C. Boddi says: What sort of "anarchist" envisions a "stateless" state where the entire economy is centrally planned. How is that not a state?
^^^^ CB; Take a look at _The State and Revolution_ for an explanation, comrade. In brief, anarchy-of-production occurs _with_ a state in full force under capitalism. So, anarchy-of-production is not even associated with lack of a state. In the course of the transition to communism the administration of people is repleaed by the administration of things, stateless anarchy comes in anarchy of production goes out.
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B: Anyway, planning the whole economy centrally has the same flaw in it that anarchists see in the state - power. Too much power. It is simply too much power concentrated in too few hands.
CB: Not if there is no private property in the basic means of p.; then there is no accumulation of wealth/power.
The problem with the state is repression of the exploited class on behalf of the exploiting class, not just "power" in the abstract.
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B: I like anarchy of production.
^^^^ CB: You would.
Sorry , you can't have it.
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B: I think it's a good thing. It lets people make the same economic decisions in competing ways. Most of the time there is not a way to do somethign that is clearly best so why should one plan get an official imprimature and the other one not? I think that if workers owned the means of production there would be more and not less anarchy of production and I look forward to it.
^^^^^ CB; You aren't thinking clearly then.
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B: Capitalists hate competition. That's why there have to be anti-trust laws. I say the more anarchy of production, the better.
^^^^ CB; Monopoly does lay the groundwork for socialism, yes. However, capitialists don't hate anarchy of production. That's a major way that they get over, by scavengering in the chaos, by keeping the working class on its back by all the "creative destruction" of anarchy of production. Capitalists would be gone without anarchy of production.
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B: As far as central planning goes, it's not that one can't conceive a good planning apparatus, it's just that the more you think about it the more you will realize that a tremendous amount of information has to be digested
^^^^^ CB; And then if you think about it a little more it's absurd and quasi-religious to believe that an Invisible Hand handles this information problem better than visible human beings.
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B: and some arithmetic notion like "cost accounting" is completely inadequate, for two reasons.
First, it's impossible to model the real economy on anything short of a number of super-computers.
^^^^ CB: What's your proof of that ? You seem to be thinkiing of an anarchistic capitalist economy, with private enterprise predominant. The main thing that has to be planned is means of subsistence as provided by societies standards "today" . The amounts of basic means of subsistence are substantially dictated by population size and demography.
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Second, and most importantly, your data have to be real. There is a huge difference between accounting (which relies on estimates of what things are worth)
^^^^ CB: Worth ? Base it in labor inputs for now. Then we are moving to production for use, away from production for exchange with this socialist economy.
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and marking to market (which actually requires using real prices on an ongoing basis). In the age of accounting, all great financial screw-ups are based on the detachment of the accounting model from reality. How, in a non-money system, do you possibly test your models against reality? In a centrally-planned economy reality is what the planners say it is. And then you find out they were wrong - in a big way.
^^^^ CB: You also find out it is correct in a big way, especially with practice , and especially if you don't have to put giant fractions of production into defense.
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B:No matter how unrealistic capitalist companies get, they either have to sell their products or their financial instruments into a real market where people have to part with real money to buy them. I don't know of any polling technology that adequately mimics the marketplace.
^^^^ CB: This ignores the REALITY, the undeniable FACT, that there are always losers among the capitalist companies who can't sell their stuff, so the makret mechanism in it anarchy is _not_ processing the information better than planning, and the resultant crisis for those companies that fail is a crisis mainly for the workers who lose their jobs , etc.
The notion that the market mechanism does such a great job of processing information is neoclassical myth, constantly rebutted in REALITY.
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B.:I know that it's confusing because I seem to be simultaneously praising capitalism and socialism but I use Marx as my model. He did the same thing. And on this list I don't think I really have to derogate captialism all the time since I think we are all pretty well persuaded that it has serious flaws.
^^^ CB: And Marx's recommendation is, famously, that we get rid of anarhcy of production under capitalism and establish socialism. Use Marx as your model all the way through to that.
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I also think the fact that you can't find a group of leftists who do not find the Soviet model of central planning seriously flawed is significant. If we're not convinced then it's safe to say that nobody else is.
^^^^^ CB: Yes you can find some. You can find lots of leftists who say the experience of the SU does not at all mean that planning in principle should be dropped.
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B: Even Charles who apparently adores five-year plans intensely dislikes the kind of state that could enforce them.
^^^^^ CB: Where do you get that ?
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So I think the task of socialism now is to steer the anarchy of production in a more positive direction (and possibly creating even more anarchy and more production) rather than supposing we can slap controls on it and make it do what we want.
Boddi
^^^^^ CB: The "anarchy" in anarchy of production means "you" can't and don't steer it. That's why we want to get out of as much of the disorder that we can especially in subsistence and basic care goods and services. There's no value in spontenaity and surprise there. Maybe in art and sports etc. we would cultivate some spontenaity, surprise, individuality. No reason to put provision of basic needs as up in the air, uncertain , sporadic, unroutine.