In this article author argues with Forest and Factory: The Science and the Fiction of Communism, mainly about labor time accounting. I think i find the argument convincing tbh (about the need to continue doing labor accounting)
In this article author argues with Forest and Factory: The Science and the Fiction of Communism, mainly about labor time accounting. I think i find the argument convincing tbh (about the need to continue doing labor accounting)
The majority of them would likely not be on our side to begin with. Proletarianization is worse than death to many. Socialism would have to see a massive transformation and relocation of labor (which would also reduce working hours tho).
I don't think that labor vouchers need to result in a completely flat payscale though. 1 hr does not need to equal 1 labor voucher. It likely shouldn't. If you have someone working a dangerous job that is hard to find people for, they would need to be remunerated higher than others. Or a job which requires a significant amount of time to qualify for, like a doctor (though, a public doctor, not an LA plastic surgeon with ten houses lol).
It seems like this essay does assume a flat pay scale where 1hr = 1lv. Their tax plan, which is nested within a statement about how this is a good starting point, has similar issues with this assumption. But also, why institute a tax? Taxation generally happens after production, but the ecological problem will result in many things not being produced. This is a cart in front of a horse situation to me. Maybe I'm reading that uncharitably though, but having to place relatively arbitrary flat taxes on specific goods is odd, because if you have a useful accounting and projection system the tax is unnecessary imo. I guess this can be conceptualized as a "tax", but it isn't really that. It's just an additional cost we have to consider before production. (if we do deal with actual taxes though, it should primarily by appropriation at source of goods which are reserved for common use. Whether that is providing for people out of the workforce or for events, etc..)
This may also just be a problem with the naming of "labor vouchers" because it invites this confusion. We can call them tokens, or even communism bux, it does not matter, but it has to be a useful unit of account.
The more I think about vouchers though, the less I like them. I think it's the best solution for a transitory system where distribution happens according to desire but is also limited. So not a completely full "take from the common fund at will". But also not a great solution with a variety of misconceptions and problems. We will always need to account for resources and labor, but I'm not sure if that always needs to be made into a public facing payment system.
Decommercialization and decommodification are important steps to go beyond this. We will have to do a little communizing.
The job that’s hard to fund should get kropotkin’ed (make everyone participate in it if it’s so shit, sooner or later someone will figure out a better way).
With education, it depends you either pay people during study, or they receive like 25 percent more cause they spent 25 % of working life studying.
Taxes are roughly same as your mention of “labor necessary to clean up”, which is most understandable metric. Sure you spend 0.1 hour getting barrel of oil out, now you have to spend one tree seedling planting and blocked land for 40 years.
Yeah, I dunno, I still like labor hour bux tbh. It’s makes perfect sense as translation layer from porkie economy (if I remember right, coop communes find out the same thing in their gatherings) to commie economy. (You can even feasible do it lib way via laws)
Yeah, like a public works program. Some jobs which require quite a bit of specialization would need to be more limited, but I would gladly welcome a public Works obligation particularly if it came with something like decommodified housing or something.
Prioritizing the reduction of labor is good though, and there should be significant grants/resources to people trying to solve those problems. Maybe a bit like the competitions described in the end notes article.
Yeah, they could, but that would be communism or something. Part of Cockshott and Cos latest book is just trying to remind the liberals that they used to do shit like this during WWII, and the climate is an even larger existential threat than that was.