/Cockshottvsalthusser/

Cockshott is mainly known for 'Towards a New Socialism' a book he co-authored in the late 1980s and early 90s as a last ditch attempt to save the soviet union's economic system using cybernetics. It is widely considered to expand the ideas Marx put forth in critique of the gotha program, namely the idea of labour vouchers, and cybernetic economic planning. Perhaps the truly dedicated Cockshottists have read ‘Calculation in Natura’ or ‘Arguments for Socialism’. But very few have read his (AFAIK only official philosophical work) ‘On Althusser’s Philosophy of the Encounter’. Basically Cockshott is a sortof post-althusserian. Althusser, as we know was a french post structural philospher who argued that Marx’s philosophy drasticically shifted in the middle of his life from a quasi-hegelian. Humanist, and historicist ideology to an anti-empirical, radically subjective theoretical praxis.

Cockshott particularly takes interest in Althusser’s idea of ‘matérialisme aléatoire’ and argues (pretty sure he speaks both French and German), that aléatoire should not be translated as ‘aleatory’ as it commonly is, but as ‘random’ or ‘stochastic’. It’s a thought-provoking read. Essentially, Cockshott argues that historical materialism should be reformulated as a probabilistic theory just as modern physics moved from a deterministic newtonian model to modern physics. He uses this to argue, against Althusser, that one can still reject a ‘teleological’ theory of history while having a theory of historical change (that is non deterministic). He uses for example the analogy of a Markov chain to represent probabilistic transitions between states (modes of production in this case). Again this is just one among the many interesting points he brings up, its a pretty fantastic use of analogies from math and computing to explain social theory. Read it. Of course, read Althusser’s Philosophy of the Encounter first to understand it.


Philosophy of the Encounter:
kokkinogati.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/philosophy-of-the-encounter.pdf
Cockshott’s Review:
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7cbf/db00665b3b251abb52ff937be6945aac164a.pdf

Other urls found in this thread:

8ch.net/leftypol/res/1911339.html
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Why should I read cockshotts philosophical views on society?

Arguing that something like economic change can be modelled like a markov chain instead of saying that modes of productions have contradiction that create counter movements, and other systems try to enforce their system on the rest, is fun, but doesnt seem productive.

Im more interested in the practical aspects.

This seems extremely autistic.

where's the data set this pretty picture was used to model?
kys markov chains a shit ANNs superior!

No OP, but it can be productive in the sense that it views Marxism from a non-deterministic perspective, I would assume.

This to repudiate often-made claims by detractors of Marxist thought that Marxism is deterministic and therefore wrong. I'm not that well-read on this issue though.

No. "As we know" correctly he was the founder of structural Marxism. He was against post-structuralism.

How the fuck would you use a neural network for modelling something like this you fucking retard?

I'm honestly excited to read this.

no bully

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>structural Marxism

Such a complex and chaotic system as historical materialism must be approached in a probabilistic way, this is useful when we have enough data to predict whether for example a socialist state is at risk of reverting back to capitalism and act accordingly.

Good point, and this could be used for a whole new approach to marxist anthropology

Probability is a useful narrative device for explaining the ratios of outcomes in all possible worlds, but a high degree of determinacy is necessary for a theory to be useful. A pitfall that many economists fall into is they build their models without considering the assumptions their models are built on.

Related question: does Cockshott thinks the Law of Value can be made to work in a socialist/communist society?

I'm not sure how related that question is however ill give an answer: Cockshott thinks the circuit of capital, the commodity etc will be abolished however the law of value will still apply in the very basic sense that in a labor voucher system the 'prices' of goods would be equal to the labor time needed to produce it (which is pretty obvious once you think about it). except without market disequilibrium, a circuit of capital, and thus extraction of surplus value.

Give or take a bit of variation to account for demand supply mismatch, or deliberate over or underproduction (make few cigarettes and price them above labour cost to discourage smoking, make lots of condoms and price them below labour cost to encourage safe sex)

yes
this would probably be handled through the 'flat tax' on labor which goes towards public services at a level which people vote on the level of. Contraceptives would be part of public health.
That probably wouldn't happen, the better thing to do would be to have a anti smoking campaign paid for out of public money, if the public cared to pay for it. This has already happened under capitalism to an extent

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No thats a terrible idea. By subsidising products you drive up the demand, but you dont drive up supply, creating (seeming) shortages. If you instead just allocate labour time to produce more condoms (which is the same real cost for the citizens) you drive up the supply, dropping the price, without creating shortages.
Unless I misunderstand, of course, but it stands to reason theres certain things that people dont want to provide for free but still provide for cheaper than their costs. You lower the price (subsidies) in capitalism to increase demand and production, but you increase production to lower the price in cockshotts system.

That is, of course, assuming that these products will not be provided for free in certain quantities as healthcare products, but its just an example for general scarce things you might want to be cheaper than their labour cost due to positive social impact.

Except the increased price of cigarettes also helps a lot with this though. Ive met a lot of people who gave up smoking because it costs too much money. Considering how cheap cigarettes can be made, it might not be a good idea to provide these damaging products for such a cheap price. But thats up to society, and every society has a different view. In sweden for example, alcohol is really fucking expensive so hardly anyone drinks regularly.

beam me up, scotty

Your not subsidizing, your simply paying for resources, this is how all public services work even under capitalism, you dont say taxation causes the price of ambulance trips to inflate. You seem to be confusing the idea of publicly funded services with price controls. All articles of private consumption will be sold at market clearing levels and then supply will be adjusted to that there is parity between the true labor cost and the price in labor vouchers. The flat tax on labor vouchers would be voted on a level determined democratically and the labor tokens would be spent paying for public services such as health, education, etc.
could be done, as it could be argued that second hand smoke etc is an externality that can be internalized by 'taxing' cigarettes. Again, this already happens under capitalism to an extent but people would have to vote on whether they want that
? I thought Europeans drink a ton, esp. compared to americans?

the incredulous anarchist butthurt tears in this post is delicious

why would anarchists in particular take issue with this?

You are totally misreading that post. A product or service isn't either free, rationed by labor vouchers while trying to equalize supply and demand, or illegal. There are policies between, where people can obtain something via their consumption vouchers, but the product or service in question is kept cheaper or more expensive than production cost in the long-term on purpose.

What the post claims is that when it comes to an item we want to make available at price below production cost, we shouldn't fix a lower price and then work out the quantity based on the consumer behavior, but rather fix the quantity and use the consumer behavior for adjusting the price.

should probably take this to the cybernetics thread, its really derailing this one
8ch.net/leftypol/res/1911339.html

He is right though.