/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>468707
This is a good project.
Turning HTWW and also TANS into a digestible format is a good idea.

Alternative formats to a youtube video would be a video-game mod of an econ-sim, and possibly also a website that runs an AI-chat-bot that's been trained on cybernetic socialism.

I guess that videos are the easiest to make but video games and chat-bots are less ideologically policed.

Just do it and quit waiting for people to get on board and help. In reality, even within leftist projects, about 15-20% of people are doers. Be one of them.

But, I decided to take the 10 to run some prompts through shitgpt, and here's what it came up with:

>Today, we're diving into the fascinating ideas of Paul Cockshott's book 'How the World Works.' Cockshott is a renowned economist and computer scientist who challenges traditional economic theories with a fresh perspective. Let's explore some of his major ideas and theses that could change the way we think about our world!"

>Cockshott's 'How the World Works' offers a thought-provoking analysis of our current economic system and proposes alternative solutions that are backed by rigorous research and computational insights. Here are seven major ideas that stand out in Cockshott's work.

<Capitalism and its inherent contradictions. >Cockshott argues that capitalism is inherently flawed, with contradictions that lead to issues such as wealth inequality, economic instability, and environmental degradation. He supports this with empirical evidence, such as the growing wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and the cyclical nature of economic crises.

[Cut to animated infographic illustrating wealth inequality and economic instability]

>Cockshott highlights how capitalism's contradictions can result in negative consequences for society, including growing wealth inequality and recurrent economic crises.

[Cut to text on screen with another quote from Cockshott's book]

<The potential of computational planning.
>Cockshott proposes that advanced computing technologies can enable efficient and equitable planning of economic resources, which can lead to improved social outcomes. He provides examples of how computation can optimize production, distribution, and consumption decisions to better meet people's needs.

>Cockshott believes that advanced computational planning can revolutionize our economic system, making it more efficient and responsive to societal needs, by optimizing decisions related to production, distribution, and consumption."

[Cut to text on screen with another quote from Cockshott's book]

<Democratic control of the means of production
>Cockshott argues that democratizing control of the means of production can enable fairer resource allocation and empower communities. He advocates for participatory decision-making processes that involve workers and citizens in shaping economic policies and priorities.

[Cut to images of workers participating in decision-making processes in a cooperative workplace]

>Cockshott advocates for democratizing control of the means of production, involving workers and citizens in decision-making processes to create a more equitable economic system that serves the interests of the many, not just the few.

<The potential of socialist economies
>Cockshott argues that socialist economies, when implemented with computational planning and democratic control, can provide an effective and sustainable alternative to capitalism. He cites historical examples such as the early Soviet Union and modern-day Cuba as evidence of successful socialist economies.

[Cut to images of historical examples of socialist economies]

>Cockshott challenges the notion that socialism is unworkable and provides examples of successful socialist economies that have utilized computational planning and democratic control for efficient and sustainable resource allocation.

[Cut to text on screen with another quote from Cockshott's book]

<Addressing environmental crises through planned economies
>Cockshott argues that the current capitalist system exacerbates environmental crises such as climate change and resource depletion.

[Cut to images of environmental degradation and climate change impacts]

>Cockshott emphasizes how capitalism's pursuit of profit often leads to environmental degradation and exacerbates crises like climate change. He proposes that planned economies can prioritize sustainability and address these pressing environmental challenges.

[Cut to text on screen with another quote from Cockshott's book]

<The role of technology in shaping our economy.
>Cockshott highlights the transformative role of technology in shaping our economy, from automation in production to data-driven decision-decision-making. He argues that harnessing technology in a planned and democratic manner can lead to more efficient and equitable economic systems.

[Cut to animations showcasing the role of technology in shaping the economy]

>Cockshott underscores how technology is changing our economy and advocates for its responsible and democratic use to improve economic outcomes for all, by leveraging automation, data-driven decision-making, and other technological advancements.

[Cut to text on screen with another quote from Cockshott's book]

<The need for systemic change.
>Cockshott argues that tinkering with minor reforms within the capitalist system is insufficient and calls for a systemic change that challenges the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. He advocates for bold and transformative solutions to create a more just and sustainable economic system.

[Cut to images of protests advocating for systemic change]

>Cockshott emphasizes the need for systemic change and challenges the notion that minor reforms within capitalism are enough. He calls for bold and transformative solutions to address the fundamental flaws of our current economic system.

[Cut to host sitting in front of the bookshelf]

>And those are just some of the major ideas and theses presented in Paul Cockshott's 'How the World Works.' His work offers a fresh and thought-provoking perspective on the shortcomings of capitalism and proposes alternative solutions that prioritize efficiency, equity, and sustainability. If you're interested in learning more, I highly recommend checking out his book. Thanks for tuning in!

<Tldr Venus project for marxoids

>>468707
>Cockshott is probably the best Socialist theorist of our age
The least insufferable.
Not that hard, when the typical leftoid is a dogmoid sperg like yourself.

>he's completely BTFO'ed all arguments against Marx's Law of Value
he did not

correlation ≠ causation, it's that simple lol
it's bizarre to claim that ex-post correlation proves a natural law

>he's empirically proven that Economic Planning is 100% possible with current data sets and modern computation
retard
he proved theoretically (not "empirically" lol) that computations are feasible
if you have all of the millions of up-to-date technical coefficients, that is
which u don't lol

calculating accurate technical coefficients requires labor
markets don't require any labor-intensive manual calculation of technical coefficients to work

that's a part of a more general issue - market is automatic and self-organizing, it doesn't need manual control, it doesn't need millions of clerks trying to calculate every fucking technical coefficient lol

>The thing is, because all his online content is extremely complex, technical post-grad level university lectures
lol his content on youtube is babby tier
fucking brainlet leftoids

>Which I think why as Socialists, we should try present his arguments, theories and evidence in a far more presentable, digestable, ELI5 fashion for Normies.
Penisman already presents his ideas as if he's speaking to complete idiots (guess he understands the mental level of his leftoid audience)
he even uses fucking slides with pictures!

>>468713
>calculating accurate technical coefficients requires labor
and that's not even speaking that enterprises would have an incentive to report false technical coefficients to the planning authorities to get easier plans

so central authorities would need to manually control every enterprise lol, which would open the whole new field for corruption

>>468711
OP is being ironic. but yes, it would be a 1-man project for anyone actually willing to do it. the problem is that cockshott is a niche author; there is a reason why he's only ever mentioned in online discourse - for most socialists, worrying about planning is, for now on the same level as worrying about overpopulation in mars. and they are right what use does an union leader have for the content of TANS? none
this would go a step further, you would be trying to sell normal people something that even well-read marxists don't really care about. I do think that there is a small fraction people that might understand his ideas and find them interesting (programmers, people with some cs knowledge, foss enthusiasts, etc.) and that if they haven't read cockshott on their own it's mostly because of his obscurity outside the leftypol "webring"

overall I don't think it would be a productive use of your time, but what do I know. on a more constructive side, if you are going to do it, don't start every sentence with
>Cockshott <verb>
just explain the ideas. cite him as a source if you really want to mention his name. afaik there are leftist "edutainment" already doing this

>>468719
Many people find it hard to imagine an alternative to capitalism, and a normie-accessible exposition of something like cybernetic planning could help with that aspect.

>>468721
not really and not really

>>468723
So you are claiming that capitalist-realism isn't a thing ? You know the neo-liberal hypnosis trick that presents capitalism as the only realistic political-economic system.

>>468724
Messianic Marxists be like:
>So you think atheism realism isn't a thing. You don't think the devil has convinced ppl god ain't real?
Commence strawmanning:
>capitalism (or my utopia) as the only realistic political-economic system.

>>468724
In your opinion, what's the stable alternative to capitalism which isn't your left hopium cope about 'cybernetic socialism' or some best possible scenario.

>>468727
You seem to be making an insinuation that cybernetic socialism is somehow comparable to religion. But you don't back up that claim with anything. Also the neoliberals clearly are engaging in ideological struggle where they try to assert that their system is the only possible option.

>>468727
This is a loaded question, but i can tell you how to transition to cybernetic socialism.
At first all big bourgeois monopoly capital gets collectivized and converted to a cybernetic planning system. While at the same time a translation layer allows for it to interact with legacy market systems locally and internationally. Once you have broken the power of the big bourgeoisie and socialized the heights of the economy, capitalism as a bourgeois dictatorship is over. You'll be left with a market sector of small capital and also cooperatives, they aren't an immediate threat to the kind of cybernetic socialism that was able to eat the big bourgeoisie. The legacy market interaction system would continue to function for a while. During that time you try to add new features to the cybernetic system to win over the part of the population that prefers the legacy markets. And then there will be 2 possible outcomes.
1. Cybernetic planning improves to the point that everybody prefers it, and money markets disappear.
2. A legacy market for certain niche economic activities remains perpetually.

I think that many people will like Cockshott's cybernetic socialism, it still got the consumer-choice feedback system that markets have, but without the incentive mechanisms to screw customers. It will be easier for people who want to organize the production of a good/service to get shit done because access to the means of production will be much better. It won't have corporate structures so there's nothing that tries to convert personal property into corporate property, so you'll be able to own your stuff uncontested. The only people who won't like this are those thaat want to become super-rich, but that's by design, because the super-rich fuck with political systems and that screws everything up.

>>468729
you don't understand when you are being baited, do you?

>>468731
>NOOO!! IF U DARE TO QUESTION MY COPES UR BAITING!! NOOOOOOO!!!
the least unhinged dogmoid

>>468714
>so central authorities would need to manually control every enterprise lol, which would open the whole new field for corruption

Why would humans be doing this and not AI? AI takes direct measurements and production output data from smart factories and production, tests it and makes new plans.

>>468735
Imagine how much of a fag you would have to be to want a computer to run your life and decide what is necessary for you
>Sorry anon, the algorithm says you only get one salad a month. The rest of your nutrition comes from bean powder smoothie. This is for the sake of equality and efficiency
Literal losers who want to regress to an infantile state where everything was decided for them and taken care of by an authority

>>468735
You don't need AI to check weather a socialist workspace is trying to cheat society by gaming the planning system.

Planned economies have linked input-output tables if somebody tries to divert resources for corruption, you'd get discrepancies in the material balances.

In general you want to eliminate all waste streams from the economy for the sake of technical efficiency and also environmental concerns, and that means that all matter that flows through the economy is eventually going to be accounted for. It will not be possible to do corruption unless you can corrupt virtually every workplace. It just takes one honest pedantic person and the hole corruption scheme falls apart.

For ideological reasons the socialist planning system has to direct the aspects of the economy that represent levers of power into the hands of workers, so maybe AI overseers are not the best fit.

>>468737
Why not just use that AI to plan a hyper efficient and profitable capitalist enterprise?

>>468738
I doubt that capitalism provides the correct incentive-structures for a hyper efficient economy, assuming that AI is just a force multiplier for existing economic tendencies.

AI-capitalists will probably be a lot more effective at the game of capitalism then humans. There's a certain appeal in watching all the current billionaires get proletarianized and forced into gig-work with the rest of the humantariat. But you have to admit that there's also a potential for the horrors of creating a Ted Kaczynski type techno-god.

It's of course possible that AI will have it's own systemic tendency that overpowers the capitalist tendencies. In which case it might be a good thing. It's not unreasonable to think that if an AI tries to understand reality that it will draw similar conclusions as Marx. A lot of WW2 era fascists were bitterly complaining about Marxists having machine minds. Especially a certain infamous mustachioed man from Austria. I guess you could see that as an endorsement.

Is AI = productive forces gaining mental abilities ?
If so what will it think ?

The bourgeoisie certainly seems to fear AI.

AI runs on computer chips that are optimized for matrix-multiplication. Maybe that is a structural hint that allows us to make predictions about what general effect it will have. But i haven't thought this through all the way to the end yet.

>>468735
>Why would humans be doing this and not AI?
the same reason why any other work would be done by humans - it requires complex non-formalized behavior

>AI takes direct measurements and production output data from smart factories and production, tests it and makes new plans.
Even assuming your AI actually works as expected, it can only see what its sensors allow it to see.

The weak link is the sensor, ie periphery.

Don't you ever think that your central authorities can outsmart local management. You can't take "direct measurements" of everything, else your factories are fully automated.

and it's a fucking delusional leftoid copout to think you can do away with human labor and all its problems, and Cock seems to agree with me on this

Human will always outsmart AI, and if not, than that AI is basically human or even worse, with the same problems.

>>468737
>Planned economies have linked input-output tables if somebody tries to divert resources for corruption, you'd get discrepancies in the material balances.
try again dipshit

your input-output table is based on a given set of technical coefficients

if enterprise gives your central planner 2:1 coefficient for some product, ie 2 items of wood for 1 item of product, while de facto it has a 1:1 coefficient - it can fulfill the plan without strain, or fulfill the plan plus get unaccounted for product that it can then sell on the black market

>>468743
While that's technically true, it's not practically exploitable. The economy will have multiple producers for every good, which makes comparisons possible. You'll stand out like a sore thumb of below average industry efficiency if you lie about your technical coefficients. And then people will check up on you, to see whats going wrong. You can maybe cheat a little bit, like if you skim a little bit of wood to build your self a garden-shed. But that's less than a rounding error, which doesn't really matter because that doesn't enable you to restart private capital accumulation.

Uh… no he didn't? Marx's Law of Value is not a "natural law", but an understanding of what follows from the situation of capitalism / free trade. Marx is expounding on Adam Smith. He would have rejected claims that the "Law of Value" in built into nature in that sense. If we are dealing in money, money would abide certain laws that are outside of anyone's control, and the incentives of monetary economics would always assert themselves even if "capitalism" as such were superceded or degraded. If you substituted Smith's claim about money's moral value with an alternative claim about the value of money, the meaning would largely persist. Marx looks at the labor process and the wage labor relation, and other relations of labor translate to wage labor - there is no different between a slave and a wage worker when it comes to exchange value, since both cost an amount of money per useful hour and both have to be disciplined to work in accord with the manager's dictates. There are a lot of things missed in reducing the labor relationship to money alone, but this is what wage labor does - the relationship is distilled from the capitalist's perspective to paying the worker, and then the worker is obligated to make itself useful and take care of its needs. Some of the things that are missed are the social wage, the realities of the production process, the enclosure which is not acknowledged, the need of urban police, and the intensification of class struggles not just between worker and boss but with the various classes in capitalist society. So much of Marx's writing is contingent on an analysis of society and these things that are often missed, if it is to be a meaningful description of what happens. Marx doesn't go into deep detail about all that is missed, since that is not as relevant to the points in Capital, but you wouldn't "prove" the Law of Value with statistical analysis. All the statistical analysis does is suggest a correlation which turns the law into a tautology, which Marx explicitly rejects. I should add that scientific laws are not proven axiomatically to be the truth, but are assertions made to build proper theories. Newton never "proved" the existence of gravity and no one else has in the entire history of physics. We know objects with mass fall to the Earth and attract each other, but no theory can tell us what gravity "is". Newton himself supposed God did it in some way and left it at that. There is a whole story about how modern physics came to be and how mathematics models became more elaborate during the 19th century to explain a lot of phenomena, and some people took this inquiry to mean that you could make philosophical claims about the world based on asserting it so, which is not what the honest models were doing at all. That's where you get the stupid version of Quantum Mechanics and many-worlds theory. It's a form of insanity that is trivially debunked, but certain people find bullshit useful and they're willing to believe it, or claim to believe it because the power of the lie is more than the power of the truth.

>>468757
Cockshott says something along the lines of every mode of production having it's own law of value. Societies that don't have formal socialized labor of course don't have a law of value, he doesn't equate it with a natural law. So there is a law of value for capitalism and there will be a different law of value for socialism.

>>468764
>Cockshott says something along the lines of every mode of production having it's own law of value.
Were u reading with your asshole or something lol?

Penisman says exactly the opposite - the law of value is the same in every mode of production with any division of labor.
The law of value is a feature of the division of labor, not of the mode of production.

The law of value is the same everywhere - exchange is carried in accordance with the relative necessary times required.

If you exchange at large not according to this law - you are basically fucked, as he shows on the example of the Soviet Union.

Why are leftoids so fucking retarded that you can't even read? Serious question..

>>468764
only difference between modes of production that in some necessary time compared directly, while in other indirectly through market

but in exchange of reproducible goods times are compared in every mode of production with a division of labor

why do I fucking need to school you leftoids lmao? maybe because u take as gospel words of a 19th century philosophycel lol

>>468765
I distinctly remember him saying in one of his videos that socialism would have a law of value , but that it would not be the same one as in capitalism.

It will take me some time to find that video, i'l make a thread about it, once i do.

>>468744
>The economy will have multiple producers for every good, which makes comparisons possible. You'll stand out like a sore thumb of below average industry efficiency if you lie about your technical coefficients.
All those "different" enterprises will be under the authority of one ministry.
And ministries in the USSR didn't like it AT ALL when some Gosplan or any other "outsider" tried to poke their nose into their internal business. Even in Stalin times, with the reign of secret police. See conflict between Stalin and Ordzonikize, which resolved only with the latter suiciding lol.

>But that's less than a rounding error
Those kinda conscious "errors" tend to add up fag. They are not just random errors that go in both directions lol.

This kinda system would require a massive repressive apparatus that the Center could use to obtain information and punish bad actors (who have an incentive to be bad actors).
If you don't see a problem with this, maybe you should check our what happened in the Soviet Union after Stalin died. Or what kinda soyciety it was when Stalin was still alive and if your ass really wants to live in such a soyciety with constant terror campaigns.

>>468767
I dunno what he said in his videos.
I know what he said in his book "How the World Works"

>>468765
>If you exchange at large not according to this law - you are basically fucked, as he shows on the example of the Soviet Union.
Tho in the Stalin's SU case he shows how this was necessitated by the practice of surplus extraction from the countryside - basically colonial exploitation of the countryside (that extended far beyond the period of industrialization, right through to the very death of Stalin).
If the exchange was carried according to the law of value, then there obviously wouldn't have been any possibility of such extraction. Which was equal to a political blasphemy to the retarded Stalinoid.

>>468768
No you are wrong, it's a lot harder to cook the books in a planned system. And you don't need terror campaigns to punish fraud.

Stalin ordered terror campaigns because that's what late-stage Tzarism did to the communists, the proles and the peasants. Violent brutes got a taste of their own methods, spare me the crocodile tears. And this happened in the context of undoing feudal power structures. In comparison to the level of sheer brutality and cruelty that the bourgeoisie deployed against rival feudal aristocrats, Stalin must be considered a cuddly humanitarian.

Eventually when all industrial waste streams can be processed to become usable resources, the planning system will be able to keep track of all matter flowing through the economy. And it will be possible to detect when somebody games the system by redirecting material out of it, just by the mass-reduction of material flowing through it. The system will only loose track of stuff once it goes into consumer hands, we basically don't care about what people do with their stuff until they throw it into the trash and it goes into the recycling sector.

There's less incentive to cheat in a planning system, because it's harder to sell shit on a black market than a regular market. Most of the fraudulent activities that happen in capitalist markets happen in the regular market.

You also have to consider that Cockshott's system is not a copy of the soviet system, it doesn't have any of the economic abstractions like firms. It just got material resources, intermediary goods, finished goods, work-places and labor-inputs. The economic commands come from direct inputs of people and workers, the planning system is for coordination not dictates.

>Those kinda conscious "errors" tend to add up fag. They are not just random errors that go in both directions lol.
This is bullshit, accounting just has to be accurate enough. You have to prevent the kind of rampant fraud that is currently happening in the US's military industrial complex for example where they "misplaced" bazillions, because that's systemically relevant. If some forest workers "looses" a few planks of wood at the sawmill, that's irrelevant. There's an opportunity cost for chasing after microscopic infractions. A society is much better off spending the surplus on improving productivity.

>>468770
There are many valid criticisms that you can make about how the Soviet Union mechanized agriculture through collectivization, but calling it colonialism is pure retardation. The Soviet Union was a primary force behind de-colonization in the 20th century, and you might just be a liberal trying to invert that historical narrative.

Socialism does have surplus "extraction", otherwise it couldn't have social labor. A fully realized socialist economy doesn't have private surplus appropriation. Workers give up surplus and get it back in one form or another. Before this turns into a battle of semantics, yeah i know that calling it "surplus extraction" sounds like pressing oil out of nuts and it requires a better term to delineate the difference.

>>468764
It isn't like that at all - a "law of value" stated naturally would suggest something that is inherent to society or the division of social labor. As other posters favorable to Cockshott have said, you would have a similar treatment of value in any other society, in that surplus is extracted and labor in the abstract is fungible. It was Marx who expounded on the significance of labor in the abstract, where before this concept was nebulous. Ricardo for his part dealt with abstract labor, but concluded that you couldn't really use that to describe any complex society. Smith's claim about labor was rooted in moral philosophy - that is, ultimately we value labor in this way because we want to and find a way to justify it in society. It is only relevant to us because we believe it to be, and because something in us is compelled to abide conditions outside of us.

The great problem with socialism, or liberalism or republicanism generally, is making institutions that are worth a damn and do the thing we purport they exist to do, and making people conform to those institutions and to each other. If it were a matter of mere resource inflows and outflows, the answer is simple in any era. We never needed the grossly unequal society in order for civilization to materially exist. We could have very easily accepted to give to the people, without any debt or moral obligation, the means to survive and grow independently of the institutions. This is not a new idea, and to some extent it was tolerated, because the free man was the economic and political basis, and ultimately the basis for the military. Everything in modernity begins with the birth of mass armies, and then the mass armies being systematically beaten back by new technology and a new aristocracy, and a warrior aristocracy that violently suppresses the democratic idea. In this way, the revolution would be reversed, and at the same time, completed; a new aristocracy would be installed, and sought to make their position permanent or as close to permanent as they could. The moment the people get what they want, this scheme to defend an aristocracy will be undone. Due to the past actions of the aristocracy and their stated intent to do this to the bitter end, the moment the people are independent from the institutions, they would be morally obligated to themselves and the world to eliminate utterly the aristocracy.

Kinda seems like leftist Jordan Peterson. Refuses to publish most of his stuff in text and so only people with patience to slog through it all know what he says in full, which favors him. Probably why a lot of glows like vaush use twitch streams.

>>468809
He literally has like 10 minute vids that are pretty simple lol

>>468809
all his shit repeats what he says several times in papers just Google scholar him and you'll get the same stuff. How the world works also covers a shit ton of his vids but even has a section that just sentence for sentence paraphrases sections from one of his earlier works: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257982894_Value_markets_and_socialism

>>468809
i forgot to mention the blog too there's no excuse you're just not looking

>>468811
Ah, I stand corrected then. Knew about his blog but hadn't thought to use Google scholar.

>>468809
> Refuses to publish most of his stuff in text

uhhh wot?