My 'new' type of government/economic system: Anarcho-Socialism

[DarthFishy]

I'm writing this OP for two major reasons:

(1) To see if this idea of mine is new at all (hence the scare quotes in the title), since a lot of ideas one has tends to be a re-hash of some old idea that you just haven't heard about.

(2) To hear some good criticism against the idea. Most of the posters here in the politics forum are able to take a political position apart in very few words in a succinct and decisive manner so I would like to see how my idea holds up.

Essentially this idea sprung up from my own political/economic journey. A couple of years ago I was essentially a libertarian, very much pro-Free Market and as much deregulation as possible (I blame a combination of Slashdot and Civilization).

Through my interactions on this forum as well as my experiences in the more socialised countries e.g. Finland, I've moved towards the idea that a Socialist system has more advantages than a purely Free market system. This is especially pertinent in my own country (South Africa) where there is a large gulf between rich and poor with a large part of the country living in abject poverty, with their only possible recourse being welfare and government support.

Having gone through this change in perspective I come to my idea for a possible new type of economic system government, i.e. a combination of both systems.

Essentially, this would be a true free market. I.e. everything would be free

Ok I can see you shaking your heads and waiting for me to link to the crazy website with all the bright colours... hang on a bit before consigning me to the loony bin.

Let's look at an example of how this would work to try and clarify what I mean a little more:

Joe is a baker, baking bread, buns, rolls, cakes etc. Everyday he bakes approximately enough food for a 100 people (as an example). So in our society he keeps enough for him and his family and gives the rest away for free. Jack is a doctor who lives in the same community. Each day he takes enough free bread from Joe to feed himself and his family. He provides his services as a doctor for free. One of his patients in John who works on a farm close by, that gives away its flour for free, to amongst others Joe the baker.

The idea is that because everybody gives away their labor for free nobody will every want for anything. Kind of like a real world application of the Open Source movement.

Obviously there are a couple of major problems with this system which I will try and highlight and answer:

(1a) Infrastructure. There will still need to be some basic infrastructure, e.g. electricity, transportation, health etc. to allow this kind of society to function.
(1b) Possible solution: There would still be large government projects which would be done with a 'labour tax' i.e. providing one day a month of your labour in your specialty to assist in some large project. John the farmer could provide manual labour, while Joe the baker could provide food for the other workers on the project etc.

(2) People unable/unwilling to contribute. There will be those who are unable (through disability or some other reason) to contribute and those who might not want to contribute.
(2b) Possible solution: The idea would be that by giving away most of your labour for free, you allow those who cannot contribute a kind of welfare, whereby they can get their basic needs fulfilled. If the proportion of people who are 'spunging' off the system is small enough this problem should not be catastrophic for the system.

(3) Large projects, high technology: How to produce large projects (anything from a car to a airplane) and things that require high levels of technology.
(3b) Possible solution: Collaborative projects between individuals, that provide their entire production for free.

(4) How to move towards this kind of society?
(4b) Possible solution: No idea, but maybe a gradual evolution of society.

Now the final bit (and I'm trying to keep this short still), what are the advantages of this system (if it runs moderately well):

- People will be able to do what they love. If you are an artist, you don't need to worry about getting paid, because as you give things away for free, so you can get things for free.
- The poor, disabled, less fortunate will be taken care of. Because everything is free, the concept of somebody who is poor will not really exist.
- Relative financial safety. So long as there are enough people producing the things you need, you will never go hungry, cold, homeless etc.

Ok... I'm pretty sure this system is full of holes, but let's have at it anyway. Please feel free to ask for more clarification on some of the issues.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, a bigger problem of that model is that there is no real way of matching supply to demand.

Let's say all people are hard working, all give away their stuff for free, etc.

But what happens if Joe the baker doesn't want to be a baker any more? What happens if nobody other than Jack wants to become a doctor, because, you know, it's a lot of learning and needs a lot of equipment, and you could do something more fun like being a painter instead? So one day Jack dies. Now what? For a while life may even work without him, because getting your shots isn't as immediately bad as not having bread, but then some epidemic hits. Now what?

What happens if in that 100 people community, 10 want to be bakers (with modern farming equipment John the farmer can probably supply all of them), and nobody wants to weave rugs? So there are about 1000 loaves of bread produced every day, out of which 900 will just go in the garbage bin. That's a monumental waste of work and resources, which could have been applied to something more needed.

The whole supply and demand and prices has the effect of basically telling you that more is needed of product X, and there's too much of product Y. That's really all that that "invisible hand" idea was about.

If you remove that indicator, how would you know if there is a big nation wide demand of rugs and a massive surplus of bread?

 

[Oliver]

Mhmm, I wonder how it used to work before people invented currencies.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, Oliver, I can tell you exactly how it worked in ancient Egypt, which didn't really use currency until they were conquered by Rome and forced to. Oh, about half-way through that long history of theirs, they did run into Greek traders and mercenaries, and got the idea that the foreigners want gold coins. Egypt had plenty of gold, so they just minted it into coins for foreign trade, but internally they stuck to barter anyway.

Pretty much the way it worked was that the food was the currency. The farmer took a basket of grain and went to the potter to buy some pots with it. The potter ate some of that grain, of course, but then took some in a basket and went to the weaver to buy some clothes. The weaver lived on that grain, but then took some of it and went to the priests to pay to have his mom embalmed. And so on.

Really, it worked by supply and demand too, and generally not very different from a coins based economy.

And, funnily enough, they had a steep inflation built right in. The grain from one year would "devalue" until next year by just becoming spoiled, eaten by mice, etc. You could put it in the bank (read: the pharaoh's granaries), but it would "devalue" by 10% a year. If you were rich, you could build your own granaries, so you'd get less of a loss. But a constant loss it still was.

Incidentally that pretty much had the same effect as inflation in a modern economy. There was a good reason to spend or invest that grain instead of just storing it and watch it spoil away. There was a lot of crafts, trade, construction, arts, entertainment, etc, just because you really couldn't take it with you. Not even into the next decade. It was IMHO one of the major factors which made Egypt _the_ economic powerhouse of that era.

And to go into a tangent, Egypt was also funny in that it already had wellfare at that time. That's what those gigantic construction projects were. Anyone who was desperate enough to come haul big rocks for food, was more than welcome to.

 

[DarthFishy]

Hmmm that's a pretty good point Hans.

Do you see any possibility for any other mechanism to replace this 'indicator' that you mention? I understand that in a centrally planned economy it would be the, well, central planning that would do it.

Could it be possible that in a large enough society there will always be somewhere where someone will be able to provide that service?

Or is it possible that the basic services would be provided by government anyway, so that basic health care would be provided (via the 'labour tax' idea), but if you wanted cosmetic surgery you would need to go to a specialist, who would be an individual giving away their skill for free?

 

[D'rok]

This is just a rough and simplistic sketch of what a "true" communist society might look like. Marx's communist end of history is a classless, government-less society where everyone contributes according to his ability and receives according to his needs. It is supposed to come about through revolutionary class warfare after industrial capitalism goes global and divides everyone on the planet into one of two antithetical classes.

Ain't gonna happen.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, probably _the_ biggest mistake that Eastern Europe did, and contributed to its economic problems more than all the stuff usually waved around combined... was trying to fix prices.

Which, in a nutshell, removed that indicator too. Or at least removed an easy way to see it. You couldn't just look and see "hmm, bread has become twice as expensive lately, maybe we need to produce more bread." On paper it still cost just as much, consumption was within what the planners guessed it should be (after all, it couldn't exceed production), hmm, everything ought to be ok after all. Except it wasn't.

The real economic problem that the communist bloc had was just that: supply and demand went their separate ways, and the bureaucracy that was supposed to match them did a piss-poor job. Some things were artifficially priced too low, which caused shortages, standing in a line for hours when they became available, and occasionally in some places the need to ration stuff. Some things were artifficially too expensive, and there was a surplus of them as a result. (Not many things, but each of the countries had its own list of them.)

It's not just exclusive to communism, though. You can see price fixing attempts in the middle ages, in the late Roman Empire, etc, and it was a catastrophe every single time. Planning how much of each stuff should a peasant produce just never worked as well as just letting that indicator be.

So, really, it's not something you can do away with that easily.

And, honestly, I don't really see a major benefit in that anyway. And I'm saying that as a socialist. Supply and demand works. It's not an evil. It's an optimization that works in a problem way too complex for one human or one committee to solve, especially since without being omniscient they won't even know all variables and constraints.

If you want to help the poor, well, welfare, regulation and progressive taxation work. They've been tried, they work, and they don't need replacing that basic market mechanism with something untested.

 

[DarthFishy]

This is just a rough and simplistic sketch of what a "true" communist society might look like. Marx's communist end of history is a classless, government-less society where everyone contributes according to his ability and receives according to his needs. It is supposed to come about through revolutionary class warfare after industrial capitalism goes global and divides everyone on the planet into one of two antithetical classes.

Ain't gonna happen.

*nods*

Ok I won't argue with you that this is essentially communism in the Marxist sense, not the centrally planned sense of the USSR and other communist countries.

Even so isn't there somewhat of a movement towards this kind of society even within the framework of the Capitalist society we currently have. Things like the Open Source movement, people 'going green' even though it costs more etc.?

 

[DarthFishy]

If you want to help the poor, well, welfare, regulation and progressive taxation work. They've been tried, they work, and they don't need replacing that basic market mechanism with something untested.

Agreed.

I'll leave the dyspotian futures to the sci-fi authors.

There must still be an element of supply and demand even within something like the Open Source community then, right? Even though I can get something for free, and the person who created it gives it away for free. Where does the supply and demand come form in that scenario?

 

[Fiona]

I may be missing something here, but how is this different from feudalism? I know you haven't mentioned a "lord of the manor" type of person, but given that collaboration would be required for major infrastructure someone would have to organise that. In a group of 100 people that perhaps would not be a problem: but larger projects would need much bigger numbers and also regular things might need a rotation for the nasty jobs: who cleans the toilets in utopia: who mines the metal? I suspect some mechanism for controlling/organising those things would arise and that some kind of " protective" groups would also be required. Of course that could be done on the basis of a "militia" and those could be trained to a high standard on the donation of days system, too: it is not inevitable, but there would need to be a conscious mechanism to prevent the emergence of a powerful class.

 

[Cleon]

Anarcho-socialism isn't a new idea by a long shot. Emma Goldman was a big fan. So is, for that matter, Noam Chomsky. (Though I think his preferred term is "libertarian socialism" or some such.)

 

[Rolfe]

I just wonder, if what you really like to do with your time is lie in the sun, do you still get your bread?

Rolfe.

 

[DarthFishy]

but larger projects would need much bigger numbers and also regular things might need a rotation for the nasty jobs: who cleans the toilets in utopia: who mines the metal?

Robots of course

OK seriously this would have to, as you say, be part of a larger controlling organization's job. I still see place for a pretty substantial government, who would ensure infrastructure and its maintenance. It's my idea of a 'labour tax' where you would do a certain amount of work for the government as a kind of tax. (This would include a police force or militia as you mentioned.)

it is not inevitable, but there would need to be a conscious mechanism to prevent the emergence of a powerful class.

Agreed. Obviously if you produce something that is greatly desired (let's say sports cars) and you can only make a small number of them you gain some power becuase you are able to control who has access to these things. It's probably inevitable that some kind of black market barter system will be created to ensure that the 'right' person gets these desirable goods.

Anarcho-socialism isn't a new idea by a long shot. Emma Goldman was a big fan. So is, for that matter, Noam Chomsky. (Though I think his preferred term is "libertarian socialism" or some such.)

Ah I will have to check that out, thanx.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

There must still be an element of supply and demand even within something like the Open Source community then, right? Even though I can get something for free, and the person who created it gives it away for free. Where does the supply and demand come form in that scenario?

Actually, I think that what you're missing is that F/OSS isn't a whole economy.

Sure, groups of people giving stuff away to fulfill some perceived need, or just for bragging rights, can exist without any free market mechanisms behind them. Charities don't really work by supply and demand and free pricing either, for example.

I have nothing against that. I've given away my coding, my money or a helping hand before myself too.

The only thing I'd argue is that I wouldn't extrapolate that to work at the scale of a whole economy. In fact, arguably they work _because_ they're a minority that operates on top of the real economy.

F/OSS makes a perfect example actually. (Again, bear in mind that I'm not badmouthing it or anything.) It does some great programs, but it doesn't really cover everything you'd need. If you want something done for a particular problem, you have to hire someone to do it for you. I.e., it's a fallback to the old fashioned kind of economy.

Even in poster-child projects like Linux, there were plenty of jobs which pretty much nobody wanted to do in their free time. E.g., a code review didn't happen until Red Hat paid people to do that. (Before that... if you took a Linux computer without a firewall online, circa year 2000, you'd get rooted in about half an hour flat.) E.g., if you look in the lists of contributors, a _lot_ (most?) of the kernel and drivers and a good chunk of other utilities isn't made by enthusiast volunteers in their free time at all. It's paid work by people from IBM, Red Hat, etc.

At various points what made it work was that possibility to fall back to plain old fashioned paid work, to cover those situations where 10 people wanted to bake bread and nobody wanted to clean the latrine.

 

[Skeptic]

Joe is a baker, baking bread, buns, rolls, cakes etc. Everyday he bakes approximately enough food for a 100 people (as an example). So in our society he keeps enough for him and his family and gives the rest away for free.

Er... I think you'll run into a few practical difficulties in this stage.

 

[geni]

I'm writing this OP for two major reasons:

(1) To see if this idea of mine is new at all (hence the scare quotes in the title), since a lot of ideas one has tends to be a re-hash of some old idea that you just haven't heard about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarco_comunism

It turns up in fiction from time to time when someone wants to create a situation which a non standard goverment. The Cassini Division and The Culture series for example.

It's quite hard to set up without invokeing a post scarcity society although it would perhaps be posible to produce in a near post scarcity society.

 

[DarthFishy]

Actually, I think that what you're missing is that F/OSS isn't a whole economy.

Sure, groups of people giving stuff away to fulfill some perceived need, or just for bragging rights, can exist without any free market mechanisms behind them. Charities don't really work by supply and demand and free pricing either, for example.

I have nothing against that. I've given away my coding, my money or a helping hand before myself too.

The only thing I'd argue is that I wouldn't extrapolate that to work at the scale of a whole economy. In fact, arguably they work _because_ they're a minority that operates on top of the real economy.

F/OSS makes a perfect example actually. (Again, bear in mind that I'm not badmouthing it or anything.) It does some great programs, but it doesn't really cover everything you'd need. If you want something done for a particular problem, you have to hire someone to do it for you. I.e., it's a fallback to the old fashioned kind of economy.

Even in poster-child projects like Linux, there were plenty of jobs which pretty much nobody wanted to do in their free time. E.g., a code review didn't happen until Red Hat paid people to do that. (Before that... if you took a Linux computer without a firewall online, circa year 2000, you'd get rooted in about half an hour flat.) E.g., if you look in the lists of contributors, a _lot_ (most?) of the kernel and drivers and a good chunk of other utilities isn't made by enthusiast volunteers in their free time at all. It's paid work by people from IBM, Red Hat, etc.

At various points what made it work was that possibility to fall back to plain old fashioned paid work, to cover those situations where 10 people wanted to bake bread and nobody wanted to clean the latrine.

Very good points, especially the bit about the F/OSS economy operating on top of the normal economy. Do you see anyway that this kind of economy could be expanded to something beyond software?

Hmmm I can think of another example which is the Open Access movement in the academic circles. Essentially any papers I publish in an Open Access environment are freely given away, I do not charge anything for them. Of course I can only do this becuase my University is Government funded.

Er... I think you'll run into a few practical difficulties in this stage.

I agree with you but would you mind enumerating some of these difficulties so I could try and answer some of them at least


I agree with what most of the people have been saying, and as I said in the OP I fell that the idea is full of holes. Even so I wonder if there is a workable system that can be based on this idea? It still seems to me as if there is a valuable idea in there somewhere.

Maybe

 

[D'rok]

Er... I think you'll run into a few practical difficulties in this stage.

Yup.

 

[DarthFishy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarco_comunism

It turns up in fiction from time to time when someone wants to create a situation which a non standard goverment. The Cassini Division and The Culture series for example.

It's quite hard to set up without invokeing a post scarcity society although it would perhaps be posible to produce in a near post scarcity society.

OK guilty as charged I admit I got my inspiration from The Culture books by Ian M. Banks.

I think your last paragraph ties in nicely with the discussion about F/OSS. In a certain sense F/OSS exists in a post scarcity society. It takes no 'real' raw materials to create software, just time and expertise. So if I have an abundance of these, I can easily create software and give it away for free. (Acknowledging the problems with F/OSS that hans has mentioned earlier).

So in essence the idea is only workable if we have super efficient robots doing all the menial labour in a manner that creates no real scarcity.

 

[D'rok]

*nods*

Ok I won't argue with you that this is essentially communism in the Marxist sense, not the centrally planned sense of the USSR and other communist countries.

Even so isn't there somewhat of a movement towards this kind of society even within the framework of the Capitalist society we currently have. Things like the Open Source movement, people 'going green' even though it costs more etc.?

There are too many forces moving in the opposite direction. How will you eliminate greed? Or lust for power? What will you do with Achilles who is motivated by pure prestige and wants to fight and die for glory? (speaking metaphorically, of course, but the Achilles archetype is still extant in real people)