Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 01:08:15 +0000
Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: PLANNING PLEASE!


Justin writes:>

> > Dave proposes labor values as an alternative basis for making such
> decisions.

No. In the interests of trying to argue for planned socialism, I 
support the use of  labour-time units as calculated democratically by workers 
councils. Nothing to do with SNLT under capitalism which will have 
been smashed by the socialist revolution along with class relations 
which sustain capitalist exploitation and capitalist alienation.  

 Marx did not do this. His labor time scheme depended on treating labor
> time as the only cost and treating all labor as equivalent, as if it were
> SNALT, which it isn't. But as Marx spent a lot of time showing in Capital,
> all labor isn't equivalent. An hour of brain surgery is incommensurable
> with an hour od steel puddling or writing about political economy. In
> Capital, Marx makes the false assumption that in a market economy one can
> treat skilled labor as a product of unskilled labor times something, but
> even if that were not false you'd have to be able to calculate how many
> hours of steel puddling an hour of brain surgery was worth, and neither
> Marx nor Dave has any idea how to do that. 
>
Not  true. We are not treating skilled labour under capitalism. I suggested in 
my last post that that Average Labour-time units could be adapted to 
account for differences in skills. What is the problem?  
Steel puddling and brain surgery would be evaluated 
not by the market, but by calculations based on the `quality' of 
labour-time  workers attached to these activities. It might be as suggested 
by Mandel and  Cockshott and Cottrell that these decisions reflect different 
priorities depending on the level of development of the forces of 
production.  But these are matters for socialist administration, not 
for unscientific speculation based on our experience of  an outmoded 
society, capitalism where...

> Moreover, labor time is not the only cost. Even if one supposes that in
> capitalism, labor is not only the source of all value but that SNALT is
> its best measure, there is no reason to suppose that the only think we
> have to take into account in making economic decisions is how much labor
> time goes into one activity rather than another. We have to consider the
> costs of the use of certain materials and methods in terms of what other
> things we won't be able to do if we adopt a proposed production plan. 

Again this is the familiar Mises-Hayek objection dealt with in my 
last post. These costs are either labour-time embodied, which we 
agree is not the issue here, or  they labour-free "natures gifts". 
But these naturally occuring raw materials 
cannot be `valued' except by taking into account their ability to 
`economise' labour-time, weighed up against the social ill  effects of the 
use/misuse of these resources. Is it beyond the intelligence of 
workers who have outwitted the capitalist class and all the shit 
thrown at them to make a revolution to solve this one?
 
> And finally, even if in theory all costs could ultimately be reduced to or
> expressible in labor time units (not labor value units for the reason
> explained), for this to be a practicable basis for making economic
> decisions we would have be be able to do the calculations, translate the
> labor time context into the costs of using x units of rubber produced by y
> method, etc. This would be highly unwieldly and in fact no one has
> discussed how to do it.

Why would this be more unweildy that the market today, which as Doug 
points out, in its anarchic fashion sets up false `prices' of non-values, all of 
which means that it cannot  even meet the basic needs of the bulk of 
humanity?  As Jason says, realistically we are talking about 
socialist enterprises that are huge, not masses of small cooperatives 
as in your model. The development of the forces of production, and 
the socialisation of production require a highly complex division of 
labour and central plan under socialism to enable these advances to 
reduce necessary labour-time.  

Justin says  we have not discussed how to solve the problem of `socialist
 calculation'.  What else is the discussion of democratic planning but that?  
The acceptance of democratic planning means that priorities can be agreed, 
and the means to meet them calculated on the basis of labour-time units and 
implemented and then checked and recalculated etc etc.

This is not some old model that has been tried and failed.  
No democratic socialist  planning has been attempted, not because it is 
incapable of solving the `calculation problem'  but because it was 
subverted, distorted and ultimately dragged down into the market, by 
the continued domination of the capitalist market worldwide.  To fail 
to recognise this fact is to be blind to the power of the law of 
value to undermine socialist planning. 
Equally to attempt to provide a blueprint for socialist planning of the future 
other than to spell out the basic social relations  and economic 
categories that we expect to find,  is unMarxist in the most 
fundamental sense, because we cannot plan a society that does not yet exist.  

Dave. 


     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---