Ask a Red III

[amadeus]

I don't know. That's something that people will have to work out at the time. Adam Smith didn't sit down and lay out a system of universal and eternal pay-rates, and neither do we.

Does this then mean that some people would be compensated (whether in goods or currency) more than others? If so, how do you conceive of one person/group having more than another person/group? If not, how would you prevent people from not working and how would you incentivize people to work harder?

Depends on the good, depends on what we want it do. Healthcare isn't bread isn't education isn't iPods. No reason to adopt a single, universal, eternal mode of distribution, any more than thedre is in capitalism.

I do not simply mean the finished product, but all of the intermediate goods and natural resources in the process, and how this is done efficiently. This also includes other important questions, like where to place a factory, how many people should it employ, etc.

Are you familiar with Leonard Read's essay "I, Pencil?" It describes the incredible complexity of the economy as told from the perspective of an ordinary yellow pencil.

With the price system, a signaling system, this all happens automatically: inefficient production methods die out as a result of fierce, entirely profit-driven competition. This also incentivizes producers to find more efficient methods of production.

My question: without a price system, what signaling system is used to identify and eliminate inefficient production methods and to promote efficient production methods?

It can be possessed, certainly, and possession tends to imply a legitimate claim to continued usage. If the shoe factory doesn't need to be there, then there's no reason not to put it somewhere else, and if it's utterly vital that it goes there, then some sort of compromise could presumably be worked out. It doesn't need to be set in stone, any more than it is in capitalism.

Follow-up: how is possession distinct from property?

Why would it be wrong for someone to enter my home without my permission, sit on my couch and watch my TV? The argument I have heard from communists regarding property is that if someone owns a piece of land, it means that others may be excluded from using it. How is that different from a couch or a TV?

Depends. You won't be reviving capitalism, because capital as an historically specific social relationship will be done and dusted, so there's no real way of knowing what "currency" or "market" would mean in this context.[/Q

If that sounds vague, then, well: yes, it is, because utopian blueprints are a mug's game. Communism, as much of capitalism, is an ongoing process, a way of doing-together, rather than a thing in and of itself. That means that, again like capitalism, it develops over time, that the fundamental terms of the social type find expressions in varying and specific ways. There's no Idea of communism, no ideal towards which we can strive, any more than there is an Idea of capitalism or an Idea of feudalism. It just is.

How then can you advocate then for a system when you don't really have an idea of how it would work?

 

[Quackers]

In a socialist society does the state tolerate pro-capitalist demonstrators meeting up, canvassing, handing out leaflets and all that?

 

[Yeekim]

Are you familiar with Leonard Read's essay "I, Pencil?" It describes the incredible complexity of the economy as told from the perspective of an ordinary yellow pencil.

That was a good read!

 

[Traitorfish]

Does this then mean that some people would be compensated (whether in goods or currency) more than others? If so, how do you conceive of one person/group having more than another person/group? If not, how would you prevent people from not working and how would you incentivize people to work harder?

Could be. I think that communism would transcend the very question of "equality" as its posed in our society, throwing out the question of "equality of oppurtunity/outcome" altogether. What we're really interested in is freedom- positive freedom, the concrete ability to do- "equality" being a means to that end. In some circumstances, that might mean people who work harder get more, in others, it might be that people who have greater need get more. We can't be sure exactly how people will choose to organise themselves.

It's like this Read fella says, "leave all creative energies uninhibited". We just have different ideas about what that means.

I do not simply mean the finished product, but all of the intermediate goods and natural resources in the process, and how this is done efficiently. This also includes other important questions, like where to place a factory, how many people should it employ, etc.

Are you familiar with Leonard Read's essay "I, Pencil?" It describes the incredible complexity of the economy as told from the perspective of an ordinary yellow pencil.

With the price system, a signaling system, this all happens automatically: inefficient production methods die out as a result of fierce, entirely profit-driven competition. This also incentivizes producers to find more efficient methods of production.

My question: without a price system, what signaling system is used to identify and eliminate inefficient production methods and to promote efficient production methods?

Labour-time, presumably. People like free time, people like things, ergo, the best system is that which provides us with the most of both. (That's how most people seem to work in their day to day life, at any rate.) It may not be quite so "automatic" a system as market-signalling, but it's also orientated towards a human efficiency, rather than the efficiency of capital, which I would say makes it more or less fundamentally preferable. I have very little reason to regard a system which can simultaneously produce a surplus of housing and a rise in homelessness as possessing of any "efficiency" which I am bound to respect.

That said, I don't think it's possible to categorically declare that market mechanisms would have no place in a communist society- I've read some interesting stuff about second-order markets- but that they would be ultimately subject to a logic of human need, rather than profit. Approached as simple tools, I think that it's possible to find some use for them- the traditional kneejerk reaction to the word "market" among reds is, I'll be honest, a little silly- but they must remain tools, rather than possessing a logic which is not only apart from but comes to dominate human beings, as is the case in capitalism (Marx's "ontological inversion").

Follow-up: how is possession distinct from property?

Why would it be wrong for someone to enter my home without my permission, sit on my couch and watch my TV? The argument I have heard from communists regarding property is that if someone owns a piece of land, it means that others may be excluded from using it. How is that different from a couch or a TV?

Possession is something that exists in any given instance- I currently possess this computer, but when I get up to go and get lunch, I will cease to possess it- while property is something that persists over time, an absolute and exclusive claim to disposal; the two are wholly distinct. You can have an entitlement to possession, which is I think what you're talking about, and that that differs from property in that it's not inherently absolute and exclusive, it's specific and constantly renegotiable. This can be seen in, for example, communal forms of land-ownership among peasant communities, in which the land is held collectively and allocated and re-allocated at certain intervals on the basis of need and efficiency (or simply retained as collective, where appropriate).

How then can you advocate then for a system when you don't really have an idea of how it would work?

Because I reject the idea that social reorganisation is the reshaping of society into a perfect, tranhistorical form by force of will exerted from outside of society.

In a socialist society does the state tolerate pro-capitalist demonstrators meeting up, canvassing, handing out leaflets and all that?

No state, but, yeah, go nuts. Far as I'm concerned, they'd be arguing against history, so why would I be bothered by them?

 

[Quackers]

What do you mean by "no state"?

 

[Traitorfish]

The state, as such, would not exist in a communist society, at least as I understand "the state" and "communism". There's some disagreement about both of them, but speaking for myself, I don't think communism, a state of direct communality, would be comaptible with the state, the apparatus of mediation-through-terror.

 

[Quackers]

Thats why I said socialist to avoid that but maybe thats not the best word to use. How about marxist-lennist? This society does have a state

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Are social hierarchies acceptable in a communist society? Even if gender, class, heritage, career status, etc are the same, hierarchies are stilled formed within groups. How does communism prevent a new class society based on social competence/unscrupulousness?

 

[Monsterzuma]

given that communism (purportedly) advocates statelessness, should it be viewed as a positive theory (in the sense of making a prediction as to what a stateless society would naturally evolve into) or as a normative theory (in the sense of prescribing a certain social order to be erected through human actions).

 

[Traitorfish]

Thats why I said socialist to avoid that but maybe thats not the best word to use. How about marxist-lennist? This society does have a state

If it's a Marxist-Leninist state, I'm afraid that I'll be too busy plotting against the state to account for its activities.

Are social hierarchies acceptable in a communist society? Even if gender, class, heritage, career status, etc are the same, hierarchies are stilled formed within groups. How does communism prevent a new class society based on social competence/unscrupulousness?

I would contest the idea that heirarchy is an inevitable aspect of human society. It is, in fact, demonstrably false: non-hierarchical societies exist and have existed historically. You can argue, quite reasonably, that there is an inherent tendency toward hierarchy, but that requires the equal acknowledge that there's a parallel tendency towards egalitarianism; what Graeber calls "power and counter-power".
So the question isn't how we address the tendency towards hierarchy, rather than the assumed fact of hierarchy, how we develop and maintain systems of counter-power that are not merely effective, but actually, for rather desperate want of a better word, hegemonic. This means forms of social organisation which preclude the accumulation of power by constantly dissipating it, by constructing our relationships in which authority is never allowed to rest in any person or institution. Whether you call it "direct democracy", "anarchism", or whatever other term takes you fancy, it amounts to much the same thing.
The role that a communistic mode of social reproduction plays in that is by robbing any would be power-mongers of a material basis for their power. In feudal-manorial society, in tributary societies, in capitalist society, and so on, the ruling class play a necessary role in the process of social reproduction; you can't have capitalism without capitalists, as it were. In communism, that doesn't seem to be the case, because social reproduction is determined at the most fundamental level between individuals. Any structurally necessary elite that we can imagine- a "red bureaucracy", as Bakunin had it, being the obvious example- would be contingent rather than inevitable, a product of particular organisational factors rather than the general characteristics of the mode of social reproduction. This means that any structures producing such an elite can be abandoned in favour of new, more effectively egalitarian ones, because they elite are in fact disposable in a way which the capitalists in capitalism are not.

given that communism (purportedly) advocates statelessness, should it be viewed as a positive theory (in the sense of making a prediction as to what a stateless society would naturally evolve into) or as a normative theory (in the sense of prescribing a certain social order to be erected through human actions).

In itself, positive, although of course any given expression of communist ideas will tend to come bundled with certain normative claims. (You're generally not a communist unless you think that communism is a good idea, after all.)

 

[Takhisis]

Do you really believe oin a completely egalitarian, non-hierarchical state of being, TF?

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I would contest the idea that heirarchy is an inevitable aspect of human society. It is, in fact, demonstrably false: non-hierarchical societies exist and have existed historically. You can argue, quite reasonably, that there is an inherent tendency toward hierarchy, but that requires the equal acknowledge that there's a parallel tendency towards egalitarianism; what Graeber calls "power and counter-power".
So the question isn't how we address the tendency towards hierarchy, rather than the assumed fact of hierarchy, how we develop and maintain systems of counter-power that are not merely effective, but actually, for rather desperate want of a better word, hegemonic. This means forms of social organisation which preclude the accumulation of power by constantly dissipating it, by constructing our relationships in which authority is never allowed to rest in any person or institution. Whether you call it "direct democracy", "anarchism", or whatever other term takes you fancy, it amounts to much the same thing.
The role that a communistic mode of social reproduction plays in that is by robbing any would be power-mongers of a material basis for their power. In feudal-manorial society, in tributary societies, in capitalist society, and so on, the ruling class play a necessary role in the process of social reproduction; you can't have capitalism without capitalists, as it were. In communism, that doesn't seem to be the case, because social reproduction is determined at the most fundamental level between individuals. Any structurally necessary elite that we can imagine- a "red bureaucracy", as Bakunin had it, being the obvious example- would be contingent rather than inevitable, a product of particular organisational factors rather than the general characteristics of the mode of social reproduction. This means that any structures producing such an elite can be abandoned in favour of new, more effectively egalitarian ones, because they elite are in fact disposable in a way which the capitalists in capitalism are not.

Where are these non-hierarchical (human) societies? I have trouble believing those exist. Doesn't such a little thing as sexual attractiveness between individuals result in a hierarchy within the group?

 

[Traitorfish]

Where are these non-hierarchical (human) societies? I have trouble believing those exist.

Some examples which have been documented by anthropologists would be the the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi and the Vezo (Cribbing from David Graeber there, I'll admit), who live in societies with little to no hierarchy. (Where it does exist, it's based on gender, and I don't think that this is likely to be a factor with the same tendency towards heirarchy in a modern society as it is in a simple society.) Now, these are all societies of a hunter-gatherer or subsistence agriculture type, so the lessons that an advanced industrial society can draw from them are obviously of a very general sort, but the point is that they demonstrate that the authoritarian and hierarchical structures we see in modern society are simply not an intrinsic and unavoidable aspect of the human condition. They are very much a specific form of social organisation.

Doesn't such a little thing as sexual attractiveness between individuals result in a hierarchy within the group?

No. Why would it? Hierarchy implies an ordered structure of dominance and subordination, particularly when embedded in institutional forms, it doesn't just mean any variation in status.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Some examples which have been documented by anthropologists would be the the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi and the Vezo (Cribbing from David Graeber there, I'll admit), who live in societies with little to no hierarchy. (Where it does exist, it's based on gender, and I don't think that this is likely to be a factor with the same tendency towards heirarchy in a modern society as it is in a simple society.) Now, these are all societies of a hunter-gatherer or subsistence agriculture type, so the lessons that an advanced industrial society can draw from them are obviously of a very general sort, but the point is that they demonstrate that the authoritarian and hierarchical structures we see in modern society are simply not an intrinsic and unavoidable aspect of the human condition. They are very much a specific form of social organisation.


No. Why would it? Hierarchy implies an ordered structure of dominance and subordination, particularly when embedded in institutional forms, it doesn't just mean any variation in status.

Thanks. I'll just disagree on the last part. Hierarchies do easily form within groups, even if they're informal, based on several factors including attractiveness. I don't see how Communism would be able to prevent them.

I can imagine anthropologists that are unable to find institutional hierarchical structures in some small, simple societies, but you can't make any claims about this being transferable to larger, modern societies. I wonder how conflicts are settled in those societies..? By strength? By an elder? By someone wise?

 

[aelf]

I find it interesting that when discussing hierarchies, there fluidity in the discourse between formal and informal hierarchies, which implies that the existence of the latter is assumed to be proof of or equivalent to the existence of the former.

 

[Traitorfish]

Thanks. I'll just disagree on the last part. Hierarchies do easily form within groups, even if they're informal, based on several factors including attractiveness. I don't see how Communism would be able to prevent them.

That could lead to a variety in social status, but that doesn't imply the presence of actual heirarchy. As I said, hierarchy denotes relationships of domination and subordination, and while varieties in social status can produce inegalitarian outcomes, a lack of total egalitarianism doesn't actually imply the presence of hierarchical relationships. That's a leap of logic which really doesn't follow.

I can imagine anthropologists that are unable to find institutional hierarchical structures in some small, simple societies, but you can't make any claims about this being transferable to larger, modern societies.

Oh, of course not, and I don't intend to. The point is simply that it demonstrates that hierarchies are not intrinsic to human society. It's a very general claim.

I wonder how conflicts are settled in those societies..? By strength? By an elder? By someone wise?

Generally speaking, by discussion, and the reaching of a mutually agreed upon consensus. If the individuals involved are unable to reach a consensus alone, then the rest of the group may intervene. Perhaps some members of the group are regarded as wiser or more even-handed, and so their opinions will be given greater weight, but I wouldn't understand that as constituting real authority, any more than, say, a senior academic could be said to wield authority over a junior academic because he was more widely respected.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

That could lead to a variety in social status, but that doesn't imply the presence of actual heirarchy. As I said, hierarchy denotes relationships of domination and subordination, and while varieties in social status can produce inegalitarian outcomes, a lack of total egalitarianism doesn't actually imply the presence of hierarchical relationships. That's a leap of logic which really doesn't follow.

It doesn't need to imply anything, it's evident that social status affects group dynamics (even more so than in the current society with several, potentially conflicting factors contributing to hierarchies) in general. Do you recognize that there a hierarchies between pupils in schools? Are these 'relationships of domination and subordination' or simply 'inegalitarian outcomes'? Take away all the other forms of hierarchy and you're left with a hierarchy based on social competence/attractiveness/etc.

Generally speaking, by discussion, and the reaching of a mutually agreed upon consensus. If the individuals involved are unable to reach a consensus alone, then the rest of the group may intervene. Perhaps some members of the group are regarded as wiser or more even-handed, and so their opinions will be given greater weight, but I wouldn't understand that as constituting real authority, any more than, say, a senior academic could be said to wield authority over a junior academic because he was more widely respected.

Or as with the Tallensi, the first born son may have a bit more respect than the rest...?

The Tallensi are polygamous and follow a patrilineal system of kinship and descent. Great emphasis is placed on inheritance and the tensions surrounding parents' relationships with their children. It is considered essential for a man to have a son if he is to achieve fulfillment and be venerated as an ancestor after his death. However, the birth of a first-born son, and to a lesser extent a first-born daughter, is held to mark the culmination of a man's 'rise' in the world, and the start of his decline. Meanwhile, the son grows to replace and supplant the father. The resulting ambivalence between father and son, which is reminiscent of the effects of the Oedipus complex as articulated by Sigmund Freud, plays an important role in Tallensi rituals and taboos.

 

[Traitorfish]

It doesn't need to imply anything, it's evident that social status affects group dynamics (even more so than in the current society with several, potentially conflicting factors contributing to hierarchies) in general. Do you recognize that there a hierarchies between pupils in schools? Are these 'relationships of domination and subordination' or simply 'inegalitarian outcomes'? Take away all the other forms of hierarchy and you're left with a hierarchy based on social competence/attractiveness/etc.

But, again, that isn't a form of hierarchy. It's just, I don't know, ranking. To conflate it with hierarchy strips away the actual content of social hierarchies, relationships between people, and leaves you with some vague notion of a semi-routine popularity contest. You may as well say that there's a heirarchy of soft drinks, because Coca Cola is more popular than Sprite, for all it tells you about how human societies work.

Or as with the Tallensi, the first born son may have a bit more respect than the rest...?

Mebbe. I don't remember saying that any of these people were blueprints for the future.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

But, again, that isn't a form of hierarchy. It's just, I don't know, ranking. To conflate it with hierarchy strips away the actual content of social hierarchies, relationships between people, and leaves you with some vague notion of a semi-routine popularity contest. You may as well say that there's a heirarchy of soft drinks, because Coca Cola is more popular than Sprite, for all it tells you about how human societies work.

Ok. *cut*

 

[asbestos]

Why do communists hate commodity production... or do they?
Would commodity production be less evil if the workers directly owned the means of production?