robbo203
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I do not understand this strange reluctance to speculate, to write recipes for the cook-shops of the future as Marx put it. People who object to this kind of exercise misunderstand its purpose. It is NOT to arrive at some collective formalised position on the nitty gritty of what a future socialist society would entail. We are not futurists in that sense and of course it is up to the people at the time to determine the details of the society they have brought into being. But that is not the point of the exercise. I think it was Pieter Lawrence who said that if we don't engage in this kind of exercise, we cede the future to those who simply seek to retain the status quo. If we don't put flesh on the bones of the idea of what kind of society we hope to bring into being we end up with a lifeless skeleton, an empty and hollowed out shell of vapid dogmas and insipid generalities, What we should be doing instead is to constantly relate the present to future possibilities, to critically and creatively engage with current developments in a way that highlights the huge relevance of our socialist goal to the society we live in in the here and now.. I suspect part of the problem has to do with the very nature of a party organisation. The temptation is always to arrive at some kind of collective offically endorsed position which because it goes through a process of formalised and being voted upon, inevitably conveys the impression that what has been decided has been set in concrete for all time. Understandably enough, people reject this not wishing to be hemmed or constrained by a viewpoint that may prove hopelessly outdated in a few years time let alone by the time we are ready to implement a socialist society. Technological developments in the field of telecommunications, for example, could radically impact on the way we could go about making decisions and thus profoundly influence the particular detailed blueprint for a socialist society that we carry in our heads But be aware of the huge risks of throwing out the baby with the bath water, There needs to be some compromise between the strictures of party bureaucratism and the essential creativity of speculating even where this runs the risk of being proven unfounded or outmoded. Unless you stimulate people's creative juices and excite their imagination about a socialist alternative you are just not going to get enough of them to rally around the cause of making that alternative a reality. It is not for no reason that the stock response of the newcomer to socialism is …"its a nice idea but…"
Young Master Smeet wrote:1) The Socialist road to Guilford runs up against the facts that state rules will exist in our way up until we get political power.2) I'm assuming a very rapid rise of the socialist movement, East Germany, or Podemos style, we could get to 30% of the vote fairly rapidly, within 8 years or so from take off.3) I'm discussing dismantling the market, and suggesting that while we do this piecemeal, it's better to just continue using money for those parts of the economy we can't immediately make free, as this is more effective than building the machinery of labour vouchers. This is part of a fairly rapid transition.Hi YMSNot quite sure what 1) is about. "State rules" may well continue to exist up until the democratic capture of political power but how would this prevent the expansion of non-market activities/relationships any more than it would or could prevent the expansion of the socialist movement itself? Such activities exist and LETS type arrangements which people seem to go on about are only a tiny fraction of this divrse non market sector. The idea behind the Road to Socialism circular (1986/7?) to which you allude is that this sector is likely to expand in lockstep with the expansion of the socialist movement itself and that, moreover, it would likely become more and more explicitly influenced by the latter and in turn reciprocally feed into and facilitate the further growth of this movement – a point that some critics of the circular back then completely overlooked and probably still continue to overlook. But ever mind! My main criticism, however, is with your 3). I just cannot see how this could happen. You talk about continuing to use money for those parts of the economy we can't immediately make free. But where is this money going to come from? How are workers to acquire the wherewithal to purchase goods that remain for the time being in the money economy?. Are you envisaging the retention of wage labour in the short term much like Lenin did in his outline of "socialism" in which all workers would be employees of the state? As other people have also pointed out , labour vouchers and money are not the the only two conceivable means by which scarce goods can be rationed. There are other ways of rationing and I have outlined one myself – the compensation model of rationing based on housing quality
rodmanlewis wrote:You are forgetting that certain transactions in today’s electronic world can’t take place unless a payment is made for goods. In the days leading up to and immediately after socialism it may be necessary to go through the motions of capitalist business practices, paper exercises if you like. Rather like leaving a pile of coins beside a drinks dispensing machine to make it work.What is to stop this procedure being immediately disabled? Particularly when everyone by then will know it would be quite pointless
I can't believe what I'm reading here – socialists actually contemplating the continuation of market relations, post revolution albeit in some kind of attenuated form. This comes of thinking that the growth of a socialist movement prior to the capture of political power can have no significant impact on the scope and extent of capitalist relations of production. Meaning everything has to be done in one fell swoop come the revolution. Now the new revisionist line seems to be – no, lets not do it in one fell swoop. Lets string it out and let capitalism die a gradual death after the revolution because the task of getting rid of capitalism in one fell swoop is just to monumental to contemplate. Is this what some comrades are now saying?
ALB wrote:Depends what you mean by "money". We always said that in the early days of socialism there might not be able to be full free access to everything. In which case there would have to be some sort of "rationing" of the goods and services in short supply. Personally, I'd have thought coupons for those goods and services only would be best way to deal with this. Certainly not "labour-time vouchers". But if these are not regarded as "money" then nor would any other all-purpose circulating vouchers be that could be used to acquire anything. An option, I suppose, but only slightly not as bad as labour-time vouchers and not really "money" (though we wouldn't be able to stop people calling it that. After all some, eg the pre-war Dutch Council Communists, call "labour-time vouchers" "labour-money".)I would broadly go along with this. The only point of contention might be on what basis might such coupons be distributed to the populace. As I see it, such distribution perhaps ought to be effected in a way that takes into accout the spatial inequalities which we will inherit from capitalism – above all, in respect of housing since housing constitutes easily the most important component of quality of life and so can serve as a proxy indicator of the latter The huge differences in the quality of housing which will continue to exist for sometime in a socialist society will constitute an open sore that could cause considerable resentment which needs to be addressed. Thats why I would link link it with the question of rationing in the guise of a "compensation model of rationing". It is a symbolic gesture on the part of society that acknowledges the basic unfairness of the situation and seeks to defuse discontent by giving those forced to live in poor quality housing for the time, priority access to rationed goods. There are ways of classifying housing stock into different bands according to various criteria. We would need to do this anyway in process of upgrading housing stock in general. Coupons could be allocated to housing units according to which particular band a housing unit falls under…..
Why assume money will start withering away after the capture of political power? Would it not make a lot more sense to talk of that happening before the capture of political power? The praxis of a growing socialist moment will surely translate into an increasing tendency to transcend the cash nexus in all sorts of ways. I cannot really see how a money system could linger on after this democratic capture of political power; its very continuation raises all sorts of thorny theoretical questions such as how do we acquire the wherewithal – money – to purchase goods in a market (which would also surely continues if money continues – by definition) Would we continue to work for wages and be employed by the state as Lenin envisaged in his conception of "socialism". I cant see this at all. That said, there might well be a need for some form of rationing post revolution. True, money is a form of rationing but the very nature of money and what it implies, in my view rules it out completely as a candidate in this case. Labour time vouchers is another candidate but there are huge problems with this too. My preference would be for a "compensation" model of rationing based on the assessed quality of housing stock. This would be much simpler to administer and it would help to address the potentially tricky problem arising from huge differences in the quality of housing stock inherited from capitalism by giving those compelled in the short term to continue living in poor quality housing, priority access to rationed goods as opposed to free access goods.
Ozymandias wrote:. What is so dishearteningis if these are the views of the most "enlightened" members of the working class (insofar as they have an inkling of class consciousness being trades union organisers) then what are average workers thinking? Almost fuck all by the looks of it. With their smartphones they are becoming ever more dumbed down. With a vast libaray of knowledge at their fingertips they know even less. We don't have a snowballs chance in hell of seeing Socilaism. This is the element which strikes me.Ozy, if what you say is the case what would you make of the Flynn Effect? http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31556802
Quite a good article here in support of the LTV https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/reconsidering-the-labour-theory-of-value/
ALB wrote:I think we're talking at cross purposes. Of course Marx's approach is different from that of conventional academic economists. I wasn't talking about this but about their views on how prices are calculated and realised in practice.As to whether academic economists now have a theory of value separate from a theory of price, here's what the Penguin Dictationary of Economics says (or said in its 1987 edition):Quote:Late-nineteenth-century economists like A. MARSHALL subverted theories of value to theories of price, determined by demand and supply; with each determined by MARGINAL UTILITY or MARGINAL COST. Since then, the theories of price and value have not been separated except by followers of K. MARX.They seem to have more interest in "utility" rather than "cost", maybe because if they looked into cost too much they would find that this can't be separated from labour expended.
Hi Adam, Fair point. And your re right – they do seem to have more of an interest in utility than cost notwithstanding the reference to marginal costs This means they have ultimately to fall back on a subjective theory of value with all the absurdities that that entails. The Austrian economists at least have the merit of stating clearly what the others merely imply. Von Mises put it like this: “It is ultimately always the subjective value judgments of individuals that determine the formation of prices…Market prices are entirely determined by the value judgments of men as they really act”.(Mises, L. von. 2008. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. The Scholar’s Edition. Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala, p.329–330). There are numerous reasons why this statement is demonstrably false, not least because subjective value judgements are themselves heavily influenced by objective prices as Bukharin pointed out. Also it fails to overlook how these judgements are mediated by purchasing power in capitalism. The beggar's desire for a square meal counts for nothing without the money to purchase such a meal. The problem with economic subjectivism is that it frames the approach to the problems of society in essentially atomistic and individualistic terms. After all it is only the individual who can make subjective judgements; society is not an individual. This means it is completely unable to grasp the systemic nature of these problems which it has by default to put down to individual shortcomings It cannot see the wood for the trees because all it is looking at is the individual tree
ALB wrote:I'd have thought that Marx's and academic economics's view as to how prices are fixed is more or less the same, i.e.Marx: cost of production + going rate of profit.Academic economics: cost of production, including profit as (supposed) cost of entrepreneurship.Both allow for variation up or down depending on short-term market conditions but neither bring in subjective utility. In fact, doesn't conventional academic economics claim that it can explain everything without needing the concept of "value" (as opposed to price) and so these days doesn't have anything theory of value?I suppose it depends on which academics economists you are talking about. The Neoclassical marginalist paradigm is diverse. The followers of Alfred Marshall differ from the Austrian School. And the so called Market Socialists like Lange are different again. But marginalism itself is rooted in the concept of economic subjectivism and utility even if the economists might dispense with mentioning it, let alone attempting to measure it. And economic subjectivism is underpinned by an epistemology of "methodological individualism" which sees the big problems of the day as arising from individual shortcomings rather than systemic failuresFrom that point of view I would say there is huge gulf between Marx's approach and the approach of most academic economists insofar as the latter ground themselves in a marginalist paradigm
Tim Kilgallon wrote:robbo203 wrote:Tim Kilgallon wrote:Clearly the second ice cream you eat yields less utility or use value/pleasure than the first and third even less than the second , I would dispute this statement!Why Tim? I don't think its an unreasonable gneralisation. I mean there are exceptions to the law of diminishing marginal returns but by and large it holds true, I think. If you continue to eat ice cream after ice cream I guarantee your desire for ice cream will diminish to zero soon or later. Unless you have an infinite capacity to eat ice cream!
I am a very greedy man, nowadays, I am also a very fat man
You wanna get in shape for the revolution, comrade! Quit eating all those icecreams; you will be "marginally" better off for it!
ALB wrote:I thought that even followers of the view that use-value entered into economic value (the theory HM Hyndman described as "the final futility of final utility") had abandoned the view that subjective utility can be measured (as it differs from person to person, eg Tim) in favour a more "objective" approach based on averages. In other words, they think in terms of more and less (relative) than of an absolute figure. Or maybe there are still a few backwoodsmen around who think you can measure use-value?The Austrian school of economics – von Mises and co – never did believe that subjective utility could be measured and attacked those early attempts you refer to, to produce some kind of objective measure of utility or use value (i think "utils" was name of the unit of utility suggested by some economist whose name I forget). The Austrians argued that subjective judgments could only ever be ranked along an ordinal scale and could never be measured in a cardinal sense The question is how then do subjective preferences get translated into measurable prices, what is the mechanism by which this is supposed to happen? I think it is at this point that whole explanation offered by them collapses. They don't really have a plausible theory of how prices are determined by subjective values – how, for example, does the subjective value that a starving pauper places on a four square meal impinge on the price of the meal? – because they can't seem to see that subjective values are mediated by other factors like how much purchasing power you have. Subjective values can obviously influence prices but they don't in the end determine them
Young Master Smeet wrote:Marginalism treats each commodity as if it were a unique instance that can be monopolised, and so arrives at the view as per Marx above. because Marx goes into the system behind the exchange events, he derives value from a social system. basically, all exchanges are what the buyer and seller are willing to pay (the libertarian fantasy) when seen at that precise moment. The question is how we got to that moment. Nor does it account for the infinite utility of money, there is no marginal utility of money, more money can always buy more and do more.Yes this is something that Mandel pointed out. The problem centres on the difficulty of“reconciling the theory of prices resulting from supply and demand with a theory of prices resulting from the quantity of money in circulation”. According to Mandel: It can be said that the Marginalist school was never able to solve the problem of the “marginal value of money”, and that for this reason it remained dualistic, combining a subjective theory of value with an objective theory of money (e.g. the quantity theory). It is clear that an increase in the “stock of currency” does not necessarily reduce the “marginal value” of this stock, as would happen in the case of an increase in a stock of corn, since money can be used to buy, one after another, commodities which correspond to different needs of equal intensity. The dualism of the theory is seen if one imagines an increase in the stock of currency suddenly causing a rise in wages, without any change in the marginal value of the commodities concerned" https://www.marxists.org/…/marxist…/marginalists.htm) This along with Bukharin's devastating critique of Marginalism (that it is based on a circular argument) and various other criticism that can be made of the subjective theory of value means that it rather resembles a piece of cheese full of holes
Tim Kilgallon wrote:Clearly the second ice cream you eat yields less utility or use value/pleasure than the first and third even less than the second , I would dispute this statement!Why Tim? I don't think its an unreasonable gneralisation. I mean there are exceptions to the law of diminishing marginal returns but by and large it holds true, I think. If you continue to eat ice cream after ice cream I guarantee your desire for ice cream will diminish to zero soon or later. Unless you have an infinite capacity to eat ice cream! Thinking about it, the law of diminishing marginal returns bears an interesting relation to that basic dogma of bourgeois economics – that our demands are unlimited. I understand its more complicated than this and that as the utility we get from one good diminishes so we are supposed to switch our attention to another that we can lust after, but all the same…
