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I think they are talking about this here on this site:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/z-marxismGo to Publications/Education at the top of this page.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

http://issuu.com/occupylondon/docs/occupy_little_book_of_ideas/1The 60 page pamphlet is by the working economic group which Carne Ross is involved with and which i drew attention to in an earlier post on the thread. The group in its foreward claim to be authorative in the field.

Read through this last night (it's an easy read and only takes an hour or so). To tell the truth, it is not what I first assumed it to be, i.e a statement of policy. It's an attempt to explain some of the terms used in discussions about banking and the financial crisis, and it gives the case for and against particular reforms. Its description of how banking works is not all that cranky, but not much different from how the textbooks say it works. I imagine hardcore cranks will be disappointed.But the overall assumption is that the crisis is financial and has been caused by certain activities of the banks, with the implication that it could have been avoided if banks hadn't been allowed to behave in this way and that future crises can be avoided if banks can be stopped behaving in this way. It's still "the bankers" rather than the capitalist profit system as a whole that is blamedSo, there's still a need for us to produce something on the same questions as there is clearly an interest in them amongst those who are critical of present-day society and economic system.Incidentally, I read their pamphlet on my computer as an e-book. Are we capable of producing something like this on our site?

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Perhaps this months Socialist Standard could be reformatted and re-edited into a counter-pamphlet on HO equipment with an appropriate introduction, and  if not all issues are covered – ie Robin Hood Tax, previous articles from archives can be included. The title can reflect the haste by being described as The Socialists Answer – Part One or whatever to show that we are prepared for an ongoing discussion. (hopefully a Part Two and Part Three would materialise)

OK, let's try to do something like this. I've just selected 20 articles on banking and money from the Cooking the Books column in the Socialist Standard since it started in 2005. At 500-600 words these are as short as the chapters in the Occupy booklet and they cover the same subjects as them, eg Basic Income, Ron Paul, Social Credit, Land Tax, Quantititive Easing, local currencies as well as banking and "credit creation". In all, about 12,250 words, so about the same length as theirs (and the same number of words as in the Standard).I'll send them to the Publications Department tomorrow. This should be do-able. Maybe also to them with a proposal to meet their Economics Working Group?

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Just read more about the Nobel Prize winners and see that they were awarded it for studies "to improve efficiency in markets where price was not an issue", i.e. where there is no buying and selling — in plain English, where there is no market. In fact, one of the winners, Professor Shapley is reported as saying that he's not is an economist, but a mathematication: "I never, never in my life took a course in economics." So their work could be of interest to socialists.According today's Times:

Quote:

Their studies helped to improve efficiency in markets where price was not an issue, matching doctors to hospitals, students to dorm rooms and organs to transplant patients (…) Such matching arrangements are essential in most Western countries where organ-selling is illegal, and the free market cannot do the normal work of resource allocation..

and

Quote:

Professor Shapley, who is 89, began the theoretical spade-work in the 1950s and 1960s, using game theory to analyse different matching methods. In the 1990s, Professor Roth, now 60, working independently, applied similar theories to more practical matters, helping to allocate student doctors to particular hospitals and later providing the theoretical underpinning to streamline organ donation. Professor Roth is regarded as an authority on a field known colloquially as "repugnance economics" — in essence, the study of transactions where the application of the price mechanism is regarded as morally repugnant, such as the sale of body parts, sperm and eggs, prostitution and even dwarf-throwing.

"Repugnance economics", is that our answer to the "Economic Calculation Argument" ? 

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If there are crisp packets in socialism they'll all be the same — just like in the olden days when they all said "Smith's Potato Crisps with Salt inside".

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

1) Only Labour occurs in every product (yes, all products contain energy, but calculating erg output of human labour would be quite a feat).2) Because what this is about isn't a general unit of equivilence, but a human centred approach to the social organisation of production, starting with the people around to do the work.

But in counting the number of people available to work you are not talking about "Labour" which is an abstract concept that, as Marx pointed out, is difficult if not imposssible to measure except through the market.  And, again as Marx pointed out, the contribution of living labour to products (as compared to past labour) has become less and less over time.You are talking about labour-power and, as I said, if you are doing this you need to take account of the particular skills of the people available for work. Counting this, and taking it into account in calculating what and how to produce, is part of calculation in kind in general. I'm not against counting labour-power, in kind, but don't see that it is different in principle from counting the other resources available for production.How would calculating the labour output of human labour power be any less easy than calculating the "erg output of human labour [power]"? "Labour output" cannot simply be counted by time. To calculate it you'd have to reduce all the different types of skilled labour to amounts of simple labour. I'd prefer to have a go at calculating erg output !

Young Master Smeet wrote:

ALB wrote:

If some material is in short supply or needs to be used sparingly for some other reason, this is something the engineers can factor in to their calculations.

As per the standard ECA, though, such calculations would involve massive computational difficulty (as well as following the suppy chain of thousands of inputs for the simplest product.  Whilst the engineers might have the time to do that, a signal between products can save that considerable effort.

You seem to be assuming that all inputs might be in short supply but surely the basis of the socialist case for non-monetary calculation is that they won't be. Some might. Then the engineers calculating the "optimal" way to produce something would have to take this into account. I can't see that this would involve a "massive computational difficulty". I thought that this is what Robin Cox's "law of the minimum" was all about.This said, I agree that the Zeitgeist people who have worked on this problem do seem to favour a centralised command approach to production and consumption (after all, they are descended from the Technocracy Movement of the 1930s) rather than the self-regulating system of stock control, etc started by what people decide to take freely from stores that we have come to see, in recent years, as a workable alternative.Incidentally, have the two people who have just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics anything to contribute here? I read that one of them has devised a scheme for matching those who need a kidney with those prepared to offer one. I assume money isn't involved but you can't be sure because this is an American scheme. But if it's not, maybe they deserve the prize for solving the question of Who Will Live on Richmond Hill in Socialism. Those who want to and need most to, rather than those who want to and can pay the most.

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Among the things Occupy London have done (besides chaining themselves to the pulpit in St Pauls in what appears to be an inter-Christian dispute) to mark their first anniversary is to produce The Little Book of Ideas which can be read online here:http://occupylondon.org.uk/archives/17533A quick look suggests that they have absorbed a number of currency crank ideas. From the chapter headings it seems to be expressing the same sort of ideas for reforming capitalism as the Green Party. That would be a sad outcome, but I'm suspending judgement till I've read it all.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

It would be a useful measure of the total share of the social effort an activity was taking in (and thus could help us balance out between branches of industry), as well as performing a transferable meaure that could allow up-chain transmission to avoid technical choices being made at one end that stretch capacities at another.

No doubt, but why single out labour-power as the special case? It's only one of many inputs and in principle no difference to the other inputs (materials, energy). I'm not suggesting this but I believe the Techocrats in the 1930s suggested that accounting be done in "energy units". What I'm suggesting is that calculation in kind doesn't require any general unit, not labour-time nor energy units. We calculate in amounts of all the different elements involved in production, just as now under capitalism, only in socialism it won't be duplicated by a calculation in money and won't need to be by any other general unit ("universal equivalent").

Young Master Smeet wrote:

As with Robinson Crusoe, we know the numbers of humans available, and how much time they have to work, the intensity of that work is, at a certain point, irrelevent (that is a question for wage allocation, not productive co-ordination).

Of course. We will need to know that along with the amount of materials and energy available. Why make a special case of labour-power (which is unlikely to be in short supply anyway)?

Young Master Smeet wrote:

As for Zeitgeist, economic efficiency is not the same as technical efficiency, as I demonstrate in my example above, what might be the most technically efficient way of producing X might in turn actually lead to excess drains on resources further down the line.

If some material is in short supply or needs to be used sparingly for some other reason, this is something the engineers can factor in to their calculations.

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I agree that recording concrete labour types could be useful as well (but would require more effort, and relies on fixing some fairly blurry lines between types of labour).

It has to be done today and seems to work. If a hundred persons are required to construct a building you cannot just take a hundred people at random and set them to work on the grounds that they are capable of contributing so much labour-time. You've got to take into account different qualities of labour-power (just as you have to of other productive inputs).

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OK, but it is not a question of a "complaint" (even less of a tantrum) but only of pointing out that an error has occurred. I have now pointed this out "formally" as you suggest.

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The problem with labour-time accounting is that it is not possible to measure the intensity of work (labour) nor to calculate in advance what labour is "social necessary" (nor, I would add, to work out how much more "simple" labour skilled labour is "worth"). Marx pointed this out in his criticism of various schemes for "labour-money" that were put forward in his day. Unfortunately, he didn't apply this to the "labour-time voucher" scheme he gave a sort of blessing to in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. The only way something like this would work is, as you suggest, if  you measure "labour" by time spent at work. In other words, actual labour or, actually, hours put in at work. I'm not sure that this would be a useful measure of much.Having said this, calculation in kind will involve taking into account "labour-power", as one of the things required for production to be measured in "kind", just like raw materials, energy, etc. But this wouldn't be a measurement of "labour" in general but of specific forms of skilled labour-power, eg in the case of building houses, bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, roofers, surveyors, etc. (as in fact is done today).The Zeitgeist Movement has done a lot of work refuting the dreaded "economic calculation argument". They argue that once you know what resources are available and what you want a product to do and how many are needed, it is possible to calculate the "optimal" way to produce it from a technological point of view. This calculation is one for engineers not economists or accountants (who of course become redundant). It might be worth looking at their work in this field.

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I entirely agree that moderators should be allowed to moderate. In this case a technical error appears to have occurred (somebody's been given two final warnings). It's up to the moderator to decide how to correct it. But it does have to be corrected. Let's see what he decides.

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robbo203 wrote:

The logical implication of this thinking is that only pro-socialists would be allowed an airing on the WSM forum ,

You are begging the question here and have failed to see the difference between banning someone for the views they expressed and banning them for their behaviour (they way they put across their views).The two individuals were not personally abusive; their personal behaviour was different: abusing their right under the rules to post 3 messages a day every day for months on end. The result was that discussion about other aspects was swamped and people left the forum. They were in effect behaving like those who sent spam sex messages to your old open forum (which led you to take the drastic step of closing the whole thing down). In any event, nobody is banned from arguing for circular cities or anarcho-capitalism either on this or the WSM_Forum

robbo203 wrote:

That is fine if you want to set up a forum for socialists only . But it is definitely not fine if you pretend to be a public open forum and then arbitrarily change the rules midstream without any apparent consultation with anyone.

This raises another relevant question. Your semi-closed forum can take a vote of all the members since you exist essentially only on the internet. Nothing wrong with that  or that way of consulting forum members, It is democratic.Our forums are different. They are set up, run and paid for by parties which exist outside of cyberspace, so we have to use a different form of democratic control. A majority of members of the WSM_Forum are not socialists let alone members, so why should they have a right to say how the forum is run? If we go down that road, then the forum would be open to take over by opponents or people with a different agenda from us.Since not all members of our parties in Britain, the US, Canada and New Zealand are members of the forum, to let Party forum members decide would be more democratic but still not entirely fair. The only way is what we do here: the membership elects an executive committee which appoints a committee from nominations made by branches and then let's them get on with it. Of course they have to report twice a year to the membership and members can challenge any decision by appealing to the executive committee. That's democracy too.The WSM_Forum is more complicated as it is the forum of the World Socialist Movement rather than of any of the companion parties. The moderator is in fact a member of the Socialist Party of Canada, living in the United States, who was appointed by the SPGB and SPC together.I hope that this exchange of messages brings out that this is not a black-and-white issue and that it is unfair to cry "censorship" just because a forum reserves itself the right to deal with unruly or disruptive behaviour.

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You raise an interesting point, Robbo, about what to do with about people like Bob Howes (who favours small-scale co-operatives and circular cities) and Dave McDonagh (who is an anarcho-capitalist) who use a forum set up by somebody else to propagate their own views so frequently and over so long a period of time (years) as to virtually take it over and turn it into a forum discussing their ideas not those of those who set up (run and pay for) the forum.Party opinion was divided on this and still is, but in the end the decision was taken by the moderator to ban them. Previously, a decision had been made to set up this forum here, as one with separate threads, which would mean that those who wanted to discuss with the likes of them could do so on a separate thread of its own. As far as I know, Bob Howes is a registered member of this forum but has not contributed much since nobody replied to him.This of course is only a problem for open forums (ie forums open to anybody) like this one and the still extant WSM Forum. It's not a problem that we have on our own member-only forums. Nor is it a problem for your own forum which (I maybe wrong on this) is not open to everyone but only to people who broadly agree with a non-market anti-state position. In other words, McDonagh would not be admitted in the first place. I'm not quite sure why Bob Howes isn't (or perhaps he is, if not why not?). I believe also that, at one time, you did run an open forum like this one but changed its nature to a semi-closed one precisely to avoid problems like those posed by Howes and McDonagh. Incidentally, have you ever had to ask someone to leave your forum because it became evident after they joined that they were not part of the broad non-market, anti-state sector? Or is there perhaps a test to join?The point I'm making (and it's not intended as a polemical debating point) is this: is there any difference in principle between not allowing McDonagh to join in the first place and allowing him to join and then excluding him for trying to take it over and turn it into a forum discussing anarcho-capitalism, not socialism?  Either way, McDonagh does not get to express his views on the forum (though on our forum someone else can and I think still does, but can't on yours). Can in fairness those who have chosen the first option accuse those who have chosen the second of "censorship"?Let's see if we can have an intelligent, reasonable and polite discussion on this question/problem.

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SocialistPunk wrote:

May I suggest the forum members are allowed to discuss what they wish, so long as they refrain from personal abuse or insinuation.

You may indeed as that is precisely the position on all our forums. It neatly sums up what the rules governing them say. It also implies that, if someone does use personal abuse and insinuation, there are sanctions to be applied. This is the common practice of all forums, whoever runs them.Incidentally, I drafted that editorial, so naturally I agree with it. After all, it's the Party case, which we apply to ourselves. And why we don't support "no platform for fascists"There are similar rules governing abusive behaviour and language at our meetings. As do other organisations. The chair can decide to ask someone they consider breaking this rule to leave the meeting room. If the meeting disagrees they can vote "that the chairman leave the chair". Again, standard practice and an essential condition for free debate.I don't want to go into the ins and outs of this particular case (passions are still running too high and the idea is to dampen things down nor add fuel to the flames) but the suspension or whatever against a forum member for infringing the rules is not at all the same as "censorship".As you say, forum members are free to discuss whatever they wish, so long as they refrain from personal abuse or insinuation.

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DJP wrote:

I'm speaking here without my moderator hat on. Would Ed, Steve Colborn, Socialist Punk, Old Grey Whistle, when he returns, and all other users please desist in posting comments on the supposed intentions of other forum users. It is not 'the done thing now' and any further comments in this direction may force me to take action as moderator, which is always the last resort.I've volunteered many hours of my own time setting up this forum only to see it overtaken by what seems to me to be the result of comrades blowing their misconceived notions about each other out of all proportions. I'm beginning to wish I hadn't bothered. If anyone wants to make a complaint about anyone it should be done either through the moderator, the internet department or the executive committee.

I agree 100% with what you say and can sympathise with your frustration. As Comrades Moss and Beveridge have said on SPINTCOM: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. STOP IT. The Party doesn't want this and it's doing us damage.If you decide to suspend till 18 October the next person, whoever they might be, who continues this I for one will not complain.

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