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| (notes for this file:) this document is part of "Anti-Joseph and the S.O.M.E. Hypothesis" | ||||
But will the trains run on time ?
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Contents: TIP: Clicking on any of the paragraph numbers
--------- along the left margin
will take you back and forth
between the body of the article
and the table of contents.
paragraph
number chapters sections subheads
--------------------------------------------------------------
212 I. An Interview with Comrade Science
229 II. Returning to Capitalism
235 Competition Amplifies Struggle Against Corruption
238 What is the kind of corruption that the masses
would oppose ?
240 Force "like gravity" would be resisted by actions
of the masses
245 Joseph's Islands
248 Joseph's word games
250 Production units bound together by unitary needs
of the masses
256 III. Leninism and single-point control theory
264 Insight into Corruption
268 Joseph's Alternative: Elections without Politics
282 "The Vote" is only a single tool in a toolbox
285 Joseph opposes discussion
288 IV. Taking Communist Theory to an Expanded
Audience
294 Footnotes:
302 Appendix A: A reply to Joseph on
more specific issues:
304 1. Joseph's Chemical Poisoning
307 2. Joseph's Trade Secrets
309 3. Joseph's Re-education
314 4. Censorship of the Mass Media
335 The truth will out
337 Information wants to be free
340 Information warfare
346 Joseph's charge of censorship
348 Censorship by boycott
351 Censorship by labor action
356 Censorship by false appeals
358 Censorship by secondary boycott
366 Censoring the fat Elvis (the masses and
interactive design)
372 How would the cultural struggle be waged on
Joseph's planet ?
383 Censorship will be impossible
390 A scenario -- the struggle over focus and
attention
393 Joseph's brand of _1984_ censorship
398 Dr. Strangelove salutes the Ministry of Truth
425 5. Ben's program for Joseph and the sectarians
434 Joseph opposes the development of Marxism
437 Let's fight in the daylight
440 1) Let readers decide for themselves what they
want to read
442 2) Give me realistic space to speak for myself
444 3) Let the fight be broadcast live -- let's have
action in real time
446 4) Lighten up on the spam & encourage
participation in discussion
448 5) Can the spam about censorship
450 6) Joseph should get a job
452 Time for the roto-rooter
454 Footnotes for Appendix A
464 Appendix B: A reply to Fred on "The
Tragedy of the Commons"
467 Aluminum Jigs vs. Extra Hours
470 Output must exceed input
474 Capitalism cannot handle externalities
476 Concrete vs. Asphalt Driveways
480 Fred's question: Diamond Drills vs. Hardened
Steel Drills
493 The Tragedy of the Commons
496 Joseph's central planning
501 How a complex adaptive system deals with "the
Tragedy of the Commons"
503 The merger of work with its measurement
511 1) The information indices
515 Perfect is the enemy of good enough
518 Easy access to indices
521 Labor time indices
524 Environmental indices
526 Joseph's binary logic applied to pollution from
hamburgers
532 Joseph's bell curve
535 Who assigns the ratings ?
537 Other kinds of indices
539 Indices which indicate what others are doing
544 2) The self-correcting mechanisms
547 Different kinds of out-of-equilibrium conditions
554 The Congress of Diamond Drill Producers Confronts
the Congress of Diamond Drill Consumers
561 Footnotes for Appendix B
|
| Note by Ben: Recently Joseph replied to my polemic written against him eight months ago. My first thought was "What would Comrade Science think ?" So I conducted a brief interview with "Comrade Science" (ie: Dr. Itzalso Sympul, Professor of Dialectical Materialism and director of the world-famous Institute for the Study of Assumptron Culture). |
| Ben: Dr. Sympul, Joseph has characterized my sketch of future communist society as a "nightmare" in which vigilantes will sabotage and disrupt the smooth functioning of society and threaten workers and dissidents with starvation, imprisonment, "disintegration" and even having their brains "tampered with" for such crimes as selecting the wrong brand of paint. Factories would shut each other down for painting their parts with the wrong stuff. The mass media would be censored, actors and actresses would be blacklisted and even soap operas would be rescripted. Everybody would keep secrets from each other, and in general a climate of fear will prevail and the whole miserable tyranny, even were it ever constructed, would collapse back into capitalism anyhow. What is wrong with this picture ? |
| Comrade Science: Well this just goes to prove that one man's paradise is another man's hell. More seriously, Joseph's main concern is that without an official "formal authority" or "general authority" which would constitute a single directing center (ie: a von Neumann point) for the entire economy and culture -- that people's political and personal freedoms will be crushed -- and that further (to make matters worse) the trains won't run on time. |
| Ben: Well there must be some content to Joseph's concerns. I mean how can a society function if, for example, the trains do not run on time ? |
| Comrade Science: The answer Ben is that society needs trains that run on time but it also has the resilience to tolerate a certain amount of flexibility. The heavens will not collapse if on occasion a train is late. The key issue here that Joseph misses is that the economy and culture of a future communist society would constitute what we in the complexity field call a "complex adaptive system". It is true that the struggles of workers in such a society would occasionally make a train late or result in other types of minor disruptions. But the key thing to see is that the process contains within itself the capacity to self-correct -- or to be adaptive. For example, if the struggle of workers becomes too disruptive of social order, the inconveniences of the disruption register in and become part of public opinion, which in turn impacts the consciousness of the workers involved. Workers who are too disruptive find that they will lose public support (which they will need in order to win their struggles) and so they turn to those forms of struggle which are in just and measured proportion to the seriousness of their grievances as reflected in the consciousness of the public (ie: other workers). |
| Ben: That seems somewhat obvious. Why can't Joseph see that ? |
| Comrade Science: Joseph's thinking is clouded for several reasons. He has a political and emotional need to prove his own indispensability. This constitutes a very powerful lens which functions like the mirror made famous by Lewis Caroll. Therefore it does not occur to Joseph -- what is intuitive to most normal people -- that the social disruptions he envisions would follow a "power curve" just like most other complex phenomena. |
| Ben: What kind of curve ? |
| Comrade Science: Many complex chaotic systems share certain features in common. Consider the phenomena of earthquakes. The vast majority of all earth movements are fairly small. On occasion, a quake which is 100,000 times more powerful occurs, but it occurs 100,000 times less often. The power curve is so named because if you plot frequency (ie: how often something occurs) vs. magnitude (of the occurrence) on a logarithmic chart, you will often get a straight line. |
| Similarly, the social disruptions of which Joseph is so much afraid would also logically be expected to follow something like a power curve. On a great many occasions the train is a few seconds late. On far fewer occasions it is a few minutes late. And on very rare occasions it doesn't come at all. You already made this point completely clear in your paragraph 120 where you say: "Most struggles might be minor and end in simple compromise. More important issues would tend to escalate and on occasion the most important issues might quickly convulse the whole of society." |
| What Joseph cannot see, what his prejudices blind him to, is the role played in all this by the consciousness of the masses. The masses will support the actions of a section of workers if their cause seems worthwhile and the social cost does not seem to be too great. Excessive disruption over inconsequential or trivial matters would result in the rapid evaporation of mass support. And without mass support struggles would tend to go nowhere. And people would see this and learn from this. Judgment enters into the equation from every single mind involved. This is what escapes Joseph. This is the factor that Joseph cannot see because for him all judgment must be channeled through and act via the single "formal" and "general" authority. The role of the masses can only be played when properly filtered and focused through this single point of control . Joseph's instincts, because of their theoretical origin in Stalin's mummification of Lenin's theory, lead Joseph to regard unfiltered mass actions with the same elemental sense of fear that you or I might feel when encountering a great white shark. |
| Ben: What about Joseph's charges that workers would starve each other, put one another into jail, "disintegrate" one another or "tamper with" each others brains ? |
| Comrade Science: Communist society would operate according to the principle: "To each according to his need". Since everyone needs to eat -- a steady supply of food (and all the necessities of life) would be a birthright. Again, Joseph only believes that no one can have these rights because there would be no von Neumann point, no single point of control . You made all this clear Ben when you quoted Engels (paragraph 146) on the elimination of the struggle for individual existence. |
| But Joseph doesn't see this because he has starvation on his mind, Ben, because you called on his supporters to stop paying him a living allowance and suggested that he get a job and work for a living. Joseph would like to spend all his time working for the "anti-revisionist" cause but a job would interfere with his addiction (to writing useless stuff and pretending that he is shaking the world). And if Joseph was not supported by others -- and did not get a job -- he would starve. |
| All of Joseph's arguments boil down to his simple tautology: Without a von Neumann point -- nothing works as it should. Joseph is very attached to the idea of a von Neumann point. A von Neumann point is his sole source of security. Joseph imagines that a von Neumann point is "Leninist" and a protection of communism against revisionism, capitalism and anarchism. |
| Joseph pictures all kinds of abuses taking place because in Joseph's mind -- only the existence of a von Neumann point can prevent the abuses. It is inconceivable to Joseph's brain that basic human rights could be guaranteed by the actions and sensibilities of the masses who supposedly cannot think and cannot act without Joseph's von Neumann point. |
| How about Joseph's charge that the entire complex adaptive system that would constitute a communist economy, culture and political system would, if it ever existed, collapse back into capitalism ? |
| There is a point here that is of theoretical interest. Joseph describes how production units would "own" the products they create and "trade" these products with other units to "get what they need". At this point the products are in fact commodities (ie: they are produced not for consumption but instead for exchange). From this we would have a straightforward development of money, credit, finance, etc. leading rather quickly right back to capitalism. |
| So the point to grasp here is that Joseph would be correct in his description of this course of development -- save for a single factor -- the intervention in this process of the masses. Left "to itself" -- without the factor of the consciousness of the masses and the resultant innumerable small actions of millions of people -- such a scenario as Joseph describes is precisely the course that events would follow. |
| So this is all that Joseph has left out. He has "forgotten" only one tiny detail -- the consciousness and the actions of the masses. And we have shown that Joseph's consistent forgetfulness originates in his fear of the masses and his denial of his objective social basis as a person whose existence requires support by a sect. It is a sad situation for a person to be in - - because it tends to cripple their mind. And Joseph has the ability to serve the workers if he could only escape the prison of denial that he has built for himself. |
| But I am getting diverted. Let's consider how the actions of the masses influence the course of events. Let's consider how innumerable "small" actions add up to a factor large enough to prevent the "inevitable" return to capitalism prophesied by Joseph. |
| The key issue here is the role that competition will play in assisting the masses to fight the kind of corruption that Joseph describes. One of the features of such competition is that it provides a mechanism to magnify or amplify small differences. This is a critical and very important feature. A coyote chasing a hare may find that a tiny extra burst of speed at a critical moment may have a big effect on whether that hare gets away and reproduces or becomes lunch. Similarly in war, sometimes small critical events have an impact all out of proportion to their size. And sometimes similar factors play a role in politics and economics. Of course Joseph has said that there will be no politics under communism (Joseph has even falsely claimed that Engels supports him on this). Hence Joseph cannot see that the masses would take action on a political basis to prevent the kind of corruption that in the near-term undermines the economy and in the long-term would restore capitalism. |
| And the masses would be expected to have a fair amount of passion that motivates their actions in this regard. The struggle to overcome capitalism will require tremendous sacrifices from hundreds of millions of people. The abuses, the hardships, the misery, the extreme wastage of resources under capitalism will remain a bitter memory that will underlay the politics of a period that Joseph has claimed will have no politics. |
that the masses would oppose ? |
| Any step in the direction of production for exchange rather than consumption would represent corruption of the first order. Any production unit that treats its products as "property" would lose mass support and not be able to survive in competition with other units that enjoy mass support. And this would be a fairly sensitive process. Even very small steps in the direction of treating products as property could elicit a huge reaction from the masses. This is the amplification effect that would give the communist economy such steady direction and enormous power . |
by actions of the masses |
| In the early period of classless society there would still exist substantial and powerful remnants of the self-centered ideology and thinking created in previous society. Under these conditions the tendency toward corruption would assert itself as an inevitable force, like gravity, that could only be resisted through the actions of the masses . Any tendency, by a production unit, towards asserting "ownership" over what it produces -- would be exposed and smashed up by the masses -- who would regard this as similar to a parent asserting "ownership" over his adult children. |
| Joseph describes how giant alliances and networks may come into existence as part of the political and economic struggle within a communist economic-political system. And yes, such alliances might come about (but not monopolies -- because this is another form of corruption that the masses would not permit -- because the potential for abuse is extreme -- just like it is with the monopoly of allegedly "non-political" political power that Joseph advocates with his "von Neumann single point control theory"). But such alliances would likely be short-lived in a fast-moving and shifting economy and in any event would be battered into quick disintegration should they engage in the open tit-for-tat exchanges of products rather than to make their products available to all on the basis of "wise use". |
| The masses are capable of grasping the necessity of the principle of production for use . The alliances described by Joseph are different than alliances formed on the basis of political principles such as developing the economy and serving the people. Joseph may not be able to distinguish between healthy and corrupt alliances . Joseph may not be able to distinguish between giving a product to a production unit in exchange for (a) its wise consumption (ie: consumption beneficial to society) and (b) another product. But the masses will . |
| The masses will support (with their labor, with their consumption, with their voice) those production units and production alliances that do the most to serve the people. And vice versa -- those units which do less well at serving the needs of the masses will not inspire the hard work and play that will allow them to expand and reproduce themselves and their hallmark traditions and methods. This sounds like ruthless "social Darwinism" to Joseph but it is actually fairly simple: if the music is not good -- people will not dance to it . |
| The corrupt alliances described by Joseph, should they come about, would be quickly isolated. I propose calling such formations "Joseph's Islands" in honor of Joseph, who has theorized their existence. And what would be the fate of Joseph's islands ? Such islands would end up diminutive within an ocean of economic activity. They would enjoy rapidly dwindling mass support. They would likely evaporate or shrink to insignificance. It is difficult to conceive of self-sufficient islands able to survive in a vast interconnected economy because interaction with and support from the rest of the economy would be a condition of the existence of any production unit of real significance. |
| Consider the matter. Why would anyone want to work for a production unit that is corrupt ? In a communist economy no one needs to work in order to eat and live. It is the other way around. People live in order to work and this means that they would no sooner want to work for an outfit that is corrupt than they would want to sacrifice their children to a pagan god. So if Joseph's island is based on commodity production then the redivision of labor (the cleavage into classes with antagonistic material interests) would eventually assert itself and the workers would have a problem with the way things are done. What is to prevent the workers from saying adios (and taking with them the most important and decisive element of production: their skilled labor) ? There would be plenty of other places where people could work for free and be appreciated and be part of a community based on the principle of serving the people. |
| Here is Joseph's problem. Ben uses the word "independent" to describe the production units and Joseph stretches this word till it becomes absolute. (Joseph does this all the time -- it is all that is left to him. If I say that it is a cold day Joseph will argue that if it were really absolute zero then the air would freeze. If I say that The Simpsons is a good TV show Joseph will berate me for failing to denounce Mark Furhman.) In reality everything is interconnected. The production units could never be completely independent from one another. The production units would only have relative independence from one another. They would make decisions at odds with one another. They would compete with one another in a variety of ways. But they could not be completely independent of one another because they are connected via the masses who they must serve as an absolute requirement for their existence as production units, as entities. |
| And because the needs of the masses are unitary in a fundamental sense (ie: dominated by common interests such as the need for a high-synergy, non-capitalist, non-class divided society which provides the conditions of life and happiness for all) -- the various production units are bound together . The difference (from Joseph's conception) is that the production units would be bound together somewhat loosely and with room for flexibility (as opposed to Joseph who would bind everything together very rigidly via his von Neumannist monopoly-of-power single-point-of- control). Hence the production units are independent and compete with one another but at the same time they are connected and cooperate with one another. The two aspects of the contradiction are interconnected. And Joseph cannot rend apart these two fundamental aspects even if he turns a million polemical somersaults (but he may try -- charlatans may not give up as long as there are suckers to support them). |
| So the production units are actually both independent and not independent. This bothers von Neumannist single-point-of-control enthusiast like Joseph because he needs for his security to have tidy little mental conceptual boxes in which everything is neatly categorized. Well maybe a better word to describe the production units than independent is "interdependent" although I am sure that Joseph will have problems with this word also. (If only Joseph's opponents would use only those words and concepts that meet with Joseph's approval -- the world be such a nice and tidy place !) But the point is not the particular word which is used so much as it is the content which the word seeks to represent. And the content of the complex adaptive system that would constitute the communist economy and political system is that it would be neither capitalist nor a command-economy as envisioned by our von Neumannist single-point-of-control-freak. |
| Joseph has made it very clear: either all units march to the single drum beat of a single point of control -- or you have capitalism and anarchism . This is Joseph's actual position if you take the trouble to follow his multitude of twists and turns designed to fool the unwary. Joseph even claims that Engels supports him . But Engels was not a revisionist in theory like our control-freak Joseph and Engels has said nothing nowhere no how that supports Joseph's single-point-of-control theory . |
| So if Joseph cannot make a revisionist out of Engels -- then he tries to make one out of Lenin. And if Ben opposes Joseph's single-point-of-control conception -- why then is not Ben opposing Lenin ? |
| Really ? |
| But if we examine Lenin we find that things are not so cut-and- dried as Joseph would have us believe. Lenin did develop a series of justifications for single-point-of-control theory in the early days of the Soviet Union. But if we examine Lenin's actual arguments we will find that Lenin never asserted that such a single-point-of-control was suited to a modern society . |
| Rather Lenin's argument was very direct: if the Bolsheviks did not institute and maintain a single-point-of-control political system -- the bourgeoisie would be able to return to power. Lenin's reasoning was very clear. Economic conditions were extremely harsh. The peasants were suffering enormously and were politically unsophisticated . If other political parties were allowed to carry out their activity -- these parties would then have made fantastic false promises to the peasants of a better life without the Bolsheviks -- and they would have been believed . And after tossing out the Bolsheviks these other political parties would have served their purpose and been slapped down by the bourgeoisie which would reassert its right to rule society. [1-rc] |
| So what was Lenin's solution ? Lenin felt that the only chance for the victory of the revolution lay in maintaining single-point rule as an emergency measure for a temporary period until better economic conditions could be created. With better conditions -- the popular dissatisfaction against the Bolshevik rule would greatly ease -- and conditions would exist that would permit removal of the emergency single-point-of-control measures. At this point the process of developing a political system compatible with the needs of a modern and stable revolutionary society -- would no longer be a luxury that could not be afforded -- but a necessity required for the development of political and economic life. |
| Now Lenin was very vague as to how long the period of emergency rule would have to be. At one point he estimated 10 to 20 years, at another point much less [2-rc] . Lenin probably was deliberately vague because he understood that it was foolish to make predictions over matters that are inherently difficult-to- impossible to predict. Lenin's hope was that during this period of emergency rule, the energy of the Soviet masses could be harnessed to bail out the economy and restore stability and allow the kinds of political liberty (political rights such as the circulation of parties and literature) that could not be afforded in 1921. |
| Well we all know what happened. After Lenin's death things did not work out. Conditions did not improve. Whether this was the result of the incompetence of the Bolsheviks or was an unavoidable result of the conditions of the times I do not know (nor do I know anyone who knows). And the Bolshevik party , rather than admit defeat and retreat, took on the role of leadership for a new ruling class -- a new bourgeoisie. And Lenin's emergency measures -- introduced as the most bitter necessity for a temporary emergency period designed to permit the more rapid development of a very backward society -- became codified under Stalin as supposedly the correct way for a stable modern society to run its political, cultural and economic life . Stalin appropriated Lenin's emergency measures -- the most bitter necessity of the most bitter imaginable circumstances -- and converted them into a theoretical fortress to justify a permanent system of repression in a modern society. |
| And this is the origin of what I have called "von Neumann social architecture" (single point control theory). And Joseph continues to uphold it to this day . Joseph continues to claim that Engels and Lenin back him up. Joseph continues to claim that anyone who opposes this farce -- is opposing Leninism -- and promoting capitalism and anarchism -- because Joseph has defined matters this way . (If anyone has ever wondered why the MLP's struggle to distinguish Marxism from revisionism became so hopelessly stagnated under Joseph's leadership -- well I think we have the answer here. And along with it we have the answer to why concerns by comrades like Ray {ie: that we were neglecting the theoretical work into the origin of revisionism} could not be brought to the entire party in 1988 without the risk of civil war and the destruction of our organization. And along with that, most importantly, we have the ability to understand why an organization attempting to fulfill a revolutionary destiny was bound to lose its belief in itself .) |
| And Joseph can get away with this nonsense (for a period of time) because his followers are desperate to believe him and a little society of mutual denial has come about. This society was nurtured right in the center of the MLP for most of its life and its most sorry and unfortunate features have revealed themselves most prominently in the last two years -- but they have existed all along and were instrumental in blocking the healthy development of our trend (witness the suppression in 1988 of Ray's concerns that the work on our theoretical foundations was being neglected). |
| And this society of mutual denial that has congealed around Joseph even gives us some insight into the intellectual corruption that came up in the Soviet Union and was flourishing by the 1920's and 30's. The Bolshevik leadership was doubtlessly influenced in their thinking by the knowledge that if they failed to follow the course that they did -- they could or would lose power and possibly their lives as well. Hence the material conditions of their existence influenced and corrupted their intellectual ability which had originally been at the service of the proletariat . Joseph's thinking appears to be influenced by concerns over maintaining the current basis of his physical existence -- as supported full-time leader of a political sect. Now Joseph is hardly living high off the hog (if he saves his pennies he can afford to have a hot dog with his beans on Saturday nights) -- but for Joseph to get a job would involve a major change in his lifestyle and a fair amount of discomfort. |
| Similarly for Joseph's supporters (who have compared me to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini because I call a spade a spade -- I am still awaiting comparisons to Attila the Hun -- I will not rest until I am compared to Attila) to wake up and smell the coffee would involve their giving up illusions that they have become very comfortable with. So we have at close hand a little miniature "living laboratory" in which we can study at our leisure the process of denial within the hearts and minds of activists within society's left-wing movement. |
| Yes the developing denial and corruption of the Bolshevik leadership in the Soviet Union was a major event in human history -- while the denial and intellectual corruption of Joseph's society is only a particle in a footnote. There is a quote somewhere by Marx, maybe in "The 18th Brumaire" (Joseph can find the quote for us -- he has all these quotes underlined and memorized like a preacher who has memorized the bible -- Joseph's only problem is that he cannot understand what the quotes mean) that in history all events occur, as it were, twice, the first time as tragedy , the second time as farce . And I believe that that is what we have here. |
| Joseph denounces as capitalism and anarchism anything that opposes the von Neumann single-point-of-control theory that he has inherited from Stalin. The idea that future communist society would constitute an environment in which political, economic and cultural trends would flourish and would enjoy independence from -- as well as interdependence with -- each other -- is for Joseph the height of anarchism . That such trends would oppose and compete with one another for influence -- as part of their cooperation and participation in a complex adaptive system -- is for Joseph the definition of capitalism. That these trends would result from the "bottom-up" activity of the masses - - is for Joseph anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist. |
| And what is Joseph's alternative ? |
| Apart from his innumerable empty and meaningless phrases for motherhood, apple pie and classless society -- HOW IN PARTICULAR does Joseph propose that his classless society would handle its affairs ? |
| We know that Joseph believes that a single central organization of some sort would run everything. To be more precise, Joseph would allow a multitude of organizations provided only that they were under the control of a single organization at the top of the pyramid which would mediate and arbitrate all conflicts between the separate organizations. We know this because Joseph has denounced the idea that many planning organizations would exist that enjoyed any degree of real independence from one another. |
| We know that Joseph has denounced the idea that even under communism society would contain political contradictions and struggles . Joseph decries this as a war of one against all . What Joseph cannot see is that such "warfare" under communism is not like warfare under capitalism. This is why I did not call it war but said it would be "kind of like a war". By this I meant that it remains the supreme mobilizer of human passion and energy . But I also emphasized that no one has to be killed, no one has to be hurt (except sometimes I suppose people will suffer hurt feelings) and there will be little real destruction. Under communism "warfare" becomes so civilized that it no longer is war. Rather it becomes "war to create" rather than "war to destroy" , a series of contests to mobilize the masses and prove the superiority of one or another set of principles . And even children can participate in this kind of warfare because it becomes, despite its seriousness, a form of play and a path to the development of their abilities, character and personality . |
| Of course Joseph pictures a more "peaceful" society with no conflicts and no politics . What do we know of his single-point- of-control organization ? Well we know that Joseph considers it to be a "formal authority" because in part I of his "Neo- conservative" series he argues that a "formal authority" is needed in order for public opinion to manifest itself [3-r] . In part II, Joseph retreats slightly and tells us that his single- point-of-control will be a "general authority" [4-r] . Further he tells us that it will be a "non-governmental authority" [5-r] and will be "elected by all". So Joseph's authority will not be a government but it will be elected . OK -- makes sense I suppose if we enter the other side of Joseph's magic mirror. Let's just go along and see how far we can take this. |
| What else do we know about Joseph's elections? We know that these elections will not be for a government and that they will contain no politics because Joseph berates me for believing that politics will exist under communism and claims that Engels backs him up [6-r] . Further it appears unlikely that opposing political parties would exist under Joseph's conception because Joseph and Mark have made a point (a very significant point -- and if you actually follow their tortured reasoning -- it is their main point) of denouncing the idea of "independent, conflicting entities" as "capitalism" and "anarchism". But if there are not opposing political parties then the election would consist of a plebiscite in which the population simply approves and ratifies by large margins whatever it is that Joseph's authority does. Of course there could be different political parties on Joseph's planet if they are not "independent from" or "conflict with" one another and are not involved in "politics" . |
| And what would Joseph's formal (but non-governmental) general authority do besides manifest public opinion ? Well we find out from Joseph that it would be responsible for banning products like lead paint which harm the environment and poison people. But its main function would be to plan and direct the entire economy. Following the quote by Engels that Joseph repeatedly cites in the belief that it somehow supports him -- Joseph's authority would not be a government of persons but would administer things and direct the process of production. And also, let's not forget, Joseph has informed us that while his authority would not govern people -- it would manufacture and insure compliance with the "rules of behavior which must be obeyed by all" [7-r] although it could, thankfully, manage to accomplish all this without "a special coercive apparatus". |
| Joseph's authority is indeed very amazing. In fact it is completely indispensable. In addition to everything else we find out that Joseph's authority is all that stands between the masses and their being poisoned, starved, imprisoned, disintegrated, having their brains tampered with and even (to add insult to injury) their soap operas rescripted. |
| So according to Joseph the entire economy of future communist society and all the rules which everyone must obey would be run by a government that was not a government in elections that are not elections and with political parties that neither oppose one another nor get involved in politics. |
| And unlike Joseph (who constantly distorts, exaggerates and twists my positions so that half the time he reports my actual views and the other half assigns to me the views of straw men -- kind of like the popular columnist Dave Barry -- who makes up half his stuff -- but makes the reader guess which half) I am reporting on Joseph's actual public statements and authentic views. |
| To be perfectly honest I do not see how I (or anyone) can make heads or tails of Joseph's non-political politics and absent further clarification from either Joseph or his loyal supporters (who seem to have no trouble lapping up this spam) I am not sure I can really make much of an intelligent comment here. |
| But I will nonetheless try. |
| I believe that in future society the masses will employ a very wide range of means to effect and impact the direction of growth and development of politics, culture and the economy. The "vote", as it were, would play a role in some particular situations but would represent a single tool in a toolbox , a single weapon in an arsenal -- and we should not make a fetish over it or any single method by which the masses convert their convictions and passions into support for or against various principles, parties, or economic units that will shape the direction of future development. The "vote" by itself is no more applicable in all situations than a hammer works for all jobs. Sometimes you need a screwdriver or a wrench . |
| In fact the vote functions simply as a subset of the voice, as a means of registering public opinion (and sometimes as a very imperfect means). And in future communist society the masses will support or oppose economic, cultural and political policies, principles and personalities with their labor , their patterns of consumption and their influence on the currents of public opinion . In short the masses will impact the direction of social development with their every thought, word and action . And this is what takes place even under capitalism, except that under capitalism, in class-divided society, this process takes place to an infinitesimally smaller degree and is generally extremely inefficient because -- until the class struggle is resolved in the only way that it can be -- by the elimination of classes -- the energy and potential of the masses must work a thousand or a million times harder to impact social development. |
| I will make a further point. None of us really do (or could) know a lot about how future communist society will really look and function. And yet, in the current period -- where the predominant view of communism is that it is and will forever be impossible -- a large part of our responsibility is to develop theory about how society can govern its economic, cultural and political affairs without recourse to the market. And to fulfill our responsibility -- we need to openly think about and discuss these kinds of issues . We must share our thoughts . And this is what Joseph opposes -- because the result would inevitably lead to him having to change his lifestyle and (for a while) have to adjust to new circumstances and be uncomfortable . |
| Joseph does not really support discussion of such topics as these. This is why Joseph calls my views capitalism and anarchism . This is why he waits eight months and requires the prod of public humiliation to notify the readers of his journal that I had replied to him 5 days later. This is why Joseph refused without explanation my request that he print my address so that his readers could contact me and receive versions of my work other than the 10% that Joseph decides to reprint. And this is why none of Joseph's supporters (other than Mark, who has said that the use of "bottom-up" methods equal capitalism) have had anything to say about future communist society and why the general atmosphere in Joseph's society of mutual denial is that the issue is not to develop discussion but to "defend anti- revisionism" (ie: by supporting revisionist single-point-control theories). And Joseph's contradictions are piled so high at this point that it becomes very difficult for Joseph's supporters to address any of the myriad issues on which I have shown Joseph to be a charlatan -- without making themselves or Joseph look foolish. |
to an Expanded Audience |
| As for myself -- I have ideas on how to take things forward. I do not believe it is appropriate to vilify Joseph (although his supporters believe this is my aim) or absolutize anything. Joseph has created a sorry spectacle of himself and his followers -- and this should be clarified. But this is not necessarily a big deal. Rather the issue is to sort out how to develop the discussion on the nature of a future communist society . |
| Frankly there is a limit to how useful discussion can be with sectarians like Joseph. It has been useful to a degree, not just to settle accounts, but because real theory can only develop in an atmosphere in which it is challenged and stimulated . But there are other means to do this also. I have been postponing a letter to Joe in Boston on these kinds of topics for nine months now. Joe asks me -- how come I have time to respond to the people who act like jerks but not those who are more thoughtful ? |
| And guess what ? I do not have a good answer for Joe. I go a bit by instinct and my instincts have told me that the stimulus of Joseph's clumsy attacks could be useful to me. And they have been. The most developed sketch of my views to date is in "Why is Joseph Afraid of Consciousness ?" and I would like to thank Joseph for helping to inspire me. But at this point it looks like Joseph has thrown everything he can think of at me and there is nothing more to respond to. Joseph's bag of tricks is empty and the audience of his supporters appears to be either too passive or sleepy on this issue, too trusting of Joseph to actually read and consider the full (ie: unexcerpted by Joseph) exchange between myself and Joseph/Mark or too corrupt or pathetic in reasoning ability -- to be worth focus. Absent some comment from them -- to indicate that they are following the debate and have actual living thoughts or ideas -- it would appear that they are all asleep at the switch. |
| The real issue is to take the discussion on the nature of future communist society to a larger audience . This is what we have been discussing locally. And the issue here is that to do this (and to do it right) requires a lot of work and I need to get off my butt and do it . And as much as I would like to find some way to blame Joseph for the torpid pace of my work on this front -- in all fairness -- the responsibility is mine. |
| So for now -- instead of writing polemics, I will try to focus my energies on something more worthwhile -- and try to report back to readers on my progress. ----//-// |
| [1-rc] The best discussion of this I have seen is in Lenin's speeches to the Tenth Congress in 1921 and in Lenin's pamphlet " The Tax in Kind " in the same year where, half a dozen pages from the end, he describes how, after any kind of shift in power from the Bolsheviks to any of the petty bourgeois parties, the capitalists and landowners would " slap down the anarchist pygmies ". (LCW 32). |
| [2-rc] See Lenin's " Plan of the Pamphlet The Tax in Kind ", section II, where he says " Ten or twenty years of regular relations with the peasantry and victory is assured on a world scale (even if there is a delay in the proletarian revolutions, which are maturing) ... ". See also his " Report on Party Unity and the Anarcho-Syndicalist Deviation " given at the 10th Congress. There he says: " It will take us at least 10 years to organize large-scale industry to produce a reserve and secure control of agriculture. This is the shortest period even if the technical conditions are exceptionally favorable. But we know that our conditions are terribly unfavorable. " And later: " A year or two of relief from famine, with regular supplies of fuel to keep the factories running, and we shall receive a hundred times more assistance from the working class and far more talent will arise from its ranks than we now have. " (LCW 32) |
| [3-r] "formal authority" (CV #4, 9-15-95, page 51, top of 1st column) |
| [4-r] "A general authority, elected by all" (CV #4, page 54, middle of 2nd column) |
| [5-r] "non-governmental authority" (CV #4, page 56, top of 1st column) |
| [6-r] See footnote 17 of Part I. (CV #4, page 51, bottom of 1st column) |
| [7-r] See Part 2 under the sub-head "Coercion" (CV #4, page 55, middle of 2nd column) |
Contents for Appendix A:
|
| This is the same issue Joseph raises in relation to the question of a chemical plant that supposedly "can't be compelled" to disclose the chemical contents of its products without a von Neumann point. Really ? Joseph would be correct if the masses did not give a shit or were impotent to act against chemical poisoning. But this is the flaw in Joseph's reasoning. This is the blockage that prevents the smoke from going up his chimney. |
| When I describe how factories could be shut down if they poison people or if they do not disclose the chemicals in their products -- Joseph imagines that ALL factories would be shut down. Again, Joseph would be correct -- IF THE MASSES LACKED BRAINS. But the masses do have brains. In fact they have considerably more brains that Joseph. The issue of making sure that all chemical ingredients that could move into the environment be disclosed to all and subject to public approval -- would be accomplished because this is a reasonable demand that would win vast public support . Even under capitalism, the struggle of the masses for similar demands has achieved a fair amount of progress considering the extremely adverse conditions. With the elimination of the rule of the marketplace and the defeat of all powerful vested interests does Joseph imagine that the struggle of the masses would accomplish less ? |
| It is similar with "trade secrets". Joseph imagines that without a von Neumann point to compel disclosure over all production processes -- that all important information will be kept secret. But let's consider the matter. To the extent that keeping "trade secrets" interferes with the process of production or slows down development -- the masses would not tolerate it. Of course I did say that production units might negotiate restrictions on the use of information. But these restriction would only be tolerated by the masses if they were fairly minor and assisted, rather than retarded, the creation of wealth. What this means is that the concrete specifics have to be considered. Consider one kind of example: should football teams be compelled to reveal their strategies and tactics to their opponents before a big game ? To do so would be absurd. Keeping such details secret for a period of time adds to the excitement and enthusiasm of the competition . Or consider another example: Suppose workers at a "cartoon factory" come up with a particular animated character or avatar and request that other such factories not use their character so that they may have exclusive influence on the development of the public persona of this character. Would other factories respect the request of the originating factory ? They probably would if such requests were reasonable and not excessive. It is only under capitalism that 17-year patents can ensure monopolies and stifle production and day-care centers can be closed down because an unauthorized drawing of Mickey Mouse is painted on an outside wall. |
| Similarly it is fear of the actions of the masses (and likely an attempt to deflect the embarrassment of supporting the "von Neumann" conceptions torn out of context by Stalin and developed into a system of reinforced permanent single-point control over all of society) that impels Joseph's near hysteria over "re- education". The simple truth is that we all re-educate ourselves and others constantly in our daily activity. There are innumerable collisions between dysfunctional attitudes (ie: attitudes which are not effective, which do not work) and the external world. As materialists, we grasp that we must change our consciousness as part of the process of changing the world. |
| We all know that all of us carry blemishes of one sort or another in our consciousness. These blemishes diminish our opportunities for fulfillment in life and happiness. Does Joseph deny that for a considerable period of time there will be a need for a struggle against the residue of the ideologies shaped during thousands of years of class society ? Or does Joseph think that with some quick revolution or even the triumph of the communist over the capitalist economy -- that all dysfunctional thinking, all the ignorance and anti-people attitudes left to us by previous society will suddenly evaporate and everyone will be completely happy all of the time ? |
| Joseph is simply engaging in more charlatanism. He is trying to blur the distinction between coercion and measures agreed between and undertaken by people voluntarily because of their convictions that this will lead them to a happier life. |
| Re-education takes place every time a woman struggles to get a boyfriend or husband to understand the harm caused by attitudes of male superiority. Does Joseph oppose such re-education ? Or does Joseph deny that such issues are a big part of the life of society and part of any progressive social agenda and will not disappear overnight ? |
| I was saving the best for last. |
| Joseph has made the very serious charge that I advocate censoring the mass media in a modern society. In particular he seems to be concerned that I would kick the Erica Kane character off of All My Children . |
| Seriously, however, Joseph appears to be confusing two distinct but important and related questions. |
| The first question is the subject of censorship itself, and includes consideration of what censorship really is. |
| The second question concerns measures to step by step raise the level of mass culture in a communist society. |
| If we are really communist theoreticians we will be able to distinguish these two questions from one another. The masses can certainly distinguish between these two questions. And if they can do this -- then should we not be able to do so also ? And if Joseph cannot distinguish between these two questions -- I think this only shows that his thinking is clouded -- is not characterized by a great deal of clarity . |
| The approach I will take is to discuss both questions and then compare Joseph's approach to my own. |
| To begin with, in a modern society there are a variety of types of media. For example some types of media represent the work of individuals or small groups . This polemic is an example of media of this type. These kinds of media are not very labor intensive in the sense that the ratio between the time the author spends writing and time the reader spends reading is fairly low. Maybe it is 10 to 1 (obviously we can only estimate such things very crudely). Another type of media production might be a modern movie. Here a 90 minute movie may involve more than a quarter million man-hours of human labor. So the ratio between the labor time congealed in the movie and the time the viewer spends watching would be relatively high, well over 100,000 to 1. |
| Hence, we can visualize a spectrum of media in which low-ratio media are at one end and high-ratio media are at the other, and various other types are in between. |
| In a modern society we generally find that most people, most of the time spend their time with medium-ratio or high-ratio media. This is just to say that people in a country like the U.S. watch a lot of TV for entertainment. Of course many other people read newspapers and books and the ratios here tend to be lower. |
| So how does this bear on the distinction between censorship and the question of raising the level of culture in a modern society ? Well, to try to put matters simply, and as best as I can -- people watch a lot of "crap" because "there is nothing else on". This is not to say that "good" material is not available at all - - if you are sufficiently determined to hunt it out and find it. If you care to read selected books and articles, or if you have a VCR and a nearby video store you have more choices. But it is a reality of life for many people that their choices are whatever is "on" at the moment. |
| And this highlights the fact that the issue of raising the level of mass culture tends to focus mainly on giving people more and better choices in the high-ratio media where most people spend most of their time . |
| And this casts some light on the distinction between the question of censorship and the question of raising the level of culture. Censorship, in particular in some of its most reprehensible forms, is often concerned with low-ratio media. This is because it is low-ratio media that tends to be most available to those who oppose the existing order (dissidents, as Joseph so correctly calls them). In Guatemala, for example, to be caught distributing a clandestine newsletter is to suffer a painful death. Now this is an important distinction although it should not be absolutized. When news coverage of some mass action refuses to show the masses and instead focuses on a person on a street corner -- this might be considered to be similar to censorship, although it is really more of a sister phenomena of politically selective news coverage. When CBS canceled without explanation the very popular Smothers' Brothers TV show in 1968 because they allowed Pete Seeger to sing Knee-deep in the Big Muddy (an allegorical anti-Vietnam war song) -- this was unquestionably censorship of high-ratio media. |
| But I think that from the point of view of the masses -- the aspect of censorship that most concerns them -- involves the censorship of low-ratio media. I believe that this is because they understand that there is a fundamental difference between: (a) preventing people from communicating their views to others, and (b) questions concerning the allocation of limited social resources (and massive amounts of labor) to media projects. |
| And this distinction, although not necessarily clear in every case, can help to guide us as we consider the mass media in an advanced society. In a communist society, there would be no way to completely censor the views of Joseph's dissidents. Everyone would have access to the net . Individual people or groups could upload their views in the forms of text, voice, video or multimedia (ie: all three) and everyone on the planet would have access to these views. The equipment needed for this would be available to all because it is being developed (and will become increasingly cheap) under capitalism (for example: video- recorders are currently being worked on that may be the size of a sugar cube and manufactured for about five dollars ). |
| Now this is not to say that Joseph's dissidents would have an easy time getting everyone's attention . Cyberspace is essentially infinitely large but people's attention will always continue to be a scarce resource . The most popular sections of cyberspace (or, to use a more general term: the mediasphere ) will likely be moderated forums or channels in which there will be selection criteria that might be hostile to Joseph's dissidents. Now this may seem unfair to Joseph's dissidents -- but we should also keep in mind that the reason that these areas would be so popular in the first place -- would be largely related to the fact that a selection principle is employed "to keep out the spam" . |
| How about if Joseph's dissidents truly have something to say that people consider worth listening to ? If they do -- then Joseph's dissidents would find bountiful opportunities to get people's attention and to gradually build an audience . Even if only a few people listened to them at first, these few people could each tell a few more (and post their opinions on the net) and (if Joseph's dissidents were really saying something worthwhile) new people could each notify others and post their opinions and so on --- and there would be something of a chain reaction or at least somewhat steady exponential growth . |
| And it becomes very difficult to conceive of how Joseph's dissidents could be prevented from speaking out because everyone would have the right to communicate to others and to read or listen to or watch anything they want in the mediasphere . Such a right would not require Joseph's "general authority" to support it -- but would instead simply be a "norm" or a "principle" that would be supported by the entire society because the historical experience of struggle would demonstrate that such rights benefit everyone and are a necessary condition for society's accelerated development. |
| Now it is possible that Joseph's dissidents would have to struggle against people having "closed minds". This can be something of an uphill struggle at times. After all there will be no guarantee that all people in a communist society will be free of prejudices. And trends which oppose Joseph might be doing their best to stir up these prejudices against Joseph and might be attacking Joseph from positions in which they have many resources that Joseph's group does not (ie: audience attention and the labor hours of volunteers). |
| But Joseph's group might have something else on its side that would be more powerful : it might have the truth on its side. And I will argue that in such conditions, in a future communist society, the trend with truth on its side will inevitably win . |
| And as materialists we can understand why. People tend to follow their material interests. If Joseph's group really has truth on its side then it represents the interests of the majority of society. And in a struggle for audience share and attention -- the truth will ultimately win . It becomes too difficult in a modern society for any oppressive force, be it a government, a pseudo-non-governmental "general authority" as Joseph describes, an oppressing class or even any social or political trend -- to suppress or bottle up the truth indefinitely because as the economy grows complex -- its development requires the circulation of a constant flow of information from all quarters and the truth comes out, whether gradually or breaking forth like a mighty river which finally bursts through a dam. |
| The medium of the truth is information. And information cannot, over time, be restrained. We can see how this works in the modern world. The Soviet economy failed to compete with the free-market capitalist economies because it could not harness the economic forces latent in "parallelity" that required the free flow of information. In both China and Singapore today, economic forces are pushing against the restrictions on information flow that the governments believe are necessary for their survival. Singapore is currently experimenting with a "filtered" version of the internet and the Chinese government is allowing and, to an extent, encouraging the linking of the internet to restricted sites in the universities and industry. |
| The governments of both China and Singapore are clearly not comfortable with such arrangements because the free flow of information will eventually undermine their stability -- but economic forces are forcing a compromise. And the same economic forces that have forced the present compromises will force others. How long can China and Singapore resist allowing their populations unrestricted access to the internet ? Ten years ? Twenty years ? It is difficult to see how they could hold out much longer than that. |
| So we return to Joseph's group of dissidents. I will argue that if they have truth on their side (and they take a scientific attitude and are willing to learn from their mistakes) -- that they will win. They will develop a set of tactics that will achieve victory -- audience share and attention at first, and, following from this (because once they have attention -- the masses will recognize that they speak the truth) -- political support from the masses. |
| But before going any further, I am going to rename the group. I am going to exercise my right as an author to censor Joseph's name from the group. Because I do not believe that Joseph has truth on his side. So I will refer to the group as the proletarian group because the assumption we are making is that the group does have truth on its side and represents the interests of the majority of society. |
| So how does our proletarian group win attention and audience share in the mediasphere ? I will argue that it does this via waging what I call "information war" against its opponents. Now the term "information war" at present refers to something else. It refers to such things as nations (or sometimes companies or other groups) sabotaging the computer systems of their opponents via information over the net -- spreading things like viruses and so forth. But I believe that the use of the term will eventually change its meaning and refer to the open political warfare of one trend against another in the mediasphere . And the object of this warfare will not be computer systems but something more powerful: human minds . And the weapons in this warfare will not be computer viruses but a different and more powerful kind of virus: ideas . |
| The communications revolution promises, in the next several decades, to very rapidly erode the barriers to the participation of the masses in political life. We will, in the period ahead, be entering an era where polemical warfare will begin its maturation from an ART practiced by a few, to a SCIENCE practiced by millions. |
| Now it is not my purpose or intention to prove to readers here that the trends which represent the truth and the genuine interests of the masses will inevitably win the information war waged in the mediasphere. The proof of the pudding , as the phrase goes, is in the eating . The value of information war will, I believe, be proven in the period ahead, and my agenda is not so much to talk about it here, with the present rather sleepy audience, as to conduct it within a wider arena. All I will say here is that I hope that those would-be proletarian activists who really wish to serve their class -- strive to keep their eyes and their minds open. |
| Now Joseph has charged that I am in favor of a most onerous, busybody censorship. I believe that we should examine his charge. I have said that if a production unit is producing toxic culture -- that it would be subject to boycott and labor actions by the masses. Let's consider what this amounts to in the context of information war in the mediasphere. |
| What does "boycott" mean in the mediasphere ? It means that people refuse to read, listen to or watch what they consider to be spam . We have an example of this at present. The majority of the xmlp will not look at Joseph's writings. Joseph blames this on various bad people. But there is another interpretation: spam does not earn respect . When Joseph equates an audience boycott with censorship -- it demonstrates that he is in a state of mind where the clarity of his reasoning ability is degraded . |
| In a future communist society, no one will have the power to impose a boycott on bad politics or bad culture except the individual members of the potential audience itself -- because the right of the individual to have unrestricted access to the mediasphere will be a norm of society upheld by all . |
| Well how about censorship by "labor action" ? Joseph has said that this will be used against dissidents. Let's consider this. Primarily this means an appeal to the workers of the production unit involved -- which says to them in effect: "your work on such and such project runs counter to the interest of the majority of society -- and we want you to know this because we do not believe you will want to devote your life energies to such a cause" . Now let's consider the effect such appeals might have in practice. |
| The proletarian group referenced above would be relatively immune from such an appeal. This is because they believe in what they are doing . In fact any production unit that creates anything in communist society would be based on the labor of workers who believe in what they are creating -- because they would have little other reason to be supporting it with their labor (after all, they are not getting paid for their work, they are not working in order to have the means to live -- and there would be no shortage of other interesting projects competing for their assistance). |
| Now what are the circumstances under which such appeals would be successful ? Primarily when the appeals were based on the truth and the power of the truth affected the motivation and consciousness of the workers involved. So what we have described so far should not actually raise too much a concern, at least among thinking people, about censorship. |
| But let's go a little further. All methods of doing things contain some potential for abuse and so let's explore the possibilities. |
| One method of abuse is false appeals -- appeals that are not based on the truth, that do not reflect the interests of the masses. The problem here is that the members of the production unit being falsely accused of producing toxic culture might be gullible and doubt themselves and believe untrue appeals. Or, similarly they might be vulnerable to the lack of respect from friends, neighbors, or the public at large -- which results from prejudices in society. And to some extent such things will undoubtedly happen. Sometimes people should stick to their guns but they don't [8-c] . But however unfortunate such events would be -- it is a bit of a stretch to call this censorship. This kind of phenomena is more analogous to incorrect or unjust peer pressure -- and is not the kind of censorship that most people are most concerned about -- because in the long run it tends to be self-correcting . That is to say that a group's belief in their mission is likely to be related to the justness of their cause -- and if their cause is really just -- they are less likely to doubt themselves and submit to the pressure of unjust and unfair accusations. Mao put it thusly: "A just cause enjoys abundant support" -- and I think that in this case Mao's grasp of the issue is deeper than Joseph's. |
| I have said that in the future, as part of the "warfare" between economic, cultural and political trends and alliances, there would be boycotts and secondary boycotts. Joseph's concern appears to be that prejudiced and ignorant masses will bring excessive pressure on progressive production units which challenge their (ie: the masses) prejudices and this would be able to shut the progressive production units down. |
| Now the first point here is that it would be difficult to prove that such things would never happen. On the contrary it is possible to imagine such a thing. Maybe in an area or country that has very strong religious prejudices, some political or cultural production which attacks religion could be stopped. |
| But what about this ? Consideration of the matter will suggest that such an event would only be a setback in the short term and would pave the way for victory in the long term . The very act of mobilizing the masses against some cultural work by a production unit would tend to raise interest and curiosity in the work of the unit. If the work represents the truth and serves the interest of the majority -- will not this interest and curiosity tend to accelerate the development of the thinking and consciousness of the masses in the long term ? Is it or is it not a good thing to be attacked by the enemy ? And maybe the defeat of the progressive production might actually help those who worked on it to consider whether they were shortcomings in their approach ? Maybe they need to better understand the terrain ? In real life everyone makes mistakes and must learn from them. It can be one thing to attack a popular prejudice and something else entirely to do so skillfully . |
| Further, let's consider what kinds of productions would be vulnerable to being stopped by such actions. Low-ratio media would be fairly immune to such tactics. Why ? Because low-ratio media can be created by very small groups and do not require resources that are vulnerable. In a future communist society, everyone would have unrestricted access to the essential technology to upload or download from the net . The needed computers and infrastructure will be omnipresent and as much available to anyone as their own voice (I think I have mentioned that even under capitalism we may end up with digital video cameras as cheap as many three-ring binders). How can a small highly dedicated group producing low-ratio media be silenced ? They cannot. Their conditions of production make them a "hardened target" that can resist indefinitely nearly any amount of pressure. |
| So what kind of media productions would be vulnerable to the kind of censorship that Joseph has described ? Well -- a media production unit that was creating something that required a lot of workers would be vulnerable if the workers were not very consolidated ideologically on the merits of the product or the principles which underlay it. High-ratio media units would be more vulnerable both because they might be using less committed or consolidated workers and also -- because they were using much larger amounts of social resources that were vulnerable to pressure and might be cut off. |
| But even in this case -- what happens ? The high-ratio media project suffers some defections and a cut-off of some resources. However the workers who remain on the project would tend to be the more committed and consolidated ones and so the project would achieve stability at a lower ratio. Instead of being a high- ratio product -- it would retreat somewhat and be a medium-ratio project. And instead of having a large audience share it would likely have a medium audience share. So in the short run the good guys would lose a battle or a skirmish. And Joseph is correct that from time to time such things might happen. But is this the end of the world ? I think that in a future communist society -- that for every battle in which there is a victory for incorrect ideas (ie: that go against the mass interest) that there will be a hundred or a thousand victories for ideas that are correct. And even in those cases where correct ideas suffer a setback and decreased audience share -- even here the setback is only temporary -- because the struggle of ideas and ideologies in society works in the long run to constantly raise the consciousness of the masses and the battle which is lost today will be won tomorrow . |
| And if we consider the matter -- I think we can see that the incorrect ideas will not suddenly disappear -- that instead they will have a certain amount of resilience . This is the way such things work. And interestingly, when I spoke in "Why is Joseph Afraid of Consciousness ?" about the struggle against incorrect ideas which go against the mass interest -- Joseph got upset and claimed that I was in favor of imprisoning and tampering with the minds of dissidents. I guess Joseph is afraid of prison. And he should be. He has built the walls of his own prison with his acts of charlatanism. |
(the masses and interactive design) |
| Joseph makes a particular point that the masses will intervene in productions as minor as soap operas. To Joseph this is something sinister. I'm not actually all that worried myself. I don't actually watch soap operas. I do not have the time because I work for a living (not to mention that these shows are generally a desert containing few human feelings other than despair and a cynical manipulation of women's insecurities designed to make them buy cosmetics). But if some section of the masses do want to watch soap operas -- why shouldn't they have an opportunity to influence the development of something that they consider (for some reason) to be important ? I doubt that the soap operas could be much worse than they are now. Most of the characters in these productions are generally white, rich, thin with standard model-like interchangeable features -- and so insincere that they would not know how to be sincere if their life depended on it. |
| Furthermore, for the masses to take a role in the evolution of this form of entertainment would only be consistent with the masses taking a role in the design and evolution in all the other types of items which they consume. As the economy becomes more complex and interactive this kind of thing will become quite common . Why make such a fuss about this ? Are the instincts of the masses really so bad that the resulting shows would be worse than what scriptwriters come up with to sell soap ? |
| And why shouldn't the viewers of some production be able to influence the selection of actors or actresses for some part ? I am sure that they would do at least as well in their selection as Joseph's "general authority" -- which if it can be a non- governmental government -- would undoubtedly select actors and actresses who can't act . |
| The role of the masses in directly influencing the appearance of some form of mass media is very limited today. I could think of no good examples that were not trivial . But Joseph finds something deeply disturbing in even a trivial role for the masses and so I thought maybe I should mention the one example I could think of. A year or two ago the post office offered to the public a chance to participate in the selection of a stamp honoring Elvis. The public got to pick a fat, old Elvis or a thin, young one. Not surprisingly they rejected the fat one. From Joseph's perspective this must be a terrible act of censorship against the fat Elvis and things like this in the future will be a "nightmare". Somehow I believe that humanity can survive the loss. |
| Joseph says that if workers understood these issues they would tell me to "Get a life!" Somehow I doubt it. I think they would tell Joseph to "Get a job!" |
be waged on Joseph's planet ? |
| But what is Joseph's own attitude on these topics ? What is his conception of what forces will shape the evolution of the media in communist society ? Does Joseph believe that there will continue to be a struggle against incorrect ideas and the remnants and dregs of thousands of years of class-based culture and the various anti-people conceptions that are component parts of this ? Or maybe Joseph believes that "after the revolution" all anti-people ideas and ideology will simply and quickly disappear ? |
| And if Joseph does acknowledge that even under communism there will continue to be a struggle between correct and incorrect ideas (ie: that history will not end) -- then how does he believe this struggle will take place if not on the initiative of and through the actions of the masses ? Will Joseph's "general authority" handle all the details of this struggle so that the masses don't have to worry their pretty little heads about such matters ? Could be. |
| Joseph has told us in part 1 that a "formal authority" is required for public opinion to manifest itself (reference: footnote 3 above). In "Why is Joseph Afraid of Consciousness ?" I discussed his simplistic solution of simply banning products that poison the environment -- and asked him if he would apply this solution to cultural products that poison people's minds. |
| But Joseph can be very coy. If Joseph really wanted to contribute to a discussion of how a system beyond capitalism could permit the rapid evolution of popular mass culture he might have clearly outlined his own views of how he thought this might take place. But who knows ? Maybe he has simply never given the matter much thought. |
| More to the point -- would Joseph's "formal authority" ban cultural productions which might pollute the popular culture ? Now I have advanced my views on the solutions I think communist society will adopt. The masses (through their cultural, political and economic organizations, through their role as cultural workers, through their role as culture consumers) will play a central and powerful role in shaping the evolution of popular culture . Joseph has rejected this solution as a "nightmare" and "anarchy" . |
| So what is left for Joseph ? Either the popular culture will need no intervention by humans at all (maybe there will be no incorrect ideas once we have a classless society) -- or all intervention will be efficiently taken care of by his formal authority -- and works not suitable for mass consumption will be banned. Hey -- what could be simpler ? |
| Of course Joseph has been very coy on this -- so we do not really know for certain. Joseph has said in reference to chemical poisoning that products would be banned -- but not "against the will of the people" and that it is "possible that a majority might support a ban" (my emphasis) [10-r] . |
| Now readers can draw their own conclusions. Who can say whether we will ever get a straight answer from Joseph ? My best guess and instincts (that is all I have to go on) leads me to consider it very likely that in Joseph's conception -- harmful cultural products will also be banned by his "general authority" -- but not "against the will of the people". If true -- this would raise the interesting question of how Joseph's "general authority" divines "the will of the people" . Probably by consulting the agency responsible for manifesting public opinion -- which turns out to be the "formal authority" . So Joseph's "general authority" which might, say, ban a harmful book, will consult Joseph's "formal authority", which manifests public opinion -- to see if banning such a book is in accord with the will of the people. Actually -- we can guess that Joseph's "formal authority" would not have to travel far to locate Joseph's "general authority". It is probably four doors down the hall. Just imagine how efficient that would be ! Here we have the roots of Joseph's opposition to the wastefulness of parallel processes. |
| Of course Joseph gives us another clue as to how his authorities would divine whether public opinion supports a ban. In the same footnote 4 as above -- Joseph tells us that it is possible that a majority supports a ban on lead-based paint because "I don't see mass demonstrations in favor of lifting the ban". This sounds like a good way to tell if public opinion supports a ban. First you ban the book and then you wait and see if mass demonstrations come up "in favor of lifting the ban". |
| And how are people supposed to know the content of a book that has been banned -- so that they can decide if it is worthwhile to demonstrate against the ban ? I'm sure that Joseph has some means for this. |
| More interesting however is a simple question. Should anyone or any formal (or informal) general (or particular) authority -- or -- even "the majority of society" -- have the authority to ban any book ? |
| Should any adult be denied the right -- under any circumstances - - to read ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING he or she wished ? |
| My answer is simple: No. |
| My view is that in future communist society it will be impossible for a book to be banned. |
| In fact, censorship (in the strict sense of a prohibition -- that can be effectively enforced -- of all access by adults to material that other adults would like them to have) is, under capitalism, very rapidly becoming very impossible. |
| This has already been discussed above. For example, the internet, by virtue of its nature, cannot be censored, filtered or curtailed against the will of users without ruinous economic consequences to the would-be regulating authority. And while the internet at present is available only to a relatively well-off or well-educated portion of the population -- it will undoubtedly, in 10 or 20 years, be available to the vast majority of inhabitants in a country like the U.S. and -- within another 20 years or so after that -- likely be available to a majority of the population of the world (even the very poor) because the technology will reach the point where it is as cheap and as easy to use as a pencil . |
| I have outlined how I believe the masses will handle bad culture. If the book was bad most people would simply choose not to read it. It would get kicked out of the popular cyberspace forums [9-c] -- but everyone who might be curious would know where to find it in the forums (or channels) with the really cheesy stuff. And some people would be curious or skeptical and want to check it out and determine for themselves whether the book's reputation as worthless was really warranted. And there would be no way to impede people from doing this because among other rights that would be defended by the entire society -- would be complete access to the net and the right to access the net privately . And if some group of people decided to make the book into a movie -- others would likely try to tell them that they were wasting their time. And if those who were making the movie persisted in their belief -- they would stick to their guns and make the movie (although the number of people they could convince to help them might be small if the book had a bad reputation). And once the movie was made most likely few would watch it -- but if others liked it they would tell their friends and post their opinions -- and references to the movie would leak out all over the net. And in the (unlikely) event that the movie turned out to be a hit -- well, you can't win 'em all . |
| And furthermore I will argue that the replacement of censorship by a struggle over selection and focus (possibly similar to the kind of dynamic sketched out above) is inevitable for social, cultural, political, economic and technological reasons and furthermore -- conforms to the most rapid possible development and evolution of human culture. |
| So we do not really know how Joseph would solve the problem of cultural products under communism that contain or promote anti- people ideology in some form. We know the action of the masses would play little if any role in this. Maybe Joseph believes that bad culture would not exist under communism and there would be no need for a struggle of correct against incorrect ideas . Or maybe Joseph has simply never given the matter much thought. And maybe Joseph will -- or maybe he won't -- tell us if his general authority could ban media if in its infinite wisdom it concluded that the masses would not demonstrate against its decision. |
| We don't know. We can't know. We must be agnostics on the question of whether Joseph's general authority (which determines and insures compliance with the "rules of behavior which must be obeyed by all") would have, so to speak, the authority to prevent adults, against their will, from having access to material on the net that some other adult would like them to access. |
| We can't know -- because Joseph has been a bit on the evasive side on this key question -- even though this question (ie: whether any authority will or should have the power to censor the net) is very important and very fundamental in a period in which a communications revolution is promising, over the next several decades, to transform or radically change nearly every sphere of human society. |
| But if we want to get a hint of Joseph's views -- we can look -- not at Joseph's theoretical declarations -- but at his practice . |
| In Joseph's Appendix to part 2, under the sub-head "Censoring the mass media", Joseph reprints a portion of my paragraph 180. In this paragraph I satirically compare Joseph's approach to that described by George Orwell in his well known book 1984 . In 1984 , Orwell described the functioning of a hypothetical single-point- of-control society even worse than Stalin's dictatorship (after which it was transparently modeled). In his book, Orwell describes the function, in this society, of the "Ministry of Truth" , whose job it was to rewrite history and to delete and alter any record of historical events that might embarrass or disprove the infallible wisdom of the great leader. |
| And in the portion of my paragraph 180 which Joseph reprints, I compare Joseph's single-point-of-control society, which is based on ideas inherited from Stalin , to that of Orwell by saying that Joseph's logic would lead to future communist society having a "Ministry of Truth" . And directly following this portion of my reprinted paragraph, Joseph makes a comment: "What an active imagination Ben Has !" |
| Really ? |
| It should probably come to no one's surprise that the Soviet government did not appreciate Orwell's book. What did ordinary Soviet citizens think of this book ? Not surprisingly they did not have an opinion. And why ? Because there was no way they could know the book existed . You see -- Stalin's police made certain that copies of that pernicious book were not allowed into the Soviet Union. If you were a Soviet citizen and you were caught with a copy of that book -- you would understand the difference between (a) the methods I have outlined for mass participation in directing the evolution of popular culture and (b) censorship. |
| Now the censorship of the Soviet state against books like 1984 was indeed reprehensible. And in censoring a book like Orwell's the Soviet state did indeed somewhat mirror the highly repressive society that Orwell described (which can be no surprise because the highly repressive Soviet state inspired Orwell and was his model for the highly repressive society in his book). |
| But Joseph took offense to my suggestion that there was any similarity between his theories of "socialism" and the "Ministry of Truth" described in Orwell's book. |
| Now it may or may not come as a surprise to some readers -- but under Joseph's leadership, the Workers' Advocate supported the actions of the Soviet police in making certain that Soviet citizens could not read for themselves what Orwell had written . |
| And this is not my imagination. |
| Now the question that comes up at this point is -- does Joseph understand that he was wrong to support the Soviet police in banning 1984 ? |
| I did not understand at the time that the Workers' Advocate was wrong to support the banning of 1984 . But I guess the point here is -- I believe I understand it now. |
| Some readers may presume that Joseph understands that he was wrong. |
| But don't count on it . |
| Now I brought this question up in something that I wrote about Joseph. I implied that Joseph still may not recognize that he was wrong to support banning 1984. It is wrong not only because |
|
(a) Stalin turned out to be a bad guy (as the hangman of Lenin's 1917 revolution) |
| but because |
| (b) even if 1984 were "counter-revolutionary" -- this would not mean that the citizens of a stable, modern state should not have the right to read it and draw their own conclusions . |
| Now if Joseph did recognize that he made an error, and especially if Joseph recognized that it was error because of both reasons (a) and (b), then one might expect that Joseph would admit the error. Why not ? It is an important question. I raised the question. Why not answer it ? |
| But Joseph did not answer the question. Maybe Joseph is embarrassed. Maybe he does not want current readers to know of his history of supporting the censorship of one of the world's most recognized books against censorship. |
| And so in the exact spot in my paragraph 180 where I had raised the issue of Joseph supporting the Soviet authorities in banning 1984 -- Joseph ended the quote. And instead of continuing the quote where I describe how he supported the censorship of the world's most famous book against censorship -- this is the place where Joseph inserts the phrase "What an active imagination Ben has!" |
| Well, one might ask, what would the younger readers of Joseph's journal think if they saw the full text of paragraph 180 -- where I discuss Joseph's history of supporting censorship ? Would they still think that Ben has an active imagination ? Well it turns out that Joseph reprints my paragraph 180 in a three page section following the appendix. |
| But if you look at paragraph 180 in the section which excerpts my work, you will find it is an exact duplicate of what Joseph quoted four pages earlier. Paragraph 180 is followed by paragraph 181. And in between, at the very end of paragraph 180, are three little dots. |
| So Joseph's history of supporting censorship is replaced by the phrase "What an active imagination Ben has!" in one spot and by three little dots in another. |
| Well, one might ask, what would younger readers think if they read the full unexcerpted text of my article and discovered how Joseph deleted reference to his previous support for censorship ? But readers of Joseph's journal might not be likely to read my unexcerpted text because unless they are on my e-mail list -- they have no way to get it . My e-mail address (and our local public po box) was deliberately omitted from Joseph's journal. Joseph refused (without explanation) my request that he print my address (together with notice in his journal that I had replied to his attack) -- so that readers of his journal would be discouraged from an effort to contact me and get a copy and read it for themselves. |
| So Joseph has placed something of a hermetic seal around his history of supporting censorship. One might be tempted to interpret his actions as current censorship to cover-up his previous history of supporting censorship . In the world of 1984 there were these little devices called memory holes in the walls of all rooms through which any scrap of old newspaper could be inserted where it would be whisked to the "central archives" (actually a big furnace). It looks like my reference to Joseph's past support of censorship has been declared double-plus ungood by the CVO's big brother and has gone down the ol' memory hole. And so that his deletions will not be discovered -- my address has gone down the memory hole also. |
| Now the issue here I think is this. Joseph did not want to give his current readers my address because to do so would be to "Ben's advantage" in his struggle against me. Yet by refusing my request that my address be made available -- Joseph shows that he does not trust his own readers to see the 90% of my material that he has not reprinted. And by failing to trust his own readers to read whatever they wish and draw their own conclusions -- Joseph reveals his real stand . |
| I must apologize to readers for dragging this last matter on for so long. Sometimes this polemic stuff can get a little dull -- and I thought some comedy might provide a measure of relief. There is a 1962 movie called Dr. Strangelove . In it Peter Sellers plays a somewhat Kissingerian scientific expert who used to work for the nazis. Dr. Strangelove is advising the U.S. president on the prospects for a nuclear war with the Soviets. And as Dr. Strangelove gets excited his right hand shoots up in a "Heil Hitler" salute and he must drag it down very violently with his left hand. Somehow reading Joseph denounce me so violently for "censorship" while denying his own readers access to my address and hence to 90% of what I write -- brought to mind this very memorable scene. |
| My program for Joseph and his supporters is very simple: act like grown-ups . |
| No one can say to what degree Joseph is corrupt . |
| We can only observe his actions . |
| Joseph is acting like a hack . |
| If Joseph really has valid points to make against me -- why can't he make them calmly and do so without distorting my views ? |
| Generally in our experience -- when someone who is acting in a way that is corrupt -- is confronted -- their actions tell us a great deal about their real motivations . Joseph does not seem to want to recognize that there is anything wrong at all with his campaign of distortion and incitement against me and others. |
| No amount of emotionalism, no amount of wrapping himself in the flag of Engels -- or of Lenin -- can protect Joseph from the truth that his efforts to maintain his position as full-time supported theoretician have led him to commit comic atrocities against thought and logic . |
| Joseph should clean-up his act and get a job . |
| Joseph's single-point-of-control theory is not Marxism. It is associated with Marxism to a large degree in the popular mind because of the particular way in which Lenin's 1917 revolution met defeat . The development of Marxism as theory guiding the liberation of humanity from all the monstrosities and absurdities of capitalism -- requires that it free itself of all traces of the idea that a stable modern society can only organize the development of its economy, culture and politics by concentrating all its energies through a single point of control . |
| The present discussion is taking place in something that resembles a sleepy, stagnant pond . Soon enough it will be taken to a wider world . In the meantime all readers are invited to participate in the discussion, to find ways, large or small, to participate. The discussion would be much richer if it is more than just Joseph and myself. |
| The discussion between Joseph and myself is only taking place at all because of the power of e-mail. Joseph's attacks on me are now the front page of his journal. This is good. But this discussion is only taking place at all because both Joseph and Mark have learned that I have the ability to compel them to respond. I have this ability (should I make the very considerable effort) because it is difficult for Joseph to maintain the loyalty of even his sleepy and insular supporters when I am wielding the whip of public humiliation. Joseph is pretending that e-mail is not playing a significant part in this discussion but anyone who examines it can see differently. E- mail is playing a significant role in this discussion because it is a medium of communication that is beyond Joseph's ability to control . Joseph's stand, both in content and form, makes it very difficult for his readers to get an accurate picture of my views. If Joseph claims that his journal is a suitable environment for discussion or debate -- my challenge to him is walk the walk -- and not try to cover up the bankruptcy of his positions by attempting to so blatantly tilt the playing field . |
| It may take Joseph a while to grasp the full depth of his bankruptcy but in the meantime he can take certain small steps to clean up his act. These steps are probably irrelevant in a practical sense but they might be valuable symbolically because they may represent the first step in Joseph's recovery -- as a partial acknowledgment that he has made very serious errors of judgment: |
| If Joseph's readers want to contact me and hear my own arguments in my own words -- Joseph should not block their access to my views. Joseph should print our e-mail address (and our new public po box if we have it by then) in the next issue of his journal so that his readers have an opportunity for full access to my views. |
| Joseph has devoted 16 pages of his journal to mostly nonsensical attacks on my supposed anarchism. Why not give me half that much space (eight pages) in which to present my responses to his readers in my own words without having Joseph choose which sentences to present and which to delete ? Since I am the author of my own works -- my writings would be more integral and coherent and better represent my views were I to select them myself. |
let's have action in real time |
| Readers should have the opportunity to follow the discussion between Joseph and myself in something approaching "real time". The printing of my views should not be delayed for the eight or eighty months it may take for Joseph to attempt to figure out how to reply without tripping over his own contradictions . If Joseph cannot respond quickly then his response to me should not necessarily appear simultaneous with mine. If I can respond more quickly by virtue of the advantage of having the truth on my side -- then I have won that advantage "fair and square" and readers should have access to my views all that much sooner . |
| The attempt by Joseph and his lieutenant Mark to equate "cooperative anarchy" with "the anarchy of production" will eventually become a textbook example of how sectarianism attempts to attack theoretical development which it finds threatening. Joseph should admit that discussion on these topics is not helped by an effort to convert every half-word, half-phrase or half- sentence into proof that his opponents are black hats. Joseph should admit that I am raising real points worth discussion and should encourage his supporters to participate in this discussion in full recognition of the possibility that I might on occasion have something useful to say. Joseph should also encourage his supporters to accept my offer to send them free printed copies of the recent ongoing polemic. |
| In view of Joseph's past support for the censorship of 1984 , Joseph should clarify whether he now recognizes this as an error for BOTH reasons (a) and (b) as outlined above. In view of the importance of computer communications networks in the future and their inevitable merger with and development into mass media -- Joseph should clarify his stand on whether his conception of communist society includes an authority with the power to prevent adults from either uploading or downloading any material they so please to and from the universal net . If Joseph has given this matter any real thought at all -- then this should not take him another eight months . |
| Finally, Joseph should investigate getting a job or job- training. His reintegration into the capitalist workforce will become a powerful factor in removing the pressure of insecurity which is contributing to his distorted outlook and contribute to his eventual rehabilitation as a servant of the proletariat who deals out only "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". |
The development of communist theory has come into collision with
the material necessities involved in the maintenance of Joseph's
impoverished but comfortable (to him) spam-producing lifestyle.
Joseph is not a "bad person" . Joseph wants, in his heart, to
serve the proletariat. But Joseph's denial of his objective
situation makes it an objective necessity that both:
a) the theories he upholds
(which have so greatly damaged the
communist movement for seven decades), and
b) the charlatan methods
that Joseph uses to try to block discussion |
| [8-c] There is a point here regarding Ray's concerns in 1988. If Ray had stuck to his guns at that time -- the history of the party might have been very different. Ray had a fair amount of clarity that we were drifting away from our real goals and that we needed to establish a solid theoretical foundation for theory that could serve the modern world. But if we consider Ray's failure to resist pressure to be his fault as an individual -- we will miss the real point. |
| The proletariat needs to have the kind of an organization where people can feel comfortable sharing their concerns and not have to risk destroying the organization in order to do so. One of the reasons that Ray backed down was that per the bullshit party norms of the time he did not feel that he had the right to talk about his concerns outside the CC (ie: it was "CC business"). But if someone cannot talk about their concerns it is easy to lose perspective. It was "the system" that was at fault in 1988. We did not have an organization based on principles that would have allowed us to more easily share our concerns -- that would have allowed information to flow more freely. |
| I have gone into this in much greater depth elsewhere. Our model of party norms was based on Stalin's mummification of Lenin's theory in a manner analogous to the way Joseph's vision of future society is based on the single-point-of-control theory inherited from Stalin. |
| We cannot build an organization (or organizations) out of solitary "supermen" from another planet. In real life our strength is a product of our interaction with others. The development and integration of our cortical (intellectual) and limbic (emotional) processes requires -- as a condition for the full realization of their potential -- the free and open interaction of our energies within the environment of an emotionally supportive community which shares our guiding principles. |
| Ultimately our party collapsed because we were unable to act on this simple truth -- we were unable to "put our heads together" and sort out the path forward. |
| This view is in sharp contrast with (and direct opposition to) Joseph's view -- that the problem was that the majority of our party "lost faith" in Marxism. But Marxism is not a religion. What was lost was faith in the single-point-of-control theory inherited from Stalin. |
| But losing our party is not the point. If we can learn from our experience we will find that the value of this lesson is vastly greater than the steep price we have had to pay to learn it . The potential of our future action to serve our class is immense . If we exercise our abilities as men and women to be materialists, sum up our experience and act on the basis of what we have learned -- we can fulfill our ambitions to lead our class and to storm heaven . |
| [9-c] It also seems safe to say that, unlike in contemporary capitalist culture, people in a communist society will (by choosing various kinds of personal media filters and by participating in the mass discussion and debate over the forms of media visible from or intrusive in public spaces) have the right not to be bombarded with words, sounds and images that they consider to be offensive or to constitute an assault on their "inner world". |
| [10-r] "will of the people ... majority support a ban" (reference footnote 4 of Part 2, CV #4, page 54, 1st column) |
| It is of interest that Fred also considers the sketch that I have drawn of how a future communist economy might function -- to be highly unrealistic -- and of such a nature that, even were it to exist, it would rapidly collapse back into a market-regulated system (ie: capitalism). Like Joseph, Fred also opposes discussion of this entire subject (he considers it a diversion from more important work) but unlike Joseph, Fred is open and straightforward in his opposition to discussion. |
| Fred opposes my conceptions from a different angle than Joseph however. Fred invokes what economists have called "the tragedy of the commons". And from a number of angles Fred's criticisms (despite being mistaken) are more interesting than Joseph's. But before going into Fred's views, I should first give a little background: |
| In the local area, over the last few years we have studied portions of Marx's "Capital" and had discussions on how capitalism works. Among the topics we discussed was the role pricing mechanisms played in establishing consumption-production equilibriums. In one of my documents I used the example of a machinist who is deciding on one of several ways of making a part. One method will save him several hours but will involve the consumption of several aluminum jigs (ie: small pieces of aluminum that will be used to clamp the part and hold it steady - - but which will be destroyed in the machining process). The machinist needs to decide if the consumption of the jigs will be worth the labor he will be saved. The question is -- on what basis will the decision be made ? One of the advantages of the money system is that it permits decision makers some extremely easy ways of making decisions like this. The machinist knows the approximate dollar value of his time to the company and the cost of the jigs. In real situations like this it is nearly always better to use the jigs because they are quite cheap. |
| But without a money system HOW would the decision be made so that the decision is made correctly and easily ? After all -- if a method of machining the part required consuming not cast aluminum jigs but rather the consumption of machined titanium parts -- the correct decision would likely be to use another method. |
| Without some system of insuring that the result of some action creates more wealth than is consumed in the process -- you end up with the typical wastage that characterized the late Soviet Union: feeding pigs subsidized bread because grain is too expensive or peasants taking subsidized jet trips to and from Moscow to buy back at subsidized prices the same vegetables that they grew on their rural collectives. |
| So the pricing mechanism under capitalism serves the function of keeping things in equilibrium. The cheaper aluminum jigs become -- the more of them will be consumed. And what is going on under the dollar values of the items involved are mechanisms that tend to conserve labor time. The aluminum jigs are cheap because they do not require many labor hours to create and the skill of the labor involved does not need to be high. Machined titanium parts, on the other hand, are not cheap because their creation requires lots of labor hours (and highly skilled labor at that). So if workers used titanium jigs in order to make a part -- they are wasting money under the capitalist system -- but under that or any other way of organizing decisions and keeping track of things -- they are still squandering labor hours -- consuming products containing hundreds of labor hours to produce products that could be made with dozens of labor hours. |
| Now the example I have used might be somewhat simplistic (and it is not too realistic because even if it they were free -- no one would want to use jigs made of titanium). But the essential point applies to a very wide variety of economic decision making. Decisions must be made so that the greatest net wealth is created via economic actions. |
| One of the problems with the capitalist system is that it cannot measure the really social cost of an action. If making a product pollutes the environment or destroys an ecosystem -- and the company can get away with it (which by and large they generally do) the social cost (of poisoned people -- and the cost to future generations that would have considered the ecosystem to be a source of untold wealth) -- is borne by "society" (ie: the masses at large, present and future generations) and no where enters the profit/loss calculations used to make the decision. Such costs are generally called "externalities" by economists. Capitalism has a problem with "externalities" because -- seen in a general sense -- nearly all the ills of capitalism can be seen as externalities -- corrupt political systems, aggressive war, populations kept in ignorance and misery, social injustice -- these are all products of a system in which human economic actions are guided only by what the marketplace can measure and return to the individual decision-maker. And if the real costs are borne by someone else -- this is a problem that, while it can be reformed to this or that degree, is fundamentally insoluble under capitalism. |
| So this is the kind of thing we have been discussing locally. Various other similar examples have come up. In a future communist economy, where there is no money -- how would you decide to do things ? Currently if you decide you need a driveway to your home (assuming that you have a home), you might check out the prices for asphalt and concrete driveways. You might compare their different features and their relative costs and make a decision. Is the extra cost of concrete worth to you the extra money ? |
| Now -- in a communist economy that did not use money -- how would you make the same decision ? It might be that if you need a driveway (assuming you lived in a home) that all you needed to do was make a call and some people would come out and give you a driveway. It would not necessarily "cost you" anything at all. It would simply be given to you because (a) you need it, and (b) society can afford it. The assumption is that in giving this wealth to you, this wealth will flow back to society later in some unspecified form (either your increased happiness will result in the generation of happiness for others -- or similarly -- that your health will be better because you will be breathing less dust and hence you will be able to live longer and contribute more, etc). |
| But the question here is this: will you want a concrete or asphalt driveway ? How will you decide ? How will you weigh the merits of each option when the money cost does not exist and yet you have an interest in minimizing the expenditure of social wealth ? So it can be seen that this example is essentially the same as the first, but in a slightly different form. |
Diamond Drills vs. Hardened Steel Drills |
| In a polemic against me, Fred brought up another example (these examples are all essentially the same but it is useful for purposes of visualization to deal with a variety of examples and we have also discussed cans of tuna fish in a grocery). In "A Layman's Guide to Infotopia" (3-24-95), under the subhead "Economy without coordination" Fred comments on Joseph's Neo- Conservatism (part 1) and says that it effectively anticipates and demolishes the article I wrote 5 days later in response to it (ie: "Why is Joseph Afraid of Consciousness?" ). Here is what Fred says: |
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| Personally I often tend to find what Fred writes difficult to follow but I think we can figure out here what Fred is saying. Fred is asking: how is the guy using the drill to know whether he should use a diamond drill or hardened steel drills ? |
| If the drills themselves have no cost to the worker -- then how can he gage whether or not he will make the best decision (or even, at worst, consume more wealth than he creates) were he to use a diamond drill ? Fred is not arguing that the worker involved does not give a shit about maximizing social wealth. Fred (at least here) gives part of my argument the benefit of the doubt (ie: that the worker is motivated to make the decision best in accord with the needs of society) and instead argues simply from a single perspective -- a decision needs to be made that requires information -- where will the relevant information come from and how can it possibly be integrated ? |
| In economic theory such an argument is often referred to as "the Tragedy of the Commons" . In essence such an argument holds that if resources are made available to people for free -- then they will be treated as worthless and wasted (and will eventually be used up) and social wealth will be squandered and distributed much less efficiently than if people had to pay for them. Put in other words, it holds that people are selfish and everyone will try to take more than their fair share from the common pot -- if they can get away with it. And hence that the idea of a "common pot" is a starry-eyed dream and not too realistic. |
| But the "common pot" is actually one of the central ideas of communism. And if we are real communist theoreticians then we must reply to the "tragedy of the Commons" argument. |
| Of course Joseph has a reply. You simply have a "general authority" dole out from the common pot to insure that each allocation of resources is wise. You remove the decision from the hands of the machinist on which drill to use. You "kick the decision upstairs" . Yeah, that's the ticket ! You just make a central plan on how to distribute all the goods and labor and everything else and then nothing gets wasted or duplicated (with needless competition) and there is no "anarchy" because everything has been neatly planned. Some super-smart central planning agency (with help from various layers of sub-agencies and so forth below it -- and helpful suggestions from workers -- Joseph will not allow the masses to take independent economic action but he will let them make suggestions to the proper authorities) figures out "everything" including exactly how many left-handed screws of a certain size will be needed for the entire economy. And then everybody else simply follows the plan. Hey, what's the big problem, anyhow ? |
| The problem is that as soon as the economy becomes sufficiently complex -- such planning always breaks down and proves to produce far less wealth than even ordinary free-market capitalism. This, in a nutshell, is why the Soviet Union was sunk in the face of competition in the world market from the U.S., Europe and Japan. This is because real economies always involve developments that are not susceptible to accurate prediction and such super- centralized planning ends up overlooking important developments and proves to be inflexible. From the high perch of the central- planner -- maybe the plan looks brilliant . From the workers' eye view on the ground, however, it ends up looking pretty stupid . Trying to run a complex economy in a modern society on the basis of such a central plan is more or less equivalent to trying to fight a war on the basis of a plan where the outcome of each battle has been predicted in advance. |
| In a real economy in a modern society, many decisions need to be made on the spot by people "on the ground". Parallel decision- making must be made by participants who use their brains to analyze local conditions . I have gone into this more elsewhere (ie: TCE) and will not repeat myself here (if any in the xmlp find this insufficient or unclear -- write to me -- the rest of the world has long known all of this). In fact corporations in the free-market economy of today -- are finding that they must learn how to "push decision-making downstairs" because otherwise decision-making is too slow to avoid the cruel fate of being eaten by their competition. |
| Of course if any planning agency could plan the entire economy -- it would be Joseph's "general authority" -- which has already accomplished the amazing trick of being a non-governmental government elected without elections from political parties without politics. |
with "the Tragedy of the Commons" |
| So how do I believe our worker in the future would decide whether to request diamond or hardened steel drills ? (Or -- somewhat equivalently -- how does our consumer decide whether he wants a concrete or asphalt driveway ?) One key issue, as discussed above, is that, in a communist economy, the decision would be "pushed down" as far as is both practical and possible. This is because the worker at the point of production (or the consumer at the point of consumption) is "closest to the action" in terms of weighing and evaluating the local conditions and the real needs - - and the real point of all this is to develop methods of harnessing the brainpower of those at the points of production and consumption (ie: utilizing "distributed intelligence"). |
| In some ways the idea of "pushing down" decision making is analogous to current developments in the "quality control" function in modern capitalist manufacturing and service operations. It used to be, for example, that in a factory, one worker might assemble two parts together and another worker is assigned the exclusive function of verifying that the right parts have been put together in the right way. The reason for the division of labor, under capitalism, is obvious. The first worker may not have any real incentive to do the job right (if he thinks he can get away with it). After all, the capitalist factory is exploiting him and he will likely be aware of this exploitation whether at a conscious or unconscious level -- and may have an incentive to try to "cheat the system". |
| However, even under capitalism, many companies, under the pressure of competition, are experimenting with methods of combining the "work" and the "quality" functions into the same person. The reasons why are profound and go far beyond the labor savings of a separate worker. The development of labor productivity requires that the path of information flow between the action/behavior and its measurement/perception/feedback be as short and direct and free and unimpeded as possible . The speed and bandwidth of this information path should ideally be infinite. The two ends of the information path should ideally merge into the same point. Put in less theoretical terms: it is the guy who does the actual work who has the greatest potential ability to understand what is really going on . If he can be motivated to do so -- he will always be able to do a better job of insuring real quality -- than some person attempting to make a "measurement" of quality based on some formal or informal checklist of specifications (some of which are invariably important and some of which are bullshit). |
| And the merger of work with its measurement -- and the impact of this on labor productivity -- in its most general theoretical sense -- is the fundamental lever -- the driving necessity which will lead to the overthrow of capitalism . Under capitalism, it is the "market" which measures the value of work (ie: economic activity). But the capitalist market cannot handle "externalities" (including not simply things like pollution -- but the inevitable division of society into antagonistic classes, corruption of all political systems, war and militarism, the wastage of human and material resources, the constant pumping of insincerity into the culture and popular consciousness, ignorance, injustice, oppression, etc) -- cannot measure the real cost to society of economic actions and direct these actions to fully benefit society. And just as capitalism cannot direct economic activity to best serve the interests of the workers (and society as a whole) -- so also -- any central planning mechanism that "kicks decision- making upstairs" will tend to lengthen the information path or impede the flow of information between "hand, eye and brain" (ie: between economic activity and its measurement/feedback mechanism) and become a fundamental barrier blocking the development of labor (and consumption) productivity . |
| It is only under communism that the authentic merger of work and its measurement can take place -- and external carrot/stick/measurement dictate by the market/plan can be replaced by internal measurement and guidance -- and the incentive to try to "cheat the system" and implement the philosophy of "better to look good than to be good" can truly be overcome. |
| I explore these questions in "TCE" but for now -- we must return to the question raised by Fred: how is the worker to know which drill he should use ? |
| In the discussion below, I will treat this decision as if it were being made by the individual, since most often it is individuals that make decisions. But we also know that important decisions must in some way be guided by the collective. The worker as an "isolated atom" would never be able to know what to do. With consultation with other workers, however, with guidance from the rest of society, he is empowered. But how can this consultation and guidance take place ? This, ultimately, is the question raised by both Joseph and Fred. How is the worker supposed to measure the benefit to society of his decisions ? How is the guy supposed to know what to do ? |
| I think there must be two parts to this answer. First, we can look at what information the worker will have on hand to help him make the best decision. Secondly, we can look at the self- correcting mechanisms inherent in the economy that will come into play to restore an equilibrium if the worker (or workers) begin to make too many poor decisions. |
| Under capitalism the worker (or his foreman, who is often the person making the decision) has all the relevant information about the drill summed up in a single number -- the cost of the drill in terms of the universal money commodity. The foreman simply has to calculate the extent to which use of a diamond drill will allow him to lower his labor costs and compare this number to the price of the diamond drill (we will leave the costs of steel drills out of this equation because they are so comparatively cheap). This is an easy method and one well-suited to capitalism. |
| In a communist economy the decision must also be easy to make. In fact it must be easier -- because the more complex an economy is -- the greater will be the proportion of the total economic activity consumed in making such decisions. The decision must also be better than that made under capitalism. One of the problems with the money system of making decisions is that the money system cannot take into account the "externalities" (ie: the true social cost flowing from an economic decision, whether it be pollution of the environment, depletion of a resource or a change in the conditions of child-care at a factory that will impact the emotional development of the workers' children). |
| So under communism, the decision on whether or not to use a diamond drill must both (a) be faster and easier to make and (b) better reflect the real costs (or impact) to society -- than under capitalism. |
| But at the same time we should rid ourselves of a fallacy that seems to occur at this point. We are not talking about a system that will make the very best decision. Such a thing would be impossible. Fred has pointed out why. The information required to make the best decision is essentially infinite . In theory we must recognize that every particular situation is in some respects unique. You cannot, as the saying goes, step in the same river twice (because it has changed, is no longer quite the same river as when you stepped in it the first time). Using a diamond drill on a Monday may not be quite the same as using one on a Wednesday. Using a diamond drill made in Pittsburgh may not be the same as using one from Bangladesh (even if the drills are identical -- because, for example, there may be a push to use products from less developed parts of the world such as Bangladesh -- as part of speeding up development there and creating a less imbalanced world economy). |
| So we must rid ourselves of the fallacy that we must make the very best decision. Because the information required to do so (not to mention the computation required to analyze and integrate this information) is infinite. Rather -- the issue is that we simply require a system that will make better decisions than are possible under capitalism . In fact, as communism continues to develop, humanity's abilities to collect and integrate information to make economic decisions will, we can safely predict, develop in ways beyond the powers of our limited imaginations. |
| So what information will the worker (under communism the decision-making will be "pushed down" to the worker but will be assisted by communications technology and the free flow of information) know about the diamond drill ? |
| Well first let's consider the various indices. In short, there will be a lot of information easily available to the worker -- and while only a small portion of it will turn out to be relevant -- let's survey what will be out there. Access to this information might be as easy (or easier) as scanning a bar-coded part number glued onto the handle of the drill and looking at a graphical display on a computer monitor (I will try to discuss this with examples of present-day technology but we can also keep in mind that technical people are telling us that eventually computer monitors will be embedded in people's watches and glasses and that the cost of this technology will be close to zero). |
| Well first might be the labor time index. This could be a composite of various sub-indices. Essentially it would be a number representing the number of human labor hours contained in the diamond drill. Of course any such number must to some extent be a fiction, an estimate (but we don't need a "perfect" number, only one that is "good enough"). Anyone interested would be able to "drill down" into the number representing labor hours for the drill (this would be as easy as clicking a spot on the graph with a mouse) and the components of the labor hour composite index could be displayed. Labor time could be viewed in categories such as skilled vs. unskilled labor, geographical dispersion of the labor, and so forth (remember what we said earlier -- there may be a push to use products from developing regions such as Bangladesh). |
| Such information as described above would be relatively easy to collect and integrate in a modern economy with advanced computer and communications technology. The hardware and software infrastructure would already exist and be as ubiquitous as electricity. The vast majority of the "work" to collect and integrate the information would be accomplished automatically by software. What would be difficult (the hard part) is making the estimates accurate -- but as we pointed out above -- the estimates can serve their function quite well even if they are not completely accurate. |
| A second kind index might be an environmental index which could be a composite of several factors. Three factors come to mind most immediately. (a) ecosystem destruction, (b) environmental pollution and (c) depletion of non-renewable resources, such as petroleum. This index (or indices) would not necessarily come in the form of a number (ie: like money or labor hours) but might come in the form of something like a grade, or a rating within a range. For example, the highest grade would promote usage, and the lowest grade might simply be: a skull and crossbones symbol - - meaning: do not use -- this product poisons people, puts excessive stress on an ecosystem, is being boycotted, or is a product of a grouping with which we are "at war". Now this brings us to an interesting question: Who (or what) would assign the ratings ? |
applied to pollution from hamburgers |
| By Joseph's logic all ratings would be assigned by a single general formal authority in a non-political way. A rating of "yes" would mean that you can use something, and a rating of "no" would mean that you can't (ie: that the product is banned). Hey -- what could be more simple ? |
| But real life is often a bit more complicated. Joseph acts like a charlatan when he asserts that all such decisions are binary and easy to make. "This product will poison hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh. Ban it. This paint contains lead. Ban it." |
| But real life throws up many situations for which the boundaries are less clear. It is reported, for example, that a good portion of certain types of air pollution in the Los Angeles basin (possibly as much as 50%) is caused by particulate matter from the cooking of hamburgers in fast food joints. This air pollution undoubtedly shortens the life of a great many people and can even be considered a form of gradual poison. Now should we ban hamburgers in LA or not -- oh Great and Wise Joseph ? You've already got the comrades in LA pissed off at you plenty. If you forbid them from eating their favorite hamburgers -- they may break from your influence entirely. |
| Who decides how serious pollution from hamburgers really is ? Under Joseph's system we cannot predict whether hamburgers would be banned but we do know that such a decision will be made by an infallible general authority (doubtless in consultation with a group of infallible experts) in an atmosphere completely devoid of all politics or all conflicting human interests -- and that there will be no need for the masses to worry their pretty little heads about the matter. |
| In real life a range of compromises and various kinds of trade- offs always come up. Can emission control devices be installed in fast-food restaurants ? More important, can a health campaign mobilize energy existing in society to persuade the masses to eat less red meat and less fried foods for health reasons ? (Whoops -- Joseph will denounce me for "tampering with the brains" of workers again.) |
| Joseph's reduction of all such decisions to extreme cases is indeed the mark of a charlatan, which is why I compared his attempt to whip up emotions over "a few hundred thousand poisoned Bangladeshis" to Rush Limbaugh's methods and Bush's Willy Horton campaign. And our most cynical and desperate Joseph, when I respond by showing how easily and effectively the masses could shut down any such factory or factories poisoning so many people -- responds by conjuring up "thousands and thousands of wars" involving "boycotts, strikes and infiltration" "for each decision, big or little , in which there is not unanimity" [11-r] and describes this as "the routine and ordinary method by which workers will resolve any differences" [12-r] -- or, in other words -- that society will be a "nightmare" [13-r] and the trains will not run on time without Joseph's supreme and all-wise general authority to mediate and arbitrate and pass judgment on all conflicts. |
| In real life, the complexity of such decisions follows, like so much else, a bell curve (whoops! -- I better be careful or Joseph will denounce me for not denouncing the racist book of the same name) -- in which one end of the curve represents decisions which are very simple , clear and easy to make, and the opposite end represents decisions of enormous complexity and the middle represents decisions of "average" complexity . And the charlatan Joseph seeks to make us think that the entire curve is represented by the kinds of examples typically found only on one extreme end. Joseph lives in a world where everyone is 7 feet tall. How lucky he is. But the rest of us live on planet Earth which where life is not so simple and easy as on Joseph's planet where the inhabitants are supported so they have time to write this kind of nonsense and call it anti-revisionist theory. |
| Since Joseph's general formal authority will not actually be able to provide the ratings -- who will ? The short answer here is: anybody who wants to. All sorts of rating groups would have an incentive to emerge and play a role because influencing consumption and production decisions would advance one or another set of politics, policies, principles and agendas concerning how society shifts and allocates its resources. Many rating groups may be attached to economic, cultural or political trends but others might not. Of course any ratings group that wishes to attain influence in affecting decisions would have to strive very hard to make ratings that conform to the broad, common, present and future interests of the majority of society -- and hence to win respect for its ratings over time. |
| And this brings us to the fact that all economic, cultural and political agendas revolve around production and consumption decisions and so all trends would wish to influence these decisions. And any trend which wanted to influence -- the worker who is trying to decide whether or not to use a diamond drill -- would have some means to play a role in assigning a rating to it in some way. I hope readers will forgive me for not being more specific at this point. Sketching out how some of these developments are likely to emerge is useful in assisting ourselves to visualize some of the ways in which future communist society may function. At the same time, the sketches I have created here are limited by the nature of speculation and can, at best, be only a poor and pale foreshadow of actual practices that may emerge. |
| Finally, we can mention one final kind of index -- one which will be the most important index most of the time to most workers. Decision-making takes time. Under communism decisions need to be made in a way which is better than under capitalism -- but they also need to be made in a way which is at least as fast (and in fact faster). Every time a worker wants to make a decision over what kind of drill to use he will not want to drill down into a immense assortment of indices, information, fact and opinion of various shades. This would be like reading all the polemics which Joseph and Mark and myself hurl at each other. This would paralyze the economy much more than the strikes and boycotts of which Joseph is so much afraid. |
| The quickest and most effective way to make a good decision in such circumstances is to simply "look around" and see what others are doing. Workers and consumers will not see themselves as isolated atoms in a sea -- but will harness the decision-making brainpower of others. It will not be necessary that a lot of time, effort and energy be poured into each and every decision. Because so many economic decisions are similar to each other -- it is only necessary that a very small percentage of the decisions are carefully and consciously thought about -- for these types of arrangements to serve the needs of the masses far better than capitalist market methods (because in practice, using a diamond drill on a Monday is pretty much like using one on a Wednesday -- most of the time). |
| In general, as under capitalism, most people, most of the time, will carry out activity in "the usual and accustomed" manner -- and this will tend to work out just fine. This works because information and brainpower would be effectively shared -- those times when workers and consumers do spend some effort carefully weighing options and priorities are the moments when intelligence and consciousness enters and shapes the production and consumption processes -- and there would be little need to constantly reinvent the wheel every time a worker needs to pick up a tool. |
| Therefore the most practical and time saving of all indices are those that indicate what is being done by other people in similar circumstances, and what is being done by people whose principles, values, judgment and opinion you trust and respect. And this, also, will be available, to a large and practical degree, when our worker wands in the engraved bar-code on the diamond drill. |
| Now so far I have only sketched out some of the ways in which a worker may make a decision over whether to use a diamond drill or several hardened steel drills. And the methods I have described could all play a role and could all be useful. But the real test of any system of doing things -- is to examine what kind of self- correcting mechanisms come into play when things "go wrong" . If diamond drills continue to be scarce (note: they may not be because techniques are currently being worked on that would make diamond coatings cheap enough to put on razor blades) and workers use them as if they were plentiful -- then eventually things get out of equilibrium. At a certain point a shortage of diamond drills asserts itself. The worker reaches for a diamond drill and the bin is empty. |
| Our question is this: how does the out-of-equilibrium situation (ie: the diamond drill crisis) come about and how is it resolved in a way that keeps everything smoothly functioning and brings about a transition to a more stable equilibrium (ie: where diamond drills are reserved for situations where they are really needed and are not squandered by people who are either selfish or ignorant) ? |
| In complex systems in real life -- equilibriums are constantly being broken and re-established on a new basis. This would be happening constantly in a communist economy. Actually the situation described above (the diamond drill crisis) is only one of four kinds of out-of-equilibrium conditions. The four different conditions can be categorized by what the nature of the "correct" solution would be: |
Problem: Not enough diamond drills
--------------------------------------
1) Solution: Consume less drills
2) Solution: Manufacture more drills
|
Problem: Too many diamond drills
------------------------------------
3) Solution: Consume more drills
4) Solution: Manufacture less drills
|
| I will deal mainly with situation (1) above and describe how diamond drill consumption would be lowered such that those consumers who actually have the greatest real need for diamond drills would get them. Readers will probably be able to picture how the other situations might work: |
|
2) Diamond drill consumers organize to either
increase the productivity of diamond drill production
or get more capacity on-line. 3) Diamond drill producers conduct a campaign to "advertise" (maybe not the best word to use since it implies commercialism) the usefulness of their drills 4) Diamond drill producers realize there is not that much need for their drills and a portion of drill production capability is liquidated (and skilled labor and resources are freed up to be distributed amongst a host of worthwhile and deserving projects). |
| For the sake of simplicity I am leaving out those situations that involve combinations of the above and also situations that interact with other kinds of products. Rather, let's go back to situation (a) and consider it in more detail. |
the Congress of Diamond Drill Consumers |
| In the above whimsical sub-head I outline my solution to the diamond drill crisis. Of course it appears to me to be somewhat unlikely that there would actually exist congresses of diamond drill producers or consumers (or even joint congresses of diamond drill producers and consumers). There would, after all, be a very large number of different kinds of products and services and putting together an actual congress for each and every one of them would imply quite a bit of work. |
| But if we step back a bit I think we can see that I am using a general method -- of considering the actions of mass organizations and meetings of various kinds. And in particular, when we consider the possibilities opened up with the development of cyberspace -- we see that it would be relatively easy to have meetings in cyberspace which do not require that all the participants actually be either in the same place or the same time in order to do the same kind of work that would be accomplished at a congress. Hence we could have virtual congresses or cybercongresses or, if we use the kinds of names that have actually come up, we would call them forums . |
| Workers who produce these products, whether we are talking about drills or diamond films, would have little difficulty tracking the usage of the offspring of their labor. Computer technology makes it very easy to create data bases to collect statistics and usage patterns for such things. It is very good at these types of things. The modern economy is moving in the direction of becoming transparent . This means that by and large workers will know what becomes of their products. They will be able to talk directly to those who fail to properly appreciate their efforts. The workers who misuse diamond drills may find video-mail marked "urgent" awaiting them when they show up in the morning. The v- mail would be from a group of diamond drill producers and would require a response. The world is becoming transparent and it is becoming interactive . |
| And in a world where there are no commodities -- this does not mean that there is no exchange whatsoever. The exchange that will exist is the exchange of production for consumption . And high-quality production will insist on high-quality consumption. |
| I produce a diamond drill -- and I allow you to have it and in exchange for this you consume it wisely -- you do not squander or waste or throw away the fruits of my labor -- because if you do - - we are going to have a little talk about it -- and adjustments (of whatever kind are necessary) -- will be made . And this is the bottom line . |
| It is under capitalism that the worker is alienated from the product of her labor. Under communism the worker has an interest in the wise consumption of her product and she will take action to defend her interest . And anyone who fails to appreciate this would find himself wishing he were someplace friendlier -- like standing between a lioness and her cubs -- because the products of the workers' labor will be the products of the workers' lives -- and the parental interest of the workers will occasional make itself felt with an insistence that cannot be ignored. ----//-// |
| [11-r] (Emphasis in this quote is mine -- Ben) (CV #4, page 53, bottom of first column and footnote 3, bottom of 2nd column) |
| [12-r] (Emphasis in this quote is also mine -- Ben) (CV #4, page 55, top of first column) |
| [13-r] (CV #4, page 53, middle of first column) |