[PEN-L:1197] New Additions to Socialist Planning Homepage.
Hi there, Several new works have been added to the Stewards/Socialist Econonomic Planning homepage at http://www.stewards.net/socplnh.htm * `On the Modes of Distribution' by Dr. Stuart Piddocke, (1998, Vancouver, Canada), a 65 page essay. Grounded in the work of Karl Polanyi and the discipline of economic anthropology, but moving significantly beyond these frameworks, this work contributes broad and clear conceptual guidelines for understanding the general nature and logic of the three historically emergent forms of economy and distribution: reciprocity, market, and `re-distribution' (aptly renamed in this work as `centribution'.) A great strength of this work is in showing that reciprocity, market, and centribution are frequently all present in a given social institution or society, but to varying degrees and in varying ways, depending on the institution or society in question. * A Critical but Sympathetic review of Cockshott and Cottrell's work on socialist planning and of the `Cyber Revolution' approach to planning by Louis Prycot. * Another essay by Prycot concerning Che Guevaras arguably important contributions to Socialist Planning theory. There are many other important links and documents at the site, and additional material will be appearing on the page in coming weeks. Stop by. Cheers, Eric Free Web-based e-mail groups -- http://www.eGroups.com
New Addtions to Socialist Planning Homepage.
Hi there, Several new works have been added to the Stewards/Socialist Econonomic Planning homepage at http://www.stewards.net/socplnh.htm * `On the Modes of Distribution' by Stuart Piddocke, (1998, Vancouver, Canada), a 65 page essay. Grounded in the work of Karl Polanyi and the discipline of economic anthropology, but moving significantly beyond these frameworks, this work contributes broad and clear conceptual guidelines for understanding the general nature and logic of the three historically emergent forms of economy and distribution: reciprocity, market, and `re-distribution' (aptly renamed in this work as `centribution'.) A great strength of this work is in showing that reciprocity, market, and centribution are frequently all present in a given social institution or society, but to varying degrees and in varying ways, depending on the institution or society in question. * A Critical but Sympathetic review of Cockshott and Cottrell's work on socialist planning and of the `Cyber Revolution' approach to planning by Louis Prycot. * Another essay by Prycot concerning Che Guevaras arguably important contributions to Socialist Planning theory. Additional material will be appearing on the page in coming weeks. Stop by. Cheers, Eric Free Web-based e-mail groups -- http://www.eGroups.com
New `World Crisis' and `Socialist planning' webpages.
Hi there, New sections devoted to `the world crisis' and `the theory and practice of socialist planning' have been added to the Stewards Corporation movement website at www.stewards.net . The new mini-homepages for the two new sections are at: www.stewards.net/socplnh.htm and www.stewards.net/worldcrh.htm The sections will be expanded over time, and currently include a number of articles on these subjects, links to online books and resources, and - very esoteric (hidden higher knowledge) in the west, the current stance of the Russian communist party on mass organizing, public action, and progressive political reform to deal with the Russian crisis. (Hint: It's more militant, and calls for greater mass action, than has been presented here in the media.) Also, the new socialist planning listserve, already described here, will launch in about one week. Please let us know if you would like to be included. All interested people are welcome. Finally, we have also established a new private listserve with several programmers and economists, including the authors of `Towards a new Socialism', a great work on socialist planning, for the purpose of exploring collaboration in the development of new socialist planning software to support democratically planned, ecologically-viable socialist or stewards economies based on social ownership in the means of production. If you are an economist, programmer, or have relevant theoretical interests, please email me with your pertinent background and interest in joining the socialist planning software nexus. Cordially yours, Eric Sommer
STEWARDS CORPORATION MOVEMENT - A NEW MOVEMENT OF POOR PEOPLE
RADICALLY DIFFERENT THAN OTHER APPROACHES. USES `CONTRACTS OF CARE AND OBLIGATION'. NO ONE SHOULD BE LEFT TO STRUGGLE ALONE! STEWARDS Corporation Movement - A NEW MOVEMENT OF POOR PEOPLE Website: http://www.stewards.net Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This is an introduction to the Stewards Corporation Movement. If you want to inform other individuals or listserves in your network about this movement, please forward this message to them. Thanks, Eric --- Hi there, The Stewards Corporation Movement, also known as the Stewards Planetary House, is a new just-being-born movement of working and non-working poor people who seek to become increasingly able to work together to care for one another together with the planet. Our approach is highly inquiry-oriented and includes new methods of social organization, economics, information technology, childcare, personal development, care of the earth, `co-obligation contracts to work together to care for one another', and much else. Our approach could, in a nutshell, be summed up as: `Organize the planetary underclass as the Stewards of the world!" The SPH also combines the seven ways people have traditionally sought liberation: The human potential movement, progressive social change, religion or spirituality, ecology, feminism, progressive art, and science. The Stewards Planetary House is open to all poor people, wherever they may be on the planet. People are needed to help us to begin our program of `organizing the poor people of the world - beginning with ourselves - to work together as Stewards to care for one another together with the world. One element that strongly distinguishes our approach from others is that while supporting all progressive struggles for greater freedom, equality, and democracy, we place emphasis as well on the new principal of `co- obligation', which entails the use of `Stewards Democratic contracts' through which we enter into formal and informal obligations which we undertake, outside the capitalist system, to work together to meet one anothers needs and to care for one another and the planet. This is Stewardship. The URL for our homepage, where you can read about us, and connect with us, is: http://www.stewards.net Along with many other documents of interest to poor people and their allies, the website includes an important new book entitled:`The Stewards Corporation: A System for Total Human Development'. This book sets out a model for a `corporation of a new type', which includes within itself: poor people's social unities called `Stewards Houses' (these are not primarily physical structures but social units of cooperation which can be used by anyone affiliated with a Stewards Corporation including homeless people); poor people's production systems called `Stewards Services'; poor people's education systems called `Stewards Guilds'; a poor people's democratic management, ownership, and governance system for the Stewards corporation called a `Stewards Polis'; poor people's use of advanced information technology for communication, collaboration, and coordination; poor people's ownership and management of land; and much more. The book on the Stewards Corporation is accessible from the `Contents' page, which is accessible from the homepage. We are involved in attempting to establish the first functioning Stewards Corporation here in Vancouver, British Columbia. Please call email or call us for further information. In case you - like ourselves - dislike the oppressive and life-fragmenting aspects of traditional business corporations, rest assured that the `Stewards Corporation' are corporations of a VERY different type! If you are interested in entering into regular dialogue and communication with us regarding the theoretical and practical steps involved in developing a Stewards Corporation in your area, please e-mail us at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or call us. If you want to inform other individuals or listserves in your network about this movement, please forward this message to them. Cordially yours, Solidarity, Blessings of light, Eric Sommer coordinator of B.C. Stewards Corporation http://www.stewards.net and The Chiapas Alert Network. http://www.stewards.net/chiapas/10.htm
THE HIDDEN HOLOCAUST AGAINST THE POOR
THE HIDDEN HOLOCAUST AGAINST THE POOR by Eric Sommer The advent of the World Crisis, with its' disturbing mix of economic, ecological, and technical Y2000bug elements, , brings new importance to the hidden holocaust against the poor which has been taking place for some time on a world-wide and accelerating scale. Over the past few decades massive numbers of middle class, working class, and - in the Third World - peasant people have been driven into poverty, where they have been increasingly threatened with annihilation. To see the truth of these statements, we need only look about us. In the U.S., the richest country in the world, lower middle class and working class standards of living have been falling for 20 years and now one or two million - nobody seems to know the exact number - poor people have actually been made homeless. The life-span for Russian men has dropped since the fall of the Soviet Union, along with a radical increase in poverty, from 75 or so years to 59 years. Turning to the Third World, the picure is replete with statistics such as 2,000,000 homeless children in brazil, with 250,000 of them in the city of Sao Paulo alone. Even before the current crisis there were hundreds of thousands of child prostitutes in southern Asia; now, under the impact of economic desperation, the numbers are increasing still further. Similar facts and figures, confirming a holocaust of unprecedented proportions against the poor, including massive former members of the middle and working classes who have been driven into poverty, could be adduced for many other areas of the world. One face of this new holocaust against the poor is that - like the original Nazi holocaust - it includes a virulent hate campaign. The media, government, and right-wing think tanks have in recent years sponsored a sweeping propaganda attack against impoverished - and especially unemployed - people. This campaign has sought to drill into the public consciousness the notion that poor people are `shiftless', that they are infected with a `culture of poverty' or `culture of dependency', that they are the `reason for high taxes', that they are `deadbeats and criminals' and so forth. One consequence of this campaign has been to scapegoat poor people; they are blamed for economic problems which actually have nothing to do with them. Declining working class living standards, and growing social misery and economic insecurity, stem in reality from the current workings of the global economy, from globalized competition, from the application of new informational and robotic technologies, and from the extraction of super- profits from the rest of the population by the upper 20% of society. But government and media, using ideas spun in right-wing think tanks (such as re labeling poverty as `dependency'), have sought to re-direct public frustration towards the poor, with their supposed responsibility for high taxes and other social difficulties. This demonizing and de-humanizing of the image of the poor has, moreover, served to harden public sentiment, so that the current massive suffering - and mass deaths - of poor people can be made acceptable. The reality of this new holocaust against poor people is, to some extent, obscured by its outward differences from the original one. In the original holocaust, for example, ordinary members of society who happened to be Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, or other targeted categories found themselves progressively publicly vilified, singled out for repressive legislation, rounded up, worked to death, and then gassed. In the current holocaust, growing numbers of ordinary people in the middle and working classes, and in the peasant class in the third world, find themselves `inexplicably' cast down among the working and non-working poor, where they become `the new Jews' of their society, and where life becomes a daily struggle for adequate nutrition, housing, and dignity. Another difference which hides the similarities between the two holocausts is the nature of the concentration camps which are used. The victims of the original holocaust were interned in slave labour camps at places like Belsen and Auschwitz. The concentration camp of the new holocaust is the street, where the ever-growing numbers of homeless must try to live, sleep, and care for themselves. For those who still have homes, the new concentration camps are the ever-worsening poverty ghettos and substandard life-support systems and housing of the inner cities and shanty-towns. Finally, there is the difference in the methods of execution. Unlike the original holocaust, the poor are not - for the most part - visibly murdered by the state or the upper classes. Under a smoke screen of rhetoric about the `necessary working of the economy' and `ending dependency' and `reliance on market forces', we are told we must simp
OVERDETERMINATION OF WORLD CRISIS
Hi there, The Socialist planning listserve has elicited great interest from a variety of people and organizations, and will therefore launch within the next two weeks. Meanwhile, I wanted to invite any interested members of this group to subscribe if you wish to our world Crisis Listserve, which was founded when most of the world still thought the crisis would be confined to Asia/Russia. Just send me an email if you want to join. Below is an article I wrote two months ago on the crisis. By the standards of PEN, the economic analysis in this article is no doubt superficial, but I think its' emphasis on the three-fold character of the crisis is worth emphasizing. -- To subscribe to the World Crisis Listserve, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Overdetermination of the World Economic Crisis by Eric Sommer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The current world crisis, upon closer examination, can be seen to be `overdetermined' in that it is actually resulting from three inter-related processes. These three processes are the `financial and material production crisis' and its immediate causes; the ecological despoilation crisis; and the Year 2000 computer bug crisis, which is proving to be a far more important issue than most progressives yet realize. First, then, there is the `purely' economic crisis, which may well, at least in large part, be the product of a `crisis of overproduction' resulting from the productivity of today's information technology and robotic technologies outstripping the ability of consumption based on the ability of workers operating in a capitalist framework to buy back the products they create. In additon to productivity advances, another contributer to this aspect of the crisis is the trend to `free market globalization' such as the NAFTA agreement which have removed import tarrifs which protected the industrial activity and wage levels within the developed countries which allowed workers in those countries to buy back some of their output. There are also issues of financial speculation and malfeasance in various countries, which have fueled matters. This financial crisis is, of course, `twinned' in many areas with socio-political crises involving the instability of corrupt and authoritarian governments operating in the interests of global capitalism, such as the governments of Suharto in Indonesia (his cronies still have power there), Yeltsin in Russia, and so forth. The `financial' aspect of the crisis is exemplified by massive losses in financial markets worldwide; massive unemployment in Russia and South Asia; and massive declines in prices and demand for commodities such as steel, oil, copper, and wood, whch are heavily impacting resource export areas such as Mexico, Chile, and rural British Columbia, Canada (which is experiencing depression conditions), as evidenced by the rapidly declining relative value of such currencies as the Mexican Peso, the Canadian dollar, and the currecny of South African. A second element in the world crisis is an ecological crisis resulting from untoward human intervention in the biosphere. The possible starvation of up to 80 million people in Indonesia in comming months, as predicted by both the World Bank and the Indonesian government, is exacerbated by the possibility of serious crop shortages resulting at least in part from changed wheather patterns. In addition, the ecological element is also betokened by the almost unprecedented number of major floods in diverse locales this year. Forty percent of Bengladesh was underwater at one point, and very serious disruptions of eco-systems and social life have been produced by floods in China, Chiapas Mexico, and elsewhere. In Latin America the crisis is just beginning to take hold through sudden drops in currency values, plunging stock markets, and drastic reductions in world prices and demand for key exports such as Chilean copper, Mexican steel, and so forth. There, the impact of the El Nino current, thought by many ecologists and climatologists to have been greatly amplified by global warming, is heavily damaging the harvest of fish in Peru, for example, where they are an important economic factor. A third element in the world crisis, which is already impacting stock prices, is the Y2, or `year 2000' bug problem, involving the possibility of massive computer and network system failures due to the inability to fully locate and replace software dating sub-routines which only run up to 1999. These subroutines are burried deeply inside massive numbers of corporate, governmental, hospital, and other systems. This problem, which is greatly underappreciated outside computer industry c
Re: [PEN-L:769] RE: Socialist Planning Listserve (fwd)
Hi there, Thanks for the `confession'. I know the feeling; I'm too am an `info-junkie'. Anyway, I'll add you the growing list of prospective participants. Cheers, Eric >> Subject: [PEN-L:767] Socialist Planning Listserve (fwd) > >I'm already on too many lists, but I confess >I'm interested too. > >Max Sawicky > > >
Socialist Planning Listserve
Please forward this message to all relevant listserves, organizations, and individuals. -- Hi there, With the arrival of the current world crisis (economic crisis, year200bug crisis, ecological crisis), the issue of how to convert a capitalist economy to a socialist economy or a social economy or a democratic economy or, as I call it, a `Stewards economy', may again be on the historic agenda. I am canvassing opinion on whether people are interested in participating in a `socialist planning network (SPN)' which would initially consist of a listserve, and accompanying shared electronic workspace. These facilities would be devoted to dialogue, exploration, and possible joint projects regarding historical and contemporary theory and practice related to socialist planning on the basis of socially owned and managed property in the means of production. The essential thrust of this listserve, and of related facilities, would not simply be academic discussion but active preparation for the possibility of socialist transition. If you would like to participate in this process, which would initially involve enrollment in a listserve, please let me know by email. if a minimum critical mass of people, say 20 or so, show interest, I will initiate the listserve and include you if you have sent me email to that effect. Dialogue and exploration through the listserve might include but would not necessarily be limited to such topics as: * The sharing of pertinent bibliographic references on socialist planning. To wet your appetite, you might initially look at `Towards a New Socialism' by W. Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell. The introduction to this book is on-line and you can download the whole work in Adobe Postscript format from: www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/ A shorter related work which also contains many of their ideas can be read in on-line in its entirety at: http://www.gn.apc.org/Reality/econ/mfs.htm * Planning experiences in the former socialist block(s). We need to learn from both the positive and negative lessons of this `vast historical experiment'. The economic successes of the first soviet five year plans; the positive aspects of socialist block planning and management approaches; the relative absence of democratic participation in the planning and management of the socialist block economies; the role of `imperialist encirclement' and of participation in the arms race in `distorting' socialist block economic development and planning; the relative absence of ecological criteria from socialist block planning and the consequent widespread ecological destruction; and the general economic difficulties encountered in the socialist block economies in recent decades, would all be on the agenda. * The problems of appropriation and transition from capitalim to socialist property and planning in an actual, `messy', `real-world' revolutionary or quasi-revolutionary setting. These problems are illustrated by the experience of the soviet people in 1917-1921 in which, amidst war and civil war, huge numbers of ordinary workers and peasants participated in the appropriation and initial planning processes regarding the factories, mills, mines, and fields in the Soviet revolution. Just one example of what can be learned here is the little-known but essential role of `workers control' in safeguarding production facilities such as factories, mines, and so forth from sabotage by capitalists and capitalist managers in the chaotic transition period immediately after the revolution. * The role of democracy in planning - i.e., What is the nature of democratic planning? How is this achieved on local, regional, and national scales? * The new prospects for democratic planning opened by use of contemporary technological means such as computer networks, automated electronic data interchange (edi), databases, groupware such as Lotus Notes, and similar facilities to facilitate `real-time socialist planning' and coordination would also definitely have a place in these discussions. * Discussions of the planning and related management procedures of contemporary business practice, such as `Hoshin planning', as these may be creatively applied in democratic socialist planning, would also be encouraged. * Relatively smaller scale planning and management in cooperatives or intentional community settings might well also be of interest. * Rehashing the `socialist calculation debate' and similar material ala Hayek would definitely be discouraged, as these subjects have been `done to death', and are often the focus of anti-socialist ideologues and academics with little knowledge or interest in the actual planning and management of socialist economies. If you would like to participate, please let me know. Cordially, Eric Sommer