Socialist Planning - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14960713
One Degree wrote:
@ckaihatsu
Thank you for your very thorough response. I was aware of the ‘natural progression’ and actually agree with it theoretically. I also agree compartmentalism (decentralization) would offset some dangers. However, I don’t see how either can work in practice when a ‘pyramid stucture’ is always the chosen method of governing. Historically, this always results in assumption of more and more power at the top and increased centralization.



Thanks, OD.

By 'compartmentalization', I *don't* mean 'decentralization'. I mean that we live in a social world that varies by *scale*, so our personal lives are not *necessarily* communicating political content as we live our lives. And the nation-state 'logistics' over how society functions are not necessarily 'personal' ('lifestyle'), *or* necessarily directly 'political', either.

I'll suggest that 'centralization' doesn't necessarily mean 'an individual's dictatorship over people's personal lives and all of civil society' -- rather, as I've been explaining, what's at-stake is how society produces things that we all need, and how those things are *distributed* to various individuals. Unfortunately society *currently* uses 'exchange values' to indicate relative pricing, for the sake of conferring *ownership*, but the means of production itself -- factories and equipment -- are themselves owned privately, for private benefit, instead of for producing to fulfill all human need for life and living.

Note that I'm not arguing for centralization of 'governing' power, as over people's lives, but rather for the empowerment of the *working class*, *collectively*, over all social production.

I'll refer you to the following thread that I started, in which I specify that 'centralization' (over social production, particularly tangible goods), can take place at *many* various scales, per-item produced, all the way up to a *global* scale, and/or any *lesser* scale:


global syndicalist currency

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=174857


---


This illustration may help the reader to *visualize* how various magnitudes of geographical scale could take place simultaneously, over a range of goods and services:


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

Spoiler: show
Image



---


One Degree wrote:
This structure seems much more important than the ideology in practice reflecting theory. It is designed to convert any ideology to authoritarianism. I don’t know how you can prevent this without many totally autonomous communities cooperating by choice.



I'll contend that ideology and structure are complementary since each tends to implicitly describe the other.

You're noting that the large-scale structure / scale necessarily has to reconcile with various included *small-scale* operations, meaning local on-the-ground ones. This is an astute observation and I happen to agree with this political-economy concern.

If workers are going to be operating the actual implements of mass industrial production *on the ground*, then each of those is a particular workplace / locality / grouping. Objectively-needed *centralization* over several workplaces would still have to *acknowledge* and reconcile-with this empirically-necessary local control, so neither localism nor centralization can be casually dismissed. (Lack of centralization implies duplication-of-effort on the ground, instead of *coordinating* over those various local efforts.)

Given today's existing technologies I don't think that *everyone* would necessarily have to contribute work-effort, but I *do* think that in the shorter-term there *should* be a near-unanimity of *political* agreement to support the proletariat in its ongoing class struggle against the continued ruling-class rule of the bourgeoisie.
User avatar
By One Degree
#14960727
I respect anyone who has thought their ideology out so thoroughly and since I believe all ideologies are basically equal will not attempt to quibble over minor details of implementation. I enjoyed and learned from your explanations. Thanks.
I am curious if you feel it is realistic to believe the ‘managers’ will be able to grasp and maintain these ‘separations’ in practice over time? This seems like a lot to expect from humans. :)
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14960736
SolarCross wrote:
What the fuck are all these weird *asterix* for? what is that supposed to mean?



It's for *emphasis* -- like boldface type.


One Degree wrote:
I respect anyone who has thought their ideology out so thoroughly and since I believe all ideologies are basically equal will not attempt to quibble over minor details of implementation. I enjoyed and learned from your explanations. Thanks.
I am curious if you feel it is realistic to believe the ‘managers’ will be able to grasp and maintain these ‘separations’ in practice over time? This seems like a lot to expect from humans. :)



If all ideologies were basically equal then we couldn't go wrong by selecting any one of them randomly -- all ideologies are *not* equal.

Glad to help.

Managerial positions would *not* be needed since workers-collectivism would ultimately determine policy over the particulars of any given workplace -- but efforts would also be necessary to *generalize* policy and *centralize* practices over greater geographic expanses for better efficiencies of production.

I don't understand what 'separations' you're referring to.
User avatar
By One Degree
#14960757
ckaihatsu wrote:It's for *emphasis* -- like boldface type.





If all ideologies were basically equal then we couldn't go wrong by selecting any one of them randomly -- all ideologies are *not* equal.

Glad to help.

Managerial positions would *not* be needed since workers-collectivism would ultimately determine policy over the particulars of any given workplace -- but efforts would also be necessary to *generalize* policy and *centralize* practices over greater geographic expanses for better efficiencies of production.

I don't understand what 'separations' you're referring to.


This...
If workers are going to be operating the actual implements of mass industrial production *on the ground*, then each of those is a particular workplace / locality / grouping. Objectively-needed *centralization* over several workplaces would still have to *acknowledge* and reconcile-with this empirically-necessary local control, so neither localism nor centralization can be casually dismissed. (Lack of centralization implies duplication-of-effort on the ground, instead of *coordinating* over those various local efforts.)


In addition to keeping separation between social, political, and economic you mentioned. There would need to be a very clear understanding of these divides to avoid conflating them and gravitating to authoritarianism instead of simply distribution and planning.
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14960999
One Degree wrote:
This...



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're noting that the large-scale structure / scale necessarily has to reconcile with various included *small-scale* operations, meaning local on-the-ground ones. This is an astute observation and I happen to agree with this political-economy concern.


ckaihatsu wrote:
If workers are going to be operating the actual implements of mass industrial production *on the ground*, then each of those is a particular workplace / locality / grouping. Objectively-needed *centralization* over several workplaces would still have to *acknowledge* and reconcile-with this empirically-necessary local control, so neither localism nor centralization can be casually dismissed. (Lack of centralization implies duplication-of-effort on the ground, instead of *coordinating* over those various local efforts.)



One Degree wrote:
In addition to keeping separation between social, political, and economic you mentioned. There would need to be a very clear understanding of these divides to avoid conflating them and gravitating to authoritarianism instead of simply distribution and planning.



I haven't called for a *separation* among the 'realms' of personal / lifestyle, logistics, and politics (a *scale*-indexed, "vertical" continuum), but rather for a 'compartmentalization', meaning that these three main tiers may not necessarily have any overlap of purpose in the real world. So perhaps a better way to put it would be 'lifestyle and/or logistics and/or politics'.

Even the compartmentalization that I suggest is mostly for purposes of *conceptualization*, rather than a political *call*, as for policy.

There's nothing wrong with an authoritarianism *altogether* -- people tend to miss that, objectively, there can only be one policy over specific conditions (a particular factory workplace, for example) active at-a-time, or else the policy is going to be ambiguous because of *competing*, *unresolved* policy proposals.

Also people forget that authoritarianism can be a *good* thing, such as *for* the working class when it's trying to defeat the bourgeoisie -- such would be a case of *revolutionary-leftist* authoritarianism, over the class foe.

On the topic of distribution and planning, I'll note that the goal is *communism*: free-access and direct-distribution. Free-access, of course, means that anything produced is available to anyone, if such production hasn't already been pre-planned for specific consumption (consumer-type pre-orders).

I think the theory happens to be weak on what the extent of 'personal property' would be, but I guess that's going to be up for debate right through to the time of actual revolution.

Back to the topic, 'direct distribution' means that *no exchanges* would be necessary or allowed, because anything produced could simply be pre-planned as to which specific consumers it would go to.

Here's from my 'labor credits FAQ':



Instead of allowing the dangers of a standing general bureaucratic administrative 'class' (as described above), all administrative concerns would be limited and circumscribed by each individual policy package. Any policy package that enjoyed adequate social participation to fulfill all of its components -- equipment, resources, liberated labor, sufficient funding of labor credits, winning-out over any competing proposals, available capacity to fulfill formally-expressed social need, internal policy-package proponents specified -- would activate / enable, and *obligate* that policy package's proponents to oversee and fulfill the terms of that formal policy package throughout its implementation.

No exchanges or exchange-values would be required whatsoever because the number of recipients for any and all mass production would be specified upfront as part of the overall policy package. In *practice*, liberated labor might determine that a certain percentage of 'extra' production (say, 25%) would be necessary to satisfy the total of *all* recipients, including any *walk-up* recipients who decided not to participate in the formal demands / requesting process for the policy package. In this way all production would always be free-access and direct-distribution, no questions asked.



https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... -Questions
#14961005
There will be a need for someone to make decisions about who gets products that are not available to meet everyone’s needs. Price currently is used to do that. Without price, then someone must decide. You not only admit the need for this authoritarianism but argue it is beneficial. It is not.
We know very well humans placed in positions of authority do not value the wishes of those below them as being equal. They see their views as superior. The more people affected by their decisions, the more superior they feel. It does not matter if it is an elected President or the Communist party leader. Power corrupts and leads to the gradual elimination of pesky inferiors telling you what is best. Authoritarianism is a belief in the inferiority of those below you.
No matter how you try to justify a world ideology, it can not overcome the mathematical necessity of the more people under one government, the more people who must be deprived of their choices. It can not overcome human nature to abuse power and humans having totally opposite views.
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14961013
One Degree wrote:
There will be a need for someone to make decisions about who gets products that are not available to meet everyone’s needs. Price currently is used to do that. Without price, then someone must decide. You not only admit the need for this authoritarianism but argue it is beneficial. It is not.



No, you're misconstruing my position -- I've *never* called for any kind of authoritarianism on a per-piece basis, as in administrating over prices. I'm actually on the *opposite* side of that issue, arguing *against* such a Stalinistic bureaucratic elitism, as in my prior post:


ckaihatsu wrote:
Instead of allowing the dangers of a standing general bureaucratic administrative 'class' (as described above), all administrative concerns would be limited and circumscribed by each individual policy package.



viewtopic.php?p=14960999#p14960999



I even developed a graphic illustration to showcase the overall material-economic *dangers* of such an elitist, group-subjective political-type *meddling* into the mix of various components of value, as with Marx's 'labor vouchers':


Pies Must Line Up

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Now, that said, one approach for a *socialist*-type / transitional workers-controlled material-economy -- internally -- *could* potentially be the market, for *less-critical*, more-discretionary-type goods and services, so that basic humane need is fully satisfied as a priority, as I've outlined at the 'global syndicalist currency' thread, and in the 'Multi-Tiered' diagram:


global syndicalist currency

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=174857



[A] distinction: My proposed 'global syndicalist currency' and my proposed 'labor credits' are two *different* material-economic vehicles, and they would function differently and separately.

The *point* of these formulations is to address the empirical need to join [1] local bottom-up, and [2] broader-geographic top-down centralized modes of revolutionary organization, *per item* of production. 'Syndicalism' implies 'local workplace workers collectivist self-organizing', and so such a first-step would be bottom-up revolutionary workers reorganization of productive efforts, away from commodity production, and into the international population of revolutionary workers' communities. Whatever production could be done by such revolutionary workers, beyond their own self-reproduction going-forward, would be the 'surplus labor value', enjoyed internally, and put into a 'global syndicalist currency', with all recordkeeping being fully transparent internally, among such revolutionized workplaces.

The global-syndicalist-currency approach would be for standardized seized-workplace-to-seized-workplace interchange while simultaneously battling the (military) forces of the bourgeoisie.



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

Spoiler: show
Image



---


One Degree wrote:
We know very well humans placed in positions of authority do not value the wishes of those below them as being equal. They see their views as superior. The more people affected by their decisions, the more superior they feel. It does not matter if it is an elected President or the Communist party leader. Power corrupts and leads to the gradual elimination of pesky inferiors telling you what is best.


One Degree wrote:
Authoritarianism is a belief in the inferiority of those below you.



No, it *isn't* -- not-necessarily.

You're thinking of 'authoritarianism' as an *ideology*, when it isn't -- it's a *process*, or an *approach*. Authoritarianism itself only describes *means*, such as how something is meant to be accomplished, but it *doesn't* describe or imply what that 'something' *is*, or 'ends'.

Again, for the task of defeating the world's bourgeoisie (the existing ruling class), authoritarianism as a *method* could prove to be *very* useful because the ruling class is not just going to *hand over* private property (factories) to the working class willingly.


One Degree wrote:
No matter how you try to justify a world ideology, it can not overcome the mathematical necessity of the more people under one government, the more people who must be deprived of their choices. It can not overcome human nature to abuse power and humans having totally opposite views.



Now you're just strawmanning -- I've already addressed this 'Stalinistic' formulation of yours, when that's not the objective of international class struggle at all.

Here it is:


One Degree wrote:
All universal ideology requires limiting choices (freedom) rather than increasing choices.



ckaihatsu wrote:
This happens to be a rather *pessimistic* view of socialism, and I'd go so far as to say that you're probably conflating socialism with nation-state-bound *Stalinism*, which is an inappropriate conflation. Sure, any political ideology that overrides personal volition would be *backward*, and *reactionary*, by definition, but I have to also point out that it's a two-way street: A revolutionary ideological movement would itself be *constrained* by any mass abstentionism on the part of workers who *opted-out* in significant numbers, as is the general case today (also bought-out business unionism, etc.).

In other words the bourgeois control of society has not *yet* been overthrown, and such requires *mass participation*, instead of mass *lifestylism*, as you're implicitly arguing-for.



viewtopic.php?p=14960688#p14960688
User avatar
By One Degree
#14961020
@ckaihatsu
Okay, I can see where our views have a lot in common. Our main difference seems to be you believe all localities need/should be socialist and I don’t believe that is necessary to provide the same overall universal benefit. A willingness of autonomous/semi autonomous communities to cooperate for mutual benefit does not require mutual internal policies.
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14961061
One Degree wrote:
@ckaihatsu
Okay, I can see where our views have a lot in common.



Would you mind detailing these compatibilities / congruencies, OD? Thanks in advance.


One Degree wrote:
Our main difference seems to be you believe all localities need/should be socialist and I don’t believe that is necessary to provide the same overall universal benefit. A willingness of autonomous/semi autonomous communities to cooperate for mutual benefit does not require mutual internal policies.



Here's the thing, though: If on-the-ground facilities are *not* cross-collectivized, then that implies at least two negative things:

1. There could easily be uninformed duplication-of-efforts, meaning that *more work* has to be done over the whole, to produce the same results compared to using *centralization* / coordination, for better efficiencies, for less work inputs needed. (For example consider *farming* -- currently less than 2% of the U.S. is associated with farmwork, due the widespread use of mechanical technologies, thus freeing more people to do other things.)

2. Each 'community' would then be an economic *island*, along with all other communities, and there would have to be some economic method used to 'bridge' the 'islands' -- typically libertarians and anarchists suggest the *market*, but then that arrangement / layout isn't significantly different from the exchange-values and overall capitalism in use today. Moreover the communist ethos of producing for *human need* would be destroyed because each commune would have a localized interest in producing for *exchange values* -- greater reciprocal compensation in any given trade, by 'shopping around' and/or 'auctioning' for a better trade deal.

That said, I do have to note that while I would *tolerate* a productive 'periphery' of market-type inter-communal exchanges for less-common and more-discretionary collective production -- see the 'Multi-Tiered' diagram -- I don't *advocate* such, because I developed an *alternative* approach for the egalitarian distribution of semi-rare items that would readily displace the market mechanism *altogether*:


Labor credits FAQ wrote:
-> What about the proletarian-revolutionary *redistribution* of existing 'wealth' -- sure, there'd be no more money in usage, but who gets *what* from the world's already-produced bounty as it exists today, and why?

I think this is an often-overlooked issue, especially since socialism is often touted as *being* a process of redistribution-of-wealth in the immediate stages of world revolutionary upheaval.

My model framework can be readily adapted to this task, and it confers the benefits of retaining a *fully mass-intentional* political process, instead of better-known, *non*-politically-conscious methods such as 'first-come-first-served', any other kind of time-based rationing, or a randomocracy-type lottery system. For any singular, *non*-divisible or *non*-replicatable context, like that of today's mansions, the item should be turned into a museum for full public admittance.

For finite, though *numerous* identical existing items, as for cultural collections, there may be *many* people who would like to personally possess some or all of those items from the days of capitalist commodity production -- this kind of competition, if left raw and unaddressed, would *not* be good for a post-capitalist society since there'd be no established way of deciding who-gets-what-and-why.


'additive prioritizations'

Better, I think, would be an approach that is more routine and less time-sensitive in prioritizing among responders -- the thing that would differentiate demand would be people's *own* prioritizations, in relation to *all other* possibilities for demands. This means that only those most focused on Product 'X' or Event 'Y', to the abandonment of all else (relatively speaking), over several iterations (days), would be seen as 'most-wanting' of it, for ultimate receipt.

My 'communist supply and demand' model, fortunately, uses this approach as a matter of course:

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

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

consumption [demand] -- A regular, routine system of mass individual political demand pooling -- as with spreadsheet templates and email -- must be in continuous operation so as to aggregate cumulative demands into the political process

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


I'm also realizing that this model / method of demand-prioritization can be used in such a way as to lend relative *weight* to a person's bid for any given product or calendar event, if there happens to be a limited supply and a more-intensive prioritization ('rationing') is called-for by the objective situation:

Since everyone has a standard one-through-infinity template to use on a daily basis for all political and/or economic demands, this template lends itself to consumer-political-type *organizing* in the case that such is necessary -- someone's 'passion' for a particular demand could be formally demonstrated by their recruiting of *others* to direct one or several of *their* ranking slots, for as many days / iterations as they like, to the person who is trying to beat-out others for the limited quantity.

Recall:

[A]ggregating these lists, by ranking (#1, #2, #3, etc.), is *no big deal* for any given computer. What we would want to see is what the rankings are for milk and steel, by rank position. So how many people put 'milk' for #1 -- ? How many people put 'steel' for #1 -- ? How many people put 'milk' for #2 -- ? And how many people put 'steel' for #2 -- ? (Etc.)

*This* would be socially useful information that could be the whole basis for a socialist political economy.

So, by extension, if someone was particularly interested in 'Event Y', they might undertake efforts to convince others to *donate* their ranking slots to them, forgoing 'milk' and 'steel' (for example) for positions #1 and/or #2. Formally these others would put 'Person Z for Event Y' for positions 1 and/or 2, etc., for as many days / iterations as they might want to donate. This, in effect, would be a populist-political-type campaign, of whatever magnitude, for the sake of a person's own particularly favored consumption preferences, given an unavoidably limited supply of it, whatever it may be.

tinyurl.com/additive-prioritizations
User avatar
By One Degree
#14961077
@ckaihatsu
You are making allowances for local populism while demanding overall efficiency is the primary goal. This requires planners and managers override local populism to avoid “duplication of production”. In practice, I don’t see how this would amount to much more than lip service to populism.
I have little interest in economic efficiency. This is mainly of benefit to capitalists and theoreticians. The common man’s life is improved by ‘being a part of a community’, not by lower prices for luxuries (or free luxuries) or even ‘the lowest price’ (or greater quantity of free food) for food.
To place efficiency over ‘community choice’ is to place economics over ‘being human’. Being human does not require efficiency. Actually, a happy human is often one involved in meaningless and wasteful tasks with friends. Seeing the ‘results’ of a community garden does more for humans than deciding if they planted too many carrots. No one cares. They will just have more carrots.

I seem to be suffering from a ‘bug’ and admit I have not been able to internalize your overall plan sufficiently to not make erroneous assumptions. Forgive me if this appears I am intentionally misrepresenting your views.
It is just difficult to concentrate fully.
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14961094
One Degree wrote:
@ckaihatsu
You are making allowances for local populism while demanding overall efficiency is the primary goal.



No, you're *imputing* this -- the primary goal is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, which is currently the world's ruling class. *Internally*, for whatever workers government takes hold, the primary goal would be the immediate meeting of everyone's humane needs, worldwide, without exception, *as efficiently as possible*.

Please note that my socialistic 'Multi-Tiered' model allows for various extents of centralization on a per-item basis -- this means that no *standing* bureaucracy is required, since all demands-making can be done entirely bottom-up, with various per-item scopes of centralization bringing similar areas of production together for greater efficiencies-of-scale.

Here's from the model for the more-advanced 'labor credits' system:


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

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

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

consumption [demand] -- A regular, routine system of mass individual political demand pooling -- as with spreadsheet templates and email -- must be in continuous operation so as to aggregate cumulative demands into the political process



[T]his method *aggregates* / tallies all personally prioritized demands lists *and* formal list items for a locality or pre-defined larger geographic area, on a *daily* basis, per rank position (#1, #2, #3, etc.), so that *no* standing institutional 'administration' is ever needed, and neither are political representatives of any kind required, either -- (no elections or voting processes are ever used). This daily mass-prioritization of material and socio-political demands is the information most needed by society, and by liberated labor in particular, a mirror-reflection of total verbatim collective consciousness, through compiled data. Liberated labor -- as available-and-willing, and as formally requisitioned through defined work roles in policy packages, and potentially funded with labor credits -- then itself flexibly collectively decides which finalized policy package(s) to take-up and implement, to completion, or not. (Greater-aggregatively-tallied, higher rank positions are populist-type *advisements* to liberated labor, but they do not *obligate* it in any way.)



https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... -Questions



---


Here's a thought-experiment I've been meaning to put-out-there -- how would the specific instance of *lychee* fruit be handled in a world-collectivist way -- ?



Lychee (variously spelled litchi, liechee, liche, lizhi or li zhi, or lichee) (Litchi chinensis; Chinese: 荔枝; pinyin: lìzhī) is the sole member of the genus Litchi in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae.

It is a tropical tree native to the Guangdong and Fujian provinces of China, where cultivation is documented from 1059 AD. China is the main producer of lychees, followed by India, other countries in Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and South Africa.

A tall evergreen tree, the lychee bears small fleshy fruits. The outside of the fruit is pink-red, roughly textured and inedible, covering sweet flesh eaten in many different dessert dishes. Since the perfume-like flavour is lost in the process of canning, the fruit is usually eaten fresh.


Image


Lychees are extensively grown in China, India, Thailand, Vietnam and the rest of tropical Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent,[12] and more recently in South Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, Australia and the United States.[3][13] They require a tropical climate that is frost-free and is not below the temperature of −4 °C (25 °F). Lychees also require a climate with high summer heat, rainfall, and humidity.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lychee



Would a globally collectivist society say that *anyone* could request lychees, even if they couldn't be grown there locally?

And, if so, what would be the liberated-labor 'cost' of harvesting and transporting that fruit for non-local consumers?

Should local consumers take precedence over non-local consumers for fulfillment of lychee requests / demands?

How would priority be established among local and non-local formally-demanding consumers for the fruit?

All of these types of logistical issues would have to be explicitly addressed and resolved by a socialistic workers state, *and* by a thoroughly post-capitalist *communist* mode of production as well.

(My model is able to address this scenario, and any other, with its daily aggregated individual rank-item demands listings. See the FAQ.)


---


One Degree wrote:
This requires planners and managers override local populism to avoid “duplication of production”. In practice, I don’t see how this would amount to much more than lip service to populism.



Fortunately I *don't advocate* any kind of populist politics, so it's a moot point.

You're continuing to erroneously assume that an elitist planners-and-managers type of Stalinistic bureaucracy would be required, when it wouldn't. Mass liberated-labor involvement, as into a collective workers state, would be more than sufficient to mass-intentionally pool various local geographic efforts together, for various extents of bottom-up centralization, per-item, to realize greater efficiencies of scale.

You're also assuming that centralization automatically means the 'overriding of local collectives' -- really it should be more like a *coordination* of existing locally-based bottom-up work roles already in progress. Under real socialism if on-the-ground workers simply walked away from their work roles for whatever reason there'd be nothing that anyone else could do about it -- and their own individual human needs, as for food and shelter, etc., would still require fulfillment, so then it's really more of a socio-*political* problem for everyone, to be resolved collectively and uniformly.


One Degree wrote:
I have little interest in economic efficiency. This is mainly of benefit to capitalists and theoreticians. The common man’s life is improved by ‘being a part of a community’, not by lower prices for luxuries (or free luxuries) or even ‘the lowest price’ (or greater quantity of free food) for food.



Prices wouldn't exist because there would be no exchange-values whatsoever -- no money, no stock, no bonds, no finance, no private ownership, no profit-making.

You'd be able to choose wherever you'd like to live, in whatever community suits you, as long as it's mutually consensual.

For the matters of a post-capitalist *material-economics*, though, the issues are how to do material productivity on a fully collectivist, egalitarian basis, and how to distribute such social production on an *equitable* basis that's customized to each individual's formally expressed needs and wants -- hence my model at the labor credits FAQ.


One Degree wrote:
To place efficiency over ‘community choice’ is to place economics over ‘being human’. Being human does not require efficiency. Actually, a happy human is often one involved in meaningless and wasteful tasks with friends. Seeing the ‘results’ of a community garden does more for humans than deciding if they planted too many carrots. No one cares. They will just have more carrots.



Great -- if you and others want to live this way, there'd be no problem with it, *except* for the fact that we haven't overcome capitalist / propertied rule yet. No one can currently raise carrots if they don't actually *own the land* that's necessary for that kind of production. (Or available time away from work to be with friends, etc.)


One Degree wrote:
I seem to be suffering from a ‘bug’ and admit I have not been able to internalize your overall plan sufficiently to not make erroneous assumptions. Forgive me if this appears I am intentionally misrepresenting your views.
It is just difficult to concentrate fully.



I'd say *take your time*, then. Try some sea salt for your health (you can research it). Besides sea salt I take borax, also for health.

If you could look over the 'global syndicalist currency' thread here at PoFo, that would probably get you caught-up:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=174857
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14961095
Rancid wrote:
Are we saying everything must be done by committee?



No, not exactly, not really.

The biggest problem with 'done by committee' is that such an approach implicitly *implies* some kind of larger bureaucracy, probably a Stalinistic-elitist one in most people's minds.

Yes, there *should* be a socialist-type workers state, initially, mostly for the ongoing intensified open class struggle against the bourgeois ruling class, but *internally* that workers state could coordinate things however those liberated-workers wanted to among themselves, collectively. I've developed models (see the 'global syndicalist currency' thread) for the sake of *conceptualizing* how workers committees might do things, but ultimately it's not up to me, of course.

*Demand*, in particular, *has* to be individual, because that's ultimately the scale that goods and services are consumed-at. But matters of planning and the *doing* of production *has* to be on a workers-collective basis, as generalized / centralized as possible, for efficiencies of scale. Take a look at my illustration for the 'labor credits' social structure, perhaps:


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show
Image
User avatar
By One Degree
#14961098
Rancid wrote:Are we saying everything must be done by committee?


I’m not anyway. :) it is okay with me if some communities decide to though.

@ckaihatsu
There is no doubt you have a well thought out and very intricate plan for planning human activity. I simply believe we would get a better result by letting autonomous communities do their own thing and trade with others peacefully. No need for elaborate planning and implementation. Simply people wanting things and others supplying them will work as long as the communities try to be as self sufficient as possible in basic needs. No foreign ownership. No one planned out our initial emergence into civilization.
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14961104
One Degree wrote:
I’m not anyway. :) it is okay with me if some communities decide to though.


One Degree wrote:
@ckaihatsu
There is no doubt you have a well thought out and very intricate plan for planning human activity. I simply believe we would get a better result by letting autonomous communities do their own thing and trade with others peacefully. No need for elaborate planning and implementation. Simply people wanting things and others supplying them will work as long as the communities try to be as self sufficient as possible in basic needs. No one planned out our initial emergence into civilization.



Well, with all due respect to your own conception of things, I have to point out that the whole *point* of socialism is for it to be a mass-*intentional* action, *unlike* how the various types of class society / 'civilization' have rolled out on an *emergent* basis.

I've also already provided a critique of your libertarian / anarchist conception, namely that such a patchwork of localist communes would implicitly be using *exchange values* -- just like capitalism does -- for its inter-communal material-economics, which is too problematic, and *isn't* socialism or communism.
User avatar
By One Degree
#14961110
ckaihatsu wrote:Well, with all due respect to your own conception of things, I have to point out that the whole *point* of socialism is for it to be a mass-*intentional* action, *unlike* how the various types of class society / 'civilization' have rolled out on an *emergent* basis.

I've also already provided a critique of your libertarian / anarchist conception, namely that such a patchwork of localist communes would implicitly be using *exchange values* -- just like capitalism does -- for its inter-communal material-economics, which is too problematic, and *isn't* socialism or communism.


Actually. I disagree with you. I think Marx would agree with my approach of evolving rather than implementing. There is no need for a plan.
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#14961384
One Degree wrote:
Actually. I disagree with you. I think Marx would agree with my approach of evolving rather than implementing. There is no need for a plan.



Hmmmm, you're not addressing the points I've made.

My main concern with your line is that it sounds like some fantasy video-game world that just snaps into being with the flick of a switch. You haven't addressed the existing class division at all or how a patchwork of communes is supposed to come into existence when such would be against the interests of the bourgeois ruling class.

In other words there's no 'evolving' to socialism while the ruling class continues to be in control, using warfare all over the world to keep people subjugated.

I'll readily agree, however, that there's no need for a *blueprint* plan, which is again a Stalinistic conception -- with my 'labor credits' framework various geographic areas can make their own linkages, in a bottom-up way, while also generalizing / centralizing across such areas for better efficiencies-of-scale for production.
By Sivad
#14961387
ckaihatsu wrote:*unlike* how the various types of class society / 'civilization' have rolled out on an *emergent* basis.


You think elite domination is emergent? :knife: Some degree of exploitation is inevitable but you don't get to the peaks of capitalist exploitation just from natural dynamics, there's a lot of 'big design up front' that goes into to this kind of domination.
User avatar
By One Degree
#14961388
ckaihatsu wrote:Hmmmm, you're not addressing the points I've made.

My main concern with your line is that it sounds like some fantasy video-game world that just snaps into being with the flick of a switch. You haven't addressed the existing class division at all or how a patchwork of communes is supposed to come into existence when such would be against the interests of the bourgeois ruling class.

In other words there's no 'evolving' to socialism while the ruling class continues to be in control, using warfare all over the world to keep people subjugated.

I'll readily agree, however, that there's no need for a *blueprint* plan, which is again a Stalinistic conception -- with my 'labor credits' framework various geographic areas can make their own linkages, in a bottom-up way, while also generalizing / centralizing across such areas for better efficiencies-of-scale for production.


You evolve to socialism (if that is indeed the natural outcome) by having autonomous communities small enough for people to make a personal connection to the community. Otherwise Socialism is a theoretical concept that is not relatable to the individual.
Why do volunteer fire/ambulance services work in small communities?
We need to change structure, not propagandize people in a way of thinking. Simply agreeing to a standardized method of people voting for their own autonomy and banning foreign ownership will naturally solve the other issues of capitalism and social/racial divisions. Cultural autonomy ‘trumps’ all other divisions.

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