“Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism”
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I’ve just stumbled on this group today- I think they call themselves council communists but I wondered if anyone has had any interaction with them. They also have a FB page
A lot of their stuff seems pretty good with many things we can agree with. But suddenly you get this:
Most of all we celebrate the emergence of a block of anti-imperialist countries that have broken away from the Anglo-American Empire. China, Russia, Iran and to a lesser extent India have resisted using the dollar as a world trade currency. Further, they have insisted on using their own local currency in trade transactions. With the exception of China – Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia are capitalist countries, but their commitment has not been making a profit on war or forms of fictious capital such as stocks, bonds, derivations or stock options. Following the Chinese great Belt Road Initiative (BRI) these countries have traded with each other, in exchanges of energy systems, infrastructures like roads and trains as well as agricultural products, as well as military defense. The BRICS economic agreement between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has been set up as an alternative the imperialist World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This breakaway movement is growing stronger by the day as the United States and the rest of the West sinks into decay. As socialists we support this breakaway movement even if it is not explicitly socialist.
Robo wonders: ‘I wondered if anyone has had any interaction with them’.
From the looks of that quote given by h.moss, just more leftist flotsam.
Me, what I ‘wonder’ is why nothing ever came of the notion expressed by ALB (here: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/two-ex-socialists-go-funny/page/6/#post-249333): ‘This is the sort of discussion — and the sort of people we should be discussing with […]’. regarding the article linked to in that thread titled ‘Forest and Factory: the Science and the Fiction of Communism’. This was nearly one year ago now.
(Of the two writers (the one less responsible for the criminally repellent writing style, I believe) one can be contacted like so: https://designformanufracture.com/about .)
While waiting for Robbo to eventually write a piece about it, the so far only published reaction to ‘Forest and Factory The Science and the Fiction of Communism’ has been this: https://www.black-lamp.com/posts/the-cart-before-the-horse-on-labor-time-accounting-the-immediate-nature-of-the-transition-to-communism-and-scientific-utopias
I found it very unfocused. (Seems to be a labor-voucher enthusiast.)
He seems to be more an enthusiast for labour-time accounting rather than of labour vouchers as such, since he envisages such accounting continuing even when goods and services are free for people to take according to their needs.
Of course “accounting” in the sense of recording what materials and types of work skills are required and/or have been used to produce will be always be needed.
But this doesn’t have to be “accounting” in terms of “socially average labour time”, if only because this is difficult, not to say impossible, to work out beforehand. There isn’t just the problem of working out this average but also of reducing skilled labour to the simple labour in order to try to calculate this average.
Only the actual labour time of actual types of labour can be measured and would need to be, but this would be no different in principle from measuring the amounts of actual materials and energy needed to produce.
Under capitalism what is “socially average labour time” is measured on and through the market. Under J.B’s scheme a similar mechanism would be required, as he seems to recognise when he writes:
“Goods are “priced” at the socially average labor time it takes to produce them. This latter point is important, because if the goods were priced at the actual concrete time that went into their creation, the more productive individual firms would be the only ones people consumed from, and the critical point that communism raises the productive capacity of all productive nodes would be lost.”
This assumes not only quasi-prices but also a quasi-market and quasi market forces where people “consume from” (“buy”
from) those “firms” (!) whose product is the “cheapest”, so forcing competing “productive nodes” to increase their productivity (reduce their average social labour time cost per unit and so the “price” of what they are “selling”).Doesn’t sound very communistic.
Looks as if his criticism of others for proposing “unscientific utopias” is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
I don’t think any special importance should be attached to that “Fields and Factories” text.
Are others aware of this text from an author also loosely associated with Endnotes?
DJP:
Well I should think so, given that I emailed it to two participants of this forum on 5 April 2021. (Seem to have somehow forgotten you though.)
‘Fields, Factories and Workshops’ is by Kropotkin. Title of the text not needing ‘special importance’ attached to it has ‘forest’ in the title, not ‘fields’, as you may have realised later.
If you were to say why no ‘special importance should be attached to’ this would already serve as a needed, however miniature, critique.
“If you were to say why no ‘special importance should be attached to’ this would already serve as a needed, however miniature, critique.”
Actually, on the back of recommendations by you and others, I read this text with a group of people a few months back. I’ll post a few paragraphs of thoughts after the festive season is over.
“And I am curious about the composition of the group of people with whom you read it.”
It’s the survivors of an online Capital Volume One reading group that started during the pandemic. A mixture of ages and genders, mainly millennials, with no overarching group affiliation.
Incidentally, the Bernes article I recommended *may* be part of this forthcoming book. I have yet to get access to a table of contents.
That Bernes article was heavy going even though he argued that labour time vouchers were useless but harmless. But he didn’t mention the waste of resources that would be involved in the bureaucratic procedures to manage any such system.
Just noticed that the blurb for the Bernes book says:
“When Marx wrote that the Paris Commune of 1871 showed that the “the working-class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes,” he identified a principle that will remain true as long as capitalism and its class antagonism persists.”
I hope this doesn’t mean that he has read “simply cannot” for “cannot simply” as many anti-parliamentarians have, as that was not what Marx meant. Marx’s point, consistent with what he wrote elsewhere, was that the working class should lay hold of the “ready-made state machinery” but would have to change it (make it more democratic) before “wielding it for its own purposes”.
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