robbo203
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Perhaps I’m playing Devil’s advocate here, but if the argument is that production goods cannot be effectively allocated without a pricing mechanism how is saying “planning will be decentralised” an answer to that?
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DJP.The reason why it is an answer is because, quite simply, a decentralised or polycentric system of planning allows you to have a feedback mechanism whereas an apriori society-wide system of central planning, by definition, does not. Once you have a feedback system you have a means with which to effectively allocate inputs based on their relative scarcity/abundance. In other words, you have a self-regulating system of stock control in place, using only calculation in kind and straightforward mathematics to adjust the ratios of different inputs that comprise any particular bundle of inputs to ensure the most effective allocation of these inputs – based on their relative scarcity/abundance as mentioned.
This is the answer to Mises´ claim that you need a single unit of accounting to ensure the effective allocation of resources in a socialist society. You don´t. Mises couldn’t see this because he started from the false premise that a socialist society would be a centrally planned system (and the sense of society-wide planning). He was thus not able to recognize the possibility that a completely nonmarket system of production could indeed incorporate a feedback mechanism (providing it was a decentralised or polycentric system)
It’s not as if we have to reinvent the wheel here. All the basic aspects required for an effective system of socialist allocation beyond the market already exist. Even under capitalism, you can’t run a business without them. It is not money or any other single unit of account that is the necessary foundation of an advanced system of production but rather, calculation in kind. Try running a modern supermarket without stock control and you will soon enough discover the truth of this.
The whole Misesian calculation argument is a red herring and an irrelevance
I think there is a very marked difference to what is implied by Von Mises. Power of disposal is the key, it implies that the body, not the community has the power to allocate and also therefore not allocate distribution.
==============================================Baron von Mises took the view that a single mind, a single planning authority, would assume absolute control over the (apriori) allocation of inputs and outputs within what he called a “socialist economy”. He dubbed this the “Fuhrer principle”. This naff fairytale has been endlessly regurgitated to the point of utter tedium ever since, by Ancaps and others (I don’t know if Stuart would now consider himself to be an Ancap or a liberal or some sort of hybrid or whatever)
At any rate, the position of the SPGB is absolutely clear. There won’t be anything remotely like what Mises had in mind in a socialist society because there can’t be. It is completely antithetical to the basic principles that inform such a society – quite apart from being completely impractical. Sure, there will be planning in a socialist society as there must be in any society (including capitalism) but it will be a polycentric planning system operating at different spatial levels of organization – global, regional, and above all, local. The interactions between all these production and distribution units being effected via distributed computer networks and operating on an essentially self-regulating basis that does away with the market completely.
I don’t know why this seems to be so difficult to comprehend yet you have people like Stuart droning on about the Hayekian “knowledge problem” – as if anyone literally advocates apriori society-wide planning in that sense. (Actually, not even Cockshott does in that apriori sense though he does support the idea of central planning AFAIK.)
The whole thing is a complete red herring. Perhaps Stuart in his next “Moneyweek” article might care to address this model of a socialist society that socialists like us advocate rather than some bogus model that few if anyone actually advocates
It has become an anarcho-capitalist cliche that the only alternative to the market is central planning and that the only alternative to central planning is the market. It surely can’t be the case that these two ex-members, Stuart and Dan, have not heard of a third possibility – a decentralised non-market system of production.
Why then do they avoid any mention of it? The whole “informational complexity” line of argument promoted by the likes of Hayek is a complete strawman argument. If these two favour a market approach to the handling of this informational complexity then you get people on the “other side” of the debate like Paul Cockshott, who favour central planning (in the sense of apriori society-wide planning. The number-crunching capacity of modern computers makes this entirely possible, claims Cockshott.
Both sides of this debate are deeply flawed but for different reasons. Cockshott because he doesn’t understand the implications of central planning (computers can at best strive only to track changes in the real world but you can’t impose an apriori central plan on a world that is in a state of constant flux); Watkins and Greenwood because they don’t seem to appreciate that the “information” they are dealing with has to do with is effective market demand, not human needs or externalities and that even on its terms the market is prone to market failures)
Cockshott can be forgiven for thinking as he does since he comes from a background of supporting state capitalist regimes – like the Soviet Union – albeit in a qualified way (he thinks the problem with the Soviet Union was that it was not sufficiently democratic). Watkins and Greenwood have less excuse for thinking as they do, having once been members of the SPGB themselves. They should have known better than to trot out this nonsense about the market
So apparently Biden would be out on his ear if an election was held now and Trump would beat him. So much for voting for the lesser evil. Migration, as one might expect, is one of the issues driving Trump’s popularity – as with the resurgent Far Right in many parts of Europe too. Globally migration is on the rise and one of the reasons for that is war and military conflict which of course the Biden regime has had its fair share in promoting directly or indirectly
Some of the stuff Trump is coming out with is really borderline Nazi if not the real thing – like the drivel about racial purity and immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country”. I thought American capitalism prided itself on being a land of immigrants and opportunity for all etc
I have not seen Alan J post in a while. Is he okay?
————–I don’t think anyone has heard from him since he suddenly disappeared. He lives abroad and I fear something bad might have happened. A lot of people here are concerned….
For once, the Tory toff, Rees-Mogg, is spot on
Zionism is a vile racist and nationalist political ideology that many Jewish folk themselves rightly oppose.
Yet astonishingly:
“The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution that explicitly labels anti-Zionism as antisemitism, after warnings from senior Jewish members of Congress and opponents of the measure who fear that it dangerously conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish attacks amid Israel’s siege of Gaza”
We truly live in Orwellian times…..
If anything is going to encourage and strengthen racist anti-semitic ideas it is stupid senseless measures like this. People, appalled by what is being done in Gaza at the hands of the murderous Netanyahu regime, are simply going to say to themselves “Well I guess that makes me an anti-Semite then”. They are not going to forsake their feeling of revulsion over what is happening.
These idiot US representatives who voted for this measure don’t seem to realise that they are only helping to make anti-semitic ideas respectable
Keir Starmer – a hypocrite to the core
Compare Keir Starmer's statements on the siege of Gaza with his arguments at the International Court of Justice in 2014, where he argued that the Serb siege of Vukovar was a case of genocide.
A thread on Starmer, international law and Gaza. pic.twitter.com/lu0X6sgXfB— Nicholas McGeehan (@NcGeehan) November 28, 2023
Some information on different Jewish ethnic groups:
Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews
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It would seem that some Jewish folk have a rather racist attitude towards other Jews. Would that be antisemitic?
https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/racism-in-israel-some-jews-are-more-equal-than-others-28109
It seems that there was a chance that this whole pointless bloody war could have been avoided but for the intervention of the Western powers and in particular the person of Boris Johnson who reputedly urged the Kiev regime not to sign anything with Russia that would have prevented war According to this report, Johnson said: “we will not sign anything with them at all, let’s just fight.” If this is true, then this individual has blood on his hands
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“We already know that Ukraine, in early April 2022, rejected to make peace with Russia. We know this from talks by the former prime minister of Israel Naftali Bennet, from the former Turkish foreign minister, from former chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroeder as well as from reporting from Ukraine.But only now do we hear the same story from a Ukrainian official:
Lord Bebo @MyLordBebo – 21:45 UTC · Nov 24, 2023
🇺🇦🇷🇺🚨‼️ BOMBSHELL: Ukraine admits that Russia only wanted neutrality from them!Russia wanted Ukraine to be neutral like Finnland was! But Ukraine was not sure if they can trust it and then Boris Johnson came and said:
-> “We will not sign anything, let’s do war!”I knew it!
videoThe video in the tweet above has English subtitles. It is part of a Ukrainian TV interview with the leader of the Servant of the People parliament faction David Arakhamia by the journalist Natalia Moseychuk. In March and April 2022 Arkhamia had led the Ukrainian delegation at peace talks with the Russians in Belarus and Turkey.”
So what will your little band of bruvvers (and two sistahs) do to retain your recruits, assuming you make any in the first place?
Offer them a share of the £2.6 million which they can hopefully spend before it’s too late?
__________________Moderator, do we have to put up with endless crap? I don’t know what this troll is doing on the forum, anyway, given her views on where she imagines the SPGB is heading…
The lurch to, not just the right, but the far right (if these terms have any meaning anymore) continues – not just in Spain but elsewhere in Europe. Geert Wilders has won the election in the Netherlands. The disease of nationalism has well and truly taken hold of the body politic. We are living in grim times.
“Hungary’s nationalist prime minister on Wednesday congratulated Mr Wilders, saying the “winds of change are here”.
“Congratulations to Geerts Wilders and the PVV for their spectacular performance in the legislative elections which confirms the growing attachment to the defence of national identities,” said French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
“It is because there are people who refuse to see the national torch extinguished that the hope for change remains alive in Europe,” she added.
Spain’s far-right politician, Santiago Abascal, added: “More and more Europeans demand in the streets and at the polls that their nations, their borders and their rights be defended.”
Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister of Italy, said, “a new Europe is possible”.
More on Milei in my feed today
and
At least it seems there wont be a Falklands War mark 2 ….
Much much more interesting, an interview with Milei in the Economist (no firewall):https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/yqYUdj
________________________________An interesting interview indeed. You sense he is already preparing his excuses for any future developments that will not have turned out the way he might have wished for. Easy to dream up a wishlist of (supposedly) desirable reforms, much harder to put them into practice.
I find the whole thing bizarre – an anarchocapitalist who defines the state as a criminal organisation and yet has just been elected to head this criminal organisation. Assuming he is sincere this has to be a first surely?
