Arguement against communist economic planning

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Che, respectfully, it makes no sense. You cannot have millions of town meetings and worker councils across the nation all sitting around brainstorming a couple hours one night a weeks and deciding all the production decisions required to make shovels, cares, aircraft, shoes, computers, TVs, furniture, homes, watches, clothing, office equipment, tractors, VCRs, books, booze, and on and on and on. There has to be some mechanism for determining the overall demand for goods and services and some mechanism for determining how to supply it. These decisions cannot possible be made in millions of little town hall meetings accross the country. They do not have the information to coordinate this effort. How many tons of steel do we need? How many barrell of oil must be imported? How may cows are required? Pulp? Corn? How much effort is needed for new plant and equipment? How much effort for research? And on and on and on and on. Small town meetings cannot possible address this questions in any effective, much less efficient manner. You must have some mechanism for determining demand and a mechanism for a national system of how to supply it.

This was a rebuttal to an arguement I made against a capitalist in another forum which explained that under a communist society, worker councils and town meetings and elected planners would mathematically determine supply and demand for all. He has a strong arguement. How would all these little things be done and nationally. It would take a year to determine everything.

Got any arguements against him?

BTW my username is Che on that forum

[JKP]

http://infoshop.org/faq/secI4.html#seci45

http://www.redstar2000papers.com/theory.ph...rt_from=&ucat=& (http://www.redstar2000papers.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1083202823&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

[Connolly]

Well, a possible system for deciding "whats to be produced" could be computerised.

An electronic organisational system thats "centralised to an extent".

For example, in 'Superquinn', which is an Irish supermarket chain, things are ordered into stock by means of a computer system.

When something is sold and scanned through a computer, the particular supermarket sends an order to the distributer to re-stock.

This is type of control is developing fast under the capitalist system.

I cannot see why things cannot be allocated and organised based on an automated computer network.

shop "sells" something, sends a signal to distributer, distributer sends signal to manufacturer and so on................Things are then organised based on whats needed.

To avoid production delay, stock might be existant in the shop. But once stock drops below a certain level - the signal is sent out.

A sort of "closed loop" system of production, for which the ground work is being set as we speak.