I know that sounds like a tautology but it's important to have a dialectical-materialist foundation before you actually look at things, or else you lose focus on the process of revolution and get caught up in bourgeois economic concepts which will have no meaning under communism.
it should be said that it was quietly debated whether commodity production actually did continue under socialism, including whether the law of value operated, and this was one of the reasons that the textbook on political economy was continually delayed. when stalin said it did operate but in a limited way it was seen as a compromise position between the two extremes. this was because the extremes were politically problematic: if commodity production continued as normal, it would suggest that capitalist economic theory and techniques were equally applicable to socialism; if commodity production did not exist under socialism, then the soviet union wasn't yet socialist. these were positions associated with the various oppositions.
under stalin there was a prominent debate about whether economic organizations could function as enterprises and consider themselves owners of productive assets. this peaked in the years immediately after much of the economy was converted to a system of hierarchical industrial units. one economist (i forget his name) argued that collective farms should be able to own the assets that they utilized, namely tractors. this was widely interpreted as a criticism of the existing planning model, because in official ideology it was the public ownership and non-commodity character of the means of production which partially justified calling the economy socialist after 1934. it was seen as suggesting that administrative units should be treated like enterprises that would have more autonomy over whether to buy and sell productive assets (instead of them being assigned by a plan). if might even imply that managers should have much more control over hiring and firing.
stalin intervened decisively in that debate and had the economist killed. there was an ideological response that clarified the issue and led to many of stalin's doctrinal comments in the area. later, khrushchev comes to power. he sells the tractors to the collective farms. this is used as decisive evidence by mao that khrushchev is a revisionist. khrushchev also rehabilitated the economists who implicitly criticized stalin. across eastern europe, leaderships reject stalin's view on this file in order to implement market-like reforms. the liberman-kosygin reforms in the soviet union were limited but in places like hungary they are fairly dramatic.
babyhueypnewton posted:Understanding socialism as a process also illuminates some things. For example, getfiscal often asks why we call Venezuela socialist while we call China capitalist, even though empirically china has far more state owned enterprises. Socialism is not a certain GINI coefficient, or workers democratically deciding their own workplace conditions, nor a state that calls itself socialist, nor even a radical economy that uses labor vouchers instead of money and has a fully centralized economy democratically controlled by the workers. Socialism is the process of destroying capitalism and replacing it with communism, any system moving towards that revolutionary goal is socialist and any system moving from it is capitalist.
I know that sounds like a tautology but it's important to have a dialectical-materialist foundation before you actually look at things, or else you lose focus on the process of revolution and get caught up in bourgeois economic concepts which will have no meaning under communism.
when i talk with some FRSO members this is actually the reason they gives why china is socialist and venezuela is capitalist. marx said socialism required the smashing of the bourgeois state, this has not happened in venezuela and it did happen in china, etc. etc.
the argument is basically balibar's, that socialism is an era of transformation and not a specific social system that can be achieved in the main. if it's progressing towards communism, it's socialism. the context seems important: he's making a long argument against stalin (and the PCF orthodoxy). his argument repudiates the idea that socialism is an identifiable system with the sort of characteristics that stalin invokes (and that you've quoted).
The position of communists on commodity production is quite clear. In semi-feudal and underdeveloped countries, the separation of city and countryside means that nationalizing the means of production is only possible for industrial capitalism in the city. the farms are collectivized and continue commodity production and the value form, though this is only temporary until the whole of society reaches the level of production that the commodity form can be abolished.
the "two sides" are in fact the two dialectical opposites I already highlighted but you treat them as static concepts. the economist you mentioned is clearly on the side of revisionism as he suggests moving away from the abolishment of the commodity form, though I don't know the specifics of what he said.
also mao did not use giving tractors to collective farms as "decisive evidence" to call kruschev a revisionist, he had plenty of other reasons. this may seem trivial but it is not, Mao was a marxist-leninist who understood that capitalist relations begin in production, not distribution, and his critique of kruschev was far more fundamental.
getfiscal posted:under stalin there was a prominent debate about whether economic organizations could function as enterprises and consider themselves owners of productive assets.
sorry, your points are interesting but basically confusing to me - i have been using the term "enterprises" in the context stalin uses it here -
Today there are two basic forms of socialist production in our country: state, or publicly-owned production, and collective-farm production, which cannot be said to be publicly owned. In the state enterprises, the means of production and the product of production are national property. In the collective farm, although the means of production (land, machines) do belong to the state, the product of production is the property of the different collective farms, since the labour, as well as the seed, is their own, while the land, which has been turned over to the collective farms in perpetual tenure, is used by them virtually as their own property, in spite of the fact that they cannot sell, buy, lease or mortgage it.
that is, referring to the industrial economic units distinct from collective farms in which productive assets are property of the state. this doesn't refer to firms that act with autonomy from the state or owners themselves of productive assets, such assets are specifically national property. i am also not suggesting commodity production and circulation continues as normal in respect to its place in the capitalist mode of production, more that it serves a reference point to establish the processes of accounting of cost and price, losses and profits and consequentially necessary areas of allocation and investments, that is required to organise a socialist economy (prior to the development of administrative apparatuses that can determine social need without recourse to the law of value, whether this is possible or not)
e: that is, functions as stalin lays out here:
But the operation of the law of value is not confined to the sphere of commodity circulation. It also extends to production. True, the law of value has no regulating function in our socialist production, but it nevertheless influences production, and this fact cannot be ignored when directing production. As a matter of fact, consumer goods, which arc needed to compensate the labour power expended in the process of production, are produced and realized in our country as commodities coming under the operation of the law of value. It is precisely here that the law of value exercises its influence on production. In this connection, such things as cost accounting and profitableness, production costs, prices, etc., are of actual importance in our enterprises. Consequently, our enterprises cannot, and must not, function without taking the law of value into account.
Is this a good thing? It is not a bad thing. Under present conditions, it really is not a bad thing, since it trains our business executives to conduct production on rational lines and disciplines them. It is not a bad thing because it teaches our executives to count production magnitudes, to count them accurately, and also to calculate the real things in production precisely, and not to talk nonsense about "approximate figures," spun out of thin air. It is not a bad thing because it teaches our executives to look for, find and utilize hidden reserves latent in production, and not to trample them under-foot. It is not a bad thing because it teaches our executives systematically to improve methods of production, to lower production costs, to practise cost accounting, and to make their enterprises pay. It is a good practical school which accelerates the development of our executive personnel and their growth into genuine leaders of socialist production at the present stage of development.
Edited by blinkandwheeze ()
getfiscal posted:babyhueypnewton posted:Understanding socialism as a process also illuminates some things. For example, getfiscal often asks why we call Venezuela socialist while we call China capitalist, even though empirically china has far more state owned enterprises. Socialism is not a certain GINI coefficient, or workers democratically deciding their own workplace conditions, nor a state that calls itself socialist, nor even a radical economy that uses labor vouchers instead of money and has a fully centralized economy democratically controlled by the workers. Socialism is the process of destroying capitalism and replacing it with communism, any system moving towards that revolutionary goal is socialist and any system moving from it is capitalist.
I know that sounds like a tautology but it's important to have a dialectical-materialist foundation before you actually look at things, or else you lose focus on the process of revolution and get caught up in bourgeois economic concepts which will have no meaning under communism.when i talk with some FRSO members this is actually the reason they gives why china is socialist and venezuela is capitalist. marx said socialism required the smashing of the bourgeois state, this has not happened in venezuela and it did happen in china, etc. etc.
the argument is basically balibar's, that socialism is an era of transformation and not a specific social system that can be achieved in the main. if it's progressing towards communism, it's socialism. the context seems important: he's making a long argument against stalin (and the PCF orthodoxy). his argument repudiates the idea that socialism is an identifiable system with the sort of characteristics that stalin invokes (and that you've quoted).
but this is the essence of balibar's idealism (and Badiou as well). this is simply the foundation, not the praxis of socialism. Of course socialism is an identifiable system, since value, surplus value, exploitation, commodity exchange, money, markets are real things and either they've been abolished or they haven't. all I'm saying is that we need to see socialism as the revolutionary process in power, not the end of the revolution. we can say, as lenin does, that socialism is progressing despite the necessity of the NEP and we can say, as Marx does, that socialist worker cooperatives simply "become their own capitalists". socialism is both a real economic system and a process of revolutionary energy, often in dialectical opposition to each other.
this sounds confused but only because your responses are so vague and insidious. what is Balibar's actual critique of Stalin? Stalin would not disagree with anything I've said, at least the stalin who actually exists and not the specter in eurocommunist minds.
blinkandwheeze posted:that is, referring to the industrial economic units distinct from collective farms in which productive assets are property of the state. this doesn't refer to firms that act with autonomy from the state or owners themselves of productive assets, such assets are specifically national property. i am also not suggesting commodity production and circulation continues as normal in respect to its place in the capitalist mode of production, more that it serves a reference point to establish the processes of accounting of cost and price, losses and profits and consequentially necessary areas of allocation and investments, that is required to organise a socialist economy (prior to the development of administrative apparatuses that can determine social need without recourse to the law of value, whether this is possible or not)
this is correct but you're also falling into getfiscal's trap of implying that planning is a complete system than has to function perfectly. in fact planning is more efficient at providing incentives, adjusting to real economic needs, and reallocating labour than market systems. this is all from Farm to Factory By Robert C. Allen which I'm sure getfiscal has read.
there is no empirical evidence whatsoever to show that planning is inefficient and that the failure of the soviet union was in its planning apparatus, in fact all evidence also looking at both Maoist China v. India or in my field Park South Korea v. Chile planning is a huge success. getfiscal simply vomits out marginalist economics 'truisms' and expects us to accept them.
e: To stress: getfiscal is to the right of economists like Ha-Joon Chang and Tomas Piketty, who themselves are anti-communist.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()
babyhueypnewton posted:The position of communists on commodity production is quite clear. In semi-feudal and underdeveloped countries, the separation of city and countryside means that nationalizing the means of production is only possible for industrial capitalism in the city. the farms are collectivized and continue commodity production and the value form, though this is only temporary until the whole of society reaches the level of production that the commodity form can be abolished.
i think you might be confused. the law of value continues to operate under socialism according to stalin because productive forces are too low to provide without recourse to rationing such that there are society-wide imperatives to accumulate capital and conserve labour-power. commodity production continues because workers buy things and economic organizations are directed to try to minimize economic costs and meet changing social demands. this is the sense of commodity production, it doesn't just mean that farm products are sold on a market. stalin argues that the law of value is attenuated by the fact that these pressures now become truly social: planners try to accumulate capital and conserve labour-power in order to meet general social needs.
in semi-feudal countries the process is indeed longer but it is more complicated than you suggest. the period where an industrial base is developed under an enterprise system (or state capitalism) is the 'democratic' period. the length of this period depends on the country's initial conditions. in eastern europe, semi-feudal countries like poland were considered to have a short democratic revolution which evolved into the socialist revolution. mao referred to a similar idea of 'new democracy'. china was not considered a socialist country until later, although much earlier than the soviet line suggested it would take. in part this is because mao did not really hold himself to the same definitions in practice. for example, much of the attacks against khrushchev applied to the situation in china, which hoxha pointed out when he finally broke with china.
getfiscal posted:babyhueypnewton posted:The position of communists on commodity production is quite clear. In semi-feudal and underdeveloped countries, the separation of city and countryside means that nationalizing the means of production is only possible for industrial capitalism in the city. the farms are collectivized and continue commodity production and the value form, though this is only temporary until the whole of society reaches the level of production that the commodity form can be abolished.
i think you might be confused. the law of value continues to operate under socialism according to stalin because productive forces are too low to provide without recourse to rationing such that there are society-wide imperatives to accumulate capital and conserve labour-power. commodity production continues because workers buy things and economic organizations are directed to try to minimize economic costs and meet changing social demands. this is the sense of commodity production, it doesn't just mean that farm products are sold on a market. stalin argues that the law of value is attenuated by the fact that these pressures now become truly social: planners try to accumulate capital and conserve labour-power in order to meet general social needs.
in semi-feudal countries the process is indeed longer but it is more complicated than you suggest. the period where an industrial base is developed under an enterprise system (or state capitalism) is the 'democratic' period. the length of this period depends on the country's initial conditions. in eastern europe, semi-feudal countries like poland were considered to have a short democratic revolution which evolved into the socialist revolution. mao referred to a similar idea of 'new democracy'. china was not considered a socialist country until later, although much earlier than the soviet line suggested it would take. in part this is because mao did not really hold himself to the same definitions in practice. for example, much of the attacks against khrushchev applied to the situation in china, which hoxha pointed out when he finally broke with china.
We were specifically talking about collective farms. The commodity form does indeed also continue in the city but it is not particularly helpful to conflate commodity production in the countryside and in the city since they are fundamentally different in semi-feudal conditions.
I can't respond to the rest of your post since it's just a series of conjectures and assumptions that you hold in your own head. Do you genuinely think the Sino-Soviet split (and the Albania-Sino split) and the issue of revisionism can be boiled down into "Mao didn't really hold himself to the same definitions in practice". What does that even mean?
babyhueypnewton posted:e: To stress: getfiscal is to the right of economists like Ha-Joon Chang and Tomas Piketty, who themselves are anti-communist.
well this is ha-joon chang:
That, at least, was the theory. Unfortunately, central planning did not work very well in practice. The main problem was that of complexity. The Marxists
may have been right in thinking that the development in productive forces, by increasing interdependence among different segments of capital, makes it
more necessary to plan centrally. However, they failed to recognize that it also makes the economy more complex, making it more difficult to plan
centrally.
Central planning worked well when the targets were relatively simple and clear, as seen in the success of early Soviet industrialization, where the main
task was to produce a relatively small number of key products in large quantities (steel, tractors, wheat, potatoes, etc.). However, as the economy
developed, central planning became increasingly difficult, with a growing number of (actual and potential) diverse products. Of course, with economic
development, the ability to plan also increased thanks to improvements in managerial skills, mathematical techniques of planning and computers.
However, the increase in the ability to plan was not sufficient to deal with the increase in the complexity of the economy.
One obvious solution was to limit the variety of products, but that created huge consumer dissatisfaction. Moreover, even with reduced varieties, the
economy was still too complex to plan. Many unwanted things were produced and remained unsold, while there were shortages of other things, resulting
in the ubiquitous queues. By the time communism started unravelling in the 1980s, there was so much cynicism about the system that was increasingly
incapable of delivering its promises that the joke was that in the communist countries, ‘we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us’.
No wonder central planning was abandoned across the board when the ruling communist parties were ousted across the Soviet bloc, following the fall
of the Berlin Wall. Even countries such as China and Vietnam, which ostensibly maintained communism, have gradually abandoned central planning,
although their states still hold high degrees of control over the economy. So, we all now live in market economies (well, unless you live in North Korea or
Cuba). Planning is gone. Or is it?
(he then defends indicative planning and suggests capitalist economies have a lot of planning, and then concludes
The question, then, is not whether to plan or not. It is what the appropriate levels and forms of planning are for different activities. The prejudice against
planning, while understandable given the failures of communist central planning, makes us misunderstand the true nature of the modern economy in which
government policy, corporate planning and market relationships are all vital and interact in a complex way. Without markets we will end up with the
inefficiencies of the Soviet system. However, thinking that we can live by the market alone is like believing that we can live by eating only salt, because
salt is vital for our survival.
how am i to the right of that? how does this reinforce your point?
babyhueypnewton posted:I can't respond to the rest of your post since it's just a series of conjectures and assumptions that you hold in your own head. Do you genuinely think the Sino-Soviet split (and the Albania-Sino split) and the issue of revisionism can be boiled down into "Mao didn't really hold himself to the same definitions in practice". What does that even mean?
the second part of my post is from soviet books like "people's democracy: a new form of organization of society" which argue these things (democratic revolution passing over into socialist revolution) in detail, explaining what marxist-leninists thought at the time. also, hoxha said that mao was never really a marxist, and you've read why he thinks so so yeah.
I mention this because marxists often do not make this argument, since we assume that even if capitalism functioned as it is supposed to, it leads to crisis. but you're filling the gaps there and making us forget that capitalism in the real world works quite poorly, and before we ask how planned economies can handle economic questions, we need to ask how capitalist economies can.
getfiscal posted:also i have no idea what you support. mao thought cuba was revisionist and state capitalist, but you think venezuela is socialist? stalin thought the antecedents of arab socialism were fascist, and you yourself have called south korea fascist, but it's also highly planned and successful?
I am using capitalist measures of 'success' because you are. You have yet to actually provide any evidence that planning is inefficient compared to markets, this is acceptable in an economics classroom but on our wonderful marxist forum needs some proof.
Also I'm aware that marxist feminists exist and are cool and the same for environmentalists, but neither group seems to be a majority in their respective movements. Ie theres a huge failure of integration of issues on the left that can't be addressed under a strictly marxist framework, also energy economics and environmental/ecological economics would need to be incorporated into this framework. The metabolic rift was cool and all but since global warming is scary is hell we need more than a throwaway paragraph about how socialism/communism are sustainable/relate to their world and environment. Obviously it shouldn't be that hard to convince environmentalists that global warming can't be stopped without overthrowing capitalism or feminists that the same is true of patriarchy...
babyhueypnewton posted:You have yet to actually provide any evidence that planning is inefficient compared to markets
i'm not sure it's even an intelligible question. there's not some transhistorical economic model which we can adapt ourselves to. it's not like 'planning' always trumps 'markets' and the only economic and political problem in history is just convincing everyone to accept as much planning as possible. you make it sound like the evidence is that economic performance is just a function of how much planning was done from the centre. i think it's probably much more complex than that. i think some important evidence though is that every country that committed itself to socialism eventually turned back from trying to plan in a specific way that was originally considered orthodoxy by marxists. you attributing this to greed by a tiny section of the population and the tacit support of the working class despite the fact they knew socialism worked great seems like it raises important questions about how dysfunctional the system must have been to allow a reactionary coup in every socialist country.
my explanation would be much simpler: most managers and experts in socialist countries were probably smart people who saw the need for pragmatic reforms, which started virtually the moment they became politically possible due to the death of someone like stalin or mao, and most people went along with them because they agreed their system had serious problems. this doesn't mean that planning is somehow "bad", just that making some extreme version of planning your core political goal seems like it's more based on bad philosophy more than actual economic problems. and i think most workers are smart enough to realize that which is a simpler explanation for why they don't clamor for stalinism even though it's obviously much more efficient.
getfiscal posted:babyhueypnewton posted:You have yet to actually provide any evidence that planning is inefficient compared to markets
i'm not sure it's even an intelligible question. there's not some transhistorical economic model which we can adapt ourselves to. it's not like 'planning' always trumps 'markets' and the only economic and political problem in history is just convincing everyone to accept as much planning as possible. you make it sound like the evidence is that economic performance is just a function of how much planning was done from the centre. i think it's probably much more complex than that. i think some important evidence though is that every country that committed itself to socialism eventually turned back from trying to plan in a specific way that was originally considered orthodoxy by marxists. you attributing this to greed by a tiny section of the population and the tacit support of the working class despite the fact they knew socialism worked great seems like it raises important questions about how dysfunctional the system must have been to allow a reactionary coup in every socialist country.
my explanation would be much simpler: most managers and experts in socialist countries were probably smart people who saw the need for pragmatic reforms, which started virtually the moment they became politically possible due to the death of someone like stalin or mao, and most people went along with them because they agreed their system had serious problems. this doesn't mean that planning is somehow "bad", just that making some extreme version of planning your core political goal seems like it's more based on bad philosophy more than actual economic problems. and i think most workers are smart enough to realize that which is a simpler explanation for why they don't clamor for stalinism even though it's obviously much more efficient.
i guess the issue is "pragmatic reforms" done in the name of "efficiency"
both not very marxian concepts, or easy to define, sadly
a question for the better-read: were there ever any attempts under actually existing socialism to integrate syndicalist/council communist ideas of workplace democracy under an regime of central state planning? obv the early soviets were an example but after the upheaval of the civil war that changed, are there any others? (i am NOT a Trot, asking for a friend)
Edited by dank_xiaopeng ()
getfiscal posted:also i have no idea what you support. mao thought cuba was revisionist and state capitalist, but you think venezuela is socialist? stalin thought the antecedents of arab socialism were fascist, and you yourself have called south korea fascist, but it's also highly planned and successful?
i thought, and forgive me if i'm wrong, stalin's negativity towards arab socialism was readily explainable because the few leftist parties in the arab world prior to arab socialism would transparently toe the moscow line no matter what, even to the detriment of local populations (case in point: israel), and that this led to direct clashes between other ideologically committed leftists and arabic stalinists, to say nothing of the rest of the populace. If you're talking about Stalin re: Nasser then I think that accusation makes at least a little sense though
how exactly are they supposed to act on this knowledge? serious q
littlegreenpills posted:suppose the workers on a factory floor, through the power of their pervasively networked open source ERP software, know exactly where in the wider system of production a supply/distribution bottleneck is when trying to answer questions such as "why haven't we received any raw materials for the last 3 months" or "our loading dock is piling up with crap because only 1 truck comes to pick it up every monday instead of 4 whats going on".
how exactly are they supposed to act on this knowledge? serious q
i think they would have to act on a case by case basis
im a eurocommunist now
littlegreenpills posted:suppose the workers on a factory floor, through the power of their pervasively networked open source ERP software, know exactly where in the wider system of production a supply/distribution bottleneck is when trying to answer questions such as "why haven't we received any raw materials for the last 3 months" or "our loading dock is piling up with crap because only 1 truck comes to pick it up every monday instead of 4 whats going on".
how exactly are they supposed to act on this knowledge? serious q
i think in the case of cybersyn the factory would report things that were beyond its control. so, if they're getting x amount of wood and turning out y amount of plywood, and suddenly they fall to y - 2 because jim tossed a cig into one of the machines, then they fix the machine and the 'problem' since it occurred at the factory or firm level and not a higher one, is solved within that factory/firm. but in the case of not getting enough wood or there being a transport bottleneck, the workers could make an assessment of the things that they don't have control over- for instance, we've got three extra truckloads of shit on our dock, so can we get three trucks to show up, please? that request is passed up to the next 'level' which in this case would be the dispatcher for the trucks in the wider area. if there are three truck-trips available then the problem is solved then and there. if not then the problem gets kicked up to the higher level, to the entire state, which might say 'hey we need more trucks' and then that directive gets passed down in reverse order, this time to the truck repair place or the truck manufacturing place. or the nationalized penske.
none of this is really socialist though. except the workers being able to make decisions and analyze their own workplace collectively and make suggestions. but even that is just the 'comment box' expanded to a managerial principle.
i think this is part of how capital develops. eventually middle management is eliminated or reduced and some combination of worker knowledge and system-wide date crunching replaces your idiot boss who never knew what the fuck was going on anyway.
stegosaurus posted:littlegreenpills posted:
suppose the workers on a factory floor, through the power of their pervasively networked open source ERP software, know exactly where in the wider system of production a supply/distribution bottleneck is when trying to answer questions such as "why haven't we received any raw materials for the last 3 months" or "our loading dock is piling up with crap because only 1 truck comes to pick it up every monday instead of 4 whats going on".
how exactly are they supposed to act on this knowledge? serious q
i think in the case of cybersyn the factory would report things that were beyond its control. so, if they're getting x amount of wood and turning out y amount of plywood, and suddenly they fall to y - 2 because jim tossed a cig into one of the machines, then they fix the machine and the 'problem' since it occurred at the factory or firm level and not a higher one, is solved within that factory/firm. but in the case of not getting enough wood or there being a transport bottleneck, the workers could make an assessment of the things that they don't have control over- for instance, we've got three extra truckloads of shit on our dock, so can we get three trucks to show up, please? that request is passed up to the next 'level' which in this case would be the dispatcher for the trucks in the wider area. if there are three truck-trips available then the problem is solved then and there. if not then the problem gets kicked up to the higher level, to the entire state, which might say 'hey we need more trucks' and then that directive gets passed down in reverse order, this time to the truck repair place or the truck manufacturing place. or the nationalized penske.
Ugh one conec posting is enough
