Anarchist economy

[Renegade420]

ok bothers i have a question. If the ideas of Anarchy are seemingly utter chaos with no one in control, how would the econmy work? Would the whole country have to go back to hunting for animals, planting crops and wearing loin cloths? im not trying to put down the theory of Anarchism in any way, i am just vary interested in how the ideas would work before calling myself an anarchist. All idea and thoughts would be appreciated.

[YSR]

Yet your avatar is an anarchy sign already.

Look into Proudhon's Mutualism, as well as the theories of Anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism. There should be some stickied threads around here that explain anarchist economics.

[which doctor]

Gift Economy- This should give you a clue about Anarchist Economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy)

;)

[JKP]

How would the economic structure look like?
http://infoshop.org/faq/secI3.html

How would the economy function?
http://infoshop.org/faq/secI4.html

[Renegade420]

ok so the people living in anarchy, if wanting to have a buisness or a somwhat corporation, would have to work togeather with no foreman or suporvisors or bosses?
oh, and about my avatar, i like the idea of freedom in anarchy, im still banging out my thoughts of whether im an anarchist or fully believe in the idea

[Janus]

If the ideas of Anarchy are seemingly utter chaos with no one in control
Anarchy isn't about utter chaos, that is just lies spread by the ruling classes.

Check out Morpheus's site for info. about anarchism and anarchist economics
Question Everything (http://question-everything.mahost.org/)

[Renegade420]

ok well what about currency? would money just fly out the window? if there is no one saying how much somthing is worth then how would there be money?

[OneBrickOneVoice]

ok bothers i have a question. If the ideas of Anarchy are seemingly utter chaos with no one in control, how would the econmy work? Would the whole country have to go back to hunting for animals, planting crops and wearing loin cloths? im not trying to put down the theory of Anarchism in any way, i am just vary interested in how the ideas would work before calling myself an anarchist. All idea and thoughts would be appreciated.


:lol: Yes you got it right pretty much.

BTW we're not 'bothers' are we?

2BTW expect Nachie to pop up soon


ok well what about currency? would money just fly out the window? if there is no one saying how much somthing is worth then how would there be money?

In communist ideologies, there would be no money everything would be pooled in a community warehouse and distributed based on need eventually. However this would suffer massive corruption during the first and second and perhaps third generation of communism because there would be organized gangs that form and take everything and give it out in exchange for different tasks mob-style.

So Labor Time Vouchers, or LTVs would be needed. are basically a measurement of how hard one works at his or her job. It is an account on a computer which you log into when you start working and log out of when you stop. LTVs can be determined by the amount of stress and effort put into your job. The amount and quality of the product you produce. Or the successful completion of a hard task. When you are finished working, you log out and print the LTVs which you will then save up and use to by non-necessities such as electronics and furniture. What is the point of LTVs? Simple to provide a motive and incentive for man to work during the time he is still intoxicated by the evils of capitalism.

[Political_Game_XIII]

the real problem with Anarchy isn't how it would work but more the fact that human nature is the major factor in perventing it form working. it's human nature to compete and win (Darwinism) "only the stong survie" and these primitive instincts need to be over come long before anyone can call themselves an Anarchist.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 12:42 AM
the real problem with Anarchy isn't how it would work but more the fact that human nature is the major factor in perventing it form working. it's human nature to compete and win (Darwinism) "only the stong survie" and these primitive instincts need to be over come long before anyone can call themselves an Anarchist.
Human nature does not exist. There is not a shred of scientific proof for it.


In communist ideologies, there would be no money everything would be pooled in a community warehouse and distributed based on need eventually. However this would suffer massive corruption during the first and second and perhaps third generation of communism because there would be organized gangs that form and take everything and give it out in exchange for different tasks mob-style.

What are you talking about? Organized gangs? Whatever criminal activity takes place will be suppressed by the workers militia.

[Political_Game_XIII]

"Human nature is the fundamental nature and substance of humans, as well as the range of human behavior that is believed to be invariant over long periods of time and across very different cultural contexts. The existence of a human nature has been criticized by thinkers such as Hegel, Marx Nietzsche, Structuralism and postmodern theory. Recently the biologist E. O. Wilson formulated a scientific defintion."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature

[Leo]

One of the most serious attempts to create an anarchist economic theory is being made by Michael Albert and is called Parecon. The adress to his site is: http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm. He, and other mostly anarchist thinkers of the modern era are usually writing at that site. I think I also have the book itself in my computer so if anyone is interested in reading, I'd be happy to send it.

Here's a brief(!) introduction however:

Socialism as it was Always Meant to Be

by Michael Albert & Robin Hahnel

As the twentieth century draws to a close, what have we learned about how we should manage our economic affairs? What should we do if we had the opportunity to start again?

We could hold a lottery, or perhaps have a brawl to decide who owns what productive resources. The unfortunate losers would have to hire themselves out to work for the more fortunate winners, and the goods the losers produced could then be “freely” exchanged by their owners — the people who didn’t produce them. Of course this is the capitalist “solution” to the “economic problem” which has been spreading its sway for roughly three centuries.cartoon by Matt Wuerker Based on that experience we can predict, with great confidence, that private enterprise market economies in a “second coming” would generate inequality and alienation just as they have the first time around. The only difference would be that “born again” capitalism would surely kill us all since it would begin with “initial conditions” — 5 billion people, modern industrial technology, and an already damaged ecosystem — that would do in mother earth in fairly short order. God has given capitalism the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time!

Alternatively, we could make the best educated, or perhaps most ruthless among us responsible for planning how to use society’s scarce productive resources and for telling the rest of us what to do. But that was tried with questionable results. To make a long story short, after a troubled half century “command economies” are on their death bed. So whether public enterprise, centrally planned economies yield more or less alienation, apathy, inefficiency, and environmental destruction than their capitalist rivals is, practically speaking, a moot point. In any case, we know authoritarian planning does not yield equity, efficiency, and economic democracy.

A third alternative is to declare all physical means of production and natural resources part of the public patrimony and have everyone work for public enterprises which would then “freely” exchange the goods produced. A little thought reveals there could be different variants of public enterprise market economies. The fact that enterprises are publicly owned and goods and labor are allocated by markets, does not settle how enterprises would be managed or financed. One possibility is for the state to select, train, and appoint experts to manage production. The other possibility is for employees to hire their own managers. In either case enterprises could be self-financing out of their own revenues, financed out of the state budget, or some combination of the two.

Many anti-capitalist economists now support one or another of these variants of public enterprise market economies. The variants have important differences, and some are worse than others. (For example, we do not assume public enterprise market models are unattractive simply because eastern europeans have rejected them for capitalism and the Yugoslavian economy has fallen on hard times. The equation of public ownership with totalitarian communism by most East Europeans is understandable but unwarranted. And the disastrous economic policies of recent Yugoslav governments combined with impossible ethnic conflicts bear a great deal of responsibility for the collapse of the Yugoslav model. Instead, we reject public enterprise market systems on other grounds.) But they all share three major deficiencies:

(1) All variants of public enterprise market economies distribute the burdens and benefits of social labor unfairly. The distributive maxim implicit in public enterprise market economies is “to each according to the social value of his or her labor.” Contrary to popular opinion in many “progressive” circles, this outcome is neither fair nor efficient.

(2) Received wisdom not withstanding, markets allocate resources very inefficiently, and create a great deal of environmental destruction and antipathy among buyers and sellers in the process.

(3) Markets create a social environment in which a class of managers, professionals, intellectuals and technicians — who we call coordinators — increasingly dominate and ultimately exploit ordinary workers.

Are there other alternatives? Some who reject capitalism, authoritarian planning, and public enterprise market models propose a vision of local self-reliance combined with direct democracy a la New England town meetings. They argue that reducing the scale of economic institutions and increasing the self-sufficiency of local geographic units can reduce alienation, cut transportation costs, and promote ecological balance. Small is beautiful. Communication and democracy works if done face-to-face. Avoid the negative repercussions of markets and central planning by decentralizing large, national economies into small, economically self-sufficient communities.

While the participatory and ecological goals of those who endorse small scale autarky are praiseworthy, the outcome would not be. Even if it were possible for every community to democratically decide how to produce and distribute everything it needs, there would be a terribly costly duplication of efforts as well as unjustifiable inequalities. But in the likely event that communities rediscovered the advantages of the division of labor, the model doesn’t provide a clue to how they should arrange to specialize and trade with one another. Should goods and services not produced by every community be traded in free markets? If so, why wouldn’t this lead to the usual inequities, hostilities, and inefficiencies? Should communities attempt to plan mutually beneficial economic relations? If so, how should they go about it? In the end, the problem of devising desirable allocative mechanisms won’t go away.

Finally, what is wrong with the original socialist vision? Why can’t workers in different enterprises and industries, and consumers in different neighborhoods and regions, coordinate their joint endeavors themselves — consciously, democratically, equitably, and efficiently? Why can’t councils of consumers and workers propose what they would like to do, and revise their own proposals as they discover more about the impact of their desires on others? What is impossible about a social, iterative, planning procedure in which other workers approve production proposals only when they are convinced they are socially efficient and other consumers approve consumption requests only when they are convinced they are not socially abusive? What is impossible about the “associated producers” (and consumers) planning their related activities?

According to most economists, the activities of separate groups of producers and consumers can be coordinated by markets or coordinated by authoritarian planning — but there is no “third way.” In the view of most economists those who call for planning by producers and consumers themselves only delude themselves and others. Economic pundits claim it is impossible to democratically plan a large, complex, modern economy. Alec Nove, for example, threw down the gauntlet in no uncertain terms in The Economics of Feasible Socialism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983): “I feel increasingly ill-disposed towards those who... substitute for hard thinking an image of a world in which there would be no economic problems at all (or where any problems that might arise would be handled smoothly by the “associated producers”.... In a complex industrial economy the interrelation between its parts can be based in principle either on freely chosen negotiated contracts [i.e., markets], or on a system of binding instructions from planning offices [i.e., central planning.] There is no third way.” We disagree. The simple truth is that socialism as originally conceived has never been tried, but not because it is impossible. We recognize that council communists, syndicalists, anarchists, and guild socialists fell short of spelling out a coherent, theoretical model explaining how such a system could work. Our predecessors frequently provided stirring comparisons of the advantages of a libertarian, non-market, socialist alternative compared to capitalism and authoritarian planning. But all too often they failed to respond to difficult questions about how necessary decisions would be made, why their procedures would yield a coherent plan, or why the outcome would be efficient.

In two recent books we set out to rectify this intellectual deficiency by demonstrating that a non-hierarchical, egalitarian, economy in which workers’ and consumers’ councils coordinate their joint endeavors themselves — consciously, democratically, equitably, and efficiently — was, indeed, possible. In The Political Economy of Participatory Economics (Princeton University Press, 1991), hereafter Participatory Economics, we presented a theoretical model of participatory planning and carried out a rigorous welfare-theoretic analysis of its properties. In Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century (South End Press, 1991), hereafter Looking Forward, we examined the intricacies of participatory decision making in a variety of realistic settings, described day-to-day behavior, and treated a number of practical issues conveniently ignored by theoretical models.

In this article we describe the essential features of the model of a participatory economy presented in those works. We describe how production would be organized and managed by worker councils and federations using balanced job complexes. We describe how consumption would be organized by consumer councils and federations according to the principle “to each according to his or her work effort.” And we describe how worker and consumer councils and federations would participate in a social, iterative, planning procedure we call participatory planning capable of yielding a feasible, efficient, and equitable plan. We do all this because the most common argument against such a system has been to insist that it is impossible.

But recently the focus of criticism has changed. Critics have not challenged the technical feasibility of our model. None have argued that our planning procedure is incoherent, or incapable of yielding a feasible plan under assumptions traditionally granted other theoretical models. None have claimed that “participatory planning” as we spell it out would fail to generate reasonable estimates of social costs and benefits, even though there is no private ownership of productive resources and no markets. Nobody has argued that we erred in concluding there are incentives for consumers to use relatively less costly goods and place socially responsible limits on their overall consumption requests in our system. None have challenged our conclusion that enterprises would have to make efficient use of resources and inputs they receive under the procedures of participatory planning. Instead of the old argument that such an economy is impossible, critics have turned to challenging the desirability of such a system. In other words, to all intents and purposes critics have dropped the claim that a non-hierarchical, egalitarian, libertarian, non-market economy is impossible, and begun to argue instead, that it is not the kind of economy they and others would want to live in. While we are delighted the “third way” is no longer being dismissed as impossible, we must now defend the desirability of a participatory economy, and explain what we believe its major virtues are compared to traditional alternatives. We turn to this debate after describing how a participatory economy would work.

Workers’ Councils

Production would be carried out by workers’ councils where each member had one vote. Everyone would be free to apply for membership in the council of their choice, or form a new workers’ council with whomever they wished. But, beyond this, individual work assignments would be balanced for desirability and empowerment. Since there is an ample literature discussing the rationale and advantages of employee management, we focus our attention on the proposal to balance “work complexes” which is more unusual and controversial.

Every economy organizes work tasks into what are usually called “jobs” that define what tasks a single individual will perform. In hierarchical economies most jobs, contain a number of similar, relatively undesirable, and relatively unempowering tasks, while a few jobs consist of relatively desirable and empowering tasks. But why should some people’s work lives be less desirable than others? Doesn’t taking equity seriously require balancing jobs, or work complexes, for desirability? Similarly, if we want everyone to have equal opportunity to participate in economic decision making, if we want to ensure that the formal right to participate translates into an effective right to participate, doesn’t this require balancing work complexes for empowerment? If some people sweep floors all week, year in and year out, while others review new technological options and attend planning meetings all week, year in and year out, is it realistic to believe they have equal opportunity to participate simply because they each have one vote in the workers’ council? Doesn’t taking participation seriously require balancing work complexes for empowerment?

This does not mean everyone must do everything. It does not mean and end to specialization. And it does not mean there is no role for expertise in a participatory economy. Each individual will still do a very small number of tasks, but some of them will be more enjoyable and some less, and some will be more empowering and some less. Moreover the balancing can be achieved over a reasonable period of time. The usual arguments against balancing are:

(1) Talent is scarce and training is socially costly, therefore it is inefficient for talented people or people with training to do menial tasks.

(2) For everyone to participate equally in economic decisions ignores the legitimate role of expertise.

In brief, our answers to these objections are:

The “scarce talent” argument against balancing work complexes is often overstated. If one assumes most of the work force has no socially useful, trainable talents, then the conclusion follows. But this assumption is false. It is true not everyone has the talent to become a brain surgeon, and there are social costs to training brain surgeons. But most people have some socially useful talent whose development entails some social costs. An efficient economy would identify and develop everyone’s most socially useful talent. If this is done, then there is a significant opportunity cost no matter who changes bed pans, and the conclusion that it is grossly inefficient for brain surgeons to change them does not necessarily follow.

In circumstances where the consequences of decisions are complicated and not readily apparent, there is an obvious need for expertise. But economic choice entails both determining and evaluating consequences. Those with expertise in a matter may well predict the consequences of a decision more accurately than non-experts. But those affected know best whether they prefer one outcome to another. So, while efficiency requires an important role for experts in determining complicated consequences, efficiency also requires that those who will be affected determine which consequences they prefer. This means it is just as inefficient to keep those affected by decisions from making them (after experts have analyzed and debated consequences) as it is to prevent experts from explaining and debating consequences of complicated choices before those affected register their desires. Self-managed decision making, defined as decision making input in proportion to the degree one is affected by the outcome, does not mean there is no role for experts. Instead it means confining experts to their proper role and keeping them from usurping a role that it is neither fair, democratic, nor efficient for them to assume.

Whether there are incentives for workers’ councils to use scarce productive resources efficiently, and whether there are incentives for them to pursue socially beneficial innovations we leave to the discussion of participatory planning and incentives below.

Consumers’ Councils

Every individual, family, or living unit would belong to a neighborhood consumption council. Each neighborhood council would belong to a federation of neighborhood councils the size of a ward or rural county. Each ward would belong to a city consumption council, each city and county council would belong to a state council, and each state council would belong to the national consumption council. The major purpose for this nesting of consumer councils is to allow for the fact that different kinds of consumption affect different numbers of people. Failure to arrange for all those affected by consumption activities to participate in choosing them not only implies a loss of self-management, but, if the preferences of some are disregarded or misrepresented, a loss of efficiency as well. One of the serious liabilities of market systems is their systematic failure to allow for the expression of desires for social consumption on an equal footing with the expression of desires for private consumption. Having the different levels of federations participate on an equal footing in the planning procedure described below prevents this bias from occurring in our model of a participatory economy.

Members of neighborhood councils would present consumption requests accompanied by effort ratings done by their peers in the work place. Using indicative prices the social burdensomeness of each proposal would be calculated. While no consumption request justified by an effort rating could be denied by a neighborhood consumption council, neighbors could express an opinion that a request was unwise, and neighborhood councils could also approve requests on the basis of need in addition to merit. Individuals could “borrow” or “save” by consuming more or less than warranted by their effort level for the year, and anyone wishing to submit an anonymous request could do so.

The major questions are whether “to each according to effort” is fair, and whether this distributive maxim is consistent with efficiency. Again, we state our views in brief.

Capitalist economies embody the distributive maxim: “to each according to the value of his or her personal contribution and the contribution of property owned.” Public enterprise market economies operate according to the maxim: “to each according to the value of his or her personal contribution.” In a participatory economy the only reason people would have different levels of consumption would be differences in work effort or differences in need. By effort we mean anything that constitutes a personal sacrifice for the purpose of providing socially useful goods and services. If work complexes were truly balanced for desirability, and if everyone worked at the same intensity, then effort could be measured in terms of the number of hours worked. In other circumstances effort could take the form of working at a less pleasant or more dangerous job, or undergoing training that was less agreeable than the average training process.

Socialists have long argued that consumption rights derived from the ownership of productive property are unjustified. Beside the simple fact that they generate grossly unequal consumption opportunities, the usual rationale is that those who receive the extra income did little, if anything to deserve it. They neither contributed more to the value of social production through their own labor than others, nor underwent any greater personal sacrifice than others.

But long ago, in Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman pointed out the hypocrisy of denouncing income differentials due to differences in ownership of property while tolerating differentials due to differences in talent. “Is there any greater ethical justification for the high returns to the individual who inherits from his parents a peculiar voice for which there is a great demand than for the high returns to the individual who inherits property?” In our view, the honest answer to Friedman’s challenge is “no.” Despite the historical fact that private ownership of productive property has generated a great deal more economic injustice than differential talent, there is nothing more fair about the birth lottery than the inheritance lottery. Greater personal sacrifice incurred in the production of socially beneficial goods and services is legitimate grounds for greater access to those goods and services. But neither ownership of property nor possession of talent that “objectively” makes it possible to produce more valuable goods and services carries any moral weight, in our view.

As we stated in the introduction, we believe this creates an ethical dilemma for those who support public enterprise market systems. If wages are determined in the market place some will earn more than others who work longer and harder. But if wages are set fairly, that is, according to effort, or personal sacrifice, users of scarce human resources will be charged prices that deviate from their social opportunity costs yielding a price system that systematically misestimates social costs and benefits. We see no way around this dilemma in an economy with a free labor market.

In a participatory economy, while individuals consume according to their work effort, users of scarce labor resources are charged according to their opportunity costs, as we will see when we describe participatory planning below. This avoids the contradiction between equity and allocative efficiency in a market economy. But what about the common view that reward according the value of one’s personal contribution provides efficient incentives while reward according to effort does not?

Differences in the value of people’s contributions are due to differences in talent, training, job placement, luck, and effort. Once we clarify that “effort” includes personal sacrifices incurred in training, the only factor influencing performance over which an individual has any discretion is effort. By definition, neither talent nor luck can be induced by reward. Rewarding the occupant of a job for the contribution inherent in the job itself does not enhance performance. And provided that training is undertaken at public rather than private expense, no reward is required to induce people to seek training. In sum, if we include an effort component of training in our definition of effort, the only discretionary factor influencing performance is effort, and the only factor we should reward to enhance performance is effort — which certainly turns common wisdom on its head! Not only is rewarding effort consistent with efficiency, but rewarding the combined effects of talent, training incurred at public not private expense, job placement, luck, and effort, is not. (We refer readers shocked by this conclusion to chapter 3 of Participatory Economics for our rebuttal to the three most common reasons people give for believing equity conflicts with efficiency. Namely:

(1) If consumption opportunities are essentially equal, people will have no reason to work up to their capabilities.

(2) If payment is equal, there is no incentive for people to train themselves in the ways they can be most socially valuable. And

(3) Effort is difficult to measure while outcome is not, so rewarding performance is the best system in practice.)


Participatory Planning

The participants in the planning procedure are the workers’ councils and federations, the consumers’ councils and federations, and an Iteration Facilitation Board (IFB). Conceptually, the planning procedure is quite simple. The IFB announces what we call “indicative prices” for all goods, resources, categories of labor, and capital stocks. Consumer councils and federations respond with consumption proposals taking the indicative prices of final goods and services as estimates of the social cost of providing them. Workers councils and federations respond with production proposals listing the outputs they would make available and the inputs they would need to make them, again, taking the indicative prices as estimates of the social benefits of outputs and true opportunity costs of inputs. The IFB then calculates the excess demand or supply for each good and adjusts the indicative price for the good up, or down, in light of the excess demand or supply. Using the new indicative prices consumer and worker councils and federations revise and resubmit their proposals.

Essentially the procedure “whittles” overly optimistic, infeasible proposals down to a feasible plan in two different ways: Consumers requesting more than their effort ratings warrant are forced to reduce their requests, or shift their requests to less socially costly items, to achieve the approval of other consumer councils who regard their requests as greedy. Workers councils whose proposals have lower than average social benefit to social cost ratios are forced to increase either their efforts or efficiency to win the approval of other workers. As iterations proceed, proposals move closer to mutual feasibility and indicative prices more closely approximate true social opportunity costs. Since no participant in the planning procedure enjoys advantage over others, the procedure generates equity and efficiency simultaneously.

Objections to a Participatory Economy

Too many meetings: First, we offer Pat Devine’s response to this objection to his version of democratic planning: “In modern societies a large and possibly increasing proportion of overall social time is already spent on administration, on negotiation, on organizing and running systems and people. This is partly due to the growing complexity of economic and social life and the tendency for people to seek more conscious control over their lives as material, educational and cultural standards rise. However, in existing societies much of this activity is also concerned with commercial rivalry and the management of the social conflict and consequences of alienation that stem from exploitation, oppression, inequality and subalternity. One recent estimate has suggested that as much as half the GNP of advanced western countries may now be accounted for by transaction costs arising from increasing division of labor and the growth of alienation associated with it. [D. North, “Transaction Costs, Institutions, and Economic History,” in the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 1984] Thus, as Pat Devine points out in Democracy and Economic Planning (Boulder Colorado: Westview Press): “there is no a priori reason to suppose that the aggregate time devoted to running a self-governing society... would be greater than the time devoted to the administration of people and things in existing societies. However, aggregate time would be differently composed, differently focused and, of course, differently distributed among people.”

Second, we quote from David Levy’s review of Looking Forward in Dollars and Sense (November 1991): “Within manufacturing firms we find echelons of managers and staff whose job it is to try to forecast demand and supply. Indeed, only a small fraction of workers directly produce goods and services. The existing system requires millions of government employees, many of whom are in jobs created precisely because the market system provides massive incentives to engage in fraud, theft, environmental destruction, and abuse of workers’ health and safety. And even during our `leisure time' we must fill in tax forms and pay bill. Critics of Looking Forward’s complex planning process should examine the management of a large corporation. Large corporations are already planned economies; some have economies larger than those of small countries. These firms supplant the market for thousands of intermediate products. They coordinate vast amounts of information and intricate flows of goods and materials.”

In sum, “meeting time” is far from zero in existing economies. But for a participatory economy we can break the issue down into meeting time in workers’ councils, meeting time in consumers’ councils, meeting time in federations, and meeting time in participatory planning.

Conception, coordination, and decision making is part of the organization of production under any system. Under hierarchical organizations of production relatively few employees spend most, if not all of their time thinking and meeting, and most employees simply do as they’re told. So it is true, most people would spend more time in work place meetings in a participatory economy than a hierarchical one. But this is because most people are excluded from work place decision making under capitalism and authoritarian planning. It does not necessarily mean the total amount of time spent on thinking and meeting rather than doing would be greater in a participatory work place. And while it might be that democratic decision making requires more “meeting time” than autocratic decision making, it should also be the case that less time is required to enforce democratic decisions than autocratic ones. It should also have been clear from our discussion of participatory work places in chapters 2 and 7 of Looking Forward that meeting time is part of the normal work day, just as it is for managers and supervisors in existing economies, not an extra burden and infringement on their leisure.

Regarding the organization of consumption, we plead guilty to suggesting that these decisions be arrived at with more social interaction than in market economies. In our view one of the great failures of market systems is that they do not provide a suitable vehicle through which people can express and coordinate their consumption desires. It is through a layered network of consumer federations that we propose overcoming alienation in public choice combined with isolated expression of individual choice that characterizes market systems. Whether this will take more time than the present organization of consumption depends on a number of trade-offs.

Presently economic and political elites dominate local, state, and national public choice. For the most part they operate free from restraint by the majority, but periodically time consuming campaigns are mounted by popular organizations to rectify matters when they get grossly out of hand. In a participatory economy people would vote directly on matters of public choice. But that doesn’t require a great deal of time, or mean attending meetings. Expert testimony and differing opinions would be aired through a democratic media. Individuals with strong feelings on particular issues would presumably participate in such forms, but others would be free to pay as much or as little attention to these debates as they wished.

We also believe the amount of time and travel devoted to consumption decision making in our model would be less than in market economies. Consumer federations could operate exhibits for people to visit before placing orders for goods that would be delivered directly to neighborhood outlets. And serious R&D units attached to consumer federations would not only provide better information about consumption options but a real vehicle for translating consumer desires into product innovation. While the prospect of proposing and revising consumption proposals within neighborhood councils might appear to require significant meeting time, we tried to explain in chapter 4 of Looking Forward why, with the aid of computer terminals and rather simple software packages, this needn’t take more time than it takes people currently to prepare their tax returns and pay their bills. In any case, nobody would have to attend meetings or discuss their neighbors’ opinions regarding consumption requests if they chose not to; the existence of greater opportunities for efficient social interaction prior to registering consumption preferences could be utilized or ignored as individuals chose; and time necessary for consumption decision making would be treated like time necessary for production decision making — as part of one’s obligations in a participatory economy, not part of ones leisure time.

But how much meeting time is required by participatory planning, which we did described as a social, iterative, procedure? Contrary to critics’ presumptions, we did not propose a model of democratic planning in which people, or their elected representatives, meet face to face to discuss and negotiate how to coordinate their activities. Instead we proposed a procedure in which individuals and councils submit proposals for their own activities, receive new information including new indicative prices, and submit revised proposals. Nor did we suggest meetings of constituents to define feasible options to be voted on. Instead we proposed that after a number of iterations had defined the major contours of the plan, the professional staffs of iteration facilitation boards would define a few feasible plans within those contours for constituents to vote on without ever meeting and debating with one another at all. Finally, we did not propose face to face meetings where different groups would plead their cases for consumption or production proposals that did not meet normal quantitative standards. Instead we proposed that councils submit qualitative information as part of their proposals so that higher level federations could grant exceptions should they choose to. Moreover, the procedure for disapproving proposals is a simple up, down vote of federation members rather than a rancorous meeting.

But while we do not think the criticism of “too many meetings” is warranted, we do not want to be misleading. Informed, democratic decision making is different than autocratic decision making. And conscious, equitable coordination of the social division of labor is different than the impersonal law of supply and demand. We obviously think the former, in each case, is greatly to be preferred to the latter. But this is not to say we do not understand this requires, almost by definition, more meaningful social intercourse.

Too intrusive: In “A Roundtable on Participatory Economics,” in Z Magazine (July/August 1991), Nancy Folbre referred to this problem as “tyranny of the busy-body” and “dictatorship of the sociable.” In a class one of us taught the issue came to be known as “the kinky underwear problem.” Nancy Folbre also cautioned of the potential inefficiency of groups dominated by the sentiment “Let’s not piss anybody off.” David Levy observed in a Dollars and Sense (November 1991) book review that while Looking Forward reminded him in some respects of Ursula LeGuin’s novel, The Dispossessed, readers should be warned that LeGuin’s subtitle was “An Ambiguous Utopia” because “reliance on social pressure rather than material incentives create a lack of initiative, claustrophobic conformity, and intrusiveness.” In comradely private communication Tom Weisskopf cautioned against “sacrificing too much individuality, specialization, diversity, and freedom of choice.” What is the source of these misgivings, and how do we respond?

For us it is important to distinguish between misgivings that any and all participatory processes may be “too intrusive,” and the criticism that some of our specific measures are more socially intrusive than need be. First, let us reiterate features of our model designed to protect the citizenry from tyrannical busy-bodies. Beside being free to move from one neighborhood to another, consumption proposals justified by one’s effort rating cannot be vetoed. While there is nothing but a motion to close debate to prevent a busy-body from carrying on about someone else’s consumption request, it is difficult to understand why people would choose to waste their time listening to views that had no practical consequence. Individuals can also make anonymous consumption requests if they do not wish their neighbors to know the particulars of their consumption habits. In workers’ councils balancing job complexes for empowerment should alleviate one important cause of differential influence over decision making. Rotating assignments to committees also alleviates monopolization of authority. On the other hand we stopped short of calling for balancing “consumption” complexes for empowerment, and refused to endorse forcing people to attend or remain at meetings longer than they found useful. An apt analogy is the saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” We had every intention of leading people to participate, but no doubt, some will drink more deeply from the well of participation than others, and those who do will probably influence decisions disproportionately. Even so, those who are more sociable would have a difficult time benefiting materially from their efforts, and the anti-social should suffer no material penalty. In any case, better dictatorship of the sociable with no material privileges than dictatorship of the propertied, dictatorship of the bureaucrats and party members, or dictatorship of the better educated.

We also fail to understand why our proposal is not seen as thoroughly libertarian. People are free to apply to live and work wherever they wish. People can ask for whatever consumption goods and services they desire and distribute their consumption over their lives however they see fit. People can apply to whatever educational and training programs they want. And any individual or group of individuals can start a new living unit, consumer council, or worker council, with fewer “barriers” to overcome than in any traditional model. The only restriction is that the burdens and benefits of the division of labor be equitable. That is why people are not free to consume more than their sacrifice warrants. And that is why people are not free to work at job complexes that are more desirable or empowering than others enjoy. It may be that some chafe under these restrictions, or find them excessive. We certainly never suggested they be forced on a citizenry against their will. We simply believe the logic of justice requires these restrictions on “individual freedom,” just as the logic of justice places restrictions on the freedom to profit from private ownership of productive property. As citizens in a participatory economy we would argue and vote for these restrictions until convinced otherwise.

Misfocused Priorities: Pat Devine criticizes our model for overly concentrating on popular participation in small and local decisions at the expense of larger social issues. In private communication Peter Dorman put the issue somewhat differently: “Since democracy is not easy or costless to practice we should economize on its use.”

Obviously, we would be unhappy with a model that diverted people’s participatory energies from more important issues to more trivial ones. And in retrospect, we can see how our exposition could lead people to conclude we attach too little importance to long term development and investment decisions. In Participatory Economics we were anxious to demonstrate that participatory planning was more likely to achieve allocative efficiency than traditional alternatives. Accordingly, we concentrated on a static model without resorting to the Debreuvian artifice of pretending the conclusions apply to many time periods as well. In Looking Forward we wanted to explain what a participatory economy would “feel like” to ordinary citizens. So we mostly discussed day to day production and consumption concerns and how they would be handled.

But our intent was that the procedures of participatory planning should also be used to formulate long run plans. Once again the options are:

(1) relegate long run planning to the vagaries of the market place,

(2) entrust long run planning to a political and technical elite, or

(3) permit councils and federations of workers and consumers to propose, revise, and reconcile the different components of the long run plan.

There is an extensive and compelling literature to the effect that laissez faire market systems are least appropriate for long run development decisions. Indeed, traditional socialist critics of capitalism such as Maurice Dobb and Paul Sweezy were most convincing when arguing the theoretical advantages of planning over markets to achieve growth and development. Even the terribly flawed Soviet version of planning demonstrated important advantages over market economies in this regard. Moreover, every historical case of successful development by a “late comer” has been an example of the efficacy of planning rather than laissez faire, ideological claims to the contrary, not withstanding.

Rejecting the vagaries of the marketplace, If the political and technocratic elite is not chosen democratically, the dangers and disadvantages are obvious. But even if those who are entrusted to conceive and negotiate the long term plan are chosen democratically, as they are, for example, in Pat Devine’s vision of “negotiated coordination,” there would be less room for popular participation than under the procedures of participatory planning. Since we agree with Devine that choosing between transforming coal mining so as to dramatically improve health and safety, replacing highway travel with a high-speed rail system, or transforming agriculture to conform to ecological norms — not all of which can be done at once — has an important impact on people’s lives, we are anxious that popular participation be maximized in these matters.

So, as always, the issue comes down to how can ordinary people become best involved in a particular kind of decision making? In our view the federation of coal miners, the federation of rail workers, the federation of automobile makers, the federation of agricultural workers, and the transportation, food, and environment departments of the national federation of consumers should all play a prominent role in formulating, analyzing, and comparing the above alternatives. In our view, even regarding major, long term choices, people participate best in areas closest to their personal concerns, and participatory planning is designed to take advantage of this. This is not to deny that everyone would vote on major alternatives. Nor do we deny there is an important role for expertise. But besides the professional staffs of iteration facilitation boards, professionals in R&D units working directly for the above federation would play an active role in defining long term options. And with the aid of relatively accurate indications of social costs and benefits, we believe workers and consumers through their councils and federations can play a prominent role in long term planning just as they can in annual planning and managing their own work and consumption.

Insufficient Incentives: Our model of a participatory economy is designed to maximize the motivating potential of non-material incentives. There is some reason to hope jobs designed by workers will be more enjoyable than ones designed by capitalists or coordinators. There is every reason to believe people will be more willing to carry out tasks they, themselves, proposed and agreed to than assignments handed them by superiors. There is also every reason to believe people will be more willing to perform unpleasant duties conscientiously when they know the distribution of those duties as well as the rewards for people’s efforts are equitable.

But all this is not to say there are no material incentives in our model. As we explained, one’s efforts will be rated by one’s peers who have every interest in seeing that those they work with work up to their potentials. Moreover, one’s effort ratings in work will affect one’s consumption rights.

It is true we do not recommend paying those with more education and training higher wages since we believe it would be inequitable to do so. But that does not mean people would not seek to enhance their productivity. First of all, the cost of education and training would be born publicly, not privately. So there are no material disincentives to pursuing education and training. Secondly, since a participatory economy is not an “acquisitive” society, respect, esteem, and social recognition would be based largely on “social serviceability” which is enhanced precisely by developing one’s most socially useful potentials through education and training.

The same logic applies to innovation. We do not support rewarding those who succeed in discovering productive innovations with vastly greater consumption rights than others who make equivalent personal sacrifices in work. Instead we recommend emphasizing direct social recognition of outstanding achievements for a variety of reasons. First, successful innovation is often the outcome of cumulative human creativity for which a single individual is rarely entirely responsible. Furthermore, an individual’s contribution is often the product of genius and luck as much as diligence, persistence, and personal sacrifice, all of which implies that recognizing innovation through social esteem rather than material reward is superior on ethical grounds. Second, we are not convinced that social incentives will prove less powerful than material ones. It should be recognized that no economy ever has, or could pay innovators the full social value of their innovations, which means that if material compensation is the only reward, innovation will be under stimulated in any case. Moreover, too often material reward is merely a symbol, or imperfect substitute, for what is truly desired, social esteem. How else can one explain why those who already have more wealth than they can consume continue to strive to accumulate more? In any case, these are our opinions. Actual policy in a participatory economy would be settled democratically in light of results.

Nor do we see why critics believe there would be insufficient incentives for enterprises to seek and implement innovations, unless they measure a participatory economy against a mythical and misleading image of capitalism. Sometimes it is presumed that innovating capitalist enterprises capture the full benefits of their successes, while it is also assumed that innovations spread instantaneously to all enterprises in an industry. When made explicit it is obvious these assumptions are contradictory. Yet only if both assumptions hold can one conclude that capitalism provides maximum material stimulus to innovation and achieves technological efficiency throughout the economy. In reality innovative capitalist enterprises temporarily capture “super profits” (in Marxist terms) or “technological rents” (in Neoclassical terms) which are competed away more or less rapidly depending on a host of circumstances. Which means that in reality there is a trade-off in capitalist economies between stimulus to innovation and the efficient use of innovation, or a trade-off between dynamic and static efficiency.

In a participatory economy workers have a “material incentive,” if you will, to implement innovations that improve the quality of their work life. This means they have an incentive to implement changes that increase the social benefits of the outputs they produce, or reduce the social costs of the inputs they consume, since anything that increases an enterprise’s social benefit to social cost ratio will allow the workers to win approval for their proposal with less effort, or sacrifice, on their part. But just as in capitalism, adjustments will render any advantage they achieve temporary. As the innovation spreads to other enterprises, as indicative prices change, and as work complexes are re-balanced across enterprises and industries the full social benefits of their innovation will be both realized and spread equitably to all workers and consumers.

The faster the adjustments are made, the more efficient and equitable the outcome. On the other hand, the more rapid the adjustments, the less the “material incentive” to innovate and the greater the incentive to “ride for free” on others’ innovations. While this is no different than under capitalism, a participatory economy enjoys important advantages. Most importantly, direct recognition of “social serviceability” is a more powerful incentive in a participatory economy, which reduces the magnitude of the trade-off. Secondly, a participatory economy is better suited to allocating resources efficiently to R&D because research and development is largely a public good which is predictably under supplied in market economies but would not be in a participatory economy. Third, the only effective mechanism for providing material incentives for innovating enterprises in capitalism is to slow their spread, at the expense of efficiency. This is true because the transaction costs of registering patents and negotiating licenses from patent holders are very high. But while we would recommend it only as a last resort, the transaction costs of delaying the recalibration of work complexes for innovative work places, or even granting extra consumption allowances for a period of time would not be high in a participatory economy.

In general, we find much of what parades as scientific opinion about incentives plagued by implicit and unwarranted assumptions predictable in an era of capitalist triumphalism. We are neither as pessimistic about the motivational power of non-material incentives in an appropriate environment as many of our fellow radicals have become. Nor do we see any inappropriate obstacles to the deployment of material incentives in a participatory economy should its members decide they are warranted. In the end we are quite comfortable with the very traditional socialist view that a mixture of material and social incentives would be necessary during the process of creating an equitable and humane economy. But that social progress hinges, in part, on the diminishing reliance on material incentives.

Conclusion

The issue is quite simple:

Do we want to try and measure the value of each person’s contribution to social production and allow individuals to withdraw from social production accordingly? Or do we want to base any differences in consumption rights on differences in personal sacrifices made in producing the goods and services? In other words, do we want an economy that implements the maxim “to each according to the value of his or her personal contribution” or an economy that obeys the maxim “to each according to his or her effort?”

Do we want a few to conceive and coordinate the work of the many? Or do we want everyone to have the opportunity to participate in economic decision making to the degree they are affected by the outcome? In other words, do we want to continue to organize work hierarchically, or do we want job complexes balanced for empowerment?

Do we want a structure for expressing preferences that is biased in favor of individual consumption over social consumption? Or do we want to it to be as easy to register preferences for social as individual consumption? In other words, do we want markets or nested federations of consumer councils?

Do we want economic decisions to be determined by competition between groups pitted against one another for their well being and survival? Or do we want to plan our joint endeavors democratically, equitably, and efficiently? In other words, do we want to abdicate economic decision making to the market place or do we want to embrace the possibility of participatory planning?

This is not the place to review the fundamental flaws of market systems. In the first chapter of Participatory Economics we summarized the case against markets that we spelled out in greater detail in Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics, (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). We have explained why markets are incompatible with equity and systematically destructive of solidarity. We have explained why market economies will continue to destroy the environment, and why a radical view of social life implies that external effects are the rule rather than the exception, which means markets generally misestimate social costs and benefits and misallocate scarce productive resources. And we have explained that while markets may fulfill the liberal vision of individual economic freedom to dispose of one’s personal capabilities and property however one chooses, they are inconsistent with the radical goal of self-management for everyone. While many have told us casually that markets are not as bad as we make them out to be, no political economist has yet responed specifically to a single criticism we have made. We can’t help but feel the debate between progressive minded marketeers and “third wayers” such as ourselves would be more engaging if marketeers responded more directly to their critics as as we have attempted to do here.

In conclusion, we believe those who reconcile themselves to market “socialist” models do so illogically and unnecessarily. Illogically because the negative experience of authoritarian planning tells us very little, if anything, about the potential of participatory planning. Illogically because the collapse of communism is incapable of reducing the liabilities of market systems that are becoming more rather than less apparent. Unnecessarily because socialism as it was always meant to be is not impossible. And unnecessarily because the vision of an equitable, democratic economy, generating increasing solidarity among its participants, is as attractive and appealing as ever.

[kurt]

In communist ideologies, there would be no money everything would be pooled in a community warehouse and distributed based on need eventually. However this would suffer massive corruption during the first and second and perhaps third generation of communism because there would be organized gangs that form and take everything and give it out in exchange for different tasks mob-style.

What a very interesting proposition.

Do you have any valid reason for thinking that the distribution according to need would suffer "massive corruption", other than of course something like "human nature". I think the main question I should be asking you is : what form do you envision communist revolution to take? If it's a genuine proletarian revolution, why would you think there will be armed "gangs", stealing everything they can get their hands on(not to mention the idea of a "community warehouse" is utterly absurd).

If a communist revolution is genuinely proletarian in nature, what possible motivation would people have to start "stealing" things... from themselves of all places.



So Labor Time Vouchers, or LTVs would be needed. are basically a measurement of how hard one works at his or her job. It is an account on a computer which you log into when you start working and log out of when you stop. LTVs can be determined by the amount of stress and effort put into your job. The amount and quality of the product you produce. Or the successful completion of a hard task. When you are finished working, you log out and print the LTVs which you will then save up and use to by non-necessities such as electronics and furniture. What is the point of LTVs? Simple to provide a motive and incentive for man to work during the time he is still intoxicated by the evils of capitalism.

As if millions of people, whom have just shown their utter disgust for capitalism, by committing the most massive revolution in history would still be "intoxicated by the evils of capitalism".

Now, I'm not 100% on the issue of LTV's, although they still strike me as a form of currency, that is, a means for exchange, which is a feature of capitalism.

Under communism, goods are not produced for exchange, but rather, they are produced for use. This is a fundamental difference; something which "LTVs" simply do not account for.

[anomaly]

I am a big supporter of TLVs as a possible transitionary means of economy.

A free access system may not be applicable due to the level of productive capacity. If that is the case, whether TLVs are 'desireable' is a moot point. They will be neccesary.

Now, hopefully we will be able to just jump right into a free access system. But I find that doubtful at best.

And because TLVs are an actual measure of labor done in order to determine a worker's 'pay' rather than an arbitrary standard applied by some superior, I think they will work well as a transitionary currency of sorts. After all, the amount of TLVs any individual receives would simply be based on the ratio of that individual's productive output and his/her time of labor.

Also, within a TLV-collectivist type system, private property itself could be eliminated, which is another reason I support the idea.

[kurt]

A free access system may not be applicable due to the level of productive capacity. If that is the case, whether TLVs are 'desireable' is a moot point. They will be neccesary.

It is entirely possible that they may be "necessary". But, you seem a little too "sold" on the idea for me. We have no real way of knowing how the proletariat will handle the distribution of goods and services during, and after revolution.

[apathy maybe]

Because there are so many different types of anarchism, you will get different answers to these sorts of questions. (See http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=6421 and http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=28053 for some general information on anarchism.)

Some are communists, wanting all things in common; some would rather share the means of production and have "personal" property. Some would rather not even share means of production necessarily.

Some are communists, some would prefer a market based system of distributing goods.

Some put the emphases on equality, others on freedom.

[FinnMacCool]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 12:14 AM
"Human nature is the fundamental nature and substance of humans, as well as the range of human behavior that is believed to be invariant over long periods of time and across very different cultural contexts. The existence of a human nature has been criticized by thinkers such as Hegel, Marx Nietzsche, Structuralism and postmodern theory. Recently the biologist E. O. Wilson formulated a scientific defintion."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature
Just because you cite something from wikipedia doesn't make it exist. If you believe in human nature, you shouldn't be a communist because then you don't believe in communism.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 01:14 AM
"Human nature is the fundamental nature and substance of humans, as well as the range of human behavior that is believed to be invariant over long periods of time and across very different cultural contexts. The existence of a human nature has been criticized by thinkers such as Hegel, Marx Nietzsche, Structuralism and postmodern theory. Recently the biologist E. O. Wilson formulated a scientific defintion."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature
Nice try but try again. There was no evidence of anything on that page. The closest thing you got science was this,


Recently the biologist E. O. Wilson formulated a scientific defintion.

but that's not proof of anything. He gave it a deffinition, I don't see any scientific evidence.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 04:42 AM
the real problem with Anarchy isn't how it would work but more the fact that human nature is the major factor in perventing it form working. it's human nature to compete and win (Darwinism) "only the stong survie" and these primitive instincts need to be over come long before anyone can call themselves an Anarchist.
First of all this argument is weak because human "instinct" are often overridden as we are creatures primarily of reason. In fact our ability to do this is one of the reasons that we have survived so well, it is also what seperates us from much of the animal kindom...

Second of all, if you actually read the likes of Dawkins to any great extent, altruism is also inherent in us as well as selfishness. Co-operation is more conducive to survival, and thus collectivism for an intelligent species such as ourselves makes sense.

Saying we are selfish is not enough, we have the potential to be, but where that potential exists and cannot be overcome, collectivist principles still make sense to us.

I would like to see a response to this, as normally none is given...

[rouchambeau]

Looking up past anarchic economies would be a great place to start. There were the syndicates in northern Spain around 1936, the zionist communes in (present-day) Israel before the Israeli state was founded, workers communes in northern Italy halfway through WWII, the way pre-civilizational Man lived...

[OneBrickOneVoice]

What a very interesting proposition.

Do you have any valid reason for thinking that the distribution according to need would suffer "massive corruption", other than of course something like "human nature". I think the main question I should be asking you is : what form do you envision communist revolution to take? If it's a genuine proletarian revolution, why would you think there will be armed "gangs", stealing everything they can get their hands on(not to mention the idea of a "community warehouse" is utterly absurd).


Yes I do. Once the 'bad apples' or 'would be CEOs' realize how easy it is to take advantage of the system, they'd seize the opportunity. You cannot deny the fact that humans do have natural instincts and one of them is that some will take advantage of things if they an get away with it. Also that's not the only reason I support LTVs. One of the big reasons is incentive. People who have lived under capitalism will become lazy if they have no incentive to work.

BTW the warehouse was sort of a joke



If a communist revolution is genuinely proletarian in nature, what possible motivation would people have to start "stealing" things... from themselves of all places.

You must be a dreamer if you think we can get everyone simaultaneously to revolt. Not only would it happen gradually but also the best we could hope for is about 60-70% as the rest are not protaletarian and most will not support the revolution as they are perfectly content with capitalism.



As if millions of people, whom have just shown their utter disgust for capitalism, by committing the most massive revolution in history would still be "intoxicated by the evils of capitalism".

Now, I'm not 100% on the issue of LTV's, although they still strike me as a form of currency, that is, a means for exchange, which is a feature of capitalism.

Look, it is impossible to predict the circumstances of a revolution because revolutions are different everytime. LTVs provide a unit which workers are used to and help smooth the transition from capitalism to communism. Personally I think people in general need to maintain some individuality and some individual goals in order to have a positive morale. Especially if there life before the revolution was only that.

LTVs are not currency because they are not cirrculated. They are terminated once they are used. Also, they aren't used for everything, just certain non necessities. Everything you need to live and function properly will be provided as that is the nature of communism.

[kurt]

Yes I do. Once the 'bad apples' or 'would be CEOs' realize how easy it is to take advantage of the system, they'd seize the opportunity. You cannot deny the fact that humans do have natural instincts and one of them is that some will take advantage of things if they an get away with it.

And you truely think these few "bad apples" could not be easily stopped by the majority of people in a communist society? After the revolution, the vast majority of people are perfectly capable of supressing a few "would-be" CEOs.

Furthermore, it's quite simple for me to deny that humans have natural "instincts" (the type you speak of, of course), as the idea is absurd, and not backed up by any credible science.

Also that's not the only reason I support LTVs. One of the big reasons is incentive. People who have lived under capitalism will become lazy if they have no incentive to work.

Your thoughts on "human nature" parallel many bourgeois ideologues. You seem to think people are naturally lazy, and won't work unless they have some sort of incentive.

However, if you really do want an "incentive", how does not ending up back "in the shit" again sound to you? I find it highly improbable that people will simply become lazy after actively seizing the means of production, and exerting their power against the bourgeoisie.


You must be a dreamer if you think we can get everyone simaultaneously to revolt. Not only would it happen gradually but also the best we could hope for is about 60-70% as the rest are not protaletarian and most will not support the revolution as they are perfectly content with capitalism.

First off, I find it highly offensive that you think that communists are "getting" people to revolt. A proletarian revolution is made by proletarians; communists are just there to furnish ideas.

Secondly, how gradual are we talking here? I suppose you envision a prolonged transistional period, involving a sort of enlightened despotism, no doubt. <_<

Also, those we do not support the revolution will probably either flee, or be very silent about it. It&#39;s generally not "wise" to be on the wrong side of a popular revolution.


Look, it is impossible to predict the circumstances of a revolution because revolutions are different everytime.
Yet you make sweeping generalizations on "human nature", and have already committed yourself to a post-revolutionary form of economy (which isn&#39;t all that discernable from capitalist economy) ...

[Political_Game_XIII]

The idea that the group of people that work together will survie and not the idividuals is exalent. Anarchy for me is the evolved form of socalism, a state of thinking were people realize that through a colective effort they can better survie. And they can better achive this without the interfearnace of a government. this would work great on a small scale with a group of educated individuals. However on a large scale people need leadership. without the leadership people become lost and form there own groups. this segragation can be seen everywere highschool, offices and other jobs. And there is always a "alfa male" in these groups

I am a beliver that people will form groups and a leader will arise even if it&#39;s not in there best interest. look at any rebellion and there is a leader. the followers may not agree with the ideals but they still follow. Or fads, wether it be music, religion, politics, or fashion people will follow with blind faith. wile this may not be true for everyone it is a proven fact that this happen with the majority.


[QUOTE] FinnMacCool Posted @ Jun 12 2006, 11:27 AM
Just because you cite something from wikipedia doesn&#39;t make it exist. If you believe in human nature, you shouldn&#39;t be a communist because then you don&#39;t believe in communism.

i&#39;m not communist i have center left wing ideals or social-democatic ideals. And communism ails 90% of the time because of human nature look at most communist nation. the government or ecconomie ends up collapsing.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 12:12 AM










Look, it is impossible to predict the circumstances of a revolution because revolutions are different everytime.


And you truely think these few "bad apples" could not be easily stopped by the majority of people in a communist society? After the revolution, the vast majority of people are perfectly capable of supressing a few "would-be" CEOs.


I don&#39;t think so if the CEOs managed to take a monopoly on let&#39;s say food. They seize all th food with the help of people who still believe in capitalism, and believe me there will alwas be people who believe in capitalism. Saying everyone will think the same is a nice fairy tale but it&#39;s a little umm unrealistic? You do understand that word, right? Anyhow it wouldn&#39;t be completly hard for the Capitalists to get supporters when they promise power.


Furthermore, it&#39;s quite simple for me to deny that humans have natural "instincts" (the type you speak of, of course), as the idea is absurd, and not backed up by any credible science.


How can you be so high that you don&#39;t realize that humans have a nature to an extant. I don&#39;t know about you, but just about everyone else in the world prefers watching tv to cleaning sewers. Why? Because that&#39;s human nature. Also humans won&#39;t work when they&#39;re is no difference in working hard and hardly working. LTVs give people a reason to work hard.



Your thoughts on "human nature" parallel many bourgeois ideologues. You seem to think people are naturally lazy, and won&#39;t work unless they have some sort of incentive.

Do you actually enjoy your job? Or would you prefer enjoying one of your hobbies? I&#39;d pick the latter. human nature is not a bourgeois thing, it&#39;s a sober thing. No one likes working unless they get applauded for their work. I don&#39;t see why you have a problem with that.



However, if you really do want an "incentive", how does not ending up back "in the shit" again sound to you? I find it highly improbable that people will simply become lazy after actively seizing the means of production, and exerting their power against the bourgeoisie.


Ahh so you prefer the crack of the whip compared to the the piece of candy. Sounded like a stalinist now. If the worker ends up &#39;in the shit&#39;, you know what he&#39;ll do? He&#39;ll revolt. He&#39;ll get pissed at the system.



First off, I find it highly offensive that you think that communists are "getting" people to revolt. A proletarian revolution is made by proletarians; communists are just there to furnish ideas.


You said the same thing I said except in a nicer way. You&#39;re right. The fire is started by the proletarians but the fuel is communism.



Secondly, how gradual are we talking here? I suppose you envision a prolonged transistional period, involving a sort of enlightened despotism, no doubt. <_<

Now it&#39;s my turn to be offended <_<. I am extremly democratic and find that an extremly arrogant comment.

First, I don&#39;t think it&#39;s realistic to think that a revolution will happen worldwide simultaneously. The world is 6 Billion people and getting the majority to follow our views is not only impossible in our life time but would need massive planning and won&#39;t just happen on it&#39;s own out of the blue like you anarchists seem to think.


(which isn&#39;t all that discernable from capitalist economy) ...

That&#39;s false. Maybe you&#39;re just not listening. Everything that human beings need will be provided. Unlike capitalism. LTVs would just be for non necessities. It wouldn&#39;t be a market economy or anything like that so I&#39;m again offended that you&#39;d say something like that <_<

[Renegade420]

see this is what i was looking for. peoples ideas on how it could work. What would determine the amount on the LTV? It would be just another thing saying what you were worth. just another person or thing besides yourself controlling you. but this is a good step since you would only have to work for these essentials if you wanted them, you wouldnt have to hold a steady occupation to pay taxes or other government bullshit.

see if in communism, everybody is the same and the government gives you your necessitys, why would a person strive to do hard work or dangerous work unless every single person is extremely for the good of the whole, i mean i wouldn want to do be a brain surgeon or a coal miner while the guy who sweeps the street gets the same as me. What about athletes, astronauts, and people who do great things for the country? if every one is considered an equal then the younger generations would have no one to look up to.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 01:44 AM




see this is what i was looking for. peoples ideas on how it could work. What would determine the amount on the LTV? It would be just another thing saying what you were worth. just another person or thing besides yourself controlling you. but this is a good step since you would only have to work for these essentials if you wanted them, you wouldnt have to hold a steady occupation to pay taxes or other government bullshit.

I don&#39;t think determining units for LTVs would be a big problem. I think that each factory or office or whatever would have a goal of production. Than each worker would have a goal of production. If you reach the goal you&#39;ll get for certain amount of LTVs while if you surpass your goal you&#39;ll get more however if you slack off depending on how comrades feel on this, you may start a negative account. The point is that LTVs would have no control over your life. They&#39;d be a token of gratitude for the fruits of your labor which is something the anarchists seem to hate.


see if in communism, everybody is the same and the government gives you your necessitys, why would a person strive to do hard work or dangerous work unless every single person is extremely for the good of the whole, i mean i wouldn want to do be a brain surgeon or a coal miner while the guy who sweeps the street gets the same as me. What about athletes, astronauts, and people who do great things for the country? if every one is considered an equal then the younger generations would have no one to look up to.

You&#39;ll work harder to get more LTVs. If you&#39;re a brain surgeon and preform a perfect surgery, you&#39;ll get alot of LTVs for your work because it&#39;s harder and takes alot of hard work which sweeping the streets doesn&#39;t.

Hopefully after a couple generations, people will get used to the idea of selflessly serving the people and LTVs won&#39;t be needed.

Also, in capitalism you can only be a brain surgeon if you can afford the college training, while in communism the training would be open to everyone who wishes.

[Renegade420]

hmmm okay im understanding some of this. thank you who posted, i hate people who talk about shit they dont know of and thats what im trying to avoid doing is saying im somthing without knowing anything about it.

so you dont have to work for these LTV&#39;s. you could live in a tent and just get the food the government sent to you? would they keep a log at the distabution place so that people couldnt come back and get extra food and water? this would cut down on obesity too

[kurt]

I don&#39;t think so if the CEOs managed to take a monopoly on let&#39;s say food. They seize all th food with the help of people who still believe in capitalism, and believe me there will alwas be people who believe in capitalism. Saying everyone will think the same is a nice fairy tale but it&#39;s a little umm unrealistic? You do understand that word, right? Anyhow it wouldn&#39;t be completly hard for the Capitalists to get supporters when they promise power.

Clearly you didn&#39;t catch the part where I said, "the vast majority of people are perfectly capable of supressing a few "would-be" CEOs". Try not to misrepresent my views, as I never said anything about everyone thinking the same. I acknowledged the fact that there may be a few reactionaries left post-revolution, but I have no doubts working people are quite capable of supressing "would-be CEOs".


How can you be so high that you don&#39;t realize that humans have a nature to an extant. I don&#39;t know about you, but just about everyone else in the world prefers watching tv to cleaning sewers. Why? Because that&#39;s human nature.

This argument still doesn&#39;t prove that it&#39;s human nature to be "lazy", it just shows that people don&#39;t like cleaning up their own feces. Isn&#39;t that perfectly understandable?


Also humans won&#39;t work when they&#39;re is no difference in working hard and hardly working. LTVs give people a reason to work hard.
Once again, "human nature" does not exist. Stop using it in your arguments.


Do you actually enjoy your job? Or would you prefer enjoying one of your hobbies? I&#39;d pick the latter. human nature is not a bourgeois thing, it&#39;s a sober thing. No one likes working unless they get applauded for their work. I don&#39;t see why you have a problem with that.

Under communism, work in voluntary. People tend to gravitate to the work they find most enjoyable, thus work is a hobby under communism. Furthermore, being "applauded" for your work does not necessitate LTVs, nor does it necessitate monetary reward like capitalists would maintain.


Ahh so you prefer the crack of the whip compared to the the piece of candy. Sounded like a stalinist now. If the worker ends up &#39;in the shit&#39;, you know what he&#39;ll do? He&#39;ll revolt. He&#39;ll get pissed at the system.

The phrase "in the shit", refers to a reversion to capitalism.


First, I don&#39;t think it&#39;s realistic to think that a revolution will happen worldwide simultaneously. The world is 6 Billion people and getting the majority to follow our views is not nly impossible in our life time but would need massive planning and won&#39;t just happen on it&#39;s own out of the blue like you anarchists seem to think.

How&#39;s the straw scarecrow buisness coming these days henry?

I never mentioned anything about world-wide simultaneous revolution, nor am I an anarchist. To say that the world will revolt simultaneously is a-historical, and well, plain stupid&#33; However, this doesn&#39;t mean communism isn&#39;t possible "in the west". We don&#39;t need to "wait" for the rest of the world to catch up, while we stay in "transistion".


You&#39;ll work harder to get more LTVs. If you&#39;re a brain surgeon and preform a perfect surgery, you&#39;ll get alot of LTVs for your work because it&#39;s harder and takes alot of hard work which sweeping the streets doesn&#39;t.

And thus eventually amassing a massive surplus, while other workers are just receiving your food hand-outs :P

Hopefully after a couple generations, people will get used to the idea of selflessly serving the people and LTVs won&#39;t be needed.

[anomaly]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 03:02 AM
It is entirely possible that they may be "necessary". But, you seem a little too "sold" on the idea for me. We have no real way of knowing how the proletariat will handle the distribution of goods and services during, and after revolution.
It seems the best system, in my opinion. But you are right, we&#39;ll just have to see what the proletariat itself decides to do. But I am part of that group. So I do have a say in the matter.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 03:29 AM




Clearly you didn&#39;t catch the part where I said, "the vast majority of people are perfectly capable of supressing a few "would-be" CEOs". Try not to misrepresent my views, as I never said anything about everyone thinking the same. I acknowledged the fact that there may be a few reactionaries left post-revolution, but I have no doubts working people are quite capable of supressing "would-be CEOs".


Fine, I concede. You win on this issue :P


This argument still doesn&#39;t prove that it&#39;s human nature to be "lazy", it just shows that people don&#39;t like cleaning up their own feces. Isn&#39;t that perfectly understandable?

Wait are you arguing that there is no human nature or that human nature doesn&#39;t make you lazy?

If it&#39;s the first, here&#39;s something to think about. I punch you. Will you be happy with me or mad? Just about everyone will choose the latter. Although different people may respond differently since we are not clones, we all will have the same reaction emotions. Also you just proved that there is human nature by stating that human&#39;s don&#39;t like cleaning up their own feces. That&#39;s human nature.

If it&#39;s the second, I&#39;d say humans aren&#39;t lazy but they won&#39;t work for nothing whatsoever. That&#39;s slavery. It may be for the good of everyone and to create a better world, but that&#39;s not good enough because man is an individual and needs to have something to gain individually from it, not just communally. Money in capitalism provides that but ends up leaving people to starve in the streets. LTVs would provide that in communism but are limited to protect the worker and the people from starvation.


Under communism, work in voluntary. People tend to gravitate to the work they find most enjoyable, thus work is a hobby under communism. Furthermore, being "applauded" for your work does not necessitate LTVs, nor does it necessitate monetary reward like capitalists would maintain.

Fine, but who&#39;ll work in as an accountant and who wants to work as a coal miner? Sewer detail? factory worker?

No one, or not enough people want to do these type of jobs so what do we do? Collectivize them? can&#39;t collective all of the jobs that are unpleasant as people will spend half their work time doing collectivized crap jobs.

Also, I wanna be a rock star. That&#39;s my hobby.

***

I understand your point though which is why I think a better system would be to have people who want societies support to sign up/volunteer for 5 different jobs in order and turn in a resume. then planners and computer system would determine who get&#39;s what job based on qualifications and preference and availibility.

jobs like rockstar and critic would be hobbies.


so you dont have to work for these LTV&#39;s. you could live in a tent and just get the food the government sent to you? would they keep a log at the distabution place so that people couldnt come back and get extra food and water? this would cut down on obesity too

No. You&#39;d have to have a job to get societies support.

[kurt]

If it&#39;s the second, I&#39;d say humans aren&#39;t lazy but they won&#39;t work for nothing whatsoever. That&#39;s slavery.

Well first off, the way you use the term work is somewhat problematic, as "work" in communism is an entirely different concept.

In capitalism, working for a wage is necessary for survival. If you don&#39;t "do your job", you starve. Furthermore, under capitalism workers are forced to obey the authority of their bosses. Production under capitalism is soley for the benefit of capitalists; workers are alienated from the products of their labour&#33;

Under communism, this alienation no longer exists, as products produced are for the benefit of all, rather than a small elite. Also, there is no concept of "boss" under communism. The threat of starvation does not loom on the horizon if you don&#39;t work for a wage. Instead, work under communism, as I have stated before, is voluntary. You don&#39;t go to work because you have to, you go because you want to.

So, your assumptions about work under communism are incorrect. People do benefit from work, materially, and mentally. It&#39;s not "slavery" if there is no coercion.


It may be for the good of everyone and to create a better world, but that&#39;s not good enough because man is an individual and needs to have something to gain individually from it, not just communally

Well, communism of course, will create a "better world", but for most people, as Marx said, this won&#39;t be the sole motivation. Communism is the result of self-interest. Once workers begin to collectively realize that they are in fact doing "all the work", and they realize that the bourgeoisie are just "leeches", stealing the products of workers labour, they will come to revolutionary conclusions. Communism is in the material interests of workers.


Money in capitalism provides that but ends up leaving people to starve in the streets. LTVs would provide that in communism but are limited to protect the worker and the people from starvation.

Judging from your plan to give doctors considerably more "LTVs" for the same amount of labour, your idea of communism simply strikes me as being just another form of class society. Of course, yours is a "nice" place; workers won&#39;t face starvation&#33; That&#39;s called a safety-net. Communists want to get rid of all that shit&#33;


Fine, but who&#39;ll work in as an accountant and who wants to work as a coal miner? Sewer detail? factory worker?

Well, first off, alot of the "icky" jobs under capitalism can easily be done away with. If jobs like "sewer detail" still exist, they can be made much more "humane" (increased protection, from actual danger, and perhaps smell :P). Furthermore, the need for this kind of work will severly be diminished, and thus it won&#39;t be too hard to drum up a few volunteers.

Oh, and by the way, my dad does "sewer detail", and from what I&#39;ve heard, it&#39;s "not so bad". The actual number of times he&#39;s ended up "in the shit" (literally) has been relatively low.

I&#39;m also fairly confident that coal mining could eventually be entirely automated, although I&#39;m no expert on robotics.



Also, I wanna be a rock star. That&#39;s my hobby.


That&#39;s nice. I&#39;m already a rock star, maybe I&#39;ll let your band open for mine.


jobs like rockstar and critic would be hobbies.
All jobs are hobbies under communism. Although I suspect everyone will be a "critic" under communism.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

In capitalism, working for a wage is necessary for survival. If you don&#39;t "do your job", you starve. Furthermore, under capitalism workers are forced to obey the authority of their bosses. Production under capitalism is soley for the benefit of capitalists; workers are alienated from the products of their labour&#33;


It&#39;s funny, Over on a capitalist forum I&#39;m part of I was arguing exactly what you&#39;re arguing now. But yeah that&#39;s why LTVs will only be for the &#39;extra&#39; things.


Under communism, this alienation no longer exists, as products produced are for the benefit of all, rather than a small elite. Also, there is no concept of "boss" under communism. The threat of starvation does not loom on the horizon if you don&#39;t work for a wage. Instead, work under communism, as I have stated before, is voluntary. You don&#39;t go to work because you have to, you go because you want to.

So, your assumptions about work under communism are incorrect. People do benefit from work, materially, and mentally. It&#39;s not "slavery" if there is no coercion.

What? This makes no sense. If work is voluntary than I just won&#39;t volunteer or my job will be a rock star or a hotel critic. If work is voluntary people will just mooch off the system and if there is no difference between hardly working and working hard then why not hardly work? When everyone gets this attitude, there will be disaster.


Well, communism of course, will create a "better world", but for most people, as Marx said, this won&#39;t be the sole motivation. Communism is the result of self-interest. Once workers begin to collectively realize that they are in fact doing "all the work", and they realize that the bourgeoisie are just "leeches", stealing the products of workers labour, they will come to revolutionary conclusions. Communism is in the material interests of workers.

Exactly. BTW, how do you think a factory, for example, would be run, in detail in communism? I&#39;m just wondering what you think or anyone reading this thread for that matter.


Judging from your plan to give doctors considerably more "LTVs" for the same amount of labour, your idea of communism simply strikes me as being just another form of class society. Of course, yours is a "nice" place; workers won&#39;t face starvation&#33; That&#39;s called a safety-net. Communists want to get rid of all that shit&#33;

What would be the motivation to be a brain surgeon than? Why put in all that hard work and time and years of studying if you can sweep sidewalks?

That&#39;s the theory, however unlike in capitalism, everyone will have the opportunity to go to college and study whatever they wish as it&#39;d be free.

Also I find that statement offending since that&#39;s not at all how life would be they would not face starvation. It&#39;d be a worker&#39;s paradise. Everything from their home, to clothing, to tools, to food, provided. LTVs would just be for non-necessities. Besides there&#39;s no reason why you should not be getting LTVs as if you aren&#39;t it means you&#39;re just slacking off.


Well, first off, alot of the "icky" jobs under capitalism can easily be done away with. If jobs like "sewer detail" still exist, they can be made much more "humane" (increased protection, from actual danger, and perhaps smell :P). Furthermore, the need for this kind of work will severly be diminished, and thus it won&#39;t be too hard to drum up a few volunteers.

Oh, and by the way, my dad does "sewer detail", and from what I&#39;ve heard, it&#39;s "not so bad". The actual number of times he&#39;s ended up "in the shit" (literally) has been relatively low.

I&#39;m also fairly confident that coal mining could eventually be entirely automated, although I&#39;m no expert on robotics.

Oh yes we&#39;ll shit more humanly. We&#39;ll ask the shit not to stink very much. And I&#39;m sure there are plenty of volunteers eager to do the sewer detail.

What icky jobs can be done away with? Give me some examples. Also that wasn&#39;t the point.

The sewer isn&#39;t gonna be somone&#39;s hobby.

What&#39;s wrong with offering A wad of LTVs for the workers who do the ickiest work?



All jobs are hobbies under communism. Although I suspect everyone will be a "critic" under communism.

Great we&#39;ll be a society of paintball players and rockstars.

"What about food?"

"Oh umm... yeah well... no one&#39;s hobby is working in the cotton and corn fields in the 110 degree sun so I guess we&#39;ll just have to do awayt with it" lol

Like I said and you ignored. Jobs have to be realistic. They should definatly be enjoyable but they should be productive hobbies.

[anomaly]

Originally posted by LeftHenry
What&#39;s wrong with offering A wad of LTVs for the workers who do the ickiest work?
Well, this is not how a TLV system would work.

We do not arbitrarily assign jobs a &#39;difficulty level&#39;. Rather, it is rather simple how TLVs will be &#39;handed out&#39;.

One simply takes the ratio of the productive output of the job in question and the amount of time an individual has worked. All we need to do is describe the output in units, and then take the units to, say, hours worked. So we&#39;ll have a ratio like 44:1, so the worker receives 44 vouchers.

Also, LeftHenry is right: TLVs will be used only to &#39;purchase&#39; items which are not produced in such a quantity that they can be distributed socially (that is free access). So the essentials of life that can be produced in abundance will be socialized.

[Janus]

What&#39;s wrong with offering A wad of LTVs for the workers who do the ickiest work?
Rewards pose a small problem. We want people to gravitate towards work that they like, not because that work has a better pay.


The sewer isn&#39;t gonna be somone&#39;s hobby.
Nope, you could get volunteers or ration it out to individuals who work for so many hours and then rotate.

[nickdlc]

Exactly. BTW, how do you think a factory, for example, would be run, in detail in communism? I&#39;m just wondering what you think or anyone reading this thread for that matter.communism gives people way more incentives than the one dimensional incentive in capitalism (money).

In a hypothetical factory of say a "sewage" factory we have 50 people working who take raw human shit and compost it into soil. Now say the workers have all voted that they would all like to start the days work at 12pm and finish around 4pm. The first thing that happens at 12pm is to meet up in the meeting room to figure out who will do which jobs that are needed for composting human manure (humanure). This can happen many ways like people volunteering for which job they want, picking names out of a hat, 100 meter race, drinking contest etc.... The important thing is that it is all democratic and people are enjoying themselves with thier comrades.

Okay so now people have worked for four hours and they&#39;re fucking tired. Alot of composting was done that day and the humanure will be ready to be sent to farms come crop season. The workers go back into the meeting room to get food and change and get ready to go, but before that any suggestions to speed up work/make work more pleasurable are taken. Comrade Heather puts up her hand and makes a great suggestion that everybody likes and votes to implement immediatly, for the next couple of days Heather and any other comrades who are interested in making her suggestion a reality will be able to work with Comrade Dillion (the engineer) to see how plausable her plan will be.

Everyones had a shitload of fun and can&#39;t wait to be emailed for the next time the compost factory will need to churn out some more humanure compost. Until that next day the workers at the sewage factory can volunteer their time at some other factory and meet new people or take a vacation after all that hard labour.


Oh yes we&#39;ll shit more humanly. We&#39;ll ask the shit not to stink very much. And I&#39;m sure there are plenty of volunteers eager to do the sewer detail. Shit can be composted so that it doesn&#39;t stink and will turn into soil (when mixed with food scraps and other organic material). No sewers needed, and no smell from shit correctly composted. I would be very interested in volunteering for "sewer detail" and im sure many other people would too. communism depends on people having many interests because we all know there would be many people who would hate doing "sewer detail" but find something else worth doing that the "sewer detail" people would hate&#33;

The question of if LTV&#39;s need to be used is up to the workers themsleves but it would be good to keep track of how much labour went it soley for book keeping purposes.


What icky jobs can be done away with? Give me some examples. Sewers can be done away with which is very environmentally harmful. Switching to the composting of feces and urine is a perfect example of how we can abolish sewers. Plus the end product of the compost is soil that can be used to grow food&#33; The end product of sewer waste is buried underground or dumped into some river or ocean.


Great we&#39;ll be a society of paintball players and rockstars.I&#39;ve never seen why people like paintball but before you think you&#39;ll be a rockstar prepared to be somewhat good at your instrument. Being able to make a record under communism will be so easy that everyone will do it. Plus all music will likely be free and easily downloadable on the internet.

[Herman]

I wouldn&#39;t mind at all, if I could work in a sewer and it didn&#39;t smell. :P

[Janus]

Switching to the composting of feces and urine is a perfect example of how we can abolish sewers. Plus the end product of the compost is soil that can be used to grow food&#33;
How would that be done succesfully on a large scale?


The end product of sewer waste is buried underground or dumped into some river or ocean.
That&#39;s where pollution and diseases begin.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Well, this is not how a TLV system would work.

We do not arbitrarily assign jobs a &#39;difficulty level&#39;. Rather, it is rather simple how TLVs will be &#39;handed out&#39;.

One simply takes the ratio of the productive output of the job in question and the amount of time an individual has worked. All we need to do is describe the output in units, and then take the units to, say, hours worked. So we&#39;ll have a ratio like 44:1, so the worker receives 44 vouchers.


I think it should work like that. My opinion is why would people study 10 long years to become a brain surgeon and have a dog walker or street sweeper get paid more than him? It&#39;s silly. Sure there will be people who just love brain surgery and are fascinated by it but most won&#39;t an will just take the easy route out. I know I would and you&#39;re a liar if you say you wouldn&#39;t.

LTVs provide an extra incentive to study to become a brain surgeon. Or to take to become a coal miner.

Also I don&#39;t quite understand your system. How&#39;ll jobs like for example brain sugery or teacher e measured? I think that a Clothing factory or something of the sort would be like that but there has to be another system for jobs that create intangible productivity. I think it could be a measure of how your patient or pupil does. If the patient has a successful brain surgery, the brain surgeon would get a handsome reward of LTVs. If the teacher&#39;s students getting A grade averages, then she/he&#39;ll get more LTVs than if they were getting Bs or C averaveges.


I&#39;ve never seen why people like paintball but before you think you&#39;ll be a rockstar prepared to be somewhat good at your instrument. Being able to make a record under communism will be so easy that everyone will do it. Plus all music will likely be free and easily downloadable on the internet.

The point is no one will do productive jobs like working on a plantation in the hot sun to harvest corn. Or working in a coal mine. Or etc.. if they can just play paintball or jam out all day or play paintball.

There needs to be a database in which everybody inputs there two or three favorite productive jobs, and then the jobs are given to people based on qualifications and want. If you decide the job you chose is not to your liking, you should be able to appeal for a new one.

Here in New York City, the Board of eduction uses something like this to place kids who score high on specialized exams into specialized schools.

[kurt]

Here we go again...


What? This makes no sense. If work is voluntary than I just won&#39;t volunteer or my job will be a rock star or a hotel critic. If work is voluntary people will just mooch off the system and if there is no difference between hardly working and working hard then why not hardly work? When everyone gets this attitude, there will be disaster.

Well, your fervant attachment to some inherent notion of human "lazyness" is simply a lingering product of capitalist society. Under communism, work, while still being potentially "difficult", is voluntary, and thus more of a hobby than actual "work" that you experience under capitalism.

I suppose you think people would just sit on their couch all day long if work wasn&#39;t forced. Your loss, not mine.


Exactly. BTW, how do you think a factory, for example, would be run, in detail in communism? I&#39;m just wondering what you think or anyone reading this thread for that matter.

I don&#39;t really know how to best "run a factory" under communism, as my experience in one has been rather limited.

However, I do know that everyone needs to "have a say". All decisions must be approved by the majority, and not some bureacrat. Tasks traditionally done by "mangers" under capitalism could be evenly distributed, or we could implement a rotational system via direct democracy, or possibly demarchy.

A work place like mine (mechanic shop) could easily run under these principles, as we (the workers) are the ones making all the decisions already.


What would be the motivation to be a brain surgeon than? Why put in all that hard work and time and years of studying if you can sweep sidewalks?

That&#39;s the theory, however unlike in capitalism, everyone will have the opportunity to go to college and study whatever they wish as it&#39;d be free.

Some people like to study for years perhaps? I hate to invoke Cuba as an example here (as it is still capitalist), but I think it accurately demolishes your "assumption". Doctors in Cuba make less money on average than cab drivers. In fact, some doctors in Cuba are actually also cab drivers. Perhaps "brain surgery" is what interests them, and not money?

Furthermore, "free college" is offered in some countries around the world, I think Australia is one of them. Still, this is simply a welfare reform, and does not address the issue of wage-slavery whatsoever.


Oh yes we&#39;ll shit more humanly. We&#39;ll ask the shit not to stink very much. And I&#39;m sure there are plenty of volunteers eager to do the sewer detail.

What icky jobs can be done away with? Give me some examples. Also that wasn&#39;t the point.

I never said anything about "shitting more humanely", but I guess I&#39;ll have to be far more explicit when I&#39;m dealing with you. As I&#39;ve already said, given the right conditions, "sewer detail" (and I suspect you don&#39;t even know what this entails) isn&#39;t all that bad. The issue of shit "stinking" is completely irrelevant when your suit blocks the smell anyways.

Off the top of my head, I recall someone mentioning on these very forums that in Japan, "cleaning the toilet" is no longer an issue, as technology has taken care of it.


Great we&#39;ll be a society of paintball players and rockstars.

No offense, but I don&#39;t suspect you&#39;re good enough to "go pro" in either of these respective fields.

Furthermore, I suppose if you&#39;re "too lazy" to do productive work, then society can easily pick up the slack for a few of you "social misfits". After all, a precondition for communism is material abundance. We&#39;ll probably just pity you more than anything.


Like I said and you ignored. Jobs have to be realistic. They should definatly be enjoyable but they should be productive hobbies.

Brain surgery can easily be a hobby if one is interested in it.

[anomaly]

Originally posted by LeftHenry
I think that a Clothing factory or something of the sort would be like that but there has to be another system for jobs that create intangible productivity.
I think that any job&#39;s output can be measured. The intangible ones will be tricky, you&#39;re right, however, even then we can probably find a way to measure it.

A teacher&#39;s productivity, for example, may be measured by the capabilities of students. Or perhaps it will be something else. However, in such scenarios, I wouldn&#39;t worry much. We are human, we&#39;ll figure it out. Once the system is put into use (if it is), then maybe we can work out the kinks in it.

Of course, hopefully no TLV or market system will even be neccesary. Let&#39;s say we have a free access-like system in which some products are not produced on such a scale that they are readily available to all who want them. Perhaps some sort of distributive rotary system would work, in which, in a commune or collective, individuals who would like the product receive it on a rotary basis. Just an idea.

But the point is there are quite a few alternatives to the TLV system. We&#39;ll just have to see which works best. It is my feeling that a TLV system would, but that has yet to be tested.

[nickdlc]

How would that be done succesfully on a large scale? It could be done quite easily and would be much simpler than all the waste treatment facilities and all the resources lost while draining human shit and urine and moving it to another location.

Composting on a large scale would require some organization but it would be easy to do on a volunteer basis. For example we have to start with the kind of compost toilet that would be most ubiquitous in communist society and that might be a two chambered toilet that can store urine and feces for around 2 months (with a family of four). The humanure within the chambers will be semi composted by the time they are picked up and sent to the city treatment plant where full composting is completed. The finished product is sent to farms or indivduals can pick some up for their personal gardens (there will be no shortage of compost).


That&#39;s where pollution and diseases begin. Yes this is how we get rid of human "waste" today but hopefully that will change.

btw here&#39;s a book that will blow your mind and will induce you to start composting your shit and urine&#33;&#33;&#33; http://weblife.org/humanure/default.html

[violencia.Proletariat]

in communist society and that might be a two chambered toilet that can store urine and feces for around 2 months (with a family of four).

Too much work. This could just be done at the waste water treatment plant. They burn the shit once they take it out of the water anyways. Much more realistic than installing new toilets in everyone&#39;s house.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2006, 05:21 AM






Well, your fervant attachment to some inherent notion of human "lazyness" is simply a lingering product of capitalist society. Under communism, work, while still being potentially "difficult", is voluntary, and thus more of a hobby than actual "work" that you experience under capitalism.


How will everthing be calculated? In other words, how do we know how much is enough or to little if people just go to work whenever they feel? There needs to be individual goals and communal goals.



I suppose you think people would just sit on their couch all day long if work wasn&#39;t forced. Your loss, not mine.

Sure. I&#39;d do that. I&#39;d probably go play soccer. maybe skateboard. maybe surf the net and watch some TV or go see a movie but I don&#39;t think I&#39;d &#39;gravitate&#39; to the meat packing plant for the fun of it unless there was some individual gain for working hard.


However, I do know that everyone needs to "have a say". All decisions must be approved by the majority, and not some bureacrat. Tasks traditionally done by "mangers" under capitalism could be evenly distributed, or we could implement a rotational system via direct democracy, or possibly demarchy.

A work place like mine (mechanic shop) could easily run under these principles, as we (the workers) are the ones making all the decisions already.

Fine


Some people like to study for years perhaps? I hate to invoke Cuba as an example here (as it is still capitalist), but I think it accurately demolishes your "assumption". Doctors in Cuba make less money on average than cab drivers. In fact, some doctors in Cuba are actually also cab drivers. Perhaps "brain surgery" is what interests them, and not money?


Cuba still has money. Do you think we should have money?

And that wasn&#39;t the point. The point is that I&#39;m sure there are alot of people who are naturally interested in brain surgery, but most likely most of them won&#39;t do it unless they have individual gains. After all it&#39;s long years of hard study.


Furthermore, "free college" is offered in some countries around the world, I think Australia is one of them. Still, this is simply a welfare reform, and does not address the issue of wage-slavery whatsoever.

LTVs are not wage slavery as they are just a bonus. The vast, vast majority of things would be collectivized, but LTVs would be for the &#39;finer things&#39; and would be a reward for the fruits of their labor.

It would just be an extra little thing.


I never said anything about "shitting more humanely", but I guess I&#39;ll have to be far more explicit when I&#39;m dealing with you. As I&#39;ve already said, given the right conditions, "sewer detail" (and I suspect you don&#39;t even know what this entails) isn&#39;t all that bad. The issue of shit "stinking" is completely irrelevant when your suit blocks the smell anyways.

Off the top of my head, I recall someone mentioning on these very forums that in Japan, "cleaning the toilet" is no longer an issue, as technology has taken care of it.


Fine.


No offense, but I don&#39;t suspect you&#39;re good enough to "go pro" in either of these respective fields.


LOL I rarly play paintball and I&#39;ve never touched an electric guitar lol. But it&#39;s the idea that counts Most people don&#39;t have hobbies like &#39;oil miner&#39; or etc.. their hobbies are guitar and paintball and yes sometimes relativly productive things like wood working but nothing really like a &#39;factory&#39; job or whatever.


Furthermore, I suppose if you&#39;re "too lazy" to do productive work, then society can easily pick up the slack for a few of you "social misfits". After all, a precondition for communism is material abundance. We&#39;ll probably just pity you more than anything.


What does this mean? Explain.


Brain surgery can easily be a hobby if one is interested in it.

Those people are few and far between. Most hobbies are little things. Jobs should be things you have interest in yes, but hobbies are hobbies because they are a break from work.

[kurt]

How will everthing be calculated? In other words, how do we know how much is enough or to little if people just go to work whenever they feel? There needs to be individual goals and communal goals.

You&#39;ll know how much is "enough" by how much is needed. It&#39;s really a simple calculation.


Sure. I&#39;d do that. I&#39;d probably go play soccer. maybe skateboard. maybe surf the net and watch some TV or go see a movie but I don&#39;t think I&#39;d &#39;gravitate&#39; to the meat packing plant for the fun of it unless there was some individual gain for working hard.

Highly doubtful. In most cases, adults find themselves "bored" without anything productive to do.

Do you receive monetary compensation for organizational work you do?


And that wasn&#39;t the point. The point is that I&#39;m sure there are alot of people who are naturally interested in brain surgery, but most likely most of them won&#39;t do it unless they have individual gains. After all it&#39;s long years of hard study.

Of course there won&#39;t be money; you&#39;re the one advocating a system similar to money, not me.

Besides, it was a completely relevant point. Doctors in Cuba get very low salaries, yet they still spend upwards of a decade studying to become one, when they could have just drove a taxi and made more money.

Furthermore, studying isn&#39;t really "all that bad" when the pressures of "paying the bills" aren&#39;t there. I&#39;m sure you don&#39;t study revolutionary texts in the hopes of monetary reward... unless of course you plan on being "the next lenin" :lol:


It would just be an extra little thing.

An unneeded "extra little thing". A thing which is only necessary if humans are naturally lazy, which they are not.


LOL I rarly play paintball and I&#39;ve never touched an electric guitar lol. But it&#39;s the idea that counts Most people don&#39;t have hobbies like &#39;oil miner&#39; or etc.. their hobbies are guitar and paintball and yes sometimes relativly productive things like wood working but nothing really like a &#39;factory&#39; job or whatever.

People do not become plumbers because they were looking soley for big bucks. People, more often than not, hold an interest in their chosen profession, be it plumbing, pipe fitting, auto mechanics, history, or "oil mining".


What does this mean? Explain.

Well, judging from your posts, you seem to be quite the lazy fellow. Assuming this held true in communist society, we would still be able to pick up the slack for you and the few others like you. People like you would probably be treated with pity. We&#39;d wonder "what was wrong with that guy".


Those people are few and far between. Most hobbies are little things. Jobs should be things you have interest in yes, but hobbies are hobbies because they are a break from work.

Obviously brain surgery isn&#39;t one of these people&#39;s only interests, but there certainly are people who are interested in the subject. Yes, these people are somewhat "rare", but brain surgery is also a highly specialized field.

I&#39;m not saying people won&#39;t continue to have unproductive hobbies like paintballing, etc. All I&#39;m saying is that people will be interested in pursuing some form of productive labour, voluntarily, which makes it more of a hobby than a "job".

[nickdlc]

Too much work. This could just be done at the waste water treatment plant. They burn the shit once they take it out of the water anyways. Much more realistic than installing new toilets in everyone&#39;s house.

It could be done at a treatment plant but at a loss of valuable soil (which we could use to feed people&#33;) which is a product of composted shit, not to mention we would get rid of the pollution problems associated with treatment plants. 40% of fresh drinking water in north america is wasted because we use it to shit and piss in&#33; As more people in the third world start getting better living conditions do you think this mass waste is desirable or sustainable?

Plus if you dont wanna get a fancy two chambered toilet you can create a super low tech saw dust toilet (all you need is leaves/sawdust and a bucket)

read the link it&#39;s a great book.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

You&#39;ll know how much is "enough" by how much is needed. It&#39;s really a simple calculation.


Ah thanks oh enlightened one. Now I understand. calculating poriduction for 100s of things for x population is &#39;a simple calculation&#39; nevermind what happens when you screw up.


Highly doubtful. In most cases, adults find themselves "bored" without anything productive to do.

No your theory is highly doubtful. People are perfectly fine watching TV or relaxing at home. And their hobbies are never brain surgery. That&#39;s upsurd and looney. It&#39;s basically slavery if there is no individualist gain and no difference in working.



Of course there won&#39;t be money; you&#39;re the one advocating a system similar to money, not me.
[QUOTE]

I&#39;m the one advocating a system that gives people a reason to work hard. If you know that your children, and the children after you are going to living the exact same way. Without individualism, we become drones of the system.

[QUOTE]Besides, it was a completely relevant point. Doctors in Cuba get very low salaries, yet they still spend upwards of a decade studying to become one, when they could have just drove a taxi and made more money.

Ah I see. Your society would be one like Castro&#39;s cuba. Viva la Opression&#33; Nevermind the fact that jobs are assigned and cuba is still a market economy and that it&#39;s a repressive regime. Nevermind the fact that people flee on rafts made of tires.


Furthermore, studying isn&#39;t really "all that bad" when the pressures of "paying the bills" aren&#39;t there. I&#39;m sure you don&#39;t study revolutionary texts in the hopes of monetary reward... unless of course you plan on being "the next lenin" :lol:

I study it because it interests me and is the only system which is humaine. It is sort of a hobby but isn&#39;t really productive. The same goes for 95% of the population. There &#39;hobby&#39; activites aren&#39;t productive.


An unneeded "extra little thing". A thing which is only necessary if humans are naturally lazy, which they are not.

It&#39;s not that humans are lazy. It&#39;s that humans aren&#39;t drones. We are not robots and are individuals who want want a better future for ourselves and families. humans need to maintain individualism. Saying that they don&#39;t is like saying humans don&#39;t have common sense as it is not scienctificly backed. Anyone who is half smar knows that we do have common sense.

I don&#39;t see why you are so set against LTVs. There is no reason why a worker who meets his reasonable goals shouldn&#39;t be getting LTVs. Unless of course you are lazy and leech off of society.


People do not become plumbers because they were looking soley for big bucks. People, more often than not, hold an interest in their chosen profession, be it plumbing, pipe fitting, auto mechanics, history, or "oil mining".


They have an interest in it, but they wouldn&#39;t do it for nothing. They do it because they need money to get rich. If you take that away they&#39;d be perfectly fine doing anything else. If they work for nothing it&#39;s almost slavery to the community.


Well, judging from your posts, you seem to be quite the lazy fellow. Assuming this held true in communist society, we would still be able to pick up the slack for you and the few others like you. People like you would probably be treated with pity. We&#39;d wonder "what was wrong with that guy".

Actually I&#39;m not lazy. I&#39;m just realistic. I showing you how your system would fall apart because there are plenty of people who take my attitude against communism. I&#39;ve debated plenty. What you&#39;re saying makes little sense. If people were smart they&#39;d all dump there work on others and just leech off of them. You can&#39;t honestly believe that people enjoy work. Do you get up in the morning and say &#39;Oh goody, sewer detail. I can&#39;t wait&#33;"? No, you most likly groan and press the snooze on your alarm clock until you have coffee which is a drug which temporarily gets rid of your laziness and sleepiness.


This arguement is becoming silly. You take an extremly idealistic anarchist &#39;it&#39;ll all work out&#39; kind of attutude, which doesn&#39;t cut it in the real world. Why do you think socialism has failed in the passed? Because they&#39;re leninists? No. Because people realize that they can just show up to work and work half heartedly and then go home and reap the benefits. If there&#39;s one thing we should have learned from the USSR during nolmancy is that people are to an extent lazy. That&#39;s why ther was no bread on the shelves in the USSR (trust me there wasn&#39;t, my moms can vouch for that). LTVs however are a solution to that and don&#39;t involve forced labor and are extremly reasononable. I&#39;ll say it again. There is no reason you shouldn&#39;t be getting LTVs (unless you are disabled or no job is provided for you in which case some other solution will be determined) unless you&#39;re slacking off.

[nickdlc]

Ah I see. Your society would be one like Castro&#39;s cuba. Viva la Opression&#33; Nevermind the fact that jobs are assigned and cuba is still a market economy and that it&#39;s a repressive regime. Nevermind the fact that people flee on rafts made of tires. Under communism the only people who decide economic questions are normal people themselves&#33; It may be that as we leave class society workers will vote enthusiatically for some type of wage system but it is also possible that the revolution has shown people possiblities and freedom never imagined and would want to dispense a monetary system all together. People in their workers councils/soviets will have to decide what is necessary and their decisions will have to be respected&#33;

Anyway Left Henry im not sure if you&#39;ve read the fundamental principles of communist production and distribution but if you haven&#39;t you&#39;ll love this book.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6579/

[Renegade420]

still no one has answered my quetion of if that people are all the same then what happens to influences? like hero&#39;s and people to look up to?

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2006, 09:46 PM
still no one has answered my quetion of if that people are all the same then what happens to influences? like hero&#39;s and people to look up to?
People wouldn&#39;t all be the same. Individualism would be extremly important.

[kurt]

You made the quotes all ugly :(


Ah thanks oh enlightened one. Now I understand. calculating poriduction for 100s of things for x population is &#39;a simple calculation&#39; nevermind what happens when you screw up.

One need not be "enlightened" to realize that calculating production isn&#39;t really as tough as the bourgeois would like you to think.

One usually knows how much food, gas, clothing, dish soap, etc they go through in a week. How hard would it be to average this all out, and then make it? Rarer things would be produced based on request most likely, with a short waiting time.


No your theory is highly doubtful. People are perfectly fine watching TV or relaxing at home.

But you haven&#39;t even offered an explanation as to why. Tell me, why are humans perfectly fine sitting at home 24/7. Of course, you could fall back on "human nature", I suppose. It&#39;s "human nature" to be "lazy" right? Nevermind the fact that "human nature" does not exist, nor have you even made an attempt to prove its existence.


And their hobbies are never brain surgery. That&#39;s upsurd and looney.

Of course brain surgery isn&#39;t a hobby under capitalism. First of all, I suspect performing brain surgery on "ones own time" would be not only illegal, but pure stupidity. Under capitalism it would be pure folly to go to school for 12+ years and not even have a career in brain surgery in mind.

Anyways, you&#39;re arguing from a capitalist mindset, believing hobbies to be merely an escape from the "daily grind".


I&#39;m the one advocating a system that gives people a reason to work hard. If you know that your children, and the children after you are going to living the exact same way. Without individualism, we become drones of the system.

No. TLV&#39;s play a very similar role to money. That is, they are a commodity which has the sole purpose of expressing the value of another commodity. You&#39;re just tacitly validating that money is necessary in society (which it isn&#39;t).

The second part of this argument might strike a chord with a capitalist, but not a communist. People don&#39;t need money to work hard, nor will their children&#39;s children always live "the exact same way" if they don&#39;t receive money.


Ah I see. Your society would be one like Castro&#39;s cuba. Viva la Opression&#33; Nevermind the fact that jobs are assigned and cuba is still a market economy and that it&#39;s a repressive regime. Nevermind the fact that people flee on rafts made of tires.
:lol:

Can you fucking read? I never said it would be like Castro&#39;s Cuba, but I suppose straw-men are you speciality. The example merely serves to crush your idea that a doctor would need a "fat wad of TLV&#39;s" to become one.


It&#39;s not that humans are lazy. It&#39;s that humans aren&#39;t drones. We are not robots and are individuals who want want a better future for ourselves and families. humans need to maintain individualism. Saying that they don&#39;t is like saying humans don&#39;t have common sense as it is not scienctificly backed.

Not being paid does not make one a drone. And receiving monetary compensation for work is not a necessary pre-quisite for being an "individual".


I don&#39;t see why you are so set against LTVs. There is no reason why a worker who meets his reasonable goals shouldn&#39;t be getting LTVs. Unless of course you are lazy and leech off of society.

It&#39;s because TLV&#39;s will lead to a material divide, and class society. You&#39;ve said yourself, doctors will receive considerably more TLV&#39;s than someone who is sweeping the streets, or producing a car.


If they work for nothing it&#39;s almost slavery to the community.

Enough with this jibberish and random attempts to equate voluntary labour with slavery. Slavery is a coercive relationship with a master-owner. There are no masters in communism, and thus no slaves or under classes.


there are plenty of people who take my attitude against communism.

Are we living under communism? No. Why is that?

It&#39;s called material conditions. The proletariat isn&#39;t ready yet, so of course your backwards attitude will be taken up by some.


I&#39;ve debated plenty.

Hardly. Your whole argument rests on the notion of human "lazyness", which does not exist.


Do you get up in the morning and say &#39;Oh goody, sewer detail. I can&#39;t wait&#33;"? No, you most likly groan and press the snooze on your alarm clock until you have coffee which is a drug which temporarily gets rid of your laziness and sleepiness.

No, but that&#39;s because I&#39;m a wage-slave. I am forced to sell my labour-power in exchange for Canadian dollars.

Under your system, I&#39;d also be forced to sell my labour-power in exchange for TLV&#39;s.

See a parallel?


This arguement is becoming silly. You take an extremly idealistic anarchist &#39;it&#39;ll all work out&#39; kind of attutude, which doesn&#39;t cut it in the real world.

It&#39;s not an idealist attitude, and I suspect you don&#39;t even know what this word even means. It&#39;s an argument based on material conditions. If people are ready to overthrow an entire social order, with the intent to create an entirely radical, new social order, then surely they will be capable of getting production in order. Communism is an entirely different social order from capitalism, and humans adapt to those material conditions. It&#39;s what we do.


Why do you think socialism has failed in the passed? Because they&#39;re leninists? No. Because people realize that they can just show up to work and work half heartedly and then go home and reap the benefits.

There was still money in your "socialist" systems... so your argument here is mute.

Socialism failed in the past because "communists" tried to force socialism onto places where the material conditions were not yet sufficiently developed. Most every "socialist" regime has sprung from a fuedal or semi-feudal class structure. It&#39;s idealist to think that communism could have worked under these conditions; the class consciousness for communism just simply wasn&#39;t possible.





If there&#39;s one thing we should have learned from the USSR during nolmancy is that people are to an extent lazy.

No, what we should learn from the "USSR" is that communism is impossible without first sufficiently developing the means of production. It&#39;s a materialist thing... you wouldn&#39;t understand.


LTVs however are a solution to that and don&#39;t involve forced labor and are extremly reasononable.

But that isn&#39;t the case. TLV&#39;s are "forced labour". If you don&#39;t work, you are denied material reward. That&#39;s a form of coercion.


I&#39;ll say it again. There is no reason you shouldn&#39;t be getting LTVs (unless you are disabled or no job is provided for you in which case some other solution will be determined) unless you&#39;re slacking off.

Yes... I&#39;m sure you&#39;ll determine "some other solution". Don&#39;t blame me for not wanting to experience it.

[Janus]

Composting on a large scale would require some organization but it would be easy to do on a volunteer basis. For example we have to start with the kind of compost toilet that would be most ubiquitous in communist society and that might be a two chambered toilet that can store urine and feces for around 2 months (with a family of four). The humanure within the chambers will be semi composted by the time they are picked up and sent to the city treatment plant where full composting is completed. The finished product is sent to farms or indivduals can pick some up for their personal gardens (there will be no shortage of compost).

Store it in a tank? Also, when human and animal feces are directly used for agricultural purposes, it is quite unsanitary and diesases can develop.

[nickdlc]

Store it in a tank? Also, when human and animal feces are directly used for agricultural purposes, it is quite unsanitary and diesases can develop.

Please read the link&#33; And no composting is sanitary and diseases are killed if you compost the material right. Putting untreated feces straight into agricultural fields is dangerous and i think this has been done in china for hundreds of years but may have been phased out by the government.

The composting process is pretty easy and in the link i provided it&#39;s explained in more detail but basically you want to achieve a carbon nitrogen ratio of 3:1. You can get carbon or "browns" from leaves, old grass, hay, wood chips, feces, paper and other dry or brown looking organic sources. you get nitrogen or "greens" from food scraps, urine, freshly cut grass and other green looking or wet organic material.

Tanks are not needed unless you want to be fancy or have lots of money, but simple open ended wooden containers are good enough. You start of by piling a layer of browns onto the ground covering with greens then piling with browns again all the while trying to attain the right carbon nitrogen ratio. Within a couple of days thermophilic bacteria (heat loving bacteria) should start digesting the compost pile and raising the temperature of the compost to temperatures around 90 degrees celcius&#33; This will kill off all bacteria in the feces that could possibly be harmful, the end product being rich smelling soil.

You can add as many piles to the compost container as you like because the bacteria is constanly digesting the pile, but if you happen to fill the pile or want to leave it for a while before using the product you can easily make more containers as needed.

This process is so simple that children could do it and most likely they would have fun, learn about the natural world and develop a greater appreciation for earth.

btw I also read that during the special period in cuba when they had to be more self sufficient that organic farming and composting was introduced with great results, so this is a very practical solution to alot of our problems.

[ahab]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 02:47 AM
hmmm okay im understanding some of this. thank you who posted, i hate people who talk about shit they dont know of and thats what im trying to avoid doing is saying im somthing without knowing anything about it.

so you dont have to work for these LTV&#39;s. you could live in a tent and just get the food the government sent to you? would they keep a log at the distabution place so that people couldnt come back and get extra food and water? this would cut down on obesity too
ok well i am opposed to the whole communist thing, The government owning everything and people getting what they need. The incentive for good work would be gone.

Back to the anarchist economy, everyone would live free and equal, regions and communities would take care of themselves through town meetings and such peoples needs would be attended to and only the work that needed to be done would be, it would be a sharing community unlike the communists where the government owns everything. Anarcho-primitaves I believe are the ones who do the whole hunt the animal and live in huts and shit like that, but i believe in Anarcho-syndaclism, in which all people are fundamentally equal and should live their lives as they see fit, as long as they dont harm the freedoms of others. I oppose capitolism because it is a profit system based on the exploitation of the workers and the poor to the ruling class. The government, military, police are not there to look out for you but to fight for the ruling class and keep them in power. Capatolists are racists and share in other forms of oppression.

The communist idea of going to the factory and working to get food is just like living in poverty in capatolism, the government being the ruling class. In reality you are not free, all this about the worker losing his chains, well sure you dont have a boss and all that but whats the point in living if you cant feel alive? Materiel things are GOOD having the government own all property, giving them complete power, you get notthing except what you need. Greed aside of course about the whole materiel things.

This is my understanding of communism correct me if i&#39;m wrong.

[kurt]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2006, 09:29 AM
[QUOTE=Renegade420,Jun 13 2006, 02:47 AM]
This is my understanding of communism correct me if i&#39;m wrong.
You&#39;re completely wrong. Communism and Anarchism have the same end result: no government.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2006, 12:11 AM

[QUOTE=Renegade420,Jun 13 2006, 02:47 AM]
This is my understanding of communism correct me if i&#39;m wrong.
You&#39;re completely wrong. Communism and Anarchism have the same end result: no government.
True that.

Only difference is anarchists want immediate anarchy while communists want gradual anarchy.