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OK , so you seem to accept that socialism can operate well enough without being perfect and that its not going to collapse should the demand for tomatoes outstrip the supply. So far so good
But then you say "socialism (sic) isnt thinking through the problem" and its "not hypothetical to say that tomatoes cannot grow on the same plot of land where lettuce grown". Who said it was? Presumably what you are trying to say is that socialists have not sufficiently thought through what follows from that.
Well lets be clear on this. As far as I know there has been no high powered socialist committee that has been delegated with the task of looking into the opportunity costs of tomato production. It would be silly even to contemplate the idea since we have no idea
1) whether socialism will even happen
2) how people will evaluate tomatoes vis -a- vis lettuce in a socialist society
All we can do at this juncture is suggest ways in which people might arrive at decisions concerning what needs to be produced and how to determine what should take priority over what
For genuine free access communism
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=792
Anarcho-capitalism is a petit bourgeois ideology. In a communist society all the remnants of bourgeois culture would have disappeared. It would be like reclaiming the return of feudalism or formal slavery in a First World developed country of today. Something anachronistic.
Slava Mercader!
Yes. I have no conception if you need a wheelchair... or teapot... or a nailclipper... or a sofa... or a carpet... or.....
Who cares what your neighbors think you need?
Yes. I understand. Its also flawed.
Typing paper is the finished good of the typing paper. But they dont just produce typing paper, they also consume somebody else's finished good.
You are simply looking at the end that you see. But the problem remains unanswered. Why are the wood folks shipping wood to the paper folks? Why not the cabinetmakers? What is the rationale?
[QUOTE=robbo203;2666022
All we can do at this juncture is suggest ways in which people might arrive at decisions concerning what needs to be produced and how to determine what should take priority over what[/QUOTE]
Stock control does not provide those means. All it does is to replace consumed goods. It dorsn't measure which goods are priorities over others.
Who cares what capitalists think I need (read, think they can make from me with)?
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Its not "flawed". Its only that you dont seem to understand the point being made. Hence your other comment here:
I never said that stock control measures - evaluates? - which goods take priority over others in the production. That is a quite separate matter at the end of the day and you need to analytically distinguish between these two things
What stock control does do is simply measure and monitor the flow of stock. To decide whether you need more of X or less of Y you have to have some means of knowing how much of X and Y there is already in place - yes? Do we have enough X to meet the demand for X? This is the function of stock control and it is absolutely indispensable to any kind of modern large system of production. You can't do without it.
The point that you are banging on about is opportunity costs - the cost of what you forego as a result of wanting to produce something else. If A given input, A , has 2 end uses M and N and the supply of A is insufficient to meet the full demand for both M and N then we have to chose which of these should take proirity - M or N.- in the allocation of A This is a function of society's hierarchy of production priorities or its value system if you like , not its system of stock control, and you constantly seem to be getting this things mixed up. The stock control system provides, as it were, the raw data upon which the valuation process depends but does not iteslf do the evaluating. The socialist production system in toto is the outcome of a combination of interacting processes of this kind and your repeated mantra that stock control is "inadequate" completely misses the point in that regard. Of course it is inadequate if you think the entire production system simply boils down to a system of stock control but nobody has ever made that claim. You have somehow got it into your head that this is the claim that is being made. It is not!
What you really need to be focussing on is not stock control but how society's notion of priorities impact on productiuon and affect the allocation of resources. Obviously if high priority goods are being produced in sufficient quantities to meet demand there is no need to allocate more resources than what you are already allocating. Stock control provides the means to determine whether such demand is being met. It monitors what people are taking from the shelves and the rate at which they are doing that
Think of society's broadbrush hierarchy of production goals as a kind of magnet dragged over a pile of iron filings. The metaphor is a useful one . It allows us to see how resoruce allocation will be structured in broad terms. Some good at the top of that hierarchy will automatically take priority over another good at the bottom in the event of a particular resource bottleneck and I dont see anything problematic about that at all. Their relative positions in the hierarchy are transperant and obvious to all
Where it becomes more interesting is where you have two goods of roughly equivalent value in terms of that hierarchy - like you earlier example of lettuce and tomatoes. If the demand for both is not being fully met you have to make a choice about resource allocation. It does not necessarily mean taking more land currently used for tomato production to grow more lettuce - or vice versa. It could mean for example ploughing up more marginal land not currently used for agricultural purposes at all. There are numerous ways of responding to the situation. Perhaps people might be induced to grow more lettuce or tomatoes themselves in their kitchen gardens and so reduce the demand pressure on the community store. Who knows?
The point is that one way or another decisions will be made even if we cannot predict the fine grained details. It is sheer utopionanism to speculate in this way since it depends on the people who will actually make these decisions. All we can do - and yes should do - is throw some light on the variables involved on the options available.We cannot say in advance which options will be chosen.
At the end of the day, if some good is chronically undersupplied in relation to demand well then there would be nothing for it but for this good to be rationed in some way and I have suggested a procedure by which it might be rationed - the compensation model.
Nothing of what you have said presents a formidable or insuromountable problem to a future socialist society. All you are saying is that it will not be a perfect system of resoruce allocation and that there will inevitably be a degree of fuzziness and human error built into it. I would agree. But that doesnt means that such a society is going to collapse around us because the demand for lettuce is not being fully met at a particular point in time
Last edited by robbo203; 22nd September 2013 at 10:44.
For genuine free access communism
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=792
Certainly a solution could be to plow more land and plant tomatoes.
However, this means that that land cannot be used by the builders to solve the substandard housing problem.
The distinction you seek to make isn't so clearcut. They both impact upon each other.
Nobody does.
So why can't I get things unless capitalists think they can make money from them?
Seems a pretty stupid system to me.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
I am curious about this as well. Not that I'm an 'an-cap' or whatever but what if by chance I feel that I do not want to live in the revolutionary community? Could I go live somewhere else without fear of expropriation? I certainly wouldn't bother the revolutionaries and leave them to their own internal matters but would I be afforded the same treatment? Surely I'm not understanding something.
Would those with disagreeable views 'disappear' in the revolution or is this a gradual thing that comes with social change? I am no historian but from what I understand feudalism and slavery mostly disappeared due to nobles and slave masters not being able to compete with the costs of maintaining the status quo compared to an industrialized society where more common people could own their own their own land and material and whatever is produced from it. There were cases of violent overthrows but slavery and feudalism just seemed to have been largely 'phased out' due to high maintenance costs. Unless I'm missing something? If not by direct revolutionary elimination of this capitalist class how does the revolutionary left propose to get people to voluntarily change their mind in favor of the RL view?
At least you have a direct way of seeking what you want. (in a capitalist society). You just save for it and go to the shop and buy it. In a communist society you have to run your requirements by the commune every time you want something. Doesn't that scare you?
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
Why is it harder to be part of a group that decides to do something, rather than going and doing something else in order to get tokend to give to someone else for something, assuming they have what I want in the first place?
You say 'run it by the commune' as if I'm not part of the commue. Why is that?
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Because in one scenario you are the one in control. The other you are dependent on the commune.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
No you couldn't. Because:
a) Communism has to be global in order to work.
b) Communism doesn't recognise private property.
But your question is a non-starter, because you will be so happy in a communist world that you won't have any desire to go somewhere else.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
WOW! I didn't realise I own the company that employs me, and the bank that gives me my money, and the shops that sell me stuff! Thanks for telling me, I really hadn't grasped how capitalism works.
Don't you realise that humans are dependent on each other? I'm dependent on my community now (I don't grow my own food or generate my own power or build my own computers or make my own clothes or provide my own medical care or drove my own train or...) - what's different?
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
You're not understanding that you're part of the worldwide human community. Could you go somewhere else without fear of expropriation? The question is rather, could you go 'somewhere else' (where? Out of the Earth?) without expropriating everbody else?
I don't understand the question. The 'revolutionary left' doesn't make a revolution over the heads of 'the people'. The people (rather, the working class) makes the revolution. '... voluntarily change their mind' - what does that mean? How can one 'involuntarily' change one's mind? If 'people' don't support 'the RL view' as you put it, and therefore don't make the revolution happen, there is no revolution.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Two points
1) In capitalism you may want or need something but that is no guarantee at all that you will get it. Capitalism is only concerned with effective demand - demand that is backed up by purchasing power. As far capitalism is concerned a starving beggar has no need for food. The system is simply not geared to register or recognise our needs. These are only satisified incidentally or indirectly in the course of producing commodities with a view to making a profit. No profit means no production.
2) Who says "In a communist society you have to run your requirements by the commune every time you want something". If I want a bag of potatoes or a new toothbrush am I going to run it past what you call the commune? Of course not. The idea is balmy. Its a recipe for bureaucratic madness. What you do instead is you pop down to your distribution store and simply pick up the items in question without payment at all. Its what is called "free access". Collectively, all of us will be doing this routinely in a communist society and the information about what we are taking from the stores will then be transmitted to the suppliers of these goods - who will, of course, also be us as well since we will all be both producers and consumers - in the form of requests for more stoick. In that way the producers will have a pretty good picture of the pattern of consumer demand to guide their productive activity with a view to satisfying it.
Where it might become not only useful but vital to run our requirements past the commune is when we are talking about social goods or large scale projects. I dont find that in the least "scary". In fact how else are you going to solicit the cooperation of others to produce these sorts of things in the first place? Are you going to build a public library or a nursery school single handed?
For genuine free access communism
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=792
This implies that t.here is a 'distribution store' that has these pre-ordered goods in stock though. That implies 'someone' managing the stock in the store - ie, the commune/community.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
In one scenario you're dependent on the boss, in the other you have a modicum of power.
I'm on some sickle-hammer shit
Collective Bruce Banner shit
FKA: #FF0000, AKA Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath
