:maduro-salute: to a fellow Cockshott poster. I was going to recommend him but you have a great summary here.

Thanks for the recommendation! All these sound interesting but number 3 in particular sounds confusing and scary? Was this system ever tried before? It sounds impossible to implement without paperless money, which is meh to me as someone living in a barely industrialised third world country.

Say my co-op sells dresses to other workers, how exactly does this exchange go? I receive their labour-tokens then destroy it? But I also receive labour tokens for making the dress from the state? Am I understanding it right?

I'll be watching the videos as soon as have WiFi. Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

That still wouldn't solve the problems of managers refusing to create innovations that would make them obsolete

I wholeheartedly agree with a bottom-up approach. If someone has a good idea, it will spread and then somebody who is elected up through elected positions will arrive at a counsel of decision makers and they'll say, "our firm found a good idea." They can do the same thing when somebody is pulling bullshit.

Examples like:

"You increased our quota without giving us more employees"

"Our quota is higher than what we need by a lot"

"This pollution is fucking shit up, we need an alternative"

Or any kind of whistle blowing

In my worldview, there are plenty of people who are naturally curious or lazy who will try to take the shortest route to hit every point necessary. If you empower enough lowly people to explore instead of putting their nose down to be a cog in a machine they'll never see the profit from, you'll find that they'll come up with good ideas - especially if they don't burn the fuck out after a year and a half. Not only that, you can also have education and academic research more robust. Scholars can be put to tasks other than seeking grants by promising short term profit. You can have a bunch of scholars, scientists, and engineers with bright eyes and a dream of improving industry. If you go to a college campus and ask a bunch of people how to change the world, you'll have a bunch of different answers. Currently, none of those ideas fucking matter because the students are all there to become baristas and 1 or 2 of them work for a weapons contractor.

I'm also not opposed to innovators and hard workers getting rich. Perhaps really fucking rich. Just not the kind of rich where you hire a wealth manager to buy up a bunch of houses, precious metals, businesses, majority stocks, etc. You can't seize un-elected control of the means of production, hoard personal property, or get in the way of shared prosperity. But if you honest to god find a way to make enough to travel the world as a vagabond with a blog never touching labor again in your life before late stage communism, then more power to you, I guess. You'd miss out on jobs that focus on personal development, social integration into communities, engagement with purposeful labor, and a direct link to the core vision of shared prosperity. Jobs would also have shorter hours, higher purchasing power, more vacation time, and a slew of quality of life benefits.

Edit: I also realize that this was about books and a request for literature instead of conjecture. As I rebuttal: my posts own and I'm keeping it here. 😎

This is my favourite method by far. It sounds more intuitive / in line with what regular workers want

I know but we're not jumping straight into the communism stage. If the fall of feudalism is any indication, it could take the better part of a century to 2 centuries for it to take hold for real. And if the next big socialist project doesn't learn from the Soviets, well pretty good chance it's screwed. Maybe it won't survive the century of development leading there at all.

I like the pension plan thought I'm not sure if I'd be happy with it if I made myself obsolete, but still really loved the job. Maybe coupled with decreased work hours or promotions it could work.

It always frustrated me when new tech got people fired instead of reduced their work load. And I'd hate if even under socialism it continues.

Damn, never thought of this!

I do get the sense parenti simplifies some concepts sometimes but I find that perfectly acceptable to keep his literature accessible. He's among the first Marxists I listened to and his accessibility was big part of that.

You're the second person to suggest labour vouchers, gtg read more on it although my impression so far is it's way too unfeasible in foreseeable history. Thanks.

A mix between central planning and market socialism.

"Market socialism" is a meaningless term. Socialism is not just about workers privately owning their individual workplaces. It's about abolishing all private property relations as well as abolishing money and commodity production. So "market socialism" is really just capitalism with private worker ownership of capital. This may be useful as a transition step towards socialism, but it will suffer from most of capitalism's problems. The biggest achievement of "market socialism" however would be the destruction of the economic power of the capitalists. That's no small feat, and in that sense, "market socialism" is as difficult a political goal as socialism.

Capitalism is not just "private property", capitalism is more accurately defined as generalized commodity production. It's about producing goods to be sold, with the incentive being profit. If the profit motive remains even if goods are produced by co-ops, you will see the resurgence of capitalist relations, a rise of black market, increasing inequality etc. This what happened in Yugoslavia and indeed even in the entire USSR as they implemented more and more market-reforms from the 70s onwards.

By eliminating commodity production altogether, you can organize the economy based on conscious planning, instead of relying on the anarchy of the market. I suggest seeing this video that describes the limits of market socialism - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyxnG2ck-sw

I got PTSD flashes when you said mixed economy from arguing with liberals

Ok, that post got more and more confusing,

let’s imagine a modern planned economy then. Input output tables live in the machine, which sole goal is to a) satisfy maximum amount of needs, probably with some vouchers (I.e. you can wish for 5000 labor hours a year worth of products, outside of food, medicine and housing) b) reduce socially necessary labor hours. c) optimize for material efficiency I.e. minimum ecological impact.

Let’s say then, that designs for products can be freely submitted in the special vault, where a) people can wish for them b) if the product already was made, the labor hours estimation is stored. Also let’s assume that used design is compensated for labor hours spent on its creation, to promote evolution.

Now let’s say people select a new phone design: it’s raw material cost and processing steps required are roughly known, so it can go to production. Considering we are optimizing for ecological impact, most optimal resource would be used electronics as a source raw materials, which are then processed and remade into a new phone.

We have left with two thorny issues: why factory would optimize its own production and how managers would fit into it. Here we can look at the internal structure, and say that for example labor hours required from that factory a) weakly influence received labor hours wishlist rate for workers b) the work cannot exceed 8 hours a day. If the inefficiencies exist, their removal would lead to to higher compensation for workers and managers, if they don’t - new factory would be made with additional work force (or old one expanded).