|
Baka-nin posted:See this discussion keeps going back in the same circle. Officially recognised transaction can only exist with an official body with the responsibility to determine what is official and what isn't and to prevent accumulation or any other unauthorised usage it would need the force required to prevent or at least limit unofficial usage. That's just the germ of a ruling class its neither revolutionary nor transitional. I don't like non-transferable vouchers but that's a utopian critique. Unltil we can produce more than enough for the population without even thinking about the practicalities of it (i.e. communism) then we have to spend time on distribution and at some point that will appear to be gatekeeping as someone will say that someone cannot take more of something because it is needed by someone else. That's not the germ of a ruling class (inherently) as you're saying, it's just the core of a system with effectively limited amounts of real things. It is the socialist state. The political economics of currency and accounting is way more important than any technical viability though. Whether it can be done off the blockchain or not doesn't matter if the function of the vouchers itself don't fulfill your political objectives. So non-circulating currency breaks the M-C-M+ cycle, true, but then you must really understand what the needs of the people using M will be and pretty much guarantee it is conveniently accessible or they will create a new M from something that they can control and accumulate. The use of the american dollar around the world when people don't trust local currency or the iconic use of cigarettes in prison illustrate this specifically but also the development of non-financial networks based on favours, family and connections which keep appearing again and again in human civilisations and act as means of securing advantages in society above others all mean you can't just say there are top marginal tax rates of 100% or you spend your cash on one use datapads like a cyberpunk novel and the job is done.
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2021 20:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:15 |
|
|
Talking about the specific technologies a worker uses as a basis of analysis is a dead end, it's the social context of their work environment that gives meaning to it. Yes there's certainly a lot of validity in talking about how physical and mental labour impacts worker consciousness differently but it pales in comparison to the management of their exploitation. Call centres are very high tech constantly using telecommunication technology and centralised databases but the workers think and act like workers on noisy assembly lines more than computer programmers.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2021 21:28
|
|
|
And yet to actually build a project that the working class believes in and works to achieve I think it's better to have a structure to show them, for them to look at and understand how it is guaranteed to deliver what they need rather than pointing to food production by weight globally and bullshit jobs and say everything will be fine. We agree that the current system doesn't care to allocate necessary resources according to need but that's also the system that a revolution will inherent. How do you suggest the interim period, where food must be consciously directed to these neglected areas and infrastructure, both physical and political, is build to ensure it is routinely available, is managed?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2021 11:17
|
|
|
Historically many people have accepted oblivion or barbarism when that moment occurs. Revolutions are successful when the specific inherent failures in society are correctly analysed and the working class organised around the urgent need to fix them but this swiftly moves from abstract critique to objective demands. People will nod along when someone says it's tragic that there are so many homeless, the class begins to organise and engage in struggle when you call for the redistribution of all second homes to the needy and the construction of social housing. Assuming the revolution is successful then this heightens the need to consider how it is done because suddenly the working class is supposed to be holding the power to accomplish it. Early Russian socialist propaganda makes light of the matter, referring to public store houses crammed full of goods able to provide for everyones needs but they took power and suddenly realised 'oh gently caress, we actually need to get this organised don't we?'. We don't have their excuse of naive optimism to dodge the issue today. There's very good reasons to not get bogged down in these discussions, mostly because we cannot preconfigure the revolution and so we simply do not know the conditions and political structures that the working class will create during the revolution, but to dismiss the technical question of organising production and distribution post-revolution because it's assumed that everyone will be a firm believer in socialism and so everything will just work out (like the link I was rebutting) or pointing to modern day (highly organised and regimented!) society and assuming that can be carried over without issue is either utopian or genocidal.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2021 11:18
|
|