ParEcon or libcom?
Aug 10 2009 12:27
#32
Steven. wrote:
as often, I think you almost have a point here. But I think maybe you didn't read the full document.The context for the discussion was "in the face of the crisis of capitalism, what is your vision for the economy?"
We specifically spelled out that our vision for the economy was for in the here in now for workers, as much as possible, to try to engage in defensive struggles in the most effective way possible (which we believe mean uniting across boundaries of nationality, gender, union membership etc, and as much as possible trying to take control of our own struggles using mass meetings, and using direct action).
apologies, your right i didn't read the full document, not through lack of interest but time
I did however read far enough to see this:-
Communism is a stateless society where our activity –and its products –no longer take the form of things to be bought and sold. Where activity is not done to earn a wage or turn a profit, but to meet human needs. It is also a democratic society, in a way far more profound than what ‘democracy’ means in its current parliamentary sense.
As there will be no division between owners (state or private) and workers with the means of production held in common, decisions can be made democratically among equals. As production is not for goods to be sold on the market, there are no market forces to pit different groups of workers against each other or compel social and environmental ‘externalities.’ We will work only as long as we decide is necessary to produce the things we need at an intensity we are happy with, not how long the boss demands of us according to the norms of the labour market. Thus production is socialised under our conscious control, and so the separate spheres of economics (where we produce) and politics (where we are governed) are abolished.
There is only a self-managed, self-governing society which exists to meet the self-determined needs of its members. A libertarian communist society.
which prompted the point i made earlier - now I understand the context and the location of this point, but there's no getting away from the fact that this is just as utopian and abstract (if not more) than the point you dismissed as being unworkable in practice and sounding great dreamt up in theory/abstract setting
and i do think there's a fair leap behind the argument about asserting our needs against and in spite of capital in the here and now and a fully fledged libertarian communist society outlined above - that's more utopian/abstract than anything to be fair - and given the statement above forms the conclusion of the introductory argument for 'libcom' then surely a reasonable person would read into that that this is a core point (or at least ultimate development) of the argument and therefore would not be unreasonabl in pointing out that's a fairly abstract/utopian position and not really much to do with the here and now and practicalities of daily life
but as i said, i didn't read the whole article so my point was only based on the introductory statements, i'll try and read the rest of it at some point
Aug 11 2009 01:15
#33
Joseph Kay wrote:
are you an economist george?
i actually just checked your facebook, 
Aug 11 2009 02:35
#34
Steven. wrote:
Zeph wrote:
Also the thought of having your effort rated by your peers sounds like an absolutely awful idea, a recipe for a terrible workplace environment if there ever was one.this is a really key point, and one which we hoped to raise with the debate continuing (which we hope it will shortly).
yes it is a key point, and steven gives a thoughtful answer. however, unless i misunderstand it, JK makes an equally objectionable claim on the other thread:
Quote:
needs are arrayed along a spectrum from physiological neccesities to luxuries. luxuries could be inherently scarce items or those which we desire but would soonest give up if given a choice (which would probably be quite different under communism than now). maslow's 'hierarchy of needs' is something in this ballpark, although i don't particularly agree with its specifics. the order of goods/services on such a spectrum would need to be the product of councils, as i say clearly in the debate:
it's not a capitalist deformation of my personality, that i would be impatient of any large group, even one including myself, determining what is the hierarchy of needs and wants to which i must subscribe. maybe this requires fuller exposition.
(btw, it was lazy's posts which first brought home to me the difficulty of parsing the needs/wants business. just sayin'.)
Aug 11 2009 03:17
#35
petey wrote:
it's not a capitalist deformation of my personality, that i would be impatient of any large group, even one including myself, determining what is the hierarchy of needs and wants to which i must subscribe. maybe this requires fuller exposition.
i'm definitely not saying that if a majority don't want something we don't make it, simply that we make less stuff that is less popular. in the kind of system i suggest, you'd probably group all goods and services into categories and agree a priority order, within that it would be a case of producing a range representative of demand. and if you say live a fit and healthy lifestyle and really do consider a light-up sound-sensitive daft punk coffee table ('furniture') more important than healthcare, and everyone else disagrees then social production will prioritise the requirements of healthcare over furniture in case of scarcity of common raw materials. but any society would face that dilemma, and i don't think settling it with purchasing power is in anyway acceptable, so democracy seems the least worst option (ah, Winston Churchill invoked in defence of communism).
Aug 11 2009 04:59
#36
Joseph Kay wrote:
in the kind of system i suggest, you'd probably group all goods and services into categories and agree a priority order, within that it would be a case of producing a range representative of demand.
this is clearer, but the devil is in the details and i can imagine how this form of organization could produce frustrations, with the risk of majoritarianism which seems to inhere in it.
Joseph Kay wrote:
social production will prioritise the requirements of healthcare over furniture in case of scarcity of common raw materials. but any society would face that dilemma.
agreed. i'm not slagging what you're proposing but i'm always extremely mindful that we'd have to experience this (or any other system proposed on these boards) before we knew what the social/interpersonal dynamic was.
Aug 11 2009 07:40
#37
petey wrote:
this is clearer, but the devil is in the details and i can imagine how this form of organization could produce frustrations, with the risk of majoritarianism which seems to inhere in it.
to be adequate to human needs any system needs to produce for a range of minority needs as well as popular ones. but ultimately, i think there' always the possibility that you don't get exactly what you want since nobody is prepared to produce it. now in practice i think people tend to consume the things that exist rather than demand the things that don't (i.e. i think iphones are great, but i didn't in any way feel hard done by before they existed), so the problem would be the cessation of production of items of low demand. without wanting to paper over naked majoritarianism, to an extent such a scenario is perhaps inevitable under any social arrangement. at least under communism, there's the oppurtunity for example to set aside a certain percentage of materials to for diy production (free of charge of course), so that individuals are free to spend time say, building that boat they always wanted, recruiting as much mutual aid (labour, technical assistance) they can to assist, even when society in general has other priorities.
i think parecon would address this problem much like capitalism; work your ass off, save up and buy the thing you want. now even if you think people who do put in that kind of extra effort deserve something more, that doesn't require a generalised wage/price system but simply some kind of 'bonus scheme' entitling those workers to first say on particular goods. that would be up for the appropriate councils to decide. as we're keen to stress, our 'vision' can and will certainly be improved in the details since all these potential pitfalls are not anticipatable in advance.
petey wrote:
agreed. i'm not slagging what you're proposing but i'm always extremely mindful that we'd have to experience this (or any other system proposed on these boards) before we knew what the social/interpersonal dynamic was.
which is why our vision is primarily about what to do in the here and now and gets less concrete the further we project from the present. we're very much reluctant to provide blueprints (although Mark seems to want us to, having ParEcon to draw on for his) for this reason. now i think he's wrong that we "can not even answer basic questions about what a post-capitalist classless economy might look like" - we've certainly answered the basics, it's the details where we're necessarily less specific. as we say, "we do have a vision in your [Mark PPS'] sense of the word – a vision that extends from the present to the future. What we do think is likely to grow out of means is not vision, but the specific details of its implementation (...) This is not a cop out – as I say we do make suggestions as to how a libertarian communist society could be organised – but an informed humility."
That's not an attempt to shut down debate, simply a statement that the details of any future society of billions cannot be planned adequately in advance, but of course we have to at least have an idea what we want when we find ourselves in some revolutionary workers' councils with problems to solve. of course, by such a point, these ideas will have been discussed much more widely and thoroughly and so many more proposals will have been generated and likely in greater detail. the PPS approach seems to be to produce a comprehensive blueprint, then rally everyone around it. i think that's a utopian socialist approach, and that the details of a future society must and can only emerge from the discussions and desires of millions of workers in struggle. of course libertarian communists and pareconists will be amongst those workers making these arguments, and no doubt having their flaws exposed and improvements put forward.
Aug 11 2009 13:19
#38
Steven. wrote:
For example, baggy jeans are cool, you buy baggy jeans. Then skinny jeans are cool, you buy them. The baggy jeans are still the same objects, but now they have been stripped of their illusory qualities of the kind of person they will make you, and how you will be perceived by others. The baggy jeans are no longer cool, they are a joke, they are awful, how could you ever have worn them...Then of course skinny jeans are no longer cool...
and all of a sudden I had an interest in communism again...
Aug 13 2009 09:57
#39
Joseph Kay wrote:
... our vision is primarily about what to do in the here and now and gets less concrete the further we project from the present. we're very much reluctant to provide blueprints (although Mark seems to want us to, having ParEcon to draw on for his) for this reason. now i think he's wrong that we "can not even answer basic questions about what a post-capitalist classless economy might look like" - we've certainly answered the basics, it's the details where we're necessarily less specific.
I definitely support the libcom position in this debate against the parecon one, but I think we need to be clear that there is NO SUCH THING AS "a post-capitalist classless economy". You were apparently clear on this in the debate when you wrote that in communism (or post-capitalism) the separate spheres of politics and economics would be abolished. It is because there will be no separate economic sphere that it is foolish, and idealistic, to demand that one offer up a blueprint or outline of what one (i.e. post-cap. economy) might look like, rather than because it is so far away from where we are currently.
Aug 13 2009 10:47
#40
Quote:
you wrote that in communism (or post-capitalism) the separate spheres of politics and economics would be abolished
i might have misunderstood the point here but does anyone seriously believe that in capitalist society there is a separate sphere of economics which is empty/devoid of political content?
Aug 13 2009 11:07
#41
oisleep wrote:
i might have misunderstood the point here but does anyone seriously believe that in capitalist society there is a separate sphere of economics which is empty/devoid of political content?
it depends what you mean. if you are saying the economy is not devoid of ideological/political assumptions, or that it also is a site of social relations based on the exercise of authority, then you're right.
but clearly capitalism does separate politics and economics. the former is the domain of governance where democracy is championed. the latter is the domain of production, consumption and exchange, where the dictatorship of title holds sway.
Aug 13 2009 11:13
#42
waslax wrote:
It is because there will be no separate economic sphere that it is foolish, and idealistic, to demand that one offer up a blueprint or outline of what one (i.e. post-cap. economy) might look like, rather than because it is so far away from where we are currently.
yes definitely, but if you replace 'economy' with 'society' in Mark's quote, i think it's still reasonable for him to expect us to be able to outline basic features of the society we want (which we do). however i don't think a detailed blueprint is reasonable for all the reasons i've outlined (the intellectual hubris required, the ahistorical idealism that supposes society strives towards a glorious idea rather than struggling against the present to create the facts of the future, the fact no mode of production has ever been the product of a pre-designed blueprint...).
Aug 13 2009 16:50
#43
the articles are now all online as library articles, linked from the main article.
Aug 13 2009 18:11
#44
Quote:
it depends what you mean. if you are saying the economy is not devoid of ideological/political assumptions, or that it also is a site of social relations based on the exercise of authority, then you're right.but clearly capitalism does separate politics and economics. the former is the domain of governance where democracy is championed. the latter is the domain of production, consumption and exchange, where the dictatorship of title holds sway
clearly i mean the former - in the sense that essentially political issues like power to control production and appropriation and the allocation of social labour and resources have been cut off from the 'democratic political' arena and displaced to a separate sphere, this sphere may be commonly called the economic sphere but it's heavily politically laden as you say, so i guess there's a load of scope for confusion when there's talk of this separation of the economic and the political - especially coming from any kind of marx perspective whose whole project was to reveal the political nature of the economic and to show that there's no sharp discontinuities between economic & political spheres - something that was previously obscured by classical political economy and to an extent by marxists post marx with crude/simplistic base/superstructure analysis which perpetuate the ideological practices marx himself was attacking
so this economic sphere actually has its own private political/judicial forms (however indirectly these are wielded) whose purpose are purely 'economic' - which really means that the differentiation of the economic and political in capitalism is really more about a differentiation of political functions and their separate allocation to either the private 'economic' sphere or the democratic public 'political' sphere dependent on what their function/purpose is
but i've kind of lost the track of my point now so i'll leave it there
Aug 20 2009 15:13
#45
anyone notice how the symbol used to depict the parecon folks sorta has a swastika in it? just saying...
Aug 24 2009 20:15
#46
On a different but related note, here is a presentation by a out-and-out capitalist eloquently arguing that rewards are a poor motivator for anything but simple tasks. Funny how schemes like Parecon not only reproduce capitalist management systems but reproduce the crudest, nastiest, and least efficient of them.
Aug 24 2009 21:18
#47
good eye, hughs, thanks for the link
Aug 25 2009 03:48
#48
Quote:
good eye, hughs, thanks for the link
Believe it or not, I appreciate the encouragement...
Oct 27 2009 10:38
#49
I picked up a paper copy of this debate at the anarchist bookfair and have just reread it. I have to say that its a really excellent exposition of libertarian communist ideas, despite the constraints of the format and the fact some questions are left hanging due to it being incomplete.
I understand that the libcom people are busy with various things, but it might be worth borrowing the written debate format to discuss issues with other sections of 'the movement'. For example, I think it would be more fruitful to discuss differences with platformist types over questions of strategy and pragmatism in a similar format, rather than through the odd blog and posted facebook conversations.
Also I think that the pamphlet should be more widely available, even if it is pretty niche. I'm going to raise selling it in Manchester through our AF group when we meet this week.
Oct 27 2009 14:05
#50
there are some archived political debates here. i've recently read through the platformist one which is a real eye opener. but yeah i agree this would be a fantastic idea.
Oct 27 2009 15:13
#51
RedHughs wrote:
Quote:
good eye, hughs, thanks for the linkBelieve it or not, I appreciate the encouragement...
thanks?
anyway, the topic and rhetoric used in that clip are very well pitched for US-style discussion. i continue to be baffled and furious that glenn beck (e.g.) has developed a language to communicate his batshit bullshit ideas to millions, but we in this area have trouble getting across a message that begins with the direct, daily experience of work.
Oct 27 2009 17:01
#52
Django wrote:
I understand that the libcom people are busy with various things, but it might be worth borrowing the written debate format to discuss issues with other sections of 'the movement'. For example, I think it would be more fruitful to discuss differences with platformist types over questions of strategy and pragmatism in a similar format, rather than through the odd blog and posted facebook conversations.
I'd be up for debating from the "platformist" pov if they want.
Oct 27 2009 17:31
#53
jweidner wrote:
there are some archived political debates here. i've recently read through the platformist one which is a real eye opener. but yeah i agree this would be a fantastic idea.
revol68 wrote:
oh the hilarity that is nationalism, oh the pure surreality that is Scottish nationalism and the comic tradegy that is Irish nationalism.
Wow, that is actually pretty good.
~J.
Oct 27 2009 19:00
#54
Also here: http://libcom.org/tags/debates
yeah, we were very wary of 'blueprints' - which i think must have been what prompted Mark Evans to subsequently write on Znet:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21577
however, we do put forward some ways a libertarian communist society might function, the 'basic questions.' what we don't put forward is a blueprint as detailed as parecon, not least because any blueprint we come up with would likely be as flawed, being the pure product of imagination detached from practice (i.e. a utopia). as we said in the debate:
like i say i hope we can recommence the debate, as there is a lot of shared ground (criticisms of capitalism, advocacy of a council system, abolition of hierarchy and classes) despite the important differences.