"Class war" cabinets: most effective and efficient form of immediate class rule?

[Die Neue Zeit]

A poster deftly turned to present affairs in response to Eric Blanc's article on Kautsky, 1917, and Finland, so I have to continue that line of thought here.

The comrade made an eye-popping assertion: The revolutionary Marxist position on merging the legislative and executive of the sovereign polity (whether it is "the state" or otherwise) actually continues the executive prerogative advocated by Locke.

Since contemporary examples were mentioned (i.e., most bills passed in parliamentary systems are government bills), I'll pose a more strategic question: Isn't the representative "class war" cabinet the most effective and efficient form of short- and medium-term class rule, exercising rule by decree and edict?

1) A representative "class war" cabinet mimics the dynamics of a city council, only at the highest levels of the sovereign polity, by merging all legislative and executive powers of the sovereign polity.

2) It would meet in continuous session, a crucial function that historical workers' councils and assemblies didn't have for continuously holding subordinate bodies to account (what I've deemed the one saving grace of small-p parliamentarism).

3) Short- and medium-term implies a period of five years to a generation.

4) For the sake of accountability, it wouldn't form an "imperial presidency" or "kitchen cabinet" (unaccountable chanceries / executive offices / prime minister's offices that rival or compete with the official cabinet).

5) As a plus, there may be separate selection processes for individual members of a representative "class war" cabinet, whether separate elections (like in US states), random balloting, demarchic means, etc.

6) For the sake of policy-making priorities, however, it should be able to divide itself between a crucial inner cabinet and an outer cabinet.

Meanwhile, any intermediate body that forms a representative "class war" cabinet would merely combine the functions of an electoral college and a political consultative conference.

[Noa Rodman]

The secrecy of cabinet meetings is part of this system (as it is also of today's system, as Varoufakis decries). Is keeping the full minutes a secret necessary for efficient rule though? Lissagaray in his history of the Commune says that allowing public scrutiny would have avoided a lot of errors.

For the sake of accountability, it wouldn't form an "imperial presidency" or "kitchen cabinet" (unaccountable chanceries / executive offices / prime minister's offices that rival or compete with the official cabinet).

Indeed this is covered by point 2 of the Erfurt program: Election by the people of magistrates [Behörden], who are answerable and liable to them.

So no unelected "spads", private drivers, cooks or bodyguards for that matter.


On the other hand, a basic right should remain; immunity for deputies in parliament/higher soviet, since the executive committee could otherwise dispose of any opposition (also possible by manipulating the soviets).

[ckaihatsu]

These days I'm quite dubious of the continued practice of representative political representation, since the practice itself is so *bourgeois* (politically).

While this proposed 'vanguard cabinet' may be the most nimble / agile vehicle available, and thus suited for certain time-sensitive situations, the glaring overall problem with it is its substitutionism, presumably / most-likely, if its decision-making doesn't depend on the larger population of workers (and people in general, arguably).

And if its decision-making *does* depend on the larger population of workers, then we'd have to ask *what process* is used for this, to purportedly 'concentrate' mass opinions and positions into a proportional reflection of it within this 'cabinet'.

I don't think that the regular, expected 'immediate recallability' provision is enough, because many representatives could be fairly transient anyway, with many of them ready to end their political careers for a final willfulness outside of what the masses indicate on a particular policy issue -- once the deed is done any reshuffling of personnel will be after-the-fact and too late to be significant or corrective for that policy.

I would certainly fall on the side of transparency in making public the realtime deliberations and tracking of all issues at-hand, if at all possible, since any steps towards opaqueness would also be steps toward a political specialization and elitism.

I've already developed a workflow structure and process that enable full inclusiveness of participation over any issues over time, with full tracking -- perhaps any perceived necessary detours into less-than-whole 'working-groups' should first be approved on a charter basis by the whole population up-front for specifically only those circumstances that really seem to require it.

I'll note that *any* substitutionism or specialization can potentially bring internal 'existential' issues into play, such as cabinet *composition* (ongoing), the relationship between cabinet and overall population, matters of process between the two, etc. -- basically everything arising from this dichotomization and duality for the payoff of expediency.


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

ISSUER

AUTOMATIC TIMESTAMP UPON RECEIPT (YYYYMMDDHHMM)

ACTIVE DATE (YYYYMMDD)

FORMAL-ITEM REFERENCED (OR AUTOMATICALLY CREATED), IF ANY

FORMAL-ITEM NUMERICAL INCREMENT, 001-999, PER DAY, PER UNIQUE GEOGRAPHIC UNIT

GEOGRAPHIC LEVEL INTENDED-FOR ('HSH', 'ENT', 'LCL', RGN', 'CTN', 'GBL')

GEOGRAPHIC SOURCE UNIQUE NAME, ABBREVIATED

FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME_BIRTHYEAR(YY)

INDIVIDUAL'S ITEM RANKING, 0001-9999 (PER DAY)

RANK-ITEM TYPE ('INI', 'DMN', 'PRP', 'PRJ', PDR', 'FND', 'DTI', 'LLI', 'PLP', 'ORD', 'REQ', 'SLD')

TITLE-DESCRIPTION


WORK ROLE NUMBER AND TITLE

TENTATIVE OR ACTUAL HAZARD / DIFFICULTY MULTIPLIER

ESTIMATE-OF OR ACTUAL LABOR HOURS PER SCHEDULED WORK SHIFT

TOTAL LABOR CREDITS (MULTIPLIER TIMES HOURS)

ACTUAL FUNDING OF LABOR CREDITS PER WORK SHIFT (FUNDING ITEM REFERENCE REQUIRED)

SCHEDULED DISCRETE WORK SHIFT, BEGINNING DATE & TIME

SCHEDULED DISCRETE WORK SHIFT, ENDING DATE & TIME

AVAILABLE-AND-SELECTED LIBERATED LABORER IDENTIFIER


DENOMINATION

QUANTITY, PER DENOMINATION

TOTAL LABOR CREDITS PER DENOMINATION

SERIAL NUMBER RANGE, BEGINNING

SERIAL NUMBER RANGE, ENDING

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sortition and stronger executive power?



Can sortition facilitate stronger executive power? I think it can, and in a way that results in more effective implementation of left public policymaking.

The traditional Marxist literature refers to the combination of legislative and executive power as a means of facilitating worker-class rule or broader popular rule, yet has not taken into account a key development in executive power itself in the 20th century: the war cabinet.

It is this particular form of government that poses strategic questions of power, not traditional legislatures, not town hall meetings, and not strike committees. Its contemporary application is diverse, from the early and wartime Soviet governments, to the early government of the People’s Republic of China, to the first seventeen years of Cuba’s government after the Cuban Revolution, to Churchill’s wartime cabinet.

The initial approach to all this government stuff is this: redefine the relationship between (a) public policymaking, (b) legislative power, (c) governmental executive power, (d) ceremonial and other prerogative power, (e) civil administration, and (f) “legislating from the bench” (judicial review regarding constitutional law) on the basis of random sortition. Drilling down, I will focus on the combination of (b), (c), (d), and at least part of (f) in either one unified organ or parallel organs.

(For the purposes of this discussion, I’ve broken down the conventional view of “executive power” into its three functional components: (c), (d), and (e).)

Combining legislative power, governmental executive power, ceremonial and other prerogative power, and at least political oversight over “legislating from the bench” has proven time and again to be the basis of effective implementation of substantive left public policymaking. A partial combination of the first two is seen in Westminster systems, whereby most bills passed into law are government bills and not private member bills. Political oversight over “legislating from the bench” is based on the recognition that all judicial review regarding constitutional law is political and, as such, needs to be politically accountable (even to the point of “court packing” and “court sacking”).

Before moving to the proposal itself, I mentioned the possibility of parallel organs. Varied individuals have argued for the creation of a separate economic parliament for economic affairs, ranging from social reformists Sidney and Beatrice Webb to Winston Churchill himself to fascists and other corporatists in continental Europe (Hitler himself mentioned an economic parliament, but only in passing). There is separation of powers the wrong way (i.e., separating (b), (c), and (f)), and there is separation of powers the right, progressive way, like this historic advocacy. The forthcoming proposal envisions the realization of such advocacy, but in a different manner.

Making this combination statistically representative and even more democratic would require that the cabinet members themselves are appointed on the basis of random sortition. Therefore, the full proposal is as follows:

1) The cabinet, whether called a “class war cabinet” or something else, should mimic the power dynamics of a city council, only at the highest levels of the sovereign polity (whether it is “the state” or otherwise). It should combine legislative power, governmental executive power, and ceremonial and other prerogative power, and be “enabled” (a la enabling acts) to rule by decree and edict.

2) The broader system should separate the constitutional court(s) from courts of appeal, and “enable” (a la enabling acts) this cabinet to appoint and dismiss members of the former for any reason.

3) The cabinet should meet in continuous session, in order to continuously hold subordinate bodies to account.

4) The official cabinet should have no rival bodies, certainly not ones that are not politically accountable. Here, I’m referring to the problem of “imperial presidencies” and “kitchen cabinets”: unaccountable chanceries / executive offices / prime minister’s offices that compete with the official cabinet for power, prestige, patronage, etc.

5) For the sake of public policy priorities, the cabinet should be able to divide itself into a crucial inner cabinet and an outer cabinet.

6) There should be established separate popular appointment processes for individual members of the cabinet. These popular processes themselves should be random sortition or even random balloting. In today’s US political environment, governors and secretaries of state are elected separately in state elections. This specific part of the full proposal replaces those elections with random sortition or random balloting. In a unified cabinet, a finance minister would be randomly selected separately from a foreign minister.

7) The full proposal thus far has assumed one unified organ, but separation of powers the right way means parallel organs. There’s no reason why 1-6 above should apply to only one cabinet. A defense-security cabinet could exist alongside a separate economic cabinet and a separate social cabinet, mirroring the three main dimensions of political thinking (economic from right-to-left, social from top-to-bottom, and foreign along a third dimension).

8) Intermediate bodies that form the cabinet(s) above would merely combine the functions of an “electoral college” (though appointing via random balloting or random sortition) and a political consultative conference.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The secrecy of cabinet meetings is part of this system (as it is also of today's system, as Varoufakis decries). Is keeping the full minutes a secret necessary for efficient rule though? Lissagaray in his history of the Commune says that allowing public scrutiny would have avoided a lot of errors.

Could you please elaborate on the Paris Commune part? Was there insufficient public scrutiny during that time? All I do recall is that there was a big debate on whether to implement a cabinet-like Committee for Public Safety.

Contemporarily speaking, I myself have advocated for full political transparency, unless there's some external war pressure to classify relevant information (military technology, where to strike next, etc.). I have no issues with nothing-less-than-full minutes being available to the broader public.

Besides, where's the fun in keeping secret the naming and shaming of some inept public official in a cabinet meeting?

Indeed this is covered by point 2 of the Erfurt program: Election by the people of magistrates [Behörden], who are answerable and liable to them.

So no unelected "spads", private drivers, cooks or bodyguards for that matter.

For those more obviously non-political positions (except the bodyguards), they really should be filled by some form of random selection (whether filtering for qualifications or not).

On the other hand, a basic right should remain; immunity for deputies in parliament/higher soviet, since the executive committee could otherwise dispose of any opposition (also possible by manipulating the soviets).

I see no problem with retaining that basic right, comrade.

These days I'm quite dubious of the continued practice of representative political representation, since the practice itself is so *bourgeois* (politically).

I'm not sure, comrade. The bourgeois definition of "representative" is fundamentally different from what I've put forward: statistically representative.

And if its decision-making *does* depend on the larger population of workers, then we'd have to ask *what process* is used for this, to purportedly 'concentrate' mass opinions and positions into a proportional reflection of it within this 'cabinet'.

In my blog above (not the OP, but the Equality By Lot blog), I didn't mention bodies of public policymaking. The process of making the cabinet decision-making depend upon the larger population of workers must involve these bodies. The process cannot and should not leave them out.

I don't think that the regular, expected 'immediate recallability' provision is enough, because many representatives could be fairly transient anyway, with many of them ready to end their political careers for a final willfulness outside of what the masses indicate on a particular policy issue -- once the deed is done any reshuffling of personnel will be after-the-fact and too late to be significant or corrective for that policy.

That's a problem that historical models of delegation have not been able to solve, precisely because the bodies at the hypothetical top of the delegation process did not have the one saving grace of small-p parliamentarism: meeting in continuous session.

I would certainly fall on the side of transparency in making public the realtime deliberations and tracking of all issues at-hand, if at all possible, since any steps towards opaqueness would also be steps toward a political specialization and elitism.

As mentioned in my reply to comrade Noa, I totally agree.

[Noa Rodman]

On the secret sittings of the Council of the Commune:

...the precipitation and heedlessness of the revolutionary electors sent up to the Hôtel-de-Ville a majority of men, most of them devoted, but chosen without discernment, and, into the bargain, abandoned them to their own inspirations, to their whims, without any determined mandate to restrain and guide them in the struggle entered upon.

...
Only about sixty of those elected were present at the first sitting. At its opening, the Central Committee came to congratulate the Council.
...
There were already some jarring notes. The violent and the giddy-headed launched out into random motions, and wanted the Commune to declare itself omnipotent. Tirard, elected by his arrondissement, took advantage of this occasion to withdraw, stating that his mandate was purely municipal, that he could not recognize the political character of the Commune; gave in his resignation, and ironically bade farewell to the Council: ‘I leave you my sincere good wishes; may you succeed in your task,’ etc.

The insolence of this dishonest man, who for eight days had been busy in fomenting civil war and now threw up the mandate solicited in his address to the electors, evoked general indignation. He escaped scot-free because he had said at the Versailles tribune, ‘When you enter the Hôtel-de-Ville, you are not sure to return from it.’

This incident no doubt induced the Council to vote the secrecy of their sittings, their awkward pretext being that the Commune was not a parliament. This decision produced a very bad effect, violating the best traditions of the great Commune of 1792-93, as it gave the Council the appearance of a conspiracy, and it was found necessary to quash it two weeks after, when the newspapers abounded in fantastic reports, as a natural consequence of the secret sittings. But the publicity never consisted in anything but the insertion of curtailed reports in the Officiel. The Council never admitted the public, whose presence would have prevented many errors.

https://www.marxists.org/history/fra...garay/ch11.htm

Though, I don't exactly understand why that incident induced the Commune to make their sittings secret.

By the way it does point to the problem of those elected "recalling" or excusing themselves from office, which in case of sortition seems more likely.

[ckaihatsu]

These days I'm quite dubious of the continued practice of representative political representation, since the practice itself is so *bourgeois* (politically).

I'm not sure, comrade. The bourgeois definition of "representative" is fundamentally different from what I've put forward: statistically representative.

It's not even the respective *proportionality* of representation that I'm concerned about -- it's the very exercise of activating a standing 'political embodiment' (if you will) of the overall vanguardist political sentiment that I see as being potentially problematic. It really smacks of *reductionism*, which is why I term it 'conventionally-bourgeois'.

In our present day-and-age we have the technological means to enable literally *everyone's* ongoing participation in all proletarian issues in a flat, *distributed* mode of political inputs and collective decision-making -- why shouldn't one vote be applied directly to a policy issue instead of to selecting a purported 'representative' who then handles the issue / policy in a 'political middleman' kind of way -- ?

If we're to cut-out-the-middleman in *economic* matters (direct production and distribution), we should also cut-out the middleman in *political* matters so that we *avoid* any kind of standing bodies / institutions if at all possible -- their very existence puts them on the slippery-slope towards specialization, co-optation, obscurantism, elitism, and power.


---

And if its decision-making *does* depend on the larger population of workers, then we'd have to ask *what process* is used for this, to purportedly 'concentrate' mass opinions and positions into a proportional reflection of it within this 'cabinet'.

In my blog above (not the OP, but the Equality By Lot blog), I didn't mention bodies of public policymaking. The process of making the cabinet decision-making depend upon the larger population of workers must involve these bodies. The process cannot and should not leave them out.

But *any* 'body' / 'institution' approach to public policymaking inherently includes the potential for the institution to 'stand alone' and exist *without* being dependent / accountable to the larger population of workers -- that's why it's set-up in the first place, as an 'emergency'-type body that can function more nimbly than the entire population, for better real-world maneuverability in such situations that may objectively call for that kind of maneuverability.

While I appreciate the 'continuous session' aspect / feature, the body as a whole is still an *institution* of its own right, and would immediately have a somewhat-separate social interest of its own for existence and policy determination that may or may not be congruent with the larger worker population as a whole, depending on actual circumstances.


---

I don't think that the regular, expected 'immediate recallability' provision is enough, because many representatives could be fairly transient anyway, with many of them ready to end their political careers for a final willfulness outside of what the masses indicate on a particular policy issue -- once the deed is done any reshuffling of personnel will be after-the-fact and too late to be significant or corrective for that policy.

That's a problem that historical models of delegation have not been able to solve, precisely because the bodies at the hypothetical top of the delegation process did not have the one saving grace of small-p parliamentarism: meeting in continuous session.

Okay. (So the 'cabinet' would function smoothly as a collective *institution*, the composition of which could certainly be *worse*.)


---

I would certainly fall on the side of transparency in making public the realtime deliberations and tracking of all issues at-hand, if at all possible, since any steps towards opaqueness would also be steps toward a political specialization and elitism.

As mentioned in my reply to comrade Noa, I totally agree.

---


I'll elaborate on the relevance of my framework (graphic) at post #3, to highlight its uniqueness in *approach* -- consider that for any given day, for any given person (all of us), a certain organic *prioritization* of tasks is objectively required: Does one stay in bed a little longer, or right away prepare for the commute to work, or go online to RevLeft, or to other websites -- etc.

In the context of the 'class war cabinet', which issues exactly would one direct themselves to, for the window of time that one has reserved (probably in advance on 'calendar time') for 'political activities' for the day -- ? This empirical necessity of 'personal decision-making' over one's daily time and efforts could be termed a process of 'prioritization' as well.

Why, then, shouldn't this organic and empirical routine of prioritization just simply be extended outward into the common political realm -- ?

Instead of handing-matters-off to a 'class war cabinet' (which would be *demonstrable substitutionism*), one should start with a personal prioritization of which active and/or inactive political issues should be *ranked higher* than all others, for an *emergent* overall picture of issue-prioritizations-in-common, over a particular geographic area or areas, or greater.

Besides one's name, location, and current date and time, the most-critical aspects / variables of any discrete 'quantum' of participation would be 'formal policy item addressed', the geographical scale covered by that issue, and 'degree of advancement' / 'maturity' of this particular input of participation -- below the graphic at post #3 I've included the column headers of the spreadsheet database that are superimposed over the graphic itself, with 'rank item type' covering the progressions / types of 'initiative', 'demand', 'proposal', 'project', 'production run', 'funding [of labor-hour credits (non-currency)]', 'debt issuance [of the same]', 'liberated labor internal [locally, on-the-ground]', 'policy package [almost-finalized, or finalized]', 'orders [of existing or anticipated nominally surplus production]', 'requests [for the same]', and 'slot donations [concerning unavoidably scarce materials, like a particular location for one's home]'.

So this approach avoids the majority-minorities schism whenever and wherever possible, because this conventional 'either-or' dichotomy is inherently 'structured-out' due to the alternative elemental focus on a-daily-gradient-of-personal-rankings-over-an-unbounded-number-of-policy-items, rather than one-discrete-vote-for-one-substitutionist-political-representative. (The elected representatives themselves would then fall into the problematic of the conventional majoritarian-minoritarian schisms of regular practice over issues.)

In the case that there *was* unavoidable 'competition' or mutual-exclusion over two or more different proposals on a given issue -- such as where to locate a particularly-needed factory -- the competing proposals would just be normally ranked by everyone geographically relevant (locally), normally iterated over successive days, for a clear emergent picture as to which one was more-favored over the others.


---

Sortition and stronger executive power?


Can sortition facilitate stronger executive power? I think it can, and in a way that results in more effective implementation of left public policymaking.

The traditional Marxist literature refers to the combination of legislative and executive power as a means of facilitating worker-class rule or broader popular rule, yet has not taken into account a key development in executive power itself in the 20th century: the war cabinet.

The 'war cabinet' should just be one topic of political interest among all others, at all geographic scales -- if a particular situation *requires* physical embodiment(s), for whatever reason, then that could be an ongoing sub-issue for the selection of personages on a *policy-constrained basis* (or 'charter', for lack of a better word).

5) For the sake of public policy priorities, the cabinet should be able to divide itself into a crucial inner cabinet and an outer cabinet.

This aspect is unclear -- you may want to elaborate. It looks to promote a specialization-within-specialization.

6) [...] In a unified cabinet, a finance minister would be randomly selected separately from a foreign minister.

7) The full proposal thus far has assumed one unified organ, but separation of powers the right way means parallel organs. There’s no reason why 1-6 above should apply to only one cabinet. A defense-security cabinet could exist alongside a separate economic cabinet and a separate social cabinet, mirroring the three main dimensions of political thinking (economic from right-to-left, social from top-to-bottom, and foreign along a third dimension).

This bourgeois-type approach to representation inherently illustrates and invites the emergent dynamic of balkanization and 'turf' over the terrain of all policy issues.

You've mentioned the role of a 'finance minister', which implies an economy of conventional finance, necessarily rooted in commodity production and exchange-values.

[Die Neue Zeit]

By the way it does point to the problem of those elected "recalling" or excusing themselves from office, which in case of sortition seems more likely.

More knowledgeable advocates have suggested adopting more principles of jury duty to make this work.

This aspect is unclear -- you may want to elaborate. It looks to promote a specialization-within-specialization.

The inner cabinet is basically the political leadership of the broader "class war" cabinet. This would include the vice-chairs / deputy prime ministers / deputy premiers.

This bourgeois-type approach to representation inherently illustrates and invites the emergent dynamic of balkanization and 'turf' over the terrain of all policy issues.

The parallelism I put forward (defense-security cabinet, economic cabinet, social cabinet) isn't the bourgeois approach at all. The bourgeois approach is historically tied to the hip with provincialism / regionalism (i.e., political government based on provinces / regions). This is natural, as it is a perfect counter to larger, societal decision-making.

Even ministerial turf wars at the societal level tend to be a lesser evil compared to provincialism / regionalism.

You've mentioned the role of a 'finance minister', which implies an economy of conventional finance, necessarily rooted in commodity production and exchange-values.

I'm quite aware of that, comrade, which is why I referred to immediate class rule with regards to this proposed body.

[ckaihatsu]

More knowledgeable advocates have suggested adopting more principles of jury duty to make this work.

The inner cabinet is basically the political leadership of the broader "class war" cabinet. This would include the vice-chairs / deputy prime ministers / deputy premiers.

Can you speak at all to the question of *composition* -- ? My concern is socio-political specialization, in which -- depending on prevailing conditions -- careerist terms of stay could become desired since such service would presumably displace regular work roles.

The parallelism I put forward (defense-security cabinet, economic cabinet, social cabinet) isn't the bourgeois approach at all. The bourgeois approach is historically tied to the hip with provincialism / regionalism (i.e., political government based on provinces / regions). This is natural, as it is a perfect counter to larger, societal decision-making.

Even ministerial turf wars at the societal level tend to be a lesser evil compared to provincialism / regionalism.

Okay, got it -- so this cabinet would be only *global*, then -- ?

I'm quite aware of that, comrade, which is why I referred to immediate class rule with regards to this proposed body.

Forgive me if we've covered this terrain before, but what kind of a post-capitalist economics do you advocate -- ? (I have a thorough line on the shortcomings of orthodox 'labor vouchers'.) (Not all work roles can or should be considered equivalent in effort.)

[Die Neue Zeit]

On the last question, I do support non-circulable labour credits. However, that is the lower phase of the communist mode of production, waaaay beyond "state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people."

[ckaihatsu]

On the last question, I do support non-circulable labour credits. However, that is the lower phase of the communist mode of production, waaaay beyond "state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people."

'Non-circulable labor credits' are Marx's 'labor vouchers'.

I have a standing critique of such here:


Pies Must Line Up

---


The unique 'labor credits' approach / model that I developed has a type of labor credits that *do* circulate, but they're *non-monetary*, so there's no commodity production.


A post-capitalist political economy using labor credits

To clarify and simplify, the labor credits system is like a cash-only economy that only works for *services* (labor), while the world of material implements, resources, and products is open-access and non-abstractable. (No financial valuations.) Given the world's current capacity for an abundance of productivity for the most essential items, there should be no doubt about producing a ready surplus of anything that's important, to satisfy every single person's basic humane needs.

[I]t would only be fair that those who put in the actual (liberated) labor to produce anything should also be able to get 'first dibs' of anything they produce.

In practice [...] everything would be pre-planned, so the workers would just factor in their own personal requirements as part of the project or production run. (Nothing would be done on a speculative or open-ended basis, the way it's done now, so all recipients and orders would be pre-determined -- it would make for minimal waste.)

We can do better than the market system, obviously, since it is zombie-like and continuously, automatically, calls for endless profit-making -- even past the point of primitive accumulation, through to overproduction and world wars, not to mention its intrinsic exploitation and oppression.

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

What's called-for is a system that can match liberated-labor organizing ability, over mass-collectivized assets and resources, to the mass demand from below for collective production. If *liberated-labor* is too empowered it would probably lead to materialistic factionalism -- like a bad syndicalism -- and back into separatist claims of private property.

If *mass demand* is too empowered it would probably lead back to a clever system of exploitation, wherein labor would cease to retain control over the implements of mass production.

And, if the *administration* of it all is too specialized and detached we would have the phenomenon of Stalinism, or bureaucratic elitism and party favoritism.

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

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

This method would both *empower* and *limit* the position of liberated labor since a snapshot of labor performed -- more-or-less the same quantity of labor-power available continuously, going forward -- would be certain, known, and *finite*, and not subject to any kinds of abstraction- (financial-) based extrapolations or stretching. Since all resources would be in the public domain no one would be at a loss for the basics of life, or at least for free access to providing for the basics of life for themselves. And, no political power or status, other than that represented by possession of actual labor credits, could be enjoyed by liberated labor. It would be free to represent itself on an individual basis or could associate and organize on its own political terms, within the confines of its empowerment by the sum of pooled labor credits in possession.

Mass demand, then as now, would be a matter of public discourse, but in a societal context of open access to all means of mass communication for all, with collectivized implements of mass production at its disposal. It would have no special claim over any liberated labor and would have no means by which to coerce it.

The administration of all of this would be dependent on the conscious political mass struggle, on a continuous, ongoing basis, to keep it running smoothly and accountably.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673

labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

[Sectarian]

But will a "class war cabinet" grant all amphibians a small trumpet?

[Wessex Way Monster]

This subject only matters if you see yourself participating in position of the "revolutionary government", imagining yourself holding clipboards and crying out decrees straight from the Communist High Council of Labour and Proletarian Distribution. Anyone else isn't going to fight a long and bloody conflict where friends and family and loved ones in general have been killed and mangled irreparably just to have your magic LARP club tell them they have to go to work. Worrying about how to administer governance in the "post revolutionary society" is symptomatic of being intwined with capital. No matter how much you say "it will be a government where everyone can participate" or whatever other horseshit you spew to run away from criticism, everyone knows that it is going to be used to control labour and human bodies. If you wanna break with capital don't participate in mass anxiety regarding how to arrange our post capital government.

[(A)]

This subject only matters if you see yourself participating in position of the "revolutionary government", imagining yourself holding clipboards and crying out decrees straight from the Communist High Council of Labour and Proletarian Distribution. Anyone else isn't going to fight a long and bloody conflict where friends and family and loved ones in general have been killed and mangled irreparably just to have your magic LARP club tell them they have to go to work. Worrying about how to administer governance in the "post revolutionary society" is symptomatic of being intwined with capital. No matter how much you say "it will be a government where everyone can participate" or whatever other horseshit you spew to run away from criticism, everyone knows that it is going to be used to control labour and human bodies. If you wanna break with capital don't participate in mass anxiety regarding how to arrange our post capital government.

While I agree with this in principle we know that certain places do try to create a more socialist / libertarian form of democracy. Essentially what is happening in to the Kurds is that to gain power separate from the state they are creating a duel power libertarian democracy outside of the current hierarchical totalitarian states they are ruled by. It is to early to say if these libertarian movements will remain libertarian or if the system will simply become a new form of class rule.

I think that the most efficient form of immediate class rule would be Militant Unionism. I would postulate that the revolution is going to entitle a certain amount of hostility between different groups (if this is not the understatement of 2016...). In order to have a large scale revolution you require mass action which means each group will either be subservient to a political party which I think is becoming less and less likely; or it will follow a libertarian model where the driving force behind the revolution is not a single party vs another but Unions of the oppressed masses rising up in a federation of unions.

This would mean the new "politics" would be the interaction between unions and other groups and movements against the capitalist class and the nation state.

[ckaihatsu]

This subject only matters if you see yourself participating in position of the "revolutionary government", imagining yourself holding clipboards and crying out decrees straight from the Communist High Council of Labour and Proletarian Distribution. Anyone else isn't going to fight a long and bloody conflict where friends and family and loved ones in general have been killed and mangled irreparably just to have your magic LARP club tell them they have to go to work. Worrying about how to administer governance in the "post revolutionary society" is symptomatic of being intwined with capital. No matter how much you say "it will be a government where everyone can participate" or whatever other horseshit you spew to run away from criticism, everyone knows that it is going to be used to control labour and human bodies. If you wanna break with capital don't participate in mass anxiety regarding how to arrange our post capital government.

This is a ridiculously presumptuous statement -- you're dismissing all revolutionaries, like myself, who would want to at least get a general sense of what the 'long and bloody conflict' is actually *aiming for*.

It's never too early to see if everyone is on the same page -- that's what political discussion is good for, to begin with, as here at RevLeft.

[(A)]

You know what your aiming for. You are attempting to create your utopian vision of society and total control over labor by claiming that your system has a legitimate authority over the means of production.
Any form of authority over the means of production is a fallacy and a complete recreation of capitalistic extortion.

"The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or *control of the *capital that he must use to live."

[ckaihatsu]

You know what your aiming for. You are attempting to create your utopian vision of society and total control over labor by claiming that your system has a legitimate authority over the means of production.
Any form of authority over the means of production is a fallacy and a complete recreation of capitalistic extortion.

"The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or *control of the *capital that he must use to live."

Bullshit. You keep making baseless allegations.

Here's the entire text of my model -- pick out whatever aspect of it you (falsely) deem to be 'utopian', 'hierarchical', 'authoritarian', or whatever.


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

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

[Die Neue Zeit]

No matter how much you say "it will be a government where everyone can participate" or whatever other horseshit you spew to run away from criticism, everyone knows that it is going to be used to control labour and human bodies. If you wanna break with capital don't participate in mass anxiety regarding how to arrange our post capital government.

Practically speaking, there is mass social movement on one side, and only one public policy-implementing body on the other. It takes two to tango.

However, only two components do the tango. Why didn't the usual workers councils implement an eight-hour working day, establish the Red Army, nationalize a number of areas (foreign trade, sugar industry, large-scale industry, railway transportation), or implement social security?

Closer to the West, why didn't the US Congress establish the National Labor Relations Board, kickstart the process to implement Social Security, or establish the Works Progress Administration??