Ticktin and socialism

[alanjjohnstone]

I wonder if Hillel Tcktin picked up anything from his debate with Adam.

http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1104/society-of-abundance/

Quote:

"people will be able to walk into a distribution point and pick up what they need."

[alanjjohnstone]

Actually, this article is an opening for someone to reply to WW and make a few points from the SPGB case.(I would but i just had a letter published in the same issue.)

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I wonder if Hillel Tcktin picked up anything from his debate with Adam.

Video of that 2009 debate in Glasgow.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/video/did-trotsky-point-way-socialism

[Young Master Smeet]

Ticktin has long form in this area, in the excellent book: Market socialism : the debate among socialists[edited by Bertell Ollman] / participants, David Schweickart … [et al.]. He took the non-market side (he suggested lots and lots of surveys).  Pre-dates that debate with Adam a touch.

[ALB]

Now that the election is over I've had the time to read this. While I'm sure Ticktin has always argued against so-called "market socialism" in favour of some sort of planning I don't think he was arguing this in 1997:

Quote:

A distinguishing mark of socialism is that distribution would operate according to need, rather than input

Quote:

people will be able to walk into a distribution point and pick up what they need. Obviously there will be no such thing as finance, and whole sections of economic activity will no longer exist because they are completely wasteful and unnecessary. There will be no arms production, no advertising and, of course, no City of London – you can go through the different wasteful forms that will cease to exist. It is quite clear that the standard of living could very quickly be raised if such waste is removed.

Quote:

In a socialist society you would expect workers to work in the way that they judge is correct. Since a worker’s incentive under socialism is not money, they work as best they can in order that they not only fulfil what they are doing for the collectivity, but for themselves. You would expect that they would work as well as they can, without any need for discipline from outside.

Quote:

Under a situation of relative abundance, there will be a high level of production without shortages. In that case growth rates will be relatively low. The green demand for lower growth will be realised, because there will be no need to go on producing and producing for its own sake. The bourgeois concept of the human being having infinite needs is ridiculous, but it is the basis of bourgeois economics. Since they say there are infinite needs, growth could reach any level. In fact there is a limited amount that needs to be produced for a given society and consequently under socialism we will be able to identify the limited areas in which increased production is needed.

I find in hard to believe that he has not been influenced in some way by what we have consistently and persistently said over the years that socialism involves.

[Young Master Smeet]

  

Ticktin wrote:

As Marx makes clear in the Gotha Programme and elsewhere, value and so price and hence money is abolished under socialism. This does not necessarily mean that there may not be tokens used for items which are not yet in sufficient supply for all or may never be, like Mediterranean homes. The society will gradually distribute more and more goods on a free basis, beginning with those items which are communal because they are natural monopolies or so costly that they require the intervention of society to ensure provision like transport, housing, water and power.

 What will a socialist society be like?Hillel H. Ticktin Critique Vol. 25, Iss. 1, 1997

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