ZJW
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Five years later, engineer Nick Chavez now continues in ‘The Black Box of Production’:
https://designformanufracture.com/2026/06/26/the-black-box-of-production .
The third to the last paragraph:
‘Workers in the technical professional stratum are therefore less crucial for the initial establishment of communist production than technicians are, but are indispensable for catalyzing communism’s transformational program. The managerial stratum, however, poses a strange tension for the communist movement. It is obvious that managers enjoy significant social privilege due to their role in administering capitalist production, which rarely produces communist sympathies. However, the matter remains that coordinating efforts between different units of production is itself a highly technical domain of expertise. Even if the social basis for capitalist forms of management is dissolved during communist construction, the need for managerial capacities in general will actually grow in communism rather than diminish, albeit in highly transformed ways. Rather than optimizing production for the singular metric of profitability, communist production will be continually optimized for a balance between a large variety of metrics. What these metrics are and what the optimal balance is between them can only be decided through collective deliberation at different scales. Because the relationships between units of production will involve coordination oriented around these socially-deliberated metrics, rather than through a market that mystifies social coordination in the form of money, it will be necessary to make use of the relevant skills for networked and institutional cooperation that are presently concentrated within the managerial stratum. The skills required to translate abstract or ambiguous goals into tangible, actionable directives and to shepherd their execution over short and long time horizons in complex organizations staffed by a diversity of people will be crucial for communist reconfiguration of production.’
Robbo203, re your post at page top:
What is the surprise? MUG’s program is modeled after the CPGB’s. And you’ve read the Weekly Worker for certainly more years than I have, so certainly you know that the CPGB espouses this very same ‘minimum-maximum program’.
In a post above I gave the site http://www.democratic-planning.com .
Here is another:
http://www.indep.network
It says of itself that ‘We reject Command Economies’ and ‘We reject Market Economies’.The site’s name is the International Network for Democratic Economic Planning (INDEP) .
On that site — or rather in a link from it — Stefan Meretz replies to Herman Lueer’s critique of the Sutterlütti & Meretz book that ALB reviewed. The reply:
Stefan Meretz Responds to Herman Lueer’s Critique of Commonism
If you find the beginning boring (but thank God it is nothing like their book), you might skip down to section heading ‘Labor time calculation doesn’t help’.
It would be more useful if they would reply to criticism of this sort (quoting ALB): ‘A more pertinent criticism would be of their opposition to delegate democracy and to any central administrative body even an unarmed one. Their argument against this is tired old anarchist one that ‘power corrupts’ ‘.
But to do that they’d have to be made aware of it.
ALB on May 29:
‘This sounds as if it might be interesting. Hope it’s not going to be about the notorious “labour-time vouchers”. ‘Did it happen? And?
This person liked it.
‘ [16] It is unfortunate that Soren Mau did not follow the implications of his excellent book Mute Compulsion in his speculations of a post-capitalist society (Mau, 2023a) which appears untroubled by questions of commodity relations and the socialisation of the productive forces (Mau, 2023b). Phil A. Neel and Nick Chavez draw this out in their critical response to Mau. Their effort to think through the technical aspects of a socialisation of productive forces under socialist relations comes closest to the spirit of Bettelheim in the current context. Neel and Chavez, (2024).’
(That’s at ‘Charles Bettelheim and the Value-Form: The Problem of the Real Socialisation of the Productive Forces in Socialist Transition’ by Roberto Mozzachiodi at https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/article/charles-bettelheim-and-the-value-form-the-problem-of-the-real-socialisation-of-the-productive-forces-in-socialist-transition )
“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.
Ok DJP, not one but two festive seasons have ended since then. What do (did) you have to say about it?
(The question, if now lost to winds of time, it was about this: https://www.endnotes.org.uk/palabre/forest-and-factory )
At the link I gave above — https://www.democratic-planning.com/info/models — if aside from looking at the summary of those few ‘models’ presented, you also then click ‘about us’, you will see a link to a twice-monthly podcast called ‘Future Histories’hosted by Jan Groos.
Some of the interviews are with the authors of such models. I see the names Muldoon, Saros, Mau … (Naturally there are also many guests who will not be attractive.) See https://www.futurehistories-international.com for clickable list of podcasts in English.
Would it not be a good thing to also get the SPGB position onto this program?
I don’t know if this — whose ‘models’ need to be updated — has been noted on this site:
Hermann Lueer, apparently a voracious reader (and — who knows, maybe a speed-reader as well) has now published a review of the (500-page) Tony Smith book. After praise at the start, what he goes on to say will not be too unexpected. But again, as with his review of the Sutterlütti and Meretz book ‘Make Capitalism History’, perhaps it can be gleaned from it to what degree this book is of interest from an SPGB point of view.
Left-communist dissatisfaction with the CWO/ICT position also from the Fredo Corvo group :
Commenting (full comment below) on the the ICT’s ‘May Day 2026: No Sacrifices for this System – Against War and All Forms of Nationalism!’, he they wrote:
‘Although the ICT has dropped its pet thesis of a permanent crisis from the basic positions of its NWBTCW [No War but the Class War] committees, it begins its May 1 statement with “The capitalist crisis only gets worse and worse, with world war becoming an increasing reality. This crisis of a lack of sufficient surplus value is extending the competition between capitalists into a contest between states.”
However, reality shows that the history of the 1930s crisis is not repeating itself; that crisis led to World War II. Now, it is the Iran-U.S./Israel conflict and massive rearmament that are leading to the end of the economic boom, with the first signs of crisis emerging. This is exactly the opposite of what the ICT claims.
The ‘common banner’ under which we are supposed to rally, according to the ICT, thus obscures clarity about the situation in the world. ‘
Another point of difference with the ICT is its Neo-Leninism. For example, the ICT talks about the ‘spontaneity’ of the working class, contrasting this with the leading role of the Party. As Trotsky noted regarding the February Revolution of 1917, speaking of ‘spontaneity’ obscures the actual discussions within the working class and the Bolsheviks’ activity therein that preceded February.
These two differences alone demonstrate the need for revolutionaries to cooperate on certain issues in the struggle against war while retaining the right and duty to act independently on other essential matters. However, the ICT does not even acknowledge the existence of many dissenters among those who refer to the communist left. [This ‘refer to’ is an often seen mistranslation of what in English should be ‘identify with’ or ‘claim to be of’. Cf French ‘se réclamer de’ — ZJW]
Instead, the ICT speaks of ‘wallowing in criticism and squabbles that lack purpose or direction’, a statement comparable to that of the Spanish Stalinists during the Spanish Civil War of 1936.’
ALB wrote:
‘[…] or “revolutionary defeatism” (ie hope that the other side wins),[…]’.
Speaking of which, here are leftcoms (the ICC) against the notion:
Having just re-read his long and excellent book review titled ‘More FALC: The Walmart hypothesis’, I nominate Pik Smeet to review the Tony Smith book.
ALB wrote:
‘The author knows us having visited our street stall in Cardiff and also written a couple of letters to the Socialist Standard.’I only see one letter from him, the one here: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2023/no-1428-august-2023/letters-moysan-graham-morris/
I remember that letter well enough, but I did not remember his name.
If there is another letter from him, please give the url.
No, Erwan Moysan is not a Cliffite. See this book review by him of ‘State Capitalism and Development in East Asia since 1945’ .
