with this determination on their own, why does getting together with one another allow them to come up with this determination? Wouldn&#39;t SOMONE would of had to determine it on their own and then convince the others? But we can&#39;t assume someone will... so we&#39;re really in the dark about it.

Fact of the matter is, you make the same "assumption" and have the same hope that I do. Lastly, I never said they had to do it individually or "on their own." I determine people need insulin because I&#39;m not on my own, and I know people that need insulin, or I read about them in books. Only way I could determine such a thing on my own is if I needed it.


It is practically assured that, even if they agree on the "big 4" --food, shelter, water, power-- they will disagree on the "lesser" stuff. And some may even disagree on the big stuff&#33;

My question is, what happens when a majority disagrees with what is obvious to any sane person. What ensures that 60% of the population won&#39;t say that insulin is not necessary, and thus production of insulin is not a "primary occuption." No one is gonna want to produce insulin, because if they don&#39;t fulfill a primary occuption they can&#39;t acquire the necessary products.

What if this happens with other lesser things that are still needs for some? I mean... insulin is fairly well known, but what if a life support mechanism that is only utilized for say... 5 people in the world is decided never to be an elected necesity, and thus it&#39;s production is not a pirmary occupation? Hoping someone will do it in their "spare time?" But alas&#33;&#33;&#33; They may not be able too if they cannot access the means of production necessary for creating it because they are under the control of other people already in such fields. -- this is messy, not tidy, and it&#39;s practical so long as your OK with certain people&#39;s needs not being met, possibly even a good chunk of society in the end.


Which is why voting works&#33;

But if most people agree and no one has control to stop the people who agree from doing what needs to be done, why do you need to vote? If most people agree medicine is a necessity, and Christian Scientists can in no way, shape, or form, control the means of producing medicine... why?

What is all this elected necessity, primary occuption, etc bullshit for? You don&#39;t need this if such a majority agree. Again, it is superfluous at best, but a danger at it&#39;s worst, because when the majority happen to agree something isn&#39;t a need (even though it really is), there is no way for those who need it to necessarily access the means of production and make it.

I don&#39;t see the need for the formality and the control. You claim it has something to do with organization, but organization can exist without these divisions and without the control based on trade and without all the elected necessity nonsense. People who need a product can get together and say "hey... how can we make this product" and then they can go do it. That is organization. There will of course be people who disagree and refuse to compromise on the methods and the means and such and such... but the majority is going to swing either way it&#39;s going to swing. Thus the functional organization (how to do it) is completely separate from the question of whether or not to do it, and furthermore who does it.

You don&#39;t have to get surgery from a "doctor" if you think he&#39;s a quack. You don&#39;t have to acquire medicine from people if you think it&#39;s gonna slowly kill you. But why the hell do you assume anyone is going to pick up a scapal and try to convince someone they can give them open heart surgery if they can&#39;t? Aside from the criminally insane or mentally ill people, no person should be making such claims. Just like there is no point in a bunch of people getting together to produce insulin if they have no damn clue how to produce insulin.

The people who do such things will be few, and far between, and out of the normal social production.. and no one is gonna accept whatever service or good they provide if there is already a trusted and social normal for acquiring this product and service.

The only arguments you can provide to my system, in reality are, people will do things wrong, or people will think they know how to do something and kill people in the process, or people are too dumb to meaningfully organize and coordinate production that they don&#39;t know about. And then sometimes you assume it will take weeks for informaiton or news to travel... that somehow the farmers will have to start a massive campaign to say "we need more people down here, or over here, or up here to help us." And then when people get the message they will all just walk off their jobs without any notification or thought... and then all those jobs will be in dire need and the process will repeat, with weeks of time passing between each request and thus there will be massive turbulance in the productive forces, and everyone will be too stupid to communicate with one another and take a look at whether or not others are going there to help out.

Here is a theoretical, ficticious conversation between myself and people currently tending to a farm which supplies my commune with food -- it will take less than 5 minutes for me to find out they need help and for this conversation to transpire.

Me: I noticed on the forums you guys could use some help with the fall harvest, have you gotten any responses yet, or do you still need help?
Farmer (or multiple farmers from the forum): Thanks for your interest, we haven&#39;t gotten too many responses yet, so if you can help all hands are appreciated.
Me: Currently I&#39;m teaching to grade 3 general education students and I do some work for the local hospital handling their computer systems for patient registration and what not and making sure all is in order, but there&#39;s a new kid down at the hospital who really has a grasp on things and could probably use some more responsibility, so I&#39;ll cut two hours out of my four from down there and help you guys.
Farmer: Thanks.

Here is an alternative to what just transpired.

Me: I noticed on the forums you guys could use some help with the fall harvest, have you gotten any responses yet, or do you still need help?
Farmer: No we&#39;ve got quite a bit of responses, thanks for your response, but we&#39;ll have more than enough people who can put some time in.

It&#39;s mind boggling no? And Look, I didn&#39;t just rise out of my job at the hospital as if I were possessed and drive down to the farm and start ripping crops out of the ground without consulting anyone there as to whether or not they were ready to be harvested.

You want simple, easy, tidy, practical? It&#39;s all right there.

Here&#39;s another more complex theoretical:

On a clear Sunday, I take a walk down to the local distribution center for some OJ. As I walk the eisles I noticed the produce is rather slim pickins today, and when I finally get to where the OJ is, there is none. So I pick up some lemonade instead. I step in the back for a minute to talk to some of the workers there and am informed that there was a bunch of crops lost, and the local farms had to ration off food by population to which distribution centers were getting it -- they inform me that if I am in definite need of OJ to try some of other other fairly local distribution centers who may still have some.

I decide to call up the farmers at the farm where the distribution center gets it&#39;s produce from, and the farm where the OJ makers get their oranges from (after a quick call to the OJ makers to ask them what farm and the telephone number).

I am informed there&#39;s not much I can do to help as it was just some bad growth, but they inform me there is some oversupply from an orange farm in California that will arrive soon enough, so it won&#39;t last for long.

Not only do I learn this, but then I discuss these things at the other places I work, and other people learn of the situation, before they even have to find it out themselves&#33;&#33;&#33; Upon discussing it one of my fellow workers at the hospital informs me he picked up a few bottles last week, and one has just been sitting in the firdge, and I can have that if I need it. Another worker responds, "you should actually donate that to the hospital, because they need healthy juices for many of the patients." We all agree&#33;

Does this all sound too utopian? I don&#39;t know, it sounds pretty sane and normal and fair to me. But of course... this is unsustainable and will eventually collapse, right? Right, cause I was like "Fuck the hospital... I want the OJ" -- then I ran to the guys house and took it from his fridge. Or drove to the farm in California (or what once was California) and filled my car with oranges from the tree then drove to the OJ factory (or whatever the hell it would be called) and made me some OJ... oh, but wait. Isn&#39;t it amazing, I don&#39;t need to go to the OJ factory -- I can juice my own oranges, with my juice machine&#33;&#33;&#33; I will be damned, technology has made it possible for me to quickly and efficiently make my own juice. The means of production has been turned over directly too me&#33;&#33;&#33;

Anyway... during all the time it took to carry these conversations... my 3D printer finished printing out the circuit board for the mp3 player which I downloaded the design for on a filesharing network.

I don&#39;t know... maybe I have too much faith in people. Maybe people can&#39;t simply communicate like this, and maybe people will refuse to drop the idea that they own products and that they need to get something in return or that they control a given means of production... maybe people will impose themselves on those means simply cause they can and whether or not that know how to use them will not even factor into their heads. Maybe people will just walk into the power plants and hit all the buttons and cause blackouts everywhere... maybe no one will help out on a farm if there&#39;s not enough food and more farmers will help solve this... maybe I&#39;m dead wrong on all of this.

These are along the lines that I see the world working though. My daily jobs would include maintaing 3 database servers for a hospital for example... they are not my databases, they are not the hospitals databases, they are not the patients, they are not anyone&#39;s and they are everyones... I work on them because the hospital needs them, and I know how, and they needed/wanted me to. I don&#39;t get paid for it, I don&#39;t need money to get the lemonade... the people at the distribution center who were there to stock shelves were volunteer workers who do so in their "spare time" -- and every weekend I do the same... I know most (if not all of the people there) because I&#39;ve worked with them. There&#39;s one guy there who coordinates the schedule, so we pretty much ask him when people are needed and we show up then... we didn&#39;t even have to "elect him" -- after the old guy who used to coordinate the schedule left, he offered and we all just kinda said "sounds good." He&#39;s done a good job so far, if he ever begins to lose it or whatever and tells us all he could use help on Friday, and we all show up on Friday and no one is there any other day we will probably elect someone new... and we will talk to that person from then on... and maybe he&#39;ll go on thinking he is still in charge of that... but we&#39;ll just sorta move on. If I happen to find myself the only one scheduled, I&#39;ll call up some of the other people, and ask them if they can come down and help, if not, maybe I&#39;ll ask some of the people as they&#39;re coming in to get products. Then I&#39;ll call the other people who usually help out there anyway, to make sure they, and the person who&#39;s in charge of coordinating the schedule, that there&#39;s been a mess up... and then we&#39;ll decide together what to do about it.

Simple, easy, tidy, practical.

As usual, I&#39;m gonna cut this short -- if you don&#39;t "get it" by now, you never will. If you don&#39;t understand how this can work, you apparently assume that someone needs to be in control... that people are too dumb to be able to live like this on their own. To me, it just seems obvious... and again, it is founded with consciousness and volunteerism. It is a GIFT economy for a reason.

Will there be problems? No doubt. Is it going to be anything that can&#39;t be addressed and fixed ASAP and quite possibly a whole lot sooner than in all previous or more archaic forms of production and distribution (including your own)... no.

[LSD]

What if this happens with other lesser things that are still needs for some? I mean... insulin is fairly well known, but what if a life support mechanism that is only utilized for say... 5 people in the world is decided never to be an elected necesity, and thus it&#39;s production is not a pirmary occupation?

But that&#39;s unlikely to occur when people are rationally discussing such things. Again, the change of a majority of the community sitting down and declaring LET&#39;S KILL THE INFIRMED is a remote possibility. That&#39;s what voting does, it assures a degree of contemplation which would not otherwise emerge.

So, again, I&#39;m going to turn your example around and ask what would happen under your plan.

It&#39;s fairly certain that the resources that go to making the life support mechanism in question can go to making other things, other mechanisms let&#39;s say. So if, as you propose, everyone has equal access to the means of production, what assurances are there that there will be sufficient resouurces, materials, factory space, labour, or time to make the life support mechanisms? Without a collective decision that life support mechanisms are an essential product, you&#39;re relying on people to simply "think about it" on their own. And since the life support mechanism is a device that is practically impossible to be produced by those who need it, as they are in need of a life support mechanism, it is unlikely that, following your paradigm, anyone will think of making one&#33;

Even if some intelligent considerate doctor does think of it, there is no way to ensure that he will be able to make one&#33; It is quite possible the the metal he needs is being used to make a boat, the plastic he needs is being used to make a television, the tools he needs are being used to make a computer, the factory he needs is being used to make a car, the labour he needs is being used to make a barn. Without prioritization there is no way to assure ...well...priority, and unless we assure that the essential comes before the nonessential, people will die.


But if most people agree and no one has control to stop the people who agree from doing what needs to be done, why do you need to vote? If most people agree medicine is a necessity, and Christian Scientists can in no way, shape, or form, control the means of producing medicine... why?

"Christian Scientists can in no way, shape, or form, control the means of producing medicine" under my plan. Under yours, everyone has equal rights and access to those means. That means the Christian Scientist along with everyone else.

If there is quality control and public voting, the fringe oppinions will be outvoted in the community, and ignored in labour. Because the workers control the means of production directly they can realize that this person holds dangerous views and kick him out. He can than work in a field in which he can not cause harm, in which his beliefs to not conflict with reason, farming or making shoes for instance.

Under your plan any restrictions on what this Christian Scientist can or cannot do is inherently imoral and if he wants to go practice medicine, there&#39;s nothing anyone else can do.


You don&#39;t have to get surgery from a "doctor" if you think he&#39;s a quack.

But, how do I know??

If this is the first time I&#39;ve ever head to recieve heart surgery how do I know that the kindly old doctor who seems to know what he&#39;s talking about is not actually a sociopath who enjoys murdering his patients?

...or not just plain icompetent? Both are very real, very dangerous possibilites which would undoubtably lead to death and suffering. What&#39;s the solution under your paradigm? um...um...there is none. Again, you have not proposed an answer to this question because you don&#39;t have one. But maybe I&#39;m wrong, maybe you do have an answer to this rather glaring hole in your paradigm. So let me ask it again:

HOW DO YOU ASSURE THAT PEOPLE KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING?

Relying on the basic "goodness" of all people, such that no one would ever go into a field they weren&#39;t qualified for, is so naive as to be scary. Some people are sadistic, some people are malicious, some people are stupid. Not taking that into account does not make those people "go away". They will be with us in communism as they have been with us in capitalism and feudalism and every other economic model since humanity began.

You don&#39;t want any control, you think control is bad, fine. But that means you accept what goes with that and that&#39;s NO CONTROL. That means no quality control, no safety control, no security control. The man charged with ensuring water safety could be anyone (everyone has equal access, right?). The man performing your heart transplant could be anyone (everyone has the right to the means of production, right?). The man testing your blood could be anyone (everyone has equal access, right?).

Well, I want controls. I want controls on who my doctor is. I want controls on who&#39;s monitoring the quality of my water. I want controls on who&#39;s growing the food. How long do you think people would really put up with the kind of nonesense in which their doctor could be a lunatic and no one can do anything? You see, I think the only redeeming part of your plan is that it inevitable would lead to something very similar to mine. Because no matter how idealistic people are, they would quite quickly tire of not knowing if their doctor had any medical training. They would demand a return to sanity, and back comes division of labour.

That&#39;s democracy in action&#33;


But why the hell do you assume anyone is going to pick up a scapal and try to convince someone they can give them open heart surgery if they can&#39;t? Aside from the criminally insane or mentally ill people, no person should be making such claims. Just like there is no point in a bunch of people getting together to produce insulin if they have no damn clue how to produce insulin.

"no point"?

That&#39;s your response? There&#39;s no risk of people making insulin without knowing how because there&#39;s "no point"? Sorry, but that doesn&#39;t fly. The "point" is that some people will simply think they are helping. They&#39;ll read some instructions on the internet somewhere and genuinely think that they can now make good insulin ...but they don&#39;t. Some other people might simply not care. Antisocial types who just want the temporary respect of being an insulin maker, or who want to hit on the hot nurse who&#39;s distributing the insulin. Other people may, indeed, be mentally ill.

The "point" does not have to logical or rational, it just has to make sense to the person who&#39;s doing it,and you have still not offered any way to stop those people them from doing it&#33;


The more you have, the less labor time is required by each. How many there are does not become a problem unless it becomes a hinderance -- for example, 1,000 people on a factory floor meant to hold 100. In which case, you kindly tell people that their services are greatly appreciated, but that there is more than enough to fulfill the necessities now.

And who makes that judgement?
If everyone has "equal access" to the means of production, who decides when there are too many?
And when this decision is made (by whomever), who, specifically leaves?

Will it just be "first to the door"? Whoever gets up first goes, but the rest stay? That might work in a limited sense in a single factory but it doesn&#39;t solve the problem of the difused productions inherent to your model. Sure, if everyone&#39;s in a factory then its easy to see that there are too many people in that factory, but what if there are several factories, what if it isn&#39;t immediately apparent? That is, what if there aren&#39;t too many people in the factory in terms of physical capacity, but simply more people that are needed to produce the good in question? Who&#39;s monitoring? And, more importantly, how can they monitor with production so spread out and alocalized. With people comming and going and working from home and producing what they feel needs to be made...


The only place where overproduction is a potential problem is with non-replenishable goods. It is a HUGE problem in capitalism, because it represents lost profit. When we don&#39;t give two flying shits about profit cause money doesn&#39;t exist we can store lots of these things and all take vacations, or better yet, help in areas where more production is needed.

Sorry, but overproduction is a huge problem, no matter what the economic system. It means a diversion of resources, material, and labour. There is only so much rubber / plastic / metal / oil / water / etc... that we can gather in a given period and using those resources on that which we do not need means that they are not going to that which we do&#33; Overproduction causes problems all the way down the line by forcing workers in other sectors to work longer and harder to compensate for the mismangement of production. If we make twice as many of X as we need, it means we have less to make Y. If this happens in one industry, it causes problems, but if, as you suggest, we elminate worker categorization, this will happen in all industries. You don&#39;t seem to see this as a problem becaue you think overproduction is just a chance to "take a vacation". It isn&#39;t. Overproduction means that something isn&#39;t being made, and quite possible that&#39;s something which needs to be made.

Since there&#39;s no industrial prioritization in your plan, it&#39;s therefore quite forseeable that an overproduction of aspirin will lead to a underproduction of insulin. After all, the means of production must be available to everyone, right? No matter what they&#39;re doing...


This doesn&#39;t really address what we know to be true from capitalism -- we have more workers than what is really needed to sustain society. The reasoning behind this is because technology allows one man to make the needs of many in meaningful time. So one can only assume a large part of the population will die under your system, given that all the primary occuptions will be full, and those who won&#39;t or can&#39;t work in primary occuptions are not allowed to acquire the products of society.

Again you&#39;ve missed the point. We&#39;re talking about much shorter hours than presently exist under capitalism. By having the entire population doing essential labour, as opossed to a minority of that population as under capitalism, we reduce the labour that needs to be done by each person. We also, accordingly, increase free time allowing for both restful activities and te production of goods which are not needed. But these goods will be produced at a secondary priority so as to assure that resources to to the essential first.

Everyone will be performing a needed occupation, everyone&#33;


So of course a musician cannot sustain his life by being a musician alone, nor can a writer, or an artist, etc. Only those who fulfill a role in creating "elected necessity."

Correct.

They will have to fulfull a socially decided needed occupation, but this will not take up most of their day and they will have a great deal of time for their art / music / writing.


Certainly those with "primary occuptions." What about the rest?

Once again, everyone will be working at a primary nescessary occupation.

Everyone.


Because what happens when there&#39;s not enough shoes and not enough shoemakers? Who gets the shoes first? Those who work in the shoemaking business?

No.

Again, distribution is socially decided, it is only production that is locally controlled.


I&#39;m sure there are a select number of people who want to be shoemakers, but I can&#39;t picture nearly enough people want to be shoemakers that this will be their "primary occupation." That&#39;s just outrageous.

You haven&#39;t really given a solid answer to how your system works. Again, you assure that people will be aware, and that someone will be in control... the shoemakers know when they dont&#39; make enough shoes and they "allow people in" or directly try and bring people in... but what if there are no people to be allowed in? Or no people who want to be brought in? Who the hell wants to make shoes?

Well "who the hell wants to make shoes" under your plan? The point is that making shoes would not be a particularly long or arduous job, and yes, people may well enjoy doing it&#33;

But maybe you&#39;ve misunderstood. I&#39;m not preposing that people will only be allowed to make shoes, or will spend 12 hours a day sitting in the shoe factory. We&#39;re talking vastly reduced hours here. Maybe 3 or 4 hours a day tops, quite possibly less. The point of creating primary occupational responsibilities isn&#39;t to "tie" the workers to that field, its to assure that that work will get done.


If everyone is doing many things they should not ever be doing one. So there is no mass exodus. Only when you have things like "primary occuptions" must you give up some of your time in one field to tend to another. If people are already spread across multiple fields, where labor time is taken from can be in the most subtle places, and is further spread across multiple fields. It is not the case that every shoemaker becomes a doctor when doctors are needed, or every doctor goes to farm when farmers are needed.

Right, but they were doing something else with that time. That is, if they hadn&#39;t gone out to make shoes that day, they would have done something else. Since there&#39;s only so much time in the day, and only so much one person can do in that day, doing one thing inherently nescessitates not doing something else. So, while I know that your not suggesting that the doctor stops being a doctor, you are suggesting that, for a time at least, he become a shoe-maker. This means that he is no longer doing what he ordinarily would have been doing, and without local control, there is no way to compensate for all this shifting labour.


But hey, maybe I&#39;m wrong on something here... I&#39;ll admit, I really can&#39;t conceive of what this is supposed to look like. Maybe there is some other means of ensuring there&#39;s enough shoemakers... maybe everyone picks straws and the shortest straw has to train as a shoemaker or something. There has to be some way to convince people to become shoemakers... no?

If there is a pronounced increased need, people can volunteer their time, but they first must be trained and approved by the shoe-makers. The difference between this and your plan is that there&#39;s quality control. Furthermore, the new volunteer workers must comply with all decisions of the shoe-making collective, of which they are now temporarily part. But we&#39;re talking limited work each. Maybe 20 minutes a day or so. This in no way prevents them from doing the 4 or so hours of primary work they need to.

But this is, of course, a short-term solution to an immediate problem. More long-term, there simply need to be more shoe-makers or the shoe-makers need to come up with a better production method. As for getting more people to become shoe-makers (we&#39;re talking about people who have not yet chosen an occupation), then, again, we&#39;re simply talking about good old fasshioned social pressure, non-coercive, but incredibly powerful.


There doesn&#39;t need to be a campaign, there can be a local planning board/forum (much like the board/forum we&#39;re on now) for each separate commune, and also for various federations. With various sections for "industries" etc... not only can it handle discussion, it can even do the voting. There can be advanced systems for creating tasks, within communes, like a "dotproject" site, so to speak, but more advanced and focused on general productions with much more options.

Fine, but if no one has a specific primary occupation and everyone is doing numerous jobs, eveyone will have to check out, what, 16 or 17 boards a day? What if they simply don&#39;t want to, what if they forget that day or just say screw it and don&#39;t bother. Your plan for organization requires that each individual worker self-motivate to find out about that organization. Relying on people to actively participate in a message board about shoe production isn&#39;t the smartest way to organize labour. Many people simply won&#39;t go to these "boards", others will go but disagree ...and under your plan that means they can go produce whoever the hell they want, organization be damned.

Organization only works if its enfoceable, or at the very least, directed. People are simply too stubborn to spontaneously agree. If people are performing 20 different jobs, they simply to not have the focus to consider each of the organizational problems involved in each of those different enterprises. That&#39;s what production will be disorganized under your plan, there&#39;s simply no one who has the dedicated time to organize it&#33; Everyone&#39;s too busy with their 68 different jobs giving each one some of their time, but none of them their full concentration.

Organization needs dedication, and that&#39;s the one thing that dilletante production can never have.


You have a lot of questions for how my system works, and while some may need to be answered, and the finer points imagined, they are not questions that raise frightening answers as some of mine do.

You mean the prospect of lunatic doctors and tainted insulin doesn&#39;t scare you? Well, it sure as hell scares me.

Your problems with my plan are moralistic and theoretical. You object to control and fear that control could lead to abuses. My problem with your plan is that it will lead to death. Period. You have no quality control, no accountability, no way to effectively organize labour.

I agree that my plan is complete, none of us know how a communist society will truly work, but what I do know is that your plan, if implemented, would lead to many people dying.

And that&#39;s enough for me.

[NovelGentry]

But that&#39;s unlikely to occur when people are rationally discussing such things.

So you&#39;re assuming a majority will elect the proper necessities. Well just the same I assume a majority will realize the necessities, and not even need to elect them, but just work towards them.


So, again, I&#39;m going to turn your example around and ask what would happen under your plan.

If it were to be the case that no one found it necessary right away and didn&#39;t work on it, those who needed the said product would have a right to the means of production for producing it. So even if 25% of the population was "drug makers" they could still become drug makers and produce what was necessary for themselves. Under your system, the access to the means of production is limited, their only hope is to convince the existing drug makers or the whole of society that it is a necessity.

But I&#39;m with you. I assume it never comes down to this, cause people are rational. Although, unlike you, I don&#39;t assume they need a majority to be rational. I think people can be individually rational without having to convene and discuss such things. "Electing necessity" is a formality that is extremely unnecessary, because it&#39;s "unlikely to occur" that drug makers would decide they aren&#39;t going to make insulin -- or even viagra (which is surely not a need).


It&#39;s fairly certain that the resources that go to making the life support mechanism in question can go to making other things, other mechanisms let&#39;s say.

Yes, certainly all kinds of things. No doubt many life support mechanisms are computerized, thus the chips that go into them are probably in other devices too.


So if, as you propose, everyone has equal access to the means of production, what assurances are there that there will be sufficient resouurces, materials, factory space, labour, or time to make the life support mechanisms?

Rational discussion.


Without a collective decision that life support mechanisms are an essential product, you&#39;re relying on people to simply "think about it" on their own.

Why do you need a collective decision? This is my point. Why can&#39;t people who realize the need just make it? And the people who don&#39;t think it&#39;s necessary or simply couldn&#39;t give a rats ass do whatever they want to do. Why does it have to be this collective decision?

The problem is that you see the collective decision as necessary for organization and coordination. I do not. The collective decision is essentially a decision on whether or not everyone will work towards it. But we don&#39;t need everyone in agreement. If there is one group who think it&#39;s necessary and is willing to make it, and another group who doesn&#39;t, the group who believes it&#39;s necessary can make it. This doesn&#39;t mean they war over the factory or such nonsense. They can plan a schedule and coordinate with the other people/groups using the means of production to make sure there&#39;s enough time for all.

Organization is a separate issue, period. If you want to talk about organization, we can talk about that, but it has nothing to do with everyone agreeing. You and I may not agree on what cars should be like, and there may be 60% who agree with you and 40% who agrees with me -- so both our groups want to make different cars. What does that have anything to do with whether or not we can organize and coordinate the use of the means of production? Since there&#39;s obviously a lot more people who agree with you, you can have it for a relative amount more time than us.

Assume for a minute, however, that your 60% was already making cars. Under your plan you have a right and ability to never allow us to make cars. Your 60% (not all of whom produce, but like your vehicle) can overrule our 40%, and we never see the light of day in the factory. That is what I oppose.


And since the life support mechanism is a device that is practically impossible to be produced by those who need it, as they are in need of a life support mechanism, it is unlikely that, following your paradigm, anyone will think of making one&#33;

Well since it&#39;s unlikely that such people will be able to get up and vote either, I doubt it would become an elected necessity because, to paraphrase you, "no one is thinking of making one." Seriously, are you listening to what you&#39;re saying? There are probably hundreds of people who will realize this need within a single hospital alone. Doctors, nurses, visiting friends, maybe even other patients who are better off.

You brought up something earlier telling me that I was looking at this too individually, but as I responsed before, you are the one who&#39;s trying to divide what I&#39;m saying down to the individual.

You pretend, whether because you believe it or simply for the sake of argument, that everyone is in their own little world. You say that no one can or will conceive to do this because they don&#39;t "think about it." Or maybe you assume they can conceive such things, but you assume they won&#39;t be smart enough or care enough to do anything about it. Or maybe that even though they want to do something about it, not enough will, or too many will, and then too many people will be doing stuff about that and not enough taking care of other things. People are not this braindead and isolated.

I&#39;m not saying people HAVE to make their own stuff, which seems to be something you believe I am presenting. In fact, I believe such things will rarely happen aside from what might be the equivalent of printing a book at home, or building your own computer, etc. What I am maintaining is that no portion less than the whole should have control the means of production, because this creates things we don&#39;t want -- social conditions of private property and depending on how this control is implemented, classes.

People are not so stupid or blind that they can&#39;t figure out their problems. If someone is sick, they see a doctor, if the doctor can&#39;t tell what&#39;s wrong with them, they can see a better doctor or maybe a team of doctors who is going to try and figure out if this is something new, then that team can develop medicines, or ask others to do so, or ask people to build machines. Why are these relations so hard to imagine?


Even if some intelligent considerate doctor does think of it

This is my point... "even if" ??? He&#39;s a doctor, helping sick people is what he does. His work demands him to be intelligent and considerate. If you are a farmer, you grow food for people... there is no option of saying "I don&#39;t want to grow food for people." If that is what you want, why the hell are you a farmer?


there is no way to ensure that he will be able to make one&#33;

Again with this isolated world nonsense. He doesn&#39;t have to make it. The intelligent and considerate doctor who&#39;s job it is to save lives decide he&#39;s going to try and save this mans life. No, this does not mean the doctor runs to the factory and begins making a life support system. Researchers and engineers look at the problem, develop a solution, and then people who manufacture these things make it.

At least your reasoning behind elections becomes clear with statements like this. You apparently think the doctor is incapable of consideration, and apparently think the doctor lacks the ability to inform others who can help the patient and build what is necessary. Not only that, you feel that even if he did or tried to, they wouldn&#39;t care, or would disagree, or would tell him off or something -- what exactly DO you think?

But apparently when they all come together to elect necessity, then the doctors words will make a lot more sense, cause people are rationally discussing these things come election time, but they never think, feel, see, or rationally discuss at any other time... just election time.


It is quite possible the the metal he needs is being used to make a boat, the plastic he needs is being used to make a television, the tools he needs are being used to make a computer, the factory he needs is being used to make a car, the labour he needs is being used to make a barn.

For a person who throws the term naive around a lot, you sure as hell fit the bill. Let&#39;s examine a reality for a moment. Car factories make cars, not life support systems. Metal to make boats is shipped to boat factories. Tools to build a computer are found in places where computers are built. People who build barns frequently, probably, aren&#39;t the same people who build life support machines (but I&#39;m not gonna rule this out).

About the only thing that made some sense was the computer stuff, assuming the life support system uses computer technology, which it no doubt will. But they need not build the entire life support system or shift tools around from one place to another. The place where the tools to build computers are can print the integrated circuits and produce the chips, etc and ship them to where the final product is manufactured.

Do we have finite resources? Of course. I&#39;m not sure, however, why you imagine that they are so finite that we will need to build life support systems in car factories. Or that there won&#39;t be enough metal for boats and life support systems. Is there enough metal for boats and life support systems now? Of course. In case you forgot, capitalism develops the means of production that make socialism, and eventually communism possible.

When we talk about material conditions we are not just trying to sound intelligent to scare of capitalists and make them think we have a point without really having one.

The scenario you present is not "quite possible." It&#39;s not impossible, but it&#39;s extremely improbable, hell, it was improbable 50 years ago. It was improbably 75 years ago. Car factories, at least to my knowledge, have always been used to produce cars. While other places were always used to produce the components and final life support products. Why do you presume all the sudden we will need to comandeer a car factory to build life support systems? Or that we will have to stop building boats to build life support systems?


Without prioritization there is no way to assure

Prioritization is a fairly meaningless term in the modern world. At one time there may not have been enough resources to make iPods and Iron Lungs at the same time, in terms of labor resources, raw materials, or means of production. But tecnology changes this. Technology makes jobs easier, so production by humans is faster and easier. What used to take three people 4 hours to produce now takes 1 person 3 hours. The means of production become smaller, the products themselves become smaller (requiring less resources). Think of how much metal went into building computers 50 years ago compared to how much goes in now. The production is not just for final products though, it&#39;s for raw materials too. It&#39;s quicker now to mine and refine X amount of steal than it was 50 years ago. We have faster means of shipping immediate necessities than 100 years ago when planes and helicopters were really just dreams.

Technology makes this possible for both resources and final products. Labor resources are freer than they have ever been, and because of it people can serve you coffee, and we still have enough people to grow enough food to feed the world. Think about how many people right now work in government, the number of unemployed, the number who work at banks and accounting firms which won&#39;t even need to exist. Now fold all of them into the regular working population. Turn old companies, government facilities, etc, into public factories and research centers, that can exist outside of the already developed means which we know can sustain society. Expand and decentralize farms from the consolidation efforts of corporate farming. We have more than enough resources to deal with our problems 1,000 times over.

This isn&#39;t Russia 1917, nor is it even Cuba 2005 -- it is the entire productive forces of the world, together, unified, after capitalism has advanced even the third world to where countries like the US, France, Germany, and Canada are already at now. If you don&#39;t have to prioritize, and we don&#39;t, then there&#39;s no purpose to it.

This doesn&#39;t mean we don&#39;t respect democracy or don&#39;t use it. There are obvious situations where democracy will be used, particularly when a vast majority of people are disagreeing on an issue. But realistically speaking, although you may believe this isn&#39;t realistic, because apparently you see the world very strangely, such formalities are not needed and won&#39;t be needed for a HUGE portion of what we do.


well...priority, and unless we assure that the essential comes before the nonessential, people will die.

I theorize we can do both at the same time.

For some reason rational discussion isn&#39;t enough to do this under my paradigm, but it is under yours. Apparently, rational discussion can only work when you are electing needs, or within the same line of work; there can&#39;t be cross-trade rational discussion; there can&#39;t be people who need things telling those who don&#39;t that they need them; and it&#39;s obvious impossible for the people who don&#39;t to even realize this and do anything about it. But hey, even if they do want to do something about it, no doubt all the car factories will already be in use. :lol:


"Christian Scientists can in no way, shape, or form, control the means of producing medicine" under my plan.

What if Christian Scientists happen to be the majority of existing scientists and medicine producers. You said that the people already working in a field control the access. So if a majority of scientists working to produce medicine are Christian Scientists... well you see the point.

Yeah, society can "override" them or whatever with a vote, but like you said before, even if it is the decision of society as a whole, it will be the "de facto" to respect the decisions of the people in the fields because they know what they&#39;re doing. Besides, we can&#39;t "rely on people to simply think about it," especially not people who don&#39;t already work in the field.

You reserve what you see as an organizational role to the proper division of labor by trade. I wonder if you go so far as to have organizatoinal roles within trade too. For example, Fred has always done simple protein analysis on the computers, so he always will. Because if he were to do anything else, he would need training and what not. Not to mention, if he was going to do the other job too, that would take the means of production (the systems used for that other job) away from the guy who already is familiar with that job. So how far does your division of labor go in terms of allowing "organizaitonal responsibility" ??

If some guy has experience coordinating an existing workforce, like a foreman on a construciton site, do they remain in that position because it&#39;d because of the inefficiency and chaos caused by trying to overcome the division of labor?

You talk about democracy but reserve the initial executive decisions, including access to existing resources both raw materials and means of production, to the workers in the respective field. But their decisions affect more than just themselves.

You maintain that even if society is given a portion of the decision, because of the experience of the existing field workers, their decisions and thus their influence become the de facto. So does this exist on all divisions of labor? Is the guy who has experience coordinating respected above others? Does his influence carry so far that the roles of these workers are split and fairly static?

Certainly no one can stop people from respecting this person and their experience. But you don&#39;t propose respect for those within the trade necessarily, you propose control by the trade. So why don&#39;t you propose control by those within the trade over various aspects?

Like I said, you expand these groups. You give more people a say, but you don&#39;t take it far enough. The capitalists say, bosses can organize and maintain control, but workers as a whole cannot. You say, trades can organize and maintain control, but society as a whole cannot. I say, the whole of society can organize and maintain control. This seems strange to you though, because you wonder, if no single person has any right to tell any other single person what to do, then no one really maintains control. But isn&#39;t that the point... no one does, and thus everyone does, and thus, we are equal.


Under yours, everyone has equal rights and access to those means.

Yes, equality... an amazing idea is it not? There are others who are afraid equality will mean the end of the world too.


That means the Christian Scientist along with everyone else.

If Christian Scientists continue to exist through to communism, yes, although I also presume relgiion will have long passed, but for the sake of argument, yes... equal rights and access.


If there is quality control and public voting

Quality is very subjective for certain things. To you, a shoe that feels like shit to wear might be extremely comfortable to me. So let&#39;s leave quality control up to the consumers. No one is going to acquire products that are shit, and if they don&#39;t take them out of the distribution centers, the distribution centers aren&#39;t going to ask for more from the factories, and if the factories don&#39;t get more requests, it is extremely doubtul they will continue to produce these things.

But obviously, from your perspective they will, just because they can. Or maybe they&#39;re too stupid to realize this and stop, or just don&#39;t care, or are actually TRYING to harm society by using up resources for things no one wants. I&#39;m not really sure how you see it, but I know you think that these people aren&#39;t capable of rational thinking unless they get together and vote. So maybe you think we could, at least for a little while, pretend they&#39;re capable of individual rational thinking too?


Because the workers control the means of production directly they can realize that this person holds dangerous views and kick him out.

But that person IS a worker, or is at least trying to be one. Utilizing the means of production.... most likely to umm... produce, means you&#39;re a worker. And this is my problem. You divide the workers by trade. This is the problem with the division of labor. Anyone attempting to use the means of production IS A WORKER. A doctor is a worker, so would he have access and equal rights to the means of production for shoemaking? Why not? He&#39;s a worker. The shoemakers depend on his work, and he depends on theirs, why can&#39;t they just be seen as equal in that respect and have equal rights and access?

When you divide by trade, as you do, you&#39;re separating, drawing lines and boundaries tha don&#39;t exist, and creating a position for alienation to occur. We all depend or enjoy and benefit from the labor of a vast majority of people, and technically ANYONE who works. It&#39;s like the five person rule, you know someone who knows someone who knows someone... up to 5 degrees, and through those people you know EVERYONE.

Well just the same, your labor supports someone, and their labor supports someone, and that person&#39;s labor someone else, until it swoops right back around to you, even if there is no direct link. Production is social -- you CANNOT DENY THIS. Without people growing food there is no one building engines cause they starved. Without someone building engines there&#39;s no tractor for the farmer to use. That is a very simple and direct link, but these links go off in every direction and connect everyone.

If the doctor doesn&#39;t do his job, the shoemakers can&#39;t do theirs. This works well for necessity, but also for want. We acquire the labor of musicians, writers, movie makers, etc, and these things make us happy, keep us entertained. While we may not need them, we all benefit from them and we all consume their labor. The fact that we consume their labor gives them equal right and access to ours. The means of production themself are the product of someone&#39;s labor. The factory would have never been built for the shoemakers if it wasn&#39;t for the carpenters/architects/bricklayers/steelworkers/whatever. So why do the shoemakers control access to the factory? Why couldn&#39;t a carpenter go in and make his own shoes? What about the guy who made the machines that sew the leather straps together, could he go in and use them? Or is he still controlled by the whim of the shoemakers?

This is not a gift economy, but in reality, a very subtle/indirect trade economy. The shoemakers have the factory and the means of production of shoes. They maintain control, because they trade their labor for it. Even if you&#39;re not consciously saying they provide this labor and are therefore given control, that is the relation which has formed. If they no longer provide that labor, they no longer maintain control. Thus, you maintain private property relations. The shoes are the property of the shoemakers, and by giving them to society they expect to maintain control over the things they&#39;ve received from society, including the factory, the means, their houses, the food, the furniture, their vehicles, etc..etc.

This is not communism.


He can than work in a field in which he can not cause harm, in which his beliefs to not conflict with reason, farming or making shoes for instance.

What if he thinks poison is fertilizer? -- would appear to be the kind of question you would ask. You response is that he cannot go work in a field, not unless the field workers allow him to. He cannot go work ANYWHERE, unless the existing workers there allow him to.

Why do you presume someone is going to go into a place and attempt to do something they don&#39;t know how to do? Your rational discussion flies out the window when these people cannot think rationally as individuals. I know for a fact that doctors are not a majority of the population. You present the idea that anyone who is not a doctor may not be able to think rationally for things pertaining to the medical field... and yet you will have these people, who maintain a majority, decide the "elected necessities" of medical treatement.

The solution is, then, to leave this completely up to the doctors, or come to the realization that people are not this stupid and can not only rationally discuss with the doctors what is necessary, but can rationally decide this on their own and can be made aware of it without having to be members of the medical "profession."

And no, a guy can&#39;t walk into an OR and start performing open heart surgery -- there is a patient there, and his life was not put in the hands of "Random Joe off the street" but it was put int he hands of a doctor. There are obvious limits, but you don&#39;t need voting or the type of control you present to realize them.

In order for this to collapse, as you see it would, these types of actions would have to occur on a massive scale... these are not rational actions. It is not rational for me to pretend I know how to maintain any responsibility at a power plant, so I do not go into the power plant and pretend I to or even try. But you think people will do this sort of thing, and you think so many people will do it in so many different fields that it will cause the end of us all or something. Then somehow, you presume these same people who can&#39;t possibly have individual rational thought, can somehow get together and come up with rational solutions.


Under your plan any restrictions on what this Christian Scientist can or cannot do is inherently imoral and if he wants to go practice medicine, there&#39;s nothing anyone else can do.

There are obvious limits as I said, limits that do not need to be voted on an discussed. It is not a question of morality, but a question of equality. You cannot tell the Christian Scientist he cannot practice medicine and he cannot tell you that you can&#39;t. So everyone has the alternative. If you don&#39;t like the service or product you are provided by the existing producers, do your own. Maybe others will prefer yours and help you out, maybe not.

But that is the universal limit in terms of produciton and it&#39;s effect on society. You need more than one person to bring a product to people, unless you peddle it on the streets. You need distribution centers to acquire this, and then people will probably get their stuff from there. So why is the distribution center going to take medicine off this random guy? Could they take it off a group of Christian Scientists? Maybe. For all we know maybe their medicine is better.

Your example, however, is problematic, you only see it going one way. You feel his use of the means of production is someone elses lack there of, but he is not allowed to control your access either.

There are billion and one different variations or disagreements on almost any product, and you assume that society will facture and split and become individual and autarkist because of this, yet you willfully admit rational discussion can take place and people will uphold democracy. It makes no sense. If people are ok enough with upholding whatever the majority decides, why can&#39;t they just uphold that anyway, without a formal vote? Why can&#39;t people just work together and coordinate needs together?

Your system is a giant contradiction of why it even exists. It relies on rational discussion, and thus needs rational people (or at the least a rational majority). Because all these people are rational and come to rational conclusions they need to vote to ensure it&#39;s done. WHY? Why can&#39;t they just do it? Why can&#39;t they just discuss and make sure what needs to be done is done? Why must they vote?

I&#39;m not attacking democracy here, but your democracy upholds two things I disagree with. The first is that the democracy on certain issues is held only in the hands of workers in a respective field for which these issues apply. If you realize that production is social this IS a matter of inequality. The second is the division of labor which you see necessary to organize this control, and thus necessary for organization and coordination in general. It is forceful and coercive by creating "primary occupations" which justify consumption, and by limiting control to those already in a field, creates the same kind of force of labor that capitalism creates.

You claim I don&#39;t have an answer, and maybe that&#39;s true, but you don&#39;t have a REAL answer, furthermore, the answer you provide has a whole lot of detrimental side effects. Your answers are founded only in the belief that people are stupid, isolated, malicious, incapable thinking outside their own little world, incapable of organizing and coordinating without knowing their place (which is really what division of labor boils down to) or just flat out... incapable.

If you truly believe this kind of control and organization is necessary, why not just admit the boss isn&#39;t such a bad idea? Because that would be "wrong" ??? You obviously feel there needs to be some beacon of sanity that keeps the world in check. The "degree of contemplation" as you put it is different for everyone though.

You propose that people vote, but if people "simply aren&#39;t thinking about it," why are they even going to have the consciousness and responsibility to vote? You fall back to the same kind of faith that I do. You have no real answer. You try to formulate a real answer with screams of organization and division of labor, but it doesn&#39;t solve the real issue, it merely forms certain constructs which are comfortable, and thus, on the surface, seems like it maintains control.


But, how do I know??

You don&#39;t. How will you know under your system? Cause other doctors said he wasn&#39;t? Maybe those other doctors were quacks too&#33; Maybe he lied. You could of course give him a polygraph. Did he have his degree out and all shinied up for you? Of course you know what the degree looks like, not to mention you can tell if the signature is authentic, etc. But you don&#39;t need to know that either. You can create a body that accredits universities&#33;&#33;&#33; and an FDA&#33;&#33;&#33; and an ATF&#33;&#33;&#33; and when someone is counterfeit or fraudulent, you can have an FBI&#33;&#33;&#33;

Accountability is a nice word to throw around, certainly anyone can be accountable if they kill someone. No doubt in communist society there will be members of society that hold people accountable for such actions, hopefully the society as a whole holds them accountable. But accountability doesn&#39;t mean you&#39;re stopping it from happening.

Where there is more freedom there is less security, and where there is more security less freedom... ALWAYS. So I can&#39;t deny that there is less formal security in my system. No one is going to give you a lie detector test when you go to join a collective to make sure you&#39;re not going to poison the products. No one is going to watch you 24 hours a day to make sure you&#39;re always doing exactly what you&#39;re supposed to be doing... but then again, I see these as a good thing. I&#39;m not saying they will happen under your system, but how else do you propose to never have such issues?

People lie about who they are and what they are capable of all the time. Sometimes doctors just screw up. Maybe you can create a means for people to sue for medical malpractice too?


If this is the first time I&#39;ve ever head to recieve heart surgery how do I know that the kindly old doctor who seems to know what he&#39;s talking about is not actually a sociopath who enjoys murdering his patients?

You don&#39;t know this regardless. The dentist I used to go to raped his female patients when they were under the gas.

But the criminally insane are something you&#39;re going to have to deal with anyway -- particularly sociopaths who are often times determined enough to go through whatever checks and balances you provide. Under your system, the very same dangers exist. You like to think they don&#39;t, cause obviously the doctors could spot a sociopath when they decide to "hire them" or whatever it is that they do, but this is not the case. Hell, my dentist had his own practice... and it was in an old house&#33;&#33;&#33; For all I knew they guy might not of even known how to fix teeth... thankfully he did, unfortunately for some, he did a little more than fixing teeth.

But what you propose does not stop this. Unless you&#39;re gonna give advanced lie detector tests to everyone, etc..etc.

Maybe I&#39;m gonna do work at a landfill so I can kill people and dump the bodies discretely in places I know they&#39;ll never be found, or will be covered with garbage only hours later. Who knows&#33;&#33;&#33; Maybe I&#39;m gonna go to flight school so I can fly planes into bui... oh, let&#39;s not bring such things up though. We might create a "terrified" population who is paranoid to the max and fears the possibility that everyone is out to get them. Maybe someone will get their drivers license so they can run people down with a car.

What you are talking about is not a question for labor, it is a question for "law and order." And of course there will be accountability in this sense, but it has nothing to do with labor.


...or not just plain icompetent? Both are very real, very dangerous possibilites which would undoubtably lead to death and suffering. What&#39;s the solution under your paradigm? um...um...there is none.

Incompetence is obviously a separate issue from criminal insanity or crminial neglegence, etc. Although it is neglegence, it is not always criminal. No doubt your solution is to just "kick them out." But what is the consequences of this? They need to look for another "primary occupation" so that they can survive by acquiring the products.

My system is not about letting any guy walk in an operating on someone. In the end it is the decision of the patient who does what to them. Just like in the end it is the decision of the shoemaker what shoes they buy. The decision of the person eating what food to buy. So these people are free to produce, yes. But we are free not to consume their labor, and where their labor is the only labor, we remain free to produce our own, which is not the case under your system.

Ever have someone tell you not to go to a certain guy for a tattoo cause he&#39;ll fuck it up? So why wouldn&#39;t you stop going to a doctor if he keeps misdiagnosing things and why wouldn&#39;t you tell others? See someone else.

Like I said, maybe medical malpractice suits is what you&#39;re after... hrm, that&#39;s the ticket&#33;

These are the same threats under existing class societies where the bosses and owners control the means of production. We face being "fired" and have no chance to survive outside of that, unless we "pick up another job." But it&#39;ll be more difficult to do so, because now not just any job determines that we get something, but we need a "primary occupation." No doubt the people already in these fields will want proof that you are educated or have some experience. So what are the real options for people who are "fired."

This whole system just seems too much like a closed loop to me. It&#39;s like the guild systems of many years ago. You divide labor by trade, the guilds control the only real means of production there, and the only way for you to acquire the goods of these guilds is to work in another guild which carries as much weight so that you can trade your crafts and service for others.

You ignore the greater role of society in just about everything we do. It&#39;s not one to one, producer to consumer, servicer to servicee, as you make it seem. I do not walk into a hospital, walk up to the first guy I see walking around in scrubs with a scapal in his hand and say "Hey, are you a doctor, can you cut me open and fix my heart?"

All I ask is that you be a bit realistic. You paint some alternative universe where no other people will play a role in such activities. You seem to pretend that between you and these products or services there is only limited number of people who can sneak their way in. Between being diagnosed with needing a triple bypass and getting one, there&#39;s only this one guy. No nurses, no other doctors, no nothing, and that even if there were they wouldn&#39;t really know who each other is, that they all just kinda go to the hospital and do whatever without ever coordinating their efforts. It&#39;s silly, and as unrealistic and naive as you think my view is.


Again, you have not proposed an answer to this question because you don&#39;t have one.

Nor do you. You just think you do. No one has answers to these questions, because it is not something that is so easily stopped unless you&#39;re going to have the tightest controlled society ever. More control than capitalism even.

Your responsibility is the of the threat to your personal well-being. If you get "kicked out" of your primary occupation, you can no longer acquire the necessary products, unless you get some other primary occupation and maintain responsibility in that. If you are not responsible, i.e. incompetent or incapable, that is your only threat.

Your accountability is much of the same. If you screw up, harm people, etc... you get kicked out, maybe imprisoned (not sure you never really mentioned it, you just pretty much assumed it existed because of division of labor and control over the means of production). But again, it is separate from that. These are question of "law and order" -- not of economics.

Right? These are your so called checks for responsibility and accountability. They are weak imagined works stemming from what you feel is necessary, control and division of labor. Because you attempt to maintain these things on an economic level you think you have them on every level -- so you pretend, for an instant, that just because some guy has a degree and a license he&#39;s not raping patients when the gas is on.


HOW DO YOU ASSURE THAT PEOPLE KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING?

HOW DO YOU? HOW DOES ANYONE? HOW DO WE UNDER CAPITALISM?

Again, your trades become the bosses; the gatekeepers. They decide to hire or fire, and they decide for whatever reasons to do either. If they decide not to hire you, you&#39;re fucked&#33;

You don&#39;t really know they can&#39;t do the job until it happens. It&#39;s no different than the statement that police stop crime -- not true, police solve crimes. On occasion they may stop a crime while it&#39;s happening, but in general the crime has to happen first -- then they catch the guy. Same things exist in all societies for accountability.

But now your trades keep control. Instead of review by the boss, it&#39;s review by your fellow workers. That&#39;s fine it&#39;s more fair. But they don&#39;t just kick you out of their company, they kick you out of this field.

You&#39;re looking for a magical answer that isn&#39;t there. You pretend it is there though. You pretend if you set up universities and the university gives you a piece of paper that means you can perform surgery. Or maybe that you can set up an FDA and the FDA can tell people "this is OK for you to consume." Or maybe you think you can interview someone and determine whether or not they&#39;re gonna kill anyone. I don&#39;t know what you think you&#39;ve offered for a solution, but blabbering on acout division of labor and workers control doesn&#39;t give anyone, workers, society, individuals, the foresight to say "this guy doesn&#39;t know what he&#39;s doing."

I got friends with computer science degrees that don&#39;t know a damn thing.

If someone is incompetent -- stop relying on them
If someone is criminally insane -- that requires rehabilitation.
If someone is downright criminal -- punishment and/or rehabilitation.

Somehow you equate using the means of production to killing people. Because you think the fact that they walk into the pharmeceutical company and make medicine automatically means their medicine is distributed to everyone. I&#39;m not sure why you think this, but apparently you do. You think just because someone has the equal right an access to an OR that they can walk into an OR and cut open whatever patient is awaiting surgery. Again, I&#39;m not sure why you think this, but apparently you do.

You equate division of labor and elected necessity to required control, and you equate that control that you offer as protection and assurance. I never said people could kill people. I never said if you make 20 pairs of shoes with no soles people have to wear them. I never said if you make some whacko medicine people have to take it. I never said any of this, but you assume that because someone can make their own shoes, or can make medicine, or can utilize an OR that, for no apparent reason, there is someone who has to wear the shoes, take the medicine, and go under the knife.

Is using the materials and resources stopping someone else from using them for a possibly more legitimate purpose? Maybe, maybe not. But this really goes back to rational discussion. You presume people to be unrational, though. That some guy disecting his dead cat in the OR (for lack of a better example yet again) would refuse to allow doctors to perform open heart surgery on someone in dire need of it.


Relying on the basic "goodness" of all people, such that no one would ever go into a field they weren&#39;t qualified for, is so naive as to be scary.

I don&#39;t rely on goodness for that no more than you rely on the idea that people are bad for your idea of needing to control them. I rely on the idea that no one likes to do things they don&#39;t know how to do. I rely on the idea that even if a guy walks into a hospital with a scapal, that doesn&#39;t mean he&#39;s gonna be able to give someone surgery. I rely on the idea, mind you, the very same idea you rely on , that the MAJORITY of people are rational, or can, at the least, rationally discuss and conclude what is proper. I rely on the idea that people can read, understand, witness necessity.

You find my ideas naive and utopian, and I find your idead naive and archaic. We&#39;re in the same boat here.

But I also realize a danger to what you propose, the same way you realize dangers in mine. Although it&#39;s interesting, because the dangers you see in mine are along the lines of "what happens if my doctor doesn&#39;t know what to prescribe for my condition?" While what I see in yours are along the lines of "what happens if doctors decide there doesn&#39;t need to be anymore doctors?"

You can&#39;t say we need to elect "primary occupations" but have no point in doing so. So your purpose is, someone must fulfill a primary occupation to be allowed to take back from the necessary products of society.

If someone must fulfill this and it determines what they may extract, you need a means to do this -- virtual credit, or at the least, some form of identity card.

This is exchange value. While there may be no determined exchange value, exchange value could be greater, equal or less than the value of what they do, it is still exchange value.

You&#39;ll need an organization to keep track of all these people and issue the cards or what have you, so you have a centralized administrative or something. Or at the least the federation of all the "primary occupations" to agree on some means of determining who is "one of them."

You may very well have unemployment. On the condition that each of these groups in these fields determines who becomes one of them, what happens if they all decide adding someone else would be a hinderance? Too many doctors at a hospital, too many farmers on the farm, too many shoemakers in the factory. Or worse, what if these people simply aren&#39;t needed... machines allow one person to do the work of many. So one person&#39;s labor can sustain multiple people... so what happens when machines and technology pushes us to the point where all primary occupations can be handled by a very small number of people and those people can make more than enough within a very small amount of time to maintain large portions of society? Do the vast majority of unneeded laborers get thrown into the blackness?

And how do these current workers determine who is capable? No doubt they will issue tests, determine the requirements of schools, accredit the various programs in "universities."

So yeah, people pass these required tests, and that makes the competent? That makes them not a sociopath? The doctors license means "this doctor will not kill you?"

I don&#39;t see how you relate all this control to the type of control you believe it to be. And obviously I do not see it as necessary.

So what happens if someone comes up with a new idea or a product, or a method of doing something that isn&#39;t the current standard, but they don&#39;t work in the field? What if the people already in the field simply say "that&#39;s not the way we do it, that&#39;ll never work." Simply because it "protect their job." For example, if I come up with some new computer program and software that organizes and coordinates the hospital fairly automatically, and this software is capable of replacing say, 5,000 existing workers in the field who currently coordinate the goings on of hospitals across the northeastern part of what is now the US. Do they use my software? What happens to those workers? They lose their "primary occupation." Where do they go? What do they do?

Material conditions determine EVERYTHING. If it is possible for a machine or piece of software to replace 5,000 workers, maintaining control over their jobs and necessity is pointless. But you can&#39;t just throw them out either, cause they have to eat.

This is something every communist should understand. The reason why socialism and eventually communism is inevitable is out of our hands. Capitalism is a system which tries and place control and restrictions on means of production that it can no longer control. The bourgeoisie so rapidly develops the productive forces that it makes it&#39;s own existence obsolete. The control placed on society can not longer be justified and it only holds us back.

I propose the same will happen with your system. I propose in many ways it already has, at least in certain industries. Communism is utterly classless, and thus no single group smaller than the whole can maintain control, not even workers in a specific field holding control over the means of production in their field. You can try to maintain this kind of nonsense, but like the control of a single boss, it becomes obsolete.

It is not that I feel your system is ill-willed or ill-intentioned... I simply don&#39;t think it&#39;s feasible for the type of society we will be living in. And that does make it reactionary, if not in this decade then surely within the decades where socialism advanced furthest and develops towards communism. But I wonder, would someone like yourself seek to maintain this control even when it becomes obsolete? You obviously feel it&#39;s necessary at all costs... so maybe so.

[NovelGentry]

How long do you think people would really put up with the kind of nonesense in which their doctor could be a lunatic and no one can do anything?

Lots of people can do something. For example, YOU could get a new doctor. If he kills someone, then obviously people can do something. But your system, much the same, cannot know this until it happens. Again, there&#39;s nothing that stops your dentist from raping you under the gas, only means to do something about it once he does. My system has these same things, but again it&#39;s an issue of "law and order" not one that is solved by economics.

You&#39;re trying to solve both in one shot. Not even capitalism is so bold as to claim it does that.


The "point" does not have to logical or rational, it just has to make sense to the person who&#39;s doing it,and you have still not offered any way to stop those people them from doing it&#33;

No doubt you won&#39;t accept the terms, "rational discussion."


And who makes that judgement?

No one makes a "judgement" this isn&#39;t a supreme court order. You rationally discuss it, and people rationally conclude that there&#39;s more than enough.


If everyone has "equal access" to the means of production, who decides when there are too many?

Well anyone with a brain could probably decide there are too many and they could discuss some kind of coordination or organization.


And when this decision is made (by whomever), who, specifically leaves?

The decision is not made by anyone, and if it is, it is not determined that people follow it just cause they made it. Again, you can "rationally discuss." I don&#39;t know why you can accept this for your system but not mine. You openly admit people will rationally discuss and then elect necessity, and that workers will rationally discuss and elect method/function. So why can&#39;t everyone who happens to be there? Why is it only certain groups can do this?


Who&#39;s monitoring?

Anyone and everyone. Again, this information is open, public, and easily available to all. All who decide to go down to the factory should already be well aware of whether they are necessary there before the head down.. Again, you a presenting this mass exodus bullshit. That everyone just suddenly arrives and is like "where&#39;s the party at?" This is nonsense and completely ignores the means of communication and organization which are already available.


Sorry, but overproduction is a huge problem, no matter what the economic system. It means a diversion of resources, material, and labour. There is only so much rubber / plastic / metal / oil / water / etc... that we can gather in a given period and using those resources on that which we do not need means that they are not going to that which we do&#33; Overproduction causes problems all the way down the line by forcing workers in other sectors to work longer and harder to compensate for the mismangement of production.

No, because finished products, shoes, air conditioners, food, whatever, can be shipped where there is any lack of resources to begin with. Furthermore, the division of raw material will occur long before the final products are made, and thus the determined necessity of such raw materials is completely separate and a precondition of any local production where these resources are not directly available.

Only in your fantasy world where it&#39;s impossible to ship surplus shoes to a place without enough does this become a problem.


If we make twice as many of X as we need, it means we have less to make Y.

This is method and will be coordinated by the people currently working to produce X and Y. It happens just the same in what you propose -- unless you&#39;re trying to say there will be a singel boss in the factory who tells everyone else how much of everything to make. Rational discussion can&#39;t figure this out either, right?

Bah... I&#39;m done with this... for good this time. The world you made up in your head is about as unreal as any you would find in a science-fiction video game. Communication is apparently impossible, as is shipping surpluses to places that need it, one factory does just about everything under the sun, so if you ship all this metal to a car parts factory and they make too many car parts that one factory won&#39;t be able to make life support systems now... it&#39;s just fucked up. The current infrastructure of the global economy doesn&#39;t even work close to what you present.... your ideas are not founded in reality. You oversimply the issue and spread it to the extreme... for example, because anyone should have access to make what they need, they will make what a bunch of people need improperly and kill them. Joe Schmoe just walks in off the street into a hospital and is automatically given a 2:00pm brain surgery appointment.

It&#39;s not even worth presenting this to you, because no matter what, you&#39;re still going to think cars and life support are made in the same factory. You&#39;re still going to think that people flock in massive numbers to a single factory... "Oh, we all had an urge to make cheese&#33;&#33;&#33;" It&#39;s unreal how hopeless you think people are, it really is.

[LSD]

Furthermore, the division of raw material will occur long before the final products are made, and thus the determined necessity of such raw materials is completely separate and a precondition of any local production where these resources are not directly available.

How can such a "division" possibly occur within your proposed model?

If everyone is free to produce as they will and use the means of production equally,how can you practically divide resources? Even if you somehow could do so, would it really be a good idea within your paradigm? I mean, if everyone is producing, whether they&#39;re qualified or not, whether they have any experience or not, don&#39;t you think a great deal of what&#39;s produced wouldn&#39;t be of the highest ...quality?

You yourself stated that if someone was producing inferior grade insulin, you would get your insulin from someone else, a "distribution center" I believe you said, but what you did not say was that this person producing the inferior insulin would be prevented from making more inferior insulin. Of course not&#33; Such "control" goes against the very basis of your paradigm, the only problem is that this person is using materials to make his, effectively, unusable product. So, now the "division of raw materials" doesn&#39;t work anymore, because, sy 9% of those raw materials are going to a guy who is making worthless product. But maybe you&#39;d propose that he not recieve access to those materials? But how is that any different from limiting his access to the means of prodcution? If we stop him from using the resources needed to run those means of production, you&#39;re "controlling" just as much as if you stopped him from using the means of production themselves.

Now, all of this comes back to division of labour, because someone has to determine if that insluin is worthless, preferably before someone tries to use it. Since neither of us wants a "state" or a "bureaucracy", we&#39;re both faced with the question of "who will that be?"

I have an answer, I don&#39;t think you do.

I say it should be the drug making worker&#39;s collective, since they&#39;re the ones who would know best, and there the ones making the drugs. You say... .. what?


Joe Schmoe just walks in off the street into a hospital and is automatically given a 2:00pm brain surgery appointment.

Hey, it&#39;s your plan, not mine.

...unless your changing it now? Are you saying that "Joe Schmoe" can&#39;t start performing surgeries? Who&#39;s going to make that decisions? The nurses at the hospital? The other doctors? Wow... it seems like you are in favour of control after all.

Once again, there must be an admission process for access to the means of production and that means a decision made by the people who know best and they alone, and that means division of labour because you can&#39;t have society voting on every single citizen and his job (or jobs, I suppose).


No doubt you won&#39;t accept the terms, "rational discussion."

Of course I will. It&#39;s just thast "rational discussion" doesn&#39;t work with the irrational.

I don&#39;t think that a sociopath will "rationally" agree not to kill people. Nor will a lunatic "rationally" agree that he isn&#39;t hearing the word of God. And, besides, discussion won&#39;t help with the genuinely self-decieved. The people who think they know what they&#39;re doing, but don&#39;t&#39;. They will honestly believe they&#39;re helping you while they&#39;re slowly and painfuly killing you. And without an admissions process, how do you stop them?


Lots of people can do something. For example, YOU could get a new doctor. If he kills someone, then obviously people can do something. But your system, much the same, cannot know this until it happens.

Yes it can.

It happens all the time under capitalism&#33; There&#39;s a process called "screening", another called "acreditation". It&#39;s when a person applying for a field of responsibility is "vetted" and his resume and training "verified". My model has that, yours does not.

Yours can only discover that the doctor is imcompetent after he kills someone, mine can discover that before; simply by having the health workers collective screen potential members first&#33; That&#39;s right, by limiting access to the means of production to those who know what they&#39;re doing. I know you don&#39;t like it, but it&#39;s the only way.


Bah... I&#39;m done with this... for good this time.

I&#39;m really done with this conversation.

I won&#39;t continue on, because there will be a lot of repeat stuff, so make your rebuttal, and that will be where this debate (at least between you and me) can end.

As usual, I&#39;m gonna cut this short -- if you don&#39;t "get it" by now, you never will.

"Every time I think I&#39;m out, they pull me back in..."

:lol:&#33;

[NovelGentry]

"Every time I think I&#39;m out, they pull me back in..."

laugh.gif&#33;

First off... yeah, fuck you.


How can such a "division" possibly occur within your proposed model?

Again, I suspect you won&#39;t accept rational discussion as an answer.


If everyone is free to produce as they will and use the means of production equally,how can you practically divide resources?

Equally, that&#39;s how.


Even if you somehow could do so, would it really be a good idea within your paradigm? I mean, if everyone is producing, whether they&#39;re qualified or not, whether they have any experience or not, don&#39;t you think a great deal of what&#39;s produced wouldn&#39;t be of the highest ...quality?

No, I think it will be of higher quality than we currently see under capitalism. I think people naturally strive to do the best they can do, and the products that people will want to use the most will always be those of the highest quality.

Again, you can produce whatever, but what is the point if no one is consuming what you produce? If you consume it yourself, so be it, if your product is shit and you don&#39;t like it, you have no one to blame but yourself. Don&#39;t expect anyone else to autmoatically want it.

You confuse what I&#39;m saying still. You think that just because someone produces it that it has to be pushed out and distributed to the people. This is not the case.

If you have a factory for example that is being used to create fairly precise metal widgets to be used for a machine part. If Joe walks in off the street and decides to use the means of production a) it does not mean he&#39;s making the same thing b) it does not mean what he&#39;s making is to be accepted as a widget and distributed with the already determined productive output of the previous workers... it simply means he has access to the means of production.

Equal access to the means of production does NOT equate to everything that is produced having to be accepted by society and for the general use.


You yourself stated that if someone was producing inferior grade insulin, you would get your insulin from someone else, a "distribution center" I believe you said, but what you did not say was that this person producing the inferior insulin would be prevented from making more inferior insulin.

No, why should they? That doesn&#39;t mean you have to use it either. Nor do doctors have to recommend it. For all I know the guy could be making it for him and his friends to drink... what the hell does is matter to me?

As I said before, in the event of scarcity some control has to be taken, and this is where democracy plays a role, as well as voting. But even still, the vote must occur amongst the people whose lives it will be directly affecting. The vote on how to use the insulin should include any such person who needs or works with the means of producing insulin, not just the AIWW (Approved Inuslin Workers of the World). Why? Because the means of producing insulin, the materials used in producing insulin, etc, are all social products, they do not belong to the Approved Inuslin Workers of the World.

What I am confused at, is why it is so difficult for you to believe that some guy won&#39;t produce say 8,000 kl of insulin just because he can and just because he "felt like produing insulin."

Maybe the existing insulin is found by a doctor to be of lesser quality than could be produced, and together him and some other doctors would like to devote time to producing higher quality insulin. This doesn&#39;t become acceptable under your plan, because the AIWW doesn&#39;t wish to approve the use of the means of production, or the use of the resources.

The fact, however, is, that it need not happen under EITHER system. What SHOULD happen, and what I believe WILL happen, is that the doctors will contact the existing workers who produce insulin and express their concern with the quality of the insulin being produced, and that the insulin workers will take this into account and make the necessy changes to produce a more quality yeild. It&#39;s that rational discussion stuff you were talking about before, which is ok between insulin workers for you, but the minute a doctor steps in and tries to make a change, the insulin workers can just kinda tell him to "fuck off." I don&#39;t find them telling the doctor to fuck off acceptable.

Whether or not the quality of the insulin changes might determine what furhter action the doctor and other doctors who agree take.


Of course not&#33; Such "control" goes against the very basis of your paradigm

Such control goes against the idea of a classless society.


the only problem is that this person is using materials to make his, effectively, unusable product.

Why is he making an unusable product? The only kind of person who would continue this behavior would have to be mentally ill or stubborn as a mountain. In either case, they will exist outside of society itself.


So, now the "division of raw materials" doesn&#39;t work anymore, because, sy 9% of those raw materials are going to a guy who is making worthless product.

Why would 9% be going to him? Who is he getting the 9% from? Again, you ignore that more than just one person is required in producing a product or developing a service. I&#39;m not quite sure how insulin is produced, so let&#39;s change example for a minute. Say some guy wants to build a skyscraper. He needs steel beams... where does he get these from? Calls up the guys making steel beams and says, "I need such and such an amount of steel beams delivered to this location." "Sorry our supplies are already marked for delivery for here, here, and here."

You are assuming someone HAS to work for someone too? No wonder you&#39;re so confused. That if steel workers are producing 1,000,000 beams they have to give him whatever he needs? Bullshit. This is not what I&#39;m proposing... what I&#39;m proposing is that the access to the means of production not be determined or controlled. So if he need 1,000 steel beams he can go make them himself.

If there is immediate surplus I don&#39;t see why they WOULDN&#39;T give them to him. But he cannot force their labor to go to his little pet project. No one can control ANYBDOY else. You cannot force a truck driver to deliver the steel, you cannot force the steel workers to make it, you cannot force the iron miners to mine it. Just like they cannot stop you from mining it... nor can they stop you from refining it... nor can they stop you from driving it out to where you want it... and they can&#39;t stop you from building your skyscraper.

Again, these are social products for which no single portion of society smaller than the whole has say over.

As I mentioned in another thread, it&#39;s like the rule in GO which stops players from jumping into an infinite loop of capturing a single piece. It&#39;d be sort of an unwritten law. If a group of people have several hundred 2x4s delivered to build a house, you walking up and taking them and not allowing them to use it is controlling it, you are NOT allowed to do that. Again, if you go into a factory and kick someone off a machine that is you controlling the means of production, such action is not legitimate... but by EITHER party.

Just because you&#39;re a coal miner doesn&#39;t give you the right to kick some guy out of the coal mine trying to mine coal. If he&#39;s in there taking an Axe to all the beams, by all means kick him out, it is a threat to life and it is "criminal" in a sense. Just like if the guy with the scapal barges into the OR and starts cutting open patients waiting to be handled by a real doctor.

But if someone decides they want Joe from down the street to perform their open heart surgery, Joe and them can go down to the OR and perform it. That is what I&#39;m saying.

You cannot force someone to give you their labor. You cannot force someone to receive your labor. You cannot force someone into a position where they are unable to expend their labor by controlling means of productions.

What you find inconceivable about this is that it gives no one control over the means of production, and it gives no one control over natural resources, and it gives no one control over your labor.... well, that&#39;s exactly the point of it.

So when you agree to give your labor, you are in a position, at any time, to stop giving it. When you agree to work for the iron miners you are free to stop working if you don&#39;t agree with their decisions, and mine your own iron for your own damn use. When you agree to make steal, you do not agree to make steal for everyone who demands it, and you are part of the decision of where your labor goes. You are, however, not in control of labor which has already been given to society i.e. the means of production. These remain public. It&#39;s not your labor power to distribute, and the person wishing to use them is not your labor power to control.

So why is this so inconceivable to you? Because you cannot picture a world without a boss. To you, SOMONE needs control. Someone HAS to have control, or it just can&#39;t work. But you don&#39;t want the boss we see right now... that&#39;s unacceptable. So you replace that boss with trades. Yeah, that&#39;ll work... but it&#39;s still the same bullshit with different people in control.

So the brunt of your question really has nothing to do with division or labor, organiztion, etc... but your question is actually:

"How can that work without someone or some group in control?"

You can call it democracy, yeah... but as I said, formality isn&#39;t a necessity. There will be plenty of formality under socialism. It will be in essence: rational discussion. Still, you can&#39;t accept that answer. You simply cannot&#33;&#33;&#33; you WILL NOT. You refuse to allow yourself to believe people can just come to agreements. You say it&#39;s utopian, relying on the "goodness" of everyone, blah blah blah.

So whatever, call it utopian, call it a dream, call it idealism. It doesn&#39;t grow out of a bush... it grows out of an existing society developed under socialism, which has had plenty of formaility and all that nonsense. But it&#39;s beyond socialism... it&#39;s beyond private property... beyond classes... beyond a state.... beyond burecratic nonsense... beyond planned economies... beyond all of this.

To put it in perspective, it&#39;d be like telling someone about capitalism and what the US is like in ancient egypt. And if the pharoh decided to have the courtesy to hear you out he would say "How can that work without an pharoh telling everyone what to do? How would you know the snake charmers weren&#39;t putting a curse on you instead of healing you if the pharoh doesn&#39;t ensure they are doing what is right? you need responsibility&#33;&#33;&#33; What happens if a slave drives three stones into the side of the pyramid cracking the stones and the portion of the pyramid? you need accountability&#33;&#33;&#33;" (or some nonsense like that).


But maybe you&#39;d propose that he not recieve access to those materials?

It&#39;s not that he won&#39;t receive access. No one is forced to provide them to him. So he can of course make his own materials, using the existing means of production to make those materials.


But how is that any different from limiting his access to the means of prodcution?

Because it&#39;s not controlling anything that doesn&#39;t belong to you. The only thing you have a right to control is YOUR labor. But steel is not the labor of the steel worker alone. So really, what you seek to do is control your labor power. You decide what you work on, what you do not. If you do not agree with where it is being used or how it is being used, don&#39;t do it. Would you build a hammer for someone if they were going to smash all the windows on your house with it?

Like I said, private property is a social condition, not a simple object. A piece of land alone is not necessarily a piece of private property, it becomes private property when it is control and public access is limited. This is what you propose is to be done with access to the means of production.

So again, it&#39;s not that you have control over the resources. The people who make the resources have control over their labor, and thus control as to whether or not these things even get made.

No doubt you&#39;re now picturing in your head that workers go on "strike" every time they disagree with the usage of their materials. So that&#39;ll be the next thing you pin as a flaw in "my system."

So be it. The Pharoh can&#39;t wrap his head around it either.


Now, all of this comes back to division of labour, because someone has to determine if that insluin is worthless, preferably before someone tries to use it. Since neither of us wants a "state" or a "bureaucracy", we&#39;re both faced with the question of "who will that be?"

Well this doesn&#39;t come back to division of labor. You don&#39;t need to have division of labor for someone to determine that insulin is worthless. Someone who knows how to test the quality of insulin can determine such a thing, whether division of labor exists or not.


I have an answer, I don&#39;t think you do.

The real question you are proposing though is not "who determines the quality?" But who controls the quality... more, who controls the product in general. If the doctor happens to think the insulin is shit, but he doesn&#39;t have anything to do with producing the drug -- well that&#39;s the end of that.

Your real answer is to maintain private property. My answer, although not acceptable to you, is very simply that this won&#39;t be an issue. To which you respond "why not?" To which I have repeatedly responded, rational discussion. Which again, you will not accept as an answer. Despite that it is the very same answer in your system for how the insulin makers decide these things.

Rational discussion is completely 100% feasible amongst insulin workers for you. But the minute it extends beyond them it becomes wholely infeasible. Why shouldn&#39;t diabetes patients have a say? Why shouldn&#39;t the doctors who prescribe it? Why shouldn&#39;t the guy at the shoe factory who requires the food produced by the population of farmers who require insulin?

And then you have the aching question of -- what happens if they decide simply not to produce it anymore?

It&#39;s amazing how universal these problems are:

(to capitalist) What happens if the bosses at the companies who make insulin decide to stop producing?
(response) They won&#39;t
(to capitalist) But what if?
-- There is no acceptable answer

(to you) What happens if the insulin workers decide to stop producing?
(response) They won&#39;t
(to you) But what if?
-- What&#39;s your answer again?

(to me) What happens if the people making insulin decide to stop producing?
(response) They won&#39;t
(to me) But what if?
(response) Those who need it are able to access the means to produce it themselves.

Again, you pretend to have control over something you do not. However, at least what I propose doesn&#39;t create unnecessary control that slows down people&#39;s ability to fulfill their own need, if that need arises.


I say it should be the drug making worker&#39;s collective, since they&#39;re the ones who would know best, and there the ones making the drugs. You say... .. what?

So my answer to your question is.... anyone. The insulin maker, the patient, the doctor, whoever. The bigger question is, what happens after someone determines the insulin is shit?

I say those who agree are capable of accessing the means of production to create their own insulin, which is of a higher quality. You say... .. what?


Hey, it&#39;s your plan, not mine.

Sorry, idiocy is not my plan.


Are you saying that "Joe Schmoe" can&#39;t start performing surgeries?

No, he can. I&#39;m saying he can&#39;t perform surgeries on those who do not want him to perform surgery on them.


Who&#39;s going to make that decisions?

Hopefully him and the patient, whatever unfortunate soul that might be.


The nurses at the hospital?

It&#39;s not their decision who you will or will not allow to operate on you, although they&#39;d probably make some suggestions and might make you aware that they have no clue who Dr. Joe Schmoe is and that he has no history of working with the hospital.


The other doctors?

Again, it&#39;s not their decision. I would hope your physician would have directed you towards a surgeon with a notable history.


it seems like you are in favour of control after all.

I have no problem with people telling you that someone will probably end up killing you if you allow them to do surgery on you. I also have no problem with someone deciding Joe Schmoe is capable of doing this surgery. So yes, I am in favor of control, contro l over one&#39;s own life, and in other places where it&#39;s not a question of life or death, control over one&#39;s labor.

No one can rightfully end your life and no one can rightfully force you to serve them with your labor.


Once again, there must be an admission process for access to the means of production

But again, the access to the means of production does not determine someone must utilize the product of your labor. For all I care Joe Schmoe can go down to the OR and dance on the table with a scapal. Or stick an oxygen mask on himself and breath the fresh air. Or maybe give himself a lethal injection.

Or he can walk into the shoe factory and sew leather straps together to make a ball of leather straps. Doesn&#39;t really bother me in the least. Joe Schmoe is not my doctor, and the shoes I get are from people who know how to make shoes.


and that means a decision made by the people who know best and they alone, and that means division of labour because you can&#39;t have society voting on every single citizen and his job (or jobs, I suppose).

This still has nothing to do with the division of labor. You presume the people who do the labor are the people who know best. I&#39;m not sure why. But lots of people know better than the people currently doing jobs. This is true in a lot of fields. Either way, the division of labor is not necessary for such things. If everyone maintians multiple positions and does a vast number of things within a single production or service, there is no division of labor, but they still know what the hell they are doing.

Again, you see it as a necessity to organiation and coordination when it is not. I do not need to know anything about practicing medicine in order to be able to say "insulin is a necessity." I don&#39;t have to know anything about it to say, "I should not be making insulin" -- in fact, not knowing anything about it helps me to say that. I don&#39;t need to know anything about it to understand that if I were to offer to help making it, I would a) need to be trained in whatever task I was doing or b) would need a job that requires no such training. I would also be aware that I should tell the people I&#39;m helping this information so that they understand whether or not I can be a help to them, or whether I&#39;ll just get in the way. I don&#39;t need to know anything about making insuling to decide not to get in their way if they continuously tell me I&#39;m in their way, or if they tell me prior to going there that I would be in their way.

This is organization and coordination. All said things can be determined and resolved within a matter of seconds through simple rational discussion. I do not need to know how to make insulin, nor does making insulin have to be their "pirmary occupation" for them to know about making it.

You&#39;ve never learned about something that had nothing to do with what you did? I reckon I know more math than my 3rd grade teachers. Could I not teach math to 3rd graders? I reckon I know more about computers than most people with 3 years experience in the field. I&#39;m going back to school to become an English teacher... and I reckon there will be people who know more about English than I do who are not teachers. I have no problem recognizing the division of labor doesn&#39;t mean a damn thing.


Of course I will. It&#39;s just thast "rational discussion" doesn&#39;t work with the irrational.

Agreed.


I don&#39;t think that a sociopath will "rationally" agree not to kill people. Nor will a lunatic "rationally" agree that he isn&#39;t hearing the word of God.

Also agreed.


And, besides, discussion won&#39;t help with the genuinely self-decieved. The people who think they know what they&#39;re doing, but don&#39;t&#39;.

Well if no one tells them otherwise, I would think it could be pretty difficult to think you&#39;ve done anything wrong. But I don&#39;t think such a society is going to be so void of communication that someone can&#39;t say "that&#39;s not how that is done." Nor do I think these people are going to make up any large majority of the population.


They will honestly believe they&#39;re helping you while they&#39;re slowly and painfuly killing you.

Well I would hope when you realize they are inflicting pain you would stop allowing them to help you.


And without an admissions process, how do you stop them?

Well again, it&#39;s not very simple to work outside of society. I&#39;m not sure why you think such people would go unchecked just from the every day communication that occurs between people.

How long you think it would take for me to be kicked out of a hospital under capitalism, and under your system if I dressed up in scrubs and walked around taking peoples tempreatures and giving them sugar-pill suppositories? Who knows... minutes, hours, days? Possibly months. Again, control you think you have, but you really don&#39;t, regardless of your "admissions process."

Until you can explain to me how you stop these things from occuring under any other system, I don&#39;t see why I need to explain how they stop under mine. The fact is, they don&#39;t really stop... they don&#39;t stop under any system. But the minute you go to harm someone, or do something to them that they don&#39;t agree with... that&#39;s when the line is drawn.

How many times you think Terry Schiavo got raped by some sick fuck working in the hospital?

I&#39;m not sure what you&#39;re trying to get at here. There&#39;s all kinds of crazy shit that happens, and no one knows, and happens under the name of healthcare, or something else benign. Did you see that Japanese doctor (or was it Chinese) who has charges brought up against him now because he would tell women to strip down during their checkups and then take pictures of them?

Do you really think these things are preventable? But you want answers of "what if they don&#39;t do their job right." Well what if a doctor doesn&#39;t do his job right now? Yeah he gets fired... big deal... what if he shows up the next day with a gun an kills everyone and then commits suicide? Not much you can do. Or he goes to another hospital and gets hired there... etc...etc. Maybe he&#39;ll show up at his old hospital and just continue working there anyway, helping patients who agree to be under his care. And what will happen? He&#39;ll be removed? Kicked out? Why? Patients are agreeing to his care. Now if he starts tending to patients who don&#39;t agree to his care -- then he becomes a threat -- then he is once again, criminal.

What would happen if I went into any place right now and just started working? Sure a small place like McDonalds might notice right away, where we&#39;re all cramped back in the kitches. But what about some big place, with multiple departments, like a supermarket? Again, I don&#39;t really see what you&#39;re trying to get at here. Anyone can really do whatever the hell they want, unless you&#39;re gonna start having fingerprint scans on every door or something. Yes, if they threaten someones life, by all means CONTROL them. But really, what do you suspect we should be doing otherwise? "Sorry, you can&#39;t use this land." Well what the fuck makes it your land? "Sorry, this iron mine is private." Huh? "Sir you can&#39;t just take that fruit." Why not? Do I need to pay for it? "Sir you can&#39;t stack our shelves" Who says? "No, you&#39;re not allowed to make shoes&#33;" But all your shoes hurt my feet. "No, this man can&#39;t operate on you." But he&#39;s my best friend, and I trust him more than I trust any other doctor here.

Did you know that doctors go around to different hospitals to see their patients? See I didn&#39;t know this until I had my surgery. By my doctor went all the way to Providence to check up on me and some of his other patients there. His practice is a good half hour from there. The surgeon that did my eye surgery wasn&#39;t normally there either, I want to say he came in from Ohio (but I could be wrong on that).

Imagine all the people at the hospital said "No, we won&#39;t allow him to use the OR to operate on you&#33;&#33;&#33;" -- I&#39;d be dead right now. I don&#39;t really know all the formalities of it. I&#39;m guessing my medical coverage pays the hospital for the use of the OR and pays the surgeion, and that&#39;s that -- cause it&#39;s not like it was the hospital he normally works at.

Anyone here in the medical industry know how this works?

Anyway, it&#39;s interesting to really think about how much trust you put in people every day. It&#39;s why everyone will eat McDonalds and not really think twice about what&#39;s in it.. "oh, it&#39;s just a hamburger." It&#39;s why I never asked my physician if he knew what he was doing. It&#39;s why I never suspected by dentist raped women. It&#39;s why I gas up wherever ans assume I&#39;m getting gass and not filling my tank with fruit punch. It&#39;s why I don&#39;t encrypt everything I send over the internet. It&#39;s why I don&#39;t ask taxi drivers if they are suicidal before getting in their Cab -- hell, I don&#39;t even ask them their driving record. I&#39;ve never asked a pilot how many years he&#39;s been flying. I&#39;ve never asked farmers what kinds of pesticides they use. I never asked a person on halloween if they put poison or razors in my candy. I used to work as a landscaper... no one ever asked if we knew what the hell we were doing. One time I chopped a lawn up pretty good with a weed whacker, looked like complete crap... I was not fired... but the next time my boss said "Hey, take this weedwhacker around the edgest" -- I said, "nah, I&#39;m not so good with that, maybe you can do that and I&#39;ll finish spreading the fertilizer.

I can&#39;t mix drings. I don&#39;t know the first thing about making insulin, or shoes. It&#39;d no doubt take me awhile to get the hang of driving a havester. I can&#39;t fly. I&#39;m not a heart surgeion. I can&#39;t even do CPR.

Strange how all these things can just kinda be. All that freedom... all the possibilities... and I can admit what I don&#39;t know, take responsibility for myself... I don&#39;t walk into hospitals and inject poison into people&#39;s IVs... I don&#39;t tell people I&#39;m a doctor. I didn&#39;t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I can rationally discuss all of these issues with anyone, and easily determine within a few seconds whether or not I can help, or whether or not they can help me in anything I do. Then we can discuss together how we will go about doing this.

I don&#39;t understand how you can claim my answers are any less meaningful or assuring than yours. You do have control... unfortunately the control you exert doesn&#39;t stop any of this. It doesn&#39;t make the world a safer place, it doesn&#39;t stop sociopaths from killing, it doesn&#39;t stop dentists from raping and doctors from taking nude photos, it doesn&#39;t stop people from not doing their job right, hell it doesn&#39;t even stop people from not making drugs (portable drug labs exist under capitalism, and we have division of labor).


It happens all the time under capitalism&#33; There&#39;s a process called "screening", another called "acreditation". It&#39;s when a person applying for a field of responsibility is "vetted" and his resume and training "verified". My model has that, yours does not.

Yeah, we&#39;ve seen how good screening works. Was that supposed to be some kind of joke? Lastly, what makes you think my system doesn&#39;t have an equivalent? Again, you don&#39;t have to simply accept the first guy that comes along and says "I&#39;m gonna take care of you&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;" Nor would I suspect that nurses and doctors who work within the hospital wouldn&#39;t look at this person&#39;s past experience, etc, their education... actually I presume most people who come to work in a hospital will do so under the training of the existing staff

Again, it is not that I throw this stuff out the window, although I will admit it is going to be far less formal. What I throw out the window is the control over the entire industry that you place so willfully within the hands of the existing worker population. There&#39;s nothing wrong with them saying "(s)he&#39;s not with us." Or "we dont&#39; approve of his/her actions." Absolutely nothing.


Yours can only discover that the doctor is imcompetent after he kills someone, mine can discover that before; simply by having the health workers collective screen potential members first&#33; That&#39;s right, by limiting access to the means of production to those who know what they&#39;re doing.

Well no... yours can&#39;t figure it out before. You can find out if he killed someone in the past... and I have no problem with that. But you can&#39;t really find out if he&#39;s going to kill someone. You can find out if he&#39;s actually had training or education with this... I don&#39;t have a problem with that either. But again, you cannot find out if he&#39;ll be OK using the knife. You don&#39;t know these things till after the fact. No matter how much you think you will.

You&#39;re screening process doesn&#39;t make sure he&#39;s competent, it makes sure he&#39;s not been incompetent in the past. There&#39;s a huge differences, especially for new doctors.

A patient is not a means of production. If you want to keep them away from existing patients you have because you think they are a threat, that is completely different and completely understandable. If you want to refuse to prescribe or distribute Joe Schmoe&#39;s insulin out to the world, that&#39;s fine, he&#39;ll have to peddle it himself. These are all very OK things to do. But they are all very different from limiting access to the means of production.


I know you don&#39;t like it, but it&#39;s the only way.

I&#39;ve heard the same arguments for other societies which uphold private property.

[LSD]

I&#39;m going to divide this into three general sections which I think ecompass the areas we&#39;ve been discussin in regards to the plan your advocating: prioritization, organization, and accountability.


I&#39;ve heard the same arguments for other societies which uphold private property.

That wasn&#39;t an argument, it was more of a rhetorical condluding summary. But moving on...


Prioritization:


Equally, that&#39;s how.

So everyone has equal rights to the raw materials as well at the means of production? If they are to be distrubted "equally" then that means that I get just as much as Sally gets just as much as John. Or maybe you meant institutionaly equally. Meaning that each factory recieves an equal amount, but anyone can go into that factory and use those materials. Or maybe you meant that they&#39;d be inudstrially equal meaning that each industry would recieve an equal amount. Or maybe you meant that they&#39;d be productively equal meaning that each product type would recieve an equal amount.

Either way, I think its fair to derive that you want equal distribution, so let&#39;s explore that.


If you have a factory for example that is being used to create fairly precise metal widgets to be used for a machine part. If Joe walks in off the street and decides to use the means of production a) it does not mean he&#39;s making the same thing b) it does not mean what he&#39;s making is to be accepted as a widget and distributed with the already determined productive output of the previous workers... it simply means he has access to the means of production.

It simply means that he&#39;s using resources.

Now, under your plan, the distribution of produced materials would be up to all the people that the product in question affected, so need would first be gauged and production informally arranged so as to roughly fill those requirements. After society analyzed what it needed and how that related to "precise metal widgest", it determined that a certain amount of metal would be required for this task. This metal would then be shipped to the factory. Now, Since onyl a certain amount of metals was shipped to this factory by the metal workers, that amount is all there is to work with. The rest of the metal is undoubtably being shipped to other factories and like producers who need it for making houses, and computers, and life-saving machines, etc...

So... the workers are busy working in the factory, cranking out "metal widgets" left and right, when John comes in to make himself some undetermined product. It really doesn&#39;t matter what so long as it isn&#39;t usable "precise metal widgets". Maybe he&#39;s trying to make widgets, but isn&#39;t any good; maybe he&#39;s trying to make little metal statues of Buddha, it doesn&#39;t matter. The point is that resources intended for the production of, clearly needed, metal widgets, are now going to John&#39;s pet project. You see the problem isn&#39;t that people are "forced" to use John&#39;s products, of course they aren&#39;t, but they are forced to reorganize production to deal with the fact that their previously arranged distribution plan is no longer functional since John decided that he really needed to make himself some metal products...

Now, how much of an effect will one guy on one machine really have on an entire factory? I don&#39;t know, I suppose it matters how much he&#39;s working, and how much he&#39;s using, but the real problem is that John wouldn&#39;t be alone. If everyone has equal rights to all means of production, then there will be many people doing what John is doing. And this isn&#39;t "alarmism" or "worst case scenarioism", it&#39;s how production would work under your model. You have no way to assure that resources go to where they&#39;re needed before anywhere else.

My argument is not that John should be prevented from making his little metal Buddha statues, it&#39;s just that he shouldn&#39;t be permitted to do so unless all essential metal production has been taken care of. That is, if all the needed uses that society has dilineated have already recieved their metal and they have adequate production, then the surplus should absolutely be usable by the general public, but someone has to make that judgement. Someone has to gauge when needed production is complete and, equally important, be able to prevent others from using the machines in question when it isnt.


No, why should they? That doesn&#39;t mean you have to use it either. Nor do doctors have to recommend it. For all I know the guy could be making it for him and his friends to drink... what the hell does is matter to me?

It matters, again, becasue his production of insulin prevents people who do know what they&#39;re doing from making inulin. He&#39;s using the basic raw materials and the time in the Chem lab that would otherwise go into producing something (maybe insulin, maybe something else) that will save lives. Of course, he and his friends "drinking" their home made insulin has no effect on you, hell his self-injection of his homemade insulin has no effect on you, but it is his production of his homemade insulin which effects you, especially if you are in need of life-saving medication which was not able to be produced because the nescessary resources were being used by some nutjob to make a useless vat of unsuable insulin.

This isn&#39;t even about the risk of dangerous insulin being made, I&#39;m going to talk about that in the Accountability section, this is only about the fact taht the basic physical rule that the productin of one thing, prevents other things from being produced. Not to get overly economical, but let&#39;s call it Opportunity Cost. Now this is always a problem in production, of course, but when we&#39;re dealing with nonessentials, it&#39;s just an inconvienience: yeah, the fact that someone had to make 500 Buddha statues means that you can&#39;t complete your boat this month, but it&#39;s not a major crisis.... On the other hand, if someone producing vats of "insulin" prevents you from getting the insluin you need to live, well that&#39;s a crisis&#33;

Again, it all comes down to priorities. Your plan really doesn&#39;t have any&#33; As you said, resources would be divided "Equally", which means John&#39;s metal Buddhas and Sally&#39;s dialysis machine recieve "equal" priority.


As I said before, in the event of scarcity some control has to be taken, and this is where democracy plays a role, as well as voting. But even still, the vote must occur amongst the people whose lives it will be directly affecting. The vote on how to use the insulin should include any such person who needs or world.

But scarcity always exists. Whether it be natural scarcity or functional scarcity, no resource is limitless or infinitely available. Only so much metal / plastic / wood / etc.. can be gathered / made in a given period and only so much can be distributed. Now, we&#39;ve discussed the dangers of overproduction and you, basically , argued that is wasn&#39;t a problem as excess products can be stored and used later., you further said that the distribution of resources would occur independently of production and hence overproduction in one industry would not adversely affect the production of others. I suppose this is what your suggesting people should vote on?

But this would happen every single time any product or resource needs to be distributed anywhere. You seem to be implying that somehow scarcity would be a rare occurance&#33; That most of the time resources would be unlimited and hence no democractic decisions would have to be made. That&#39;s nowhere near the truth&#33; On the contrary, scarcity will be factor in every production effort and accordingly in every distribution effort as well.

Within your model, to prevent overproduction from sucking resources, distribution would have to be, as you suggested, independent, but all this does is further focus the negative effects of misproductiong. That is, yes, if resources are divide "Equally" as you advocate, than overproduction will occur internally within an industry and not effect other productions but now John&#39;s metal Buddha&#39;s rear their transcendental heads once again. Becasue if distribution of raw materials are prearranged and independently determined, then you are only furthering the functional scarcity that would be present regardless. This artifical limit, which I agree, you have to impose to prevent overproductive seeping, will mean that every Buddha that John makes is one less "precise metal widget" that can be made by someone else. The only alternative is to re-open the distribution question and allow for a further shipment of raw materials to the factory in question, and now we&#39;re back to the problem of overproduction because, from a macro-economic sense, you&#39;re taking resources away from some other industry.

Either way, you production model results in a mismanagement of resources. This is simply caused by the fact that you have no way to assure priotization if everyone is equally able and equally entitled to use the means of production and the resources therein. I suppose you could, again, open the question of material distribution and argue that while everyone should have access to the means of production they don&#39;t nescessarily have to have access to the raw materials processed by them. But now you have to arrange a system by which certain people are excluded from these raw materials and others are not. Basically, that&#39;s prioritization&#33; Saying that John should not recieve metal, but Sally should. ...but who will make this determination? The entire collective? The entire society? Every single time a shipement or distribution needs to be made? That would probably be on a daily basis&#33; At the very least, there&#39;d be several of them a week, surely the people don&#39;t have the time to sit around deciding who should get metal and who should get plastic and who should get wood, etc.. there has to be a system in place.

And there are two fundamental problems with creating such a system within a model such as yours. The first is that it creates the very occupational hierarchy that you didn&#39;t want by saying that some tasks are more in need of resources than others, and secondly, and more importantly, it is entirely unenforceable and hence functionally impossible. There is simply no way to assure that the resources go to dillineated purposes within a dilletante production model because there is no way to monitor what every single person is doing without having someone standing over them the whole time. Now, of course there are simply not enough people to do that, and within your paradigm there wouldn&#39;t even be anyone with the functional authority to tell that person that what they&#39;re doing doesn&#39;t comply with such a required task&#33; Simply put, they can lie going in and build whatever the fuck they want. The only way to stop that is to have production only in the hands of the workers specially charged with that field, but that&#39;s division of labour and you don&#39;t want it.

Now, maybe that doesn&#39;t apply to you becasue you genuinely don&#39;t want any prioritization at all. But if that&#39;s true, I genuinely don&#39;t see how you think production can possible serve society&#39;s needs. You&#39;ve made the point that you feel that technology will make scarcity virtually disapear, but there is a very finite limit to how far that progression can go. This is epecially given that the world&#39;s population will continue to grow and with the advent of communism, that population will be far better off and far more fed and clothed and provided for. All of this means that even if technology does increase productivity, which is most likely will, that will be counterbalanced by the massively increased world requirements. Furthermore, the collapse of capitalism will lead to a skyrocketing of demand for the things that most of the world had no way of getting before, meaning that while the amount of things that can be made in an hour may double, the amount of things that need to be made will as well, if not triple or quadrouple... I think it&#39;s a very real possibility that scarcity will increase, especially as by this point capitalism and human technological development will have no doubt stripped many of the natural resources of the world such that there will be much less surface metals; much less wood, coal, and plastics; and MUCH less oil. The availability of natural resources will be almost certainly drastically reduced as will the availability of land space, clean water, clean air, etc...

All of this means that, no matter how advanced technology gets, and no matter how far we advance, scarcity will always be a problem, most likely even a greater problem than today.


Say some guy wants to build a skyscraper. He needs steel beams... where does he get these from? Calls up the guys making steel beams and says, "I need such and such an amount of steel beams delivered to this location." "Sorry our supplies are already marked for delivery for here, here, and here."

But are there actually "guys making steel beams" as a group? Isn&#39;t each steel beam maker free to distribute to whom he wishes? Furthermore, aren&#39;t resources supposed to be distributed "Equally"?

Furthermore, who dcided the "here, here, and here"? Was it a collective decision by all the steel beam makers? If so...on what information was it based? "First come, first serve" or something slightly more logical. If it isn&#39;t just luck or the draw, then it was probably based on what was needed, no? So building a hospital came before building a statue. But, again, dividing based on nescessity within a sytem such as your is replete with problems. The first is that if there&#39;s no functional control over the means of production, how do you assure that the needed use for which you diverted the resource in question is actually wha the resources will be used for? That is, if you&#39;re shipping metal to a factory to be turned into steel beams, how do you know that some guy isn&#39;t walking in, sitting down at an empty station and making himself some Buddha statues? Within your paradigm, he is perfectly within his rights to do precisely that&#33; This means that while a certain amount of metal was intended for making beams, a percentage of it is being syphoned off to make Buddhas.

The second obvious flaw is the "buddy" problem. Since you&#39;ve said that the individual producers should have control over their product, what happens if the guy who wants to build the skyscraper happpens to have a buddy or two who make steel beams. Now there may well be a pressing need for those beams, but these specific steel beam makers won&#39;t be contributing to that, they&#39;ll be contributing to the skyscraper-guy&#39;s, possibly, useless project. At the very least, it&#39;s a project which isn&#39;t of equal importance to, say, making a hospital. Again, the problem is a lack of prioritization and the inability of your plan to account for genuine need and to deal with that need first.


It&#39;s not that he won&#39;t receive access. No one is forced to provide them to him.

Yeah, but if we&#39;re talking about a factory then those resources are implicit in that factory, no? That is, if John goes down to the "widget" factory, the metal is already there and part of the factory. When he sits down at an empty station, the materials are a part and parcell of that station. So, in away, by openning the means of production to everyone, material producers are "forced to provide" those materials to people and projects that they don&#39;t nescessarily want. Even if none of the metal workers want their metal to go to making little metal Buddha statues, by shipping to a factory where anyone can work (which is implicit in your plan), that is exactly what the metal will end up being used for when John walks in. You see your lack of control does extend to the producers, because they cannot control what their product / material is used for if their shipping it to factories which can be used by anyone to make anything&#33; The only way, again, to ensure that the factories actually produce what they are meant to produce and that alone, is to restrict the use of that factory to the workers who work specifically in that field.

That&#39;s division of labour.


Organization:


(to you) What happens if the insulin workers decide to stop producing?
(response) They won&#39;t
(to you) But what if?
-- What&#39;s your answer again?

My answer is simple and obvious. If people refuse to work in their chosen field and cannot justify that decision to the community, then they have chosen to no longer contribute to that society, and hence should no longer be permitted to use the resources of that society. If they still refuse to produce (whcih is unlikely given that they&#39;re now not getting food / water / electricity /etc...) then society will get together and collectively decide on a solution to this rather bizarre occurance. They&#39;ll probably decide on replacement workers, but only after a decmoractic decision and a clear dilineation of who should do it and why. But in all likelyhood the original workers would have tired of, you know, not eating by now and will be ready to return to work, or at least to explain their actions.


So again, it&#39;s not that you have control over the resources. The people who make the resources have control over their labor, and thus control as to whether or not these things even get made.

But as has already been addresed, they have very little control over where their products are going. First of all, they have no way of knowing what the factories their shipping to will actually be making&#33; Since everyone can go in and out making what they will, those resources aren&#39;t actually going to any specific production effort. Secondly, aren&#39;t resources supposed to be distributed "Equally"? If the producers are individually deciding distribution, then that isn&#39;t even close to equal. It&#39;s the "buddy" effect and the "personal prejeduce effect" and the "seemed like a good guy" effect. Relying on each individual producer to be able to individually decide where his product should individually go is completely disorganized. Yeah, there can be discussion and Internet BBoards, but neither of these can be enforceable under your plan. That means that while discussion is possible it probably won&#39;t happen for many since if they&#39;re really working in 20 or 30 different areas, you don&#39;t have time to check 20 or 30 bulletin boards everyday. Furthermore if you disagree with the collective decision of the other producers in the field, you can just turn off your screen and distribute to whomever the fuck you feel like. So, yes, organization is theoretically possible, but not functionally probable because it requires an astounding degree of self-motivation and selfless devotion to concentrate and participate on discussions in the dozens of different fields in which one&#39;s working.

Within division of labour, however, things are much simpler and much more reasonable. If people only have one industry to focus on, they can easily think about that industry, certainly more easily than focusing on 30 of them&#33; Furthermore, if industrial divisions are formal and concrete, then collective democratic decisions are binding across the entire field and not merely suggestions to be followed or not at ones leisure.

Furthermore, producers being able to control where their labour goes and what it goes into making, requires that someone be monitoring the factories and individaul who revieve those goods to make sure that they are actually producing what they are supposed to be. Under division or labour, that&#39;s easy to assure. All the factories and individuals within an industry are clearly dilineated and formally organized. Within your plan, however, there is absolutely no way to monitor.


Rational discussion is completely 100% feasible amongst insulin workers for you. But the minute it extends beyond them it becomes wholely infeasible. Why shouldn&#39;t diabetes patients have a say? Why shouldn&#39;t the doctors who prescribe it? Why shouldn&#39;t the guy at the shoe factory who requires the food produced by the population of farmers who require insulin?

In other words, everyone.

The entire community voting on every issue of production and distribution is simply not feasable. I know you say you want it to be "informal" collective discussion, but that defeats the point. The reason why formal voting works, be it the entire community, or across a given industry, is because when decisions are presented formally people have to confront the issue head on and have to listen to opposing ideas and consider them. When they are faced with the same decision in life outside of an institutinal construct, they simply don&#39;t have the focus or exposure to genuinely consider all of the available options. Furthermore, they may not even consider a relevent issue at all&#33; Expecting that the entire community can informally deal with relevent issues when they don&#39;t have the time to deal with it formally.

"Rational discussion" works for me when it is formal, when it is arranged and outright and set and democractically decided. The reason why that is possible in small expert groups working in the same field and faced with the same problems is obvious. The all have roughly the same basic knowledge and they are all aware of the specific problems and possible solutions. On the other hand, across an entire society in which most people don&#39;t know the relevent problems or have any experience in the field in question.... "Rational discussion" is much tougher and much more complex. Worse, while division of labour means that workers only have one industry and one set of problems on which to have "Rational discussion", your paradigm, in which everyone is working in numerous diverse fields, requires that each worker engage in literally dozens of seperate unconnected discussions, requiring a complete dividing of attention and a lack of any real focus on any of those discussions individually.


You don&#39;t need to have division of labor for someone to determine that insulin is worthless. Someone who knows how to test the quality of insulin can determine such a thing, whether division of labor exists or not.

But who&#39;s going to be doing that testing? I mean, testing insulin isn&#39;t as simply as shaking it and seeing what colour it turns. Every doctor can&#39;t test every vial of insulin and since most insulin is self-injected anyways, all diabatics certainly don&#39;t have the training or knowledge to test every vial. So how&#39;s it going to work? Based on trust I suppose... that is if it&#39;s known that Feddy makes good insulin than everyone get&#39;s their insulin from Freddy. But, of course, it&#39;s unrealistic for a single person to be making insulin since the resources / tools are too expensive and rare. It is much more likely and certainly more plausable that it be a factory that&#39;s trusted for making insulin. Maybe everyone knows that Chemical Lab 222b is a good supplier. Alright then, but under your plan anyone can go into that Lab and start making insulin along with everyone else, so the testing would have to be factory level. Not that that isn&#39;t a good idea anyways, as it&#39;s important to know that the insulin you&#39;re shipping is usable. So, some guy, or group of people, will sit at the end of the Lab and ensure that all the insulin (and everything else being made in that Lab, of course) is quality. Now, here&#39;s where it gets interesting...

If Bobby goes into that Chemical Lab every day and makes insulin which the tester perpetually finds to be useless, what does he do? I suppose the first thing he does is talk to Bobby and tell him that what he&#39;s doing it wasting resources and not helping and would he like some training? Bobby says "NO&#33; I&#39;m making insulin as the good lord hath commanded me in minst dreams&#33; Praise the Lord&#33;" hmm...so he&#39;s nuts, alright... what do we do? Do we let him continue to use the machines in that plant, to waste resources, time, materials all to feed his delusion? Or do we restrict him from using the Chimical Lab? Do we do the only reasonable thing and say that crazy people should not be using valuable chemical lalb when there is genuine need for its products. It makes sense ...but, now you&#39;ve taken the first step. Because if you say that crazy people shouldn&#39;t use the means of production becasue they don&#39;t know that they&#39;re doing, it&#39;s a very small step to say that no one should use the mans of production if they don&#39;t know what they&#39;re doing; maybe they should be trained first. Maybe someone should check and ensure that they&#39;ve been properly trained. Maybe only real chemical workers should use the chemical machines...

Wow... we&#39;re getting really close now.... we&#39;re about an inch from division of labour at this point and it was all through small logical reasonable, unavoidable steps. Because, really, what is the alternative? Letting Bobby waste the materials and time of the society? Uphold some nebulous principle of "equal access" at the expense of people&#39;s lives?


The fact, however, is, that it need not happen under EITHER system. What SHOULD happen, and what I believe WILL happen, is that the doctors will contact the existing workers who produce insulin and express their concern with the quality of the insulin being produced, and that the insulin workers will take this into account and make the necessy changes to produce a more quality yeild. It&#39;s that rational discussion stuff you were talking about before, which is ok between insulin workers for you, but the minute a doctor steps in and tries to make a change, the insulin workers can just kinda tell him to "fuck off." I don&#39;t find them telling the doctor to fuck off acceptable.

It&#39;s not about the Chemical Workers saying "fuck off". If the doctor tells them that their insulin isn&#39;t working, of course they&#39;ll listen. It&#39;s just that the doctor has to go through the workers and can&#39;t go into their factory and start making insulin himself. There is no reason, under my proposed system, the the Chemical Workers would ignore the oppinions of the doctors, after all they are producing for use&#33; So the workers will get together and dicuss what to do. Under your plan, however, any such decision would not be binding and a group of insulin workers can simply go on doing what they were doing, furthermore another group of people could suddenly come in and start making inferior insulin, since everyone has access to the means. Now, are either of these lijely to occur, maybe not, but the point is that when you eliminate the formal structure of Chemical Workers you elminate the conduit by which the doctor can communitcate to all insulin makers. This means that while he may able to speak to the specific person or people who made the exact batch of insulin he&#39;s concerned about, there is no way to ensure that his concerns / advice go any further than those people. Since all organization is informal and people are participation in countless occupations, again, their focus is not on any of these fields and hence will not be regularly aware of the recent developments in all of those fields. They certainly won&#39;t have the concentration or focus that they would if that field was their only primary occpation and their only functional responsibility. Moreso, even if some diverse groups of insulin makers do hear of this doctor&#39;s advice, they may assume that it doesn&#39;t apply to them or may decide that he simply doesn&#39;t know what he&#39;s talking about.

It&#39;s your plan which is preventing the doctor from having a say, by diffusing responsibility and making it impossible for the doctor to genuinely communicate with the entire industy in any meaninfull sense. Division of labour assures that there is a formal superstructure so that there is an organizational construct, assures that there is formal agreement across the board; assures that there is sufficient attention by each worker for those agreements to by understood and carried out; and assures that any change is carrid out efficiently and properly.


Accountability:


Well I would hope when you realize they are inflicting pain you would stop allowing them to help you.

Well, I was thinking that the patient in question was anesthasized, but point taken.


For all I care Joe Schmoe can go down to the OR and dance on the table with a scapal. Or stick an oxygen mask on himself and breath the fresh air.

Really? It doesn&#39;t bother you that he&#39;s wasting limited resources that could be used to save lives in that hospital?&#33;? Strange, &#39;cause it really bothers me.

Here&#39;s yet another example of how your plan fails to understand that resources in society are limited and Joe Schmoe dancing on tables, using an oxygen tank,injecting himself with demerol, and randomly defibrolating things... wastes those resources&#33; Code blue, code blue, where&#39;s the Crash Cart?&#33;? Oh... um.. right.. Joe&#39;s got in six, he&#39;s defibrolating himself for kicks... Maybe people who don&#39;t know what they&#39;re doing and don&#39;t have a valid reason for being there should not be allowed to use (and quite possible break) valuable equipment needed to save lives.


Hopefully him and the patient, whatever unfortunate soul that might be.

And how can a patient possibly know if the surgeon knows what he&#39;s doing? If this is his first heart surgery, how does he know if a particular cardiologist is at all skilled or at all experienced? He trusts the other doctors to check those things. So, this is really a meaningless suggestiongf 99% of the time, and, again, you&#39;re basically suggesting that it be up to the Doctors / Nurses to check his qualifications / experiences ...but in an informal sort of way.


Again, you don&#39;t have to simply accept the first guy that comes along and says "I&#39;m gonna take care of you&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;" Nor would I suspect that nurses and doctors who work within the hospital wouldn&#39;t look at this person&#39;s past experience, etc, their education...

Until you can explain to me how you stop these things from occuring under any other system, I don&#39;t see why I need to explain how they stop under mine.

The point isn&#39;t that your plan fails to stop these things from occuring, it&#39;s that it would lead to more of them happening. You&#39;re elminating any oversight and opening the "means of production" to literally everyone. This not only means the wasting of resources that we&#39;ve covered Ad Nauseum, but it also means a much harder time in knowing who can and who can&#39;t perform surgeries, who does and who doesn&#39;t know what they&#39;re doing. I guess, you&#39;re saying that when you&#39;re GP or specialist tells you that you need surgery, he&#39;ll advise a surgeon that he knows. But alot of the time there simply isn&#39;t the time for that. In an emergency, on a ward, durring triage, there often isn&#39;t time to specifically check each apparent "surgeon"&#39;s qualification to ensure that he knows what he&#39;s doing. You have to know that you can trust the doctors in a hospital to actually be doctors. Now, this can easily done in any sane system by some identification or the like, but no such thing is possible in a diffused system such as yours.

Yes, under any system things can be faked and if someone is genuinely focused and detemined enough to pretend to be a doctor, under pretty much any system they&#39;ll find a way to do it, but the point is that your system makes it perversely easy. You want to run it all through word of mouth and recommendations, in an emerency everyone will have to know everyone else and no one can really trust that an outsider knows what they&#39;re doing. A formal system such as that which I&#39;m proposing allows for trust becasue there is a superconstructive organization which accredits and authorizes. Every doctor knows that if someone bears the authority of the Union of Doctors, or whatever, they are an actual doctor and they can reasonably trust them. They don&#39;y have to personally know them or have "word of mouth" recommendation, it&#39;s all taken care of for them.

You yourself gave the example of how doctors travel from hospital to hospital, often to places where no one knows them. Now, imagine, under your system, what would have happened had you been comotose or otherwise unable to identify the doctor. How would the staff there know that he was an actual doctor? As it was they quickly looked him up on the AMA and checked his credentials, but under your paradigm there would be no such organization. So the nurses / doctors would not have been able to quickly check him out as he without an organization, there can be no issued identification card or document, and so it would be a lengthy process to confirm that he has the credentials / experience he claimed, or even that he was who he claimed. So they probably wouldn&#39;t have allowed him to perform on you, since they didn&#39;t have your permission Per Se, they didn&#39;t know him personally, they couldn&#39;t confirm his credentials, and, in your words, "patients are not means of production" and hence he had no implicit right to perform surgery.

So let me ask you your own question, "Imagine all the people at the hospital said "No, we won&#39;t allow him to use the OR to operate on you&#33;&#33;&#33;", because that is exactly what would happen under your plan. Without an organization that accredits doctors and of which all doctors must be a member, no hopsital can trust that someone is a doctor without an extensive backround check. And in medicine, there simply isn&#39;t time.


...and in the end:

Once again, neither of us really knows what a communist society will be like, or even if either of us will be around to see one. We&#39;re both genuinely trying to formulate what we think will be the best way to arrange such a society. You&#39;ve called my plan "archaic", I&#39;ve called your&#39;s "naive".

I honestly feel that you&#39;ve been so repulsed by capitalism that you&#39;re trying to throw out everything even associated with it. Division of labour exists within capitalism... so it&#39;s gotta go&#33;&#33; You don&#39;t want any control, and I suppose I can respect that, but, in the end, control is needed. "Informal" democracy isn&#39;t democracy and "informal" control isn&#39;t control, it&#39;s chaos. Your plan relies on superhuman dedication, unreasonable selflessness, and the abolition of scarcity. And as much as I wish all three could come to pass, none of them will happen within the lifetime of our species.

It&#39;s too bad.


First off... yeah, fuck you.

:wub:

[NovelGentry]

So everyone has equal rights to the raw materials as well at the means of production?

I suppose you promote controlling land too now?


If they are to be distrubted "equally" then that means that I get just as much as Sally gets just as much as John.

Equal distribution should be thought of in the same context of equal access to means of production. Again, you cannot force someone to labor for you. You cannot force someone to cut down treets and ship them to you.


Or maybe you meant institutionaly equally. Meaning that each factory recieves an equal amount, but anyone can go into that factory and use those materials.

No.

I don&#39;t see factories as getting and using those materials. I see people as getting and using those materials. The factory doesn&#39;t get anything, it does not call up and order it&#39;s raw materials. If you are making a product, and you need raw materials you contact the people who are making raw materials and ask if they can send some your way. If there answer is no, you have a right to go acquire those materials on your own. Get it? But as usual, I don&#39;t see why they would say no.


Or maybe you meant that they&#39;d be inudstrially equal meaning that each industry would recieve an equal amount.

No, unless you consider industries to be people and people to be industries, which apparently you do.

Like I said, you can&#39;t understand what I&#39;m talking about while maintaining the idiocy behind division of labor. People are not factories, nor are people industries... people are people.


Or maybe you meant that they&#39;d be productively equal meaning that each product type would recieve an equal amount.

No. No. No.


Either way, I think its fair to derive that you want equal distribution, so let&#39;s explore that.

That is fair. Afterall, that is what I said, but I&#39;m not sure you&#39;re in any position to explore that since you seemed pretty confused at it in general.


It simply means that he&#39;s using resources.

No. If he&#39;s using them, THEN he is using them. Having access to them does not automatically imply he&#39;s using them. I have access to my car... I am not using it right now.


Now, under your plan, the distribution of produced materials would be up to all the people that the product in question affected, so need would first be gauged and production informally arranged so as to roughly fill those requirements.

Decisions are up to who&#39;s labor and lives they would affect. There would be no need to guage it, nor would we have to arrange production. These things would already be in play from socialism. Furthermore, we would already have a large amount of information pertaining to how much in consumed, normal rates of produciton, etc.


After society analyzed what it needed and how that related to "precise metal widgest", it determined that a certain amount of metal would be required for this task.

In the event that a new necessity arises, it is determined by those who will be making the product. I need precise metal widgets for a machine I&#39;m building. I would talk to people who can make precise metal widgets, presumably I would call up a metal shop. I need, 1,000 metal widgets of a specific size. The people at the metal shop can determine how much metal is needed for these widgets exactly, and what form it should come in... etc. If they do not wish to make my metal widgets, I am free to make my own metal widgets.

But I can always have a rational discussion with them. And they in turn have rational discussion with those providing the metal, or we all have a rational discussion together.

You presume that this means the metal workers have control anyway, but again, I can make my own metal widgets. Furthermore, it is not that the metal workers have control over whether or not metal widgets are made, they have control over whether or not they will make them. Again, everyone has control over their own labor power. If 30 of them get together and decide to make these metal widgets while 10 don&#39;t think it&#39;s necessary, those 10 can do something else in the mean time.


Now, Since onyl a certain amount of metals was shipped to this factory by the metal workers, that amount is all there is to work with.

Well I would hope it&#39;s not all there is to work with.. I would hope that they request metal as the find out they have more things to do. More, they&#39;d request different kinds of metals that come in different forms i.e. pellets to be melted and remolded, sheets, bricks, whatever -- copper, brass, iron/steel... etc.

It&#39;s not that difficult to conceive of, in fact, this is how modern society works already. They might keep a certain surplus there for whatever reasons, but it&#39;s probably not necessary.


The rest of the metal is undoubtably being shipped to other factories and like producers who need it for making houses, and computers, and life-saving machines, etc...

Or some is left in surplus at the refineries... I&#39;m not sure, this isn&#39;t the type of business I&#39;m in.


So... the workers are busy working in the factory, cranking out "metal widgets" left and right, when John comes in to make himself some undetermined product. It really doesn&#39;t matter what so long as it isn&#39;t usable "precise metal widgets". Maybe he&#39;s trying to make widgets, but isn&#39;t any good; maybe he&#39;s trying to make little metal statues of Buddha, it doesn&#39;t matter. The point is that resources intended for the production of, clearly needed, metal widgets, are now going to John&#39;s pet project.

Well let&#39;s assume for a minute that John has a brain, as many humans do. Apparently John isn&#39;t very good at making precise metal widgets, furthermore, he&#39;s not part of the original people I talked to who are providing my precise metal widgets, so whatever John decides to produce, whether it is an imprecise metal widget or a statue of Buddha is presumably something he is producing for himself or someone else who asked him to do so -- or maybe he&#39;s just gonna make it and give it to someone as a gift or something. I&#39;m not really sure, but I&#39;m guessing I could ASK HIM.

Certainly John can speak with the people already there making the precise metal widgets for my machine and ask them whether or not he can use the metal they are, and further questions like whether or not someone is currently using the drill. Certainly if no one was using the drill he could use it, and if someone was he could certainly wait in line, or maybe use another available drill.


You see the problem isn&#39;t that people are "forced" to use John&#39;s products, of course they aren&#39;t, but they are forced to reorganize production to deal with the fact that their previously arranged distribution plan is no longer functional since John decided that he really needed to make himself some metal products...

No, I don&#39;t see that problem occuring.


I don&#39;t know, I suppose it matters how much he&#39;s working, and how much he&#39;s using, but the real problem is that John wouldn&#39;t be alone.

Right, cause no one has brains. Not only this, but people at the distribution centers would take 30 turkeys home and leave eveyrone else with none&#33; And people would eat someone elses dinner before they had a chance&#33; And you would barge into any house you wanted and sleep on someone&#39;s bed&#33; And fill up a 500 gallon drum truck with maple syrup&#33;


If everyone has equal rights to all means of production, then there will be many people doing what John is doing.

Hopefully, then no one else has to build statues of Buddha.


You have no way to assure that resources go to where they&#39;re needed before anywhere else.

I have the same exact assurance you do. That people can rationally discuss -- but instead of electing necessity or primary occupations I don&#39;t think people will need to put it to a vote. Thus I don&#39;t think there will need to be any enforcable nature to either. I think if there is a society filled with "many people like John" that they will be just as prone to creating such problems by not electing the proper necessities and not creating the necessary primary occupations under your system.

Again, if you cannot ensure that people are rational individuals, you cannot assure they will vote rationally, and thus you cannot assure that the social outcome of such voting will be rational. But you ignore this. Under your system and you believe because some guy knows how to run a drill or a press that he is rational enough to decide what he should be drilling and pressing (if anything), and the rest of society could not possibly conceive of these things without his field expertise.

I happen to think most of society won&#39;t be as self-indulgent and as stupid as John though.


My argument is not that John should be prevented from making his little metal Buddha statues, it&#39;s just that he shouldn&#39;t be permitted to do so unless all essential metal production has been taken care of.

Your argument is that he shouldn&#39;t be permitted to do so unless the metal workers tell him he can. You simply assume, with no assurance, just like I assume, with no assurance, that they will allow this.


That is, if all the needed uses that society has dilineated have already recieved their metal and they have adequate production, then the surplus should absolutely be usable by the general public, but someone has to make that judgement.

I know who can do it. A CEO&#33;


Someone has to gauge when needed production is complete and, equally important, be able to prevent others from using the machines in question when it isnt.

No one has to guage it. It is not a subjective thing. If you need 1,000 precise metal widgets, and 1,000 precise metal widgets have been made, the need is fulfilled. Again, under what I propose, all such information will be clear, open, and public. It is not a very difficult thing to understand, simple addition and subtraction and comparing numbers.


Our friend Robinson Crusoe learns this by experience, and having saved a watch, ledger, ink and pen from the shipwreck, he soon begins, like a good Englishman, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a catalogue of the various objects he possesses, of the various operations necessary for their production, and finally, of the labour-time that specific quantities of these products have on average cost him. All the relations between Robinson and these objects that form his self-created wealth are here so simple and transparent that even Mr Sedley Taylor could understand them."

EVEN MR. SEDLEY TAYLOR CAN UNDERSTAND THEM&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33; EVEN HIM&#33;&#33;&#33;


It matters, again, becasue his production of insulin prevents people who do know what they&#39;re doing from making inulin.

But the means of production are far more advanced than that, and advancing ever still. Before power drills one would hand drill such a metal widget for quite possibly hours, no? Surely this took time and it consumed that drill for all this extended period of time. My overwhelming point, is again, that the material progression and technological advancements make division of labor possible to disappear. And as I said before, I believe said control will disappear as division of labor disappears... as a consequence so to speak, because without division of labor there is no way to properly judge where this control comes from, other than society as a whole.

Like I said, your system very well might work. It even has some things in common with what I propose for a mid-term socialist society. I simply cannot consider it to be communist.

So do I think your system is wrong? No. Do I think it&#39;s incapable of working? Hardly. I just don&#39;t consider it communism; for reasons already stated.


but it is his production of his homemade insulin which effects you, especially if you are in need of life-saving medication which was not able to be produced because the nescessary resources were being used by some nutjob to make a useless vat of unsuable insulin.

Well I don&#39;t think they would be. I indulged your example for the sake of argument, not because I thought some nutjob would be making a useless vat of unusable insulin. But let&#39;s be quite clear... this is not something you really have control over either. Well, maybe with insulin -- but I&#39;m not sure what goes into making that. What happens if some nut sets a forest on fire and the necessary lumber is not available? What if a lumber worker sets the lumber yard on fire? What if he "steals from his job"?

You said everyone works in a primary occupation. So everyone is in a position to control some necessity (as that is what defines a primary occupation). So why can&#39;t someone so irrational reak just as much havoc? (this is not rhetorical, I want answers to these questions). Why can&#39;t a farmer think he&#39;s doing the right thing trying to fix a plow and break it even more? Why can&#39;t accidents happen? Why can&#39;t a doctor misdiagnose, or worse, mistreat? And MOST importantly, why can&#39;t metal workers refuse to make the widgets I need?


Now this is always a problem in production, of course, but when we&#39;re dealing with nonessentials, it&#39;s just an inconvienience: yeah, the fact that someone had to make 500 Buddha statues means that you can&#39;t complete your boat this month, but it&#39;s not a major crisis.


Everyone&#39;s oppinion of what is needed is different. -- Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

So how far does your control go? Who determines that the 500 Buddha statues are more important than the boat? Or that the boat is more important than the 500 Buddha statues. Everything beyond what is needed becomes "open for public use." So who determines that when this occurs, the 500 Buddha statues are more important than the boat?


On the other hand, if someone producing vats of "insulin" prevents you from getting the insluin you need to live, well that&#39;s a crisis&#33;

Again, I know nothing about producing insulin, but I&#39;m imagining if it&#39;s feasible for a single person to produce vats of useless insulin, a fairly minimal amount of time would be needed for 20 workers to produce the necessary vats of usable insulin.

This is something inherent in the average social hour of labor. Which is indeed the underlying principle (in my belief) for what makes communist (and socialist) economics possible. But your point raises other questions. If the insulin he is producing is useless, why is he even using the resources/means to produce insulin? Why not just fill vats with water and label it insulin? Why does he continue producing vats of useless insulin? Why can&#39;t the people producing the necessary and usable insulin say, "hey man, this insulin you&#39;re making is no good, let me show you how it&#39;s done." And then he could produce usable insulin&#33; Or why don&#39;t they say, "If you want to make some inuslin, join us, we will all have to work a bit less if we have more people to spread the production across."

I don&#39;t understand why you think John just stands there with his tongue hanging out, refusing to listen to anyone, and just pumping out pseudo-insulin. I don&#39;t understand why John didn&#39;t join the others already making insulin to begin with.


Again, it all comes down to priorities. Your plan really doesn&#39;t have any&#33;

Well no, it does.... I just don&#39;t presume they need to be elected. Producing insulin means that people with diabetes can continue producing what they produce, and what they produce can continue allowing others to produce what they produce, and so on and so on. This is what I meant when I said that need is objective, and it regulates itself. Even still, one cannot prioritize one thing over another. Because it is the social total which must be kept in mind. Food is all well and good, but if the people producing food need tractors to produce it, so are tractors. If some of the people producing food and tractors need insulin to survive, that&#39;s important too. As is medical care to make sure they don&#39;t all just get sick and die or injure themselves and never get help.

If my plan doesn&#39;t have priorities amongst need it is because priorites do not exist amongst need -- that&#39;s what makes it need. It cannot be prioritized, if you do not fulfill it, you do not move on. But this is the whole Marxist concept of need, historical materialism, and why the means of production exists to begin with. The means of production exists so that we can produce what we need. Yes, it also exists to produce what we want, or simple objective luxuries, but it is first and foremost what ensures society lives to see another day.

You seem to remove material reality from this equation and pretend it really is up to people, when it&#39;s not. We are ALL subjects to material oppression -- and the means of production, society, and even the previous divisions of labor are all things that deal with overcoming material oppression.

If communism is man&#39;s return to his true nature, then it should no doubt be that material reality should be what deems our continual advancement to history.


But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life. -- Karl Marx

Because, as usual, I don&#39;t care to type a whole lot more, I&#39;d like to really summarize this, and then I am certainly out of this conversation -- no matter what quote about "pulling me back" you present. But I think you are unclear about some things under my system, as well as I may be unclear about yours. So let&#39;s compare and contrast for a minute.

Under my system I propose that the division of labor is not upheld. This is to say there is no "primary occupation" or any other such establishment that separates workers by trade or by function. Thus, to clarify the definition of laborers from here on in, your laborers will be considered those who explicity hold this function and this trade as their primary occupation, while my laborers are quite simply anyone who happens to be working in that field at the time (whether it be their "primary occupation" or not -- this includes volunteer workers).

We both agree laborers (with our own respective definitions) should control method and function of production. That is to say, we both believe through discussion or democracy that they decide how they are going to go about producing what is necessary.

We both agree there needs to be bookkeeping -- and I can only presume yours would be so public as mine. But where yours is kept solely for the laborers to determine their output, production time, necessary resources, etc, mine is for the whole of society to be able to see such things, determine them, and act on them if need be.

Under both these it is feasible to say that we have avoided the pitfalls and vagueness of Faurian economics, common social democratic economics, and state capitalism. Agreed?

The fundamental economic organization and coordination, under both systems, is effectively the same, with rational discussion, democracy, and bookkeeping.

Our split, however, comes when we see your reasoning behind maintaining division of labor.

You place control of the means of production, and even the resources produced, in the hands of the respective trades. That is, steel workers determine who can a) be a steel worker b) access the means of refining and producing steel products c) use the iron ore which has been handed off to them by the iron workers.

I place control of the means of production, in no ones hands. The resources produced, indirectly, in the hands of those that produced them. I say indirectly only because as I have said before, their control is placed in whether or not they produce the resources.

These are the certainties of control placed, which you have founded in the division of labor, and which I have effectively abolished.

On the issue of consumption:

Under your system those who fulfill specific primary occupations (to which you say is everyone), are capable of acquiring the products of society. You have yet to really state whether or not they are free to acquire as much as they like, or whether or not they are limited, and if they are limited, how will this be determined?

Under my system, all people are capable of acquiring the products of society.

Does this all sound about right?

There is a paper that I would like you to read... I&#39;d like everyone to read it. Because I think you&#39;ll find much of the ideas are "on par" with yours. Although there are certain aspects you don&#39;t seem to have, and certainly certain aspects they do have, which you do not. I&#39;ve linked this many times on this site before, and it&#39;s a paper I respect far more than any other socialist/communist economic work that has really been presented before. It is not highly detailed, but more detailed than a lot of other works:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6579/index.htm

What I want you to keep in mind, while reading this though is a particular point/quote from the work itself which goes as follows:


In the case of the system of freely associating producers, it functions so as to bring to life and to promote those very forces through which it itself as the function of rule progressively loses power, in order finally to make itself superfluous; workers&#39; rule works so as to bring about its own demise at the earliest possible historical moment.

What I propose to you, and what the paper is proposing, at least I believe, with this quote, is that the fundamental principles of communist production and distribution are founded in socialism, and although the paper presents a number of formalities, including a means to determine how much one can consume (effectively a form of currency), the end result of communism occurs ONLY when these formalities have become superfluous.

[redstar2000]

May I say that this was one of the best threads ever in the Theory forum...with well-developed arguments articulated by both parties to the controversy.

I think I could live with the arrangements proposed by Lysergic Acid Diethylamide; his system would work and work well. It or something very much like it might well be what things would look like in the early post-revolutionary decades...and perhaps even longer.

But I also think it would be much better if NovelGentry turns out to be right...and we can finally escape the bounds of the division of labor.

I&#39;m not convinced that it&#39;s really possible, but I hope it is.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[NovelGentry]

May I say that this was one of the best threads ever in the Theory forum...with well-developed arguments articulated by both parties to the controversy.

I think I could live with the arrangements proposed by Lysergic Acid Diethylamide; his system would work and work well. It or something very much like it might well be what things would look like in the early post-revolutionary decades...and perhaps even longer.

But I also think it would be much better if NovelGentry turns out to be right...and we can finally escape the bounds of the division of labor.

I&#39;m not convinced that it&#39;s really possible, but I hope it is.

user posted image


Cheers. Out of curiosity, have you read the link I posted? The "Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution"?

Historically speaking I&#39;m not really sure the role the original author played. I&#39;m really a bit confused on the overall origins and why such a work has never gotten more attention. Maybe much of it has been refuted before, maybe it&#39;s just not detailed enough to be refuted.

But I&#39;d be greatly interested in hearing what you have to say about it.

[LSD]

Because, as usual, I don&#39;t care to type a whole lot more, I&#39;d like to really summarize this, and then I am certainly out of this conversation -- no matter what quote about "pulling me back" you present.

Yeah, I think I&#39;ll leave it here too.

We&#39;ve both presented our arguments and I don&#39;t think we&#39;re going to convince one another. Still, it was certainly one the most fascinating discussions I&#39;ve been involved with, and undoubtably the most I have ever written about division of labour in my entire life&#33; :lol:


But I also think it would be much better if NovelGentry turns out to be right...and we can finally escape the bounds of the division of labor.

Believe me, so do I.

As I&#39;ve said several times in this thread, I wish his plan were possible. Unfortunately, I fear that any like model would inevtiably degenarate into something very similar to what I outlines anyways.

But I don&#39;t know. As always, any discussion on the future organization of a hypothetical society is just that, hypothetical, and the most likely possibility is that the way society will ultimately arrange itself is something that none of us have yet thought of.