Hi Ladybug   As others have

Hi Ladybug As others have noted, your post above is an excellent contribution . It is a model of the kind of constructive criticism that is needed to clarify and develop our ideas. I will be as brief as I can in response Your raise two main points. The first concerns the form of rationing that may be needed in a post capitalist society. I would certainly  entertain the idea that some of rationing may be required  to operate alongside  free access within a dual distribution  model, so to speak.  According to the structural logic of the production system I outlined in the article to which you refer, those goods likely to be subject to rationing would tend be low priority goods at the “luxury end” of the spectrum of goods while those goods likely to be made available on a free distribution  basis would tend, by contrast,  to be essential goods satisfying “basic human needs”.  This follows from the way in which the hierarchy of production goals I referred to would tend to skew the allocation of resources in favour of the latter at the expense of the former  where we have to deal with bottlenecks in  the supply of  such resources. As to the form of rationing I have to say that I am not  particularly enamoured  of the labour vouchers proposal or even a system of credits based on environmental impacts which I think would be administratively unwieldy and would be beset by all sorts of other difficulties – theoretical and practical. I favour instead what I call a compensation model of rationing based on the quality of housing stock.There are two main reasons for preferring this system 1)  Our living accommodation constitutes a hugely important component  of  our quality of life.  Realistically, though,   the legacy of material inequalities in housing we will inherit from capitalism will persist for many years after we have got rid capitalism. Such inequalities are likely to generate unacceptable social tensions and this will need to be acknowledged and addressed. People having to put up with low quality housing will need in some sense to be  “compensated” for this and this accords with a sense of natural justice and basic fairness. 2) We will need, in any case,  to assess the housing stock in our communities with a view to eventually  upgrading and improving  this stock in many cases. This assessment process can be easily tied in with a system of rationing which assigns different levels of priority access to individuals according to the assessed quality of the houses they occupy in terms of a number of criteria e.g. size and overall condition, facilities, proximity to amenities etc.  A prototype for this is to be found in the way housing stock is assessed today by placing individual houses in one of  a number  of bands according to the market value of the property in question for the purposes of  raising local taxes. Naturally the question of marketable value of properties will not arise in a socialist society but the basic approach  could still be used Obviously what I have presented here is just the bare bones of the idea; the meaty details need a lot more thought.  Nevertheless I do think it is an eminently do-able and more administratively straightforward system than , say, Marx’s cumbersome labour voucher scheme. The second point you raise concerns the practicality of some kind of hierarchy of production goals.  You make a number of very telling observations which point to the need for further research and investigation in this area.  I do not wish in any sense to brush under the carpet the criticisms that you make which are perfectly reasonable  and valid  but my first inclination is to urge you to look at what was being proposed in that article in  a more holistic all-rounded fashion.  The four basic components of the production system proposed are1) calculation in kind2) a self regulating system of stock control3) the law of the minimum4) a hierarchy of production goals Your criticisms mainly concern 4).  The point I’m making here and this is a point that has been lost sight of in many criticisms of that article, is that these different components of the system are organically interconnected and do  not function in isolation from each other.  Its is through their  mutual interaction that  a framework of structural constraints comes into being  which will guide production decisions in ways that ensure a rational outcome, in my view.  So its important not to lose sight of the wood for the treesLet  us remind ourselves what purpose a hierarchy of production goals is intended to serve.  It is as I said above, to differentiate between end uses by organising them into some kind of ordinal ranking arrangement in  the event that a particular input  common to all these end uses happens to be in short supply. In that event it is perfectly rational to allocate such an input to high priority ends uses as opposed to low priority end uses Your criticisms basically focus on the nitty gritty details of this allocation process which, as I say, is quite a reasonable thing to do.  However, there are several points that need to be born in mind1)  In this model of a socialist production system the basic orientation of every enterprise would be to produce slightly more than what is demanded – or, in other words, to maintain a buffer stock as part and parcel of a self regulating system of stock control.  Marx,  I believe, said something along the same lines about buffer stocks  though I cannot locate the relevant quote.  The point of so doing would be to accommodate the vicissitudes of fluctuating demand  including of course the possibility of unforeseen emergencies . This is relevant to the question of a  hierarchy of production goals insofar as the latter comes into play only in the event of supply bottlenecks  – where an input is in short supply –  and provides decision makers on the ground, as it were,  with a rough rule of thumb as to how to allocate the input  or resource in question 2) The fact that a resource  bottleneck might occur does not in any case necessarily prevent a low priority good from being produced in the quantities demanded insofar as technological substitution is a possibility.- that is, using some alternative and more abundant input instead . This is the point that I am trying to make –  that this model of a socialist production system is eminently flexible 3) The idea of  a hierarchy of production goals is not a detailed blueprint  that assigns every conceivable  kind of good produced to a specific  place within a strict ordinal ranking.  That would be a preposterous idea yet some of the people who cricised my article implied that that was precisely what I was saying.  Nothing could be further than the truth.  In point of fact what I was simply trying to impress on people was the common sense of some kind of hierarchy of production goals and of the notion  of having to chose between end uses when the occasion demanded this.  I would even go so far as to say that we might  not even need to consciously attend to this and that it would be implicit in a system of socialist values that we would prirotise housing over, say,  luxury yachts. Whats there to argue about here? It is only perhaps  in the case of specific projects democratically decided upon by the community – eg the construction of  a new community school or doctors surgery – that we might be talking of the conscious commandeering of resources for a particular end use at the expense of other end uses.  For the most part I suspect all the detailed decisionmaking about how much of a particular scarce resource  should be devoted to this particular end use as opposed to that can left to individuals on the ground to decide upon, using their own intuition and common sense. I suggest, further, that a system of convergent  values is likely to produce a pattern of outcomes in respect of these  micro level decisions that is broadly consistent and regular. Of course there will be times when X will allocate a particular resource amongst various end uses  that does not fully accord with how Y might view things that but then we would expect that.  No system of production is ever going to be perfect and in any case such decisions will be subject to the scrutiny and influence of others so there will be a tendency  towards “self correction” : If a particular end use that people particularly desire is being starved of inputs then the resultant clamour for changes in the way these inputs  are allocated will mount and exert social pressure on the enterprise in question (which enterprise certainly would have nothing to gain by resisting social pressure in a socialist society). That  is quite apart from the fact that we could 1) increase the supply of the input in question 2) opt for technological substitution But it is really  what happens at the macro-level and in the long run  that ultimately counts in the end – doesnt it? – and I would contend that an integrated system  of production such as is being proposed here  provides for a comprehensive structure of constraints that will guide production in a way that is sufficiently pervasive and potent as to ensure an outcome that broadly conforms to what people  desire and expect.. If people are broadly happy with the system they are not going to jeapordise becuase of a few niggling imperfections But like I said, I’m not trying to brush your criticisms under a carpet of bland generalisations or smooth talk my way out of a tricky theoretical situation.  I don’t have all the answers to you probing questions though,  in my defence, I don’t possess a crystal ball either to enable me to adequately answer them.  All I can do is constantly try  to find ways in which to refine and strengthen the model that has been presented. So if you – or anyone else – have any observations on how this might be done this would be very welcome indeed! Cheers Robin