[anticlimacus]

Before giving my opinion on this arrangement, I need a reality check. Is the description above accurate?

People don't work for free. They work because they are invested in their own communities and their own personal lives and the welfare of both. They work to sustain themselves and their communities, and also because they perhaps enjoy their work. But their work is not necessarily solely about themselves and their own personal grandeur. It is a social product, socially sustained. So yes, we are talking about an economy where a "money nexus" is not what binds us. Technology and production are put to the use of human needs as opposed to human labor being in service with technology, as cogs in machines, for the production of profit, and profit of a few.

Do you see exceptions (e.g. in trade with foreign countries)? Or do you anticipate that the entire inter-connect global economy will operate on such mutual gift basis?

Of course the aim of libertarian socialism is to be global, however I don't think this means that before one society reaches that point that they cease to interact with other societies.

[Eran]

Is there money in your society?

Do individuals have the freedom to choose what they want to consume?

Here are the possible answers:

1. Individuals are given money (or transferable coupons) with which to purchase goods and services from any willing provider
2. Individuals are given non-transferable vouchers with which to acquire specific goods and services (like food stamps)
3. Individuals are free to pick any goods or services they wish, but what is picked is monitored, and the community addresses cases of excess consumption
4. Individuals are free to pick any goods or services they wish

There could, of course, be a mix of the above. In the UK, most purchases are handled under #1, housing and other subsidies look like #2, and medical care consumption under the NHS looks like #4.

How do you see this question answered in your society?

[anticlimacus]

Is there money in your society?

Do individuals have the freedom to choose what they want to consume?

No there is no money. Individuals are free to choose what they want to consume, within limits. There is a check on over consumption in order that we ensure a fair distribution for all. This would need to be quit sophisticated, but I don't think impossible. Again, as I mentioned before, the point is to allow for both an equality of basic goods, while also allowing for individual taste.

[SolarCross]

No there is no money. Individuals are free to choose what they want to consume, within limits. There is a check on over consumption in order that we ensure a fair distribution for all. This would need to be quit sophisticated, but I don't think impossible. Again, as I mentioned before, the point is to allow for both an equality of basic goods, while also allowing for individual taste.

I don't see this as practical at all. Yes internally to a group you can avoid using monetary transactions but when the group wants to trade with those outside the group they will need to use a mutually acceptable value measure (money). Any group that completely avoids using money even for external trade will effectively be putting itself into a state of economic isolation that will tend to make the group poorer and poorer.

[Eran]

Individuals are free to choose what they want to consume, within limits.

Thanks. That sounds like option #3 of the ones I proposed above.

With that in mind, your moral position makes much more sense.

At the same time, it seems even less likely to be realizable given what we know about human nature.

As I explained in detail in a previous post, even when people recognise the value of interacting with others, they are still biased in favour of themselves over their neighbours and their neighbours over strangers.

Social norms can effectively mitigate the former bias in the context of a small group. This is what we observe in many primitive societies in which trading is not a major component of in-group cooperation.

In the context of modern societies, however, two issues have to be taken into account.

First, people interact in complex ways as parties to many different groups. In a small tribe, people might allow a highly-successful hunter to enjoy a larger share of the meat captured by the tribe. But that is because production (hunting) and consumption (communal eating) are done in the context of the same group. In the modern world, we often produce in the context of one group (our company or syndicate) and consume in the context of an entirely different group, and, more and more, in small family (or household) units.

Second, mitigation of selfishness through social norms has never applied outside small groups. Those very same hunter-gatherer groups which shared equitably within the tribe have bartered on a comparable-value basis with other groups.

In the modern world, coordinating transfers of items of value between thousands if not millions of separate groups couldn't possibly be monitored without precise valuation and centralised accounting.

And then there is the Socialist Calculation Problem. Even if all members of society are the selfless people we hope them to be, even, in other words, if the incentive problem is resolved through either education and social norms or through sophisticated monitoring tools, a sophisticated industrial economy cannot function without markets.

The problem is already impossible when markets for means of production are lacking. It is that much greater when markets for consumer goods are also eliminated.

I don't see this as practical at all. Yes internally to a group you can avoid using monetary transactions but when the group wants to trade with those outside the group they will need to use a mutually acceptable value measure (money).

If I understand anticlimacus correctly, he sees the model of sharing within a small group as perfectly scalable, ultimately to the global level, through a hierarchy of progressively larger groups.

As I explained above, I agree with you that such system is hopelessly impractical.

[Rothbardian]

I don't see this as practical at all. Yes internally to a group you can avoid using monetary transactions but when the group wants to trade with those outside the group they will need to use a mutually acceptable value measure (money). Any group that completely avoids using money even for external trade will effectively be putting itself into a state of economic isolation that will tend to make the group poorer and poorer.

That doesn't mean isolationism. People from the outside may still be willing to trade. As long as a mutually beneficial arrangement can be made, it will happen. And if not, then it shouldn't happen anyway.

[anticlimacus]

At the same time, it seems even less likely to be realizable given what we know about human nature.

As I explained in detail in a previous post, even when people recognise the value of interacting with others, they are still biased in favour of themselves over their neighbours and their neighbours over strangers.

Yes, but, as I have already stated, your argument doesn't seem at all accurate or even applicable. Nobody suggests that we don't operate in relation to our interests. But that doesn't mean that our own interests are at odds with those of others. You seem to be posing a false dichotomy between being either selfish or altruistic, and I had already argued that these are entirely social constructs. What we know about human nature is that people are perfectly capable of interacting on a voluntary basis and seeing their own interests vested in the well-being of the group. And neither does this mean that we are forced to sacrifice our most intimate relations or interests for the sake of the group. This is just fabrication.

As I explained in detail in a previous post, even when people recognise the value of interacting with others, they are still biased in favour of themselves over their neighbours and their neighbours over strangers.

Again I don't see how this makes any difference. There does not appear to be any problem with hoping for the well-being and focusing on the well-being of that with which you have the most power to control. But that doesn't make one anti-communal or selfish. Neither is it the case that helping to make sure the basic needs of others are met in a reasonable way makes one altruistic, particularly, as I have mentioned, if it is understood that it is in your own interest that others do not go, say, starving.

In the modern world, coordinating transfers of items of value between thousands if not millions of separate groups couldn't possibly be monitored without precise valuation and centralised accounting.

I don't think there is any need of centralization in the sense of a state at all. Does there need to be a sophistication of organization? Certainly, but centralization of decision making? I don't see that to be the case. The monitoring rather occurs at several different levels, from communal boards to labor cartels federal allied and that spreading internationally. There does not need to be any centralized hub of it all.

Even if all members of society are the selfless people we hope them to be, even, in other words, if the incentive problem is resolved through either education and social norms or through sophisticated monitoring tools, a sophisticated industrial economy cannot function without markets.

Again, "selfless" is your description, not mine. I see no reason why people must be selfless in order for this to happen. This false dichotomy between selflessness and selfishness is nothing but a social construction. If agents are encouraged to be "selfless", say in giving, it is because they see at as part of their own interests, say as "giving beings", to act as such. If individuals are encouraged to seek their own benefit irrespective of others, such as in capitalist economies, that is, once again, because they are socially structured to behave as such. Thus we are always looking at the institutional structure--interests and how they are shaped depend on social structure.

As far as incentives go, there is no difference except that one's own well being is seen to be tied to the well being of others. This does not make one "selfless" in any meaning of the term. Part of the thesis is that we all want a society in which we are free to actualize ourselves and our potential. So long as we provide the suitable socio-economic foundation, we work because we enjoy a particular kind of work and we want to offer it. There's no reason to assume that doing something solely for economic profit is the only incentive there needs to be--that just betrays a fundamental inability to see beyond the capitalist market economy.

that such system is hopelessly impractical.

The current system is one that strikes me as hopelessly impractical. In fact, it is one that really only practically works for a small group of increasingly powerful economic and political players--but even for them it seems hopeless impractical and will most likely lead to their own destruction.

This is the irony of capitalist production: it claims to be based on freedom, but at the same time capitalists and their apologists do not at all trust the ability for people to make free democratic decisions both in relation to political life and economic life. Instead, it is seen as "irrational" or "hopelessly impractical". Instead, it makes more sense for "markets" to make decisions for us, markets within which economic forces are always increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few and even structured by those major economic players.

[Phred]

At the same time, it seems even less likely to be realizable given what we know about human nature.

As I explained in detail in a previous post, even when people recognise the value of interacting with others, they are still biased in favour of themselves over their neighbours and their neighbours over strangers.

anticlimacus replies: Yes, but, as I have already stated, your argument doesn't seem at all accurate or even applicable.

And this is why you are a Left-Anarchist: you know almost nothing about how actual humans actually behave. Eran's "argument" isn't an argument at all: it's an observation of how humans have acted since the dawn of recorded history and certainly long before then. He's not trying to convince anyone through reasoned discourse that humans value their own interests over those of others, since no one possessed of a pair of eyeballs who lives on planet earth needs convincing of that - it is self-evident.

Nobody suggests that we don't operate in relation to our interests. But that doesn't mean that our own interests are at odds with those of others.

Sometimes it does.

You seem to be posing a false dichotomy between being either selfish or altruistic, and I had already argued that these are entirely social constructs.

That is gibberish. More Left-Anarchist buzzwords - "social construct". They aren't "social constructs", they are facts of life. Some people are less altruistic than others. You are right that there is an infinite gradation between totally selfish and totally selfless, but Eran's point is that these conflicts will arise without it being a strict binary situation of greedhead vs hippy.

What we know about human nature is that people are perfectly capable of interacting on a voluntary basis and seeing their own interests vested in the well-being of the group.

Humans are capable of all kinds of bizarre and atypical behavior. No one is denying that. What counts here is the probability that nearly everyone will act altruistically nearly all the time. The probability of that happening is next to zero.

As I explained in detail in a previous post, even when people recognise the value of interacting with others, they are still biased in favour of themselves over their neighbours and their neighbours over strangers.

anticlimacus replies: Again I don't see how this makes any difference.

Which is why you are a Left-Anarchist. As Eran has patiently and thoroughly explained, it makes all the difference in the world.

In the modern world, coordinating transfers of items of value between thousands if not millions of separate groups couldn't possibly be monitored without precise valuation and centralised accounting.

anticlimacus replies: I don't think there is any need of centralization in the sense of a state at all.

I don't believe Eran is referring to a state, rather to the fact (and yes, it is a fact) that gift economies fail nearly instantly due to lack of necessary economic information - prices.

Even if all members of society are the selfless people we hope them to be, even, in other words, if the incentive problem is resolved through either education and social norms or through sophisticated monitoring tools, a sophisticated industrial economy cannot function without markets.

anticlimacus replies:Again, "selfless" is your description, not mine. I see no reason why people must be selfless in order for this to happen.

They don't need to be selfless in a capitalist society. They do, however, in a gift economy. That's the point you aren't grasping.

This false dichotomy between selflessness and selfishness is nothing but a social construction. If agents are encouraged to be "selfless", say in giving, it is because they see at as part of their own interests, say as "giving beings", to act as such. If individuals are encouraged to seek their own benefit irrespective of others, such as in capitalist economies, that is, once again, because they are socially structured to behave as such. Thus we are always looking at the institutional structure--interests and how they are shaped depend on social structure.

This is contentless psychobabble.

As far as incentives go, there is no difference except that one's own well being is seen to be tied to the well being of others. This does not make one "selfless" in any meaning of the term. Part of the thesis is that we all want a society in which we are free to actualize ourselves and our potential. So long as we provide the suitable socio-economic foundation...

A gift economy, sadly, isn't a suitable socio-economic foundation. It is a trainwreck waiting to happen.

...we work because we enjoy a particular kind of work and we want to offer it.

Yeah. Cleaning septic tanks is so enjoyable. People will just line up waiting their turn for that.

The current system is one that strikes me as hopelessly impractical. In fact, it is one that really only practically works for a small group of increasingly powerful economic and political players--but even for them it seems hopeless impractical and will most likely lead to their own destruction.

The current system is very, very far indeed from the system Eran advocates. You do realize that, right?

This is the irony of capitalist production: it claims to be based on freedom, but at the same time capitalists and their apologists do not at all trust the ability for people to make free democratic decisions...

"Free" and "democratic" are opposites. The Founding Fathers of the United States and other Enlightenment philosophers understood this. Too bad modern Left-Anarchists don't.


Phred

[anticlimacus]

And this is why you are a Left-Anarchist

Phred, I'm just happy we have this settled

you know almost nothing about how actual humans actually behave

Yawn...

They aren't "social constructs",

Yes, they are--and since you seem to value commentary on eran's quotes so much, you should keep in mind that he actually agreed with me on this. It's not just "leftist newspeek"

It is true that people's perception of what's right, and what would serve their interests, their values etc. are, to some extent, determined by society.

The difference we are having is that Eran thinks that an anarchist society fails to allow us to fully decide for ourselves and our most precious interests. We, according to Eran, will always have to sacrifice these interests for "strangers"--and thus it requires us to be altruistic. I of course entirely disagree and have explained why several times and, in fact, I think this is perfectly normal behavior we exhibit in any voluntary organization. It is simply not a question of being selfish or altruistic. It may, however, be a question of having more communal solidarity VS being individualistic--but I don't think the former at all is in question with human nature.

What counts here is the probability that nearly everyone will act altruistically nearly all the time. The probability of that happening is next to zero.

No, what counts is the fact that a voluntary society does not in the least require selfless altruistic behavior. It requires a vested interest in the community, upon which the self depends...why am I even trying with you?

This is contentless psychobabble.

Translate: I don't understand what he is saying, so I will just scoff at it.

They don't need to be selfless in a capitalist society. They do, however, in a gift economy.

Gift economy is your description. I have continued to express that exchanges are met on mutual agreement, and planned production is accomplished on a mutual basis in relation to labor cartels and communal boards. And by the way, gift economies are anything but selfless. They are filled with varieties of strategic self-interests, social control, and expectations in relation to social position and hierarchy--just read Mauss on the gift exchange, or Bourdieu on gift exchange.