Path toward socialism
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“If everybody can take home any car wants, don’t you expect that most people will settle for Ferrari, Lotus or alike? ”
Are you assuming that there will not be a democratic popular means of determining what is produced. That will be the main check and balance…What will society allocate the resources and the labour to a product.
Bu let’s face reality, having confronted and defeated the ruling class in what may well be a bitter protracted conflict, are you suggesting that the citizens in the newly established socialist world, will begin to undermine and sabotage what they had just sacrificed for and had successfully accomplished? Using past revolutions I do not think is a fair comparison to judge the socialist revolution. Previous revolutions were to replace an elite with a new elite. As with our own organization , the SPGB, I think members always have an eagle-eye to spot any form of privilege or advantage within the membership. We don’t have the rotating term of officials, simply because we don’t have sufficient members but woe betide any committee member who believes she or he has an entitlement to that position
Having campaigned on principles such as equality and climate justice to end the poverty and misery that people will not have changed their worldview on what brings happiness and joy. Perhaps some will be greedy, selfish and maybe even aggressive, well I have confidence that these individuals can either be tolerated and accommodated or otherwise somehow sanctioned by their neighbours, family and friends. I cannot see them as a threat to the stability of future society, merely an inconvenience.
But to be specific, do you think a Ferrari is the most useful of cars for a family or carrying cargo?
Also remember, there is not going to be any special status associated with conspicuous consumption as there is now in our highly stratified consumer society. But I am hoping that when it comes to watches we will have Rolex-quality produced and not the cheap fake that I can afford
That argument about the car is very old, and it has always been tried by peoples who believe that socialism can not be established in our society. I don’t care about having a car when I can have massive transportation. There are places where peoples need a car every day because the capitalists have made that type of arrangements in order to force workers to own a car along with others expenses that come along with them including court system, police, judges, and lawyers, as a friend of mine used to say: We wanted private transportation, well, we got it. The most important thing to understand is that socialism can only be established by the vast majority of the human beings and we can not create a blueprint of the future person and it is up to mankind to produce what they need and what they do not need
“Do you gorge yourself to point of vomiting then start all over again? “
I have a confession, Robbo.
In my younger years, that was what I would do practically every weekend when it came to drinking beer…binge drinking and throwing up and then more pints 😳
I also went for the hottest spiciest curries until I realized that milder ones were tastier.
What youth learns with maturity, so will future society gain in wisdom with experience.
Thank you alanjjohnstone and robbo203 for your replies. I apologize I cannot spend more time for replying to you. I think it will help if I post one reply per idea rather than one post with views on multiple ideas.
Hi robbo203,
Consumers’ motives would affect demand. Regardless of motives, the socialist economy would have to satisfy the demand, whatever the demand is. You mention “self regulating system of stock control” as a mechanism to balance supply and demand in the socialist economy. This is a system to replenish the shelves. In Capitalist economy “pricing” is the mechanism to balance supply and demand. If the supply is low the price goes up and reduces demand. Demand means “willingness and capacity to pay” not “need for product”.
Another mechanism to balance supply and demand, for example, is “quotas”. It can be a disastrous solution. I lived through quota of 2 lb of meat per months (half of it was bone). Maybe a good computer algorithm could generate quote/work required pairs that most people would be pleased with. Would you have interest to be part of developing such an algorithm?
Can be any other mechanism to balance supply and demand?
By the way, all production today is for consumption, granted – often enough is wasteful consumption.
Prices do not balance supply and demand. They gauge effective demand, that is, the ability to buy, not the actual demand.
You no doubt heard the analogy…I wished to eat steak but had to do with hamburger because I couldn’t afford the steak because the price was too high to pay for. The actual real demand for steak is therefore hidden by the purchase of the cheaper substitute. We can apply this to many products, even to your Ferraris and Maseratis.
Socialism is based upon real demand, what people actually want and use. It is not about monetary accounting. The prices system involves vast quantities of resources and labour. In socialism calculations will be done directly in physical quantities of real things, in use-values , without any general unit of calculation . Needs will be communicated to productive units as requests for specific useful things, while productive units will communicate their requirements to their suppliers as requests for other useful things. Take construction, to build a house I require so many thousands of bricks. Under capitalism having completed what amount of materials require to build the house, I have to cost it all by translating that into prices.
A monetary economy gives rise to the illusion that the “cost” of producing something is merely financial . Money is the universal unit of measurement, the “general equivalent” that allows everything to be compared with everything else under all circumstances—but only in terms of their labour-time cost or the total time needed on average to produce them from start to finish. Such non-monetary calculation of course already happens, on the technical level, under capitalism. Once the choice of productive method has been made (according to expected profitability as revealed by monetary calculation) then the real calculations in kind of what is needed to produce a specific good commence so much raw materials, so much energy, so much labour. In socialism it is not the case that the choice of productive method will become a technical choice that can be left to engineers
By the replacement of exchange economy by common ownership basically what would happen is that wealth would cease to take the form of exchange value, so that all the expressions of this social relationship peculiar to an exchange economy, such as money and prices, would automatically disappear. In other words, goods would cease to have an economic value and would become simply physical objects which human beings could use to satisfy some want or other. The disappearance of economic value would mean the end of economic calculation in the sense of calculation in units of value whether measured by money or directly in some unit of labour-time. It would mean that there was no longer any common unit of calculation for making decisions regarding the production of goods.
Decisions involving choices of a general nature, such as what forms of energy to use, which of two or more materials to employ to produce a particular good, whether and where to build a new factory, there is a technique already in use under capitalism that could be adapted for use in socialism: so-called cost-benefit analysis and its variants. Naturally, under capitalism the balance sheet of the relevant benefits and costs advantages and disadvantages of a particular scheme or rival schemes is drawn up in money terms, but in socialism a points system for attributing relative importance to the various relevant considerations could be used instead. The points attributed to these considerations would be subjective, in the sense that this would depend on a deliberate social decision rather than on some objective standard. In the sense that one of the aims of socialism is precisely to rescue humankind from the capitalist fixation with production time/money, cost-benefit type analyses, as a means of taking into account other factors, could therefore be said to be more appropriate for use in socialism than under capitalism. Using points systems to attribute relative importance in this way would not be to recreate some universal unit of evaluation and calculation, but simply to employ a technique to facilitate decision-making in particular concrete cases. The advantages /disadvantages and even the points attributed to them can, and normally would, differ from case to case. So what we are talking about is not a new abstract universal unit of measurement to replace money and economic value but one technique among others for reaching rational decisions in a society where the criterion of rationality is human welfare.
Prices are indeed superfluous when society is organised on the basis of production for need and exchange-values are replaced by use-values to employ Marxist terms.
The function of cost/pricing is to enable a business enterprise to calculate its costs, to fix its profit expectations within a structure of prices, to regulate income against expenditure and, ultimately, to regulate the exploitation of its workers.
Socialist determination of needs begins with consumer needs and then flows throughout distribution and on to each required part of the structure of production
But with capitalist system, the information is a contra-flow of information. It flows from producers, through distributors, to the consumer. This information is the prices of goods determined by the accumulating costs of production and distribution plus profit. Prices are increased in each part of production, from mining through industrial processing, manufacture and assembly, then accumulating further through distribution until the final price is passed on to the consumer.
It is indeed questionable that prices can represent the social costs (the externalities) of allocation of resources. Try putting a monetary value on a beauty spot which is then lost by open-cast mining? It is the subjective judgement of a points based cost-benefit analysis of the pros and cons that will be the more accurate deciding factor , not the $ or £.
Nor does prices effective solve the dilemma of calculating opportunity costs. Prices simply are accounting technique.Apologies for the length of this response, and I fear since I use Robbo’s substantive explanation which you can read here he may well repeat some of this.
https://libcom.org/files/CommonVoice3.pdf
But to sum up.
The only calculations that would be necessary in socialism would be calculations in kind. On the one side would be recorded the resources (materials, energy, equipment, labour) used up in production and on the other side the amount of the good produced, together with any by-products. This, of course, is done under capitalism but it is doubled by an exchange value calculation: the exchange value of the resources used up is recorded as the cost of production while the exchange value of the output (after it has been realised on the market) is recorded as sales receipts. If the latter is greater than the former, then a profit has been made; if it is less, then a loss is recorded. Such profit-and-loss accounting has no place in socialism and would, once again, be quite meaningless.
Calculation in kind entails the counting or measurement of physical quantities of different kinds of factors of production. There is no general unit of accounting involved in this process such as money or labour hours or energy units. In fact, every conceivable kind of economic system has to rely on calculation in kind, including capitalism. Without it, the physical organisation of production (e.g. maintaining inventories) would be literally impossible. But where capitalism relies on monetary accounting as well as calculation in kind, socialism relies solely on the latter.
Why are we going to need money on a society based on common possession of the means of production and free access ? Money could be used to decorate the walls and for tailor paper, and gold and silver can be used to make cooking pots
Hi radu62s
Just to take up your point:
You mention “self regulating system of stock control” as a mechanism to balance supply and demand in the socialist economy. This is a system to replenish the shelves. In Capitalist economy “pricing” is the mechanism to balance supply and demand. If the supply is low the price goes up and reduces demand. Demand means “willingness and capacity to pay” not “need for product”.
But “replenishing the shelves” is precisely what “balancing supply and demand” entails. You are organising the supply of particular products in a way that meets the physical demand for them as represented by the rate at which these items disappear, or are removed, from the shelves.
I cannot stress enough that ANY kind of technologically advanced mass society – including capitalism itself – depends on this mechanism of a self regulating system of stock control. Capitalism would pretty soon collapse if it sought to dispense with it. It would have no way of effectively organising the physical production and distribution of goods to where they are needed without this capacity to monitor stock levels and transmit information to the suppliers of the goods in question.
In capitalism though, as Alan had pointed out, the demand for goods is based not so much on what people may actually want or desire but rather on what they can afford. That is to say, on their “effective demand” to use the jargon. It is purchasing power that constrains what you may want to purchase but that there is a further point to be made here which is that that what you may want to purchase (irrespective of whether you can afford to purchase it) is deeply conditioned by the very nature of capitalist society and its expansionist dynamic
In other words, capitalism has a material incentive to generate what Marcuse calls “false needs” via such mechanism as advertising and by extension, perpetuate scarcity in the form of “artificial scarcity” by means of which it retains its ideological hold over individuals (see for example, https://www.academia.edu/30288232/Herbert_Marcuse_and_False_Needs_-_Appearing_Soon_in_Social_Theory_and_Practice_)
Hi radu62s,
I totally understand your wish to start building the socialist system right now. This kind of position, “we just need to sit tight and WAIT until the rest of the humanity automagically come to realize the socialist values as theirs own”, it is a bit frustrating.
I will just throw a couple of ideas into the pot here. First of all, it seems that most people are limited in their vision of a future society by what they have already seen, which is very understandable, this is how a brain works. For instance, we usually imagine store shelves full of produce. My idea would be that in a more sustainable socialist society, a more efficient system would function: that of canteens. It saves a lot of waste on so many levels: cooking, energy, washing up, space, etc. When I lived in Zurich, I would often eat in a local university canteen which offered a variety of choices of food, including vegetarian, and I absolutely loved the fact that I didn’t need to waste my time grocery shopping, cooking and washing the dishes.
But this is just one idea. I imagine, there would be a lot of other changes in the way we consume, and our current vision is somewhat distorted by what we see on the daily basis in capitalism.
In general, radu62s, I agree with you that we may need to start building the systems of the future already now. I would join you, and I have a lot of ideas.
I totally understand your wish to start building the socialist system right now. This kind of position, “we just need to sit tight and WAIT until the rest of the humanity automagically come to realize the socialist values as theirs own”, it is a bit frustrating.
Hi Schekn
I dont think anyone here is suggesting we sit back and wait for people to become socialists. Nor is I being suggested that you cant make lifestyle changes in the here and now even if that in itself is not going to be enough to do the trick. This is not an either/or thing
The idea you put forward of using canteens is OK, I guess. Maybe food consumption in a socialist society will become more of a social activity. A sort of “people’s eating halls” sort of thing. I imagine there will also be a lot more in the way of growing your own food in socialism too and I am all for encouraging these sort of developments right now as a way of helping to shift ideas
But at the end of the day we still plausible model for the allocation of resources in a socialist society and I believe this has to be firmly based on the concept of a self regulating system of stock control using calculation in kind. I think this is what is basically being discussed in this thread
World War 2 created communal canteens which were widely regarded as a success and expanded the allotments
British Restaurants supplied an almost universal experience of eating away from home. Here a three course meal cost only 9d. Standards varied, but the best were greatly appreciated and had a large regular clientele. British Restaurants were run by local authorities, who set them up in a variety of different premises such as schools and church halls. They evolved from the LCC’s Londoners’ Meals Service which originated in September 1940 as a temporary, emergency system for feeding those who had been bombed out. By mid-1941 the LCC was operating two hundred of these restaurants. British Restaurants were open to all, but mainly served office and industrial workers.
From 815,000 allotments in 1939 the number rose to 1,400,000 by 1943. allotments were estimated to contribute some 1.3 million tonnes of food produce.
What about Al Capone chicken soup restaurant ?
Thank you all!
I am really overwhelmed by your replies. I wish I had more time to spend on replies and reading your materials.
Schekn – I would love to discuss with you your ideas. I am not sure if it should be continued here, in a different forum or in a different format.
Your idea about canteens, expanded by robbo203 and Alan (alanjjohnstone if I am not mistaken), I think it is a great idea with potential to become a plan of action. I would like to call it “social eatery” or even something more glamorous (to be found). Image/presentation matters a lot these days when people buy drinks for the look (to post pictures with) rather than for the taste.
Alan – I really appreciated you bringing in discussion the point system, as an alternative to money for making decisions. I would think resources allocation would have to be part of the points calculated. To use your “steak/cheeseburger” example: most people would prefer the prime steak instead of cheeseburger but a cow provides more cheeseburgers than steaks. The point system should solve such problem at least, if not better, as the pricing does. I would love to expand more on this topic, after I read the document you referenced.
Just a few words about myself, so you can understand my views better. I am Romanian, which I lived 29 years in socialism/communism, than I immigrated to the US where I lived another 28 years. I plan to retire in a couple of years in Romania. I have engineering degree from Romania and a Business/finance degree from US, though I work in I.T. as an analyst developer. I came to the understanding that money, “the blood of the economy”, restricts economic activity. I expect, in the not to distant future, society will function without them. Actually I am having fun at all the energy poured into the cryptocurrencies.
Radu, I am sure you will appreciate the great difference between the Romanian regime and our depiction of a socialist society.
A state-capitalist command economy that was brought to Romania by Russian T-34 tanks and then which became the fiefdom of the Ceausescu dictatorship and his secret police, the Securitate.
I think I didn’t highlight that Cost Benefit Analysis also need not be based on money values bit can be used in a points version to determine advantages and disadvantages of a project.
And also that logistic supply chains such as Just-In-Time already operated by capitalism can be applied even to socialism.
Perhaps you can expand on your insight that money is a restriction now satisfying public demand.
And we have a thread on crypto-currencies which you could contribute to using your professional experience
I think you moved from one capitalist country into another capitalist country. It is the same case of the Cuban who emigrated from one capitalist to another capitalist country
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