Economics and Politics on the Day After the Social-Proletocratic Revolution

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS ON THE DAY AFTER THE SOCIAL-PROLETOCRATIC REVOLUTION



“But I maintain that it is a help to political clearness to examine the problems that will grow out of the conquest of political power by us. This is also valuable for propaganda since our opponents frequently assert that our victory will give us unsoluble problems, and we have in our own ranks also people who are unable to paint the results of our victory black enough. According to these people the day of our victory is also the day of our downfall. Therefore it is important to investigate and know how far this is the case.” (Karl Kautsky)



Some Marxist readers may, upon reading this appendix, consider the material to be a “utopian” invention of, in Kautsky’s words, “recipes for the kitchens of the future” (The Social Revolution, Volume II: On the Day After the Social Revolution). However, should they think such, they should also label Marx, Hilferding, and Lenin “utopians” for their respective pronouncements on what the immediate post-revolution society could or should look like.

“Multi-Economy”

In “Left-Wing” Childishness, Lenin wrote:

But what does the word “transition” mean? Does it not mean, as applied to an economy, that the present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does. But not all who admit this take the trouble to consider what elements actually constitute the various socio-economic structures that exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question.

Let us enumerate these elements:

1) patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming;
2) small commodity production (this includes the majority of those peasants who sell their grain);
3) private capitalism;
4) state capitalism;
5) socialism.

Russia is so vast and so varied that all these different types of socio-economic structures are intermingled. This is what constitutes the specific features of the situation.

Such “elements” were in fact “economies” unto themselves, forming a larger “multi-economy” that spanned the territory of the young Soviet Republic. Notwithstanding his erroneous conception of “socialism,” it is entirely possible that an immediate post-revolutionary society would operate on the basis of a global “multi-economy” having at least these “economies”:

1) Small-cooperative capitalism;
2) Superstate-proletocratic capitalism (the word “superstate” implying a global state);
3) Direct-proletocratic capitalism;
4) Labour credit (social proletocracy); and
5) Actual and effective gift production (“communism”).

It must be emphasized that the mode of production, even with the global overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the transitional aggravation of dem Klassenkampf (starting with the non-compensatory expropriation of their capital property), is still capitalist.

Small-Cooperative Capitalism

“To be sure we have here the gigantic industries (sugar factories and breweries), but as a general thing the little industry is still generally dominant. Here it is necessary to satisfy the individual needs of the market, and the small industry can do this better than the large.” (Karl Kautsky)

In the Chapter 2 section on the petit-bourgeoisie, this remark was made:

One such reason for the continued existence of the small business owner is the adoption of product differentiation as a strategy. Each small business owner that has adopted this strategy has found a “niche” in which to flourish. In fact, such flourishing can also result from cooperation with other small business owners, since the “niche” business owner has no incentive to charge monopoly rent to his “niche” market.

An example of how to transform these small businesses into productive cooperatives was discussed in Chapter 3: the Inveval case in Venezuela. Such transformation could even occur to smaller financial institutions which have not yet become credit unions. With cooperative-ownership stakes over small businesses (the remaining stakes being superstate-owned or even social property, perhaps), profit sharing and cooperation with other cooperative businesses can become even more inspirational for the overall development of the transitional multi-economy.

The Agrarian Question

There is one concern with the small-cooperative model, however. That model, when applied to modern agriculture, is obsolete. Said Kautsky:

Therewith a large number of the little competing farmers of to-day would cease to exist and go as laborers into the industrial or agricultural great industry, because they could there secure a respectable existence [...] But here, as well as in every sphere, conditions would make it necessary to simplify the circulation process by substituting for a large number of private individuals trading their products with one another a few organizations united for economic purposes.

The current food production problems revolve around meeting demand from three sources: organic food consumption, biofuel production, and typical food consumption. Typical “mainstream” solutions revolve around the further development of agricultural technology in order to increase production for the two latter demand sources, thereby freeing up land for organic food production. However, there is only so much arable land on the planet. One radical solution being proposed is vertical farming, which has, according to Dr. Dickson Despommier of The Vertical Farm Project, the following advantages (among others):

1) One indoor acre is equivalent to several outdoor acres (due to multiple floors being used);
2) Droughts, floods, pests, and other weather-related crop failures are avoided (due to the crops being grown inside);
3) Because of the lack of pests, food produced by vertical farms can be done so organically (thereby increasing organic food production and overall food production at the same time);
4) Some industrial equipment, such as tractors, will be rendered unnecessary; and
5) External farm land can be freed up to allow the restoration of ecosystems, which in turn will absorb more carbon (with all the current talk about carbon emissions and global warming).

However, given the massive economies of scale regarding this still-industrial form of agricultural production (just the mere construction of these more than offsets the absence of tractors and pesticides), this will prove to be too capital-intensive to fit within the small-cooperative model (it is already too capital-intensive and “unprofitable” to fit into the schemes of bourgeois capitalism).

Indeed, on a historical note, economies of scale eventually drove the Soviets to abandon “Comrade” Stalin’s historical compromise on the collectivization question and thereafter promote the sovkhozy (state-owned industrial farms) over the kolkhozy (collective farms legally owned by those operating them). Every sovkhoz worker was a proletarian, whose “respective existence” as a wage slave and lack of exposure to the profitability risks that plagued the kolkhozy (similar risks, but of a lesser degree, belonged to the state) obviated any need to earn income on the side through private-plot production (existing adjacent to the central kolkhozy).

Proletocratic Capitalisms and Finance Capital

"Once finance capital has brought the most important branches of production under its control, it is enough for society, through its conscious executive organ – the state conquered by the working class – to seize financial capital in order to gain immediate control of those branches of production." (Rudolf Hilferding)

This remark above by Rudolf Hilferding was the basis of Lenin’s erroneous assertion in Chapter 5 regarding “socialism” and finance capital. Meanwhile, not less than a decade ago did so many in the bourgeois press tout “free enterprise” and private ownership, yet something caught them by surprise. As reported earlier this year by Joshua Kurlantzick of The Boston Globe:

In modern times, business and government have occupied increasingly separate spheres in Western economies - separation that has laid the groundwork for their economic ascendancy. By the end of the 20th century, many economists and political scientists assumed there was no other path to growth.

The modern record of state-controlled business, by contrast, was chiefly one of failure [...] As private enterprise flourished in the West, the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union were widely seen as a repudiation of the idea that governments could successfully control the business sector.

But the wake of the Cold War also sowed the seeds of a new discontent with free-market private enterprise. Many emerging nations were stung by ill-planned privatization strategies in the 1990s. In Latin America, a decade of privatization proved so unpopular that, in a region-wide poll taken in 2001, a majority of people across 17 countries viewed privatization unfavorably. Across Africa, this era, known as the "lost decade," resulted in rising poverty, and even longing for some nations' authoritarian past.

The failure of those privatization strategies helped create a ready audience for a different model. Perhaps the most dramatic example is China. Over the past 25 years, while keeping firm control over its economy, China has adopted many of the tools of capitalism - ceding some operational power to a Western-trained executive class, inviting foreign investment and partnerships, and buying and selling on the global open market.

[...]

Overall, state-controlled funds control as much as $7 trillion, according to several estimates, more than the entire hedge-fund industry. And they are growing.

"The [funds] will become absolutely massive in size in the not-too-distant future, and will have powerful implications for the financial markets," notes Morgan Stanley's Stephen Jen, an expert on state funds.

As the global business momentum shifts from private companies to national governments, the implications are far reaching.

More importantly, each major corporation in the world is already a planned economy unto itself, with complex “management information systems” (read: information technology). The development of the corporation as a business entity would have been remarkably different without the Soviet experience, especially during the primitive-accumulation era of double-digit economic growth from the 1928 to 1953 (the death of the already-grossly-revisionist “Comrade” Stalin and the completion of the post-WWII ascension of the post-revisionists – the “Khrushchevite” buffoons and “Suslovite” opportunists not far behind). The institution of superstate-proletocratic capitalism will enable a more highly compensated coordinator class (otherwise they will deem the new ruling class to be worse than the old one and resort to “under the table” corruption schemes), leaned upon by the working class, to fulfill its socially necessary historic task (contrary to the hysterically anti-coordinator objections of the French-socialist pareconists) – what James Burnham aptly called “the managerial revolution” – due to the ouster and numerical reduction of the functioning capitalists. What a new, non-revisionist spin on the economic aspect of “permanent revolution,” indeed!

Since Hilferding made the first major analysis of financial leverage since Marx, what does “seize financial capital in order to gain immediate control of those branches of production” entail? Does it have to, in the spirit of traditional schematism (that is, reductionism manifested through the ignorance of changes in material conditions), entail absolute superstate ownership, like the Soviet experience? Absolutely not! With the historical development of financial leverage through intercorporate investments (and the related financial reporting, as remarked upon briefly in Chapter 2), there are now “grandson” subsidiaries and “great-grandson” subsidiaries. Bare-majority-stake arrangements similar to that of Inveval are the only prerequisites for legal superstate control over superstate-owned parent companies, each potentially being a “trust” (but only relative to the absence of competing superstate-owned parent companies). These parent companies can then have bare-majority stakes in their direct subsidiaries, which in turn can have bare-majority stakes in their own subsidiaries (the “grandson” subsidiaries), and so on.

Now what of the remaining equity, the vast majority of which would not be under superstate ownership? How can attempts to prevent the resurgence of bourgeois ownership be made? Consider Joe Guinan’s remarks on “pension fund socialism,” a phenomenon that now dominates the publicly-traded equity markets of imperialist powers such as the United States):

To take America as the most dramatic example, in 1974 U.S. pension funds had a portfolio of about $150 billion, compared with a total list price for the stock market of under $500 billion, representing 30 percent of the total value of listed companies. Explosive growth during the 1980s and 1990s resulted in a capital pool, by 1998, of $7 trillion of workers' pension fund savings, or 45 percent of all publicly traded equity in the United States. It is not uncommon for occupational pension schemes to have a fund of far, far greater worth than the companies that actually run them. Worldwide, pension funds had a global value of $13 trillion in 1999. Here we have the elephant in the living room, the 800-pound gorilla (add sufficiently impressive animal metaphors to taste) loose in the financial heart of corporate capitalism.

[...]

'Pension Fund Socialism' – the term – first entered the political lexicon back in the 1970s when Peter Drucker, the relatively enlightened philosopher of management, wrote The Unseen Revolution, in which he began to fret and ponder the implications of this rise of 'labour's capital.' His book made the bizarre claim that "if 'socialism' is defined as 'ownership of the means of production by the workers' - and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition - then the United States is the first truly 'Socialist' country."

[...]

What really got Drucker excited, however, was the idea that Pension Fund Socialism had outflanked the Left – in particular, was about to make the trade union obsolete – as workers abandoned shop-floor solidarity and became more loyal to their capital than to their labour. For a conservative mind, the joy of this 'unseen revolution' was that, after all the apprehension on the Right about the coming of socialism, it had actually required relatively little real change overall. Socialism was here, and it looked just like... capitalism. But, in his premature declaration of the arrival of Pension Fund Socialism, Drucker had neglected to pay attention to the vast and crucial difference between ownership and control of pension fund assets.

Though he had been among the first to point to the enormous potential inherent in the growth of labour's capital, Drucker could hardly have been more wrong in his predictions about its effects. A significant new element in the struggle, the pension funds by their very nature emerged as weapons which, if not wielded by workers toward their own ends, were destined to be wielded against them. The result was not Drucker's Romantic utopian socialism but, instead, the nihilism and destructiveness of an overcaffeinated and brutalizing neoliberalism.

Like employee share purchase plans, this “pension fund socialism” is, at the present time, merely a tool for big businesses to obtain additional financial leverage on the collective back of the working class, all the while continuing the exploitation of labour (so much for the “Third Way” property distributionism advocated by some Roman Catholics). However, while this tool can in turn be used against the ousted bourgeoisie after the social-proletocratic revolution, it must be noted that superstate control (and nominal superstate ownership) will be progressive only to a point. Indeed, said Guinan regarding the need for as much direct control (and nominal ownership) by the workers themselves as possible:

If workers were ever to exercise their collective ownership rights over these deferred earnings – and to express their social and economic priorities through their funds' investment decisions – it could shake our present economic system to its very core. And if there is to be a serious attempt by the Left to reconstruct and rehabilitate a socialist political economy for the twenty-first century (beyond the commitment to a mere "sustainable development") then the chances are that pension fund capital will have an early and significant strategic role to play.

Non-Circulable Labour Credit, Stagism, and “Left-Wing Childishness”

A reiteration of the concept of non-circulable labour credit as the basis of the social-proletocratic economy is absolutely necessary before moving on, and from another of Marx’s works. In Chapter 18 of Volume II of Das Kapital, he said this:

In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate.

To be sure, there are problems with 19th-century paper vouchers, per se. Even tickets, which Marx compared these vouchers to, can be circulated “under the table” (the modern equivalent of these tickets would be retail gift cards) and perhaps even counterfeited. However, as mentioned in Chapter 5, the development of information technology, of plastic card technology in general (debit, credit, gift, etc.) and of the “food stamp” program in the United States (especially with the advent of electronic benefit transfers) has made possible the attribution of labour-time to specific individuals. To be fair, “libertarians” such as David Ramsay Steele have criticized non-circulable labour credit through the suggestion of another “under the table” possibility:

Any attempt to introduce a system of distribution by labor-vouchers will tend to lead to an actual distribution (after trading) which departs from one proportionate to hours worked [...] A point not explicitly noted by Pierson or Mises is that, although the vouchers might come to be used as money, if this were discouraged by making the vouchers non-transferable and expirable, then some other monetary medium would spontaneously arise - just as cigarettes have frequently emerged as money in prisons, internment camps, and hyperinflationary situations.

Unfortunately, he missed the point totally with his very next sentence (From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation):

It has long been agreed, virtually unanimously by economists, that as long as consumer goods are not superabundant there has to be a market in consumer goods […]

Capitalism as a mode of production is distinct from past modes of production through the addition of two markets (not just consumer goods and consumer services): labour and capital. Steele failed to address what impact Marx’s non-circulable labour credit would have on the latter two (besides their obvious elimination)! Even on the subject of consumer goods, this “libertarian” fails to consider the huckster's issue of planned obsolescence (thereby resulting in more profitable but more inefficient production) – which is becoming more rampant in bourgeois-capitalist economies – as well as ignores one of Kautsky’s more general points:

Only one phase of the disturbances in circulation which spring from production is of importance to the proletarian regime - only under-production, never over-production. Today the latter is the principal cause of crises, for the greatest difficulty at present is the sale, or getting rid of the product […] It will be the principal anxiety of the new regime to see to it that there is not insufficient production in any sphere. Accordingly it will, to be sure, also take care that no labor power is wasted in superfluous production, for every such waste signifies an abstraction from all the others and an unnecessary extension of the labor time.

Criticisms of non-circulable labour credit have arisen amongst Marxists, as well, some more mistaken than others. The most subtle (and by far the least mistaken) of these criticisms comes from none other than Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell themselves. In their preface to the Czech edition of Towards a New Socialism, the two authors write:

Broadly speaking we see the transition as occurring through the intermediary forms of cooperatives and state-owned capitalist enterprises, in a three-stage process. A first stage of transition involves moving from a system of shareholder capitalism to a combination of state capitalism and worker-owned enterprises. A second phase involves the transition to a fully planned economy […] A third phase involves the actual abolition of monetary exchange and the movement to payment in labour tokens.

Why stages, though? A key remark which the authors themselves have made in that groundbreaking work goes against the worrisome stage-ism outlined above:

We will first look at socialist trade with capitalist states [...] What indeed is the meaning of foreign exchange if money is in the process of being eliminated? Socialist states traditionally have gone to great lengths to acquire capitalist currency [...] what we propose is the reverse of this: imports from the capitalist world are paid for in labour credits; labour credits may be exported and can circulate abroad but not at home; and the import of foreign currency is outlawed [...] In the capitalist world money capital already exists so there is no objection to labour credits of the socialist commonwealth circulating between foreign capitalists.

Since Chapter 6 stresses the necessarily transnational character of the social-proletocratic revolution (in order to counter capital outflows from revolutionary hotspots), why not apply something similar immediately to the global multi-economy? Various industries can make the transition to a social-proletocratic economy more rapidly than others (the obvious exception being financial services, which operate exclusively on the basis of money capital), even with existing “pension-fund-socialist” schemes (which can be substituted for non-financial equivalents on a pro rata basis). Once these leading industries complete the transition to social proletocracy, they can then be planned on a global level to “trade” with the lagging industries (still operating on the basis of non-bourgeois capitalism, but capitalism nevertheless) on the basis of labour-credit “exports” and the diminishing roles of money capital and of all non-proletarian classes.

The least subtle of labour credit criticisms, on the other hand, is in fact an expression of “left-wing childishness.” Consider the opposition to this by the pacifist-but-sectarian World Socialist Movement:

The technical ability exists today to produce, in an ecologically responsible manner, more than enough to satisfy the self-defined needs of the world's population. There will not be a shortage of goods and therefore, artificial access limitations – labour vouchers – will not be required.

What an economistic take towards opposing non-circulable labour credit! Did they not consider what Marx said in the Critique of the Gotha Programme regarding proper “communism” and the “all-round development of the individual” – not to mention the disappearance of “the antithesis between mental and physical labour,” which are directly related to the supply of professional-worker services? What of the immediate post-revolution society, which is “morally and intellectually still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges” (read: nurtured self-interest and the desire for as full a compensation for labour as possible)? Heck, what about psychopathic consumers, or, as religious fundamentalists would call them, “decadent materialists” (to be addressed in the next section)?

One cautionary note needs to be made, but this does not pertain to any criticism of labour credit, per se. Some readers, upon having read all of the above, may wonder why the multi-economy is even needed after the social-proletocratic revolution in the first place, when only two economies will be sufficient (social proletocracy and gift production). Considering, once more, both the law of uneven development and the fact that the social-proletocratic revolution will by necessity be transnational in character, less developed regions may not yet be materially ready to operate on the basis of social proletocracy, and may even have to operate on the basis of, in Lenin’s words, “state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be [bourgeois] monopoly.”

Actual and Effective Gift Production

Since the dawn of the Internet, “free media” has undergone a boom. This is one area of human economic activity that has leaped many steps forward in terms of operating on actual “gift” production (i.e., what is today called “voluntary” work, in the sense that such work is not compensated). Once the capitalist economies in the multi-economy are eliminated, “gift” production – without the Swords of Damocles known as copyright laws, trademarks, patents, etc. – can be further proliferated to other industries.

Because of the non-circulable and possibly even expirable nature of labour credit, already some “gift” production is bound to be made in the social-proletocratic economy (on top of the necessary surplus production “for the common funds” pertaining to strategic socio-technological development, infrastructure, retirees and the disabled, and so on, thereby clearing the air surrounding the historic Lassallean slogan pertaining to “undiminished proceeds of labour”), simply by virtue of the fact that the vast majority of people are not psychopathic consumers with certain insecurities! For the few individuals who are such exceptions, they should feel free to buy expensive jewellery and other goods for show-off purposes, to the extent that their labour credit balances allow for such purchases.

Political Considerations

In addition to the chasm between revolutionaries and reformists on the nature of the state, amongst the revolutionaries there is a separate chasm that needs to be addressed: that between “authoritarians” and anarchists. This chasm is best explained by differing definitions of the word “state.” The anarchists – be they level-headed ones such as anarcho-Marxists, “Molotov cocktail” hooligans, or reactionary “propagandists of the deed” – subscribe to the erroneous mainstream definition (“monopoly on the legitimate use of violence,” according to Max Weber, yet the basic act of personal self-defense breaks this monopoly), while the “authoritarians” subscribe to the correct, dynamic-materialist definition (the most powerful instrument of class domination over and repression of other classes). The chasm is also explained by the anarchists’ reductionist failure (not so much amongst anarcho-Marxists, however) to differentiate between state power and state administration (the civil bureaucracy). For them, both state power and state administration must be eliminated. Fortunately for the working class as a whole, the revolutionary-Marxist position is more comprehensive:

1) At least some organs of collapsing state power (such as parliaments, “imperial presidencies” and cabinets, and law enforcement apart from investigative organs) are to be smashed immediately by either traditional armed revolution or “well-defended” mass strikes;
2) Organs of workers’ power (not necessarily soviets, contrary to the reductionist organizational fetish with the soviet form) are to be elevated in replacing smashed organs of state power;
3) Remaining organs of state power are to be transformed either into additional but temporary organs of workers’ power (democratic but hierarchical and internally uncritical offense-oriented militaries as a supplementary means of spreading revolution, as mentioned in Chapter 6 and contrary to Lenin’s overly optimistic appraisal of non-hierarchical workers’ militias and post-decision criticisms expressed within them) or into new organs of state administration (law enforcement investigative organs and internment organizations for, in Lenin’s words, “suppressing both exploiters and hooligans” in a purely administrative fashion); and
4) Organs of state administration (the civil bureaucracy), while existing, are to be transformed such that they will be destined for irrelevance at some future point.

One more point needs to be made in regards to the post-revolution role of Social Proletocracy as a mass organization (SPD). As noted in Chapter 4, historical “one-party states” (more accurately described as “no-party states”) featured state-administrative “parties” without much of a political character. Some think (probably erroneously) that there should be multiple SPDs. Others think that such organizations should stay out of the organs of state administration altogether. Still others go even further, thinking that such organizations should also stay out of the organs of workers power. This Appendix hereby ends with what one Alexsei Razlatzki said creatively in 1979 regarding a possible relationship between the revolutionary-Marxist SPD, the organs of workers’ power, and the organs of state administration:

So what should we have? A two party (or multiparty) system? And will we let social contradictions resolve themselves through struggle between the ruling and the opposition party?

But, along this path, the fundamental contradiction of society, the source of its development, would be concealed, made more complicated and even pushed entirely to the side in the struggle for power; that is to say, secondary contradictions would divert much effort, but would in no way, shape or form assist in advancing society. Besides which, the existence of many parties inevitably assists in the stratification of society and the division of its interests, that is, serves to place additional obstacles on the path of the transformation of the society to classlessness.

No, solving the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat is possible only by bursting through the historical (and altogether alien to proletariat) precedents, only by liberating oneself from the path of habitual schematism.

Not the opposition of a ruling and an opposition party, but the immediate opposition of the party and the state; this is what fully reveals the social contradictions, this is what the proletariat must strive for.

Yes, the party must lead the proletariat in the struggle for power. Yes, the party, at the head of the proletariat must seize this power. Yes, it must destroy the old state apparatus and build a new one. [The party] must promote its most experienced organizers, leaders and chiefs to the leading posts in the state; and then it must immediately cross them off its list of voting members.

Just that. This does not mean a complete rupture but a radical restructuring of relations; thus […] excluding state interference in party affairs and the direct influence of state interests on party activity.

The party must continue to monitor those of its members that have been promoted to administrative posts, it must understand their state concerns and must prove itself to be a direct help in organizing the masses for the support of state measures. But the party must do this, not under the diktat of the state, but only as it emerges from its own aims and tasks. It is completely natural that this support will be at its most energetic and powerful in the early period, when the leading ideas of the party and the state are almost completely convergent, when the state is being refounded and needs such support most of all. But even in this period the party must not bind itself with any promises.

In detaching its better cadre and leading forces to state posts, the proletariat must clearly recognize that this will not resolve all the problems of social development. Sooner or later, the interests of the state apparatus will be brought into contradiction with the developing interests of the proletariat, will become a constraint on the formation of state structures and the point of some of their functions will be lost. Then, a new [social] revolution is needed which can raise to the state level those changes which have taken place in the consciousness of society. Only such an uninterrupted revolutionary development can lead to the foundation of a communist society.



REFERENCES:

The Social Revolution, Volume II: On the Day After the Social Revolution by Karl Kautsky
[http://www.marxists.org/archive/kaut...crev/pt2-1.htm]
[http://www.marxists.org/archive/kaut...crev/pt2-2.htm]

“Left-Wing” Childishness by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...918/may/09.htm]

Capitalism without bourgeois rule: a public compilation [http://www.revleft.com/vb/capitalism...423/index.html]

Is land reform obsolete? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/land-refor...905/index.html]

The Vertical Farm Project: Agriculture for the 21st Century and Beyond by Dr. Dickson Despommier [http://www.verticalfarm.com/Default.aspx]

Das Finanzkapital [http://www.revleft.com/vb/das-finanz...879/index.html]

State Inc. by Joshua Kurlantzick, The Boston Globe [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/id.../16/state_inc/]

Trots and others: a new theory of "permanent revolution" needed? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/trots-and-...296/index.html]

Stamocap [http://www.revleft.com/vb/stamocap-t59014/index.html]

Pension Fund Socialism: The Left Needs a Capital Strategy by Joe Guinan [http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/show...le.php?aid=321]

Das Kapital, Volume II by Karl Marx and edited by Frederick Engels [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...85-c2/ch18.htm]

From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation by David Ramsay Steele [http://books.google.ca/books?id=aBkU...ummary_s&cad=0]

Towards a New Socialism: New preface, 3rd draft by Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell [http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/soc...preface-a4.pdf]

Labour Vouchers by the World Socialist Movement [http://www.worldsocialism.org/articl...r_vouchers.php]

The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...18/mar/x03.htm]

The Second Communist Manifesto by Alexsei Razlatzki [http://proletarism.org/m1str.shtml]

Without the organs of state power, how do you deal with murder, rape and other crimes of violence? Subsuming these in the state bureaucracy isn't a panacea. Unlike, for instance, the fire departments, local police departments still have to worry about the rights of the accused, and often the way these problems are dealt with are deeply entrenched in the class structure of society. If we can't have a classless society overnight, how does one create a "proletarian" justice system?

And how about counter-revolutionary forces? Is it advisable to rely on strikes and desertions alone? Again, these seems like a field where retaining organs of state power seems quite natural.

Thank you, comrade. I have edited the above to distinguish between "professional" investigative organs and law enforcement in general.

And how about counter-revolutionary forces? Is it advisable to rely on strikes and desertions alone? Again, these seems like a field where retaining organs of state power seems quite natural.

Well, I did mention "internment organizations" (which, BTW, CAN include gulags ).

Indeed, that's why #1 says "at least some" and why #3 says "remaining organs."

“suppressing both exploiters and hooligans” in a purely administrative fashion

Well, I did mention "internment organizations" (which, BTW, CAN include gulags ).

Indeed, that's why #1 says "at least some" and why #3 says "remaining organs."

hmmm... a Gulag doesn't strike me as "purely administrative". Could you maybe add an example of such suppression? Re-education camps maybe, but this does beg the question you deal with constructing a proletarian theory of justice on the day after.

^^^ I hedged my bets by not mentioning gulags in my "final draft," as e-mailed to you.

[This is for saving the more constructive discussion on corrective labour.]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-pol...36/index3.html

I don't see why society should waste bullets, lethal injections, electrocution-dedicated electricity, etc. - let alone cost-ineffective living accommodations - on serial murderers, serious counterrevolutionaries, class enemies, grossly corrupt officials, etc. when there is more utility to be derived from either their working to a slow and painful death in the GULAG, or their being lab rats.

[...]

While I myself am for corrective labour as part of the "aggravation von dem Klassenkampf along with the transition to socialist production," I think there should be a demand calling for the abolition of prison labour for the benefit of private parties.

Also, the industrial city of Magnitogorsk itself was the best example of a GULAG facility. Because of a tarred reputation, many ordinary convicts in Magnitogorsk willingly chose to continue working there after their sentences expired.

[...]

For deterrence, even the most minor infraction of labour laws would result in lots of small business owners in the Gulag - for much shorter terms, of course. Those responsible for specifically criminal graffiti would spent a short but critical time in the Gulag, too - meaning that criminal offenses punishable by "community service" can be upgraded to short-term Gulag labour (and of course the convicts won't die or starve).

However, take our global population today, and a post-revolutionary situation could see even a million real convicts in such a Gulag system. This figure is less than the 2+ million incarcerated in the US prison system, and far less than the "Gulag atrocities," but it's more than enough to commit to Gulag projects here and there.

The balance between Group A (serial murderers, serious counterrevolutionaries, class enemies, grossly corrupt officials, etc.) and Group B (criminal offenses punishable today by short- or medium-term "community service," including criminal graffiti) would tilt towards Group B over time, but like I said, even a million people from both groups would be more than enough. Note: both groups would have high turnover, with Group A's turnover being due mainly to death, and Group B's turnover being due to paroles after sentences have been served.

(Also a third Group, but more later)

That's comrade Mike Lepore the DeLeonist:

They should spend each day strapped to a laboratory table with electrodes and scanners attached to their heads, while brain researchers try to figure out what caused them to be that way. To do anything else with them is a waste of scientific data.

(Checking "other." Thank you for being one of the few poll creators who remember to include an "other" option.)

I conditioned "slow and painful death" strictly to the Gulag. The other option was "utility to be derived from... their being lab rats."

One executed criminal, despite being "stripped and ripped" [for their organs], means one less very cheap contributor to ongoing workers' infrastructure projects - or one less person from a pool of workers' scientific test subjects. It's not about merely minimizing overhead, workers' enterprise management around Cost Leadership, etc. Too many tragedies, not enough statistics.

Well, comrade, now that you did raise the question of unionization, I am but reminded of my subscription to the thread on the Georgia prisoners strike.

I'm literally scratching my head on this. I don't want to come across as some sort of political hypocrite ("labour rights" under bourgeois rule, none afterwards).

Maybe I can incorporate unionization with the abolition of prison labour for the benefit of private parties, while retaining conscription (vs. "voluntary") and group-by-group regard or disregard for contemporary labour laws (incl. compensation)... as a compromise?

That disregard would definitely kick in for the worst criminals. The small-time offenders fit for "community service" could perhaps be subject to the labour laws (so much for actual slavery), but I'd still retain conscription. Again, consider that one-million pool out of the millions more incarcerated throughout the world today, and you'd still have a sufficient pool for infrastructure projects.

And since comrade MarxSchmarx brought up the word "corvee" in describing the labour used to build the pyramids, perhaps the corrective labour system as a whole could incorporate conscripted corvee labour (no compensation, but other labour laws in effect) as an alternative to paying hefty fines and such. So now we have Pool C in addition to Pool A (real Gulag labour for these worst of scum) and Pool B (the small-timers).

[...]

What about that one-million global scenario I suggested? Each of Pool A, Pool B, and Pool C have high turnover, for different reasons. Pool A: slow and painful death (real Gulag stuff). Pool B: short sentences ("community service"). Pool C: anywhere from seasonal corvee labour turnover to monthly corvee labour turnover. I don't think even those paying hefty fines would be expected to work exclusively for the corrective labour system until the fine is paid.