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.

  • quarrk [he/him]
    hexbear
    3
    6 months ago

    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

    • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]
      hexagon
      hexbear
      2
      6 months ago

      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.

      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.