Re: [Marxism] Economic Planning/Centralization and Computation - The Work of Cockshott and Cottrell

[Craig Butosi via Marxism]

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>The problem, however, with cy.Rev and Cockshott-Cottrell alike is that
their vision of feasible socialisms rest on utopian foundations. They view
computers as the key that can unlock the door to a more just and humane
society.

Indeed, Louis. I suspect that the risk of committing to a technological
determinism in the area that Cockshott and Cottrell work is quite high -
perhaps a product of such a focused question they attempt to tackle
(socialist calculation). I think Eden Medina nails it when discussing
Chile's Cybersyn Project
:

5. We need to think big, because technology alone will not create a better
world.

We need to be thinking in terms of systems rather than technological quick
fixes. Discussions about smart cities, for example, regularly focus on
better network infrastructures and the use of information and communication
technologies such as integrated sensors, mobile phone apps, and online
services. Often, the underlying assumption is that such interventions will
automatically improve the quality of urban life by making it easier for
residents to access government services and provide city government with
data to improve city maintenance.

But this technological determinism doesn’t offer a holistic understanding
of how such technologies might negatively impact critical aspects of city
life. For example, the sociologist Robert Hollands
 argues that
tech-centered smart-city initiatives might create an influx of
technologically literate workers and exacerbate the displacement of other
workers. They also might divert city resources to the building of computer
infrastructures and away from other important areas of city life.

He contends that progressive smart cities should first try to understand
human interactions in urban environments and how they systematically
produce power inequalities. Technologies should then be integrated into
city environments in ways that ameliorate these disparities.

Beer shared Hollands’ perspective. Throughout the Cybersyn Project, Beer
repeatedly expressed frustration that Cybersyn was viewed as a suite of
technological fixes — an operations room, a network of telex machines, an
economic simulator, software to track production data — rather than a way
to restructure Chilean economic management.

Beer was interested in understanding the *system* of Chilean economic
management and how government institutions might be changed to improve
coordination processes. He viewed technology as a way to change the
internal organization of Chile’s government.

If he were alive today, Beer would undoubtedly lament that e-government
initiatives to put existing forms online or computerize existing processes
miss opportunities to make organizations themselves more effective.

We must resist the kind of apolitical “innovation determinism” that sees
the creation of the next app, online service, or networked device as the
best way to move society forward. Instead, we should push ourselves to
think creatively of ways to change the structure of our organizations,
political processes, and societies for the better and about how new
technologies might contribute to such efforts.

The challenges faced by Cybersyn’s protagonists were not unique to their
era — we will face similar ones. While the project was far from perfect,
its lessons should not be ignored by those seeking a future where
technology is democratically harnessed for social good.


C


Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS, B Mus (Hons)
Website: http://www.craigbutosi.ca
Library: library.craigbutosi.ca

On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:06 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> There are other efforts to reconcile computer technology and socialism
> that differ quite strikingly from cy.Rev's "Third Wave" vision. W. Paul
> Cockshott and Allin Cottrell co-authored "Towards a New Socialism: a
> Post-Soviet Model" to promote such a vision. Cockshott is a computer
> systems engineer and his expertise helps to give the book a firm grounding
> in the technology it espouses. They advocate centralized planning though
> the wide-scale use of networked computers, rather than the decentralized
> version of market socialism that cy.Rev embraces. Instead of rejecting a
> Soviet-type model out-of-hand, they present a re-engineered version.
>
> Cockshott and Cottrell argue that the labor theory of value can provide
> the underpinning for both wages and prices in a socialist society. If we
> can quantify how long it costs to produce something, then we should not
> only be able price it accurately but make sure that factories can do it on
>

Re: [Marxism] Economic Planning/Centralization and Computation - The Work of Cockshott and Cottrell

[Craig Butosi via Marxism]

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Hi all,

This is a great start. Thanks for the leads everyone. Much appreciated.

C


Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS, B Mus (Hons)
Website: craigbutosi.ca 
Library: library.craigbutosi.ca


On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:06 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> There are other efforts to reconcile computer technology and socialism
> that differ quite strikingly from cy.Rev's "Third Wave" vision. W. Paul
> Cockshott and Allin Cottrell co-authored "Towards a New Socialism: a
> Post-Soviet Model" to promote such a vision. Cockshott is a computer
> systems engineer and his expertise helps to give the book a firm grounding
> in the technology it espouses. They advocate centralized planning though
> the wide-scale use of networked computers, rather than the decentralized
> version of market socialism that cy.Rev embraces. Instead of rejecting a
> Soviet-type model out-of-hand, they present a re-engineered version.
>
> Cockshott and Cottrell argue that the labor theory of value can provide
> the underpinning for both wages and prices in a socialist society. If we
> can quantify how long it costs to produce something, then we should not
> only be able price it accurately but make sure that factories can do it on
> time. This seems somewhat like the operating principle of the former Soviet
> Union, so why didn't it work there?.
>
> The answer is two-fold. Besides the lack of democracy, there was also
> inadequate information available to economic planners. Only sophisticated
> computer systems can provide this information. They say, "If we want to get
> a more objective source of cost data, we need a system of data collection
> that is independent of the market. This is where computer technology comes
> in. We need a computerised information system that gives production
> engineers unbiased estimates of the labour time costs of different
> technologies."
>
> The recent infatuation with market pricing in formerly socialist nations
> seems oddly placed, given the generally irrational nature of the market
> itself. Cockshott and Cottrell note that "market prices are used as a cost
> indicator in capitalist countries, but they have a certain arbitrary
> character. An artist dies in poverty. A few decades later his pictures
> change hands for millions. A sudden panic hits the stock markets. In a
> matter of hours hundreds of billions are wiped of stock prices. Farmers
> destroy crops because the prices are too low. Walk through the poor areas
> of a British or American city and you will see the pinched faces and
> stunted figures of people for whom food is too expensive."
>
> If the proper computation of labor values is necessary for economic
> planning, what is better, according to Cockshott and Cottrell, to perform
> this function than modern supercomputers. Scientists use them for weather
> forecasting, atomic weapons design, oil prospecting and nuclear physics.
> Would it not be reasonable to expect a national planning bureau to make use
> of them as well?
>
> They, like the publishers of cy.Rev, are cyber-optimists but welcome the
> idea of state management of the economy. They make the case succinctly for
> a mix of advanced automation and old-fashioned "state socialism":
>
> "If detailed plan-balancing is way beyond the reach of the human brain,
> can the calculations be performed successfully using computers? Our answer
> will be `yes', but we wish to anticipate some criticisms. During the 1960s,
> as mainframe computers began to become widely available, many Soviet
> economic cyberneticians were very optimistic, but since that time the
> overall impact of the computer on Soviet planning has disappointed those
> early expectations. Of course it was not just in the USSR that the benefits
> of computerisation were greatly oversold in the 60s. Computerisation is no
> panacea. There are many problems with the economic mechanism in the USSR
> which would have to be tackled before the application of extra
> computer-power can be expected to yield much of a dividend. (One example:
> the irrational and semi-fossilised pricing system, with the prices of many
> goods stuck at levels which guarantee shortages and queues.)
>
> But having said that, the computer and telecommunications technology of
> the late twentieth century does present striking opportunities for the
> regulation of the economy. We believe that the more real danger at present
> is an over-reaction to the `failed promise of the computer'. One should
> remember that the USSR is somewhat behind the West in computer technology,
> and the types of computer system available to Soviet planners in the 60s
> and even 70s were primitive by to

Re: [Marxism] Economic Planning/Centralization and Computation - The Work of Cockshott and Cottrell

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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There are other efforts to reconcile computer technology and socialism 
that differ quite strikingly from cy.Rev's "Third Wave" vision. W. Paul 
Cockshott and Allin Cottrell co-authored "Towards a New Socialism: a 
Post-Soviet Model" to promote such a vision. Cockshott is a computer 
systems engineer and his expertise helps to give the book a firm 
grounding in the technology it espouses. They advocate centralized 
planning though the wide-scale use of networked computers, rather than 
the decentralized version of market socialism that cy.Rev embraces. 
Instead of rejecting a Soviet-type model out-of-hand, they present a 
re-engineered version.


Cockshott and Cottrell argue that the labor theory of value can provide 
the underpinning for both wages and prices in a socialist society. If we 
can quantify how long it costs to produce something, then we should not 
only be able price it accurately but make sure that factories can do it 
on time. This seems somewhat like the operating principle of the former 
Soviet Union, so why didn't it work there?.


The answer is two-fold. Besides the lack of democracy, there was also 
inadequate information available to economic planners. Only 
sophisticated computer systems can provide this information. They say, 
"If we want to get a more objective source of cost data, we need a 
system of data collection that is independent of the market. This is 
where computer technology comes in. We need a computerised information 
system that gives production engineers unbiased estimates of the labour 
time costs of different technologies."


The recent infatuation with market pricing in formerly socialist nations 
seems oddly placed, given the generally irrational nature of the market 
itself. Cockshott and Cottrell note that "market prices are used as a 
cost indicator in capitalist countries, but they have a certain 
arbitrary character. An artist dies in poverty. A few decades later his 
pictures change hands for millions. A sudden panic hits the stock 
markets. In a matter of hours hundreds of billions are wiped of stock 
prices. Farmers destroy crops because the prices are too low. Walk 
through the poor areas of a British or American city and you will see 
the pinched faces and stunted figures of people for whom food is too 
expensive."


If the proper computation of labor values is necessary for economic 
planning, what is better, according to Cockshott and Cottrell, to 
perform this function than modern supercomputers. Scientists use them 
for weather forecasting, atomic weapons design, oil prospecting and 
nuclear physics. Would it not be reasonable to expect a national 
planning bureau to make use of them as well?


They, like the publishers of cy.Rev, are cyber-optimists but welcome the 
idea of state management of the economy. They make the case succinctly 
for a mix of advanced automation and old-fashioned "state socialism":


"If detailed plan-balancing is way beyond the reach of the human brain, 
can the calculations be performed successfully using computers? Our 
answer will be `yes', but we wish to anticipate some criticisms. During 
the 1960s, as mainframe computers began to become widely available, many 
Soviet economic cyberneticians were very optimistic, but since that time 
the overall impact of the computer on Soviet planning has disappointed 
those early expectations. Of course it was not just in the USSR that the 
benefits of computerisation were greatly oversold in the 60s. 
Computerisation is no panacea. There are many problems with the economic 
mechanism in the USSR which would have to be tackled before the 
application of extra computer-power can be expected to yield much of a 
dividend. (One example: the irrational and semi-fossilised pricing 
system, with the prices of many goods stuck at levels which guarantee 
shortages and queues.)


But having said that, the computer and telecommunications technology of 
the late twentieth century does present striking opportunities for the 
regulation of the economy. We believe that the more real danger at 
present is an over-reaction to the `failed promise of the computer'. One 
should remember that the USSR is somewhat behind the West in computer 
technology, and the types of computer system available to Soviet 
planners in the 60s and even 70s were primitive by today's Western 
standards. They were also very centralised (relatively few big 
mainframes), while the system we will propose makes use of both massive 
fast mainframes and widely-distributed PC-type equipment, linked by the 
national telecommunications system. And a political point is relevant 
here. Our planning proposals absolutel

[Marxism] Economic Planning/Centralization and Computation - The Work of Cockshott and Cottrell

[Craig Butosi via Marxism]

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Hi all,

I thought I'd both share and inquire about the work of socialist economists
Allin Cottrell and W. Paul Cockshott. In particular, their book Towards a
New Socialism  I've
long been fascinated by the 'how-to" of centralized economic planning and
the possibilities of realizing such an economy by applying modern
computation to track economic inputs and outputs, hence completely
destroying some of the assumptions and exhortations found in the work of
von Mises and the Austrian School (briefly and vulgarly, his argument that
no single authority can possibly calculate all economic inputs and outputs
to run an economy, that Markets must do this).

I wanted to know if any comrades on here are familiar with Cockshott's and
Cottrell's work, or if you have reading recommendations from other
socialist cliometricians working in the centralized economic planning and
computing sphere? I have never heard of them until very recently so I have
much reading to do; I wondered what you all thought about their work, and
the reception their work has received over the years.

Thanks all,

Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS, B Mus (Hons)
Website: craigbutosi.ca 
Library: library.craigbutosi.ca
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