Doug Henwood wrote:
> But if we're talking about some kind of postcapitalist
> future, we have to talk about popular control of investment and
> resource allocation using criteria other than private profit
> maximization. So what are we talking about?
Parts of the planning discussion have been fruitful, particularly as the differences in the meaning of the term under capitalism and socialism/communinism begin to be explored.
But your point, Doug, is also important, and, I think, logically prior as well. We need to be looking, in Rob's phrase, for "ways to think about" the future, or most particularly, I think, at how to develop a sense of priority and logic as to what to think about.
The logically prior question to ones about what planning should, or is likely to, look like, or who should do it, is this: what should be the new purpose or object of production? Replacing that is, the private profit motive, after the expropriators have been expropriated.
The answer is complicated, unlike the simple motive of capital. It must be an explicitly social purpose, going far beyond mere control of investment and resource allocation, involving all major aspects of economic and social life. The question of what gets produced, how much of it, and at what price, must solved in a way that meets the need of work that is unalienating, consumption, resource allocation, environmental needs, community, etc.
It is the process of working through capitalist contradictions and toward such an alternative, that will yield some of the shape of the kind of planning that will be necessary, and give some sense as to the very meaning of the term itself under socialism/communism.
Roger