[AFAIK]

What is the distinction between personal and private property when deflation and rising incomes is taken into account?
If someone owns a laptop is that personal property whereas someone accessing an internet cafe is using private property?
What about different modes of transportation.

Do socialist societies always have a state or can they be anarchic?

How do workers relate to industries that are fully automated?
Some farms and factories can now be monitored and managed remotely via the internet.

How are consumers represented within socialism?

What are your thoughts regarding technocratic socialism?

[Julian]

Socialism in the 20th century was largely been about public ownership of property but that was not so clearly the case in the century before Marx and I think that in the 21st century socialists have become less fixated on issues of ownership.

I am more concerned for instance that the public is able to decide outcomes in terms of equality and environmental impacts than who owns the property. However I still consider myself a socialist because I don't think that how property is used should be purely an issue for those individuals who formally own it. Robust regulation, progressive tax and workers rights are all important whoever owns Capital.

Generally most socialists have distinguished between private possessions and Capital. Capital is property which can be used along with labour to produce goods and services which have a value.

In the case of a laptop. Some laptops are personal possessions, some laptops are capital and some laptops are capital stock which are rented to people and which are owned by a business provider such as an internet café.

For me these divisions, are rather academic but for many socialists they are important economically

))))))

Some anarchists consider themselves socialist and some do not. The socialist anarchists sometimes refer to themselves as collectivists. Collectivist anarchists tend to think that capital goods should be held by a collective and made available to members of the collective for free in exchange for a promise to work for the good of the collective.

Personally I think that there is no obvious benefits to a socialist society in having decentralised work units. I would prefer to see state run collectives providing opportunities for individuals. The important thing to me is that individuals are respected and autonomy is encouraged. I think that State run organisations are often better employers than co-operatives.

)))))

I don't know of many industries that are entirely automated. In general, socialists are not opposed to automation provided that it does not lead to the impoverishment of working people. People should be offered retraining and new opportunities.

Technicians are clearly important to a socialist economy because there are big gains for all where greater productivity can be achieved. We just need to make sure that those gains are fairly distributed

Some socialists are less keen than I am on new technology but there are sceptics in relation to technology amongst conservatives and liberals as well.

))))

In my view consumers are important in a socialist economy

That's been, from time to time, a rather unfashionable view in intellectual socialist circles because attention has focused on labour and capital.

My own view is that we should move away from the market in the long run towards more public provision of goods and services. Free Health, education, housing and transport. However I accept that for the foreseeable future there is a need for wages and prices to constrain demand and to help decide who gets what.

However as on other issues there are very many different views on the issue amongst socialists.

)))))

Socialism needs technically skilled people to operate production and to advise the public of the impact of different decisions.

I am very clear in my own mind however that the only fair way of deciding policy is equal votes for all.

A world run by technocrats is a dictatorship. It may have its attractions but a dictatorship is a dictatorship.

[AFAIK]

Thanks for the reply Julian. I was waiting for other responses, hence the delay.

Generally most socialists have distinguished between private possessions and Capital. Capital is property which can be used along with labour to produce goods and services which have a value.

Can you expand on that as I see a significant amount of overlap.

What do socialists think of the potential for 3D printers to democratise production?

[Julian]

thank AFAIK.

[Julian]

there may be overlap between possessions and small scale capital. I'm not sure why the distinction is quite so important to socialists. it is of course true that some socialists are 'underconsumptionists'. for them if capital is employed with labour to produce goods that creates potential economic instability as the workers are not paid enough to buy their own product and capital investment is subject to periodic crisis. on this basis possessions and small scale capital have different economic roles

however I'm unclear whether even the more sophisticated economic arguments which identify crisis are particularly relevant. I am more interested in arguments for socialism that emphasise the need for democratic control of production for reasons of equality, justice and personal liberty. It may be possible to extend democratic control over the economy without strict laws on ownership.

in terms of 3d printing - people could use 3D printers to produce consumer goods cheaply. if they were producing for their own use then arguably they are not involved in Capitalist production. although there may still be an argument for some regulation of some production. as we have seen when someone uploaded instruction for producing guns.

I'm a technological optimist but I'm not naïve about the benefits of 3D printing. the reality is that goods will still be produced by Corporations and 3D printing will largely be used by corporations to co-ordinate the production of parts across different sites. it may be that more workers become independent suppliers for Corporations with the big assembly lines and marketing skills but this is unlikely to be a equal relationship.

[Vera Politica]

What is the distinction between personal and private property

Private property refers to means of production of various sorts and consists not only in what the object actually is, but also in certain relationships it is involved in. For example, a home is personal property until it is rented out to others or is used as office space for a home business, etc. So private property is a complex bundle of characteristics comprising not only what the object is but also the legal, social and productive relations in which it is fixed.

[Eran]

Every economic enterprise uses resources (some of which have alternative potential uses) to create some products. Clearly, it would be wasteful to use resources which are more valuable than the end-product.

Without retrospective measurement of profit, how can decision-makers in a socialist society know whether a particular enterprise is creating or destroying value?

[Julian]

How do enterprises demonstrate value is being added ?

There are various ways. Education and health are both
provided free of charge at the point of delivery.

Some products are effectively bought by the state and sold on at regulated prices.

Some products might be allocated using prices as a guide.

[Eran]

Private enterprises demonstrate that value is being created by being profitable. A profit indicates that the total value being consumed (cost of production) is lower than the value being produced (the subject value assigned to the products by consumers paying with their own money).

Government, on the other hand, has no tools, even if we assume that it has the incentives, to know whether value has been created. It necessarily operates in the dark.

You can deliver education free at the point of delivery. But then how do you know whether the value of the education is greater than or lower than the cost to society to deliver it?

[Vera Politica]

Every economic enterprise uses resources (some of which have alternative potential uses) to create some products. Clearly, it would be wasteful to use resources which are more valuable than the end-product.

Without retrospective measurement of profit, how can decision-makers in a socialist society know whether a particular enterprise is creating or destroying value?

To the first point: yes, of course. Marxists simply think that productive resources need not be organized into private property and, in fact, should be organized differently.

As to two: with a retrospective measurement of need-satisfaction, in so far as the economic arrangement of society is organized in order to be sensitive to need rather than to profit and, so, a different metric altogether will signal both production and distribution. The crux of the issue, though, is that while production has been socialized and internationalized, distribution remains privatized and what gets produced is determined by profit, not by human needs. This is why the human species can have a significantly high level of productive output, but still not be able to feed and clothe 1 billion of its own people nor offer basic services to more than half of its global population. This is also true of the demographics of single capitalist nations: there could be, for example, thousands of vacant homes and yet thousands homeless. Marxists take issue with the essential irrationality of capitalist, private property all the while noting that capitalism has, in its history, rapidly socialized and industrialized production to a point where human beings can satisfy every and all human needs, yet the productive relations still present barriers to executing this task.

You can deliver education free at the point of delivery. But then how do you know whether the value of the education is greater than or lower than the cost to society to deliver it?

Education is the typical case where market signals get this wrong. In any case, this is another issue altogether with its own complexities.

[Eran]

with a retrospective measurement of need-satisfaction, in so far as the economic arrangement of society is organized in order to be sensitive to need rather than to profit

How do you propose to quantify, along a common denominator, different forms of need-satisfaction?

How do you compare education, health, food, luxury, safety, etc.?



This, however, isn't the main issue. Some socialists accept personal property and thus a market in consumer goods. No socialist, however, accepts a market in producers goods. Without such market, how can you value (quantify along a common denominator) producer goods (raw materials, labour and capital equipment)?

How can you tell how much a machine is worth, if there is no price for it discovered through competitive market transactions?

This is why the human species can have a significantly high level of productive output, but still not be able to feed and clothe 1 billion of its own people nor offer basic services to more than half of its global population.

First, this is very much a "glass half empty" perspective. Under capitalism, unprecedented billions are now fed and clothed at levels undreamed of by past generations.

The minority who aren't properly fed and clothed are all, with very few exceptions, residents of countries with particularly terrible governments, or the ongoing legacy of such governments. To blame free markets for poverty in sub-Saharan Africa makes no sense at all.

This is also true of the demographics of single capitalist nations: there could be, for example, thousands of vacant homes and yet thousands homeless.

There is nothing illogical about that. Homes tend to be vacant on a temporary basis. Allowing homeless people to live in vacant homes would immediately both drastically expand the list of the homeless, and depress the housing market.

Housing shortages, btw, are largely accounted-for by various regulations of the land-use and housing markets, from zoning, green-belt and other construction-restrictions to regulations that unnecessarily make housing too expensive, to rent control which depresses the incentives to build new housing.

Marxists take issue with the essential irrationality of capitalist, private property all the while noting that capitalism has, in its history, rapidly socialized and industrialized production to a point where human beings can satisfy every and all human needs, yet the productive relations still present barriers to executing this task.

There is one point on which I can agree (!). Essential to the capitalist (read: free market) process is that goods produced are scarce in the technical sense of having more demand than supply at zero cost. In other words, not everybody can have everything. This, contrary to the illusion of various post-scarcity-believers, is an essential consequence of human nature and the physical world.

In (moderately) free countries, even the poorest people enjoy standard of living that would have been envied by the middle-classes of pre-capitalist (or early-capitalist) past.

Products under capitalism go through a process of being first only affordable by the wealthy, then by the middle classes, then by virtually everybody. Think cars, refrigerators, TVs, air conditioning, computers and cellular phones, all today affordable by most poor Americans.

Today's luxuries become tomorrow's necessities and the following day's background possessions.

Poor people under capitalism are only relatively poor. In other words, they only appear poor because others are so rich.

Education is the typical case where market signals get this wrong.

What "market signals", with governments dominating all phases of the education market? But pick any public service of your choice.