robbo203
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Well, since Marx argued that humanity creates its own ‘entire output of global production’, the most fundamental political question is ‘who should control that output?’
It seems to me that Marx also argued for ‘democracy’ within our ‘social production’, and that particular political mode of social production would be called ‘communism’.
LBird
I earlier asked you: “are you saying that humanity in its entirety should democratically determine the entire output of global production…” Its seems to me that what you say above is simply evading the question
Its seems to me that what you say above is simply evading the question
Yes production today is social production but it does not follow therefore that the whole of society should or can democratically control the whole of production. This is where you constantly err. You don’t seem to understand the implications of what you are actually proposing…..
An example. You earlier said “I don’t regard ‘democratic’ as meaning ‘centralised’.” Now you appear to be saying that, since humanity as a whole produces the entire output of society, humanity “as a whole” should democratically control the whole of production. Not bits of humanity controlling bits of the apparatus of production but the whole of humanity controlling the entire apparatus of production because it is “social”.
So you are actually proposing there should be one single centre of decision-making in which everyone in the world is a participant which democratically decides on everything that is produced, right? Actually, contrary to what you earlier said, you now seem to be advocating the most extreme form of centralisation imaginable – i.e. society-wide planning – in which there is just one planning centre effectively for the whole of society.
I probably don’t need to explain to you why this is completely ridiculous – just on the grounds of the sheer logistics of decision-making alone in a world in which there are probably billions of decisions that need to be made each and every day. Instead, what I propose to do is tackle head on your argument about democracy and your naïve suggestion that the form of democracy should equate with the social nature of production.
Like you I fully support the concept of democratic control of production. I believe this will be a much more potent and salient aspect of life in socialism than it ever could be in capitalism.
However, unlike you, I say there are necessarily limits to how far you can extend democratic decision-making even in a socialist society. In fact, paradoxically if you do not set limits you risk destroying the very thing you cherish most – democracy itself
You do not wish to set any limits except those of the whole of society itself. i.e. society wide planning. I suggest to you that this will spell the complete annihilation of democracy in practice. In practice, what would happen in the absence of society as a whole being able to decide on anything for sheer logistical reasons – except maybe a handful of global plebiscites in the course of a year – is that all de facto day-to-day decision-making would be taken over by a tiny elite supposedly deciding things on behalf of society as a whole
The limits you need to set on democracy in order to ensure its optimality are those to do with the spatial structure of decision-making and those to do with the role of individual choice
The first is obvious. You have to disaggregate decision-making and assign particular decisions to particular spatial levels of decision making. Local communities, for example, are best placed to make decisions that are essentially of a local nature. Yet you have never once conceded that in a socialist society there would be such a thing as a local communities making local decisions because this fundamentally undermines your whole thesis on social production being democratically controlled by society as a whole.
Secondly, there has be substantial scope in a socialist society for individuals to make choices which do not require the formal stamp of democratic approval. Examples would be lifestyle choices, consumer choices and choices regarding what work you do. Yes, society has a say in determining the parameters in which such choices are made but, necessarily, it is the individual who makes the choice in these instances.
You are fond of quoting Marx in support of your arguments but actually Marx would be strongly opposed to the arguments you present. Marx held that the free development of each individual was the condition of the free development of all in socialism/communism
For example there is that famous quote from the German Ideology:
For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
What Marx was asserting was the need for the individual to be able to choose (“just as I have a mind”), what form of activity she engaged in rather than submit to the compulsory division of labour applicable in capitalism. What Marx was trying to underscore with this rather colourful example of his was the essentially voluntaristic nature of labour in socialism.
This would not be possible under your system of society wide planning which would require everyone to submit to the task they has been assigned by society “as a whole” in order for the single giant plan that you envisage the whole of society having “democratically” decided upon beforehand
LBird – again all I want to know from you is 1) what is your proposed structure of democratic decision-making in socialism and 2) what is the scope of this democratic decision-making. We both accept the need for democratic decision-making in socialism but we appear to differ in how we visualise this being organised
I understand completely the point you are making about social production but it does not follow from that that everyone in the world has to be involved in all decisions relating to global social production, does it? In fact that is not remotely possible as you know. That is why I have asked you whether you accept in principle that many – indeed, the great bulk of – production decisions will be localised and limited to local communities/production units and whether you accept in principle that many decisions that may well have indirect consequences for social production dont really even need to be subjected to democratic decision-making. For example you dont need to get a democratic mandate from your local community to allow you to eat cornflakes for breakfast instead of porridge, wear a particular kind of clothing to work or use a particular mode of transport to get there…
Could you answer these specific points I raise so we can get a clearer idea of your model of democratic decision-making in socialism
I’d give the political answer that ‘humanity’ is the ‘who’, and that ‘democracy’ is the ‘how’.
So just to be clear here LBird – are you saying that humanity in its entirety should democratically determine the entire output of global production – that is, all the inputs and outputs that make up the global system of production within a single giant global plan?
If this is not what you mean by democratic control of production could you please explain what you do mean? What will the structure of democratic decision-making look like? Will there be localised democratic decision-making for example?
You define ‘wide’ as ‘central’, whereas I define ‘wide’ as ‘democratic’.
I dont follow your reasoning at all, LBird
I have given you a clear definition of what I mean by society wide planning. I am talking about a very particular concept where society as a whole or its representatives determines the total pattern of output via a single gigantic plan covering all the inputs and outputs of the economy. This is what I am opposing not democratic planning per se. I am actually in favour of democratic planning but in the context of polycentric and largely decentralised model of planning.
To compound matters you earlier said “I don’t regard ‘democratic’ as meaning ‘centralised’”. Indeed – my very point! Society wide centralised planning in the above sense could not be democratic in the least let along practical
I don’t regard ‘democratic’ as meaning ‘centralised’.
To me, a democratic communist, if ‘produced overall’ and ‘society wide planning’ are democratic, then they are not ‘centralised’.Sorry but this makes no sense. Society wide planning is by definition centralised. It means the elimination of polycentric planning and its replacement by unicentric planning in which society “as a whole” gets to plan production “as a whole”. That means a single planning body and a single plan issuing from this body to determine the overall shape or pattern of production. Of course, the idea is an abstraction or ideal type which is never going to be realised for practical reasons but that is besides the point. This discussion is about what constitutes society wide planning. You cant have “society wide planning” and also have, for example, numerous planning bodies each formulating their own plans, such as local communities. Because in this case it is not “society” that is doing the planning by which I take to mean global socialist society but rather the various local communities referred to. Meaning it is a polycentric model of planning with a plurality of plans that spontaneously interact and mesh with each other in much the same way that a market economy operates except that in socialism there will be no market whatsoever.
You are, in effect, defining any ‘democratic’ decision that clashes with, and overrides, an individual’s opinion, as ‘centralised’ and ‘single’.
No absolutely not, LBird. That is not what I am saying at all. I am referring quite specifically to the ideal type that is called “society wide planning”. I am definitely not referring to a polycentric model of planning which I and indeed the SPGB supports. (See our pamphlet, Socialism as a practical alternative). Of course there will be occasions when democratic decisions will (quite rightly) override the views of individuals. The decision will be centralised only in relation to the body making the decision itself which may very well just be the local community but this is nothing to do with the concept of society wide planning as defined above. Moreover a lot of decisions dont need to be subjected to democratic decision-making at all – you wouldn’t want “society” or even your local community to vote on what you should eat for breakfast or what clothes you should wear today, would you? The need for democracy arises only in the context of joint decision-making where these is a potential conflict of opinion or interest involved
Saying society is democratic and saying that society “democratically decides” what is produced are two very different things Alan . The latter definitely does seems to refer to the idea of society as a whole deciding on what is produced i.e. society wide planning
All I am saying is we need to be careful about how we phrase our ideas so as to avoid any misundrstanding
Yeah, ‘self’ refers to the ‘subject’ that creates, and the creating subject for Marx was humanity (ie. ‘social individuals’, not ‘biological individuals’ as for bourgeois ideology), and any ‘defining’ by the creating subject must be democratic.
Within democratic communism, ‘self-defined needs’ will be determined democratically.I think the concept of “self-defined” needs to be properly understood in the context of how individuals in a proximate sense would appropriate their means of subsistence. That is to say, they would formally have “free access” to goods and services. Meaning there would be no quid pro quo exchange involved at all. So as an individual there would be no need for me to exchange a sum of money or a labour voucher in order to obtain a loaf of bread
This is all that self-defined needs means. It is a reference to the mode of appropriation – nothing more – and it is an attempt to differentiate free access from all forms of rationing. The distinct danger of rationing, even of an egalitarian kind, is that it can lead to corruption and the emergence of an overseeing powerful elite.
In no sense is the concept of self defined needs incompatible with your notion of the “social individual”. The latter is a reference to what shapes our perception of what our needs are which is of course social whereas the former refers simply to the mode of appropriation. In fact this very idea of the social individual in your sense supports the argument in favour of dispensing with rationing and establishing free access. Quite simply we wont need rationing in general (though I dont rule out limited rationing of certain particular kinds of items) because the kind of society we are talking about would be precisely one most conducive to responsible – and responsive – consumer behaviour.
Finally we must careful about how we phrase the argument that, in socialism, “society will democratically decide what is produced” even if individuals have free access to what is produced. This could be very misleading. I will argue to the contrary that socialist society will not and cannot decide what is produced overall because that implies centralised “society wide” planning and a single gigantic plan which is absolutely impractical and completely incompatible with the nature of socialism itself.
It is far better and much more accurate in my opinion to say that socialist society will decide on the priorities of production rather than the overall pattern of production itself . This would allow for the existence of some form of feedback mechanism – a self regulating system of stock control – without which any kind of advanced system of production would be literally impossible
Marshall Sahlins in Stone Age Economics
For there are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way, makes assumptions peculiarly appropriate to market economies: that man’s wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although improvable: thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that “urgent goods” become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, departing from premises somewhat different from our own: that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty-with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters.
(https://libcom.org/files/Sahlins%20-%20Stone%20Age%20Economics.pdf)
Why cannot socialism be a combination of both – a sort of dialectical “interpenetration of the opposites” so to speak? The impetus to restrain consumption will come not only from a concern for the ecological consequences of untrammelled consumerism but also from the realisation that we all depend on each other for our common wellbeing. That is a question of ethics, values and empathy
On the question of Marx’s definition of Marx’s definition of economics its worth reading Louis Dumont’s work From Mandeville to Marx: Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology
Dumont’s basic argument is that prior to capitalism, it was difficult if not impossible to distinguish a particular field of human activity one could label the “economy”. Everything was mixed up. We see this in the case of gift transactions which is often misconstrued to be “trade” when in fact it is more a moral transaction. The dynamic of the gift transaction is the complete opposite of a market transaction. It is about cementing social relationships not separating (atomising) individuals into buyers and sellers having opposing interests with respect to the price of the thing being sold
The rise of capitalism represented also the “disentanglement” and freeing up of the “economic category” from other dimensions of social reality. In so called mercantile capitalism we still see the subordination of the economic realm to the political realm. It is only with the emergence of classical political economy and the idea of the free market that you get a sense of economic realm as something separate and distinct from any other realm and subject to its own distinctive laws that define economics as a discipline. This was also coincident with the rise of individualism and Dumont’s more controversial thesis is that Marx took as his basic point of departure an individualist standpoint by positing the economic base as the decisive determining factor as far as the nature of society is concerned insofar as it presupposes the economy as a separate realm of activity subject to its own inner laws.
After all, you can’t posit a causal connection between base and superstructure unless the base is in some sense autonomous. But then again this is a rather crude and misleading characterisation of historical materialism which does not deny that the superstructure can impact on the base even if the base is decisive
So no I dont think one can talk about a “socialist economy”. In socialism, we will return to a state of affairs in which the different aspects of human relationships will all be seamlessly intertwined . Terms like “moral economy” or “gift economy” hint at this but even these are not quite satisfactory since they still seem to imply of some sort of “economy” as the basis of society
Yes I agree with you Alan – 100%. It seems very odd to hire a firm to clean HO particularly if there are members willing and able to come to HO to do the work. Though its many years since I last visited the place it is a fantastic asset which should be made more use of and in many more diverse ways. When last was there a BBQ , Music night or second hand book sale/exchange there?
The carpet must be a bit lumpy. There seems to be quite lot on the subject here. A quick vacuuming uncovered.
Ha Ha nice one Matt. No I was thinking back to the thread – cant locate it anymore unfortunately – concerning whether the case for socialism was also a moral one and not just a matter of class self interest. I take the view that is both and endorse Engels comment about the need for a “class morality” but others must have been taking a contrary view arguing that morality has nothing to do with establishing socialism
On the question of human beings as being “inherently greedy” and harbouring “insatiable wants”, I think one needs to understand that this has not been a particularly dominant theme in the history of economic ideas – at least not in the naïve form I refer to below. It certainly appears in precursors to the Neoclassical Marginalist revolution like Hermann Gossen in the 1850s who had an almost fanatically religious attachment to the idea of maximising one’s self interest (in fact he saw egoistic impulses as a “natural law” designed by god which humans have a moral duty to conform to)
The concept of “Homo Economicus” – Economic Man – was really ushered in or popularised by Alfred Marshall , a leading economist in the second generation of neoclassical economists. However, like the utilitarian J S Mill, he considered that self interest strictly related to the economic sphere of life and did not deny that human beings were subject to “higher motives” – altruism – in other parts of life. Marshall defined economics as the “study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing”
Marshall’s “Economic Man” was subjected to criticism from people like Thorstein Veblen and other humanistic economists and from then on you find a subtle shift in the way economics approached the problem of human motives , pioneered by economists like Wicksteed and Lionel Robbins . The ends (whether these be altruistic or egoistic) were effectively separated and distinguished from the means of realising those ends with economics being purportedly concerned only with the what are the most effective means by which human beings realised their ends. Even someone solely motivated by altruistic concern for others still had to make wise economic choices in order to best realise his/her objectives. In this way the caricature of the “Greedy Man” was replaced by another caricature “Rational Man” – though one could argue that the latter is just a way of camouflaging, rather than banishing, the former. It is still “self-interested” insofar as it treats other people as a means to realising your ends rather than an end in themselves
So the basic argument becomes this – that in making economic choices we always face “opportunity costs”. If I want to go for a swim this afternoon I cannot at the same time go for a stroll in the park. The opportunity cost of my decision to swim is that I forego a stroll in the park. Similarly if a particular society wants to develop its agricultural sector, say, this may require having to divert resources from some other sector(s) of the economy and so on. Thus, the concept of “scarcity is built into the very definition of opportunity costs which any kind of society must face. This is a truism but I dont think this particular concept of scarcity in any way undermines the case for socialism which depends on our ability to produce enough to satisfy our reasonable needs. In the latter case we are talking about a quite different definition of scarcity which socialists argue is no longer applicable given the development of a productive potential to sustain a socialist society
Which brings me to a final point – it might be slightly misleading to just baldly portray contemporary economics as having as its basic assumption that “people’s wants are insatiable”. This could be misconstrued as suggesting that my particular want for something e.g a cone of ice cream – is “infinite”. Obviously this is a caricature and an Aunt Sally argument and in fact, flatly contradicts the “Law of diminishing marginal utility” in contemporary mainstream economics itself. In other words, for every additional ice cream I consume I derive less utility or pleasure until eventually eating another ice cream might even become a disutility – I might become sick at the very thought of it – meaning very clearly that my demand for ice-cream is definitely not insatiable! Nor is contemporary mainstream economics saying that it is
Rather, the argument is that as the marginal utility of a good falls with each additional unit of that good consumed, the consumer switches his/her desire to some other good depending on the marginal rates of substitution. (MRS). The point being that there is no end to the variety of goods that could potentially provide a substitute for ice-cream. Indeed, this argument is employed in “indifference theory ” in conventional economics to analyse consumer behaviour
It is pretty easy to knock down the Aunt Sally argument referred to above but more problematic when it comes to dealing with the so called “Greedy Person” argument in this wider context of what modern economic theory is actually saying.
For this we need a more sophisticated nuanced approach which recognises that human behaviour is always a dynamic mix of both self interested and altruistic motives and will be so even in socialism. That approach will also need to make a distinction between “needs” and “wants”, in my view, something that has long been a cornerstone belief in humanistic economics in its debate with conventional mainstream economics. Sometimes “wants” will have to be sacrificed in order that “needs” be met – not least in a world in which we face growing environmental constraints.
All of which, of course, brings into focus the question of morality which, unfortunately, some comrades tend to want to brush under the carpet as being irrelevant to the socialist project.
Hi David
Some commentators have argued that Marxist economic theory and Marginalist economic theory do not so much contradict as complement each other in the sense of each having a quite different focus – macroeconomic or microeconomic – and on this basis have sought to integrate one with the other. I’m not sure this is theoretically possible. However I wouldn’t entirely throw the baggage of Marginalist thinking out of the window. Some of its key concepts such as the law of diminishing marginal returns and marginal rates of substitution have merit and can serve as a heuristic for conceptualising how a socialist system of production could be organised.
It is also important to grasp that there are different schools of thought associated with modern economic theory. We tend to think of the theory as a development out of the neoclassical Marginalist revolution of the late 19th century which replaced the labour theory of value of classical economists and Marx with a subjective theory of value. But it is really only the Austrian school of economists represented by people like Von Mises who are thoroughgoing subjectivists and who would argued that price is entirely determined by subjective values – or utility/use value. That is to say, they are confusing/conflating use value and exchange value
Certainly a commodity must have use value in order to be a commodity at all as Marx himself point out. Subjective valuation certainly influences the demand for a good but it cannot explain the ratio in which goods exchange in the long run because an increased demand for a good under capitalism induces an increase in supply so that in the long run supply and demand tend to equilibrate. That being so, why does a car consistently and in the long run sell at a price way above, say, a bicycle? There is a limit to how far you can reduce your price and stay in production. This is determined by your cost of production – an objective consideration. . In capitalism, production grinds to halt if there no profit forthcoming and profit after all derives from the difference between costs and revenue. Meaning prices have to be pitched above your costs of production for production to continue under capitalism. An objective constraint!
The major problems with the subjective theory of value are as follows
1). Your subjective valuation of a commodity means nothing unless you have the purchasing power (objective) in the form of money to influence its price.
2)The theory is based on circular reasoning in that it asserts that utility (subjective valuation) determines price but price also determines utility (e.g. increases the desirability of a commodity through a reduction in its price).
3), the theory is contradictory with the regard to the role of money. Is the marginal utility of money subject to diminishing returns and what does this mean for the marginal utility of other commodities?
Hi Schekn
It strikes me that what we are looking at here with respect to tackling climate change is reminiscent of what the biologist Garret Hardin wrote about in his famous essay in the 1960s on the “Tragedy of the Commons”. Hardin’s basic thesis was seriously flawed. In practice, actually existing Commons do not generally result in serious environmental degradation since they are often quite closely monitored and subject to stringent rules to prevent overuse and destructive exploitation.
More to the point, Hardin’s diagnosis of the problem was misplaced. It was not the fact that there was a commons to which the herders could gain free access that was the root cause of the problem of overgrazing. Rather it was the fact that the cattle herds were privately owned by herders in competition with each other that locked them into the destructive logic whereby each herder benefitted exclusively from the addition of one more head of cattle to his/her herd but where the environmental costs of each additional head of cattle were externalised and shared by all the commoners. This gave each individual herder a built-in incentive to add to his/her herd resulting in generalised overgrazing.
The same kind of logic applies in the case of tackling climate change. The trillions of dollars needed to tackle climate may well be less than the costs of inaction but as a long as each capitalist state is seeking to externalise the costs of tackling climate change – get others to bear to more of the burden of these costs so as not to impair its own economic prospects in its competition with others – inaction will result. States will only be dragged kicking and screaming into action as things get generally worse and the action they take will probably be too little too late.
That is the tendency of capitalism – to get away with what is minimally required. It is why citing Hardin’s model (but correcting its faulty reasoning) might be a useful approach to encouraging environmentalists to taking more seriously what socialists have to say
Hi David,
I dont think there is any problem with communicating personally with members of the EC although I am curious as to why you might want to. As Alan suggests, there is nothing special about EC members and we dont put them above anyone else. You are quite at liberty to communicate with anyone in the SP, we are a party of equals.
I would just make one small observation though that some individuals, because of their personal circumstances, might be a little reluctant or anxious about having their names made too public – perhaps because of family or job reasons. This is understandable. I remember when I worked in the civil services many years ago I discovered to my horror that my many letters to the local press had been monitored over several years by Personnel (they actually kept copies on file). Because of this I was actually required to give a firm assurance on leaving the job that I would not disclose any information relating to this establishment (amusing since I was merely a lowly “clerical officer”) It is quite conceivable that such information could have been passed on to future would-be employers asking for references (in my case that actually did happen when I applied to another branch of the civil service two or three years later! They had a record of my political activism which had been transferred from my original workplace).
I dont want sound overly conspiratorial or whatever but these things can and do happen and so we have to be a bit sensitive to the concerns of particular comrades in the organisation. Personally I dont give a fig now if the powers-that-be know of my activities, – sod ’em! – but others might be a bit more concerned
No doubt if you wrote to the Gen Sec the information you require would be communicated to you in personal correspondence (it appears in minutes of the EC meetings anyway to which all members have access) Alternatively, this forum could reinstate the old messaging facility to facilitate communication between individuals
Hope this helps
Best regards
Robin
