ParEcon or libcom?

I didn't edit that bit, that's your fault.

I take it back, this is shit.

Hmm,

You don't explicitly break it down this way but it seems to me that, if we crudely remove the crucial element of the historical dynamic, the parecon vs communism debate comes down to two "visions of human existence".

- In the 'parecon vision', each person would prefer to get more quantifiable goods. The goal of society is to produce more of these goods and to fairly reward those who work harder producing more stuff in general with more stuff of their own. Society would operate democratically with the view of "incentivizing" a minority of slackers (or "free riders") to contribute their fair share of effort as well as making sure the whole operation is run efficiently.
For Parecon, the fundamental problem of capitalism is that it is unfair and somewhat irrational, people like capitalists who just own things and do nothing can get lots of stuff and the processes of production are wasteful and polluting. Under Parecon, the current processes of people working would still exist and people would still be subject to explicit controls while working, these control would just be fairer and more rational.

- In the 'communist vision', each person would prefer to get more unquantifiable "goods", "goods", such as friendship, comradeship, festivals, etc, which are naturally produced by society-as-a-whole without the need for explicit controls. Just as much, while formal democratic process could be used for administering various things, especially the production processes required for physical survival good, these would be supplemented by the informal processes of the "social fabric", by society-as-a-whole.
For communism then, the fundamental problem with capitalism is that it produces capitalist society, that it impoverishes society-as-a-whole - though communists are certainly aware that capitalist society produces immense physical impoverishment as well. Now that capitalism produces more than enough for human beings' physical survival, the problem is that capitalism only produces "enriched survival". It produces substitutes for human social contact that could be better satisfied by giving people the time needed to directly "produce" this human social contact.

Interestingly, the question of rationality or irrationality under capitalism can be quite difficult to puzzle out. A fascinating example is this justification for the rock band Van Halen's contract, which specifies that band be provided with a bowl of M&Ms but that, on pain of cancellation of the entire show, all brown candies be removed from the bowl. In this example and others, it seems that even the most seemingly irrational excesses of capitalist society are ultimately necessary corollaries of the mere existence of commodity relations.

What?!?

Is there are an argument somewhere in your posts that I missed?

Sorry if this comes off clunky but IF I'm saying something different from what Joseph Kay says, or if you disagree with the original point, perhaps you could explain.

I don't think JK was saying that in communism people would prefer unquantifiable goods like friendship and have no interest in material goods. The point was that many things that we as human beings care deeply about, fuzzy things like friendship yes, are not exactly quantifiable, which goes to show that the economistic argument that parecons make about work (where rewards as well as work are strictly quantifiable) is a bit out of touch with reality.

surely more not only the material possessions themselves?

Yea, but while there is obviously a certain amount of status etc. Tied up in purchases, when someone buys a 42 inch widescreen TV, nice car or nice laptop, it's at least as much because the TV gives a better picture and viewing experience, the car is most comfortable and more fun to drive or the laptop runs faster and better. While it's undeniable that aspiration and status come into it, I think with most goods you can't solely reduce it to that.

Although obviously with some shit like a rolex or diamond necklace it is pretty much totally down to status!

Surely you must mean your needs. How can the objects drive consumption?

I found this really interesting - simple and accessible; will spread it around. Really good work must have taken a lot of effort!

I may be wrong but it seems to me that Communism is about negating the supremacy of the economic sphere/wage slavery/the commodity form/blah blah blah, while Parecon is about taking the economic sphere and making it as egalitarian and democratic as possible but not getting rid of it. That sound good?

this is a really key point, and one which we hoped to raise with the debate continuing (which we hope it will shortly).

Not only is it a terrible in the sense of making everyone spy on each other, but what would happen in reality if this was implemented is that workers would resist it.

In my workplace now, we only got organised relatively recently, within the past two years, and have only had some relatively minor disputes: a couple of small boycotts, strike ballots, etc. But even so, we would have the sense of solidarity to collectively just say that we would stick together, and all rate each other as putting in the maximum possible level of effort and sacrifice.

Even with workers as atomised as they are now, if the a system such as this put in place now, people everywhere would resist this system by just deciding to rate each other really highly.

And if you imagine the only type of society that could possibly have implemented parecon, then that would basically have to be a pretty revolutionary society, with much higher levels of workers organisation and solidarity than we have at present.

And the idea that workers who have been through a violent and terrible revolution, being on long drawnout strikes, fought on picket lines together, large numbers would have been imprisoned, tortured or shot. All this for equality, and workers solidarity, then march straight back to work and then start saying "Sally doesn't putting enough effort", "Ahmed gets in late", "Jimmy spends too long in the toilet"... so they shouldn't get as much. The idea is absolutely ridiculous. I'm sure it sounded good thought up in an abstract setting, but in terms of practical application it's completely unworkable.

the whole debate centers around ideals being thought up in abstract settings (which no amount of materialism will salvage it from) - the practical application of both sides of the debate being something that no one can comment authoritatively on as they have not, and will probably never, be tested - so seems bizarre to use the unworkability of practical application as an argument in this case, especially because it can so easily be thrown back as an argument against your own case