ZJW
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In 2017 I showed the following to a friend:
1) Buick: ‘No need to compare Apples and Oranges: The Case Against Economic Calculation’
2) Cox: ‘The “Economic Calculation” Controversy: Unravelling of a Myth’
He replied as follows:
‘I imagine that the socialist calculation debate can be relegated to the dustbin of history. Items 1 and 2 on your list seem pretty right, as far as it goes, but the solutions proposed seem mostly no longer relevant, except maybe for a very brief transitional stage.
After the revolution —
Computational devices will have been subject to a multi-year redesign process purging them of functions and modalities that reflect their origins under the reign of Capital. Since fundamental values such as “efficiency”—probably the single most highly-prized value of the likes of Mises and Hayek, and the one capitalist virtue most widely internalized among the populace at large—will have been subject to rigorous critique and reformation—the redesign of I.T. will proceed from very different political foundations. Those elements of capitalist-era I.T. that had anarcho-communist elements in their deeper structures— distributed computing and other decentered modes of coordination, plus the anti-authoritarian possibilities inherent in algorithms themselves—would be greatly advanced. Algorithms which now exist to channel consumer behavior and limit choice would be rebuilt, allowing for an emergence of the kind of systemwide “knowledge” that Hayek et al claimed was only possible through price (although Hayek was open to the possibility that there could theoretically be a form of general systemic knowledge other than price). In the short term, this technology would allow for the kind of organization of production along the lines of item 1 below. In the long-term though, I.T. technology would have been designed to evolve according to the needs of emergent communes/soviets/ as well as planet-scale mutual aid/repair initiatives. There is no coordination/non-coordination problem that isn’t solvable even given current technology and with a different political-economic system that would produce a new and better set of motivations for technological improvements, the nature of “calculation” itself would be completely different. ‘
YMS-
Drone is an acquired taste, I figure, and I haven’t, so listen to it only once in a blue moon, and just the same very limited range of stuff over and over without exploring further. That being so, I’d never heard of Eliane Radigue. She seems to have put out an awful lot of material over a long period of time. What are one or two pieces by her you’d recommend for the to-be-initiated?
That Coil Time Machines is nice.
Now from a band — Horse Lords — that style themselves marxists or radicals of some sort. This quote is from a review of their music:
‘May ’68 surfaces again on the new album via “dead time,” the notion of human consciousness numbed by the capitalist enterprise that was part of a Situationists’ slogan during that spring. That cheeky Marxism is reinforced by the outright “Communist Manifesto” allusion ‘All That is Solid.’ […] That Horse Lords obliquely incorporates such thoughts into its music begs the question: Can instrumental music convey political ideas?’
Here is their ‘Wildcat Strike’. A bit boring at the start; by the end it isn’t.
(Musically it is both microtonal and in just intonation. (Though with my bad hearing I can never tell the difference between just intonation and equal temperament.))
https://horselords.bandcamp.com/track/wildcat-strike
If you want more, all their music is on bandcamp.
DJP –
Yes, I have read it twice. Once directly before posting the url, and then a second time after a seven day holiday from internet.
With many caveats, I think it is well worth reading, yes; and fully agree with ALB’s: ”This is the sort of discussion — and the sort of people we should be discussing with’ […]’.
My caveats: there much in it that is unnecessary, tedious, pretentiously literary, and even downright foolish (the humor). But these exasperating formal impediments to content-targeted reading are not homogeneous across the article: there are entire paragraphs, even whole sections (say, that between ‘Localities’ to ‘Motor of History’ ) that are unmarred.
As for flavor-of-the-month marxologist Søren Mau, whom you mention: on the basis of what is written about him in this article, I would conclude that he is an idiot, and it is difficult to imagine what useful ‘breakthroughs’ he has arrived at in his the-newest-interpretation of Marx. Still, I might download his book and take a look.
You say the Standard ought to review Mau’s book. If only the SPGB had the same policy that the WSPUS had, non-party members would not be barred from contributing to the party organ, and you could write the review yourself.
But never mind about hot-new-thing Søren Mau for the moment. First and foremost, what the Socialist Standard ought to review is this article itself. (If for no other reason than because this is the way to bring it to the attention of those party members who do not deign to read this forum … or this thread of this forum or whatever.)
PS: Nick Chavez himself has reviewed Mau’s book, positively: https://shorturl.at/tEINW . But from his description I can hardly agree with his concluding sentence, that ‘Every communist should have a copy of this book’.
At #249337 YMS wrote:
‘My own collection of atonal drone music might not make the cut of most people’s definition of music.’
Do you mean such as the following two links, YMS? What are some items in your collection?
Titled ‘Forest and Factory: the Science and the Fiction of Communism’, here is a new contribution — having appeared just days ago — on the topic of production under socialism. Section headings are these:
Tangibilities
The Fundamental Principles of Communism
Localities
Association and Deliberation
The Ecosystem of Industry
Planned and Planetary Limits
The Motor of History
Construction and Conclusion(Some readers *might* want to start not from the beginning but from section ‘Planned and Planetary Limits’.)
Forest and Factory: the Science and the Fiction of Communism
Well?
(Robbo in particular should comment on it, since this area is his specialty.)
StuartW2020:
Since you are so unexpectedly gracing this forum with your presence, perhaps you would reply to point (2)
here:https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/two-ex-socialists-go-funny/page/3/#post-204299
14 anti-war songs on the ‘Folk it!’ sub-channel of Concertzender (nl), running to just under one hour, most of which are not in English:
Yes, the relative pronoun ‘which’ seems to refer to Downing’s desires, not to the Labour Party.
How had you written it before it was ‘sub-edited’?
In addition to the 6 links in the two posts above, here now is a seventh.
Some use of the internet including deepl reveals that it is from an conspiratorialist anti-migrant speech by Viktor Orbán on 15 March 2016 saying, to start with, ‘In Europe today it is forbidden to speak the truth’.
(How was this arrived at? Beginning from looking up ’tilos kimondani’, the Hungarian for ‘it is forbidden to say/speak’.)
Music for non-sung speech by the group Tin Men and the Telephone.
I find this a genius marriage of (excellent) music and text.
ALB will have to tell us what Marine Le Pen is saying.
The last two (next post) are from Trump talking.
First three:
And here is the preface (in English) to the German translation:
First german translation of an important work on the period of transition
Regarding the booklet by L.L Men, ‘Two Texts for Defining the Communist Programme’ ( here https://libcom.org/article/ll-men-two-texts-defining-communist-programme ),
it, or rather the ‘What is Socialism? part of it, has recently (!) been published in German by Red & Black Books.
See council-communist Fredo Corvo’s ‘Critical Notes on L.L.Men, “What is Socialism?” ‘:
(If you read Spanish, also click ‘Spanish with a critique by Aníbal’.)
That SLP review mentioned by Almamater of the Jennings book is on (newspaper) page 2 here, just under ‘at large’:
