Hi Ladybug   I think the

Hi Ladybug I think the problems that you refer to in relation to the fourth aspect of a hypothetical  socialist production system that i touched on in my article  – namely a hierarchy of production goals – are not nearly as grave as they perhaps might appear. They are complications, yes, but they do not add up to an insurmountable obstacle that would bring the system crashing to its knees.  To understand why you need to step back a little to see the bigger picture. As I said to Darren in my post above, you need to have such a hierarchy in order to  prioritise the allocation of inputs in cases where you run into supply bottlenecks. It makes a lot of sense in such cases to allocate such inputs to high priority end uses first and foremost and then to other end uses lower down your ranking system.  As I said this is a matter best left to the intuitive judgment of individuals on the ground; there is no need for society to formulate some kind of elaborate and explicit hierarchy of end uses and it would it would be absurd even to attempt that.  My working assumption is that people in a socialist society would broadly share the same kind of values and this would be reflected in the decisions they make. It is only in the case of particular community-based projects that I envisage a kind of conscious socially-based commandeering of inputs for a given purpose but even then low priority end uses deprived of inputs in this fashion can still turn to technological substitution as another option The problems that you are alluding boil down to one of  how you proportion a scarce input between various end uses.  I wont go into this in great detail here as I will give a fuller response to this matter in the ECA working group forum on which I see you have  begun posting.Suffice to say this relates to what the neoclassical economist, Marshall, referred to as the “equimarginal principle” – .how to allocate between different lines of  production to ensure that the marginal unit in each case ends up with the same “utility”.  I don’t know if you are familiar with the writings of J A Hobson. In Neoclassical Economics in Britain (1925) he presented  a rather effective demolition job of this Marshallian concept which I think has implications for our discussion here. I quote the relevant section:http://www.marxists.org/archive/hobson/1925/09/neoclass.htmA person adjusting the use of his resources to the demands of a new situation makes a number of delicate adjustments at the margins. But the determinate judgments, of which these delicate adjustments are expressions, are made, not at the margins, but at the center. They are the quantitative implications of the new organic plan he has applied. If we regard him as a creative artist working out a new ideal with the materials at his disposal, we shall get nearer to the true psychological interpretation. A painter in mixing colors to get some particular effect must exercise care to obtain the exactly right proportions. This care will be greatest when in mixing he comes near the limit, and is in danger of putting too much or too little of the several colors into his mixture. A marginal economist, observing him, might pronounce the judgment that he kept adding increments of the different colors until he stopped, and that therefore an exactly equal art value must be attached to the last increment of each color. For if the last brushful of Turkey-red had been found to have less value than the last brushful of green, another would be added, so as to even out the values of the different colors at the margin.Now this, of course, simply means that in every sort of composite plan, economy or harmony, involving the use of different materials, some exact amount of each material is required. In forming such a plan no special thought is directed to the marginal unit of each factor. But in carrying out a change of an existing plan, the process of shifting pieces from the old plan to the new involves a series of operations at the margins. The size of these operations is, however, determined and laid down in the conception of the scheme as a unity. The painter, not knowing exactly how much of each color is required to produce his effect, may try a little too much of this or too little of that, rub out, and begin again until he has it just right.But the idea of imputing any special value to the marginal units, or of regarding the artist as comparing the colors at each margin by some common standard of art value, is alien from the psychology of art. As soon as it is clearly comprehended that the business man, the consumer, and every man pursuing a line of policy or conduct, is acting as an artist, the invalidity of Marginalism will be equally apparent in their cases.