[lbo-talk] "Central Planning"

[farmelantj at juno.com]

Well you are a bit late too the party, since some of these issues got an airing out on this list during this past spring.  At the time, I posted the following:

David Laibman gets into some of these issues in his new book, 
*Deep History: A Study of Evolution and Human Potential*.  In a
review of that book that I have been working on I write:

Laibman not only holds that his PF-PR model can be used to elucidate the
many issues concerning the feudal-capitalist transition (issues that have
been debated by scholars like Paul Sweezy, Maurice Dobb, Perry Anderson,
Robert Brenner etc.) but that this model has important implications for
understanding how the transition from capitalism to socialism and beyond
might occur. He considers an evaluation or rather re-evaluation of the
experiences of the Soviet Union and of other Soviet-type societies in
both their positive and negative aspects to be of crucial importance for
understanding the dynamics of the capitalist-socialist transition. In
this discussion, Laibman discusses a number of issues including the
proposals that have been made for market socialism as a model to be
preferred over Soviet-style centrally planned socialism. Laibman rejects
market socialism but recognizes that markets may play a very significant
role in the building of socialism and he points out that the Soviet
economy did have markets of various types. In Laibman’s view, one cannot
abstract markets from the social contexts in which they exist, as most
forms of free-market ideology tend to do. He also discusses the proposals
by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel for a participatory economy in which
collectives of workers would be organized to negotiate the production and
distribution of goods without any sort of reliance on market relations
but would also be lacking in any central bodies or structures of
authority that could degenerate into a bureaucratic caste. Negotiations
between producer and consumer collective would be mediated through an
Iteration Facilitation Board in a system of horizontal coordination.
Laibman sees some merit in Albert & Hahnels’ proposals inasmuch as they
place strong emphasis on democratic participation. However, he faults
them for unwittingly proposing to reproduce much of the alienation
associated with the market economy. There are no mechanisms provided in
their proposals for achieving or facilitating the development of social
consensus concerning the outcome of iterations. The iterations, as Albert
& Hahnel admit, will be designed to reproduce the allocations that would
have been generated by the market, since their iteration model is
supposed to guarantee economic efficiency by replicating the Walrasian
general equilibrium Their model does not allow for the establishment of a
conscious political control over economic activity. Instead, it attempts
to replicate the outcomes of markets without making use of markets.
Laibman also objects that the constant meetings and negotiations that
would be required for the iterative organization of production and
consumption would require more time and participation than most people
would be able to bear. 

Likewise, Laibman finds both significant merits and demerits in the
proposals made by W. Paul Cockshott and Allin F. Cottrell for a
computerized centrally planned socialist economy. Against bourgeois
economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, Cockshott and
Cottrell argue that developments in computer technology make it possible
to overcome the so-called socialist calculation problem. The many
thousands, if not millions, of simultaneous equations that economists
tell us would have to be solved in a complex economy, can in fact be
solved within seconds by computers. Moreover, Laibman agrees with them
that modern computer technology, including computer networking, makes
rational economic coordination possible without our necessarily having to
rely upon markets. However, Laibman objects that Cockshott and Cottrell
fail to take into account the importance of things like local knowledge
and traditions, which cannot be easily factored into mathematical models.
To some extent, Laibman actually endorses the Misean-Hayekian objection
to the idea that central planning cannot be expected to handle those
sorts of issues very well. And he also faults them with attaching too
much importance to the problem of economic coordination whereas he thinks
that the decisive advantage of socialism will most likely turn out to be
in the area of what he calls consensualization, that is the establishment
of participatory planning which aims to create consensus and shared
vision as the economy and society are brought under the conscious control
of the masses. However, he agrees with them that the revolution in
information technology is a decisive example of how capitalism is being
undermined by the development of the PFs. Modern technology makes
possible the “decisive transcendence” of capitalism. Laibman proposes
that under socialism we might wish to rely upon what he calls an
“E-Coordi-Net” which would be modeled after the Internet and which would
be responsible for registering and processing the flows of economic data,
thereby facilitating participatory democratic control over the PFs.

Laibman as a historical materialist holds that the development of
productive forces under capitalism necessarily undermines the kinds of
incentive and control structures upon which capitalism has long been
reliant. Further economic and social development will require more
advanced levels of consciousness and incentives, but these are
unavailable under capitalism. Hence, capitalism will have to be
transcended if human progress is to continue. In that sense for Laibman
the triumph of socialism is inevitable, barring such catastrophes as
nuclear war or ecological collapse. In the chapters on “Socialism” and
“The Soviet Experience,” he provides an extended discussion of the role
of both material and moral incentives and of individual versus collective
incentives in the building of socialism. At any given stage in the
development of socialism, all of these different types of incentives will
be operative. Policymakers will have to find ways for combining
individual/material incentives with collective/moral incentives to
maximize the advancement of both production and consciousness. A
materialist view of incentives and consciousness will see this as a
matter of the working out of a dialectic between people’s developing
consciousness and their changing material circumstances as humanity
emerged out of capitalist society. In other words, the combinations of
material and moral incentives that would be required for promoting
further economic and social progress will likely change over time.
Presumably, in the earlier stages of socialism, more reliance will have
to made on material and individual incentives as people would still be
“stamped with the birthmarks” of the old society, However, as socialism
develops, the balance will tend to shift in favor of increasing reliance
upon collective and moral incentives. Laibman concedes that in the
earliest stages of socialism, policymakers will be confronted with making
trade-offs between increasing production and increasing the quality of
life (which would involve increasing equality and participation). The
experiences of countries trying to implement policies to increase quality
of life suggest that this is the case. To that extent, the neo-liberal
critics of socialism are correct in his opinion. Where these critics go
wrong is that as socialism proceeds to more advanced levels of
development, these sorts of trade-off will cease to exist. In other
words, whereas in the earlier stages of socialism, it might well be the
case that increased quality of life can only come at the expense of
increased productivity, under a more advanced socialism, the continued
improvement of productivity will require changes in people’s motivational
structures. Improved productivity will come only if people display a high
sense of commitment and creative fulfillment in their work. Those sorts
of changes in motivational structures would be best fostered under
conditions of increasing democracy and equality.  

-- Kevin Robert Dean <Qualiall at roadrunner.com> wrote:
Sorry if I'm late to the party on this one, but I stumbled across this 
interesting paper by Allin Cottrell and W. Paul Cockshott.  I can't say 
I have the mental capacity to understand all of it, but here's a snippit 
(sorry if text is messy)

Full at:
http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/calculation_debate.pdf