Laymen explanation of concrete menachisms of planning

[bropasaran]

So, could someone explain to me how would ideas of democratic planning be concretelly applied?

Is the plan of production to be local, regional, national or international?

Also how does that relate to nationalization, if revolution comes in a wave, in one state and then another, etc, and not simultaniously across the world?

Can there be directly democratic central planning? As I understand it, left communists advocate that, with directly democratic delegates forming a council that makes the economic plan. Also another way that maybe such thing is could be done is by the people deciding on a general plan by a referendum instead of the central committe making it. Also, if there is to be a general plan, what timeframe should it encompass- one year, five years? Is there to be a general plan, or plans only general to branches to specific secundary industries?

About decentralized production- who should decide on quotas about how much things should be produced in different workplaces, the workers in the workplaces themselves- making production sort of of a spontaneous coordination, of should it be decided by federations of worker councils? Again, federations at what level- local, regional, national, international? Should it be across industry or divided by branches of industry? Or maybe it should be decided at all by the workers councils, but by consumer councils on the level of communities (those would of cource include the workers being that make up the bulk of the community), and again there is a question about the level of communities and their federations. Or should the plans be made by comittees made for making a compromise plan by putting together proposals by workers and consumer councils, as parecon suggest. Which is by the way the only specific suggestion that I came across, that spells out a precise proposal of how things should work.

A lot of questions Just to add that I'm interested in a plain, down-to-earth explanations, as people say "explained in your own words", in laymen terms, with concrete explanations, if you can point me to such posts or esseys, or if someone isn't too bothered to write an explanation, that'd be great.

[AnaRchic]

Here is how I see it potentially working. Workers councils will run each enterprise, and consumers councils will be elected in communities by popular assembly. Information technology will be used to process economic data, including consumption patterns, resource availability, ecological impact, productive capability, etc.

Workers and consumers councils will federate together on a local, regional, national, and international level. Computer algorithms will process economic data and create a series of potential economic plans that will result in the creation of an artificial abundance, allowing for free self-determined consumption by all. Workers and consumers councils, through federation, will democratically determine the best plan in a given period. Once a plan is agreed upon, the federated councils will then decide how to best implement the plan. Once this is all figured out production begins, and aims at meeting the target quotas. We will automate every part of production that can be automated, to reduce the need of human labor and enable everyone to have more free time and less labor time.

This would be a system of directly-democratic cooperative planning, using information technology and all that is made possible by it. With the technological power we have today, rational economic planning is not only possible but imperative.

[ckaihatsu]

So, could someone explain to me how would ideas of democratic planning be concretelly applied?

Yes....


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

Is the plan of production to be local, regional, national or international?

[T]he basic idea is to *generalize* productive activity as much as possible, yielding broader and deeper expanses of coordination.

Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy

Also how does that relate to nationalization, if revolution comes in a wave, in one state and then another, etc, and not simultaniously across the world?

Same basic idea -- as much as possible, as quickly as possible.

Can there be directly democratic central planning? As I understand it, left communists advocate that, with directly democratic delegates forming a council that makes the economic plan. Also another way that maybe such thing is could be done is by the people deciding on a general plan by a referendum instead of the central committe making it. Also, if there is to be a general plan, what timeframe should it encompass- one year, five years? Is there to be a general plan, or plans only general to branches to specific secundary industries?

This relates to a common misperception that potential feasible post-capitalist approaches need to be beholden to the *historical*, Soviet-type approach -- basically, a 'blueprint', designed from the top-down, to encompass a grand plan that accounts for all social production.

While the very definition of socialistic cooperative social planning inherently *implies* centralization, this fact doesn't mean there can't be some 'wiggle room' along the way, as for realizing a truly 'bottom-up' process instead of a 'top-down' one.

About decentralized production- who should decide on quotas about how much things should be produced in different workplaces, the workers in the workplaces themselves- making production sort of of a spontaneous coordination, of should it be decided by federations of worker councils? Again, federations at what level- local, regional, national, international? Should it be across industry or divided by branches of industry?

Ultimately, yes, decisions -- especially over particulars -- should / must be decided by the liberated laborers themselves, per 'self-determination', from the individual outward, and at all scales of involvement / deliberation.

But I differ with tradition here, in that, due to current communications technology, we no longer need *any* kind of political representation anymore, whatsoever:

4. Ends -- Flat, all-inclusive mode of participation at all levels without delegated representatives

[In] this day and age of fluid digital-based communications, we may want to dispense with formalized representative personages altogether and just conceptualize a productive entity within a supply chain network as having 'external business' or 'external matters' to include in its regular routine of entity-collective co-administration among its participants.

Given that people make *points* on any of a number of *issues*, which may comprise some larger *topics* -- and these fall into some general *themes*, or *categories* -- wouldn't this very discussion-board format of RevLeft be altogether suitable for a massively parallel (ground-level) political participation among all those concerned, particularly workers, for *all scales* of political implementation -- ?

I think there's conventionally been a kind of lingering anxiety over the political "workload" that would confront any regular person who would work *and* wish to have active, impacting participation in real-world policy, along the lines of the examples you've provided for this thread's discussion.

But I'll note that, for any given concrete issue, not everyone would *necessarily* find the material need to individually weigh in with a distinct proposal of their own -- as I think we've seen here from our own regular participation at RevLeft, it's often the case that a simple press of the 'Thanks' button is all that's needed in many cases where a comrade has *already* put forth the words that we would have said ourselves, thereby relieving us from the task of writing that sentiment ourselves.

Would concrete issues at higher, more-generalized levels be so different, so inaccessible to the regular, affected person on the ground? Wouldn't the information gathered within such an appropriate thread of discussion "clue everyone in" as the overall situation at that level -- say, from the participants of several different countries -- ?

I'll ask if delegated representatives *are* really required anymore when our current political vehicle, the Internet-based discussion board, can facilitate massively participatory, though orderly and topic-specific conversations, across all ranges of geography and scales of populations.

tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-concise-communism

And, no quotas needed -- the determination of what should be produced can be found from the communicated needs and desires of the population itself. I developed a model that accommodates this -- here are excerpts:

Associated material values

consumption [demand] -- Every person in a locality has a standard, one-through-infinity ranking system of political demands available to them, updated daily

Material function

consumption [demand] -- All economic needs and desires are formally recorded as pre-planned consumer orders and are politically prioritized [demand]

Determination of material values

consumption [demand] -- Basic human needs will be assigned a higher political priority by individuals and will emerge as mass demands at the cumulative scale -- desires will benefit from political organizing efforts and coordination

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174

Or maybe it should be decided at all by the workers councils, but by consumer councils on the level of communities (those would of cource include the workers being that make up the bulk of the community), and again there is a question about the level of communities and their federations. Or should the plans be made by comittees made for making a compromise plan by putting together proposals by workers and consumer councils, as parecon suggest. Which is by the way the only specific suggestion that I came across, that spells out a precise proposal of how things should work.

(Again) no political personages required -- see the 'Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy' illustration above, and think of how that approach could function in a bottom-up way.

A lot of questions Just to add that I'm interested in a plain, down-to-earth explanations, as people say "explained in your own words", in laymen terms, with concrete explanations, if you can point me to such posts or esseys, or if someone isn't too bothered to write an explanation, that'd be great.

Yup -- good topic.

Information technology will be used to process economic data, including consumption patterns, resource availability, ecological impact, productive capability, etc.

Computer algorithms will process economic data and create a series of potential economic plans that will result in the creation of an artificial abundance, allowing for free self-determined consumption by all.

I've come across this blueprint-by-computer approach before, and I find it to be too technologically substitutionistic -- and too top-down as well.

Here's from another thread:

It'd be nice also if these things that are assigned points or value could have some type of agreeable equations worked in so that computers could determine some of these things

(I have to note that you're edging onto the terrain of *replacing* human judgment and decision-making with that of algorithms. Please recall the 'GIGO' principle:


Garbage in, garbage out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out

[Ahab Strange]

There's no consensus on how a such an economy would look. Nonetheless, coherent models of how things *could* be as an alternative to capitalism need to be devised IMO.

To avoid too much waffle il give a brief outline as I see it:

• A planned economy must be a dynamic thing. Yes there maybe quota for certain industries to provide x or y amount of services, but the plan as whole must be capable of being readjusted very regularly in light of new information. By readjusting we mean matching the plan with what it is currently feasible to produce with the current means of production. Better to think of a planned economy less like a movie script and more like a nervous system, with information flowing freely from the periphery to the core and vice versa

• Today we use money to make economic calculations, but this can also me done with labour time, as it is an attribute common to pretty much every product and service in an economy. People can be remunerated in vouchers equal to the labour time that they have contributed, which can then be "spent" in the communal stores on goods/services equal to that value. We would want to gauge societies production priorities and match that with the labour available in the finest possible detail.

• Decision making. I personally would advocate all administrative bodies being made up of a random selection of the population to best ensure equal representation, much like a jury. This can be augmented by technical experts who are elected where specialist knowledge of a subject is needed. The central planning agency itself could be more like a distributed network. Workplaces feed all current information about their production status into a global database that is there for all to see, to enable the planning agency to make adjustments to the plan in real time.

• As for workplaces, people can join wherever there is a vacancy much like today. However, they should be free to self-manage and decide how to best carry out their role in the plan as they see fit. Freed from the pressure of cut-throat market economics, hopefully we will be able to experiment with more egalitarian and creative forms of workplace organization.

Thanks for the thread. it's made me realize just how hard it is to begin describe alternatives to people without trying to tell everyone everything all at once!

[ckaihatsu]

Today we use money to make economic calculations, but this can also me done with labour time, as it is an attribute common to pretty much every product and service in an economy. People can be remunerated in vouchers equal to the labour time that they have contributed, which can then be "spent" in the communal stores on goods/services equal to that value. We would want to gauge societies production priorities and match that with the labour available in the finest possible detail.

There's nothing *wrong* with the fundamental focus on labor time, but the labor *voucher* approach to implementation is too problematic since it isn't 'free-access', as a post-capitalist political economy is supposed to be.

One could even say that *any* indexing of labor time to material rewards is *too much* like commodification, since labor -- while supposedly liberated -- would implicitly be valued according to what it produces, per locality. This makes it more like *syndicalism* than anything else, and we'd doubtlessly begin to see economic competition (for more labor productivity and lower voucher-rates) among the various syndicalist productive entities.

Labor vouchers *could* fill this role of individualized economic prioritizations -- as we're used to doing with today's money -- while eliminating the vagaries of the financial realm, since labor vouchers couldn't be used to buy and sell the means of mass (industrial) production.

I myself, though, have reservations about the labor voucher system as a whole, since it begs the question of *valuation* -- what is one labor voucher, exactly, and how is its value arrived-at -- ?

Labor vouchers imply a political economy that *consciously* determines valuations, but there's nothing to guarantee that such oversight -- regardless of its composition -- would properly take material realities into account. Such a system would be open to the systemic problems of groupthink and elitism.

I'll contend that I have developed a model that addresses all of these concerns in an even-handed way, and uses a system of *circulating* labor credits that are *not* exchangeable for material items of any kind. In accordance with communism being synonymous with 'free-access', all material implements, resources, and products would be freely available and *not* quantifiable according to any abstract valuations. The labor credits would represent past labor hours completed, multiplied by the difficulty or hazard of the work role performed. The difficulty/hazard multiplier would be determined by a mass survey of all work roles, compiled into an index.

In this way all concerns for labor, large and small, could be reduced to the ready transfer of labor-hour credits. The fulfillment of work roles would bring labor credits into the liberated-laborer's possession, and would empower them with a labor-organizing and labor-utilizing ability directly proportionate to the labor credits from past work completed.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=11269