What would a "better" society look like?

[SS-18 ICBM]

I don't think it would be very hard for them to figure out an efficient way of running it.

That's the kind of answer that leaves lingering doubts in my mind.

The amount of people even qualified to work with this sort of technology is small enough to begin with.

There are hundreds, possibly even thousands of scientists who rely on the results of the LHC. As for the actual people who work in the maintenance and operation of it, that's another order of magnitude.

What makes this a unique issue for non-hierarchical relief groups?

It isn't, but the lack of coordination and communication would be more apparent without a structured organization.

 

[civver_764]

That's the kind of answer that leaves lingering doubts in my mind.

There are hundreds, possibly even thousands of scientists who rely on the results of the LHC. As for the actual people who work in the maintenance and operation of it, that's another order of magnitude.

If I don't know the specifics of how the operation is run I can't really give you my idea of how it look in a non-hierarchical society. I don't see why it wouldn't work though. Many of the same occupations that exist today around the collider would probably still exist, and the people would hold the same responsibilities. It would just all be mutually agreed upon(which, if the current order works just fine I don't see why they wouldn't keep it, but then again I don't know much about it).

It isn't, but the lack of coordination and communication would be more apparent without a structured organization.

Structure can exist without hierarchy.

 

[Borachio]

None of you got the reference. No P.G. Wodehouse fans?

I used to be a huge fan.

But if it doesn't involve aunts or pigs, what's the point, old chap?

Tootle pip!

 

[Traitorfish]

The fact that state capitalism was used to bridge the gap between imperial and socialism by the communist party makes the determination of the top echelon of the economic planning system as "capitalists" irrelevant. Capitalists endeavor for profit's sake, showing disregard for the status of the rest of society that is not immediately relevant to the turning of those profits. It is clear from its outset that the Russian communists, while utilizing the developmental capacities of capitalism, were not working to profit themselves, as their lifestyles and society clearly show, to say nothing of their ideology. State capitalism was one of the tools to create socialism, or get close to it, while European working classes waited for the time for a new revolution to come, according to their understanding at the time. And all things considered, nothing less could be expected of them.

I think that it's mistaken to pose capitalist pursuit of profit as something undertaken for personal gain, as if it was just some pathology that could be taken into account by a sufficiently benign government. Rather, profit is a compulsion that capital itself places upon its administers, a demand not for personal oppulance but for the expansion of capital-as-capital. The formula isn't "C - M -C1", after all, as it would be if capitalism was about accumulating golden yachts, but "M - C - M1", in which "M1" has no function at all but to reenter the market as "M" and begin the process all over again. As Marx explains in his discussion of the ontological inversion, the capitalist is, fundamentally, no more free of capital than the worker is. That the capitalist is able to indulge in a much greater degree of personal accumulation simply represents their relative freedom within those basic terms.

The relative austerity of the Russian ruling class, then, indicates nothing about their class-character, any more than the relative prosperity of a skilled white-collar worker in the West suggests that he is some sort of salaried bourgoise. It is simply an expression of the practical constraints on personal accumulation they experienced as the collective adminstrators of an under-developed capitalist economy.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I like the description of post-Stalin USSR as "authoritarian social democracy".

 

[Patroklos]

Yes, but I fail to see why the alternatives would be any better. As I said, there will always be an inequality in power. I don't know about you but despite all of their shortcomings, I prefer my local police department to unorganized militias or tribal councils.

Which themselves represent an inequality of power.

I was not saying that to counter your argument, I was agreeing with you that not having that is impossible.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's not obvious that either of those examples represent an "inequality of power", or at the very least not that they represent a structural rather than merely contingent inequality of power. (I mean, if you're climbing a ladder while I hold it, I can be said to have a certain power over you, but we wouldn't infer from this observation that ladder-holding is the basis of all social oppressions.) That requires additional argument, or at least some attempt to describe the organisations in question in somewhat less vague and homogenising terms.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

If I don't know the specifics of how the operation is run I can't really give you my idea of how it look in a non-hierarchical society. I don't see why it wouldn't work though. Many of the same occupations that exist today around the collider would probably still exist, and the people would hold the same responsibilities. It would just all be mutually agreed upon(which, if the current order works just fine I don't see why they wouldn't keep it, but then again I don't know much about it).

My digging could only find a "Research Board" that approves all the experiments for the LHC schedule. I find it hard to believe that there would be hundreds of people on there arguing which experiment should be done when.

Structure can exist without hierarchy.

But it would be more difficult.

 

[civver_764]

My digging could only find a "Research Board" that approves all the experiments for the LHC schedule. I find it hard to believe that there would be hundreds of people on there arguing which experiment should be done when.

There probably wouldn't be unless it was seen to be beneficial. The research board could still exist at its current size, with people taking turns being a part of it.

But it would be more difficult.

Why's that?

 

[Chimera Kitty]

please, lerf was the single best thing to happen to the game.

lerf?

 

[innonimatu]

I think that it's mistaken to pose capitalist pursuit of profit as something undertaken for personal gain, as if it was just some pathology that could be taken into account by a sufficiently benign government. Rather, profit is a compulsion that capital itself places upon its administers, a demand not for personal oppulance but for the expansion of capital-as-capital. The formula isn't "C - M -C1", after all, as it would be if capitalism was about accumulating golden yachts, but "M - C - M1", in which "M1" has no function at all but to reenter the market as "M" and begin the process all over again. As Marx explains in his discussion of the ontological inversion, the capitalist is, fundamentally, no more free of capital than the worker is. That the capitalist is able to indulge in a much greater degree of personal accumulation simply represents their relative freedom within those basic terms.

The relative austerity of the Russian ruling class, then, indicates nothing about their class-character, any more than the relative prosperity of a skilled white-collar worker in the West suggests that he is some sort of salaried bourgoise. It is simply an expression of the practical constraints on personal accumulation they experienced as the collective adminstrators of an under-developed capitalist economy.

Ahh... I know that impulse to find similarities between what you dislike - I do it myself. But in this case you are wrong, the economic systems of the "west" and the "soviet block" were not just the same thing dressed up with different speech.

There were similarities, and indeed there were comparable classes in each block. The "managerial class" in the capitalist block had its counterpart in the "bureaucratic class" in the soviet block. Galbraith made a persuasive argument for such institutional similarities still when the Cold War was in full swing and to do it was heretical in either side - but he was always one to write those simple but inconvenient truths that you just don't admit when you are a member of respectable circles!

But what about the capitalist class proper, the "rentier class"? Did the rentiers of the capitalist block had their counterpart in the nomenklatura? Djilas complained that they did, but the way I see it, it really wasn't the same thing. The nomenklatura were politicians on the active, akin to western politicians on the active and/or administrators. It was part of that "bureaucratic class" which was a counterpart to the western "managerial class". The "rentier class" typical of capitalism had been successfully eliminated (or, more correctly, diluted - one of the goals of socialism) in the soviet block. That was why it was so hated and feared by the members of that class in the capitalism block. It wasn't just posturing.

The difference between having a rentier class which is allowed to gradually concentrate wealth (wealth begets more wealth, and rents from wealth accumulate with a compound effect), or having what has become fashionable to call "state capitalism" (I really would like to know who coined the term) where the proceeds from any "rents" (profits) are either generally redistributed through state services or reinvested, has big institutional consequences! Big social consequences too. If it didn't then the crassest of capitalism of the most benign of social-democracies would be similar, something which the people forced to live under one or the other have very often (and sometimes violently) rejected by demanding changes from one to the other.

It would be worth, it seems to me, do discuss what "state capitalism" is. Not only because that has by far been the most often used alternative to "capitalism" but also because the term itself is, I suspect, politically loaded towards pretending that it is no different from capitalism. Which is a rather... bold claim.

 

[Lone Wolf]

or having what has become fashionable to call "state capitalism" (I really would like to know who coined the term)

Early Marxists like Liebkniecht used it to describe interventionist and nationalizationist tendencies in capitalist West.

Some left-mensheviks, leftcomms (traitorous fishes ), anarchists and unorthodox trotskyists applied it to the Soviet Union. The latter insist that USSR started out as socialist, but Stalinism spoiled everything.

If it didn't then the crassest of capitalism of the most benign of social-democracies would be similar

Do you mean "and"?

Interesting post. I've long held that post-Stalin SU was authoritarian social-democratic. But what you suggest that its economic structure was different even from the most benign of Western soc-dems.

 

[Nares]

The second most important would be an absence of individualism.

Wow.

That is scary.

Complete removal of freedom, huh? I wouldn't call that a society. That's like calling an ant colony a society, but in doing so we're merely humanizing ants for our own amusement.

 

[Leoreth]

Wow.

That is scary.

Complete removal of freedom, huh? I wouldn't call that a society. That's like calling an ant colony a society, but in doing so we're merely humanizing ants for our own amusement.

Did you read any further? Because if you had, it would've become obvious that civver chose a poor word and meant egoism instead.

 

[Patroklos]

It's not obvious that either of those examples represent an "inequality of power", or at the very least not that they represent a structural rather than merely contingent inequality of power. (I mean, if you're climbing a ladder while I hold it, I can be said to have a certain power over you, but we wouldn't infer from this observation that ladder-holding is the basis of all social oppressions.) That requires additional argument, or at least some attempt to describe the organisations in question in somewhat less vague and homogenising terms.

I think the organization of a "tribal council" constitutes something structural, and if it resembles the vast majority of organizations sharing that name from our history it probably has some other very nasty structural problems with it to.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Ahh... I know that impulse to find similarities between what you dislike - I do it myself. But in this case you are wrong, the economic systems of the "west" and the "soviet block" were not just the same thing dressed up with different speech.

There were similarities, and indeed there were comparable classes in each block. The "managerial class" in the capitalist block had its counterpart in the "bureaucratic class" in the soviet block. Galbraith made a persuasive argument for such institutional similarities still when the Cold War was in full swing and to do it was heretical in either side - but he was always one to write those simple but inconvenient truths that you just don't admit when you are a member of respectable circles!

But what about the capitalist class proper, the "rentier class"? Did the rentiers of the capitalist block had their counterpart in the nomenklatura? Djilas complained that they did, but the way I see it, it really wasn't the same thing. The nomenklatura were politicians on the active, akin to western politicians on the active and/or administrators. It was part of that "bureaucratic class" which was a counterpart to the western "managerial class". The "rentier class" typical of capitalism had been successfully eliminated (or, more correctly, diluted - one of the goals of socialism) in the soviet block. That was why it was so hated and feared by the members of that class in the capitalism block. It wasn't just posturing.

The difference between having a rentier class which is allowed to gradually concentrate wealth (wealth begets more wealth, and rents from wealth accumulate with a compound effect), or having what has become fashionable to call "state capitalism" (I really would like to know who coined the term) where the proceeds from any "rents" (profits) are either generally redistributed through state services or reinvested, has big institutional consequences! Big social consequences too. If it didn't then the crassest of capitalism of the most benign of social-democracies would be similar, something which the people forced to live under one or the other have very often (and sometimes violently) rejected by demanding changes from one to the other.

It would be worth, it seems to me, do discuss what "state capitalism" is. Not only because that has by far been the most often used alternative to "capitalism" but also because the term itself is, I suspect, politically loaded towards pretending that it is no different from capitalism. Which is a rather... bold claim.

The New Industrial State indeed springs to mind. I seem to remember him concluding that the problem was not the technocratic structure itself, but rather where decision-making lay. He said that GosPlan operated exactly like the late Henry Ford's FMC, with all decision-making originating directly from the top, which was necessarily privy to far less relevant information than positions closer to the production process, and thus resulted in a severely atrophied production process, in comparison to structures that placed decision-making and innovation in the hands of people directly contacted by production. It's like Galbraith was afraid to openly endorse socialism, yet provided what is quite possibly the soundest economic justification for it in the modern era. He sets 'em up, we knock 'em down.

lerf?

Last Effect Resolves First. Replaced the horrid spell-batching system from pre-Classic. Much more straightforward and sensible.

I think that it's mistaken to pose capitalist pursuit of profit as something undertaken for personal gain, as if it was just some pathology that could be taken into account by a sufficiently benign government. Rather, profit is a compulsion that capital itself places upon its administers, a demand not for personal oppulance but for the expansion of capital-as-capital. The formula isn't "C - M -C1", after all, as it would be if capitalism was about accumulating golden yachts, but "M - C - M1", in which "M1" has no function at all but to reenter the market as "M" and begin the process all over again. As Marx explains in his discussion of the ontological inversion, the capitalist is, fundamentally, no more free of capital than the worker is. That the capitalist is able to indulge in a much greater degree of personal accumulation simply represents their relative freedom within those basic terms.

The relative austerity of the Russian ruling class, then, indicates nothing about their class-character, any more than the relative prosperity of a skilled white-collar worker in the West suggests that he is some sort of salaried bourgoise. It is simply an expression of the practical constraints on personal accumulation they experienced as the collective adminstrators of an under-developed capitalist economy.

At the bottom of this post I explain my position wrt this post. I'm not entirely disagreeing, but, well, I kind of am.

The latter insist that USSR started out as socialist, but Stalinism spoiled everything.

My position is still further. I think up until 1953, the USSR was following a possible tract towards socialism (albeit a certainly undesirable one for us Westerners), a tract which his successors rendered meaningless by failing to understand the role that Stalin's State Capitalist* enterprise from 1928 onwards was meant to play. It's quite possible that Stalin himself forgot this purpose. Either way, his successors were so afraid to think for themselves or deviate in any meaningful way from Radnoy Stalin's economic practices, that the trend towards Socialism in One Country, in the only possible way it could have been created, was destroyed, and under Brezhnev it became the caricature of "socialism" that so many Third World nations more obviously were. Khrushchev, for all his faults, was their last chance.

Now, it's quite possible to argue, I suppose, that the plan was doomed to fail from the start, and was not the fault of Stalin's successors, but of Stalin himself for undertaking the venture in the first place. Perhaps the only path for them was one which yielded those unthinking bureaucratic successors, and it was never actually possible to progress beyond the OMG STEEL AND HEAVY INDUSTRY stage. Perhaps Stakhanovism is inherent to the Five Year Plan For Economic Development mindset. I'm not educated enough to say. All I can do is observe that, if the USSR was trying to mirror the economic development of the capitalist period, without the worst that capitalism has to offer the working class, then it failed to reproduce the surplus of consumer goods which is supposed to characterize not only more mature capitalism, but also the beginnings of socialism. And without that, they had no chance of overtaking the West.

*By "state capitalism" I mean a very specific thing. I refer to the Trotskyist concept of Permanent Revolution, by which a socialist revolution in an infant-capitalist society might seize control and use the state to guide society through a mirror of capitalist economic development under its own hand, in an attempt to reproduce the necessary prerequisites for socialism. State Capitalism, to me, refers to this process. Thus, I agree that the USSR was State Capitalist, but I contend the point with TF that this constitutes the exact same thing as "Real Capitalist."

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

There probably wouldn't be unless it was seen to be beneficial. The research board could still exist at its current size, with people taking turns being a part of it.

I see. So there will still be people in higher management roles, but with rotating terms. I think that answers all my questions then.

Why's that?

It's necessary in some situations, such as in the answer you gave me above. Arbitrating a potential dispute between hundreds or thousands of individuals will be quite challenging without a structured means of addressing such conflicts.

 

[Chimera Kitty]

Last Effect Resolves First.

So in other words, the exact same thing as the previous LIFO (Last In, First Out) system.

Or do you mean the elimination of Interrupts as a spell type?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

So in other words, the exact same thing as the previous LIFO (Last In, First Out) system.

Or do you mean the elimination of Interrupts as a spell type?

Interrupts were only necessary because of the batch system. LERF (or LIFO, whatever you want to call it) was a rule change when 6th Edition was released, along with the creation of The Stack. So when batches left, so did Interrupts (and Mana Sources, IIRC).

 

[Chimera Kitty]

I'm sorry, but if I cast a Burnout, you should NOT be able to use your Merfolk Looter to draw a Hydroblast. That's just nonsense.