New system
Jun 7 2009 05:24
If anyone is interested, I've written an alternative economic system, along libertarian communist lines - http://angeleconomics.blogspot.com/.
I know its a bit irritating for me to walk in here brandishing adverts in my first post. (I did used to be a libcom forum member a while ago...). Forgive me.
Anyway, I would appreciate any comments.
Jun 8 2009 05:28
#2
Don't forget that one big driver of the size and force of socialist/communist movements has been the fact that they had, at their center, an inspiring vision of how the future could look. Early last century, massive intellectual figures were drawn in, and a much wider milieu at least considered the ideas very seriously.
Obviously, it is not the only thing that matters; it is what it is. But achieving intellectual hegemony is part of strategy/struggle. No?
(I'm trying to overlook the mindless insults, and be positive)
Jun 9 2009 12:28
#3
themediumdog wrote:
If anyone is interested, I've written an alternative economic system, along libertarian communist lines - http://angeleconomics.blogspot.com/.I know its a bit irritating for me to walk in here brandishing adverts in my first post. (I did used to be a libcom forum member a while ago...). Forgive me.
Anyway, I would appreciate any comments.
Will sit down and read the whole thing when i get time, on a skim read, broadly would agree with it. One major problem, i saw though was the idea that one could participate in decisions as a consumer, not just of certain types of services but of actual consumer goods (i think the example you use is ice cream). This to me seems to be adding complications for no reason, since a simple supply and demand market mechanism would suffice. If you made products that were less popular than others, less people would eat them, thus you would order less stock next time.
Mind you i did only skim read the thing, so i may have got the wrong end of the stick on that one.
BigLittleJ wrote:
We don't really do "let's all close our eyes and imagine what communism would be like" here, to be honest. We're more about strategy and struggle.
~J.
No offence but i think thats taking things a bit too far. I think its quite important to think about how particular workplaces might be run in a communist society. Personally when i'm argueing about anarchism with someone, asking them where the work and discussing how anarchism would make that better are pretty important ways of getting the ideas across.
I guess the text being discussed is more abstract, but i do think having a clear idea of how you'd like to see aspects of society work is important. As another poster already pointed out, mass organisations back in the day liek the CNT and the IWW didn;t shy away from having detailed ideas on how they wanted society to operate. People weren;t just members of othose rganisations because of their startegy, but because of the ideals and models of society they proposed.
Jun 9 2009 15:24
#4
what is the angelic aspect in the Angel Economy?
Jun 10 2009 07:55
#5
Jun 11 2009 10:37
#6
Quote:
a simple supply and demand market mechanism would suffice. If you made products that were less popular than others, less people would eat them, thus you would order less stock next time.
Not quite.
As an ice cream seller you don't actually care whether people eat your products, except in so far as edibility makes them saleable. Indeed, you can't afford to care - or you endanger your businesses profitability, and thus its very survival. All you care about is selling your products, and getting a good price for them. Their use is invisible to you, except as a sort of 'shell' within which their value can be realised.
Alternatively, one could abolish this social relation and allow the needs of the ice-cream makers and the ice-cream eaters to confront each other directly. Hardly 'adding complications'. What could be simpler, as a way of determining people's needs, than just letting them tell you?
Both the CNT and the IWW recognised, to a greater or lesser extent, that the next society must grow out of society as it exists today. "Utopias" can only be relevant to the extent to which they apply to struggles in the here and now, otherwise they are pure fantasy.
~J.
Jun 11 2009 13:03
#7
BigLittleJ wrote:
Alternatively, one could abolish this social relation and allow the needs of the ice-cream makers and the ice-cream eaters to confront each other directly. Hardly 'adding complications'. What could be simpler, as a way of determining people's needs, than just letting them tell you?
This doesn;t make sense though. If you run a supermarket selling 1000 odd products, you aren;t going to ask every one of your 50,000 weekly customers which products they like, your just going to record how much stock is used up in a few weeks and order accordingly with some slack to avoid shortages.
Same goes for smaller ''shops'' like said ice cream parlour or a fast food joint. You don;t hand out surveys to people every time they come in so they can ''participate'' in your decisions that would just seem to be completely uneccesary.
Jun 15 2009 16:08
#8
cantdocartwheels wrote:
One major problem i saw though was the idea that one could participate in decisions as a consumer, not just of certain types of services but of actual consumer goods (i think the example you use is ice cream). This to me seems to be adding complications for no reason, since a simple supply and demand market mechanism would suffice. If you made products that were less popular than others, less people would eat them, thus you would order less stock next time.
You could have a bit of everything - participation in design by consumers, the use of data on what people are taking off the shelves, and 'natural' mechanisms of bad products dying a death through lack of demand.
BigLittleJ is right though - I think that people telling you what they like and don't like is a pretty effective, if not-much-used feedback channel. And it is capable of being far more specific that are the acts of 'taking' v 'not-taking'.
Another point about participation in design is that I think you don't want walls of effective ownership to grow up between the different parts of the economy. Its no good saying "everyone owns everything; everyone can participate in everything" if for all practical purposes, each person keeps to their little square. You want to keep things alive.
Jun 15 2009 19:13
#9
BigLittleJ wrote:
What could be simpler, as a way of determining people's needs, than just letting them tell you?
I hardly think that finding out the needs of 7+billion people and the process of satisfying those needs would be "simple"!
Jun 16 2009 05:34
#10
themediumdog wrote:
cantdocartwheels wrote:
One major problem i saw though was the idea that one could participate in decisions as a consumer, not just of certain types of services but of actual consumer goods (i think the example you use is ice cream). This to me seems to be adding complications for no reason, since a simple supply and demand market mechanism would suffice. If you made products that were less popular than others, less people would eat them, thus you would order less stock next time.You could have a bit of everything - participation in design by consumers, the use of data on what people are taking off the shelves, and 'natural' mechanisms of bad products dying a death through lack of demand.
I don;t see how i can participate in the design of say an electric drill or a new brand of toothpaste, because i know nothing about those things. I mean consumer surveys for certain services, like say the health service, do kinda make sense, but I don;t have an urge to particpate in the design of a new hospital or the reasearch into a new vaccine. If i did have an urge to do so, i'd go work in said occupations.
In short you say its bad if ''each person keeps to their little square'' but broadly speaking thats how industrial society functions because the number of tasks is vast and labour is divided and specialised snd/or an assembly line type of production is needed to meet demand.
To me, turning the clock back on this seems somewhat romantic and to be honest i'm not sure if its humanly possible to keep up a good standard of living. On top of that I don't really see whats desireable about it. I mean i was walking on the south downs the other week, and was chatting to soem fo the farmers/farmhands were we stayed (Interesting stuff about the crisis and harvests and so on actually), as nice as those chats were i don;t want to live in a tiny little village or participate in them getting up at half five in the morning to clean out the pig stye, by the same token i dobt many of those people wanted to live in london. Its a simplistic example no doubt, but i'm just saying that people do keep to their own squares, because people have limited time and are mostly concerned with living comfortably more than anything else. So you'd be involved in your occupation and in the running of your workplace for 25 hours a week, and maybe a bit in your local housing co-op ort whatever but you wouldn;t be spending all the rest of your free time 'participating'' in other peoples jobs.
Jun 17 2009 05:26
#11
cantdocartwheels wrote:
I don;t see how i can participate in the design of say an electric drill or a new brand of toothpaste, because i know nothing about those things. I mean consumer surveys for certain services, like say the health service, do kinda make sense, but I don;t have an urge to particpate in the design of a new hospital or the reasearch into a new vaccine. If i did have an urge to do so, i'd go work in said occupations.
In short you say its bad if ''each person keeps to their little square'' but broadly speaking thats how industrial society functions because the number of tasks is vast and labour is divided and specialised snd/or an assembly line type of production is needed to meet demand.
To me, turning the clock back on this seems somewhat romantic and to be honest i'm not sure if its humanly possible to keep up a good standard of living. On top of that I don't really see whats desireable about it. I mean i was walking on the south downs the other week, and was chatting to soem fo the farmers/farmhands were we stayed (Interesting stuff about the crisis and harvests and so on actually), as nice as those chats were i don;t want to live in a tiny little village or participate in them getting up at half five in the morning to clean out the pig stye, by the same token i dobt many of those people wanted to live in london. Its a simplistic example no doubt, but i'm just saying that people do keep to their own squares, because people have limited time and are mostly concerned with living comfortably more than anything else. So you'd be involved in your occupation and in the running of your workplace for 25 hours a week, and maybe a bit in your local housing co-op ort whatever but you wouldn;t be spending all the rest of your free time 'participating'' in other peoples jobs.
(By the way, I do understand why some people get incredulous at discussions like this. All this crap going on in the world, and you're honing the details of your little Sim City. But I do think its worth at least some attention, because, to my mind, the conclusion to questions like this has a big bearing on what you're fighting for).
I agree with the point that the division of labor in a sophisticated society, prevents you from participating usefully in the production of all the things you use. But I think you are exaggerating the limitations.
First off, to clarify one thing, you participate in what you want to. Think Wikipedia, open source, or community-center stuff. So if you don't want to do any pig farming, that's not a problem. Natural distribution will see to it that most functions are covered by everyone doing what they want.
Second point might be that even today, when people work 40-hours a week (plus the other, say, 30 hours of free labor of shopping, paying bills, driving, cooking, cleaning etc etc), still there are loads of people who participate in, or would be capable of participating in, completely unrelated pursuits. Think amateur hobbies, basically.
Third. I believe you've definitely got to think in terms of a much raised level of basic competence. Formulating toothpaste, or designing a drill, would be murky stuff for most people because they know no chemistry, biology etc, nor principles of design, electrics etc. (I think this stupification of people is really under-analysed as a source of oppression). But this would no longer be an issue.
Finally, as for the 'factory' or 'industrial' processes of production - participation doesn't do away with this. They're not particularly antagonistic demands. There are some balances to strike. But I can easily imagine being involved in, say, five pursuits at a deep level (just for example, coding some application, writing something, factory work, giving medical advice, helping run a farm) and some other things in a more superficial way (giving my experiences of using some tool, or giving my opinion on how a school day should be split up - whatever). As I say, there's a much-raised level of basic competence, and participation will feed on itself. But I think you've really got to think in terms of a changed mindset. Participation in these things would be something you'd enjoy; and all the passive things that soak up so much time today, its reasonable to think they would make way.
Jun 17 2009 12:44
#12
I didn't say 'simple' I said 'simpler', pay attention.
~J.
Your approach is all wrong, and it's really appallingly badly written. And I hate the name.
We don't really do "let's all close our eyes and imagine what communism would be like" here, to be honest. We're more about strategy and struggle.
~J.