Deciding production without prices

[alanjjohnstone]

One of the criticisms of free access by market 'socialists' and pareconistas if i read them right is that prices are required to evaluate externalities and cost benefits of various production processes, something consumers can only determine by the price placed on something.

Does this news item support our case that there exist practical solutions to this question??

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-29639976

Quote:

Applications to improve the workings of the freight and logistics industry are also being pursued,…

Ultimately, the scheme could track produce from the farm gate to the front door, and allow shoppers to swipe their smartphone over packaging to discover where their food comes from, who processed it and how it was transported and stored. "It would allow them to see the conditions under which their food is produced, the environmental impact of that and the way that it has been handled along the way," Ms Makin said.

[DJP]

"Externalities" are costs / benefits that are not included in the price of a good or service.It is precisily the type of information above that is not included in the pricing mechanism.Productive decisions in socialism would not be made by isolated "consumers" choosing products as the appear at the end of the production process. Everyone would both a producer and consumer and directly involved in the productive process in one way or another, remember "producers" and also "consumers".

[alanjjohnstone]

DJP, i was specifically referring to Parecon and other similar models who retain prices and offer the reason that it is for determining externalities and criticise moneyless free access system. What Parecon call indicative pricing,…" meaning that they strive to indicate the various impacts of one or another choice. Markets ignore the effects beyond the immediate market exchange, and in fact there’s a name for these outside effects: externalities. They are clearly external — outside — the immediate exchange, and markets therefore ignore them…The greater the negative impact of each component, the higher the component price and the overall price.""Parecon is designed to assign "prices" to goods and services by finding convergence between supply and demand and assessing externalities in a direct democratic fashion…Parecon solves the problem of assigning prices to externalities by allowing the community to assess how much the externalities impact them. This assessment is then included in the prices of the given goods and services."http://www.wsm.ie/c/economy-revolution-pareconAnd this from the horses mouthhttp://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/www/books/pareconv/Chapter8.htm

Quote:

prices are “indicative” during the participatory planning process in the sense that they represent the best current estimates of final relative valuations. As the process unfolds these estimates become steadily more accurate. Indicative prices in a parecon are also flexible in the sense that qualitative information about the actual conditions of labor and implications of consuming items provides important additional guidance. We do not use quantitative prices alone, and the mechanism of arriving at and refining quantitative prices has checks and balances. Indicative prices (measuring social opportunity costs) … we need not only set quantitative prices but also continually socially reset them in light of changing qualitative information about work lives and consumption activity, the burden of distributing information in a participatory allocation procedure is considerably greater than in a non-participatory economy which simply disregards such matters. Not only must a participatory economy generate and revise accurate quantitative measures of social costs and benefits in light of changing conditions, it must also communicate substantial qualitative information about the conditions of other people.

Quote:

Productive decisions in socialism would not be made by isolated "consumers" choosing products as the appear at the end of the production process.

I thought this was indeed Robin Cox's point…that we will judge what to produce from stock-levels on the shelf, what stays and what leaves and at what frequency and all added up gives us a social demand to meet. This is fed back into the system of production. What Pareconistas have said is that would not be a responsible way of quantifying the social costs. While we argue that cost benefit analysis would serve but this article raises the possibility that a mere bar-code could offer a solution (this where i might have it wrong)The article says the consumer can have a way of looking at the amount of labour time…for sure not all the social necessary labour time, but more than enough of the collective labour to reflect whether the tin of sardines should be chosen than say the tin of anchovies.   

[cybutek]

Externalities should not be all that important in a socialist society.  Without a profit motive, there is no requirement for extremely low cost products.  Food for example can already feed multiple times the current global population.  There should never be a need to work, farm or rear animals in anything other than good conditions.With regards to logistics, this should also not be an environmental concern.  Given that I do not foresee global socialism being in effect before either all the Earth's oil has been depleated, became too difficult to extract, or a catastrophy caused because of global warming has called for some kind of action.  By the time socialism is globally viable and accepted by the majority of the population, we will have already been using clean energy out of necessity for quite some time.  This is my view unless anyone seriously believes that the global socialist revolution will happen within the next 20-30 years.The mindset of the population at the socialist revolution will obviously be different to what it is today, and by definition must be somewhat close to our current ideals.  Otherwise there will be no revolution.  Do not fall into the false vision of how socialism would fit in today, with people holding onto their cherished capitalistic world view.  As this just will not and could not happen.That being said, my summary would be that it makes sense that the value of an item will only be that of the labour costs as any environmental or welfare concerns should be either non-existent or best standards anyway.  This is due to both technology and the socialist (humanist) mindset of the global population which is already pre-requisite to socialism.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

"Externalities" are costs / benefits that are not included in the price of a good or service.It is precisily the type of information above that is not included in the pricing mechanism.Productive decisions in socialism would not be made by isolated "consumers" choosing products as the appear at the end of the production process. Everyone would both a producer and consumer and directly involved in the productive process in one way or another, remember "producers" and also "consumers".

Although I've had my differences with DJP on some subjects, I have to say that on this issue I agree 100% with DJP.The notion of the 'isolated individual' making decisions about 'shopping' (that is, being forced to choose one item over another, having to weigh up one's personal preferences) will be considered as laughable in socialism, as would 'a single hunter-gatherer heading off alone to hunt a dangerous prey' would be to a tribal group of hunters. Just as 'hunting' was a social activity, with far more cultural significance than just 'filling one man's belly', which required co-ordination and co-operation, and respect for the hunted animal, so 'bourgeois consumption' will appear unfeasably individualist, selfish and archaic to our a future society.Our choices will be as 'producers-consumers', and will involve such factors as 'happiness' (for an example amongst many). Why would anyone choose a 'commodity' produced without happiness? Of course, there is no way for a 'consumer' (the individual shopper) to see 'happiness' in an isolated tin of beans, in any commodity. But this knowledge would exist for the 'producer-consumer', the 'whole-person', the 'social-individual' of socialism.We producers won't be 'externalities' any longer for the disregard of the rich bourgeois 'consumer'.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 The notion of the 'isolated individual' making decisions about 'shopping' (that is, being forced to choose one item over another, having to weigh up one's personal preferences) will be considered as laughable in socialism, as would 'a single hunter-gatherer heading off alone to hunt a dangerous prey' would be to a tribal group of hunters. Just as 'hunting' was a social activity, with far more cultural significance than just 'filling one man's belly', which required co-ordination and co-operation, and respect for the hunted animal, so 'bourgeois consumption' will appear unfeasably individualist, selfish and archaic to our a future society.

 Im not quite sure what you have in mind here. In practical terms, how would a can of baked beans, say, find its way off the shelf of a distribution centre and into the stomach of the empirical individual in a socialist  society without that involving an actual decision by that individual to select such an item off the shelf, as opposed to some other item? You surely cannot be  suggesting that everything that individuals qua individuals consume  will be decided "socially"? If so, that seems to me to be venturing perilously close to the crackpot idea of "society wide central planning" in which the entire pattern of inputs and outputs are configured apriori within some stupendously vast Leontief-type matrix.  Necessarily , that would indeed entail the rigid allocation of consumer goods to individuals – absolutist rationing down to the tiniest detail  –  by some central planning authority, representing "society". I agree that consumption is "social" in a sense, and subject to social influences, but you have to distinguish between that and the actual decisionmaking process bearing on the distribution and supply of consumer goods in a socialist society. For the most part,  I would argue, the agents of such decisionmaking  will be empirical individuals making consumer  decisions that reflect their own preferences – even if their "own preferences" reflect, or are conditioned by, the wider social environment.  The emerging  pattern of demand will be monitored and automatically acted upon via a self regulating system of stock control  which will guide the producers – who, as you say, are also consumers – as to what needs to be produced.  Of course , there is also a class of final goods – public goods – which are not individual, or destined for consumption by individuals, but social or community-based.  It is with respect to the latter that we can indeed anticipate a high degee of democratic involvement. But it would be utterly ridiculous to posit the need for a democractic decision to be made to determine with you or I should be permitted to consume a can of baked beans!

[cybutek]

Individual products will be consumed by individuals and decisions will still need to be made, such as whether to get beans including mini sausages or without.  The point is that any decisions based on the production techniques like whether it's free range, organic or the working conditions of the producer will make no sense.  There will be no need for any form of production to be 'unhappy'.  No-one wants to work in an unhappy environment and socialism by its nature gives everyone power over their actions and decisions in this regard.  Not only will people not produce anything in an 'unhappy' way but the consumers would never choose to consume a product that was created under such situations.  The system will be self regulating in that you will be able to assume that all products you can choose from at your local supply were produced in good conditions and are environmentally friendly.  No more deciding whether to spend more money on a free range chicken.  A decision which is currently forced upon us because the capitalists see "happiness" as a commodity to be profitted from in of its self…  All chickens will be free range!

[alanjjohnstone]

 

Quote:

No-one wants to work in an unhappy environment and socialism by its nature gives everyone power over their actions and decisions in this regard.  Not only will people not produce anything in an 'unhappy' way but the consumers would never choose to consume a product that was created under such situations.

I think this expresses the reason why i think we will switch eventually to vegetarianism in a socialist society (perhaps not totally vegan but getting close to it)Who will want to work in an abattoir, slaughtering animals? Who would wish such a thing on another person? Perhaps there will be some small scale DIY butchery in some local communities for the occasional local meat-feast but nothing on the scale of the industrialised system of dismemberment that at the moment prevails. Those who persist in being flesh-eaters will have to take the responsibility of rearing the animals and doing the task of killing themselves. It won't be a matter of enforcement of a vegetarian diet, simply that work will be voluntary and i do not foresee too many volunteers for that sort of job. Gradually the culture of flesh-eating will fade away. (I myself remember as a youngster that chicken was reserved for once a year,  at Xmas…where i lived turkey was never on the menu, much less a christmas goose. Our 'daily' meat was mostly adulterated with non-meat fillers.) 

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

Im not quite sure what you have in mind here. In practical terms, how would a can of baked beans, say, find its way off the shelf of a distribution centre and into the stomach of the empirical individual in a socialist society without that involving an actual decision by that individual to select such an item off the shelf, as opposed to some other item?

But that’s not ‘shopping’, is it? ‘Selecting off a shelf’, I mean? ‘As opposed to some other item’. Why not both?What I said was:

LBird wrote:

The notion of the 'isolated individual' making decisions about 'shopping' (that is, being forced to choose one item over another, having to weigh up one's personal preferences) will be considered as laughable in socialism…

‘Shopping’ is the antithesis of ‘selecting off a shelf’. You try walking into Asda or Tesco and ‘selecting off a shelf’ as much as you deem necessary for your needs, and then walking off back to your car.The small matters of the amount of money in one’s wallet, payment at the till and security guards will intervene to ensure that you don’t ‘select off a shelf’ whatever you need. ‘Shopping’ is not ‘selecting’. ‘Shopping’ is being forced not to select what one wants. One must ‘weigh up’ the contradiction between one’s wants and one’s lack of resources.As other comrades have said, the organisation of this ‘selecting from a shelf’ requires, not ‘empirical individual’ decisions, but ‘democratic collective’ decisions, about production, distribution and consumption.

robbo203 wrote:

If so, that seems to me to be venturing perilously close to the crackpot idea of "society wide central planning"…

I’m not sure why you consider ‘society wide central planning’ to be a ‘crackpot idea’. Clearly, some decisions at least will require ‘society wide central planning’ because of the nature of our world society. As long as any ‘central planning’ is under the democratic control of all of us on this planet, then it sounds to me to be entirely sensible.You might now say, ‘Ahh, I see, no money, democratic controls, the same freedoms for all to select from shelves… why didn’t you say so?’, and we’d be in agreement.But, given that fact that we’re on a Communist site, why the emphasis on ‘empirical individuals’ and the insinuation that ‘society planning’ is tantamount to a ‘crackpot idea’?To me, ‘empirical individuals’ smacks of ‘greedy graspers’ who will satisfy their own desires, outside of any social considerations. And calling ‘social planning’ a ‘crackpot idea’ sounds like propaganda from the Adam Smith Institute! We will be social individuals, who will recognise the need for prior theoretical consideration ahead of our ‘selecting from a shelf’.That’s not ‘shopping’.From the content of the rest of your post, I’m know you don’t mean this, robbo, but I often get the strange feeling from some comrades that they regard ‘socialism’ as the realisation of the bourgeois wet dream of everyone becoming like ‘a billionaire going shopping’, and no-one being able to say ‘No’ to them about any item that takes their fancy. I definitely got this impression from some contributors on LibCom.It's a subject worth discussing, I think, especially with regard to Parecon and the others in that tradition, of some sort of 'market socialism' which stresses 'individual consumer choices' which take place at the end of a unconscious process, as opposed to 'collective production decisions' which take place at the start of a conscious process.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

But that’s not ‘shopping’, is it? ‘Selecting off a shelf’, I mean? ‘As opposed to some other item’. Why not both?What I said was:

LBird wrote:

The notion of the 'isolated individual' making decisions about 'shopping' (that is, being forced to choose one item over another, having to weigh up one's personal preferences) will be considered as laughable in socialism…

‘Shopping’ is the antithesis of ‘selecting off a shelf’. You try walking into Asda or Tesco and ‘selecting off a shelf’ as much as you deem necessary for your needs, and then walking off back to your car.The small matters of the amount of money in one’s wallet, payment at the till and security guards will intervene to ensure that you don’t ‘select off a shelf’ whatever you need. ‘Shopping’ is not ‘selecting’. ‘Shopping’ is being forced not to select what one wants. One must ‘weigh up’ the contradiction between one’s wants and one’s lack of resources.As other comrades have said, the organisation of this ‘selecting from a shelf’ requires, not ‘empirical individual’ decisions, but ‘democratic collective’ decisions, about production, distribution and consumption.

This is why I said " I'm not quite sure what you have in mind here".  You have now indicated that what you have in mind is that there will be no quid pro quo exchange intervening between you and the appropriation of the product you select off the shelf in a socialist society.  I wouldn't wish to argue against that; thats quite correctHowever,  you then go on to say the "organisation of this ‘selecting from a shelf’ requires, not ‘empirical individual’ decisions, but ‘democratic collective’ decisions, about production, distribution and consumption". With respect, this is quite confusing  "Selecting from the shelf" does indeed  presupposes the organisation of production and distribution, but the act of "selecting " itself – which is what we are talking about –  is self evidently a matter of exercising one's individual consumer preferences, is it not? In that sense it is the individual that is the proximate decision maker here.  It is the individual who is deciding to take that can of baked beans off the shelf – not her peers or society in general – on account of the fact that she has a craving for baked beans and indeed knows this better than anyone else. She may be influenced by her peers or society in a background sort of way, of course, but it is she herself who is making the decision 

LBird wrote:

…I’m not sure why you consider ‘society wide central planning’ to be a ‘crackpot idea’. Clearly, some decisions at least will require ‘society wide central planning’ because of the nature of our world society. As long as any ‘central planning’ is under the democratic control of all of us on this planet, then it sounds to me to be entirely sensible.

 From this it is clear to me  that you don't really understand what "society wide central planning" means. I don't know quite what you have in mind but society wide planning in its classic sense means one single giant apriori plan that seeks to plan the total pattern of production by setting out in advance the production targets of millions of interdependent inputs and outputs that a comprise any kind of  modern production system.  Its not just about "some decisions" requiring society wide  central planning; it is about ALL decisions about what needs to be produced being integrated into a single worldwide plan. If  it were only about SOME decisions then by definition that would not be society wide.I think the expression you are searching for is  "centralised planning" or maybe even "global planning".  Yes, of course there will be a need for some global planning bodies – for example in respect of the coordination of global air traffic or maritime traffic of emergency relief and aid.  But none of  this is remotely "society wide" in the sense of what is meant by society wide planning; each such body would be concerned with only a tiny sliver of the activity that goes on in the larger society, not the totality of such activity 

LBird wrote:

You might now say, ‘Ahh, I see, no money, democratic controls, the same freedoms for all to select from shelves… why didn’t you say so?’, and we’d be in agreement.But, given that fact that we’re on a Communist site, why the emphasis on ‘empirical individuals’ and the insinuation that ‘society planning’ is tantamount to a ‘crackpot idea’?To me, ‘empirical individuals’ smacks of ‘greedy graspers’ who will satisfy their own desires, outside of any social considerations. And calling ‘social planning’ a ‘crackpot idea’ sounds like propaganda from the Adam Smith Institute! We will be social individuals, who will recognise the need for prior theoretical consideration ahead of our ‘selecting from a shelf’.

I don't quite see how talking of "empirical individuals" smacks of "greedy graspers". You me and everyone else frequenting this site are empirical individuals. Are we all greedy graspers?  Nor do I see any contradiction between the fact that we are empirical individuals and the fact that we are socially constituted.  To say that there are no such thing as an empirical individual strikes me as being about as daft as Mrs Thatcher saying  that there is no such thing as society.  Without individuals there is no society and without society there are no individuals  

LBird wrote:

From the content of the rest of your post, I’m know you don’t mean this, robbo, but I often get the strange feeling from some comrades that they regard ‘socialism’ as the realisation of the bourgeois wet dream of everyone becoming like ‘a billionaire going shopping’, and no-one being able to say ‘No’ to them about any item that takes their fancy. I definitely got this impression from some contributors on LibCom.

Well I don't really get that impression that all.  On the contrary, the usual argument employed is that given an abundance of goods individuals  will have no inclination to take more than they need: greed is by-product of contrived scarcity. Additionally, under free access communism there is nothing to be gained in terms of the conspicuous consumption and display of wealth by way of status. On the contrary, status acquisition, if anything, will turn on what you put into society rather than what you take out of it 

LBird wrote:

It's a subject worth discussing, I think, especially with regard to Parecon and the others in that tradition, of some sort of 'market socialism' which stresses 'individual consumer choices' which take place at the end of a unconscious process, as opposed to 'collective production decisions' which take place at the start of a conscious process.

I think what will be "unconscious" or spontaneous, if you like, is the way in which the numerous plans in a communist society will mutually adjust to each other.   Your conscious decision to take several cans of baked beans off the shelf  will automatically  trigger a signal to the production unit producing baked beans to produce more baked beans.  Point is that that production unit does not know at the time about your decision or the decisions of millions of other "consumers"  or indeed other production units connected to it along the supply chain.  To a degree, production in any large scale complex modern society unavoidably entails a large degree of anonymity – or to paraphrase your expression "unconsciousness".  In that respect and only in that respect the AnCaps have a point.   I don't see how you can get around that but this does not in any way necessitate some kind of market or quasi-market  as Pareconists and others mistakenly think. Actually,  it is the market that apes a self regulating spontaneous process that is essential to modern society – not the other way roundThe Left, it seems to me, is very fond of a kind of totalistic and totalising notion of "consciousness" (as in "conscious planning") as though it were , or would like to be,  privy to a sort of "gods eye view" of what goes on society.  You cannot really  be conscious of what I'm thinking – though I can attempt to communicate my thoughts to you which will be at best a partial attempt – anymore than I  can be conscious of what your are thinking  –  your needs, your desires and your hopes.  Similarly one community really cannot know the needs of another in a communist society and the further apart they are spatially, the less likely are they to know. When you throw into the equation the dynamic factor- the fact that needs change over time – then the matter becomes more complicated than ever.Instead of focusing on "consciousness" per se in some totalistic fashion, we should be looking at the processes that link different consciousnesses  if I can put it like that,  in a manner that allows for their spontaneous and mutual adjustment to the benefit of all

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