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Ideology Over Reality
By Michael Albert at Jun 07, 2008 |
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This is the final piece, at least for now, in the debate about parecon that is largely contained in my immediately prior post.
I have to admit that the experience of interacting with leftists wedded to particular ideologies is, every time, a daunting one, even for a leftist who is also quite strongly attached to a particular set of views, such as myself.
For people trying to change the world, holding some shared concepts, goals, etc., is essential and not per se a problem. But beyond holding shared views, when encountering views contradicting ours perhaps we can agree that our attitude ought to be:
- first, we want to seriously understand those different views on their own terms
- second, we want to see how those different views are contrary to the ones we hold
- third, we want to see if the different views are better in some ways, rather than reflexively rejecting them with a stored up barrage of rhetoric born of entirely different circumstances, and then,
- fourth, if we do find that the different views embody improvements, we should happily adopt them, since the goal is not to be right, but to attain a better world, and better ideas mean more likelihood of doing so. And finally,
- fifth, if we decide the different views are instead flawed, we should try to explain why they are based on evidence and logic, not simply repeating that we believe differently.
Now I suspect that the editors and/or reviewer engaging with me in this exchange think the above has been, in fact, their approach to the different ideas found in the book Parecon...but I would have to say otherwise, that they instead didn't take it even a little seriously, didn't try to understand what was being said, didn't ever even contemplate the possibility that it has valuable insights, and didn't try to actually explain, since they thought it was the case, why its specific views and proposals were flawed.
Readers will have to judge, I guess, remembering that the topic is parecon...as presented in the book, Parecon, and as begun in the original review.
In any case, here is my reply to the last editors comment...
===
The editors start their final reply in the debate, the last entry in the prior post, with what I guess they think is their knockout blow for parecon: "It is only under capitalism that the social surplus takes the form of a monetary surplus value and, as you admit, this is what will exist in parecon."
My reaction is that they are knocking themselves out, not parecon.
Why is anything true only under capitalism, and no where else, one wonders - is it because that is rule written somewhere? And what is it that I admit, in any case - we have to wonder.
The editors have a set of concepts - value, surplus value, prices, and apparently money, among others. More, they have a set of expected relations among the real world referents of those concepts that they take for granted will exist in every conceivable system other than, perhaps, a very vague one that they favor, identifiable mainly by their favoring it. In my reading of their words, at least, they simply don't seem to be able to see anything other than what they already believe, and they make what at least seems to me to be no discernible effort to do so.
I am sorry that this is harsh, but I should be honest about my take, even at the risk of offending. In short, it is hard for me to understand how someone highly trained in left thought, editors of a Socialist periodical, could read Parecon, or even just this exchange, and then say what they do, other than if they are functioning rather reflexively and routinely and repeatedly imposing on my words meanings that not only aren't there, but are explicitly denied.
It isn't, of course, that I don't think anyone could sensibly dislike the book or disagree with the model, etc. It is that I think the editors are doing these things without more than superficial reference to what is being said in the book or the model, but instead only in accord with doctrine that is already in their heads.
Again, I am sorry for being harsh, but...well, let's see. (By the way, I have no problem continuing this in the pages of their periodical, as well as here on ZCom, if they wish to.)
When the editors say "monetary surplus value," well, okay, what is in their minds? I admit that I am not entirely sure because this is the kind of technical phrase (to be kind) or obscurantist jargon (to be not so kind) that people use, though in this case I think it may be a bit idiosyncratic, each user molding it in accord with their other views, so that communication becomes quite difficult, like talking with Humpty Dumpty, I think it was, in Lewis Carroll's parable, changing meanings as he wishes.
I think, judging from context, that most likely "monetary surplus value" they have in mind a sum of money, or what that is the same thing - claims on social output, also called income - that is going to someone at the expense of someone else - thereby being exploitative.
Why this could only occur under capitalism, or put differently, why any system it occurs in is for that reason usefully called capitalism, isn't explained. If a system has exploitation in this broad sense, but has no private ownership and no markets, for the editors it is capitalist. For me, this is humpty dumpty word play with a vengeance, but it isn't germane to parecon which doesn't have this kind of exploitation, and it arises again below, anyhow...
So what is germane regarding economic surpluses and parecon? A parecon firm produces. I covers its costs (hopefully all of them, costs of production and byproduct costs, etc.). The value of the outputs exceed the value of costs. That surplus is converted, I assume the editors are thinking, into cash (income, claims on consumption) and then goes to someone - and here is the crucial part - at the expense of someone else.
Okay, if that last part were true, that would certainly be bad, I agree with the editors about that. Saying that if it were true it would imply the economy is capitalist I however find ludicrous. It makes the word capitalist and the word exploitative synonymous so that feudalism suddenly is capitalist, so is pharaonic Egypt, so is the "socialist" Soviet Union, etc. Still, if the benefits of production were going to people based on owning the means of production of the workplace, then it would rightfully be called profits, in the Marxist terminology and in the mainstream too, and that would be bad. If the benefits were going to people based on their having more bargaining power and being able to grab it away from others, then that too would be bad, I agree, though it would not be profits in the sense any marxist or other economists use the term. Rather, the second kind of exploitative allocation occurs in many economic systems, but perhaps most important it occurs in what has been called socialism heretofore - both market and centrally planned. And it is still bad, yes.
However, parecon doesn't have either of those bad results. So far from admitting what I think the editors have in mind, I explicitly say it is false, the book's presentation says it is false, and the above replies say it is false, and at least in the longer formulations, it isn't just said but demonstrated. Thus, people get income for how long they work, how hard they work, and the onerousness of the conditions under which they work. They do not, and even cannot, in a parecon, get more than that - not due to property relations, not due to bargaining power - it is even quite hard to do it by theft.
So why do the editors say I agree with them in their portrayal of parecon embodying exploitation? I think they deduce parecon must be exploitative because because parecon tracks relative values (prices) and has income shares as well. I say it is not exploitative because in parecon the income you get is for how long, how hard, and the onerousness of the conditions under which you do useful work, which is equitable remuneration, and has nothing to do with property ownership or bargaining power. They say prices and income based on what you do means exploitation. I say that is utter nonsense... You judge who is right. But, regardless of who is right, you might wonder, how can the editors possibly interpret my words as saying I agree. Well, my guess is that this is how.
I say that pareconist firms produce more value than the sum of all associated costs. I say that in parecon there are prices and income, as well, thus in some sense money, or exchange values, and there is a way to track our rightful claims on social product via budgets based on income. The editors in turn KNOW, however, without even looking and because their concepts tell them so (and of course in my view wrongly), that if firms produce more value than the associated costs, and if there is income in any way correlated to work, and there are relative prices, and there tracking of all that, and budgets, even if all these things are very different than in other systems, then the surplus will inevitably become what they call "monetary surplus" by which they mean to imply, I think, a surplus accruing to some instead of others. This claim, that x implies y, is never remotely explained but is, instead, an axiom or unchallengeable belief. It simply must be true. The editors don't have to think about it, or look closely at parecon, for that matter. They KNOW x implies y for all possible visions that might be offered. So why look closely? All they have to do is look at my words and find that there are prices and income and then that's the end of it, they at most only feel a need to make the claim they know is true that connects those features to exploitation.
First, it is important to see how peculiar what they are saying is. Of course anyone sane wants workplaces to produce items and services and other outcomes that are more socially valued than all that is used up in that production or otherwise incurred as costs, whether material, personal, social, or ecological. So we want all want there to be economic surplus, in that sense. The editors must, too.
The editors now add, however, that if we have surplus,a good thing, but we also have prices and income that is in any way correlated to people's activities, then we will inevitably have exploitation. No need to demonstrate exploitation, to say who gets more and who gets less than they ought to since we simply know exploitation must be there.
Now, if we do take that leap, they argue, then if we want to avoid exploitation we must forego prices, income in the sense of earned rights to a share of the social output, and anything remotely resembling money. When I tell them that this means they have not only jettisoned prices, income, etc., but they have done away with all possibility of sensible allocation because they have no way to decide between options based on valuations, they simply ignore it. When I tell them they have also done away with all possibility of attaining just distribution because, again, there is no way to say to a consumer, or for a consumer to even know that some amount is more (or less) than he or she should have, or to say to a worker, or for a worker to even know, some level of work is more (or less) than you should be doing - the editors think they don't need to answer. They feel it is compelling to just repeat without reference to what parecon actually embodies, their doctrine - surplus plus income plus prices means exploitation. Then, since they in my view quite rightly want an end to any kind of elites accruing disproportionate wealth by property or power or any other means, and since they KNOW (wrongly) that if there is a surplus, which of course there needs to be, and if there is also money, prices, budgets, etc., then there will be exploitation - they deduce there simply must not be money, prices, budgets, etc.
It is important to add that this reasoning is not nonsensical in the abstract. For example, I am following a somewhat similar pattern, I believe quite reasonably, when I say I want classlessness and see where that leads me. That is, I believe, based on a whole set of evidence and logic carefully presented in plain language, that private ownership and also the familiar corporate division of labor in which about 20% of producers monopolize virtually all empowering tasks (as well as markets and central planning) all singly and together inevitably produce class division and class rule. Proceeding on that belief, I then deduce that to have classlessness we must reject these other features - supposing that we can do so and still have a viable and worthy economy, that is. Then I try to carefully show how we can accomplish that, with balanced job complexes, participatory planning, etc.
The editors and I are both claiming that feature x (we are pointing to different features, of course) obstructs outcomes that we want. To get the outcomes, then, we each deduce that we must therefore do away with feature x. X for me is markets, central planning, corporate divisions of labor, top down decision making, private ownership of means of production, and remuneration for property, power, or output. X for the editors is private ownership and, well, money and perhaps even relative prices, and perhaps other things too. We both find some features objectionable, inevitably, and we both say that therefore to have a good economy we must conceive it without those features.
Here is a difference, however. I work very hard to make a compelling case by examining their properties and dynamics that the x that I reject - private ownership of means of production, the monopolization of empowering tasks in few hands, remuneration for property, power, or output, authoritarian decision making, and allocation by markets or central planning, each produce class division and class rule. The book they reviewed does that, for example. And I very carefully present an alternative way of organizing economics that doesn't have those features and then also carefully make a case that that new type of economic arrangement, with new defining features, can get economic functions achieved in ways we desire, rather than avoiding some ills while generating new ones in their place. The editors, I think, in contrast, don't make a connection between pricing and income per se and exploitation or class difference. They simply assert it/ Likewise, they don't offer a serious set of institutions without those features and show their viability - though perhaps somewhere else they do and I am just unaware of it - though I very much doubt it. They debate based on doctrine, not on reason and evidence. They reject a new model without even bothering to examine it, or so it seems to me.
There was a famous exchange that is purported to have occured in a restaurant between an exceptional economist, Joan Robinson, and some table mates whose names I don't know, decades back. One table mate said to Robinson (who was one of the more knowledgeable people in marxist economics in the world) how come you aren't a Marxist. And Robinson replied, well, the difference is that if you ask a Marxist some question about wages and prices, for example, he or she will think for a moment and then say, oh yes, okay, well on page xxx of volume two of Capital it says.... In contrast, Robinson added, if you ask me the same question, even if I would in some case happen to have essentially the same substance for my answer, I would pull out a napkin and work it out, rather than simply quoting as if from a bible. (I admit, I added some words to what I remember of this). It is a very instructive story, I think even if the doctrinal approach isn't always so utterly obvious as when quoting sources in place of offering evidence and logic.
Okay, so if what the editors KNOW to be true - that having prices, budgets, etc., implies exploitation - is in fact not true, or if I claim it isn't true, then what do I think is the case regarding the main issues at hand and parecon?
In a firm in parecon it is quite true, as the editors notice, or one hopes it is true, at any rate, that the firm produces a volume of outputs whose worth to society is greater than all the incurred resource, labor, environmental, and social costs as well. Okay, so let's say the food plant, or bicycle plant, or whatever else, succeeds in that respect. Now what?
Well, that doesn't inexorably mean that some group thereby unjustly accrues the greater income, whether by virtue of owning the factory - or by virtue of having great bargaining power due to their situation in the economy which lets them take more. The ownership is eliminated in parecon. So too are the differentials in economic circumstance that convey different bargaining power. So too, in any case, is even the possibility of remuneration in accord with power.
Yes, the items and services in the economy have prices in a parecon - exchange values - though those prices emerge from self managed cooperative negotiation of inputs and outputs, which, oddly, I suspect, is exactly what the editors want, they just don't want it to include, as information, relative valuations. And yes, people have incomes, or said differently, have budgets, which limit how much of the social product they are entitled to. And yes, allocation decisions about what to produce using resources and labor, etc. and about who winds up producing it or getting it, use valuations and are impacted by budgets. Not only does all this happen in a parecon, but more, I claim if it didn't the system would be utterly incapable of functioning intelligently, or even at all, much less functioning equitably and with self management. That ought to be trivially apparent. You can't make sound judgements about producing one item instead of some other, or vice versa, without knowing how much cost and benefit the item and its production involve - relative valuations. In any case, But, that an economy has prices, budgets, etc., which are both essential and desirable if done consistent with other aspirations, does not imply, and I have seen zero words designed to show that it implies, that there is exploitation, much less who benefits, or how much. I should perhaps add that it is incredible to me, I admit, that someone would be discussing parecon, focusing on exploitation, and never once discuss parecon's norm of remuneration...but, given that the argument is from doctrine, not based on the actual model, I suppose it is predictable.
There is another side to the coin, however, and to the editors' objection as well. Let's say, instead of the situation of surplus discussed above, that the bicycle or food workplace produces output that is less valuable than the costs associated with production. The editors seem to think that paying attention to this is tantamount to operating according to profit and not peoples needs and desires. In fact, the actual situation is the opposite.
Consider the firm that has no surplus of benefits over costs. What do we do about it? Well, if society is rational, and if it is operating in accord with needs and not profits, it will be desirable for there to be changes so the workplace does a better job of creating the outputs without incurring so many costs. Or, if that doesn't occur and people don't want the bicycles or food coming out of these particular workplaces more than they want well being for the workers there, or sustainability for the neighborhoods, or other products (including food or bicycles made differently in other firms with less costs) the firm should no longer produce. It is not serving needs but instead diminishing fulfillment relative to better choices.
And here is an irony - but one the editors should, and would, I think, immediately understand if they were using a napkin to work things out instead of using doctrine to claim things. What occurs in capitalism, in this case of not producing more value in outputs than the costs incurred? Well, sometimes the firm will shut down - as it ought to if it can't be refitted - but other times it won't. For example, if the firm is generating big profits for owners because lots of the costs are going unpaid by the owners but instead hitting others than the owners - being paid through taxpayer funds, say, or just going unaddressed as in ecological impacts, so, think, for example, of idiotic products that destroy the environment but don't include those costs in the prices - or of weapons manufacture - then the production will continue. Ironically, in other words, the situation is opposite, in this case, on all counts, to what the editors' doctrine proposes. Paying attention to full social costs and benefits and closing down operations that don't generate surpluses is the thing to do to abide need of all concerned, if done in a pareconish way, while keeping such a firm open (in some cases) is the thing to do and that will be done, to abide the will of capitalist owners.
The editors write to me in their reply: "The institutional changes you advocate (no legal individual ownership of means of production, self-management, etc.) are inadequate reasons for claiming that capitalism has been overthrown."
How to begin. Well, if what they present was the actual list of changes that I advocated, the editors would be part right. In that (fictitious) case, what I was proposing could then be, for example, market socialism or centrally planned socialism - both of which are still exploitative and class divided, though calling them capitalist is ridiculously misleading. But in fact what they offer isn't the list of changes I advocate, and I think most interestingly, the editors feel no need, it seems, to acknowledge or probably even to notice that it isn't the list of changes I advocate.
Instead, the list I advocate, put negatively or simply in ethical terms, as they did (not least, I think, because they have no positive institutional proposals) includes no private ownership of productive assets (not just some formal law but none), no markets, no central planning, no remuneration for property, power, or output, no top down decision making, and no corporate division of labor (that allots empowering tasks overwhelmingly to about 20% of the workforce who I call the coordinator class and who easily dominate the economy and exploit, and allots rote and repetitive and otherwise disempowering tasks overwhelmingly to 80% of the workforce, who I call the working class, and who are for want of information, credentials, access, and skills and knowledge, dominated and exploited. In ethical terms the list is self management, equitable remuneration, diversity, solidarity, and efficiency in meeting needs and developing potentials of both workers and consumers. And finally, the list, put positively in institutional terms, since parecon isn't just a list of things rejected or ethical aims, but is an actual vision - includes, workers and consumers self managing councils, remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning.
Now, to say, as the editors do, that an economy which has replaced the way work is organized with a classless approach, the way decisions are made with a self managing approach, the way consumption occurs with an unalienated approach, the way allocation is accomplished with a cooperative, negotiated approach, and the way people earn and utilize income with an equitable approach is, nonetheless, still capitalist, because it has something they call monetarized surplus, is quite something, but, I think, actually explicable, in an odd way that we will see in a second.
The editors say, "We agree that the former Soviet Union did have a ruling class, but not that there were no markets there. Even the regime's ideologists admitted that there was `commodity-production,' i.e. production for sale, and that buying and selling relationships existed between state enterprises. While there was no individual legal ownership of the main means of production (though there was of some things: dachas, works of art, state bonds, bank accounts), these means of production were not owned by society as a whole but effectively by a class which monopolised them, via the state, and which lived a privileged life from the surplus value extracted from the wage-labour of the workers. That is why we think the best description of that and similar societies was state capitalist."
The Soviet allocation system was central planning. Markets did not set prices and existed far far less, for example, than planning exists in the U.S., which I bet the authors would call a market economy, quite reasonably. But we could have been talking about Yugoslavia, and then, indeed, there would have been markets, which is why it was called market socialism. Intoning the phrase "commodity production" brings us back to the humpty dumpty dynamic. What does it mean?
Do the editors have in mind that things produced are consumed? Well then there would always be that feature and there would be nothing bad about it. Do they have in mind that the consumption occurs limited by budgets? Again, that will always be true and there is nothing wrong with that. What it means technically, and this may be what they intend to connote in using it, is that the production occurs driven by profit motives with the profit accruing to owners, who have overwhelming power, etc. But all this was absent in the Soviet and Yugoslav cases.
People own dachas? Yes. And they owned the shirts they wore too. So? Saying there should be no private onwership of productive assets doesn't imply there is no ownership of anything. This was not the key problem with the Soviet or Yugoslav economies. If bank accounts conveyed interest based on profits earned by firms, that would be a real thing to point to, but swamped by everything else. However, yes, there was a ruling class - but it was an economic phenomenon - footed in, and here is the key economic problem with these economies, the existence of a class monopolizing empowering tasks and thus dominating workers below. (Was there a statist political aspect? Yes, but even if there had been a multi party democracy, the economy would sitll have been class ruled not classless.) Did the ruling class live much better than working people due to taking an exploitative share of the social product. Yes, that is quite true. But that was also true under feudalism, should we call that capitalism, too? Perhaps royal capitalism? Humpty can choose to use the words whatever way he wishes, but then if we actually want to communicate usefully, we just need more words.
Here is the crux. The editors want to reject the Soviet system (I hope for good reasons rather than only because Trotsky did, in the end.) Okay. They do not want to say, however, that there can be anything other than capitalism and socialism, after feudalism. There are two reasons for this. Adherence to doctrine - marxist and leninist - and because once you admit this possibility you have admitted that eliminating capitalist economics means more than eliminating private productive property and profits - entailing, also, getting rid of the economic source (not just authoritarian politics) of the power and wealth of the ruling class in the Soviet system, which opens the door to the absolutely verboten possibility - that even the most aggressively anticapitalist leninism is not a framework seeking classlessness but is, instead, a framework seeking rule by the coordinator class.
The editors say "Your attitude towards the former Soviet Union is revealing in that it shows that you had nothing against the continued existence there of the key features of capitalism that are production for sale, money, wages, profits, etc but only to the fact that the economic system involving these was controlled by a privileged ruling class and not democratically by the workers."
This is rather amazing - again, not only because parecon eliminates profit seeking and profits per se, but because Parecon also has no production for sale - meaning for profits - at all. But it does have production for use, and the users do have budgets and therefore buy what they choose. And it does have numeric prices and budgets, which is what they are calling money, and it does have income, which they are calling wages to make it sound like it is something dolled out miserly by bosses. But the pejorative connotations are all merely assumed, asserted, and imposed on the words I have offered, because doctrine says it must be.
And then incredibly the editors say - "Parecon is thus revealed to be the idea of the economic system that existed in Russia `self-managed' by the workers. A sort of `self-managed capitalism' that could only exist on paper."
What is going on is simple. There is the system the editors want - true socialism, I guess they would call it - with whatever features they have in mind, but I think, probably, nothing coherent, nothing specified sufficiently to assess. Then, other than that system the editors like, there must only be, well, capitalism, though in lots of forms. There is a sense in which "capitalism" is the editors synonym for "we don't want it."
So, the U.S. is capitalist, Russia was, and now parecon is too, and apparently is more like Russia, no less, despite dumping central planning, all private ownership, etc. etc. And all this is so, note, just by decree, by definition, by the authority of humpty dumpty, in my view, and I guess Trotsky, or whoever, in the editors' view.
You think I am being harsh? Look through the whole exchange and see if you can find anyplace where the editors are doing anything other than repeating their beliefs, as gospel - remember they are reviewing parecon, not presenting their claims. See if they explain what it is about balanced job complexes, or pareconish remuneration, or participatory planning, or self managed decision making, that is insufficient or bad. In fact, see if they even say what these things are, what they entail, anything about them there defining features of the system they are rejecting. See if they explain how it is, which is to say by what dynamic, in what form, and benefitting whom, profits or if they prefer monetarized surpluses accrue, or any kind of economic injustice in power or income occurs, for that matter. None of that appears, because there is no need, in the editors view, to address parecon as it is described and conceived. Rather one only needs to say, it isn't what we favor, so it must be capitalism, and now we will dig around and find a few words we can mishandle and then use to evidence the point.
It may sound differently to others, but I think it is honest and perhaps useful for me to admit this is the way their formulations sound to me. Plus, honestly, they also sound incredibly ignorant, for people claiming to be experts on capitalism and on its rejection, of even the most simple economic insights. This is quite sad I think, not a matter of blame, but of depression over the state of the left, or this left's, comprehension of economics.
If you can't work with a napkin to derive and justify your thoughts, without taking a doctrine as given, and if the doctrine is way outdated and flawed, you find yourself in a whole lot of difficulty.
The editors end, "Socialism will break free from the financial bureaucracy of capitalist calculation. It will treat people as ends in themselves. It will produce directly for human needs. It will break the link between individual effort and individual consumption. That's what all those who consider themselves to be anti-capitalist should be aiming at."
Actually, with the exception of breaking the link between individual effort and individual consumption, which, for able bodied people would be a disaster for rationally trying to meet anyone's needs equitably, as well as for discerning desirable directions for economic development, the above list is precisely what parecon attains, though only a small part of what it attains. I hope at some point folks with views like the editors, and the editors, and advocates of parecon, can have a discussion that arises from a napkin mentality, not a volume two doctrinal mentality.
not all this again
By Motor, John at Jul 24, 2008 17:47 PM
Reply this comment
Re: Ideology Over Reality
By Myers, Ron at Jun 25, 2008 16:38 PM
It would seem you have a low opinion of human nature
which is surprising given your comments from other
pieces you have written. For example;
"The optimist says that given circumstances that foster
and reward their better selves, humans can engage in
mutually beneficial social relations with means for
handling what little violence and anti-sociality arise
in the normal order of events, and without tumbling
down a slippery slope of greed or destruction. We urge
this, and provide parecon as a set of relevant economic
structures." -Albert
So, informed people being able to consciously and
rationally apply consumption constraints on their
personal perferences in order to generate public
welfare in a society structured to promote both is
off the agenda simply because there are no
institutionalized purse strings to regulate their
behavior and their decisions on consumption? You
claim that we need a pricing mechanism to make
choices between competing options, but what you\'re
really saying, it would seem to me, is that people
need a controlling mechanism so that their greedy
and selfish natures aren\'t environmentally triggered
to surface. The limitation of money puts a cap on our
conspicuous consumption in other words, and Parecon
supplies just such a controlling structured instititution.
We maintain that people can make these decisions without
the need for control or force exerted in Free Access socialism.
Socialism will create a structured society where people have
accepted socially mutual obligations and the realization of
universal interdependency and that decisions arising from
this mindset would profoundly affect people’s choices,
perceptions, conceptualizations, attitudes, and greatly
influence their behavior. We effectively argue against
what you claim in that-people will consume to the maximum
even to the point of being socially reckless and at the
expense of their own democratically decided acceptance
and agreement on the practical applications of social
administration and prioritized production goals.
Modern day existing examples which put a damper on the
notion you present-that people will automatically consume
to the maximum in a free access society are public
libraries-people rarely borrow the maximum number of books
allowed; public drinking fountains-people don\'t fill up
gallon jugs for later at home personal consumption; free
PC software-isn\'t complusively snatched up; music-isn\'t
downloaded to the extent that it would include each and
every song a person ever thought that they might want to
someday listen to; etc. In other words, these services
and products are very rarely abused now, nor fully taken
advantage of by people in an effort to maximize their
consumption.
You also state that the socialist position assumes away
the need for valuations on grounds that we can simply have
everything we want and that we assume there is no need to
pay attention to relative worth to audiences, but where you
got that idea is anyone\'s guess. As you have admitted to
only skimming over the socialist proposal provided, in
contradiction to your own recommended procedure of debating;
"when encountering views contradicting ours perhaps we can
agree that our attitude ought to be:
1. first, we want to seriously understand those different
views on their own terms
2. second, we want to see how those different views are
contrary to the ones we hold
3. third, we want to see if the different views are better
in some ways, rather than reflexively rejecting them with
a stored up barrage of rhetoric born of entirely different
circumstances,"
I suspect a more thorough reading would have been appropriate
prior to making the claims you made.
You\'ve mistaken free access to mean people will automatically
get everything they ever desired, as opposed to what it really
means; taking freely from all that has been decided to be
produced. This is a very old \'red herring\' argument which has
been dealt with completely and, in fact, I\'m very surprised to
find you falling back on it. For example, access to the products
of labour will be free and unfettered in socialism but access
to labour itself will not - simply because the owners of labour
are absolutely free to use it as they choose.
You can say that, yes, in socialism he may well have the right
to choose to live in a ten-bedroomed mansion, but it is a hell
of a responsibility (and a labour) to take on, isn\'t it? How
many people would want that? Just keeping the place clean and
in good order would be a huge task in itself, because you can
bet your bottom dollar that in a society of freely associating
human beings you are not going to find loads of people queueing
up to offer their labour solely for the purpose of keeping you
in luxury.
Choosing to live in luxury at the expense of others, which is
what you\'re really implying, I think, is ruled out in socialism
by a mechanism that arises out of the independence of labour itself.
Luxury is only possible in a society where access is restricted.
There may just conceivably be people in a socialist society who
have a burning desire to live in a mansion, whatever it costs them,
but it will not be an easy, and therefore not a common, choice.
And of course social approval/disapproval will be another powerful
factor in all this.
As far as consuming lots of luxury items, is concerned, that too,
will be limited and will depend on other people deciding to produce
items which will only be available to the few. And so on. I think
these are all institutional mechanisms.
You say, "let\'s try to boil it down quite a bit. I say that in
any economy, any society, it will always be very desirable to
make judgements about what we want to do with our time, resources,
energies, etc. We will choose among lots of possibilities,"
Where you found any disagreement with this notion, is yet,
another mystery. Your solution to this problem is an income
budget as a means to enforce restrictions on consumption. Our
solution is democratically deciding on a prioritzed set of
production goals which is geared towards satisfying human needs
and which takes into account the very factors you claim we ignore.
You say this can\'t be done without a price mechanism. We say
prioirties placed on production can be decided upon without
such a mechanism and we provided the outlined processes which
would acheive such results.
You state that we need this mechanism to order our preferences
and choose between competing options and to rationally economize.
We claim people can simply decide on their demand in order of
personal preferences and socially establish production priorities
given an analysis of cost/benefit in the manner of a points system.
A point system for attributing relative importance to the various
relevant considerations would be subjective and could take into
account all productive factors.
You asked to be corrected if you were wrong in assuming,
"I think you believe, instead, that there is a capacity for
humanity to generate as much nice and fulfilling goods and
services as anyone could possibly desire to have, plus as
much leisure as anyone could want, and so on."
Let\'s boil down our position so as to lift the burden
of actually reading the details of what we wrote off
your shoulders and make life a bit easier for you..
"We have seen that a socialist economy would need to have
some system of production priorities and how this might be
arrived at. We have seen how this would impact on the
allocation of resources where the supply of such resources
falls short of the demand for them. We have looked at the
mechanism of a self-regulating system of stock control,
using calculation-in-kind, which would enable us to keep
track of this supply and demand. We have established that
the need to economise on the allocation of resources is
positively correlated with their relative scarcity and
that that, in turn, is a function not only of crude supply
as revealed via the self regulating system of stock control
but is also a function of demand and of the technical ratios
of inputs involved. Comparison of the relative scarcity of
different inputs allows us to operationalize Liebig\'s Law
of the Minimum. Having identified our limiting factors we
can subject them to the guidance of our established system
of production priorities to determine how they are to be
allocated. In short, what we have arrived at is a coherent
and functioning system of interlocking parts that at no point
has need of economic calculation in the form of a price/money
mechanism whatsoever."
As Engels claimed over 160 years ago;
"Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will not
assign values to products. It will not express the simple
fact that the hundred square yards of cloth have required
for their production, say, a thousand hours of labour in
the oblique and meaningless way, stating that they have the
value of a thousand hours of labour. It is true that even
then it will still be necessary for society to know how much
labour each article of consumption requires for its production.
It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance
with its means of production, which include, in particular,
its labour-powers. The useful effects of the various articles
of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities
of labour required for their production, will in the end
determine the plan. People will be able to manage everything
very simply, without the intervention of much-vaunted "value".
- footnote- As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned
balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making
decisions concerning production was all that would be left,
in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of
value." (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95)
Well, lo and behold, no one seems to have ignored a cost/benefit
analysis as an important factor to consider in our decisions
on production and consumption.
Imagine that!
I suppose, in the end, we will have to agree to disagree.
Not for the reasons you pointed out, but because of a lack
of recognizing an alternative, showing an unwillingness
to discuss alternatives on your part. I\'ve read several
alternatives/criticisms put to you to which you\'ve reacted
in the same manner. You\'ve dismissed them; refusing to
discuss them. It would seem to be a habit with you. Let
me be the one now to apologize for my honesty here, but
I do feel compelled.
As far as the model which Parecon presents I would refer to
the same complaints voiced by David Schweickart in his piece
\'Nonsense on Stilts: Michael Albert\'s Parecon\' found here;
http://homepages.luc.edu/~dschwei/parecon.htm
which I know you are well aware of. Perhaps you can direct
me to your rebuttal(s)?"
Cheers, R&R
Reply this comment
Perplexed
By Primc, Matic at Jul 09, 2008 08:05 AM
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Re: Perplexed
By Albert, Michael at Jul 09, 2008 15:32 PM
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Re: Perplexed
By Primc, Matic at Jul 09, 2008 08:05 AM
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Re: Re: Perplexed
By Albert, Michael at Jul 09, 2008 15:28 PM
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Re: Ideology Over Reality
By Myers, Ron at Jun 21, 2008 07:49 AM
"In "Ideology over Reality" Michael Albert appears quite willing to
engage in further debate with the WSM therefore I will endeavour to
present our practical alternative.
Conventional academic economics declare that the true state of the
world is scarcity - limited supply - versus- boundless demand, denying
the potential for a state of abundance can exist. Our wants are
essentially "infinite" and the resources to meet them, limited, claim
the economists. However in the real world, abundance is not a
situation where an infinite amount of every good could be produced.
Similarly, scarcity is not the situation which exists in the absence
of this impossible total or sheer abundance. Abundance is a situation
where productive resources are sufficient to produce enough wealth to
satisfy human needs, while scarcity is a situation where productive
resources are insufficient for this purpose. Admitting this would mean
the end, not only of the economy as a system of allocating scarce
resources but also of goods having an economic value and price; goods
would simply become useful things produced for human beings to take
and use, while economics as the study of the most rational way to
employ scarce resources would give way to the study of how best to use
abundant resources to produce free goods in the amounts required to
satisfy human needs. This is the purpose of the WSM, to speed the day
towards free access. That is what could be described as a
revolutionary concept.
The real discussion is how to provide for the needs of all using the
ingenuity of the human race. That is the big X which both Albert and
WSM share and wish to address. So let\'s use the napkins as recommended
by Albert to outline the type of new society we desire without any
reference to Marx\'s Labour Theory of Value. Just some application of
common sense to solve a pressing problem. Let us compare one with
another; Participatory Economics Vs. Free Access Socialism. We have
Albert\'s schema available to us already elsewhere, so what I will do
here is outline, with a bit of detail, our notion of
a Socialist society.
We\'ll start with Albert\'s objections;
"When I tell them that this means they have not only jettisoned
prices, income, etc., but they have done away with all possibility of
sensible allocation because they have no way to decide between options
based on valuations ... ", they simply ignore it. When I tell them
they have also done away with all possibility of attaining just
distribution because, again, there is no way to say to a consumer, or
for a consumer to even know that some amount is more (or less) than he
or she should have, or to say to a worker, or for a worker to even
know, some level of work is more (or less) than you should be doing -
the editors think they don\'t need to answer....they don\'t offer a
serious set of institutions without those features and show their
viability - though perhaps somewhere else they do and I am just
unaware of it - though I very much doubt it. "
And in case we never understood the first time, Albert repeats it;
"...And yes, people have incomes, or said differently, have budgets,
which limit how much of the social product they are entitled to. And
yes, allocation decisions about what to produce using resources and
labor, etc. and about who winds up producing it or getting it, use
valuations and are impacted by budgets. Not only does all this happen
in a parecon, but more, I claim if it didn\'t the system would be
utterly incapable of functioning intelligently, or even at all, much
less functioning equitably and with self management. That ought to be
trivially apparent. You can\'t make sound judgements about producing
one item instead of some other, or vice versa, without knowing how
much cost and benefit the item and its production involve..."
So Albert believes that only prices and money can be used to
rationally organise society because the professors text-books say so,
thus it must be true and a law as natural as the Law of Gravity. He
reveals his acceptance of orthodox capitalist economists when he
employs what is called the Economic Calculation Argument (developed by
Von Mises, even if he declines to quote chapter and verse of Mises, he
nevertheless, accepts it without questioning the actual requirement of
a pricing mechanism for the well-being of society. It is automatically
taken as fact, an economic law; or at least, he doesn\'t provide a
rationale rather than an assertion).
Let\'s begin with prices and how practical allocation of resources do
not require the intervention of a pricing mechanism and how resources
can be rationally allocated in a moneyless society.
A monetary economy gives rise to the illusion that the "cost" of
producing something is merely financial. Money is the universal unit
of measurement, the "general equivalent" that allows everything to be
compared with everything else under all circumstances— but only in
terms of their labour-time cost or the total time needed on average to
produce them from start to finish. Such non-monetary calculation of
course already happens, on the technical level, under capitalism. Once
the choice of productive method has been made (according to expected
profitability as revealed by monetary calculation) then the real
calculations- in-kind of what is needed to produce a specific good
commence; so much raw materials, so much energy, so much labour. In
socialism it is not the case that the choice of productive method will
become a technical choice that can be left to engineers (perhaps those
of the co-ordinator class that Albert fears), as is sometimes
misunderstood by critics, but that this choice too will be made in
real terms. In terms of the real advantages and disadvantages of
alternative methods and in terms, on the one hand, of the utility of
some good or some project in a particular circumstance at a particular
time and, on the other hand, of the real "costs" in the same
circumstances and at the same time of the required materials, energy
and productive effort.
By the replacement of exchange economy by common ownership basically
what would happen is that wealth would cease to take the form of
exchange value, so that all the expressions of this social
relationship peculiar to an exchange economy, such as money and
prices, would automatically disappear. In other words, goods would
become simply physical objects which human beings could use to satisfy
some want or other. The disappearance of economic value would mean the
end of economic calculation in the sense of calculation in units of
value measured by money. Albert\'s contention is that without prices we
can not allocate resources. It would mean that there would no longer
be any common unit of calculation for making decisions regarding the
production of goods.
The WSM counter this with the proposal that socialism, as a moneyless
society in which use values would be produced from other use values,
there would be no need to have a universal unit of account but could
calculate exclusively in kind. The only calculations that would be
necessary in socialism would be calculations- in-kind. On the one side
would be recorded the resources (materials, energy, equipment, labour)
used up in production and on the other side the amount of the goods
produced, together with any by-products. This, of course, is done
under capitalism but it is doubled by an exchange value calculation:
the exchange value of the resources used up is recorded as the cost of
production while the exchange value of the output (after it has been
realised on the market) is recorded as sales receipts. If the latter
is greater than the former, then a profit has been made; if it is
less, then a loss is recorded. Such profit-and-loss accounting has no
place in socialism and would, once again, be quite meaningless.
Calculation- in-kind entails the counting or measurement of physical
quantities of different kinds of factors of production. There is no
general unit of accounting involved in this process such as money or
labour hours or energy units. In fact, every conceivable kind of
economic system has to rely on calculation- in-kind, including
capitalism. Without it, the physical organisation of production (e.g.
maintaining inventories) would be literally impossible. But where
capitalism relies on monetary accounting as well as
calculation- in-kind, socialism relies solely on the latter. This is
one reason why socialism holds a decisive productive advantage over
capitalism AND Parecon by eliminating the need to tie up vast
quantities of resources and labour implicated in a system of
monetary/pricing accounting.
Albert tells us that without the guidance of prices socialism would
sink into inefficiency. "Socialism" or "Communism" has for the WSM
meant a society without markets, money, wage labour or a state. All
wealth would be produced on a strictly voluntary basis. Goods and
services would be provided directly for self determined need and not
for sale on a market; they would be made freely available for
individuals to take without requiring these individuals to offer
something in direct exchange. The sense of mutual obligations and the
realisation of universal interdependency arising from this would
profoundly colour people\'s perceptions and influence their behaviour
in such a society. We may thus characterise such a society as being
built around a moral economy and a system of generalised reciprocity.
Let\'s get to the practicalities of Free Access Socialism.
The problem with a centrally-planned model of socialism was its
inability to cope with change. It lacks any kind of feedback mechanism
which allows for mutual adjustments between the different actors in
such an economy. It is completely inflexible. We witnessed in Russia
how it was unable to determine prices by central planning. Prices were
set, re-set, fixed then re-fixed, plans were made then re-appraised,
re-defined, changed and dropped.
Socialism however is a decentralised or polycentric society that is
self regulating, self adjusting and self correcting, from below and
not from the top. It is not a command economy but a responsive one.
Stock or inventory control systems employing calculation- in-kind are
absolutely indispensable to any kind of modern production system.
While it is true that today they operate within a price environment
that is not the same thing as saying, as indeed Albert does, that they
need such an environment in order to operate. Most students of
Logistics will be able to explain how unnecessary dollars and cents
are for its operation. The key to good stock management is the stock
turnover rate – how rapidly stock is removed from the shelves – and
the point at which it may need to be re-ordered. This will also be
affected by considerations such as lead times – how long it takes for
fresh stock to arrive – and the need to anticipate possible changes in
demand. The Just- In- Time systems are another tried and trusted tool
of warehousing and supply chains which can be utilised. And even so,
the existence of buffer stocks provides for a period of re-adjustment.
We even have the existance of store "loyalty cards" that can be put to
more creative and constructive non-commercial usage. Socialism does
not necessary involve the creation of new layers of administrations
but simply the transformation of them.
The "Law of the Minimum" was formulated by an agricultural chemist,
Justus von Liebig in the 19th century. Liebig\'s Law can be applied
equally to the problem of resource allocation in any economy. For any
given bundle of factors required to produce a given good, one of these
will be the limiting factor. That is to say, the output of this good
will be restricted by the availability of the factor in question
constituting the limiting factor. All things being equal, it makes
sense from an economic point of view to economise most on those things
that are scarcest and to make greatest use of those things that are
abundant. Factors lying in between these two poles can be treated
accordingly in relative terms.
Actually to claim that all factors are scarce (because the use of any
factor entails an opportunity cost) and, consequently, need to be
economised is not a very sensible approach to adopt. Effective
economisation of resources requires discrimination and selection; you
cannot treat every factor equally – that is, as equally scarce – or,
if you do, this will result in gross misallocation of resources and
economic inefficiency as we see today in our present economy.
In any economy there needs to be some way of prioritising production
goals. How might these priorities be determined? We can apply Maslow\'s
"hierarchy of needs" as a guide to action. It would seem reasonable to
suppose that needs that were most pressing and upon which the
satisfaction of others needs were contingent, would take priority over
those other needs. We are talking here about our basic physiological
needs for food, water, adequate sanitation and housing and so on. This
would be reflected in the allocation of resources: high priority end
goals would take precedence over low priority end goals where
resources common to both are revealed (via the self regulating system
of stock control) to be in short supply.
We can also speculate, that some kind of "points system" might be
used with which to evaluate a range of different projects facing such
a society. Again those more qualified can explain how cost-benefit
analysis is not dependant upon dollars and cents calculations, as even
now ecological concerns are required to be taken into consideration in
planning. In fact each day we all individually use various methods of
adding up pros and cons to determine actions. Naturally, under
capitalism (read Parecon) the balance sheet of the relevant benefits
and costs advantages and disadvantages of a particular scheme or rival
schemes is drawn up in money terms, but in socialism a points system
for attributing relative importance to the various relevant
considerations could be used instead. The points attributed to these
considerations would be subjective, in the sense that this would
depend on a deliberate social decision rather than on some objective
standard. In the sense that one of the aims of socialism is precisely
to rescue humankind from the capitalist fixation with production
time/money, cost-benefit type analyses, as a means of taking into
account other factors, could therefore be said to be more appropriate
for use in socialism than under capitalism. Using points systems to
attribute relative importance in this way would not be to recreate
some universal unit of evaluation and calculation, but simply to
employ a technique to facilitate decision-making in particular
concrete cases. The advantages/disadvan tages and even the points
attributed to them can, and normally would, differ from case to case.
So what we are talking about is not a new abstract universal unit of
measurement to replace money and economic value but one technique
among others for reaching rational decisions in a society where the
criterion of rationality is human welfare.
Marx and the WSM has been generally reluctant about producing
"recipes for the cook-shops of tomorrow" (unlike the detailed and
specific constructs of Parecon) but a broad picture would be that
production-for- use would operate in direct response to need. These
would arise in local communities expressed as required quantities such
as grammes, kilos, tonnes, litres, metres, cubic metres, etc., of
various materials and quantities of goods. These would then be
communicated as required elements of productive activity, as a
technical sequence, to different scales of social production,
according to necessity .Each particular part of production would be
responding to the material requirements communicated to it through the
connected ideas of social production. It would be self-regulating,
because each element of production would be self-adjusting to the
communication of these material requirements. Each part of production
would know its position. If requirements are low in relation to a
build-up of stock, then this would be an automatic indication to a
production unit that its production should be reduced. The register of
needs and the communication of every necessary element of those needs
to the structure of production would be clear and readily known. The
supply of some needs will take place within the local community and in
these cases production would not extend beyond this. For example, with
local food production for local consumption. Other needs could be
communicated as required things to the regional organisation of
production. Local food production would require glass, but not every
local community could have its own glass works. The requirements for
glass could be communicated to a regional glass works. These would be
definite quantities of required glass. The glass works has its own
suppliers of materials, and the amounts they require for the
production of 1 tonne of glass are known in definite quantities. The
required quantities of these materials could be passed by the glass
works to the regional suppliers of the materials for glass
manufacture. This would be a sequence of communication of local needs
to the regional organisation of production, and thus contained within
a region. Local food production would also require tractors, and here
the communication of required quantities of things could extend
further to the world organisation of production. Regional manufacture
could produce and assemble the component parts of tractors for
distribution to local communities. These would be required in a
definite number and, on the basis of this definite number of final
products, the definite number of component parts for tractors would
also be known. The regional production unit producing tractors would
communicate these definite quantities to their own suppliers and
eventually this would extend to world production units extracting and
processing the necessary materials.
This would be the self-regulating system of production for need,
operating on the basis of the communication of need as definite
quantities of things throughout the structure of production. Each
production unit would convert the requirements communicated to it into
its own material requirements and pass these on to its suppliers. This
would be the sequence by which every element of labour required for
the production of a final product would be known. This system of
self-regulating production for use is achieved through communications.
Socialism would make full use of the means communications which have
developed. These include not only transport such as roads, railways,
shipping, etc. They also include the existing system of electronic
communications which provide for instant world-wide contact as well as
facilities for storing and processing millions of pieces of
information. Modern information technology could be used by socialism
to integrate any required combination of different parts of its world
structure of production. Simpler is Better.
Planning in socialism is essentially a question of industrial
organisation, of organising productive units into a productive system
functioning smoothly to supply the useful things which people had
indicated they needed, both for their individual and for their
collective consumption. What socialism would establish would be a
rationalised network of planned links between users and suppliers;
between final users and their immediate suppliers, between these
latter and their suppliers, and so on down the line to those who
extract the raw materials from nature. There is no point in drawing up
in advance the sort of detailed blueprint of industrial organisation
that the old IWW and the Syndicalists used to and what Parecon now
does, but it is still reasonable to assume that productive activity
would be divided into branches and that production in these branches
would be organised by a delegate body. The responsibility of these
industries would be to ensure the supply of a particular kind of
product either, in the case of consumer goods, to distribution centres
or, in the case of goods used to produce other goods, to productive
units or other industries.
Since the needs of consumers are always needs for a specific product
at a specific time in a specific locality, we will assume that
socialist society would leave the initial assessment of likely needs
to a delegate body under the control of the local community (although,
other arrangements are possible if that were what the members of
socialist society wanted). In a stable society such as socialism,
needs would change relatively slowly. Hence it is reasonable to
surmise that an efficient system of stock control, recording what
individuals actually chose to take under conditions of free access
from local distribution centres over a given period, would enable the
local distribution committee to estimate what the need for food,
drink, clothes and household goods would be over a similar future
period. Some needs would be able to be met locally: local transport,
restaurants, builders, repairs and some food are examples as well as
services such as street-lighting, libraries and refuse collection. The
local distribution committee would then communicate needs that could
not be met locally to the bodies charged with coordinating supplies to
local communities.
The individual would have free access to the goods on the shelves of
the local distribution centres; the local distribution centres free
access to the goods they required to be always adequately stocked with
what people needed; their suppliers free access to the goods they
required from the factories which supplied them; industries and
factories free access to the materials, equipment and energy they
needed to produce their products; and so on. Production and
distribution in socialism would thus be a question of organising a
coordinated and more or less self-regulating system of linkages
between users and suppliers, enabling resources and materials to flow
smoothly from one productive unit to another, and ultimately to the
final user, in response to information flowing in the opposite
direction originating from final users. The productive system would
thus be set in motion from the consumer end, as individuals and
communities took steps to satisfy their self-defined needs. Socialist
production is self-regulating production for use.
To ensure the smooth functioning of the system, statistical offices (
and many of those now exist ) would be needed to provide estimates of
what would have to be produced to meet peoples likely individual and
collective needs. These could be calculated in the light of consumer
wants as indicated by returns from local distribution committees and
of technical data (productive capacity, production methods,
productivity, etc) incorporated in input-output tables. For, at any
given level of technology (reflected in the input-output tables), a
given mix of final goods (consumer wants) requires for its production
a given mix of intermediate goods and raw materials; it is this latter
mix that the central statistical office would be calculating in broad
terms. Such calculations would also indicate whether or not productive
capacity would need to be expanded and in what branches. The centre
(or rather centres for each world-region) would thus be essentially an
information clearing house, processing information communicated to it
about production and distribution and passing on the results to
industries for them to draw up their production plans so as to be in a
position to meet the requests for their products coming from other
industries and from local communities. The only calculations that
would be necessary in socialism would be calculations- in-kind. On the
one side would be recorded the resources (materials, energy,
equipment, labour) used up in production and on the other side the
amount of the goods produced, together with any by-products.
Stock or inventory control systems employing calculation- in-kind are,
as was suggested earlier, absolutely indispensable to any kind of
modern production system. While it is true that they operate within a
price environment today, that is not the same thing as saying they
need such an environment in order to operate. The key to good stock
management is the stock turnover rate – how rapidly stock is removed
from the shelves – and the point at which it may need to be
re-ordered. This will also be affected by considerations such as lead
times – how long it takes for fresh stock to arrive – and the need to
anticipate possible changes in demand.
To summarise a typical sequence of allocation and information flows
in a socialist economy might be as follows. Lets assume a store stocks
a certain consumer good – say, shoes and boots. From past experience
it knows that it will need to re-order approximately 1000 pairs from
its suppliers at the start of every month or, by the end of the month,
supplies will be low. Assume that, for whatever reason, the rate of
stock turnover increases sharply to say 2000 tins per month. This will
require either more frequent deliveries or, alternatively, larger
deliveries. Possibly the capacity of the distribution point may not be
large enough to accommodate the extra quantity of footwear required in
which case it will have to opt for more frequent deliveries. It could
also add to its storage capacity but this would probably take a bit
more time. In any event, this information will be communicated to its
suppliers. These suppliers, in turn, may require additional leather or
plastic , to make the shoes or boots to be processed and this
information can similarly be communicated in the form of new orders to
suppliers of those items further down the production chain. And so on
and so forth. The whole process is, to a large extent, automatic, or
self-regulating, being driven by dispersed information signals from
producers and consumers concerning the supply and demand for goods
and, as such, is far removed from the gross caricature of a centrally
planned economy.
Parecons Co-ordinator class thesis is rather an academic one. In
fact, for those who felt that the Russian Revolution was a failed
revolution rather than what it was.. a still born one-since after all
the intelligentsia of the 19th century, Lenin\'s professional party
cadres and the rise of soviet apparachiks were one and the same
process. (A bourgeois revolution without the bourgeoisie as some
scholars have described it and Marx had envisaged the possibilities of
capitalism without the capitalist - "the collective capitalist", "the
associated capitalist", "the national capitalist", employing "state",
"industrial" , "social", capital perhaps co-ordinated through a Central
Bank to continue exploitation without individual ownership.)
The threat of the bureaucracy assuming a new class in socialism that
Parecon spends many pages warning and organising to avoid simply
cannot arise in this form of socialism. Free access to goods and
services denies to any group or individuals the political leverage
with which to dominate others (a feature intrinsic to all
private-property or class based systems through control and rationing
of the means of life). This will work to ensure that a socialist
society is run on the basis of democratic consensus. Decisions will be
made at different levels of organisation: global, regional and local
with the bulk of decision-making being made at the local level. A
socialist economy would be a polycentric, not a centrally planned,
economy. Free access to the common treasury and no monopoly of
ownership, not even by the producers who call for ownership of their
own product,(as promoted by mutualists and syndicalists) can deprive
individuals in society of common ownership of the means of production
and distribution.
Socialism will be a self regulating, decentralised inter-linked
system to provide for a self sustaining steady state society. And we
can set out a possible way of achieving an eventual zero growth steady
state society operating in a stable and ecologically benign way. This
could be achieved in three main phases. First, there would have to be
emergency action to relieve the worst problems of food shortages,
health care and housing which affect billions of people throughout the
world. Secondly, longer term action to construct means of production
and infrastructures such as transport systems for the supply of
permanent housing and durable consumption goods. These could be
designed in line with conservation principles, which means they would
be made to last for a long time, using materials that where possible
could be re-cycled and would require minimum maintenance. Thirdly,
with these objectives achieved there could be an eventual fall in
production, and society could move into a stable mode. This would
achieve a rhythm of daily production in line with daily needs with no
significant growth. On this basis, the world community could reconcile
two great needs, the need to live in material well being whilst
looking after the planet which is our shared home in space. Thus, we
can settle Parecon\'s claims that moneyless society cannot calculate
opportunity costs and allocate rationally by this methodological
economic process:
1.) Calculation- in-Kind
2.) A Self Regulating System of Stock Control - which identifies
quantities of stocks available and provides a reliable indication
of consumer demand (via the the depletion rates of stocks)
3.) The Law of the Minimum - whereby you economise most on those
factors of production that are relatively scarcest
4.) A Social Hierarchy of Prioritized Production Goals - which sorts
out the allocation of scarce factors where competing demands
are placed upon them.
With this approach it is possible to ascertain opportunity costs.
Assume a particular factor X has 20 units in stock (as revealed via
the self-regulating system of stock control mentioned above - feature
2). Assume there are two end-uses for X , end-use A and end-use B.
Assume A requires 12 units of X and B requires 10 units of X. Clearly
the full requirements for X for both A and B cannot both be met. If we
chose to met A\'s requirements fully then the opportunity cost of this
is a slight reduction in the output of B - and vice versa. Deciding
which end use should take priority is a function of feature 4 of a
socialist allocative mechanism. This mechanism will direct producers
towards economically efficient outcomes for the economy as a
functioning whole since every part of it is connected to every other
part via a feedback system.
Albert alleges that \'from each according to ability, to each according
to need\', is an unachievable utopian ideal.
In socialist society, productive activity would take the form of
freely chosen activity undertaken by human beings with a view to
producing the things they needed to live and enjoy life. The necessary
productive work of society would not be done by a class of hired wage
workers, but by all members of society, each according to their
particular skills and abilities, cooperating to produce the things
required to satisfy their needs both as individuals and as
communities. Work in socialist society could only be voluntary since
there would be no group or organ in a position to force people to work
against their will. As to collective needs (schools, hospitals,
theatres, libraries and the like), these could be decided by the
groups of individuals concerned, using the various democratic
representative bodies which they would create at different levels in
socialist society. Thus production in socialism would be the
production of free goods to meet self-defined needs, individual and
collective. Society requires a rational, long-term attitude towards
conserving resources and yet present day society imposes intolerable
conditions on the actual producers (speed-up, pain, stress, boredom,
long hours, night work, shiftwork, accidents).
Socialism, because it will calculate directly in kind, will be able
to take these more important factors, rather than production time,
into account. Once production has stablized these other factors will
naturally lead to different, in many cases quite different, productive
methods being adopted, rather than the method employed now under
capitalism. If the health, comfort and enjoyment of those who actually
manipulate the materials, or who supervise the machines which do this,
to transform them into useful objects is to be paramount, certain
methods are going to be ruled out altogether. For example,
particularly dangerous or unhealthy jobs would be automated or
abandoned. Work will be useful, fulfilling, and as it is interest
driven, can become enjoyable. But to the extent that work becomes
enjoyable, measurement by effort and/or working time would be
completely meaningless, since people would not be seeking to either
minimize, nor rush such work.
Parecon is attractive to those who dislike capitalism, but who, in the final analysis, lack confidence that either there are sufficient resources on the planet to provide for all, or that human beings can work voluntarily, and co-operate to organize production & distribution of wealth without chaos, and consume wealth responsibly without some form of rationing.
In the end, Pareconists remain no less fixated to the lazy person, greedy individual, critique of human behaviour than Capitalism\'s apologists."
Alan Johnstone
http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2008/06/pareconfusion.html
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Wrong assumption of money
By Primc, Matic at Jun 22, 2008 15:02 PM
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Re:
By Albert, Michael at Jun 21, 2008 14:00 PM
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assumptions
By Martin, Michael at Jun 09, 2008 22:20 PM
In my experience, it has been crucial to recognize and try to eliminate ready-made assumptions before I could even begin to comprehend Parecon. Knee-jerk reliance on long-held comfort paradigms and doctrinaire (however dear) habits are perhaps the first, and toughest, block to a clear understanding--therefore, comprehensible opinion--of Parecon.
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assumptions
By Martin, Michael at Jun 09, 2008 22:13 PM
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