so I was sitting around after my cs327 exam thinking about producer- consumer relationships (part of the exam was about producer consumer relationships within computer programs)...and I was struck with an idea that is probably pretty stupid and obvious but it made me happy that I finally came up with a good way to quantify this...
so this is my completely non economics grounded (I've never had a course), non academic, uneditted, unproofread, bs ramblings on what I was thinking...half of it is nothing new, and the other half may not be either :) I just had to write it down to see whether I had actually made progress in my argument or if it was just the same old stuff...and I figured that you folks might be interested...comments even...
I talk to people about the evils of capitalism, the wonders of communism, and the fact that marx predicted that any sufficiently advanced capitalism would neccessarily breakdown due to its inherrant flaws (the goal of capitalist companies is to form monopolies so they can control the market, so they merge, or get taken over, and eventually you have all the capital controlled by a small power elite)...
and they say "but russia didn't work, communism is a crock"...and I say but damnit were you even _listening_...marx's communism was never tried, what marx wrote about was supposed to happen in england...he didn't even think germany was advanced enough...much less fucked up peasant russia...advanced capitalism, _not_ backwards monarchy....
so then they say...but we have a controlled capitalism, monopolies don't form, so its ok...and I say hey look at the world it was slowed down, but its still happening, the control is not so controlling, and you still have a small number of power elite companies, they aren't a monopoly, but its still _extremely_ unbalenced distribution of capital, with no end in sight...
so then there is the kicker, well but without competition what will be the incentive to work, if you aren't working to live, why do you work? what about slackers...what will keep them in line...and I'm like ...bah!...I don't know...but I _believe_ in the gospel...I _believe_ people will connect to their collective need to live...and they say...but it didn't work in russia...and I'm like _bah!_ I said ADVANCED CAPITALISM...and they are like yeah but what does that have to do with human nature....
and then the debate would always stop, with me cowing to their argument, my only rebuttal being one of faith...
so then I was thinking about producers and consumers and about LeGuin's non-euclidean view...
the goal of society seems to be to map producers to consumers...before society, individuals produced what they consumed...now we rely on society to deliver the produce of another to us in exchange for our produce...obviously there can not be any more consumption than there is produce...
capitalism does an amazing job of creating producers, you _must_ produce in order to consume (and you can't live without something to consume)...even the rich produce, they produce wealth through investment, they trick the system, but they still produce...they don't _work_...but they produce...the bum on the plush as Utah Phillips puts it...
capitalism has done such a staggeringly good job at creating producers that we end up with surplus consumables, which leads to the "consumer lifestyle" where classes of people have raised expectations about what they need to consume in order to live "happily"...interestingly enough this is all key to produceing _more_ production, because everyone wants to rise to "happiness" so they work more...(or more people work, or people are more willing to work for lower wages, so they can get work at all, its all the same in the end)...
another outcome of this quest for production is the advent of technology to amplify effort into greater production...this is one of the keys...LeGuin talked about how Hot Societies were not all bad because they give us the technological infrastructure for a global warm/cool society...capitalism gave us the internet...its dangerous to forget that. (remember the old debate, sure technology pollutes but it has also enabled activists to better organize against pollution, should greenpeace give up their netlink, stop printing paper mailers and flyers, cut its phone connection?)
so heres where I am going with this...I think the key to determining if my intuitive faith about communism is correct is to determine several things about the current state of production and consumption. How much "stuff" does the average "mostly happy" person need...times the number of people...and then divided over the amount of effort it takes to maintain that level of production given effort amplifying technology (automated factories and such)...and you end up with a level of acceptable slack...I guarantee that a _large_ percentage of the workforce could just _not_ work and you could still maintain a western middle class lifestyle for all people (a step up for most, a lot of steps down for the very few elite rich)
so its just a matter of convincing yourself that _enough_ people will work _enough_, and who cares about the rest...if everyone works less efficiently then you use a whole lot of inefficient people instead of a few efficient ones...you get the job done...the key is that values change so something cool/warm where people aren't looking to outconsume their neighbor...
the only reason that efficiency and progress are so important in our capitalist society are because we _need_ progress to compete...we have to build better things, faster things, more efficient things in order to continue encouraging consumption which encourages production which is a viscious cycle that leads to _insanely cool_ technological advance....but not to happiness, because you never get where you are going (carrot and stick)...
so the conclusion is that communism by its very nature of eliminating competition solves the problem of slackers...the solution is that they don't matter...and people don't _care_ that they don't matter because they live comfortably...work less, stress out less, and don't feel they are losing...BUT the advanced capitalism is still a prerequisite...use capitalism for rapid advancement of technology and then pull the plug when it gets out of control and stop advancing and enjoy what you have...
the yardstick for "sufficiently advanced" is somewhat quantifable (vaguely, but still tied to specific economic metrics) now..so maybe we aren't advanced enough, maybe the expected slack is still greater than the acceptable slack, but expected slack is a constant and acceptable slack is constantly being reduced by technology...so eventually the threashold will be crossed...the unfortunately hard part is timing the "revolution" with the threshold crossing...this was russia's failing, they had greater need for consumables than they had production because their acceptable slack was too low, they realized this almost immediately after the revolution (or maybe even before) and they insituted a dictatorship (ironically essentially facist) in order to make up for it...to create an anti slack drive of oppression, even that was not enough and they still failed because opression just makes less efficient workers (and you already had a slack problem)...it is my theory that this correct timing of "revolution" with slack threshold would avoid the formation of a dictatorship...note that our society doesn't live under a dictatorship because we produce enough/more than enough so there is no social force to support dictatorship...germany did the facist gig because it had an economic slump and it "needed" facism to fix it...
capitalism is definately preferable to facism/dictatorship...but the _next_ level when we are ready is communism...
(and to summarize my view of communism vs anarchy is that communism _or_ capitalism can be the dominant economic systems in _both_ anarcho-syndicalism _or_ democracy...I happen to think that anarcho-syndicalism and communism go hand in hand, but I am hoping that this idea applies regardless of the underlying government structure (facist dictatorships just don't work if human happiness is a factor...we've gleened at least that from russia)
Copyright 1997, Zachary Miller (wolfgang@imsa.edu)