I'm going to give a Marxist economic explanation for why Communist countries don't implement basic things like direct democracy at all levels, freedom of speech, freedom of association/assembly etc.
It's important to have a scientific understanding of why these countries are the way they are. Blanket denunciation of authoritarianism is not enlightening and won't prevent us from repeating the mistakes.
So basically, socialism is about abolishing money and commodity-production. As long as money exists, you can use money to command labour. As long as the state is the source of money, the state can simply print money and exploit people by taking their labour using the free printed money. All communist countries do/did this.
Another source of exploitation is subjective prices. As long as prices are subjectively set by the state through price controls (rather than objectively calculated using labor-time), it's very easy to set up imaginary prices that don't reflect the true amount of work put in by the workers. All communist countries do/did this.
As long as money exists, the salaries are also subjective. Unproductive bureaucrats can pay themselves well without doing any productive labor. The bureaucrats form a pseudo-class that protects its own material interests, which are now directly opposed to the working class.
As long as money exists, you will have a black market. The capitalist mode of exchange can be reintroduced very easily, by simply stealing from factories or shops and reselling. By the 1980s, the USSR had a gigantic shadow economy run by secret black market millionaires who paid off the bureaucrats.
As long as subjective prices are used, it is very difficult to accurately and efficiently plan the economy. If prices do not reflect their labor content as they do in capitalist economies, then it's not possible to decide which investment is truly cheaper. Hence, plans were based on crude quantitative planning of "this many cars" or "that many shirts", rather than financial planning that minimized total labor cost. Financial planning is only possible with objective prices.
The suppression of wages ( made possible as no objective measure of value is used) turns the Communist countries into "sweatshop economies" like those in Africa or Asia. Cheap labor provides an incentive to hoard labor for production rather than removing labor through mechanization, which is what would happen if labor is expensive. This removed a major incentive for economic growth.
Lessons learnt :
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Communist countries did not abolish exploitation. DRILL this into the head of every single ML or Tankie. They did NOT end exploitation. This is an objective fact.
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The economic base (exploitation) creates the superstructure ( police state, suppression). There is no practical reason to maintain a police state when exploitation doesn't exist.
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Ideally you must abolish money and commodity-production. Replace with labor-vouchers.
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If step 1 is not yet possible/feasible, at least still ensure that prices are objectively calculated based on labor-time, rather than subjectively set through price controls or subsidies. This can be done either by markets("market socialism"), parecon, Lange model etc.
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The authoritarianism is officially justified through the siege mentality of capitalist oppression and counterrevolution. This is a bad faith argument especially for nuclear armed USSR and NK, who will ever invade a nuclear armed state?
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Communist countries implemented gun control. This is best and clearest sign of the nature of these states. If there was no exploitation and no classes, why was the state afraid of arming the people?
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However, it is still a real fact that capturing and retaining power is not an easy task, and that hierarchical organizations have been more successful at this. Anarchists have not yet proven by practice that they are capable of capturing and holding power.
Authoritarianism being reflection of material relations and exchanges in economy is non-marxist take? Really? Could you give me an example of country, where looking at the economies won’t give me a pretty good idea of its authoritarian/oligarchic/democratic state? maybe I’ll have to reevaluate. America is not authoritarian for example, it’s extremely oligarchic/ruled by petit bourgeoisie, but if we go by monopoly of violence thingy all modern states are authoritarian semi-equally.
Yes, and I think some of this exploitation is necessary, but that’s neither here nor there.
That's true.
I agree with that. My entire OP describes how the exploitative economic relations in the USSR made it necessary to have a police state. Central planning is not exploitative(in the Marxist sense) on its own.
Can you make a small sketch of non-exploitative modern, non-post-scarcity society? I think I’m suffering from failure of imagination here. Or point to a book? Because my current thinking is you’ll have to have exploitation in any case.
Paul Cockshott "Towards a New Socialism" lays out one possible society. But for a small sketch, the basic outline laid down by Marx in "Critique of the Gotha program" is also good.
Taxation is a form of exploitation that is inevitable. But all other forms can be eliminated by replacing money with non-transferable labour-vouchers. These labour-vouchers are issued based on how many hours you work, difficulty of your role, level of training required etc. This means "to each according to their contribution" and not "equal wages for all".
The prices of goods and services are calculated based on the amount of direct and indirect labour used to produce them. These price are objective, they represent the exact amount of labor embodied in them. So if you work 8 labour-hours, you can buy exactly 8 labor-hours worth of G&S. There is no profit, no price manipulation, no interest, no rent, no inflation etc. Everything is fully transparent. Apart from income tax, there is no exploitation.
An important point is that vouchers are non-transferable, so when you buy something, that voucher is destroyed. So the only way to earn is to work because vouchers don't transfer from buyers to seller. This means there is no longer any commodity-production. All goods are only produced for their use-value, not for their exchange-value.
In such a society, economic growth is represented by constantly falling prices, as we use more and more efficient and mechanized ways of producing G&S. In such a society, the very concept of private ownership is meaningless, since the very concept of profit is eliminated, it makes no sense to "own" capital anymore.
Now try and imagine how someone would try to exploit in a society like this. Taxation is one method, which is why it's very important that the rate of taxation and use of taxes is controlled through democratic means. Apart from that, the only way to exploit is through outright robbery or forgery of vouchers. If vouchers are electronic, it would be very hard to do those things.
Yeah, I thought mention of labor-vouchers implied cockshott:)
But my problem is, it implies that new road/factory/amenities construction is decided how exactly?
I agree that rent would be eliminated, inflation would be replaced by deflation, but also - labor-vouchers are just currency with additional properties (I.e. non-transferrable). At the same time they cause some strain, which I see as two fold: there is always a need for informal two people exchange, unless everything is uber-ized (which - fair enough) and sort of general extremely obvious pressure to reduce taxes (you work 8 hours, but you labor voucher simply cannot be 8 hours), which lets say in our ideal society, will exclusively go to elderly/young/disabled/research.
Well, robbery/stealing is one thing (ussr police kinda was also forced in that regard, ironically, look at the majority of the people in prisons there) which would necessitate some response to it, so that necessitates either police/militia, which in any case takes society labor hours to combat, further increasing exploitation.
Third thingy - such system doesn’t optimize for material efficiency/pollution.
That’s just my general random thoughts, I agree that would be more preferable to ussr shenanigans. *Also, maybe wrong comm to have this discussion tbh, outside of my first point.
Same way as it does now. We still calculate prices, so we can tell which investments are cheaper/better. Labor is now the unit of account. New investments(like a massage parlor or a car factory) can be pitched by people, its costs can be calculated, they can be voted upon by the community and finally integrated into the overall plan.
Can you elaborate why you think so? Regulations are still a thing. The beauty of planning is that material usage and pollution can in fact, be considerations that modify the overall plan.
informal exchange of second hand goods can be performed with labor-vouchers. Exchange of second-hand goods is not commodity-production. In fact, second-hand shops would be encouraged to reduce consumerism. so it wouldn't matter if vouchers are used as money in this case.
If you mean informal exchange of services between two people, that is also permissible as it is a simple exchange of concrete labor for abstract labor. There is a danger of subcontracting, which can be exploitation, and there is also the issue of accurate pricing. But I think allowing market interactions in this case won't really be an issue. In most developed countries, the informal sector is tiny so I don't think this is a major issue.
Yep, but this is not unique to vouchers.
Nah, small community things are obvious, they can be decided locally/close to anarchist ideal in fact. I mean by necessity big state level (by size) things (roads, train ways) would go by path of economic (labor reducing) efficiency, which may leave some remote locations a little bit forgotten. Like constructing a road to 40 people village which is worth 10^6 labor hours is wildly inefficient on the surface, and democratically not an obvious decision. Also, bigger things in r&d (space, silicon manufacturing processes, sciences) are extremely unobvious as labor investment (which currently operate like state-level venture investing).
They can be a constant multiplier for material usage in the input-output matrix equations sure, but you still have to decide on it. Dirty operating economy is the cheapest one by labor hours. so the higher value of this constant may even imply de-growth like results. If it’s decided democratically, I feel there is a danger here, but that’s my pessimism and speculation.
As soon as you’ve made this exchange possible though - black market is created, which is sort of fine when labor cost is reflected in commodity value, but you can then start making fraudulent transactions to accumulate labor vouchers. You can then produce local shortages, for example, of food and sell it for more vouchers, which seems like not far removed from exchange value relations of capitalism. But that’s my gripes with labor-voucher system tbh, outside of efficient/inefficient worker issue.
Obviously planning isn't something that's always done one-dimensionally like "reduce labor cost no matter what". We don't even do that in our neoliberal hellworld. Having an objective measure of cost enables us to make cost-benefit decisions, but the ultimate decision won't always be lowest cost.
I'm not sure why you think R&D is a problem. We would be spending far more on scientific and technological advancement in a socialist country than in a capitalist country. People understand the importance of science and tech, they're not going to vote to reduce expenditure on those things.
I agree you're being too pessimistic about environmentalism being decided democratically. If people already support environmentalism inspite of the profit motive and media manipulation in capitalist countries, it would be a no-brainer in socialist countries.
I'm not sure how a black market is created. When you buy something, the voucher is destroyed. So if you hoard food and sell it, you gain nothing, the vouchers you gain is destroyed. In an electronic cashless society, this is automatic. If the vouchers are paper, no transaction is considered complete until the other side sees the voucher shredded. Every citizen has an incentive to follow this. Even if you hoard items, once you actually try to sell them, the buyer will want to see that voucher destroyed. He has no incentive to let you simply keep it or it would mean he would bear the cost of you double-dipping.
Yeah, but who makes the decision? If it’s government body - it implies existence of state, if it’s directly democratic - it may leave small minorities by wayside, and completely disconnected from human nature, people wouldn’t vote directly every day on small stuff, and will get annoyed.
They really don’t, but maybe in ideal society where needs are met they will, shrug.
They don’t support it though when material benefits are there, if you ask like whole ass country depending on gas/oil, they’ll happily vote for continuation (look at usa/russia/norway).
But if you can transfer vouchers between two people without destruction (as it by necessity is needed, as if it’s not vouchers, it would be seashells with the wrong clockwise direction or whatever as a currency). You sell food as one on one exchange, also for second currency, if vouchers are destroyed between two people, and hoard them.
But yeah, maybe that scheme is fixable if shortages can be solved extremely quickly logistically, so the potential benefit is very fleeting.
How do you think decisions are made in our present society? It involves a complex process of discussions and negotiations with multiple stakeholders. The exact mechanics of planning is not something I want to go into in detail, but I really don't understand what's the issue here that is specific to planning. A state would definitely still exist in a socialist society, and direct democracy is not incompatible with a state.
"Americans broadly favor government funding for medical and science research" - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/03/americans-broadly-favor-government-funding-for-medical-and-science-research/
Yes, because we still live under capitalism, where people make money from the oil industry. Even then, there are more Norwegians who think the oil industry should be dismantled than those who don't. There is overwhelming evidence that people support environmentalist policies today, despite the massive incentive against it due to capitalism and media manipulation. I'm having a hard time believing that with the elimination of the profit motive and consent manufacturing, people will somehow become more opposed to environmentalism.
If environmental decisions are made through direct democracy, the people working in oil and coal may vote in favor of such industries, but there are vastly more workers in other industries who suffer from its externalities and who who would vote against it.
Black markets can exist if people steal products. That's more of a problem with law and order, rather than voucher system itself. Even in a post-scarcity moneyless communist society, people can steal and hoard goods, and demand something in exchange for it.
The use of objective pricing has benefits. You can clearly tell if someone is unfairly benefiting from exchange if they try to sell something higher than its true-price. Such activity can be reported as it is both illegal and a useful indicator of shortage. If someone is selling for a lower price than true-price then either (a) they stole the product which is an issue of law and order (b) they are reselling something they already bought through official channels, which is something that is perfectly acceptable and does not reintroduce capitalist exchange relations.