statickinetics posted:im wondering what people think about this discussion, particularly the argument that socialism in one country is not possible; the idea that the *now global* law of value is overdeterminant and that these attempts eventually become sublimated into the world market.
"what do we do if the revolution only breaks out in one country? that's a very good question, we need to do some theorizing on that..." lol, that was a good question in 1920, we're a little bit past it. these people live in a dream world, having said that left communists are completely harmless unlike trots and basically are just hermits who religiously read marx. makes them good for books and economics and stuff, they have no possible chance of doing anything real and in fact are explicitly opposed to anything real as "vanguardism."
only a matter of time until we get people who think marx himself was a totalitarian and go back to feuerbach and blanqui
babyhueypnewton posted:only a matter of time until we get people who think marx himself was a totalitarian and go back to feuerbach and blanqui
a matter of time?
diamond_galas posted:there was no market for labor power. and the bureaucracy did not have the power to hire and fire workers.
one of the authors mentioned earlier, chattopadhyay, argues there was a functioning labour market and that there was even a significant level of unemployment (or, at least, underemployment). i've never read him though, mccaine used to like it years and years ago.
as you said, there were countervailing factors though, such as:
- prices didn't give strong signals to firms because they were generally set too low, and often not allowed to float, which was connected to widespread bureaucratic fears that sharp rises in key prices would lead to riots.
- projects had huge amounts of inertia given labour market rigidities and political practices, such that it was generally considered unacceptable to lay off people or relocate or even reduce state orders of certain goods (such as tanks).
- there was a lot of innovation within research facilities but there weren't good systems to diffuse this innovation within actual industrial practices. this wasn't to say there wasn't attempts at it, they just tended to be much slower and less effective than comparable projects in the west (computerization, for example).
- there were principal-agent problems given complex system of (dominant) state orders. the state order system made it so that the market was structured in such a way that there was a state/political filter between consumer demands and actual production, such that it was unclear whether the main aim of a firm's manager was to target sales to consumers or to target maximizing resources out of the state. usually the latter won out. and because of all the above then there were issues like featherbedding (labour hoarding).
one example is, say, shoes. under khrushchev there was a shift towards light industries producing consumer goods like shoes. by the late brezhnev period the government boasted about the large numbers of shoes produced, more than the US actually. but an economist pointed out (in 1983 iirc), well, okay, sure, but the soviet union doesn't need a lot of shoes. it needs shoes that fit specific demands of consumers - different styles, more durability, etc. - but the soviet economy just mass produced a narrow line of shoes, and probably way too many of them. but there wasn't much of a way to get that basic message integrated into the actual practice of the economy.
swirlsofhistory posted:talking about 'consumer demand' like it's a politically neutral development, especially when comparing it to the consumer market in the US, is an error of the revisionist theory of the productive forces. people only need one or two pairs of shoes. if they are lost or damaged, then they can be replaced, but I think the bourgeois practice of collecting different clothing items for vanity reasons should be discouraged in socialism.
how does marxist science determine how much comfort or style a person should have. is there a formula. which of mao's books contains the definitive statement on how nice a pair of shoes should look before it becomes bourgeois affectation. do you think that maybe high modernist utilitarian design philosophy was also itself a stylistic choice.
swirlsofhistory posted:talking about 'consumer demand' like it's a politically neutral development, especially when comparing it to the consumer market in the US, is an error of the revisionist theory of the productive forces. people only need one or two pairs of shoes. if they are lost or damaged, then they can be replaced, but I think the bourgeois practice of collecting different clothing items for vanity reasons should be discouraged in socialism.
beep boop
you have reached your quota of shoes
beep
HenryKrinkle posted:what was the deal w/ chocolate america anyways i never followed that drama
he used to be a right-winger and lf turned turned him into a liberal. he's always been a meltdown machine though
statickinetics posted:communism is a higher stage of production and i would imagine that would include going beyond the artificially constructed consumer demand produced by either market forces or a centralized planning body. as in, the consumers of products would return meaningful feedback to the producers that would determine the quantity and quality of the products beyond "voting with your dollar"
so your plan is to reinvent amazon.com?
getfiscal posted:swirlsofhistory posted:talking about 'consumer demand' like it's a politically neutral development, especially when comparing it to the consumer market in the US, is an error of the revisionist theory of the productive forces. people only need one or two pairs of shoes. if they are lost or damaged, then they can be replaced, but I think the bourgeois practice of collecting different clothing items for vanity reasons should be discouraged in socialism.
how does marxist science determine how much comfort or style a person should have. is there a formula. which of mao's books contains the definitive statement on how nice a pair of shoes should look before it becomes bourgeois affectation. do you think that maybe high modernist utilitarian design philosophy was also itself a stylistic choice.
I was thinking more along the lines of consciously reducing necessary labor time to a minimum so as to allow for the flourishing of each individual's creative, intellectual, and social life; that is to say their dis-alienated human nature. a race to produce ever more bourgeois fashions or trinkets stands at odds with this goal.
anyway, today's consumer society is an outgrowth of the high degree of parasitism present in the imperialist countries, and not a sign of the kind of advanced productive forces achievable under socialism. it would be good to disabuse people of the idea that socialism is merely bourgeois privilege democratized.
HenryKrinkle posted:what was the deal w/ chocolate america anyways i never followed that drama
he donated the most money for the pants and spent like 20 pages in a thread defending his decisions against wesley button. now he's just a typical american liberal who has a lot of meltdown. he's like the ezra klein of SA
swirlsofhistory posted:I was thinking more along the lines of consciously reducing necessary labor time to a minimum so as to allow for the flourishing of each individual's creative, intellectual, and social life; that is to say their dis-alienated human nature. a race to produce ever more bourgeois fashions or trinkets stands at odds with this goal.
probably also a dictatorship that considers shoes a bourgeois privilege also at odds with this goal, just a thought
in Rhizzone-LF he admitted to having sex with a prostitute in a third world country as a first world tourist.
so by his own standards he's a rapist.
babyhueypnewton posted:It's clear where babyfinland's loyalties lie, but I would advise you to not fall for the same kind of trap, lest you are silenced over the issue of Assange by pro-imperialist women, conflicted and attacked over the issue of bourgeois gay rights, distracted from the good character of comrades by attacks of sexism (as the FBI has tried to smear the black panthers with for 40 years) etc. democratic centralism and materialism are the only defenses from the disciplined and ruthless forces of the state and bourgeoisie who will seek to divide us through identity politics.
Goethestein posted:its cool that trotsky was entirely right and stalin instituted an incompetent system that brutally killed millions of people and starved millions more, then collapsed utterly within a lifetime, discrediting socialism everywhere
haha u gaey
swirlsofhistory posted:talking about 'consumer demand' like it's a politically neutral development, especially when comparing it to the consumer market in the US, is an error of the revisionist theory of the productive forces. people only need one or two pairs of shoes. if they are lost or damaged, then they can be replaced, but I think the bourgeois practice of collecting different clothing items for vanity reasons should be discouraged in socialism.
no socialism unless nike dunks