Left Unity.org / People’s Assembly

[Young Master Smeet]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Fred wrote:

What will this new social order have to be like?Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.

Charlie & Fred tend to talk about common plan than 'planned economy'http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

Charlie wrote:

If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, “possible” communism?

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Fred wrote:

In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite — into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society

There's a few more choice quotes, I can't recall the precise terms I'd need to look for them, and the book I need is at home…

[ALB]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

Charlie wrote:

If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, “possible” communism?

Paresh Chattopadhyay interprets this passage above as a rejection of planning from a single centre ("central planning"):

Quote:

The habitual discussion on the possibility (or otherwise) and method(s) of rational economic calculation in socialism has been carried out in terms of the opposites :’plan’ vs.’market’ where plan stands for socialism and market for capitalism. For socialists, planning is supposed to eliminate what Marx often calls ‘anarchy of the market’ reigning under capital leading to economic fluctuations and crises. But what kind of planning for socialism is in question? For a large number of people, both Right and Left, largely under the impact of  the experience of planning in the post-1917 Russia, the type of planning considered  in this connection has been central planning on the basis of mainly state ownership of the means of production which has been taken as the hall mark of socialism. (…) this view of planning, centralized at the highest level, is the very opposite of the type projected by the 1871 communards for the free society of the future and summarized by Marx (as given above) as decentralized planning by the associated producers.[his emphasis]

Personally, I'm not convinced that Marx did envisage "planning" in socialism as being decentralised to that degree, even though he clearly did not envisage the sort of planning that was tried in state-capitalist Russia. Nor do I think he would have used the term "planned economy" since he didn't envisage socialism being an "economy".

[Young Master Smeet]

I also missed 'definite plan', again, from principles of Communism:

Fred wrote:

hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which is an absolute impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Fred wrote:

In communist society it will be easy to be informed about both production and consumption. Since we know how much, on the average, a person needs, it is easy to calculate how much is needed by a given number of individuals, and since production is no longer in the hands of private producers but in those of the community and its administrative bodies, it is a trifling matter to regulate production according to needs.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/02/15.htm

[stuartw2112]

Thanks Bill for doing my homework for me. I'm aware of course that there's a huge debate about what "planning" or what "plans" there will be under socialism, to what extent such planning will be centralised, and the debate about whether such planning is even possible in a complex industrial society. But what's uncontroversial, as I said at the start, is that socialism has always been about replacing the anarchy of the market with a planned economy. To say that socialism won't have an economy is surely just to start piddling around with words. Socialism, like every other economic system, will have to produce goods and services, distribute them, consume them. The way in which this is done is known to most people who speak English as an "economy".

[alanjjohnstone]

i always thought Robin Cox explained socialist planning rather well in his ECA article."But even if Marx and Engels were advocates of central planning, that does not mean that every socialist or communist must necessarily follow suit."These days many, particularly recently in the Occupy Movement, view a planned economy as regulated capitalism with Keynesian government intervention. From my childhood sitting on the carpet in front of the TV I recall the amount of News time devoted to Neddy and always wondering who he was because he was always busy planning lots of things.

[Young Master Smeet]

Actually, I think there is more mileage nowadays in talking about a 'designed' economy, to make clear that we're not talking about everyone being subordinated to some master chart mapping out every hour of their day, regulating life down to the last rivet, but rather that we mean that we'll know how branches of production relate to one another.  If we design how things are going to work in advance, and then just leave them to get on with it.

[stuartw2112]

Nice point Bill. I was interested, back at the height of Occupy, to see that many people were reading their Hayek. Might decentralised democratic decision making lead to the emergence of spontaneous economic (socialist) orders, something like Hayek argued happened with free markets? Might an Occupy consensus model if it took off lead spontaneously, without central planning, to a socialist economic order? Probably not, but I'm sure there's interesting debates to be had here, work to be done.

[ALB]

You're right, Stuart, that whether we refer to socialism as an "economy" is a matter of definition of the word "economy". You may well be right that most people wouldn't regard the term "socialist economy" as a contradiction, but that would probably be because they envisage "socislism" as having the familiar features of today's "economy", i.e. production for the market, monetary incomes, etc.My point was that this is not how Marx and many in the Marxist tradition (including us) would describe socialism. For instance, in her series of lectures later published as What is Economics? Rosa Luxemburg concludes that it is the study of the impersonal economic laws that come into operation as if they were natural laws when there is generalised production for sale on a market with a view to profit. The subject of "economics" is "the economy" that comes into being under these conditions.In other words, "economics" is not the study of the production and allocation of resources as such but the study of this when there is an "economy". Economics only arose with capitalism, as in previous societies, where there was production and distribution (and, in most, exploitation) for direct use, there was no need for a special branch of science to study this: it was transparent. For the same reason, there will be no role for "economics" in socialism, precisely because socialism won't be an economy.OK, this is just a definition, but it's the Marxist one.  Having said this, I don't think it's a capital offence to talk of a "socialist economy" when arguing with people who have a different definition of economics (usually the conventional one that it's the study of the allocation of scare resources to competing ends — rather than this only where's there's production for sale and profit). I must have done it myself.You might mean by "planned economy" what we mean by socialism, but I doubt Ken Loach or most of the other Left Unifiers do.

[Young Master Smeet]

I'd argue that even the current market anarchy is to a certain extent 'designed' and far from spontaneous.  I think, to resort to metaphor, I'm talking about the difference between an orchestra (with a score and conductor) compared with a jamming band, who know a few common rules, and can indicate timings and transition between themselves through readily understood means.  Orchestral socialism, or Jazz socialism?

[stuartw2112]

Bill: I agree current economic order is not the same as Hayek's utopian vision of spontaneous order, but I'm afraid your metaphor rather confused than clarified things for me! Is the current order orchestrated, or jamming? Probably a bit of both, though it looks like the metaphor's collapsed already!Adam: Yes, I've heard all that before, as you know. My point would be that you can make a great deal of ideological fuss and academic debate over all these definitions and visions and revisions, and no doubt that's very useful in separating yourself from everyone else and creating a USP for the party and yourself. But actually, Ken Loach's vision of socialism and yours are identical for all the practical difference it makes in the here and now.

[ALB]

stuartw2112 wrote:

I was interested, back at the height of Occupy, to see that many people were reading their Hayek. Might decentralised democratic decision making lead to the emergence of spontaneous economic (socialist) orders, something like Hayek argued happened with free markets? Might an Occupy consensus model if it took off lead spontaneously, without central planning, to a socialist economic order? Probably not, but I'm sure there's interesting debates to be had here, work to be done.

Actually,  this sounds a bit like Robin Cox's "Guildford Road to Socialism" which we debated in the early 90s (the exchanges are on the files section of the WSM Forum). Only Robin didn't rule out winning control of (central) political power too at some stage. So we've sort of been here before.

[Young Master Smeet]

Ed,my quotes were meant to show that Charlie & Fred tended to refer to 'Deliberate plan' or 'Common plan' not 'Planned economy' but there was clearly a juxtaposition of 'plan' to 'anarchy of individual interests' .  I held back from quoting from Engels article on communes in the states, but the sorts of society he describes there and understands by communism clearly had an element of 'elected central controllers'http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htmWe can look at Marx arguing with Bakunin to see something along the lines that they saw such positions becoming technical rather than political once common ownership was established:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm

[Ed]

I'm sorry YMS but I don't see the phrase planned economy anywhere in those quotes. Nor do they refer to what is commonly meant by "planned economy" which is central planning or a command economy. It is quite a specific term used in Marxist-Leninist and Maoist circles to refer to what we would call state capitalism. The quotes you provided are akin to picking quotes from the 18th Brumaire to back up the degenerated workers state theory. I agree with your last post, all economies are planned to a certain extent. Which is why the phrase is generrally misleading as it assumes that all other economies are unplanned. This is of course ridiculous. The opposite to a planned economy is not an unplanned economy but the democratic control of the means of production, decided upon by those who produce rather than by a representative body of government beuracracts. I say again planned economy/command economy is synonymous with state capitalism.I tried to find the origin of the term and I can only find one instance in Lenin from a letter published in 1945. I believe the date the letter was published may have effected it's wording as I can find no other instance of planned economy.Unfortunately copy & paste doesn't want to work for some reason so it's no 12 in the notes.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/14.htmTrotsky on the other hand uses the phrase frequently to refer to the economy of the soviet union.http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/ch07.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/10/sovecon.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch02.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/quotes.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/10/sovstate.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch09.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/04/squeak1.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/xx/stalinism.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch01.htmand here's Stalin's usage.

Joey wrote:

When speaking, in my "Remarks," of the profitableness of the socialist national economy, I was controverting certain comrades who allege that, by not giving great preference to profitable enterprises, and by tolerating the existence side by side with them of unprofitable enterprises, our planned economy is killing the very principle of profitableness of economic undertakings. The "Remarks" say that profitableness considered from the standpoint of individual plants or industries is beneath all comparison with that higher form of profitableness which we get from our socialist mode of production, which saves us from crises of overproduction and ensures us a continuous expansion of production.But it would be mistaken to conclude from this that the profitableness of individual plants and industries is of no particular value and is not deserving of serious attention. That, of course, is not true. The profitableness of individual plants and industries is of immense value for the development of our industry. It must be taken into account both when planning construction and when planning production. It is an elementary requirement of our economic activity at the present stage of development.

[stuartw2112]

Ed: Your method is faintly ludicrous and complicated by the fact that we're dealing with translations from different languages. You can Google "planned economy" all you like, but it doesn't change the fact, denied by no one but you it seems, and spelled out clearly by themselves, that Marx and Engels saw the alternative to capitalism, the anarchy of the markets, as being socialism, which involved planning. In fact, even more problematic for your method, is the undeniable fact that Engels (and presumably Marx too), saw the centralisation of production in the hands of the state, including nationalising the banks and credit, as being a preliminary and necessary step towards socialist transformation.Adam: Yes, I was thinking of Robin's stuff too. But surely that's not the final word.

[ALB]

It's not just us being "sectarian" in not referring to socialism as an "economy" and in saying that socialism will in fact mean the end of "economics" (since there'll be nothing for it to study). That communism (as they prefer to call it) will mean the end both of "economics" and of "politics" is widely held in libcom circles, eg by those on the libcom forum who call themselves communists.So the dividing line is not between us and the rest but between those who see socialism/communism as necessarily a non-money, non-market (and so non-economic) society (a much wider group of people than just us) and those who see "socialism" as a planned "economy", i.e the planned production of goods for sale.

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