http://mccaine.org/2013/01/30/on-communism-and-markets-a-reply-to-seth-ackerman/
mccaine's argument is clever but unusual. basically he admits that the soviet union had poor labour productivity, that workers were alienated and that product quality was low. but he says that the technical apparatus and capital base that oversaw it was pretty sophisticated, so you can't really blame the social organization per se. his argument is that the soviet union was trapped in a sort of paradox: the main goal of society should have been to reduce the burden of labour in order to encourage the free development of all, but the level of output was perceived to be too low for that to be realized beyond a certain point. and beyond this, mccaine implies that there was in fact a political solution to this crisis: they could have possibly oriented away from trying to maximize output of consumer and military goods, and instead reduced the work week further. and the implication is that this could have possibly helped labour productivity, through commitment, but that this isn't really a necessary outcome for the strategy to be successful.
because the soviets were oriented towards maximization of commodities, they could never reduce the work week beyond around 41 hours a week. because planners faced all sorts of shortages, especially in labour supply, the idea of unilaterally reducing the labour supply was never seriously considered. instead, the basic view of socialism came to be cornucopian - the ideal was to expand production until rationing became unnecessary. mccaine reverses this formula and suggests, in effect, that rationing should have been tightened (at least in the interim) so that labour time could be sharply reduced. of course, were this to freeze production at, say, 1970 levels, it would have been a problem - but mccaine implies that this shift in worldview from accumulation to production for needs would unlock the productivity of the average worker.
even if that weren't a coherent strategy, you could still say that it's plausible as a strategy for contemporary industrial economies. if anything, commodity output and fuel consumption are far too high, and a sort of green contraction could be accelerated with a reduction in the work week. in global terms, people might have fewer things but greater security in them, and more time for their own lives. of course, this has always been a goal of the socialist movement.
some obvious points is that it seems to conflate a pseudo-maoist view of "putting politics in command" with one particular policy, a policy which would have likely been impractical in most situations, and an exaggerated view of the importance of alienation. for one thing, many workers self-report that they would rather have greater incomes than smaller work weeks. a large shift in work hours would need to be imposed generally to be effective, and it would probably have large short-term costs. i think the more important thing would be, a la althusser, some sort of critique of the humanist basis of this sort of argument.
NoFreeWill posted:but surely international threats to the soviet union necessitated the sort of unsustainable arms race that ruined them. ie there's not much they could have done?
well that's a complex question but i think that it's false that the real threat to the soviets necessitated the scale of defence spending that prevailed. soviet defence strategy was highly secret and even top planners tended to have little idea of the full burden of it. even large parts of the defence industrial capacity were completely secret and segregated. soviet defence strategy was focused on a full war with america and all of its allies in europe, i think 23 countries against the warsaw pact. some have said that this was basically because they feared a replay of the 1941 invasion, and that the lack of preparation for 1941 had been so catastrophic to russia that it was important to prepare for this sort of attack.
the problem is that a full NATO attack on russia was highly unlikely, especially given russia's nuclear capacity. american defence policy, for example, focused on the immediate defence of two limited theatres, such as germany and korea. the soviets estimated that any conventional war in europe would cripple their ability to produce new tanks such that a huge stockpile would be required to counter that possibility. america, on the other hand, was more focused on blunting an offensive and then building up unstoppable force against the aggressor, which it could more plausibly do because america is isolated and had an immense industrial capacity.
one soviet defence expert suggested that afghanistan didn't actually require a large increase in defence output because there was already such a large stockpile and excess supply. there were perverse incentives in the system against retooling which made it more attractive to continue to produce new tanks rather than focus on maintenance of existing vehicles.
if the soviets were more focused on fighting a war like afghanistan while maintaining some ability to defend in europe, rather than fighting a total war, then it could have easily converted a lot of the defence industry into civilian industry. that actually happened in the late 1980s as the economy started to fall apart and the premise of warsaw pact defence evaporated. "conversion" became a major policy of gorbachev which bore some limited fruit and happened fairly quickly, but it only came about because of the terminal crisis of market socialism.
to tie it back to mccaine's point, one of the strategic benefits of reducing the work week is that capitalism can't really respond in kind after a certain point. capitalism requires the constant pressure to increase labour productivity not just on a unit basis but also in terms of volume produced, which is why overproduction is a persistent problem. capitalists only reduce the work week when forced to by workers in a way that's consistent with their reproduction as a class.
NoFreeWill posted:also the whole marxist fetishisation of labor and the proletarian worker etc. as the foundation of society makes the idea of working less impossible to even discuss? like the labor theory of value is awesome, don't get me wrong, but less labor then = less value = everyone's sad...
which is why the idea is to abandon the law of value as the structuring principle of society
getfiscal posted:mccaine's argument is clever but unusual. basically he admits that the soviet union had poor labour productivity, that workers were alienated and that product quality was low. but he says that the technical apparatus and capital base that oversaw it was pretty sophisticated, so you can't really blame the social organization per se. his argument is that the soviet union was trapped in a sort of paradox: the main goal of society should have been to reduce the burden of labour in order to encourage the free development of all, but the level of output was perceived to be too low for that to be realized beyond a certain point. and beyond this, mccaine implies that there was in fact a political solution to this crisis: they could have possibly oriented away from trying to maximize output of consumer and military goods, and instead reduced the work week further. and the implication is that this could have possibly helped labour productivity, through commitment, but that this isn't really a necessary outcome for the strategy to be successful.
is there any empirical evidence that this is actually the case, and that you don't suffer from really strong diminishing returns in terms of increase of productivity?
iFederico posted:is there any empirical evidence that this is actually the case, and that you don't suffer from really strong diminishing returns in terms of increase of productivity?
my guess would be that you are right. but beyond that, there's a bit of a leap in the dark at play, so it's hard to know. no large country has ever moved from, say, 40 hours a week to 25 hours a week, for example. the 40 hour work week itself is a reduction from the 48 - 60 hours that were common earlier on in the industrial revolution, but as you suggest that's not really comparable. also i think reducing the work week is usually talked about in a situation of high unemployment, for example the french law, which is a situation of underutilization of resources.
i think mccaine's reply would be that this is all within the logic of capital accumulation and the maximization of commodities though. the goal of an economy is not to spit out lots of widgets so much as accommodate to the lives that people want to live.
someone could probably coat it in nicer language and detail but i am pretty sure i am correct
getfiscal posted:NoFreeWill posted:but surely international threats to the soviet union necessitated the sort of unsustainable arms race that ruined them. ie there's not much they could have done?
well that's a complex question but i think that it's false that the real threat to the soviets necessitated the scale of defence spending that prevailed. soviet defence strategy was highly secret and even top planners tended to have little idea of the full burden of it. even large parts of the defence industrial capacity were completely secret and segregated. soviet defence strategy was focused on a full war with america and all of its allies in europe, i think 23 countries against the warsaw pact. some have said that this was basically because they feared a replay of the 1941 invasion, and that the lack of preparation for 1941 had been so catastrophic to russia that it was important to prepare for this sort of attack.
the problem is that a full NATO attack on russia was highly unlikely, especially given russia's nuclear capacity. american defence policy, for example, focused on the immediate defence of two limited theatres, such as germany and korea. the soviets estimated that any conventional war in europe would cripple their ability to produce new tanks such that a huge stockpile would be required to counter that possibility. america, on the other hand, was more focused on blunting an offensive and then building up unstoppable force against the aggressor, which it could more plausibly do because america is isolated and had an immense industrial capacity.
one soviet defence expert suggested that afghanistan didn't actually require a large increase in defence output because there was already such a large stockpile and excess supply. there were perverse incentives in the system against retooling which made it more attractive to continue to produce new tanks rather than focus on maintenance of existing vehicles.
if the soviets were more focused on fighting a war like afghanistan while maintaining some ability to defend in europe, rather than fighting a total war, then it could have easily converted a lot of the defence industry into civilian industry. that actually happened in the late 1980s as the economy started to fall apart and the premise of warsaw pact defence evaporated. "conversion" became a major policy of gorbachev which bore some limited fruit and happened fairly quickly, but it only came about because of the terminal crisis of market socialism.
to tie it back to mccaine's point, one of the strategic benefits of reducing the work week is that capitalism can't really respond in kind after a certain point. capitalism requires the constant pressure to increase labour productivity not just on a unit basis but also in terms of volume produced, which is why overproduction is a persistent problem. capitalists only reduce the work week when forced to by workers in a way that's consistent with their reproduction as a class.
why do you continuously conflate the Stalin era USSR and the kruschev revisionist era? and then make broad statement about "socialism" and planning.
babyhueypnewton posted:why do you continuously conflate the Stalin era USSR and the kruschev revisionist era? and then make broad statement about "socialism" and planning.
getfiscal posted:i think mccaine's reply would be that this is all within the logic of capital accumulation and the maximization of commodities though. the goal of an economy is not to spit out lots of widgets so much as accommodate to the lives that people want to live.
ok sure but that's an entirely different argument. I have no real interest in a normative defense of the american work ethic, but I am curious about the empirical claim that reducing the amount of work hours would have a positive effect on productivity, past a certain point.
If you are arguing that the USSR shouldn't have even tried to compete with the US in terms of material wealth (i.e. Krushev's ideal) but should have instead abandoned that fight and focused instead on a more balanced work/life dynamics... that's fine, but that doesn't tell you anything about productivity.
iFederico posted:ok sure but that's an entirely different argument. I have no real interest in a normative defense of the american work ethic, but I am curious about the empirical claim that reducing the amount of work hours would have a positive effect on productivity, past a certain point.
well the other stuff i said addresses what i think about that. i would say that it's unlikely and untested at a national scale.
getfiscal posted:well the other stuff i said addresses what i think about that. i would say that it's unlikely and untested at a national scale.
oh sure, but it basically sounded as though this was completely untested and without really any strong theoretical basis, just interesting as a radical experiment
iFederico posted:oh sure, but it basically sounded as though this was completely untested and without really any strong theoretical basis, just interesting as a radical experiment
it's more just a marxist argument i hadn't heard before.
stegosaurus posted:I think mccaine asked the mtwists so many questions that he got his own tag on their blog thing. Good timez
not only is that true but it's been true since like 2010
getfiscal posted:stegosaurus posted:I think mccaine asked the mtwists so many questions that he got his own tag on their blog thing. Good timez
not only is that true but it's been true since like 2010
yeah I was talking about msh.
stegosaurus posted:yeah I was talking about msh.
me too 
i didn't mention this in my comment on Mccain's post, but it's kind of implied. my take is that he has this belief, influenced by Marshall Sahlins, that equates widespread idleness in early class societies with leisure time in wealthy modern societies, and that to increase leisure time it's a matter of decreasing consumption, hence decreasing the effort of providing those means of consumption. i think this is wrong because it ignores that leisure time is a choice while the idleness of scarcity is not
NoFreeWill posted:Supposedly according to psychologists a 30 hour week is actually optimal so even for capitalists the extra 10 hours are unproductive. Possibly those extra 10 help with hegemonic control or something like that, but if you were merely arguing for a reformed capitalism within capitalist ideology you would go for 30.
There was an article I can't find right now about how businesses are using more part-time workers because they get more bang for the hour of labor-time, since they need money to live. They say their workers are more productive because they're 'fresh' but also because they are scrambling for more hours and favor with management. Not sure how this would translate to a socialist economy, there's that old problem of material and moral incentives.
I thought of this "abandoning the law of value" bs whilst playing Tropico 3, OP. Enjoy
Edited by Crow ()
getfiscal posted:the paradox implied in mccaine's post is that the soviet union's drive for productive capacity possibly undermined that project by alienating workers, such that speed-like tactics of shooting the hostage slash reducing the work week might have been a viable strategy.
you're suggesting that the lack of productivity growth can be made up for by higher intensity of work? the intensity of human labor very quickly runs into a wall, there is only so how hard or diligently someone can work in a day and that limit isn't very high no matter how many moral incentives you lay in front of them. in comparison the growth of technical productivity is extremely variable, and we may never see its upper limit if it has one
it seems to me the growth of social productivity is a for better or worse deal: yes to alienation, but also yes to the minimization of household work by dishwashers and microwave dinners
Goethestein posted:getfiscal r u virgen?
let's just say that the lenin poster is still up.
getfiscal posted:Goethestein posted:getfiscal r u virgen?
let's just say that the lenin poster is still up.
the more times I have sex the more communist leader posters i put up. Let's just say something something something
iFederico posted:I am curious about the empirical claim that reducing the amount of work hours would have a positive effect on productivity, past a certain point.
Ah, yes, the so-called "Bizarro-World Laffer Curve"