/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2322089
the game looked pretty jank when I played the demo but I don't really trust this guy's opinions

>>2324970
Why not reply with an actual proposal by Neurath. Or do you not know any. How could that be.

>>2289711
fermentation of cheese and wine too. hell the peppers in tabasco sauce are fermented in wood kegs for 3 years

>>2326836
The article by Thomas Uebel was already discussed in an older thread: https://archive.is/jXivP in comment No. 1943092. Uebel is making the same point about Neurath not knowing how to actually do planning in kind.
<…it appears that his strong in-kind calculability assumption traded on the future achievement of a research program called “calculation in kind.”

>>2326962
yeah? the USSR amounts to such a research project

>>2327710
this videos two years old?

>>2324545
>As long as there is labor discipline, you can use abstract labor in accounting and planning, with or without a market.
Addendum: And even something like equal labor discipline across workplaces is not necessary. As long as we have good estimates of how people are doing in different places relative to a standard we are good.

>>2327249
Not really, no. Developing plans for ever completely replacing one-dimensional accounting (for that's what Uebel means by strong in-kind calculability) was never a mainstream position among soviet economists. They may have paid lip service to the idea, but only for a future period beyond what they concerned themselves with.

For anyone who can read German, you might want to check out Die Wirtschaftsrechnung in der sozialistischen Gesellschaft by Otto Leichter (1923) for a sensible if boring take on socialism. (Except for this bit: He wants to give higher remuneration to educated people, because he doesn't think much of education in terms of society providing it, but mostly as an achievement and sacrifice of the individual.)

He mentions a certain Tschajanow (that's how the Russian name looks in German) as a guy among the very tiny pro in-kind crowd in the USSR. Leichter describes Tschajanow's proposal for agriculture, which is far more concrete than anything by Neurath. It requires people coming up with tons of standards for judgments and evaluations and then we can do marginally-productivity analysis with physical inputs. Tschajanow claims that this is THE solution for organizing a socialist economy. But Leichter points out it's really something for comparisons at a place or at most within an industry and not an approach for the economy as a whole.

>>2333305
I assume you mean this paper: https://raetekommunismus.de/Texte%20Grundprinzipien/Grundprinzipien%20Wirtschaftsrechnung%20Leichter.pdf
Firefox did a pretty bad job at translating it, but it seems it's just a whole lot of waffle
I am aware that the USSR cucked to value, that it often just "planned" things in rubels, especially in sector B. I am also aware that Neurath never did do an entire economy in kind, since the computational power to do that simply did not exist in his lifetime. that's beside the point. what I am reacting to is this endless flood of "proposals" that amount to just changing the name of the currency and calling that planning. how are these proposals, where each product is stamped with a price in terms of labor, where each workplace purchases products from eachother, not just market socialism? the notion that workplaces can plan in isolation and arrive at good regulation, that production anarchy is good actually, is completely at odds with Capital, and at odds with modern cybernetics
>Tschajanow
do you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Chayanov ?

>>2334356
>I assume you mean this paper
You should know from the first sentence that this is a small excerpt of a bigger work. Here is a shitty scan.
>I am also aware that Neurath never did do an entire economy in kind, since the computational power to do that simply did not exist in his lifetime.
It wasn't a lack of computational power. Neurath did not know how to do it, he just had a feeling it's possible.
>what I am reacting to is this endless flood of "proposals" that amount to just changing the name of the currency and calling that planning.
If you follow the way Marx and Engels wrote, labor vouchers as proposed in TANS are not money. And while places like the GDR did not literally implement this since people could give cash to other people, there was no capitalist money circuit. The split between investment and consumption was set by administrative fiat. The problem was the opposite of what you are complaining about: They did something very different from capitalism, but lacked the language to express it and stuck to capitalist terms like money and profit, terms that only in some longer texts had the proper qualifications added. And this lack of clear short terms made it easier for revisionist changes: 'What's the big deal with a bit more private initiative if we are already doing profit and money accounting, my fellow comrades?'

>how are these proposals, where each product is stamped with a price in terms of labor, where each workplace purchases products from eachother, not just market socialism?
Cockshott and Cottrell do not propose workplaces purchasing their own means of production. The means of production are pooled together and everything is one big "company". Likewise, Leichter refers to big trusts under capitalism as a reference point and he says everything would be a big trust. According to Marx (as well as common sense), the allocation process within a company is not a market. Hence, if you follow Marx you cannot argue that resemblance between a proposal for socialism and the internal accounting of a capitalist firm is evidence of it being a proposal for doing rebranded capitalism!

>the notion that workplaces can plan in isolation and arrive at good regulation, that production anarchy is good actually
Such a claim is neither in TANS nor in Leichter's proposal.

>do you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Chayanov ?
That must be him, yes.

>>2338732
>It wasn't a lack of computational power. Neurath did not know how to do it, he just had a feeling it's possible.
right. but Gosplan was perfectly capable of doing it, if only for a very limited subset of the economy. we know that we can do it for a much larger set these days. whether it can be done for the entire world economy is an open question
>If you follow the way Marx and Engels wrote, labor vouchers as proposed in TANS are not money. And while places like the GDR did not literally implement this since people could give cash to other people, there was no capitalist money circuit. The split between investment and consumption was set by administrative fiat. The problem was the opposite of what you are complaining about: They did something very different from capitalism, but lacked the language to express it and stuck to capitalist terms like money and profit, terms that only in some longer texts had the proper qualifications added. And this lack of clear short terms made it easier for revisionist changes: 'What's the big deal with a bit more private initiative if we are already doing profit and money accounting, my fellow comrades?'
fair point. and yes I know that it's not money, but it's still exchange. exchange-value is a more general concept that applies to more than just money. what I am complaining about are proposals that amount to workplaces exchanging products with each other, without a global centralized plan. to me this seems like it cannot result in anything other that a reconstitution of private property. we cannot permit workplaces to go against the will of the entire class. we must struggle against the notion that reducing all the qualitative properties of each use-value down to a single number, a price, is somehow a good thing rather than a bad thing
>Such a claim is neither in TANS nor in Leichter's proposal
I'm not replying to C&C or Leichter, but to anon >>2297068
I'll see if I can do something with the scan when I have better internets, thanks

>>2338732
> I. The problem of accounting in business . 7 1. The problem of accounting in business . All economics goesvonderTatsache,thatpeople recurring Silent needs and with have to budget a stock of elaborated goods. The goods , the were created in a production period are consumed and the recurring Needs necessary the human to a new production period , so that the whole economic life of man other than a Cycle of Production and Consumption is . Any creation of goods intended to shut down from need nissen serve , and with it every satisfaction of need nissen has certain expenditures of labour-power and factual production requirements , which in turn Results the application of labour-power are to Prere . Any satisfaction of needs is not only with a certain suffering of work , but also with the devotion of know goods purchased , which means impoverishment. The Economics has coined the term costs for this and really these costs are d . h . the fact that to everyone Needs satisfaction certain Expenses necessary are , maybe the only common Characteristic all economics shape started from the economy of primitives to Communist Economy of the highest order . The Re production of daily wear-out life force , recovery the daily the basis walking or in the verse consummate Goods caused continuously Costs . When Life to become bearable for the person, then must the cost of living If possible, if possible be low , d . h . the working sufferer and other expenses , by the he the satisfaction of his needs allowed in the Ver equal to the satisfaction caused by the satisfaction of needs not to the immeasurable grow. The farmer People must therefore seek, effort and goal , costs and being Poor satisfaction into a tolerable harmony to bring
yeah I'm not reading 108 pages of Gerlish

new 'ock'ott
>Critique of neo Kautskyism

Victor Magariño put put a planning related video
>Socialism and Central Planning Debate with @boredk

>>2347225
Each are arguing like playing both defense lawyer and judge acting out two different criminal cases.

Victor Magariño: I'm doing the defense of socialism. Socialism is innocent until proven guilty, so if you don't prove its guilt, socialism wins. I'm also the judge here and I decide what is convincing evidence and what is not.

boredk: I'm doing the defense of capitalism. Capitalism is innocent until proven guilty, so if you don't prove its guilt, capitalism wins. I'm also the judge here and I decide what is convincing evidence and what is not.

boredk is repeatedly making an extremely stupid argument: "NO COSTS ATTACHED!!" He claims markets attach costs to expressing wishes, and if you do a survey people will just state they want infinite apples…

First of, people can have individual consumer budgets even if the means of production are all in the hands of one big pseudo-firm, so how is that a killer argument for private ownership of the means of production?

And since changing the income distribution will change the demand data, how can you put so much faith in just market-demand data?

And of course we can limit expressions in surveys to what's technically possible and nerf exaggerations by the way we count them. When you do a survey about how many pencils and apples to produce, you could ask people for the ratio between these rather than absolute amounts. And here is an algo proposed years ago for assigning quantities of a produced pile of a thing: https://pastebin.com/bPyr7Vau Try and see what happens when a person is honest, gets fewer units than he wanted, and then replace his honest input with an exaggeration and repeat the calculation.

boredk is a programmer. If markets are so great, why does computer science even exist? Wouldn't all computing problems just boil down to something you could put in a short booklet. Here's the preferences for your agents. They all participate in a virtual auction. The end.

>>2347703
Kill Austrians. Behead Austrians. etc etc
Victor could have said "just measure it" to boredk's incessant "how 2 find demand???" and he'd have saved everyone several hours. Victor also seems to think there would be people whose job is "planner" and that there would be a "central planning board". he doesn't seem to have advanced past 1920 on this issue. there's also this inability to separate paying for things in distribution and paying for things in production. the two are very different

>>2347703
TL;DR: shallow and pedantic

The Critique of the Gotha Programme is wrong!
Workers can get back their full contribution as income!

The draft of the Gotha Programme said that "…the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society". Marx claimed this to be impossible. The published Gotha Programme does not this statement anymore. But was it logically necessary to yeet that statement? Was Marx right that there must be deductions?

Here is what Marx did not like about the bit with undiminished proceeds:
<Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

<From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

<These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.

<There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

<Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

We might be able to define contribution in marginalist terms. Marginal contribution is a very brittle concept because depending on what time horizon we are thinking in, different things are fixed and fluid, and so our measure changes. Moreover, once we have settled on our accounting norms for measuring the marginal physical output, we can still set the selling price in this or that way, resulting in changing the marginal monetary output of the same action. And what's the marginal contribution to somebody's utility is still another question. We can set the marginal contribution as relative to some expectation value and call anything falling short of that a loss caused by the less-than-perfect person being there and preventing a better person from doing that task perfectly. It seems to me there is so much wiggle room with marginalism that we can define anybody's marginalist contribution to be as small as we want. Playing this definition game is one way of giving everybody back their whole contribution. But let's do something else.

Of course, people can donate and that is not a forced deduction. Of course, joining a voluntary insurance scheme is not a forced deduction either. But there is more: THE KETCHUP ARGUMENT. For this, we will first look at a a seemingly off-topic scenario and then draw our conclusion.

Consider a company that sells sausages. The company promises to not raise sausage prices for the next twelve months. Six months later, a customer complaints: He always eats the sausages with a special ketchup, and this ketchup got more expensive. Well, ketchup getting more expensive might be a reason to be sad, but this does not mean that the sausage company broke its promise about its sausages (even if the same company is also the only one selling this ketchup).

Now consider the following. Imagine you live in a society that promises its citizens this: Doing an hour of labor enables you to buy an hour of labor, without the qualifier "after deductions". You check for the so-called "labor-minute price" of a pretzel you bought. There is a public database about cost accounting in production that clearly shows that natural resources have positive fictional labor minutes assigned already before the factual labor time gets added to that. Well, that might be a reason to be sad, but you doing an hour of dog-sitting does indeed enable you to buy a full hour of another person dog-sitting for you. So, is society really breaking its promise? You might be sad that giving one hour does not get you one hour plus some other stuff (resource inputs), but that was not the promise. The promise was: You can get one hour for giving one hour. That promise is kept.

And so, with green taxes for resources like land, we do have our funds for stuff without taxing labor. In conclusion, Marx was wrong. Dog-sitters of the world, unite!

>>2348685
Wrong. Read https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch37.htm

>>2348697
Not written by Marx and that section you linked does not even refer to Marx. I don't believe you have fully read the post before writing your phony reply.

>>2348712
Marx never lived to see a complete proletarian State. Therefore Marx has nothing of cognitive value to say about such thing from materialist point of view. Proletarian State textbooks clairify your issue

>>2348725
Post >>2348685 is against a specific claim by Marx. Whether you try to support Marx in this or the post against the claim, it does not make sense to link https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch37.htm since it does not make a statement about the claim. If you don't care about what Marx said, there is no point in replying at all.

>>2348831
Marxism is not Karl Marx Thought

>>2348831
his refutation of Marx's claim is refuted within www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch37.htm
his farcical take on socialist value distribution can be corrected by reading that chapter

>>2349133
>Marxism is not Karl Marx Thought
Post >>2348685 is explicitly about a statement by Karl Marx and not somebody or something named "Karl Marx Thought".

>>2349152
>take on socialist value distribution can be corrected by reading that chapter
There is no conflict whatsoever between post >>2348685 and that chapter, hence the chapter cannot be a correction of the post nor vice versa. The entire point of that post is about a logical compatibility that Marx believed to not exist. The chapter posted makes no statement for or against its existence.

New Big Dick Vic MAGA-RINO

>>2351815
already posted >>2347225

>>2356427
I of course agree with TANS (and Marx and Engels) that we will continue to estimate and measure labor time (and that we will take into account task training for the production cost of a product while not using received training as justification for higher income).

Still, wouldn't we want to plan as much as we can with different individual abilities as they exist in different individuals? Think of a huge checklist of abilities for each person (most fields empty, fixed in the short run).

>>2356540
>Still, wouldn't we want to plan as much as we can with different individual abilities as they exist in different individuals?
yes. this is a huge deficiency in Cockshott Thought. any planned economy will quickly find itself having to deal with not just the total amount of labour power at its disposal, but also what kinds of labour power there are

im going to be reading some stuff on this soon, but I wonder if anyone can answer a basic stupid question of mine. For a computer to centrally plan all activity within a system, it must have total visibility on that system right? Isn't this a big privacy issue?

>>2357635
privacy in production is bad. in consumption on the other hand, yeah we probably don't need to know who buys the dragon dildos, only how many we expect to be needed

>>2357635
The issue with surveillance and privacy is when there is a lack of symmetry. It's the lack of symmetry that makes it a power thing: "I see you but you can't see me." Universal lack of privacy would be awkward at first, but not a power thing. That said, it is possible to compute with privacy, it just adds some complications. See: voting.

>>2357639
And let's think about who at the warehouse of the online shop needs to know what. The person picking the item from the storage space (if that is even a person) does not need to know who receives it, the person putting the item into a postal package (again, if that is even a person) does not need to know who receive it either: When the item is put into the postal package, the package gets a code attached (barcode or QR code or RFID). The package goes down a conveyor belt, a machine checks the code, retrieves the associated address from a database, and puts the address on the package. It sometimes still happens that a person sees the information (e. g. when a package accidentally opens). So the people working there are also under oath not to share this information.

When a big family goes to the supermarket, usually one wallet pays for everything. The supermarket does not need to know how the items are assigned within the family. Even with online shopping of individuals all using their own wallets the requests could be routed through households and a cluster of households, with the item sender by default only knowing the household cluster.

Joshua Dávila AKA The Blockchain Socialist wrote a book called Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It. Please read this wonderful review: https://theluddite.org/post/blockchain-radicals.html

If you just want the verdict: The book is ass.

>>2358515
this sounds like a multi-armed bandit problem. you just have to estimate what different production methods will cost over time. we can't know the future exactly
>GIMMI MY FREE TIME
if we optimize on social labour then we can give workers more free time than they have now. since the RoE is ~100% worldwide, this means a 20 hour work week

>>2357635
<For a computer to centrally plan all activity within a system, it must have total visibility on that system right? Isn't this a big privacy issue?
I mean no more than capitalism? Isn't all that data and far more already captured? it would probably be less considering advertising wouldnt be as much a thing so you wouldn't need detailed machine learning data

Is it possible to implement this kind of cybercommunist system side by side with already existing capitalist economy? Like for example lets say in Belgium (and I am picking this one specifically because it is a developed but small country) a communist party gets in power and nationalizes all major domestic enterprises, interlinks them in cybernetic manner implements labour time accounting, and starts publishing labour credit with which consumers can procure goods from state. However portion of economy still remains in private hands, foreign companies still keep their property, and the country as a whole is still integrated withing global market. Is this something that could exist from purely economic perspective (for the sake of argument we ignore political factors)? Basically what I am asking is, could communism be implementable on scale that does not allow for near autarky.

>>2360680
Explain to me first how this is communism.

>>2360720
Ok, let me rephrase it, could this kind of economic planning be implemented side by side with already existing capitalist economy?

>>2360809
So the people working at these nationalized enterprises are paid with labor vouchers with which they can only get goods provided by the state. But goods by the state could only be from said nationalized enterprises which likely doesn‘t cover everything a person may need. To remedy this the state would start buying from private enterprises to provide said goods to people only paid in labor vouchers. The money for that either comes from tax payers using normal currency or from the state selling to other countries to then buy goods from private companies as to be able to provide these goods to people paid only in labour vouchers. That sounds cumbersome and unnecessary to me and would likely lead people to want to be paid out in normal currency instead.

Isn‘t this ultimately the Chinese system just with time based labour vouchers instead? If China doesn‘t use time based labour vouchers while existing under global capitalism then I‘m guessing the answer to your question is no.

>>2360680
I don't see why not. not even the USSR was fully planned. we're going to have to deal with the market for possibly hundreds of years. it is important however that the thumb is put down hard on domestic Porkies
>>2360823
speaking of China, does anyone know to what extent planning is used in the PRC today?

>>2360826
From what I read there is no equivalent of "detailed" planning. Their main planning body is National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), which sets long term economic goals. State implements its plans though tax cuts and subsidies towards favoured industries, regulations, monetary policy, public works. Pretty much the same as any other country, just to larger extend than most.

>>2360842
in other words indicative planning? boo

>>2348685
Arguably the public taking a share from what a diseased person owned (or even all of it) isn't a forced deduction from labor either. Have you ever heard a dead person protest against it?

>>2363523 (me)
FUCK. Meant to write:
Arguably the public taking a share from what a deceased person owned (or even all of it) isn't a forced deduction from labor either.

>>2360680
Cuba exists, you know? It's very similar to what you're describing.
Short answer is: no, you can't, since the global market will block you out due to your socialist economy. It happened *every single fucking time*.

Was YUGOSLAVIA Economically DOOMED? Myths vs Facts – with Eddie Gerba, PhD

Thoughts on the Yugoslav economy? I think it's pretty overlooked by most communists since it wasn't part of the USSR, but I believe it's quite interesting nonetheless. It was actually largely planned and not some "liberal capitalism with red flags" like I've heard before around here.
I suggest you look at the attached video and also the other videos in the youtube channel, very interesting stuff.

>>2378272
yugoslavia had some interesting differences and effects, i don't recomend people to just discart it away like some do.

>>2378272
Also, from Wikipedia:
>The exact nature and extent of market socialism in Yugoslavia is debated by economists. The market mechanism was limited mostly to consumer goods, while capital, labor, materials and intermediate goods were allocated by different means.[33] The Yugoslav model didn't have much in common with the classic model of market socialism imagined by Oskar R. Lange. John Roemer, an advocate of market socialism, had a very negative view of the Yugoslav experiment, claiming that Yugoslav companies weren't run on true market principles of competition and profit, and that they instead relied on soft budget constraints and were subjected to political control, which created a deeply inefficient system that ultimately collapsed.[34] While admitting that it is somewhat problematic to use the term market in the context of socialist countries such as Yugoslavia or Hungary (after the introduction of New Economic Mechanism), János Kornai believed that the term market socialism is still appropriate because such countries at least partially experimented with markets under socialism which would otherwise remain only an abstract idea.[35]