What's your kind of revolution?

[sihhi]

You can't sum up any society in a few short sentences. Of course there were lots of different effects of communism, many good, some not so good and some outright bad. It's a good economic model for some industries and not such a good one for others. If you allow competing models to exist the better ones will flourish.

I'm basically chucking free market capitalism back in its own face here. Competing workplace models have had the most restrictive market of all. Let's see what happens when they're encouraged to compete.

The right-wing wins, when encouraged to compete.

 

[stethoscope]

You mention elsewhare a claim that there will be no waste .. I can't see that.
Capitalism goes a long way to reduce waste because waste is lost profits or businesses that are non competitive and therefore fail.

Capitalism is extremely wasteful.

 

[ViolentPanda]

But sustainability has to be pull, not push. People won't listen if you start telliing them that it's all their fault. They'll give up their cars when the local shop sells decent food at a low price and the bus passes at least every half hour even in rural areas, and when the buses can take them everywhere they go for less than the cost of running a car.

You'll need to de-programme some of those car-users first. Many of them will have grown up believing the American notion that use of a personal vehicle is some kind of unspoken "human right" as well as an extension of their identity.

 

[ymu]

Competition is waste. It might be a bloody good way to push the boundaries of innovation ever further, but it also creates cheats, trips, and attracts more investment in me-toos with different branding than it does in genuinely innovative research. Innovation requires demand, for sure, but it also requires freedom to experiment - payment to pursue a programme of research, not individual projects that have to pay their way.

Investment in an industry which makes an existing product that is already well supplied by the market is not really investment. It's just creating a new slice of the pie at the expense of other slices.

 

[_angel_]

You'll need to de-programme some of those car-users first. Many of them will have grown up believing the American notion that use of a personal vehicle is some kind of unspoken "human right" as well as an extension of their identity.

You might need to lay on tons of free transport. It's not people believing American notions of anything really, more being expected to commute further and further away. The idea of living near where you work, doesn't work when you've got people on short contracts who could end up anywhere. Expecting someone to spend 4-6 hours a day on a succession of buses rather than drive isn't going to be popular.

 

[weltweit]

Capitalism is extremely wasteful.

How so?

In the companies I have worked in we did not build anything until we had a customer for it, to reduce worked on stock in process and finished goods stocks, we spent a vast amount of time and effort on defect and scrap reduction in production and our competitors all did the same.

 

[ymu]

You'll need to de-programme some of those car-users first. Many of them will have grown up believing the American notion that use of a personal vehicle is some kind of unspoken "human right" as well as an extension of their identity.

We'll be investing heavily in electric cars and bikes, improving the performance and design, and building new plant to lease out to worker-owned enterprises.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

One of the greatest factors driving the problem, in my opinion, is "choice". There's so much "choice" (by which I mean basically-similar goods and services dressed up as individual and unique "products"), and so much of self-identity tied in with the "choice" you make, that people often don't purchase or use rationally.

'Consumerism', basically. It's not quite at the level of Huxley's idea that to mend and make do would become morally wrong, but it's somewhere along that road. We have a contradictory situation at the moment whereby we are encouraged to recycle but we also buy goods that are designed with built-in obsolescence, and if we all really did make do and mend, the economy would tank.

We have an economic model that depends on people consuming to keep the factory wheels turning. The puzzle for me is how you get away from that – and specifically away from a model of endless economic growth, which both capitalism and the 20th-century version of communism basically judged themselves by – while at the same time having a system in place that is able to respond to people's needs and desires in a dynamic way.

 

[stethoscope]

How so?

Food removed from shelves and disposed of before it's past its edible state.

Constant push to throw away and replace with something that's only marginally better than what you already had.

Old stock and equipment wrote off.

 

[ViolentPanda]

But that inevitably requires rationing, and loss of freedom, and state direction of people's lives and a degenerated bureaucratic capitalist state, albeit a highly benevolent one.

I'm not convinced that rationing would be inevitable in (thanks for the label, DD!) Ymutopia, nor that it would require a bureau-state to facilitate. I suspect we'd have a narrowing of availability of types of food seasonally, but I'm also sanguine that good old-fashioned horse-trading with other nation-states would obviate the need for rationing.

Personally, I think the biggest problem would be vegetarians and vegans - soya doesn't grow too well here.

 

[Proper Tidy]

On the subject of whether we need to maintain capitalism in some form or other to prevent the rise of a nightmarish bureaucracy springing up whilst everybody helps themselves to iPods and yaughts - well, no. In the Stalinist bureaucracies, there was either little or no workers' democratic control. Matters were decided by a centralised bureaucracy, in effect operating as a newly-minted ruling class, on the cast-iron assumption that they, the bureaucracy, were not only representatives of the working class but more representative of the working class than the working class themselves.

With a workers' democracy, with decisions taken over who can have what from the (overabundance of) available commodities/products (necessities being a given), and decisions taken over what commodities/products are produced based upon a plan of production driven by social need not market demands or pursuit of profit, at a ground-level and as local and community-based level as is possible - that is to say, without the creation of an unwieldy, unaccountable and unrepresentative bureaucracy - then there is no reason to assume any inevitability of any alternative to capitalism (as opposed to an amendment to capitalism) descending into a Stalinist nightmare.

And ymu, you often talk a lot of sense, and you definitely are academic enough for Marx, but don't you think attempting to write a manifesto/thesis on how to create an egalitarian/more-egalitarian-than-now-but-still-with-a-class-system-due-to-a-wealth-gap society whilst ignoring a hugely significant body of work created not just by great minds but by working class struggles, revolutions, and class experience, a tad conceited?

 

[DotCommunist]

Personally, I think the biggest problem would be vegetarians and vegans

re-education.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Writing a manifesto is always a conceited act, PT. Nobody knows everything, so any manifesto will be written in ignorance of some of the ideas out there. No shame in that – the alternative is to be paralysed into inaction by the fear that you might get it wrong.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Capitalism is extremely wasteful.

The false g-d of "choice".

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The false g-d of "choice".

It is a false god. But how far away do we want to move from it? ymu's proposal, it seems to me, doesn't move too far away from it as the same dynamic that makes particular kinds of production profitable now will also be in place then. How do you get away from pointless duplication without the hand of the central power bearing down and forcing you?

 

[Edie]

Fuck yer, I think it's brave to think about things, chuck some ideas about and have the balls to discuss them. Your always going to have a hundred people (specially here) ready to rip it down and tell you why it won't work whilst feeling smug (Random).

 

[discokermit]

re-education.

with a bacon sandwich.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You might need to lay on tons of free transport. It's not people believing American notions of anything really, more being expected to commute further and further away. The idea of living near where you work, doesn't work when you've got people on short contracts who could end up anywhere. Expecting someone to spend 4-6 hours a day on a succession of buses rather than drive isn't going to be popular.

If that were the case we would have about a million fewer cars on the road than we do, to be fair.
As for the public transport, I always look at pre-privatisation London Transport as an exemplar of good practice. Buses scheduled at regular intervals whether it was rush hour or not, services that included the back of beyond and affordable fares. As soon as privatisation occurred, fares rose, services became irregular, and the coverage contracted significantly (there being no profit in providing services that did not fill the bus).

 

[Proper Tidy]

How so?

If I have a load of grain, and a load of people half way across the world really need grain to live, and I agree to sell them the grain - I agree a price taking into account my a) transportation costs, b) productions costs and c) required profit - then they get their grain, I get my money, everybody is happy.

But say I pack all this grain up on a boat, it gets half way across the ocean to its destination, then I get a phone call saying, for whatever reason, 'we can't pay for your grain' then I'm in the shit. I have a load of grain but no buyer. They have a need for grain, but no money. What do I do?

Well, I could try and find an alternative buyer, which would solve my problems, if not those of the people who needed the grain to live in the first place. Except my grain is half-way across an ocean so unless I can find a buyer near to where the boat was headed then further increases in transportation costs, given my grain has a value dictated by markets, would likely mean I would lose money. I don't want to lose money.

So I get my abacus out and add it all up. I could try and find a buyer elsewhere within the global village, except the price I would get + the cost of getting it there + the costs I have already accrued mean this would lose me a lot of money.

The other option is that I could cut my losses and forget any prospect of making money from my grain. My abacus tells me that I would lose less money this way than if I sought an alternative buyer. But how do I gut my losses?

I could send the boat on to its destination and give the starving people - who were going to buy my grain - the grain for free. Except that would mean paying for the boat to continue its journey, heavy with grain, until it reached its destination, then paying for the boat to come back again.

Or I could order the cargo hold to be opened and all that life-saving grain can fall to the sea-bed instead. That way I only have to pay for the boat to come back, light and empty, across half an ocean. I've lost money, but less than I would have lost had I taken either of the first two options. I've taken the sensible business decision. That there are people in desperate need of grain doesn't really enter my thinking. This is a business, not a charity.

It was the rational decision under capitalism.

And this parable is why capitalism is wasteful.

 

[ViolentPanda]

'Consumerism', basically. It's not quite at the level of Huxley's idea that to mend and make do would become morally wrong, but it's somewhere along that road. We have a contradictory situation at the moment whereby we are encouraged to recycle but we also buy goods that are designed with built-in obsolescence, and if we all really did make do and mend, the economy would tank.

We have an economic model that depends on people consuming to keep the factory wheels turning. The puzzle for me is how you get away from that – and specifically away from a model of endless economic growth, which both capitalism and the 20th-century version of communism basically judged themselves by – while at the same time having a system in place that is able to respond to people's needs and desires in a dynamic way.

You get away with it through indoctrinating people to relate consumption choice with the exercise of freedom, and then by convincing a certain "critical mass" of people that the "new and improved" good or service is something that will positively affect their lives.

As long as that works, and keeps the money flowing fast enough, it will stay in place. Until a "critical mass" of people become convinced otherwise, anyway.

 

[ViolentPanda]

re-education.

Abattoir camp.

 

[_angel_]

If that were the case we would have about a million fewer cars on the road than we do, to be fair.
As for the public transport, I always look at pre-privatisation London Transport as an exemplar of good practice. Buses scheduled at regular intervals whether it was rush hour or not, services that included the back of beyond and affordable fares. As soon as privatisation occurred, fares rose, services became irregular, and the coverage contracted significantly (there being no profit in providing services that did not fill the bus).

London is just about the only place where it actually pays to not have a car, even as it stands. If only the rest of UK cities and towns could have a system like that!

 

[Proper Tidy]

And in answer to an earlier point, from Edie I think, yes there would be a lot of meetings and committees, but as long as there is alcohol and a fag break half-way through and nobody bangs on too long then it isn't so bad.

I quite like meetings. Some of them, anyway.

 

[DotCommunist]

Laurie Penny for Editor of the new regimes pravda

 

[ymu]

I'm not convinced that rationing would be inevitable in (thanks for the label, DD!) Ymutopia, nor that it would require a bureau-state to facilitate. I suspect we'd have a narrowing of availability of types of food seasonally, but I'm also sanguine that good old-fashioned horse-trading with other nation-states would obviate the need for rationing.

Personally, I think the biggest problem would be vegetarians and vegans - soya doesn't grow too well here.

I don't mean rationing as in 'imposed scarcity'.

I mean as in, who decides whether my kid gets a bike or a playstation for her birthday? Can she just help herself to both? Does every kid get the same for their tenth birthday? What?

Abolish money and you just end up with LETS or ration books taking its place and the same old shenanigans arising. Ban the shenanigans and not the bits of paper, and it's a wholly different kind of object.

 

[Proper Tidy]

I mean as in, who decides whether my kid gets a bike or a playstation for her birthday? Can she just help herself to both? Does every kid get the same for their tenth birthday? What?

How do you decide these things now?

 

[ViolentPanda]

It is a false god. But how far away do we want to move from it? ymu's proposal, it seems to me, doesn't move too far away from it as the same dynamic that makes particular kinds of production profitable now will also be in place then. How do you get away from pointless duplication without the hand of the central power bearing down and forcing you?

I don't know. It seems to me that if you retain a form of market competition, then the issue will always be with you, and the possibility of consumer capitalism re-animating will always be lurking.

 

[weltweit]

Food removed from shelves and disposed of before it's past its edible state.

The food industry has specific issues, a potato farmer plants his/her crop about a year before and in anticipation of the idea that a supermarket will buy the resulting potatoes and a consumer will then shortly after that buy them from the supermarket. The supply lines are therefore very long. Plus a lot of the products that a supermarket sells are pershable and have a short shelf life. It is actually quite amazing to me that they manage to present such a rich array of vegetables and fruits in ripe or near ripe condition.

No supermarket wants to throw food but this is already built into the price you pay. If you wanted to avoid the throw away of out of date food you would have to ensure that the supermarket only stocked what it absolutely knew it could sell, not what it thought it could sell. This would result in a reduced choice and reduced quantities and occassional stock outs.

I was recently in my local supermarket where they had been doing some reorganisation, no milk, no bread and no eggs, all three had sold out. So no scrap or throw aways there, but that was not a lot of use for my omlette!

Constant push to throw away and replace with something that's only marginally better than what you already had.

Well that is a situation we find ourselves in. Especially where markets are saturated, mobile phones for example, virtually everyone in Britain who could have a mobile phone already has one. Companies can now only persuade you to buy something else from them if there seems to be a motivating reason to upgrade.

I have had the same mobile phone for about 8 years. You don't have to upgrade! my phone still works as a phone quite as well as it did when I first bought it. I also drive a 17 year old car, which also does just as good a job as it ever did.

Old stock and equipment wrote off.

I think in Britain we are a bit behind the curve where production techniques like JIT are concerned. In many markets it is possible to only make a product when you have a customer for it. And that works all the way back into the supply chain. Result no scrap minimised stock and reduced costs for everyone.

 

[ViolentPanda]

London is just about the only place where it actually pays to not have a car, even as it stands. If only the rest of UK cities and towns could have a system like that!

That's my point. They should all have a nationally-owned transport system that satisfies transport needs, and is integrated enough that it's as easy for you to get public transport from your front door to (for example) Cardiff (with a few changes), as it is for you to get public transport from your front door to your local town centre.

 

[DotCommunist]

mm, raises a question I have on parecon tbh, and that question is 'what about black marketeering'. Now we can lie to ourselves and say that CTR the need/wants will be served so well as to eliminate the conditions where a black market will thrive but short of summary execution for spivs with their silk tights and western cigarettes what are you going to do to stop those with low use but high exchange value items accrued before the revolution feeding a black market in goods- unless your goods are as desirable (but sold cost) what is to stop the black marketeer?