Pros and Cons of Centralized Planning and Decentralized Planning?

[Jacob Cliff]

I am a Marxist and I'm unsure as to which one I support. I feel the economic calculation problem and also lack of democracy would destroy centralized planning but I also feel decentralized planning may not be efficient; and I'm also unsure how it would be structured.

Also, is there a difference between state capitalism and centralized planning? Was the USSR under Stalin genuinely *socialist* - because the working class didn't control production; a bureaucracy did.

[robbo203]

I am a Marxist and I'm unsure as to which one I support. I feel the economic calculation problem and also lack of democracy would destroy centralized planning but I also feel decentralized planning may not be efficient; and I'm also unsure how it would be structured.

Also, is there a difference between state capitalism and centralized planning? Was the USSR under Stalin genuinely *socialist* - because the working class didn't control production; a bureaucracy did.

On the contrary, its only by repudiating the ludicrously unworkable idea that the total pattern of production can be planned apriori by a single planning authority, and encapsulated within a single society-wide plan, that we can effectively counter and demolish the so called "economic calculation argument". It is no coincidence that people like von Mises and Hayek envisaged socialism to be a system of society-wide central planning; it is to play into their hands to argue along the same lines....

For a more detailed argument check these limks

http://www.des4rev.org.uk/cv3cox.htm
http://mailstrom.blogspot.com.es/200...roduction.html

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The so-called "economic calculation argument" is a joke. The strongest version of the argument - the one concerning opportunity costs (I think the version of the argument that pretends information can't be collected by a central authority is beneath addressing and could only convince someone who either doesn't live in the same world we do, or who wants to be convinced so bad he's willing to ignore the real world) - actually works against capitalism. A centrally-planned socialist society can assess the opportunity costs involved in each production process directly, in material terms - and there are numerous opportunity costs, whose relevance depends on what the members of society want. But in capitalism, all of these indicators are "packed" into one number, the price, which also depends on numerous other factors.

"Decentralised planning" is nonsense. Production is either rationally planned, or it is not. Competing and interacting low-level plans have existed in every mode of production, from slave-owning to capitalism. And the question is always the same: why would anyone suppose that these numerous plans interacting in a haphazard fashion will produce the socially optimal result? It's the old fable of the invisible hand of the market, slightly modified to appeal to people who think actual social control of the means of production is horrible. (Not to mention, if the economy is composed of autonomous units making decisions about the employment of "their own" means of production, private property has not been abolished.)

[Tim Cornelis]

The so-called "economic calculation argument" is a joke. The strongest version of the argument - the one concerning opportunity costs (I think the version of the argument that pretends information can't be collected by a central authority is beneath addressing and could only convince someone who either doesn't live in the same world we do, or who wants to be convinced so bad he's willing to ignore the real world) - actually works against capitalism. A centrally-planned socialist society can assess the opportunity costs involved in each production process directly, in material terms - and there are numerous opportunity costs, whose relevance depends on what the members of society want. But in capitalism, all of these indicators are "packed" into one number, the price, which also depends on numerous other factors.

This is false. By expressing it in material terms you make them incomparable. With option A we save 10 tonnes of steel, with option B we save 150 litres of oil. How do we know what's better? In purely material terms information is lost or hidden the same as in prices. Hence the need for calculation in natura and via social labour time, in concert. This itself does not 'solve' the economic calculation problem as labour is heterogeneous, but treated as homogeneous category. So this mitigates the problem. But as pointed out, capitalism has an economic calculation problem as well by hiding information via a price mechanism that is not at equilibrium. And moreover, the profit rationale leads to absurdities like exporting foods away from starving populations.

To address OP's question. I think 'social planning' should replace central planning and decentralised planning, or any talk of competitive market mechanisms. A Soviet-styled command economy is inherently flawed, but it's worlds apart from planning under the conscious control of immediate producers and consumers, which is socialism. So basically:
Central planning = state management and planning of capital
Social planning = socialist production and distribution

[Jacob Cliff]

Thing is, Stalinist command economics don't work. They led to an immense bureaucracy and was ultimately just state-run capitalism. It wasn't socialism -- Marx knew that, Engels knew that; even Lenin knew that. State capitalism was only a temporary means to laying material conditions in Russia for later socialism. How would a genuine socialist economy work? Pros and cons of centralization and decentralization?

[robbo203]

The so-called "economic calculation argument" is a joke. The strongest version of the argument - the one concerning opportunity costs (I think the version of the argument that pretends information can't be collected by a central authority is beneath addressing and could only convince someone who either doesn't live in the same world we do, or who wants to be convinced so bad he's willing to ignore the real world) - actually works against capitalism. A centrally-planned socialist society can assess the opportunity costs involved in each production process directly, in material terms - and there are numerous opportunity costs, whose relevance depends on what the members of society want. But in capitalism, all of these indicators are "packed" into one number, the price, which also depends on numerous other factors.

We have been here before - havent we?- and still the penny hasn't dropped. How many different kinds of consumer goods and producer goods are there in a modern industrial economy? If you take into account all the possible permutations the figure must run into the literally millions. How on earth is some central planning authority going to know in advance 1) the global demand and 2) the global supply of each of these millions upon millions of different items amd put this all together in some mindbogglingly stupendously large input output matrix - a single worldwide global plan? The idea is insane. I dont think you have the slightest inkling what you are talking about.

And even if it was remotely possible to put together this monstrosity of a plan - are you seriously proposing that the cental planning authority is going to canvass a world population of 7 billion to determine the global demand for, say, brown toe-capped shoes size 42 - do you imagine for one moment that either the demand, or the supply, of each of these millions upon millions of items will remain static and unchanging over the duration of the plan for the convenience of the some remote central planning authority? Of course not. With every minute of every hour of every day something will happen to upset the carefully worked out calculations of the central planners - whether it be a plague of locusts in the Sahel or some devastating earthwquake in the Far East. And since everything is interconnected in reality - if the output of steel falls below its specified target this has knock consequences that make it impossible to met the targets of numerous other items - the global plan will have to be reonfigured in toto from scratch - every day, every hour , every miunute. In fact the plan will never ever even get off the drawing board


Oh and I am still waiting to hear how you imagine a centrally-planned economy can "assess the opportunity costs involved in each production process directly, in material terms" without a feedback mechanism of some sort which can only arise in a polycentric system of planning involving a self regulating system of stock control. Please explain - what is the opportunity costs in "direct material terms" of 10% drop in global wheat harvest due to a drought in the USA, say?

"Decentralised planning" is nonsense. Production is either rationally planned, or it is not. Competing and interacting low-level plans have existed in every mode of production, from slave-owning to capitalism. And the question is always the same: why would anyone suppose that these numerous plans interacting in a haphazard fashion will produce the socially optimal result? It's the old fable of the invisible hand of the market, slightly modified to appeal to people who think actual social control of the means of production is horrible. (Not to mention, if the economy is composed of autonomous units making decisions about the employment of "their own" means of production, private property has not been abolished.)

This has been explained to you umpteen times before but still you dont get it. The fact is that a socialist economy - any kind of economy for that matter - must of necessity entail some form of polycentric planning i.e. millions of different "plans" being implemented on a different levels, local regional and even global. It is silly saying "Decentralised planning" is nonsense, If a single society wide plan is out of the question - which it is - than by definition you have polycentric or, what amounts to the same thing , decentralised planning. The fact that under the planning regime you have numerous plans which spontanteously adjust to each other does NOT mean that out of this spontaneous interaction a socially optimal pattern of production cannot emerge. What you are doing here is confusing the question of wherther there should be one plan or many plans with question of what is the social purpose of planning.

Capitalism - like any other conceivable kind of economy in the real world - involves of necessity polycentric planning . Even within large corporations. for example, departments exert of necessity a certain degree of autonomy with respect to their own affairs. By you daft logic that means that these departmental entities within a corporation exercise a kind of de facto ownership over what they do, distinct and separate from the corporation under which they are subsumed. Thats ridiculous. Rather, they interact with other departments to promote the interests and efficient functioning of the corporation of which they are a part.

In socialism the purpose of production will be entirely different to what is the case in capitalism today in which businesses produce for a market with a view to making a profit From Local communities right the way up to global bodies the purpose of production in socialism will be to directly meet human needs and in the process of interaction, those millions of separately conceived plann will indeed spontaneously adjust to, and effectively mesh, with each other precisely on order to realise that overriding purpose of socialist production in the first place.

Thats how a socially optimal outcome will emerge through spontaneous interaction within a decentralised socialist economy!

[robbo203]

Thinking further about this question of how "spontaneous interaction" could (supposedly) haphazardly arrive at a socially optimal outcome in a polycentric socialist planning system, it occured to me that quite a useful analogy might be that of a team sport like football.

When you think about, the precise movements of the players on the field are not planned in advance by the team manager. Sure there is a general strategy which the team manager outlines to the players but out there on the field the players in the main respond spontaneously - one might almost say, instinctively - to every situation they confront and play all the better, and more fluidly, for that.

Because each player decides on his or her own next move one might be tempted to say, as 870 does, that their actions are uncoordinated and haphazard. But that i think would be to misread the situation. Their actions are directed and purposeful and to that end the players cooperate with each other to achieve their goal (pun intended). Player A passes the ball to player B who feeds it through to C who is a good position to shoot it in between the goalposts

Much the same if I might say so as would happen in a socialist society when hundreds of thousands - nay millions - of production units and distribution stores would cooperate to produce a socially optimal outcome without the total pattern of production ever being planned in advance, something which is simply not possible to do anyway.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

We have been here before - havent we?- and still the penny hasn't dropped.

Perhaps it hasn't "dropped" for you - you learn a new phrase every day - but to me that seems to be the fault of your over-reliance on vague impressions, as well as what amounts to an inherent bias against social planning.

I mean, consider this:

How many different kinds of consumer goods and producer goods are there in a modern industrial economy? If you take into account all the possible permutations the figure must run into the literally millions. How on earth is some central planning authority going to know in advance 1) the global demand and 2) the global supply of each of these millions upon millions of different items amd put this all together in some mindbogglingly stupendously large input output matrix - a single worldwide global plan? The idea is insane. I dont think you have the slightest inkling what you are talking about.

Millions of products. That sounds intimidating, doesn't it? Now if you stop there, if you stop at that impression, then of course, you will think central planning is impossible. But let's look more closely.

Multiplying a matrix and a vector is a relatively easy operation. Inverting a matrix - something that would have to be done at some stage - is a much more daunting task. But how daunting is it?

Brute-force methods give about n^4 FLOP per matrix, where n is the rank of the matrix (here, a million, or 10^6). That's far too much. Luckily LU decomposition gives n^3 (in the leading order). That's much better. The best supercomputers we have today can manage around 1 PFLOPS, so 10^12 FLOPS. Assuming they run at full speed all the time, they would be able to invert that matrix in less than a day. Bump it up to a day to account for the variations in processor speed. That doesn't look so daunting now, does it?

(And that is for a general matrix. In fact IO matrices are mostly sparse - that is, most of their elements are zero. In any column, there are only going to be a few values that are nonzero.)

What about data collection and retrieval? Well, databases containing millions of entries are hardly unique. In the dark ages of the late eighties, the Guide Star Catalogue containing millions of stars could be prepared in, what, one year I think? And the progress we have made since then is staggering. Gathering this sort of data is literally a matter of someone punching in a number at the end of a shift.

I don't think it is a secret that I find a lot of your positions distasteful, but to be honest few of them are as irritating as this sort of "it's too complex" hand-waving. You might be able to sway people who aren't really paying attention, but anyone who is paying attention will notice how unfounded your assertions are.

Did you know we can simulate rat brains? And that's billions of neurons, each of which is a complex system. And yet you think solving one input-output matrix is too complex. Vae, vae.

And even if it was remotely possible to put together this monstrosity of a plan - are you seriously proposing that the cental planning authority is going to canvass a world population of 7 billion to determine the global demand for, say, brown toe-capped shoes size 42 - do you imagine for one moment that either the demand, or the supply, of each of these millions upon millions of items will remain static and unchanging over the duration of the plan for the convenience of the some remote central planning authority? Of course not. With every minute of every hour of every day something will happen to upset the carefully worked out calculations of the central planners - whether it be a plague of locusts in the Sahel or some devastating earthwquake in the Far East. And since everything is interconnected in reality - if the output of steel falls below its specified target this has knock consequences that make it impossible to met the targets of numerous other items - the global plan will have to be reonfigured in toto from scratch - every day, every hour , every miunute. In fact the plan will never ever even get off the drawing board

Again, you don't seem to grasp what is involved in predicting demand. No one assumes that demand will be constant - although, yes, in the end the integrated demand curve will give some sort of aggregate demand. Presumably this will be modeled in some way - this is a fascinating subject but one I can't shed much light on. Of course, any plan will have safeguards - including purposeful overproduction and buffer stock.

Production unit failure is easy to factor in - simply assume that the unit will not function at full capacity in the entire period and use this factor to correct things like input estimates and so on.

Finally, your mantra, "everything is interconnected in reality", is technically true, but completely besides the point. Analysis in terms of an input-output matrix cuts off all correlations besides the most immediate ones. Again, you seem to reply on impressions rather than a serious consideration of the problem.

Oh and I am still waiting to hear how you imagine a centrally-planned economy can "assess the opportunity costs involved in each production process directly, in material terms" without a feedback mechanism of some sort which can only arise in a polycentric system of planning involving a self regulating system of stock control. Please explain - what is the opportunity costs in "direct material terms" of 10% drop in global wheat harvest due to a drought in the USA, say?

Ha? Drops in the harvest don't have an opportunity cost. Sending 10 Arbitrary Units of wheat to the whiskey distilleries does have an opportunity cost - those 10 AU of wheat could have been used to produce 13 AU of bread, 8 AU of wheat germ oil and so on. There are multiple opportunity costs. Which is the most relevant one? That depends on what we want. If no one wants wheat germ oil, that cost is irrelevant, for example.

But monetary calculation and any other form of calculation that relies on a single indicator just mashes all of those costs into one number (that, in the case of capitalism, is further modified by market mechanisms).

This has been explained to you umpteen times before but still you dont get it. The fact is that a socialist economy - any kind of economy for that matter - must of necessity entail some form of polycentric planning i.e. millions of different "plans" being implemented on a different levels, local regional and even global. It is silly saying "Decentralised planning" is nonsense, If a single society wide plan is out of the question - which it is - than by definition you have polycentric or, what amounts to the same thing , decentralised planning.

And that amounts to no planning at all. I mean, this is independent of your position on the possibility of central planning - a decentralised planned economy makes as much sense as virgin sex. Either central planning is possible, or a planned economy is impossible.

Of course, you haven't established that central planning is impossible. Your firm faith in this is admirable, but sadly for you, it is not an argument.

The fact that under the planning regime you have numerous plans which spontanteously adjust to each other does NOT mean that out of this spontaneous interaction a socially optimal pattern of production cannot emerge.

No, it does not. But it does not mean that such a pattern will emerge. You need to establish that it will - if you can't do that, you are in effect asking us to believe in some Invisible Hand that will just happen to make everything alright. That is hardly intellectually honest.

What you are doing here is confusing the question of wherther there should be one plan or many plans with question of what is the social purpose of planning.

And again I protest - if there are multiple plans, you can't talk about planning in any substantial sense. Nothing is being consciously planned on the social scale - the scale where the global economy actually operates. Instead we have a blind interaction where nothing guarantees that the end-result will be socially useful. Indeed you seem to believe in some sort of orthogenetic influence on this blind interaction - there is really no explaining it otherwise.

Capitalism - like any other conceivable kind of economy in the real world - involves of necessity polycentric planning . Even within large corporations. for example, departments exert of necessity a certain degree of autonomy with respect to their own affairs. By you daft logic that means that these departmental entities within a corporation exercise a kind of de facto ownership over what they do, distinct and separate from the corporation under which they are subsumed. Thats ridiculous. Rather, they interact with other departments to promote the interests and efficient functioning of the corporation of which they are a part.

Hah, that's an extremely rosy view of capitalist business. In fact most often the department heads will be at each others' necks, from my experience. But anyway - the point is that "a certain degree of autonomy" is not autonomy. The board of directors will gladly have the head of a department chief who is causing trouble in most cases.

In socialism the purpose of production will be entirely different to what is the case in capitalism today in which businesses produce for a market with a view to making a profit From Local communities right the way up to global bodies the purpose of production in socialism will be to directly meet human needs and in the process of interaction, those millions of separately conceived plann will indeed spontaneously adjust to, and effectively mesh, with each other precisely on order to realise that overriding purpose of socialist production in the first place.

Thats how a socially optimal outcome will emerge through spontaneous interaction within a decentralised socialist economy!

"They'll do it because they'll do it." Well, I'm convinced.

Thinking further about this question of how "spontaneous interaction" could (supposedly) haphazardly arrive at a socially optimal outcome in a polycentric socialist planning system, it occured to me that quite a useful analogy might be that of a team sport like football.

When you think about, the precise movements of the players on the field are not planned in advance by the team manager. Sure there is a general strategy which the team manager outlines to the players but out there on the field the players in the main respond spontaneously - one might almost say, instinctively - to every situation they confront and play all the better, and more fluidly, for that.

Because each player decides on his or her own next move one might be tempted to say, as 870 does, that their actions are uncoordinated and haphazard. But that i think would be to misread the situation. Their actions are directed and purposeful and to that end the players cooperate with each other to achieve their goal (pun intended). Player A passes the ball to player B who feeds it through to C who is a good position to shoot it in between the goalposts

Much the same if I might say so as would happen in a socialist society when hundreds of thousands - nay millions - of production units and distribution stores would cooperate to produce a socially optimal outcome without the total pattern of production ever being planned in advance, something which is simply not possible to do anyway.

I don't even watch football and yet I can immediately tell you how this analogy works against you - as in fact players fuck up all the time. There is no guarantee that their moves will be optimal, no matter what their personal intentions, and because their knowledge of the situation is necessarily limited they often make sub-optimal and sometimes stupid moves. But again, you're answering a question with an analogy. That might pass for cryptic wise man characters in movies, but in real life it's just irritating. I am asking you what mechanism would ensure the socially optimal outcome in a decentralised economy.

[robbo203]

Perhaps it hasn't "dropped" for you - you learn a new phrase every day - but to me that seems to be the fault of your over-reliance on vague impressions, as well as what amounts to an inherent bias against social planning.

Thats nonsense. The problem is not "planning". In capitalism there are millions of plans being implemented on a daily basis. The same will be true of socialism except the context will be totally different - planning for production for use not for the market. We are not just talking about individuals making plans as they go about their daily lives. We are talking about large entities - steel mills, power stations, autoplants not to mention different levels of decisionmaking in the socialist administrative structure - local, regional and global. All of that IS "social planning". You have this absurd idea that unless everything - literally everything that is produced in the whole of global society (7 billion of us) - is incorporated into one single mindbogglingly large mega-plan then it is not "social planning". Thats daft. If that were true there would have been absolute no planning going on anywhere in the world right up to date since there has never existed such a thing as a mega society wide plan in the history of humanity

Millions of products. That sounds intimidating, doesn't it? Now if you stop there, if you stop at that impression, then of course, you will think central planning is impossible. But let's look more closely.

Multiplying a matrix and a vector is a relatively easy operation. Inverting a matrix - something that would have to be done at some stage - is a much more daunting task. But how daunting is it?

Brute-force methods give about n^4 FLOP per matrix, where n is the rank of the matrix (here, a million, or 10^6). That's far too much. Luckily LU decomposition gives n^3 (in the leading order). That's much better. The best supercomputers we have today can manage around 1 PFLOPS, so 10^12 FLOPS. Assuming they run at full speed all the time, they would be able to invert that matrix in less than a day. Bump it up to a day to account for the variations in processor speed. That doesn't look so daunting now, does it?

(And that is for a general matrix. In fact IO matrices are mostly sparse - that is, most of their elements are zero. In any column, there are only going to be a few values that are nonzero.)

What about data collection and retrieval? Well, databases containing millions of entries are hardly unique. In the dark ages of the late eighties, the Guide Star Catalogue containing millions of stars could be prepared in, what, one year I think? And the progress we have made since then is staggering. Gathering this sort of data is literally a matter of someone punching in a number at the end of a shift.

I don't think it is a secret that I find a lot of your positions distasteful, but to be honest few of them are as irritating as this sort of "it's too complex" hand-waving. You might be able to sway people who aren't really paying attention, but anyone who is paying attention will notice how unfounded your assertions are.

Again you are totally missing the point. The problem with society wide central planning is not a computational one and Ive never said otherwise. It really does not matter one iota how powerful your super duper computers are there is not the slightest chance of your crackpot idea ever seeing the light of day in the real world - ever. The problem is an informational one and one of practical implementation . You have made no serious attempt even to demonstrate how your remote global planning centre is going to go about ascertaining, to use my example - the global demand for brown toe capped shoes size 42. Without that information it cant even get off the starters block. On the last occasion we squared up you vaguely suggested a "questionnaire" might be sent out from the global planning centre to the global population. When I pointed out that such a quesstionnaire would have to be the size of a telephone booth or something like that - to allow for all the millions of items that are produced in a modern economy - and that most, if not all, of us would need to return our questionnaires fully answered for the information to be even slightly useful, you simply failed to come up with any kind of answer. And Im not surprised. Eveything you say on the subject is of the utmost vagueness and ill conceived

To me, how you go about assessing demand in a socialist society is so blatantly obvious I dont know how anyone can fail to see it. A self regulating system of stock control. This is what happens today except of course in socialism no money involved , no market exchange. Thats doesnt preclude other supplementary methods of assessmnet such as (limited) consumer surveys but it lies at the heart of socialist system of distribution

Did you know we can simulate rat brains? And that's billions of neurons, each of which is a complex system. And yet you think solving one input-output matrix is too complex. Vae, vae.

What on earth has stimulating rats got to do with operating a worldwide socialist economy. Stimulation is not planning

Again, you don't seem to grasp what is involved in predicting demand. No one assumes that demand will be constant - although, yes, in the end the integrated demand curve will give some sort of aggregate demand. Presumably this will be modeled in some way - this is a fascinating subject but one I can't shed much light on. Of course, any plan will have safeguards - including purposeful overproduction and buffer stock.

Production unit failure is easy to factor in - simply assume that the unit will not function at full capacity in the entire period and use this factor to correct things like input estimates and so on.

Allow me to paste here what I wrote in the economic calculation thread
which deals with tbis bogus argument of yours:

4) The allocation problem . The last line of defence you fall back on is that the central planning authority will be able to accomodate changes in the pattern of supply and demand simply by dictating that for every kind of good in question there should be some form of buffer or surplus stock. Well, to begin with, this as noted can actually make problems worse should demand for a particular product fall. You would end up with much more in the way of unwanted goods in this case which would be wasteful. Also, society wide planning rules out technological innovation in the course of the Plan's implentation since what technological innovations does its to alter the particular configuration of the bundle of inputs that are required to produce a particular good and that would require changing the production targets for each of those inputs. But even if technological innovation were possible in principle, outdated products e.g. cellphones would still have to be produced in accordance with the Plan even though consumers might prefer to get their hands on technically superior versions of the same - that is to say they would become outdated during the course of the Plan implementation but still you would have to stick with them becuase that was dictated by the Plan. More to the point, the level of buffer stocks proposed to allows production units and distribution centres some leeway in dealing with real world fluctuations in demand and supply , would itself be arbitarily fixed by diktat and this would apply right accross the board for every conceivable kind of consumer and proucer good in the global economy. In other words we would have absolutely no idea of the relative scarcity of each of these millions of different kinds of goods since this would in theory be completely hidden by the universality of buffer stocks. So we couldnt discriminate between inputs in terms of their relative scarcity. Which means we would have no way of deciding what particular combination of inputs ought to be used to produce a given output so as to leave as much over as possible for the production of other goods. We would have no way of ensuring that we use less of those inputs which are scarce - i.e. economising on them - and more of those inputs that are abundant since, in theory (on paper), every input would be available to the producers in abundance (which is what a buffer stock would signify) so they could not really discriminate between one input which was scarce in real terms and another which is not. Inevitably as a result of that there will be a tendency to make greater use of relatively scarce inputs than ought to be sensibly the case, leading to increasingly inefficient allocation. Less efficient allocation increases the opportunity costs of production which ultimately leads to a spiralling decline in output. So in fact the very attempt to impose buffer stocks by diktat will result in a situation where those buffer stocks will rapidly erode away as output falls . Generalised scarcity will increasingly assert itself and, with that, the prospect of a return to commodity production

http://www.revleft.com/vb/economic-c...14/index3.html

Finally, your mantra, "everything is interconnected in reality", is technically true, but completely besides the point. Analysis in terms of an input-output matrix cuts off all correlations besides the most immediate ones. Again, you seem to reply on impressions rather than a serious consideration of the problem.

I think if anyone is relying on vague impressions rather than a serious consideration of the problem it is your good self. You never seem to come up with a direct answer to the searching questions asked.

Ha? Drops in the harvest don't have an opportunity cost. Sending 10 Arbitrary Units of wheat to the whiskey distilleries does have an opportunity cost - those 10 AU of wheat could have been used to produce 13 AU of bread, 8 AU of wheat germ oil and so on. There are multiple opportunity costs. Which is the most relevant one? That depends on what we want. If no one wants wheat germ oil, that cost is irrelevant, for example.

Of course you can pluck any figure out of thin air that you want to to give a fig leaf of respectability to your dotty ideas. But you are missing the point completely as usual. How do you arrive at those figures if you have no idea of the relative scarcity of the goods in question? How? You cannot know the relative scarcity becuase you have no feedback mechanism. And you have no feedback mechanism becuase you have precluded the very idea of a self regulating system of stock control

But monetary calculation and any other form of calculation that relies on a single indicator just mashes all of those costs into one number (that, in the case of capitalism, is further modified by market mechanisms).

Of course. But I am not proposing a single unit of accounting. I am proposing calculation in kind . This is a red herring on your part

And that amounts to no planning at all. I mean, this is independent of your position on the possibility of central planning - a decentralised planned economy makes as much sense as virgin sex. Either central planning is possible, or a planned economy is impossible.

But you cant have a planned economy in the sense that the total pattern of production is planned in advance. That is indeed impossible. But that does not mean there is no planning. That is a stupid argument. Do you even understand what "planning" means? Im begininng to wonder. Even capitalism enterprises engage in "planning", you know

No, it does not. But it does not mean that such a pattern will emerge. You need to establish that it will - if you can't do that, you are in effect asking us to believe in some Invisible Hand that will just happen to make everything alright. That is hardly intellectually honest.

Oh come now. Read again what I wrote. I am saying that a socially optimal outcome will emerge out of the interactions of numerous plans via the underlying purpose that governs all those plans. The adjustments that plans make to each other are not haphazard as you seem to think but purposeful. That is what ensures a socially optimal outcome

And again I protest - if there are multiple plans, you can't talk about planning in any substantial sense. Nothing is being consciously planned on the social scale - the scale where the global economy actually operates. Instead we have a blind interaction where nothing guarantees that the end-result will be socially useful. Indeed you seem to believe in some sort of orthogenetic influence on this blind interaction - there is really no explaining it otherwise.

Once again, this is complete nonsense. You really dont seem to have a clue about what is meant by planning. Are you seriously trying to tell me that there is "no planning in any substantial sense" undertaken by capitalist enterprises today? Yes or no? Does a modern corporation like Walmart or Unilever not engage in planning?

Hah, that's an extremely rosy view of capitalist business. In fact most often the department heads will be at each others' necks, from my experience. But anyway - the point is that "a certain degree of autonomy" is not autonomy. The board of directors will gladly have the head of a department chief who is causing trouble in most cases.

Once again, you evade the point. Whether or not "department heads will be at each others' necks" they nevertheless do exercise a "certain degree of autonomy", do they not? - otherwise the very notion that they are at each others necks will make no sense. They would be at each others neck becuase they would have different and conflicting plans about a course of action. You claim in another one of those baffling statements of yours that a "certain degree of autonomy" is not autonomy. Well, what is it then? Granted it is not full autonomy but it is limited autonomy is it not? Yes or no

I don't even watch football and yet I can immediately tell you how this analogy works against you - as in fact players fuck up all the time. There is no guarantee that their moves will be optimal, no matter what their personal intentions, and because their knowledge of the situation is necessarily limited they often make sub-optimal and sometimes stupid moves. But again, you're answering a question with an analogy. That might pass for cryptic wise man characters in movies, but in real life it's just irritating. I am asking you what mechanism would ensure the socially optimal outcome in a decentralised economy.

I have already given you the answer to that last question but to pursue the analogy provided - what you are advocating in effect is that sequence of hundreds of thousands of moves made by each player over the course of 2 hours or so on the field should be precisely predetermined in advance. So the opposing team takes possession of the ball in midfield and is baffled to see their opposite numbers running to the far corner of the field because...er.. it is from there, at that precise point in time, a goal had been "predermined" according to the Plan. Of course, the effect of such a predetermined plan would be simply to allow the opposing team a clear run down their opponents goal and to pop in an easy goal. And you talk about stupid moves and suboptimal patterns!

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

First of all - you can dispense with remarks about "my ideas" (apparently I'm some combination of V. Leontiev and Yu. Larin) being "crackpot" and so on. I don't particularly like you, Mr. "Socialist" Family Values, and you don't like me, but I have better things to do than trade insults with some anonymous person over the Internet. Either we will have a serious discussion, or I will go do something more productive, which might in fact be anything. Not to mention how mind-bogglingly stupid the assertion that central planning, a stated goal of most socialist organisations even if not all of them are consistent about it, is a "crackpot idea", whereas a "self-regulating system of stock control", something that is only seriously considered in your Internet coterie, is. It is good that you have a healthy dose of self-confidence - but it is entirely misplaced in this case.

Thats nonsense. The problem is not "planning". In capitalism there are millions of plans being implemented on a daily basis.

And yet production is not planned. Just as every morning on the highways there are numerous drivers carrying out their private plans, but the traffic is not planned. This conflation of economic planning with the existence of plans - by that logic every mode of production involves economic planning - is presumably because the actual socialist movement has always been vocal about its support for social planning, from Marx onwards. So by broadening the use of the term "planning" until it no longer means anything you and your co-thinkers try to cover up your blatant revision of socialism.

Again you are totally missing the point. The problem with society wide central planning is not a computational one and Ive never said otherwise.

Perhaps, then, I hallucinated the paragraphs in which you talked about the supposed intractability of an input-output analysis of a realistic economy in the last thread. In fact I still seem to be hallucinating the same paragraphs, oh dear.

But in fact the computational problem is a real one - it's just that it is easy to solve with modern technology. In the era of punch cards and tabulation machines, it would be immensely more difficult to implement. But what you claim is your actual objection doesn't make one iota of sense. Namely:

It really does not matter one iota how powerful your super duper computers are there is not the slightest chance of your crackpot idea ever seeing the light of day in the real world - ever. The problem is an informational one and one of practical implementation . You have made no serious attempt even to demonstrate how your remote global planning centre is going to go about ascertaining, to use my example - the global demand for brown toe capped shoes size 42. Without that information it cant even get off the starters block. On the last occasion we squared up you vaguely suggested a "questionnaire" might be sent out from the global planning centre to the global population. When I pointed out that such a quesstionnaire would have to be the size of a telephone booth or something like that - to allow for all the millions of items that are produced in a modern economy - and that most, if not all, of us would need to return our questionnaires fully answered for the information to be even slightly useful, you simply failed to come up with any kind of answer. And Im not surprised. Eveything you say on the subject is of the utmost vagueness and ill conceived

And again I have to point out: I've already answered it. Collecting information is as simple as a worker punching in a few numbers representing the flow of goods through the distribution centre (or factory or whatever) at the end of the shift (or at the agreed-upon time as I highly doubt there will be shifts in socialism). This isn't even a case of "this is so obvious I don't see how anyone could doubt it is possible", it actually happened. The bourgeois governments in Chile and France were able to implement systems that did just that. The COMECOM would have done so as well, if the bureaucracy wasn't worried about their ability to sponge off funds being jeopardised.

(As an aside, I recently heard someone claim that Project CYBERSYN was an instance of "decentralised planning" - which happens to be wrong on both accounts as it was a control, not a planning system, and it literally had a great big fuck-off control room housing the economical "central command". It just shows that "decentralised planning" is, for many people, a mantra, a shibboleth instead of a scientific term.)

How will the signals representing momentary demand be analysed? I don't know. Predicting economic demand is quite far from my area. But it is something that already happens under capitalism, albeit under less than ideal conditions and on a small scale.

That is just one example. Other things are possible - questionnaires, some kind of "citizens' card" that would track every "purchase" someone makes (think of the potential for modelling individual economic behaviour!), automatic systems that detect changes of weight on the shelves, bypassing the need for the workers punching in numbers etc. I am sure people who have dedicated their careers to the question could think of something clever here. That's not the point. The point is that collecting that sort of data is entirely possible.

What on earth has stimulating rats got to do with operating a worldwide socialist economy. Stimulation is not planning

Computationally, to a large extent, planning is simulation in inverse. You start with the final state given by the demand and try to work out the initial state - the inputs and how labour needs to be distributed to give the desired inputs.

Allow me to paste here what I wrote in the economic calculation thread
which deals with tbis bogus argument of yours:

4) The allocation problem . The last line of defence you fall back on is that the central planning authority will be able to accomodate changes in the pattern of supply and demand simply by dictating that for every kind of good in question there should be some form of buffer or surplus stock. Well, to begin with, this as noted can actually make problems worse should demand for a particular product fall. You would end up with much more in the way of unwanted goods in this case which would be wasteful. Also, society wide planning rules out technological innovation in the course of the Plan's implentation since what technological innovations does its to alter the particular configuration of the bundle of inputs that are required to produce a particular good and that would require changing the production targets for each of those inputs. But even if technological innovation were possible in principle, outdated products e.g. cellphones would still have to be produced in accordance with the Plan even though consumers might prefer to get their hands on technically superior versions of the same - that is to say they would become outdated during the course of the Plan implementation but still you would have to stick with them becuase that was dictated by the Plan. More to the point, the level of buffer stocks proposed to allows production units and distribution centres some leeway in dealing with real world fluctuations in demand and supply , would itself be arbitarily fixed by diktat and this would apply right accross the board for every conceivable kind of consumer and proucer good in the global economy. In other words we would have absolutely no idea of the relative scarcity of each of these millions of different kinds of goods since this would in theory be completely hidden by the universality of buffer stocks. So we couldnt discriminate between inputs in terms of their relative scarcity. Which means we would have no way of deciding what particular combination of inputs ought to be used to produce a given output so as to leave as much over as possible for the production of other goods. We would have no way of ensuring that we use less of those inputs which are scarce - i.e. economising on them - and more of those inputs that are abundant since, in theory (on paper), every input would be available to the producers in abundance (which is what a buffer stock would signify) so they could not really discriminate between one input which was scarce in real terms and another which is not. Inevitably as a result of that there will be a tendency to make greater use of relatively scarce inputs than ought to be sensibly the case, leading to increasingly inefficient allocation. Less efficient allocation increases the opportunity costs of production which ultimately leads to a spiralling decline in output. So in fact the very attempt to impose buffer stocks by diktat will result in a situation where those buffer stocks will rapidly erode away as output falls . Generalised scarcity will increasingly assert itself and, with that, the prospect of a return to commodity production

And I will repeat what I said then: you seem to be incapable of thinking in anything but market or quasi-market terms, so it seems to you that scarcity can be detected only as a drop in supply. But while your autonomous "socialist" enterprises (socialist enterprises!) would not have access to this sort of data, a central planning authority would have:

(1) assessments of the remaining reserves of minerals, of oil, assessment of fertility of certain regions and so on (many of these already exist under capitalism, of course);

(2) data about the efficiency of recycling plants etc., the capacity of these;

(3) data concerning how much of the product is actually being produced, how much is being spent, the fraction of demand that is satisfied by buffer stocks etc.

And more, of course. Thus it would be able to not simply detect scarcity (reserves running out, output of the product falling, demand being mostly satisfied by buffer stock etc.) but to analyse it (a simple supply drop couldn't distinguish between the three scenarios I have mentioned at all - if it could even detect the first one).

I think if anyone is relying on vague impressions rather than a serious consideration of the problem it is your good self. You never seem to come up with a direct answer to the searching questions asked.

Well, only one of was content to say "everything is interconnected in reality" and leave it at that. You can use the same argument to "prove" a lot of things, from the idea that the simple rocket equation can't be solved to the notion that humans can never predict the weather (something a fair number of people used to think).

Of course you can pluck any figure out of thin air that you want to to give a fig leaf of respectability to your dotty ideas. But you are missing the point completely as usual. How do you arrive at those figures if you have no idea of the relative scarcity of the goods in question? How? You cannot know the relative scarcity becuase you have no feedback mechanism. And you have no feedback mechanism becuase you have precluded the very idea of a self regulating system of stock control

Those are called examples, robbo. Did you think I would start phoning the grain board about how much bread can be made out of one kilo of wheat? I doubt that. Anyway, what you claim is all wrong - opportunity costs don't depend on the scarcity, although some opportunity costs are relevant and some are not, which depends partly on scarcity (and partly on how demand is structured). The opportunity cost for making one AU of whiskey in terms of the wheat grain oil remains the same no matter how scarce wheat grain oil is (it depends only on the way production is carried out), but unless the oil is scarce or we want a lot of it, no one is going to care.

Of course. But I am not proposing a single unit of accounting. I am proposing calculation in kind . This is a red herring on your part

It was a general comment, concerning in particular people who want to extend the labour theory of value into socialism and have labour-time calculations.

Oh come now. Read again what I wrote. I am saying that a socially optimal outcome will emerge out of the interactions of numerous plans via the underlying purpose that governs all those plans. The adjustments that plans make to each other are not haphazard as you seem to think but purposeful. That is what ensures a socially optimal outcome

This is a pretty classic politician's answer. I am asking what mechanism would ensure the socially-optimal outcome. In capitalism, market mechanisms ensure that enterprises maximise the rate of profit in comparison with other enterprises in the same branch or they are driven off the market. (That is of course not a socially optimal outcome, but there is nonetheless a definite outcome that can be deduced from the mechanisms that operate in market economies.) What would the equivalent of that in a "self-regulating system of stock control" be? In centrally-planned economies the main mechanism is democratic oversight and workers' control - these ensure that the members of society get what they want.

Once again, you evade the point. Whether or not "department heads will be at each others' necks" they nevertheless do exercise a "certain degree of autonomy", do they not? - otherwise the very notion that they are at each others necks will make no sense. They would be at each others neck becuase they would have different and conflicting plans about a course of action. You claim in another one of those baffling statements of yours that a "certain degree of autonomy" is not autonomy. Well, what is it then? Granted it is not full autonomy but it is limited autonomy is it not? Yes or no

Well, no. Limited autonomy is not autonomy just as limited independence is not independence and so on. Autonomy is or isn't - departments might act as if they were autonomous from time to time but in the end they answer to the board of directors.

[Lowtech]

centralized planning happens everyday in every business around the world. firms manage thier own resources in a very totalitarian manner. an argument against centralized planning is an argument against capitalism.

[robbo203]

First of all - you can dispense with remarks about "my ideas" (apparently I'm some combination of V. Leontiev and Yu. Larin) being "crackpot" and so on. I don't particularly like you, Mr. "Socialist" Family Values, and you don't like me, but I have better things to do than trade insults with some anonymous person over the Internet. Either we will have a serious discussion, or I will go do something more productive, which might in fact be anything. Not to mention how mind-bogglingly stupid the assertion that central planning, a stated goal of most socialist organisations even if not all of them are consistent about it, is a "crackpot idea", whereas a "self-regulating system of stock control", something that is only seriously considered in your Internet coterie, is. It is good that you have a healthy dose of self-confidence - but it is entirely misplaced in this case.

Feeling's mutual, sunshine, but let that go. Point is that the idea of a single society-wide plan for the whole world which strives to plan the totality of production everywhere, right down to the last 3 inch screw, all from the cosy confines of some remote global planning centre is demonstrably a crackpot and insane idea . Sheesh, I dont why I am even having to argue the case with you - its as plain as the nose you can see on your face. You claim that this is the venerable objective of "most socialist organisations". I question that. When most people, or most "socialists", talk about "central planning" they mean something quite different to what you mean i.e. they mean simply a greater degree of centralisation or something like what existed in the Soviet Union. I think this stems from the still strong attachment of large swathes of the Left to what is basically a state capitalist mindset. Hence the idea of nationalising the commanding heights of industry. Still, if you can prove me wrong and produce evidence of a socialist organisation anywhere that subscribes literally to your extreme and absolutist interpretation of "central planning", then do it. I wont hold my breath waiting.

And yet production is not planned. Just as every morning on the highways there are numerous drivers carrying out their private plans, but the traffic is not planned. This conflation of economic planning with the existence of plans - by that logic every mode of production involves economic planning - is presumably because the actual socialist movement has always been vocal about its support for social planning, from Marx onwards. So by broadening the use of the term "planning" until it no longer means anything you and your co-thinkers try to cover up your blatant revision of socialism.

Ive dealt with this already. Any kind of joint or collective planning effort is "social" by its very nature as opposed to what we plan as private individuals. Your assertion that planning has to be society wide, meaning global, or it is not planning at all, amounts to the ridiculous assertion that there has never been any "planning" in the entire history of the world up to this point in time since there has never been (and never will be) in existence the kind of planning system you propose to inflict on us.

Perhaps, then, I hallucinated the paragraphs in which you talked about the supposed intractability of an input-output analysis of a realistic economy in the last thread. In fact I still seem to be hallucinating the same paragraphs, oh dear.

But in fact the computational problem is a real one - it's just that it is easy to solve with modern technology. In the era of punch cards and tabulation machines, it would be immensely more difficult to implement. But what you claim is your actual objection doesn't make one iota of sense. Namely:

No you didnt hallucinate my paragraphs about the "supposed intractability of an input-output analysis";you just got it totally wrong as per usual. The computational aspect of your version of central planning is not really the problem. I repeat again it is an informational problem (e.g. how do your central planners gather information about the global demand for pink polka dot ties or neck scarves?)and a problem of how you cope with change in the real world. Revising the plan is all very well but since change is continuous, the plan would then have to be continuously revised, meaning it will never get off the ground in the first place. That or it will end up merely as some kind of glorified wishlist of nominal targets which the planners wistfully hope the producers will somehow get to taking on board if they can be bothered. There is also the allocation problem in the face which you are bereft of any kind of answer , and I would add also the problem of sheer bureacratic waste sending out all those bulky questionnaires you propose and then trying to analyse the tiny fraction that might get returned to produce a pretty much useless assessment of global demand

And again I have to point out: I've already answered it. Collecting information is as simple as a worker punching in a few numbers representing the flow of goods through the distribution centre (or factory or whatever) at the end of the shift (or at the agreed-upon time as I highly doubt there will be shifts in socialism).

What? Did I read you right just then? Are you now trying to say that the flow of goods through distribution centres or factories is the kind of information that your central planning office would rely upon? If so what you are talking about is no longer real society-wide central planning. All you would be talking about is some kind of central agency that receives and transmits information to whoever it deems to be the appropriate recipients. e.g this or that factory on some kind of ad hoc basis

I think we need to establish if this is what you mean by central planning because if that is the case then clearly you are not advocating central planning in the classic sense of society wide planning. Frankly, I have always had a sneaking suspicion that you dont quite understand what the argument is about though you cover up your ignorance with a plethora of smart arse comments that amount to little more than a (rather paltry) fig leaf

How will the signals representing momentary demand be analysed? I don't know. Predicting economic demand is quite far from my area. But it is something that already happens under capitalism, albeit under less than ideal conditions and on a small scale.

That is just one example. Other things are possible - questionnaires, some kind of "citizens' card" that would track every "purchase" someone makes (think of the potential for modelling individual economic behaviour!), automatic systems that detect changes of weight on the shelves, bypassing the need for the workers punching in numbers etc. I am sure people who have dedicated their careers to the question could think of something clever here. That's not the point. The point is that collecting that sort of data is entirely possible.

More grist to the mill of what I talked about immediately above. Let us be clear- you are here talking about a feedback mechanism - of planners tracking "purchases" and whatnot which again suggests maybe you are not really an advocate of society wide central planning after all even if you dont know it. Christ, you even concede that predicting economic demand is something that already happens under capitalism. and that in socialism this will happen too albeit on a larger scale How does demand manifest itself in capitalism? By people purchasing things in store. More demand pushes up the price which induces business to produce more. There wont be prices in socialism, of course, and people will not purchase goods but the underlying mechanism will still same -a self regulating system of stock control that in purely physical terms links supply and demand. This is precisely what I have been trying to drum into your head over many posts and now finally you admit it - or seem to, Maybe there's hope for you yet

Computationally, to a large extent, planning is simulation in inverse. You start with the final state given by the demand and try to work out the initial state - the inputs and how labour needs to be distributed to give the desired inputs.

Perhaps I spoke to soon because once again we are back to the the obtuse and obscurantist mindset of the central planner. You cannot have it both ways, you know - you have to chose. I dont even think the idea of a central planning as a kind of global information exchange set up is particularly useful given the way distributed computer networks function today - look at the way the internet works - but at least such a model of central planning is not vulnerable to the kind of devastating critique that a full on society wide planning model is.

If you are now really expressing your commitment to the latter I must ask you once again how are going to acquire the information you need to formulate your single giant plan? You cant just turn around and say "oh, we will glean the information by tracking what people take from the stores" because this presupposes a self regulating system of stock control and a polycenmtric system of planning which is fundamentally incompatible with precisely the kind of society wide planning you advocate, That apart , what people take from the stores is something that your central planers are supposed to have confidently predicted in the first place. Now your are saying that they are basing their prediction on something which has not been planned in the first place and over which they have no control. Something does not add here.

I repeat again - how is some remote global planning office going to determine the global demand for brown toecapped shoes (size 42)? If you are honest with yourself you will admit it wouldnt have a clue . It will be pure guesswork that it will be engaged in Your ridiculous suggestion that a global population (of 7 billion) people could be sent questionnaires so the planners can assess the demand of the global population for literally hundreds of thousands of different items (or permutations of items like shoe size and colour) is simply not up to the task as Im sure by now you agree. So all you are left with is the idea of seeing what people actually take from the stores and extrapolating/predicting future demand from that and adjusting supply to follow suit. An increase in the rate of stock depletion means an increase in demand for the product in question which is precisely the signal that producers need to determine how much to produce. Simples really. Yet this is the concept of the self regulating system of stock control that you have constantly sneered at and turned up your nose at. Now it turns out that you depend on such a mechanism absolutely. How ironic

Claiming that your central planning office can somehow accommodate change by setting aside buffer stocks to allow for fluctuations in supply and demand is, of course, no answer at all becuase you dont really have any baseline in the first place (other than what a self regulating system of stock control can provide) to determine what actual demand is . The buffer is supposed to signify an excess over and above current demand - a sort of insurance policy as it were - but if you dont know what current demand is how can you determine what constitutes an excess of supply or how much that should be?

And I will repeat what I said then: you seem to be incapable of thinking in anything but market or quasi-market terms, so it seems to you that scarcity can be detected only as a drop in supply. But while your autonomous "socialist" enterprises (socialist enterprises!) would not have access to this sort of data, a central planning authority would have:

(1) assessments of the remaining reserves of minerals, of oil, assessment of fertility of certain regions and so on (many of these already exist under capitalism, of course);

(2) data about the efficiency of recycling plants etc., the capacity of these;

(3) data concerning how much of the product is actually being produced, how much is being spent, the fraction of demand that is satisfied by buffer stocks etc.

And more, of course. Thus it would be able to not simply detect scarcity (reserves running out, output of the product falling, demand being mostly satisfied by buffer stock etc.) but to analyse it (a simple supply drop couldn't distinguish between the three scenarios I have mentioned at all - if it could even detect the first one).

You persist in your dishonest and shoddy tactic of misrepresenting my position - that "I am incapable of thinking in anything but market or quasi-market terms" I will say it again - a self regulating systrem of stock control in itself has nothing to with the market. Markets have to do with the terms under which goods are appropriated in the guise of commodities. A market economy depends on a self regulating system of stock control just as much as a non market economy will depend on a such a system but such a system in itself has nothing to say about the terms under which goods are appropriated. All it is concerned with is the flow of goods, whether these take a commodity form or not

Of course the biggest irony of all is that all of the supposed advantages you cite that a system of society wide planning will enjoy can ONLY be produced by a system of polycentric planning where there is a feedback mechanism involved, Which means either that what you are advocating is not a system of society wide planning of that you cannot have such a system on your own terms

I dont say scarcity can be detected only by a drop on supply - when was I supposed to have said that? - since obviously an increase in demand can also result in that same outcome. What I say was that only where you have feedback mechanism - a self regulating system of stock control - that you can ascertain the relatve scarcity of factors of production. Under society wide planning you cannot do that since you have no means of ascertaining the relative scarcity of goods since the interplay of supply and demand is ruled out. That means also that you have no means of knowing what factors of production you need to economise on most and what least. You talk about the central planners having access to data concerning the "efficiency of recycling plants" etc. But there is a big difference between technical efficiency (which is what you are talking about here) and economic efficiency which is about the allocation of factors of production. You central planners will be completely unable to ensure the latter . Check out this link to seew the difference between these concepts of efficiency http://www.differencebetween.net/lan...ic-efficiency/

This is a pretty classic politician's answer. I am asking what mechanism would ensure the socially-optimal outcome. In capitalism, market mechanisms ensure that enterprises maximise the rate of profit in comparison with other enterprises in the same branch or they are driven off the market. (That is of course not a socially optimal outcome, but there is nonetheless a definite outcome that can be deduced from the mechanisms that operate in market economies.) What would the equivalent of that in a "self-regulating system of stock control" be? In centrally-planned economies the main mechanism is democratic oversight and workers' control - these ensure that the members of society get what they want.

Actually the very opposite is the case. The very complexity of the model you propose rules out completely anything remotely amounting to "democratic oversight". Even if what you propose was remotely practical, how do you propose that the population at large should democratically decide on the make up and structure of your gigantic plan, let alone such things as the distribution of the workload which would have to be imposed in top down fashion under your system and ruthlessly enforced if Plan is to stand any chance of succeeding on uts own . I think you are complete dreamer, frankly, with your head in the sky and your feet certainly not on this earth. Vague techo-waffle and the pious enunciation of no doubt well meant sentiments is no substtitute for hard headed realism and clear thinking

Well, no. Limited autonomy is not autonomy just as limited independence is not independence and so on. Autonomy is or isn't - departments might act as if they were autonomous from time to time but in the end they answer to the board of directors.

No limited autonomy is still autonomy of a sort; its just not full autonomy. But then logic is not your strong suit, is it?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Feeling's mutual, sunshine, but let that go. Point is that the idea of a single society-wide plan for the whole world which strives to plan the totality of production everywhere, right down to the last 3 inch screw, all from the cosy confines of some remote global planning centre is demonstrably a crackpot and insane idea . Sheesh, I dont why I am even having to argue the case with you - its as plain as the nose you can see on your face. You claim that this is the venerable objective of "most socialist organisations". I question that. When most people, or most "socialists", talk about "central planning" they mean something quite different to what you mean i.e. they mean simply a greater degree of centralisation or something like what existed in the Soviet Union. I think this stems from the still strong attachment of large swathes of the Left to what is basically a state capitalist mindset. Hence the idea of nationalising the commanding heights of industry. Still, if you can prove me wrong and produce evidence of a socialist organisation anywhere that subscribes literally to your extreme and absolutist interpretation of "central planning", then do it. I wont hold my breath waiting.

Well, one fairly irrelevant Russian group, the Bolsheviks, did. Here is how Bukharin (I don't suppose you've heard of him) puts it:

"The basis of communist society must be the social ownership of the means of production and exchange. Machinery, locomotives, steamships, factory buildings, warehouses, grain elevators, mines, telegraphs and telephones, the land, sheep, horses, and cattle, must all be at the disposal of society. All these means of production must be under the control of society as a whole, and not as at present under the control of individual capitalists or capitalist combines. What do we mean by 'society as a whole'? We mean that ownership and control is not the privilege of a class but of all the persons who make up society. In these circumstances society will be transformed into a huge working organization for cooperative production. There will then be neither disintegration of production nor anarchy of production. In such a social order, production will be organized. No longer will one enterprise compete with another; the factories, workshops, mines, and other productive institutions will all be subdivisions, as it were, of one vast people's workshop, which will embrace the entire national economy of production. It is obvious that so comprehensive an organization presupposes a general plan of production. If all the factories and workshops together with the whole of agricultural production are combined to form an immense cooperative enterprise, it is obvious that everything must be precisely calculated. We must know in advance how much labour to assign to the various branches of industry; what products are required and how much of each it is necessary to produce; how and where machines must be provided. These and similar details must be thought out beforehand, with approximate accuracy at least; and the work must be guided in conformity with our calculations. This is how the organization of communist production will be effected. Without a general plan, without a general directive system, and without careful calculation and book-keeping, there can be no organization. But in the communist social order, there is such a plan." (ABC of Communism)This is the notion of socialisation that dominated the famous first four congresses of the ComIntern, whose decisions, with one or two exceptions, every Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyist group accepts, at least on paper. Now, in fact most of these groups are social-democratic traitors. But when it comes to rhetoric, they still accept this view of planning (of course, Marxists-Leninists also talk about "socialism in one country" which mixes nationally-delimited semi-planning and market mechanisms, but that is an entirely different matter). Here is how, for example, Mandel put it:

"We have been using the term ‘planning’. But the concept itself needs to be more precisely defined. Planning is not equivalent to ‘perfect’ allocation of resources, nor ‘scientific’ allocation, nor even ‘more humane’ allocation. It simply means ‘direct’ allocation, ex ante. As such, it is the opposite of market allocation, which is ex post. These are the two basic ways of allocating resources, and they are fundamentally different from each other – even if they can on occasion be combined in precarious and hybrid transitional forms, which will not be automatically self-reproducing. Essentially they have a different internal logic. They generate distinct laws of motion. They diffuse divergent motivations among producers and organizers of production, and find expression in discrepant social values." (In Defence of Socialist Planning)

Once again, I can't but agree with how the old devil put it in writing (his actions as USec leader are another thing entirely of course).

Now, perhaps Mr. "Socialist" Family Values will deign to tell us how many socialist organisations have adopted his "self-regulating system of stock exchange". It doesn't matter either way of course - but his infinite arrogance is just too fun to demolish.

Ive dealt with this already. Any kind of joint or collective planning effort is "social" by its very nature as opposed to what we plan as private individuals.

And therefore, planning in the sense in which socialists use the term already exists in joint-stock companies (any kind of company in fact), and Marx and Engels were simply being idiots when they talked about the socialist society overcoming the anarchy of production through social planning (e.g. Engels in Anti-Duehring).

Your assertion that planning has to be society wide, meaning global, or it is not planning at all, amounts to the ridiculous assertion that there has never been any "planning" in the entire history of the world up to this point in time since there has never been (and never will be) in existence the kind of planning system you propose to inflict on us.

And in fact, planning in the sense in which socialists - well, pardon, socialists except you and your friends (you are of course "socialists") - talk about economic planning does not exist and has never existed.

No you didnt hallucinate my paragraphs about the "supposed intractability of an input-output analysis";you just got it totally wrong as per usual. The computational aspect of your version of central planning is not really the problem. I repeat again it is an informational problem (e.g. how do your central planners gather information about the global demand for pink polka dot ties or neck scarves?)and a problem of how you cope with change in the real world. Revising the plan is all very well but since change is continuous, the plan would then have to be continuously revised, meaning it will never get off the ground in the first place.

And here the re-hashing of the previous discussion starts. You don't have an argument for the claim that the plan would have to be constantly revised, unless you count your embarrassing hand-waving as an argument.

What? Did I read you right just then? Are you now trying to say that the flow of goods through distribution centres or factories is the kind of information that your central planning office would rely upon? If so what you are talking about is no longer real society-wide central planning. All you would be talking about is some kind of central agency that receives and transmits information to whoever it deems to be the appropriate recipients. e.g this or that factory on some kind of ad hoc basis

And here the dishonesty starts. That, or the outright delusions. See, I said something that sounds like robbo's SRSSC (if you've been drinking heavily), so therefore I must actually mean to propose some ridiculous "decentralisation" scheme. God's in his heaven - all is right with the world.

I mean, this sort of behaviour does remind me of religious fanatics more than anything (and why not? after all our petit-bourgeois gentilhomme's positions on minorities and the family are pretty much in that vein). No one, they think, really disbelieves in gods. Everyone is a theist in denial.

But of course, there was nothing contrary to central planning in what I said. Information about the flow of goods through distribution centres is collected by the central authorities, who then use this information to predict aggregate demand in the next period (using one or the other model, depending on which of them proves to be useful). Now robbo's assertion seems to be that:

More grist to the mill of what I talked about immediately above. Let us be clear- you are here talking about a feedback mechanism - of planners tracking "purchases" and whatnot which again suggests maybe you are not really an advocate of society wide central planning after all even if you dont know it.

Decoded from robbo-speak, this means:

(1) tracking "purchases" is a feedback mechanism;
(2) there are no feedback mechanisms in a centrally-planned society;
(3) tracking "purchases" is incompatible with central planning.

Now, as per the previous discussion, Mr. "Socialist" Family Values doesn't acknowledge something as a feedback mechanism unless it automatically changes the distribution of goods - i.e. unless it's a market mechanism per Mandel's previous definition (let's be generous here and call it a quasi-market mechanism instead). This is the sense in which (2) is true. However, it is not the sense in which tracking "purchases" and the flow of goods through distribution centres is a feedback mechanism - obviously this simply provides data to the planning authorities. Our good friend simply plays fast and loose with these two meanings - of which the first is recognised only by him - because otherwise his "argument" would be an obvious non-sequitur.

I think we need to establish if this is what you mean by central planning because if that is the case then clearly you are not advocating central planning in the classic sense of society wide planning.

Hmm.

First central planning was a "crackpot idea" (as opposed to the widely-accepted and respected SRSSC). Now it's the "classic sense of society wide planning".

It's almost as if our friend robbo is being deliberately disingenuous.

Christ, you even concede that predicting economic demand is something that already happens under capitalism. and that in socialism this will happen too albeit on a larger scale

Another good example of robbo-logic. No, in socialism prediction of demand won't simply "happen on a larger scale" but it will be generalised in the same sense in which commodity production, which exists under feudalism and under the slave-owning society, is generalised by capitalism.

Maybe there's hope for you yet

Kindly fuck yourself.

If you are now really expressing your commitment to the latter I must ask you once again how are going to acquire the information you need to formulate your single giant plan? You cant just turn around and say "oh, we will glean the information by tracking what people take from the stores" because this presupposes a self regulating system of stock control and a polycenmtric system of planning which is fundamentally incompatible with precisely the kind of society wide planning you advocate,

Oh, obviously, without a SRSSC there would be no distribution centres and people would not take anything from them. Even if they did, the information about that would mysteriously catch fire. Or maybe you're just full of shit as usual.

That apart , what people take from the stores is something that your central planers are supposed to have confidently predicted in the first place. Now your are saying that they are basing their prediction on something which has not been planned in the first place and over which they have no control. Something does not add here.

Good grief, do you understand how prediction works? I mean, you might as well ask why meteorologists use the measured wind velocity and temperature fields when their models give the same quantities. I just... you really don't know anything about this, do you? I'm at a loss as to what I could write here as I don't think the record of my head hitting the keyboard would be appropriate (although compared to the kind of posts that can be found on RevLeft it would be the fucking Mandel-Bettelheim debate). That's almost as embarrassing as your statements about fictitious capital and chaos theory.

Of course the biggest irony of all is that all of the supposed advantages you cite that a system of society wide planning will enjoy can ONLY be produced by a system of polycentric planning where there is a feedback mechanism involved, Which means either that what you are advocating is not a system of society wide planning of that you cannot have such a system on your own terms

Oh look, another one of those robbo moments that we've all come to love and cherish. Obviously, once again, without a SRSSC there would be no geological surveys. And even though the central office would have the information about the inputs and outputs to every factory they wouldn't be able to calculate things such as the ratio of demand satisfied from the buffer stock to total demand. Because... because... fuck this I can't even say something flippant. This is one giant nonsequitur and it's not even funny. It's just sad.

I dont say scarcity can be detected only by a drop on supply - when was I supposed to have said that? - since obviously an increase in demand can also result in that same outcome.

Again I feel like slamming my head against the keyboard. You say that you don't view things in market terms and then protest that in addition to one market or quasi-market mechanism you also rely on... another market or quasi-market mechanism.

I mean.

Good god.

What I say was that only where you have feedback mechanism - a self regulating system of stock control - that you can ascertain the relatve scarcity of factors of production. Under society wide planning you cannot do that since you have no means of ascertaining the relative scarcity of goods since the interplay of supply and demand is ruled out. That means also that you have no means of knowing what factors of production you need to economise on most and what least. You talk about the central planners having access to data concerning the "efficiency of recycling plants" etc. But there is a big difference between technical efficiency (which is what you are talking about here) and economic efficiency which is about the allocation of factors of production. You central planners will be completely unable to ensure the latter . Check out this link to seew the difference between these concepts of efficiency http://www.differencebetween.net/lan...ic-efficiency/

I'm aware of the difference. And "economic efficiency" is a concern for capitalists - in the socialist society, where there is no commodity exchange and the factors of production are not commodities (obviously) it simply doesn't exist. Only under capitalism can you pretend that there is one "optimal" distribution of scarce goods to the production units, regardless of the context given by the actual structure of demand and so on and so on. Since under capitalism these complicated factors are all stored - ineffectively - in one indicator, the price.

Actually the very opposite is the case. The very complexity of the model you propose rules out completely anything remotely amounting to "democratic oversight". Even if what you propose was remotely practical, how do you propose that the population at large should democratically decide on the make up and structure of your gigantic plan, let alone such things as the distribution of the workload which would have to be imposed in top down fashion under your system and ruthlessly enforced if Plan is to stand any chance of succeeding on uts own . I think you are complete dreamer, frankly, with your head in the sky and your feet certainly not on this earth. Vague techo-waffle and the pious enunciation of no doubt well meant sentiments is no substtitute for hard headed realism and clear thinking

Oh, hahahah. Wow. You consider your hand-waving to be "hard headed realism and clear thinking"? Jesus on a breadroll. I mean, I'm not surprised. The shill for bourgeois parliamentary democracy turns out to be skeptical of actual proletarian democracy. No, wait, it's just that it's too complicated. People's brains will cook off if they consider anything than electing SPGB toffs to the parliament. Oh good grief. If you think members of society - "ordinary" members even - are incapable of meaningfully discussing the economy, why be a socialist? I honestly don't get it. But as I said before, your "socialism" in fact leaves the entire edifice of capitalist society untouched with some cosmetic changes.

No limited autonomy is still autonomy of a sort; its just not full autonomy. But then logic is not your strong suit, is it?

I think kindergarten children know there are some combinations of a term and modifier that mean something entirely different than what a naive reading of the syntagm would suggest. Thus someone who is a little pregnant is in fact fully pregnant. And someone who is relatively wealthy isn't wealthy at all. And being relatively independent or autonomous means you aren't independent or autonomous at all.

I mean. Kindergarten.

I notice Mr. "Socialist" Family (and Local!) Values hasn't stopped with the insults, and more importantly he's just rehashing the same old guff he constantly uses to bore people into withdrawing from the conversation so he can claim victory.

Well.

Far be it from me to spoil his fun. But unless he comes up with something interesting next time, I'm bailing out, as I just realised I could have spent the time I spent writing this reply basically doing anything but this. It's not worth it. I think I've already presented a case for central planning and Mr. "Socialist" Family Values is just re-hashing the same old boring crud. If anyone finds that appealing, good for them. I guess being stuck in some "socialist" supermarket waiting for your not-market-honest-guvnor signals to arrive beats calculating indicative prices.

And for robbo, who ignored my request to stop with the useless insults, fuck off, you miserable homophobic relic of a bygone era.

[ckaihatsu]

I am saying that a socially optimal outcome will emerge out of the interactions of numerous plans via the underlying purpose that governs all those plans. The adjustments that plans make to each other are not haphazard as you seem to think but purposeful. That is what ensures a socially optimal outcome

This is a pretty classic politician's answer. I am asking what mechanism would ensure the socially-optimal outcome. In capitalism, market mechanisms ensure that enterprises maximise the rate of profit in comparison with other enterprises in the same branch or they are driven off the market. (That is of course not a socially optimal outcome, but there is nonetheless a definite outcome that can be deduced from the mechanisms that operate in market economies.) What would the equivalent of that in a "self-regulating system of stock control" be? In centrally-planned economies the main mechanism is democratic oversight and workers' control - these ensure that the members of society get what they want.

I think that in these recurring, never-ending exchanges on this topic, there's generally an overreliance on the *logistical* aspect of the system, to the extent that the more-*political* ('social') aspect is ignored. Everyone should certainly understand that the difference from capitalism is that a *post*-capitalist society would have a *fully mass-conscious* political economy, meaning fully transparent information about ongoing production, and informed perspectives from anyone and everyone about the daily workings of the economy's "machinery".

Yes, that "machinery" should be as automatic and routinely functioning as possible, for a minimum of necessary oversight, but, for any given quantity that needs producing, the *political* / social procedures for addressing it should be clear and fully accessible.

I see a lot of hair-splitting going on -- as is typical of the revolutionary left -- over the definition of 'central planning' and what it entails exactly.

One *could* conceptualize it as being more-political (than economic) as one goes higher-up in scale, towards the global level -- for example, the 'central plan', even *right now*, for a potential nascent socialist economy could be 'health and welfare for all'. This decisive global political sentiment could potentially be demonstrated in some way, as anti-war sentiment has been shown, in the past.

Does 'health and welfare for all' mean that every *economic* detail needs to exist on a single spreadsheet in a single office at a single location somewhere, to cover the whole world's collectivized economy -- ? No, but maybe a 'global spreadsheet' *would* exist to reflect a "delegation" of lower-level social processes underway in various regions of the world, over *all* regions of the world, to ensure the fulfillment of this central (political) plan.

Since there's no actual physical 'gargantuan world factory' that's capable of singly spitting out production, Santa-Claus-workshop-style, for the denizens of the entire world, *actual* production takes place over a very broad *collection* of factories and workplaces worldwide, which *should* be coordinating with each other at the broadest, *most-generalized* scales possible. *This* would be the 'centralization' at-hand, based on available and willing liberated labor, emerging from a bottom-up process, and yielding greater and greater economies of scale through *conscious* collective political participation and planning.

[robbo203]

Well, kid, you know what they say about sticks and stones. Frankly, I couldnt really care a toss about your colourful ad hominens. They only show you up for what you are - a nasty arrogant little piece of shit. Your bad, Im afraid. Note that I have only attacked your daft argument thus far in admittedly forthright terms not you personally. Your latest hysterical contribution makes this personal . But I have better things to do with my time than trade insults with someone who hypocritcally bleats about having requested to "stop with the useless insults" and has engaged in precisely that from the word go.

By the way, your idiotic jibes about "Mr Socialist Family values" , in case peeps here dont know what this is about, is a reference to another debate we had some time ago in which I quite reasonably pointed out that while the bourgeois form of family life will no doubt cease to exist in socialism , it is quite likely that some other form (or more likely forms) of family structure , whether or not based on consanguinal ties, will continue in socialism, And why not? What is the alternative? That everyone lives in a some sort of huge military-style barracks. No thanks. I dont imagine Im alone in not wanting to live in a bee colony. Anthropologically speaking some form of family unit has always existed in human societies - including incidentally hunter gatherer societies. Check out the evidence for yourself

Your absurd fantasies on a family-less future are all of a peice with your equally absurd claims about towns and villages being abolished in socialism and everyone moving into the city - a kind of reversal of the Khmer Rouge's fascist idea of emptying the city but equally repugnant. When I pointed out that among other things this would be a monumental waste of resources simply abandoning all these structures you had no answer. Typical.


Just because your ridiculous crackpot idea of one single giant plan for the whole world for has been thoroughly exposed as nonsense on stilts, is no excuse for engaging in a hissy fit. Ive patiently explained to you umpteen times why the idea is a no starter but you've ignored all the arguments and pretend that I haven't made them. I dont know how many times Ive elaborated on the difference between a market (or quasi market) mechanism and a self regulating system of control. Yet still you persist in your dishonest ploy of claiming I advocate the former when the former has to do with the terms under which goods are appropriated on a quid pro exchange basis while the later is simply concerned with the flow of goods through the system.


And of course there is a contradiction between your idea that the total pattern of production - the entire structure of inputs and outputs - in the global economy would be planned in advance and the idea that your imaginary central planning office would somehow be engaged in tracking conmsumer "puchases" ( a strange expression from someone who accuses others of advocating a "market or quasi market mechanism"!). What would be the point of doing the latter unless it involved some change in the flow or distribution of goods, eh? That is what is meant by a "feedback mechanism"- the information feeds back and modifies in some fashion the larger picture or pattern of distribution. In this instance economic realites are guiding the plan rather than the plan guiding reality which rather defeats the whole purpose of society wide planning, doesnt it?

Your mythical central planning office just becomes the locus for the convergence of a constant stream of ever changing data from the far flung corners world, which data it would have to somehow digest and analyse with a view to advising the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of factories and distribution points scattered across the world as to what they should be doing on a day to day basis. In which case this is no longer central planning in the classic sense of the term since the primary planning initiative would lie with the local unit with the global planning offce acting purely in an advisory or consulting capacity. It is still nevertheless be a pretty pointless way of proceeding, in my view, given the existence of a distributed computer network that allows production units/distribution centres to directly communicate with each other.

What can your global planning office offer that these production units/distribution centres cannot do themselves and in fact, for the most part, far more effectively? Your argument is that it would be able to take a wider persepctive might have some merit in some cases but against that it could be equally, if not more forcefully, argued that it would be absolutely crippled by the sheer information overload it would have to deal with and by the lack of familarity with more detailed or specific location-bound information only available to the local unit. That said Im not against some degree of centralisation in some respects but within limits - otherwise we run into diseconomies of scale


But the main point I make is that this is no longer a single society wide plan you are advocating in this case. I can see why you would now want to revise your position by talking about the global planning office needing to "track purchases" - in other words moving towards the position you previously sneered at and reviled, of advocating a self regulating system of stock control. That is because in the absence of some kind of feedback mechanism (which such a system is) you have absolutely no realistic or effective way of ascertaining what the demand is for any of the hundreds of thousands of consumer and producer goods in the global economy. That means ALSO that you have absolutely no way of knowing what you have to provide in the way of buffer stocks to accomodate changes in demand since you cannot know what demand is in the first place. Your laughable suggestion of despatching questionnaires (probably each the size of a telephone booth) to 7 billion consumers across the world to solict their views on the matter, having been torn to shreds, you are not in much of a position to do otherwise than to come back with your tail between your legs and admit in a backhanded sort of way that I might have been right all along on this particular issue at least.


Neverthless in your revised perspective on so called central planning the global planning office simply becomes a colloborative advisor-cum-consultant to the local unit in making its own plans which plans then continuously work to alter the wider pattern of production in a feedback fashion. With classic society-wide planning the opposite is meant to be the case. The local unit does not make its own plans but is instructed from above and in complete detail as to what it must do at every stage. Clearly this is incompatible with the idea of a feedback mechanism - and I am at a loss to know how you cannot see this - becuase the whole point of a feedback mechanism is, as I said, to make adjustments in the light of changing circumstances. But a single society wide plan for the whole of global society - all 7 billion of us - cannot posssibly be making adjustments all the time becuase it will quite simply NEVER EVER get to be implemented. The moment the Plan had been formulated it would necessarily have to be revised becuase change happens all the time yet for the plan to be effectively implemented it has to be rigidly applied as its is - as a single vast coherently organised and structure of interconnected targets

You cannot logically be guided by information that of its very nature is changing all the time and then put in place something, purportedly based on this information that has to remain AS IT IS in order to be implemented. Thats just absurd and you contantly evade this point. Local units can quite easily and switfly change their plans and adapt to changing circumstances but a mythical global planning trying to do that for the entire world economy is a whole different ball game altogther and yet pigheadedly you refuse to see this. Try to imagine, for example, the monumental task of issuing fresh instructions or targets to hundreds of thousands of units on a daily basis when for all sorts of reasons any one of them might not be able to comply which would have knock on repercussuoins for the others. That might be due to something as trivial as not having the available workforce at that particular time or becuase the local power has shortcircuited or whatever. So what are you going to do then? Revise and redistribute the workload once again amongst hundreds of thousands of producton units? Dont be daft. Frankly your whole argument is breathtaking in its naivity and goes to show that for all your smart alec comments and pseudo intelelctualism you really havent thought this through at all



Finally. Im not convinced by your comments that the notion of a single society wide plan for the entire world has significant support even amongst those claiming to be "socialists". Frankly I wanted something more in the way of concrete evidence of contemporary organisations actually endorsing such an idea in a literal sense rather than rhetorically by paying lip service to a vague form of words that could be interpreted in several different ways. You havent supplied such evidence. and, as I said, most people when pushed, will interpret "central planning" to mean simply a "greater degree of centralisation in the planning process". indeed quite a few people on this site have argued that central planning is what goes on inside large multinational corporations today. No one I have encountered, bar you , has actually advocated in a quite literal sense complete society wide central planning in the sense you have in mind


A polycentric system of planning is fully compatible with social ownership of the means of production for reasons Ive already explained - look at the division of responsibilities along departmental lines within, say, the modern corporation whose singular ownership of the corporation's assets does not preclude polycentric planning within the corporation itself- so merely talking about "social ownership of the means of production" does not in any way denote support for what you are claiming

The Bukharin quote incidentally claims that "The basis of communist society must be the social ownership of the means of production and exchange." which appears odd to say the least since how can there be economic exchange in a society in which the means of production are held in common? Perhaps it is Bukharin you should be attacking for advocating market or quasi market mechanisms, not me

[GanzEgal]

I skip the fruitless tit-for-tat that most of this thread is filled with, and concentrate on the OP:

I feel the economic calculation problem and also lack of democracy would destroy centralized planning but I also feel decentralized planning may not be efficient; and I'm also unsure how it would be structured.

I don't think that economic calculation is a major problem, not in the modern era of Big Data and supercomputers. Neither is it necessary to ask people to fill any questionnaires. The way google does it, sufficiently detailed market information gets created in real time, by following what people do on the Internet, without asking any questions from anyone.

I believe that centralized planning is the most effective and productive way of managing national or global economy, if it is done as lightly and smoothly as possible, semi-automatically responding to public demand which is monitored in real time with google-style techniques, avoiding making unnecessarily many or heavy "decisions" (= deliberate deviations from the documented public demand) in the central planning committee.

Also, is there a difference between state capitalism and centralized planning?

Yes, all state Capitalism is centralized planning, but not all centralized planning is state capitalism.

Was the USSR under Stalin genuinely *socialist* - because the working class didn't control production; a bureaucracy did.

Very few people think that USSR under Stalin, or China under anyone, was genuinely Socialist. There never was democratic decision-making, nor any serious attempt at equal distribution of material well-being across the whole population. Communist regimes created a class society of the ruling elite and the poor working class. Socialism is supposed to be a classless society.

[robbo203]

I believe that centralized planning is the most effective and productive way of managing national or global economy, if it is done as lightly and smoothly as possible, semi-automatically responding to public demand which is monitored in real time with google-style techniques, avoiding making unnecessarily many or heavy "decisions" (= deliberate deviations from the documented public demand) in the central planning committee.

Just to be clear, though, this is NOT classic central planning in the sense of society wide planning entailing a single giant input-output matrix. It is important to understand this. You are actually talking about a self regulating system of stock control albeit with the flow of data being supposedly routed thorugh some hypothetical "centre".

I question whether in fact this can even meaningfully be characterised as "centralised planning" To me, it better it describes the architecture of what might be called a "global "distributed computer network" (see here for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing). Certainly, implicit in that model is the idea of a "client/server relationship" as per your example of Google with the later presumbaly constituting the "centre". But the crucial point is who initiates the flows of information into or retrieves and utilises the information embodied within or held by this putative "centre"?

All the centre does, it seems to me, is to enable the information to be colllected and distributed; it does not determnine how the information should be used or who should use it - though it is conceivable that a global centre or, rather, centres focussing on specific areas of expertise, (like today's UN Food and Agricultural Organisation in the area of agricultural production), might well be involved in dispensing advice and technical support to local units across the world. The contents of the millions of links listed on Google are not, after all, the creation of Google and, similarly, the millions of plans that will formulated by the production units and distribution icentres in a worldwide polycentric socialist planning system will not be drawn up by some hypothetical global planning centre - obviously

Is it, therefore, even meaningful to describe this as "centralised planning"? What is the task of the putative "centre" in this model of yours vis-a-vis the local units? If it is only to act as the collector and distributor of dispersed information using "google-style techniques" as you put it, then I would say this is not really an example of centralised planning - with the emphaiss on planning - and certainly not "society wide planning", the most extreme example of centralised planning

Very few people think that USSR under Stalin, or China under anyone, was genuinely Socialist. There never was democratic decision-making, nor any serious attempt at equal distribution of material well-being across the whole population. Communist regimes created a class society of the ruling elite and the poor working class. Socialism is supposed to be a classless society.

The fact that you acknowlege that democratic decisionmaking is fundamental to a genuine socialist economy is yet another reason for socialists to totally reject anything that smacks of society wide planning. It is quite simply logistically impossible for the global population to be meaningfully involved in the countless practical decisions that would need to be made every single minute of every single day throughout the length and breadth of a global socialist society. So by a reductio ad absurdum argument, society wide planning has to be categorically rejected


Democratic involvement in the planning process has to be meaningfully related to what is realistically possible in terms of individuals democratically participating in decision making. That means first and foremost discrete entities lilke local communities or production units. Here is where we can most effectively engage in the decisionmaking process, democratically. The higher up the scale the less effective our democratic engagement but also the more large scale and abstract will the decisions tend to be and the more do those multiple minor decisions that also crucially need to be made slip out of the frame. Point is these latter kind of decisions still need to be made somehow however much large masses of people may well be able to agree on such broad generalised mission-type statements of what needs to be done

But what about the vastly more numerous minor detailed decisions that also need to be made? Who is to make them if not the people on the ground? If it is some hypothetical global planning centre then ipso facto that rules democratic decision because there is absolutely no way the entire population of a global socialist world could meaningfuly participate in the literally millions - nay, billions - of decisions to be made at this detailed level right across the global community. By default it would have to be done a tiny elite even assuming that could get round to maaking such decisions - millions of them - which is simply not possible anyway

Ergo , society wide planning is totally incompatible with socialism and with the idea of democratic decisionmalking that lies at the very heart of socialism

[GanzEgal]

this is not really an example of centralised planning - with the emphaiss on planning - and certainly not "society wide planning", the most extreme example of centralised planning

If the grammatical meaning of words is analyzed seriously enough, it is true that statistically handling Big Data in real time, and a computer system automatically making millions of decisions based on the collected data, is perhaps not central planning, but rather a planned machine for making central decisions, based on planned rules and algorithms.

democratic decisionmaking is fundamental to a genuine socialist economy

I don't see it this way, and I doubt that majority of humans do either. What I want, and what most people probably want, is yawning through as few PowerPoint presentations and organization meetings as possible. Participating in a decision-making process is not of interest or philosophical value for me, if a machine can be built which liberates me from the duty of sitting in a conference room and hearing ten different opinions from ten different speakers, I am in for it. Just one boring meeting to agree about the rules and algorithms for the machine, and off we go.

[Lowtech]

this is very fascinating and robo is the quintessential mind on the subject, but what I tend to ponder is; do we actually need to emulate capitalist markets? because thats really what is being proposed. some sort of system that is underneath socialist; taking greed and malicious self interest out of the equation so that our technology and abundance can be utilized at its fullest potential for the equal benefit of all. yet coupled with emulating markets, supply, demand, etc. etc. it is far too complicated than it needs to be. capitalist markets have such precieved diversity of "product" actually in support of the idea of ownership. this company patents this thing, another patents a variant and so on. even though one may be superior to the other. the lessor variant is a wasteful and unecissary production. we can see it all the time in technologies. tech leans toward standards. monetization and market environments create unecissary diversity of commodities. this ripples throughout and now you have all these other areas of economy spring up to support the unecissary diversity that wouldn't have existed otherwise.

the movement of resources on large scales is so uniform there is no such thing as "demand." there is simply the reality that so many metric tonnes of water needs to go there or so much of a certain building material goes here etc. "demand" at the user level would then be satisfied by customization, real time via 3d printer like technologies.

[ckaihatsu]

Your mythical central planning office just becomes the locus for the convergence of a constant stream of ever changing data from the far flung corners world, which data it would have to somehow digest and analyse with a view to advising the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of factories and distribution points scattered across the world as to what they should be doing on a day to day basis. In which case this is no longer central planning in the classic sense of the term since the primary planning initiative would lie with the local unit with the global planning offce acting purely in an advisory or consulting capacity. It is still nevertheless be a pretty pointless way of proceeding, in my view, given the existence of a distributed computer network that allows production units/distribution centres to directly communicate with each other.

What can your global planning office offer that these production units/distribution centres cannot do themselves and in fact, for the most part, far more effectively?

This, unfortunately, Robbo, is decidedly an *anti-centralization* line -- you're saying that the bird's-eye view *cannot* help at all, and that a global generalization of productivity wouldn't be advisable.

While I don't favor any *top-down* *political* process of initiation, I see nothing wrong / inadvisable about having some kind of 'global level' of coordination, which *would* be a centralization of sorts.

Here's some quick background from Wikipedia:

Material balances are a method of economic planning where material supplies are accounted for in natural units (as opposed to using monetary accounting) and used to balance the supply of available inputs with targeted outputs. Material balancing involves taking a survey of the available inputs and raw materials in an economy and then using a balance sheet to balance the inputs with output targets specified by industry to achieve a balance between supply and demand. This balance is used to formulate a plan for resource allocation and investment in a national economy.[1]

The method of material balances is contrasted with the method of input-output planning developed by Wassily Leontief.


Role in Soviet-type planning[edit]

Further information: Soviet-type economic planning

Material balance planning was the principal tool of planning employed by Soviet-type planned economies and was Gosplan's major function in the Soviet Union. This system emerged in a haphazard manner during the collectivisation drive under Joseph Stalin's leadership. It prioritized rapid growth and industrialization over efficiency. Although material balances became an established part of Soviet planning, it never completely replaced the role of financial calculation in the economy.[2]

In the economy of the Soviet Union, Gosplan's major function was the formulation of material balances and national plans for the economy. In 1973, supplies for 70% of all industrial production representing 1,943 of the economy's most important items had their balances worked out by Gosplan.

Beginning in the early 1960s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union considered moving away from material balance planning in favor of developing an interlinked computerized system of resource allocation based on the principles of Cybernetics. This development was seen as the basis for moving toward optimal planning that could form the basis of a more highly-developed form of socialist economy based on informational decentralization and innovation. This was seen as a logical progression given that the material balances system was geared toward rapid industrialization, which the Soviet Union had already achieved in the preceding decades. But by the early 1970s the idea of transcending the status quo was abandoned by the Soviet leadership because it threatened to undermine the existing power structure, and the decentralized nature of the proposed system was seen as a threat to the authority of the party.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_balance_planning

So the historical situation at the time favored the 'rapid growth and industrialization' political-logistical ethos, over any other conceivable kind of developmental trajectory.

*These days* our incredibly more-granular / more-refined data capabilities would lend themselves to a much-quicker, possibly realtime, data cycle for any or all of the above, but what would be missing would be the overall political / socialist *ethos* of what it's all for, and where it all should be going. This would be the societal / civilizational question, which can't be substituted-for by *any* logistics, no matter how empirically responsive it may be.