An interesting paper on planning dealing with the Iterative Economic Planning and Optimized Selections system (I-EPOS), which I am not familiar with.
While this is clearly from the "communizing" perspective, it is worth the read. It seems to be partially set up against the TASS (Towards A New Socialism/labor voucher) perspective, but does not throw it out in dealing with optimization of raw materials/labor/energy/demand on a large scale.
There do seem to be issues here which are glossed over a bit when trying to think about this at scale and considering commodities with especially long or complicated or difficult or dangerous production chains. And of course the typical "communizer" issue of the, Imo, mypoic obsession with the "value-form" and seemingly ignoring the far larger political issue before such a techno-political solution is relevant in any way shape or form (though the latter is something shared among many/most of the writers dealing with economic planning today).
This paper could be interesting for the capital book club who just finished chapter 1, as in a sense, this is a contemporary elaboration of the quite vague description/alternative Marx offers in a short passage dealing with a future non-capitalist social relation.
Sidenote: Is anyone here familiar with I-EPOS? Here is a paper from the footnotes: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3277668 with a use-case/example. The math here goes over my head, so if any math/software engineering comrades can provide a perspective that would be cool.
I'm just getting started reading through this, only skimming right now since I have to sleep soon. It's intriguing so thanks for posting.
My initial take of their introduction is skepticism, partly because I'm biased against value-form theory. But there are a couple key things that seem to directly contradict conclusions of Marx while they claim to have reconstructed Marx's theory from its foundations.
Marx specifically identifies the proletariat as the revolutionary class. Ctrl+F "proletariat" where they bring up Althusser, maybe I'm misreading it, but it seems like they are agreeing with the conclusion that the proletariat does not actually produce value, which IMO is completely wrong.I think I misread this part.The authors of this paper don't seem to be proponents of labor vouchers (like Cockshott, Cottrell, and now Dapprich--in their latest book "Economic Planning in An Age of Climate Crisis):
and:
...but not property? Or is that assumed under capital, state and law?
They don't seem to be completely focusing entirely on distribution. The most interesting parts of this paper are later on when they are dealing with I-EPOS, and then later with Energy. The article focuses in as it goes, even if it starts and then ends in vague communization lolidk anymore, I-EPOS seems to be designed around consumption/distribution, and their own section on energy seems to be primarily about consumption and hand waves production a little too much. I still find Cockshott, et. al. to have the most convincing way of dealing with production/resource/energy/labor/etc..idk, I'm going to read it again one day. But I want to look into I-EPOS which seems pretty interesting.
I'm getting a bit sleepy to form a coherent response, but my interpretation of the Gotha Program is that the labor vouchers presuppose a post-capitalist society which has already abolished private property. The labor vouchers would not serve as money but as a token to receive one's means of subsistence from the social fund; so not for use in private exchange.
I don't have much to add at this point so I'll have to read more tomorrow
That's my read too, vouchers don't really circulate in the formulations of it I've read. The article seems to say that it is still a surrogate even within post-capitalist society. They seem to favor a more volunteerist approach that most communization people seem to do.
I have only a little bit read the paper though, just posting my initial thoughts. Maybe I'm way off base