Market Socialist Theory Thread

His alternatives were revealed in his negations and asides. Through the critique of the gotha program we know that he did consider a lower stage of communism and socialism necessary as a transition. We also know that he disparaged markets since they do not take into account the general will of society. Certainly he spent little time thinking about this issue which is why I think some of his critique is flawed.

Here's Bukharin summarizing a common leftcom talking point created by Marx, whether intentionally or not:

They seem to be under the impression there can be no political economy under socialism, or whatever the lower form of communism is called. But this is completely unreasonable. Indeed, this notion can only be resolved with either comprehensive central planning in the case of relative scarcity or abundance. Central planning has its own contradictions, has difficulty at finding the general will of society while at the same time being the only viable way and lends itself towards class hierarchies well and abundance is near impossible with a world with a population as large as our own. Perhaps you can change the definition of society to mean something smaller than what Marx discussed so it can be managed by a directly democratic local government, but that is certainly cheating and still presents problems on how to run a modern industrial economy.

Marx certainly wanted his arguments to be scientific, and indeed many of his criticisms of capitalism were, but he clearly slid into idealism in the broad strokes of communism and socialism he painted. Therefor, if we are to implement socialism in the 21st century we must not limit socialism such impossible goals as the abolishment of a political economy and instead focus on worker ownership.

this literally doesn't even mean anything.

capitalists think that market socialism is 'utopian'. I mean fuck, if you're going to have a revolution and topple the capitalist paradigm, why not go all the way instead of just installing capitalism with socialist characteristics

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I mean it's literally not possible to organize scarce resources (and yes they are scarce, just try dividing what has been produced or even what can be produced between 7 billion people) without either centralized planning(which have trouble accounting for quality and use-value among other issues) or markets. Certainly a market socialist economy will make use of both, but the primary mode of production will probably be co-ops producing for a market.

And what exactly would "going all the way" entail for you anyway?

webm related

Left Forum hosts Dr Paul Cockshott on Cybersocialism

youtube.com/watch?v=LtlZys7QOO4

central planning, I'm not one of the 'everything is free maaan' faggots

when you have markets and money you have capitalism, I don't see how market socialists can't see that. even if somehow the co-op structure could be maintained (I doubt it) the new proletariat would just be the lower level (ie resource extraction and so on) co-ops who would be forced to work for less than their labour is worth by their buyers like farmers are today

wew

In that case you run into the problem of necessary authority and replication of class structures through the state, not to mention the problem of production paying little attention to quality and what kind of goods consumers and society at large might want.

I don't see why the co-op structure wouldn't be maintained. But as far as your point why would they be forced to work for less than their labor is worth. Farmers today, or at least they were, given large subsidies so they could survive and society would always have enough to eat. A similar solution is viable in market socialism, for while there are markets there is no reason for there to be a neo-classical fetish for them and perfect competition.

Marx was a busy man. Whenever he wasn't working on some manuscript he was shitposting polemicizing against someone for being too stupid. He would have taken you to task for asserting he should articulate a society in the absence of its material basis, namely what socialism or communism would actually entail.

Unusually, you're allowing Bukharin to speak for Marx, rather than Marx himself. Again, he made no attempt to sketch what the transition would actually look like, and for good reason. It's not idealism to have a goal in mind; it's idealism, and hence utopian, to outline how an entire society will function through pure speculation. I would argue Bukharin was making a reasonable assumption – he was in no way stating, in detail, what this would actually entail.

We're not even discussing full socialism or communism, we're discussing a viable transition implemented soon, which implies we are working with the current material conditions or very similar ones.

It's also idealism to attempt a transition without a plan and expect it to work.

And that's exactly the problem, without some specific meaning of what we're talking about, there's no reason for us to be taken seriously as a political force.

None of what you said is applicable to Marx, which is the point. The flaw is not with Marx, or Bukharin, for being idealist.

If you want to change the subject, then fine.

You take the theory and assumptions of Marx, and further theorists who've improved and critiqued him, you write a materialist analysis of the society under examination – just as Lenin did concerning Russia, for example – and then you can start planning. Then you're discussing a viable transition. All that's being discussed here are generalizations.

Which is fine; this is an imageboard. I'm not sure what you expect.

No you're missing the point. Even a moneyless marketless transition state is idealist and the soviet union is exactly one example of why.

You're a retard because the Soviet Union had both money and markets, even if its production was planned.

But the markets were not for autonomous firms, the markets were not there to give consumers choice between products. They were only there as a way to ration the centrally planed goods. And this is the fundamental problem, grounded in a lack of good theory on how to treat value in a transitional state. Money must have proper value to it and be circulated. Certainly the ussr was good at emulating capitalist hierarchies in order to ramp up production but that is unfeasible in the 21st century when the first world is a service based economy based more on quality than quantity. Not to mention it is antithetical to leftist principles that workers be so de humanized by central planning and it's methods of distribution

The ruble had value in the USSR and Warsaw Pact states but not outside them, And the first world economy is absolutely based upon quantity – it is still about goods and services being produced for exchange, it's just that most industrial production has been outsourced, following the injection of Western capital into the former third world, and in partnership with firms in places like China. There has not been a qualitative change in Western social relations: there are still workers and capitalists, it's just that the emphasis has shifted, following the relative deindustrialization of the West into services and so-called "immaterial" labor. Also, workers are intensely dehumanized, intensely alienated, by market exchange. The one thing the Soviet Union had going for it, for all the contradictions it introduced, was the hobbling of the market as a crude method of allocation, even as prices were fixed and production was planned. It was ultimately untenable – that is true – but they should have gone beyond, not regressed back into an unlimited market.

You mistake my point. It's not that the ruble did not have exchange value, its self evident that it did, it's that soviet economists and planners intentionally ignored any use value in their calculations. They didn't care about people's subjective experiences thanks to their ideological opposition to subjective value theory. If they did, they would allow real competition between firms even despite what waste comes with one firm loosing the competition.

But its also a lot about experiencing goods and services. Even if this is being distorted by advertising and commodity fetishism you cannot deny that many people simply buy certain things because they enjoy them and would prefer to have such things as movies and fancy armchairs in their lives. This is what I refer to by quality, as well as the actually quality of a good. For example, the same SNALT may produce one unit of coal with more hydro-carbons than another just by sheer luck, a similar problem with the same socially necessary labor time creating a dress of high quality and a dress of low quality. Certainly the theoretical problem can be solved by saying these are now two different commodities on account of their different qualities, but central planners are unable to make such a distinction.

I do not deny that markets in their current forms are dehumanizing, but in the Soviet Union where an average worker neither had a say in government even to the degree of citizens in liberal democracies, did not have a say in their workplace even like workers in Yugoslavia, or even a limited say in the qualities of the commodities they consumed that workers in western capitalism had, certainly that is more dehumanizing and less free then other plainly available alternatives.

Marx did not have a proper theory on how to run an economy or a government, why don't we expand our theoretical pool a bit.

That's absurd. It's like claiming Gosplan wasn't able to make a distinction between a T-64 and a T-62 when considering the former for production.

Oh, I see, you literally believe that Western capitalism is more free because of its diversity of consumption choices. As expected from a market socialist, I guess. You do know the USSR had a huge black market, right? What more evidence do you need that the planners weren't able to dictate people's consumption habits.

We've been doing that since his writings appeared, with mixed success. Anyway, I'm out of this stupid conversation.

I was referring to how largely unintentional differences not related to socially necessary labor time led to a difference of qualities. Things that a central planner would not be able to notice but would be on a market with non-fixed prices.

The freedom is not through the sheer diversity of consumption choices, as simply saying that superficial differences make for more freedom is rather silly. Rather, it is when differences are not superficial, they allow individuals to have more control over their own life by being able to choose in differences, sometimes in a subjective manner.

I think the history of markets makes it clear that the ones that have the most success are the ones with state support and state interference. Regardless, the soviet people would have had more freedom had the government allowed for more autonomous cooperative firms which could produce whatever they wanted.

With extremely limited success if we are to compare socialist experiments with leftist values. Certainly I think we need to turn to non-Marxists such as Rousseau for insight into government and turn to capitalists economists (while consciously critiquing their assumptions and ideology) to understand the best way to proceed.

Bump

How do we get governments to spend more on co-ops like they have done businesses? It's grand that we have Jeremy Corbyn with the most comprehensive co-op plan ever, I think that's great, but let's be honest, he probably won't get into power. We need to move the sphere towards this sort of zone.

Anyone got any ideas?

My college socialist club is working on getting tax breaks for coops and a zoning law that requires developers to put 40% of their developed space to coops in our city. Seems to be making progress so far

Question: The co-operative party in the UK is allied with labour. If you join them you also get to attend/vote in labour meetings. Should I join them? Has anyone here joined them?

Bump, would be nice to have an answer to

I'm thinking of joining them

Bump

do it and back le slick entryist

Bamp.

Tbh really wanna

Is cooperativisation the main political tool of Market Socialism?

Whoever you are, comrade, good posts. I approve.

kill yourself

This would be true only if you had a time machine, that would let you use the prices of the future for your fixed capital, thus conteracting the falling rate, but as this is not possible you would endup in crises like capitalism. As Marx said you can't possible mantain new relations of porduction if your forces of production still the same, if you belice so you're an idealist.
Good video on the topic: youtube.com/watch?v=9oXEgH4HzYk&list=PL1F6723279F3E4676&index=1

Noboy ITT has mentioned Leon Walras
Wasn't he a market socialist?

Oh so you're referring to how they have to pay back credit on investments and such. Well I suppose that the current solution would work of just printing money as an inflationary pressure to pay past debts. I hadn't thought about that until now, so I suppose in reality prices would have to steadily increase even if the inflation adjusted rate of profit decreases.

And considering that the money used to pay off the credit that paid for the capital will be re-circulated thanks to the spending of lenders and the state I don't see that it will significantly disrupt the process, especially if the state just picks up the slack of investing. For the state can invest even if the rate of return hits zero, for it can stand with simply breaking even.

nobody actually takes that guy seriously user

bump

Walras was a marginalist in favor of capitalism.

Bump.

OI! What's preventing capitalist countries from fucking over marc-soc countries like Yugoslavia all over again? Any suggested readings that include the subject?