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 railed against the utopian socialists for their advocacy for money abolition, or replacement with labor-vouchers, as a gateway to socialism. The most direct and concise place is in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). So Marxists who advocate for exactly that, at first glance, seem to have gone astray. But I'm still leaving open the possibility that they understand this already.
- Marx specifically identifies the abolition of private property as the necessary basis for socialism.
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.- In general, the focus on distribution as independent of production is something Marx criticized already in the Critique of the Gotha Program (1875). So a solution that focuses exclusively on distribution seems both theoretically flawed and doomed to failure.
"Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in general a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal stress on it.
Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?"
- Curiously enough, Marx does advocate for something akin to a "moneyless and labor voucher" distribution in Critique of the Gotha Program. Did he ever deal with this again later?
What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
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):
Although those points are fundamental to solve in reality, our aim here is simply to provide an intuitive vision of how “supply” and “demand” in general could be handled without the value form and other surrogates like vouchers of working time.
and:
A vision of abolishing capitalist mediations, alongside capitalist social forms, has to move beyond the first steps of the socialist society posed in the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
- When reading, I automatically assumed that this all requires the abolition of private property, but now I'm not quite sure, or at least it isn't as clear as it could be:
It is worth noting that Ostrom received the Nobel prize in Economics for her work, which is a concrete answer to the speculative, while highly influential, The tragedy of the commons by Hardin (1968), where only two forms of governing the usage of common goods exist: either centralized State interventions through planned use or market-based, with a private property regime. Despite certain naivety of this “either-or” argument, it seems that the majority of the debates is still posed as a struggle between (authoritarian or supportive) centralized State versus (free or regulated) distributed markets. Following a Marxist standpoint, in particular, the Value-form Theory presented in Heinrich (2012), whose focus is on the social forms, this article displaces this type of question by arguing that this debate assumes the capitalist forms of relations as fixed points. At this level of abstraction, the value-form serves as the logical articulation of the specifically capitalist social forms, such as commodity, money, labor, capital, State, and Law.
...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
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.
I have only a little bit read the paper though, just posting my initial thoughts. Maybe I'm way off base
