Re: [OPE] markets and socialism

alejandro_agafonow@yahoo.es

You all, as Marxists, can discuss the particulars concerning exploitation. But, since as Market Socialist I find exploitation an unfruitful concept, I prefer to focus on other properties in your models.

All decentralized models of Socialism have to offer a solution to the issue of how demand is effectively communicated to units of production and how these units comply effectively with consumers demand.

I think that it would be a fruitful exorcizes to compare Diego Guerrero’s proposal with the proposal of the Group of Dutch International Communists lead by Jan Appel (Max Hempel) back to 1930.

Unfortunately I can’t do this comparison right now. I’ll try to write a paper to launch the debate in the Spanish speaking community.

Kind regards,
A. Agafonow

----- Mensaje original ----
De: Paul Cockshott <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Para: Outline on Political Economy mailing list <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Enviado: miércoles, 11 de junio, 2008 14:29:02
Asunto: Re: [OPE] markets and socialism

Diego
We shouldn't be impressed by the apparent differences betwen ordinary 
(capitalist) money and money of account. The crux of the matter is 
whether money is inserted in a society where the law of value is still 
governing the economy or instead use value has been enforced by a 
conscious population that aims to finish exploitation and inequalities 
at the world level.

That is in part a reasonable response, and corresponds broadly to the 
orthodox Soviet account
of the role of money in the USSR. There however, the plan regulated the 
allocation of use values.
This gave some plausibility to the Soviet argument.

In your proposal as I understand it, allocation of use values is not to 
be planned.

If enterprise A acquires machines from enterprise B, it is going to

a) do it on its own initiative
b) pay for the machines with its own bank account
c) own the machines when they arrive

How is this different from money acting as a medium of exchange in the 
classic
way?

For my part I sympathise with the criticisms  Che made of the USSR, which
have recently been circulated on OPE-L, namely that it made too much use
of monetary categories. Your proposal seems to be more in line
with the Jugoslavian approach, which made even more use of
monetary and commodity relations.

Your proposal to charge all labour power at the same price would
certainly tend to even out disparities in the working population, but
the enterprises would still, as abstract legal entities, constitute
capitals. If demand was such that price for say bread was higher
than the costs of a particular bakery, that bakery would register
a profit. This profit, once banked, would be money capital.

Diego
-----
The second necessity is to plan demographic growth and localization of 
labour force and means of production at a world level. This means using 
use values again, and this is used again AGAINST the law of value. The 
demographic growth at a rate of 4% or whatever else is a matter of 
secondary importance. The point is the necessity to move masses of 
people from one point to another: specialists and qualified workers 
towards where they are most needed, simple work force to other places, 
masses of specific means of production... In my opinion, there has to be 
a massive net transfer of population from underdeveloped countries to 
developed countries, and the opposite direction is required for means of 
production.

Paul
-----
Is this not what the law of value in a capitalist economy tends to do 
anyway, it is only politically imposed immigration controls that impede it.

Diego Guerrero wrote:
> Hi, Paul C.,
>
> We shouldn't be impressed by the apparent differences betwen ordinary 
> (capitalist) money and money of account. The crux of the matter is 
> whether money is inserted in a society where the law of value is still 
> governing the economy or instead use value has been enforced by a 
> conscious population that aims to finish exploitation and inequalities 
> at the world level. In order to achieve this goal the first thing is 
> to end with the determination of wages by the value of labour force. 
> The different (capitalist) cost of reproducing a unit of 
> differenciated workers must be replaced by a single cost for all 
> people since every person is now equal to all others and therefore 
> they "cost" the same to society: just the same fraction of the cost of 
> reproduction of society. This change in the "incomes" completely 
> alters the demand and necessarily forces the supply to change... The 
> second necessity is to plan demographic growth and localization of 
> labour force and means of production at a world level. This means 
> using use values again, and this is used again AGAINST the law of 
> value. The demographic growth at a rate of 4% or whatever else is a 
> matter of secondary importance. The point is the necessity to move 
> masses of people from one point to another: specialists and qualified 
> workers towards where they are most needed, simple work force to other 
> places, masses of specific means of production... In my opinion, there 
> has to be a massive net transfer of population from underdeveloped 
> countries to developed countries, and the opposite direction is 
> required for means of production. This is why demographic growth has 
> not to be understood as the result of natality rates but mainly of 
> migration rates. It is something like inverting the rates of Table 1.
>
> http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/demsum.html
>                                                  Table 1
>                                      Summary, Population Change
>
>                              Annual Average            Annual Average
>                                Growth Rate                  Growth Rate
>                                1960-80                        1980-01
>  All                              2.33%                        1.82%
>  Less Developed          2.93%                        2.25%
>  More Developed        0.94%                        0.48%
>
>  Data source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base
>
>
> Cheers,
> Diego
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Cockshott" <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
> To: "Outline on Political Economy mailing list" <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
> Cc: "Heinz Dieterich" <hdieterich@gmail.com>
> Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 11:56 PM
> Subject: RE: [OPE] markets and socialism
>
>
> It was a zip file which can be decompressed to yield a pdf.
>
> I am slowly working through it. I am as yet unconvinced that his
> money of account would really be any different from ordinary money.
> Soviet official doctrin was that the rouble was just a money
> of account, which had some credibility given the directive nature
> of the plan there, with Diego's decentralised system it looks to
> me as if the money of account would be money as we know it.
>
> I am also less than convinced that it would be possible to
> plan world population growth in such a way as to achieve a
> rate of demographic growth of 4% in a country like Spain, or
> more generally that a higher demographic growth could be
> achieved in OECD than non OECD countries. It is one thing for
> a communist government to limit family size as in China, it
> is quite another for it to be able to enforce much larger family
> sizes as would be required to achieve a 4% rate of population
> growth.
>
> One also has to ask whether, given the current water shortages
> in Spain that it makes any kind of sense to plan for Spain to
> have a population 3 times its current size in 30 years time.
> Climate modelling indicates even greater aridity to be expected
> by then.
>
> Paul Cockshott
> Dept of Computing Science
> University of Glasgow
> +44 141 330 1629
> www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> ope@lists.csuchico.edu
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