/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2442007
because hes british

>>2442007
nah man, cockshott's whole point is that elections are outdated and a dead-end

Third part of the series of vids about British doctors is out on Cockshott's channel. IMHO the most interesting part is about the history of doctors going on strike in Britain (12:48 to 14:27).

>>2442007
Electoralism puts an aristocracy in power and is very well suited to bourgeois class rule

>>2446754
very waffly. but it's fun to hear him point out that the TPS is not the end-all-be-all

>>2446754
Guy sounds like a wanker (labor time accounting is a trauma response hurrdurr). He mentions the works of Eliyahu M. Goldratt. We actually had threads for reviews of management books (back in 2019 on 8chan/bunkerchan) and Goldratt's stuff was among those books. I have no idea if anyone archived those threads. Anyway, a bias of Goldratt's stories was that he really assumed the bottlenecks to be stubborn and stick in the same place for days, whereas in reality you really can get to the point that the bottleneck switches positions after a few minutes. By the way, Goldratt got into legal trouble for making false optimality claims about his management software.

>>2440889
>not gonna watch this trash
why announce your intention to not do something?
>cybernetics is a bourgeois pseudoscience
why? elaborate.

>>2447108
Roger is a contrarian, but at least he admits that he is
>Anyway, a bias of Goldratt's stories was that he really assumed the bottlenecks to be stubborn and stick in the same place for days, whereas in reality you really can get to the point that the bottleneck switches positions after a few minutes
hence why you want inventory as a safety margins. the TPS people are autistically against that

>>2447210
Lean production is for overall low inventory, not zero inventory. It's also not really a goal to cut inventory equally in every place (that would be autistic), but to cut inventory in the big picture. Achieving this might involve actually increasing inventory in some spots or even creating inventory spots where there aren't any currently.

My impression of Tom O'Brien is that he really has a very one-sided and extreme view of DA POWAH OF LEAN because he just read texts introducing it and he stays in the hype zone of the early convert for longer than a manager would, simply because he is not a manager. Without the real-world check, you have to be much smarter and very self-critical to learn at the same pace as a dumb person trying it out for real.

>>2448076
>Lean production is for overall low inventory, not zero inventory. It's also not really a goal to cut inventory equally in every place (that would be autistic), but to cut inventory in the big picture. Achieving this might involve actually increasing inventory in some spots or even creating inventory spots where there aren't any currently.
this is still ass-backwards. your need for inventory depends on how accurate your model of the production line is, and how much variance (noise) there is. if you know what a bunch of work stations in a production line will do, and the probability that they will keep on doing that, then you should be able to work out the appropriate level of inventory so as to keep costs down while maintaining steady throughput. if inventory is cheap enough then using more of it is no harm, so long as you have proper regulation
one question I find myself asking is how can this lean stuff actually be instrumentalized? how is the necessary politics brought into it?
>he really has a very one-sided and extreme view of DA POWAH OF LEAN
his zeal is very strong, yes. the same goes with his views on Marx, since they too are detached from reality

It wouldnt be socialism as no one would have to work. Unless you start advocating for the robot rights.

>Notes on Angry Workers’ debate contribution
https://leftdis.wordpress.com/2025/08/25/notes-on-angry-workers-debate-contribution/
a reply to this post, which I believe was posted here a couple of threads back: https://www.angryworkers.org/2025/07/30/thoughts-on-the-fundamental-principles-of-communist-production-and-distribution/

>>2457826
>The principle of exploitation is as straightforward as the principle of its abolition. The abolition of wage labour can only be achieved by abolishing the separation between labour and its products, and by returning the right to dispose of these products, and thus the means of production, to the workers
by "the workers", does the author mean the workers at a particular workplace, or the working class as a whole? if the former, then it's the same reactionary nonsense we see from anarchists and market "socialists"
>The enforcement of labour-time accounting, i.e. the use of individual labour-time as a measure of a worker’s share in the product of socially averaged labour-time, makes exploitation impossible and leads to the socialisation of the means of production
this seems to imply that non-workers (the sick, the elderly) should have no share in the surplus product, and indeed that no surplus product should be produced. how they imagine investments should be handled is not clear
>Without this foundation, any attempts to reorganise the labour process would rely on moral appeals or administrative orders instead of decisions made by the associated producers themselves
apparently "administrative orders" and "decisions made by the associated producers" are different things in these people's heads. this reeks of cold war anti-communism
>This concept is intended to prevent two undesirable developments: […] 2) The state-communist danger of the central apparatus treating the operational units as passive executors of its directives.
this reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of Soviet (and Chinese etc) planning
>In capitalism, accounting in value terms is the private record of capital’s command over labour; in council communism, accounting in socially-average labour hours is the public record of the producers’ command over their own work and product.
<if I change the names of things (value -> SNLT) then I have changed the things in themselves!
at least the public accounting bit is decent though. it's the one actually good thought the GIC has produced. it's a shame it's hidden among a bunch of much

as expected the text has nothing to say about Neurathian pseudorationality. apparently labour time accounting and talking is enough to deal with global warming

>>2457850
>by "the workers", does the author mean the workers at a particular workplace, or the working class as a whole?
The latter. Hermann Lueer is the number one promoter of the GIK text in the world so he has the same take as them.
>this seems to imply that non-workers (the sick, the elderly) should have no share in the surplus product, and indeed that no surplus product should be produced
Don't be silly. Professional caretakers get remuneration and there is a deduction for that (and for people doing R & D and other stuff) and that logically means that the individual worker cannot own their output as an individual. This is covered in the GIK text.
>global warming
The GIK text is almost a century old by now.

>>2457986
>Don't be silly. Professional caretakers get remuneration and there is a deduction for that (and for people doing R & D and other stuff) and that logically means that the individual worker cannot own their output as an individual. This is covered in the GIK text.
then why tf do they feel the need to point this shit out? there's no need to spill ink over saying that the DotP is when the proletariat decides things. it just strikes me as arguing against straw men
>The GIK text is almost a century old by now
yes, but none of the people who cite it do anything to address global warming. global warming is also far from the only such concern. see Neurath, who was writing about planning in the late 1910's and early 1920's. or the Soviet debate, which was very lively

Pinned tweet by @BenBurgis
<On Saturday, September 13th I'll be speaking on a panel on post-capitalist blueprints at the @jacobin conference in NYC
AFAIK he shills for market socialism. I don't know if he is familiar with the critique of that using money distribution models of econophysics.

damn he was a twink

>>2477677
Kinda looks like Ivan Drago. I imagine he was fit for the COBI.

>>2477554
I've come to the regretful conclusion that 2/3rds of people advocating for "planning" are just market socialists in disguise

if you ask chat gpt to apply category theory to economnics it basically starts talking in marx-like terms even if you never mentioned marx to it before

>>2477677
The word "twink" has become completely fucking meaningless.

Live now

>>2488453
COCKSHOTT OR BUST
BYE

>>2477554
BEN BURGER IS CRINGE LIB

>>2488453
I have no idea why Tom is so hellbent on shilling Toyota methods in socialism, in general the world has been moving away from JIT production since the pandemic, if Tom thinks pull production methods are some panacea I have seen them in action in software engineering for a good breakdown of why they are wrong see this >>>/tech/26448

>>2482727
explain

>>2488860
the true genius of toyota is not JIT production, its using your dominant position and subcontracting to squeeze the subcontractors hard and drain all the profit. Its a model also used in the supermarket industry and franchising in general, subcontract the actual stores to "independent" managers who own it, but control the supply and central procurement and get all the profit. Small owners are very good at exploiting their employees (and themselves) harder than a big company could (because they face harsher regulation, taxes, and more easily organized labor, its the small business advantage against big company who get economy of scale)

(I once wanted to translate this excellent article to post it, but now that AI can do it for me, I will simply post the link)
https://www.econospheres.be/Delhaize-le-gout-amer-du-vrai-capitalisme

>>2488453
At 11:49 there is a statement from AcidCommunistAachen that in Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx endorsed unequal hourly remuneration under socialism, that is the quantity of your individual output is remunerated on the basis of how many hours it takes on average for people with the same job to achieve this.
I think this is a bit imprecise. What is the same job? New and improved tools are not instantly available to everybody in sufficient quantity, so some will work with outdated tools. Your performance should be judged relative to people working with the same tools. So for remuneration, we will have several standards on the basis of using old or new tools. (But when it comes to the price of the output, we will pool the processes with the old and new tools together for averaging.) I do believe that the person agrees with what I'm saying here.

O'Brien points out the distinction between producing more due to differences in technology and due to different natural endowments. It is clear that he doesn't like rewarding natural endowments. He tries to make this point by interpreting Marx correctly, using the same passage in CotGP. He notes that there is a common "misinterpretation" of the text, a "basic mistake" and that it actually aligns with his position. I'm a native German speaker and it's clear to me that O'Brien is misinterpreting it. This guy who can't read German refers to Andrew Kliman, another guy who can't read German, on how to interpret Marx. (He is confident in his position, so he could and should just state it without reference to the authority of Marx. He actually seems to come to this insight right after the Kliman shilling.) O'Brien claims rewarding natural endowment would stratify society. Yeah OK sure. He illustrates this with a society pyramid with slaves at the bottom and a literal pharaoh on top! Now that's what I call a basic mistake. If there is no extraction mechanism that takes from the bottom and gives to the top, you don't have a class society.

He seems against remunerating unpleasant labor for more, claiming this has been gamed in communes, so time and again these people have come around to chore rotation. So his argument is: If it can't even work on a small scale, why would it work on a big scale? Now any mainstream economist can tell you that's a silly argument because it's easy to game a tiny market compared to a thick market with many participants. We can say the same about voting procedures that look very different from what we normally call a market. A solution of equal chore rotation of course does not require weighting the chores, but equal duties are not feasible when there are many different tasks. For organizing production on the big scale, there is no way around weighting arduous work, irrespective of whether that information is used for different remuneration or for equalizing the "weight" of different packages of concrete chores.

For the rest, I agree with him: For complex labor, we can add the training time to the produced output. We can put a physical use-limit per year on a natural resource and use demand data to increase its price accordingly or set its price somewhat arbitrary fashion and this is neither abandoning labor-time accounting in the big picture nor against Marx and Engels. O'Brien quotes Engels in support of still having rental payments:
<Just as the abolition of property in land is not the abolition of ground rent, but its transfer, although in a modified form, to society. The actual seizure of all the instruments of labor by the working people therefore does not at all exclude the retention of the rent relations.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch03.htm

Would creating a cybernetic system of economic organization to achieve communism, but one which in a way enslaves humanity to this system of machines, be an advancement towards communism that simply leaves us with a new contradiction to overcome, or a tragic mistake that could have been avoided? What mechanisms of avoidance are there? Is there any theory on this that isn't bourgeois?

>>2488941
>the true genius of toyota is not JIT production, its using your dominant position and subcontracting to squeeze the subcontractors hard and drain all the profit
TRVE and HONEST gommunism
>>2488860
>I have no idea why Tom is so hellbent on shilling Toyota methods in socialism
it's because what Tom is saying is deeply reactionary. he explicitly agrees with the Austrians. specifically Hayek, as has been pointed out ITT many times
Donal as far more interesting. I don't understand why he attaches himself to Tom
>>2488987
class struggle sharpens in communism

>>2489137
>class struggle sharpens in communism
Can you link me some theory on this

Will any group of communists ever follow Ian Wright's commandment to create alternative modes of living, fund raising, and organization divorced from the Leninist theory of the revolutionary party? (1:31:32)

>>2482838
fr. bro looked masculine. just shaved

>>2488987
>one which in a way enslaves humanity to this system of machines
but what does that imply?

>>2489350
A cybernetic system which is set in stone and not flexible enough or subject to change, or one which becomes too abstract and over generations people forget the theory behind how it works necessary to know how to properly evolve it

>>2488453
I find it really funny that around 30:30 Tom just flat out admits that labor time accounting is the same as money accounting
>picrel
is Tom a clangfag?

>>2488958
>This guy who can't read German refers to Andrew Kliman, another guy who can't read German, on how to interpret Marx
I only read a little bit of German, and even I have come up with multiple places where the English translations don't do the original text justice. this is why it's important not to treat Marx as some kind of prophet. especially since Marx is wrong in many places
what I think O'Brien is doing is using Marx to try and justify his own eclectic views. except of course where Marx' words directly contradicts O'Brien's views

If/when this site dies, is there presently a single other community on the internet that is capable of having this Marxist cybernetics discourse like this thread?
I thought CASPERForum at first would be it, then it went offline
Then I thought indep.network would, but got overridden by the parecon libsocs.
Could cibcom.org be convinced to add a forum to their website? Is there some corner of Lemmy or Mastodon I'm unaware of? We need something concrete. I hate this loosey-goosey situation we're in right now, as imageboards / leftypol shrinks every year, Reddit constantly purges far-left /r/, lemmygrad is spearheaded by red socdems, Tiktok just got bought by zioyankees… I'm NOIDing comrades.

>>2489622
cibcom was moving towards an international section for a while I think, but indep becoming a thing probably put a damper on that
we probably need to struggle within indep

>>2489622
Idk, but just in case someone thinks he need to set up a web server, availability, all that, which will cost some money.. I found syndie.de, it is not a customization of a web browser. It is a program, like a forum. But everyone can make a mirror AFAIK. It supports https, i2p. If you worry someone will DDOS your home computer, keep an i2p mirror, although I'm not 100% sure it will save you from an attack.

>>2489635
running a forum isn't terribly difficult. bots are an issue though, but it can be handled by having a custom question during account setup, like asking who wrote Capital Jenny. Anubis can take care of some of the DDOS nonsense

>>2488860
>I have seen them in action in software engineering for a good breakdown of why they are wrong see this >>>/tech/26448
oh god I fucking hate agile with a passion. I thank GNU every day that I can work on projects that have a spec up front and a fixed price

>>2488987
>that simply leaves us with a new contradiction to overcome
you can't escape this, no matter the system

>>2489325
what even is this shit, fuck off

>>2491066
do not besmirch Ian Wright (pbuh), the Prophet of Capital
>>2489325
watched this earlier. there's a bunch of good stuff in there. didn't know Wright is working on a book

>>2491066
lol is this the best that counter revolutionary science can come up with these days.