Cockshott General 3.0: Chad Cybernetics Edition

We're putting together a special team…

New blogpost by Paul Cockshott, this time about manipulated security-cam footage?? paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/the-petrov-pictures/

...

it's refuting British anti-Russian war propaganda

lmao wtf. I didn't follow the affair, I just saw liberals screaming fake news at RT for doubting the offical version. This kills the redditor

Thanks user. I was away from the internet for a couple of days focusing on studies.

I've been re-reading TANS lately and early on in the book, in chapter 2, he calculates the value created by an hour of labor in the UK, coming to about £7.50 or £300 a week. I looked up some statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate what it'd be today in the US. Assuming a NNP of $17.25 trillion and a working population of about 153 million, it works out to about $112,500 created per worker. This means an hour is worth $58.59 and implies a weekly wage of $2343.69. Compare this to the median weekly wage of $876.

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NNP includes finance activities. Not a good measurement. Why not just look at the average or median "hourly" wage for proles and divide it by the average workday?

oh and multiply the wage by ~1.6 to ~2 to find out the actual value of their work

I want to clarify some issues here by quoting Marx on price, value, and production.

"In the same way the exchange values of commodities must be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less quantity. This common “something” cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities, make them use values. But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value."
…
"If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract."
Marx, Capital vol.1 chapter 1
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1

"It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves."
Marx, Letter to Kugelmann
marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_07_11.htm

"The assumption that the commodities of the various spheres of production are sold at their value merely implies, of course, that their value is the centre of gravity around which their prices fluctuate, and their continual rises and drops tend to equalise."
Marx, Capital vol.3 chapter 10

So, the argument goes like this:
1. The 'abstract labor time' necessary to produce a commodity determines its exchange-value with other commodities. (Or, its value for short.)
2. In capitalism, since private property is the norm, one does not know directly how much abstract labor time is necessary to produce an individual commodity.
3. Averaging the prices of a single category of commodity gives you a rough estimate of the average value and therefore the socially necessary labor time (SNLT) for that commodity.
4. That said, production of the same category of commodity (ex: a banana) may require different labor inputs depending on the specific producer and the conditions of production that obtain in that specific enterprise.
5. Like Marx says above, the fact that one banana is physically identical to another has absolutely nothing to do with its value.

What's my point?

Under a system of socialized production the abstract labor required to produce a given product is no longer something that only the producer knows and the consumer estimates via averages. The labor inputs would be directly social and therefore directly accounted for. For that reason any attempt to blend these various labor inputs (costs) by a system of averaged prices would be irrational. Like Marx said above, the distribution of social labor in specific proportions is governed by natural laws and not specific forms of manifestation. In both a capitalist mode of production and a socialist mode of production the specific distributions of social labor would need to be distributed on a rational basis. Socialism, in this sense, would be a step forward in that things which are only estimated by producers and consumers in capitalism can be directly measured and accounted for in socialism.

It's astonishing that somebody can read so much, be able to summarize it in plain language, and then come to completely asinine conclusions "based" on that. Your last paragraph is absolute nonsense and what you say before does not in any way lead to it. You are fucking retarded.

So if we get rid of interest doesn't that basically mean we get rid of loans altogether since there's no reason to take the risk that the recipient will default if there is no interest? He did said that banks would just become a payment service. Or would the state still issue loans at zero interest? I'm sure the right would harp on this point so what's the response to this?

What would you need a loan for?

to buy things you dont have the money for, but potentially will

There will be full employment and people will be able to cover their consumption from their income without loans.

Business would still need loans even if they are all coops.
Also I don't see education, cars, and houses becoming super affordable overnight

On page 98 Cockshott discusses interest on savings.
Short answer: I think that what Cockshott would propose is eliminating loans and interest rates and investing purely out of taxes since in a real sense one can only utilize the labor and resources that actually exist. The amount of surplus being invested in machinery and production would be decided on a democratic basis and deducted like a "tax" from existing funds.

On a related note, Cockshott suggested using the average growth rate of productivity as the discount rate. It's on page 67 of TANS. What that means is that today the value of an hour's work contains X use-value but increases in productivity means (by definition) an increase in production relative to that hour's work. So today we produce X, but a few years from now we'll produce X plus 7% or whatever. This gives us the discount rate from which we can estimate growth and help guide long-term development.

Second related note, it would also be possible to introduce a negative interest rate on individual savings since this would cancel out an attempt to accumulate value over time via saving labor tokens. This negative interest rate, again, could equal the average growth in overall productivity.

If you remove the effects of exploitation and speculation from the prices of these commodites then they would become very affordable, at least in developed and semi-developed countries.

There will be administrative / "political" decision-making for that.
Covered by the public at large, not individuals / their parents.
You will rent those things or get that assigned based on where you work / study.

I'm in a non-anglo loose commie team that is in the process of translating TaNS into a retarded language not speaken by the 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧anglo🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 world. Kuki-shot knows about us.

What am I to do if I find his work absolutely crucial but totally flawed?!

I want my denigrated native speakers to understand him, while I despise his shitty shilling for "direct-democracy" PATHETIC and undialectical.

Help me! I'm on the verge of critically obliteratinf Mr. Ck., (le direct demughrasy, le "no party needed", and so on…)
For me Ck is just another person who needs2besent2reeducation camp…

Net national product is what Cockshott used in tans, so I think that's why he used it.

Use proper translated work or just don't.
Suggest kys.

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nig, u don't understank

ima translate Ck word fo' word, yet I disagree w him on several levels

Then just do it. If you really have disagreement then just add translators note.

are you the german deng autist

just translate it and write a critique that you publish separately or something

also his basic ideas for referendums and voting on ratios are fine and could be adapted to a traditional DOTP

Its so easy to divorce the actual planning of the economy from the other parts of his politics that I thought it was on purpose. So just remake the videos yourself and only explain the economic planning.

Write a prologue briefly introducing your point while explaining why it's "absolutely crucial", and write a separate article with the actual critique.

If you edit, alter or misrepresent the original text of the work in any way, you are a revisionist child, you agreed to translate his work with him under the assumption that it would be just that, a translation, I'd imagine? Why does your personal politics have to have any bearing on whether you can carry out a faithful translation? It actually doesn't fucking matter whether you disagree (and let's be honest, I doubt you could actually refute him to a standard acceptable to be included in the work itself), there are infinite ways that you could do so without compromising the integrity of the work as a translation.

How is this even a question you should be asking, this is a fucking joke, how about I translate Capital into Aramaic but replace half the book with shitty polemics written by Austrian Economists?

I really hope you decide to hold yourself to an academic standard and publish your critiques seperately and in such detail and breadth that they are actually worth taking seriously, the arrogance that you display here is breathtaking, the fact that you thought it would be acceptable to alter someones work in a translation to include your own critiques is unreal, and could even be damaging to Cockshott himself considering he apparently approved it, and not only that, the real movement for Scientific Socialism in the 21st Century.

TLs shouldn't be used to voice disagreement with texts

Absolutely infantile.

sounds hilarious

You translate it properly, and write a separate critique as a paper. It's not that hard.

Alright so i'm going on what feels uncomfortably like a religious mission to spread the word about cybercom to all even nominally left spaces I can reach. My first attempt was the chapo discord and I noticed a bad strategy was just giving people the video explanations of it. I thought that by not being books it'd be easier to get people to pay attention but even clicking on a youtube video might be asking too much.

I'm asking if someone could succinctly communicate not the idea but the details of cybercom towards an audience thats already on board with socialism but not in any details. How would you explain cockshotts ideas to your friends whos a leftist but just believes in a vague "give workers full value of their labor" that sort of thing.

(me)
are there any other places that talk about cybernetic communism like this thread does?

>>>/netcom/ has a thread about Cybercom stuff. The previous threads had some good stuff. You could get ideas from Cockshotts blog. The netcom thread had a specific person you can email for cybercom software.

Discord, and Chapo Discord especially I'd imagine, are full of people who literally will do anything to avoid actually learning whatsoever, but yes, this is something that we are required to strategize. If we were to make videos for this crowd what we'd have the most success with is condensing cockshott's work down into d@w style short videos. Ofc that is an incredibly daunting task, but you can actually do said videos with surprisingly little animation, most of which will be built into whatever video editor you'll use, so that leaves you with probably the most complicated thing gone. Perhaps this should be a long-term project for either this thread, somewhere like /netcom/ or even Zig Forums more generally. We could even consult Mr Cockshott about it, someone should ask mods about reviving the graphic design thread.

As a small aside, if you're going to be entering radlib spaces like chapo discord, you might want to have a way to avoid getting banned when they see some of the stuff Cockshott writes about LGBT and call you a TERF

Another kind of stupid strategy would be to meme Cockshott, but idk how you'd go about doing that in an original way

There already is a German version of TANS. He's just trolling.

user… >:(
Animated diagrams.

While we're on the topic, I've got a comrade who generally agrees with Cybercom, but is trying very hard to convince me that labor vouchers aren't necessary and that simply letting people take what they want, on pain of getting limited access if they get greedy, is all you need. They think calc-in-kind is feasible without vouchers and that you can plan based on previous and current data, as well as referendums. Any thoughts?

I think it it'd be better to at least do pilot programs within a voucher system to see how that kind of thing works out. It just seems idealistic and a bit irrational. You can attempt to condition people to work hard and only take what they need when they grow up and through propaganda, but this could result in weirdness like people depriving themselves out of cultural shaming or fear, or of course the fear that they might over consume and push the system very hard to keep up with high rates of consumption. Then if the whole thing is simply geared to react to growth metrics, you're inevitably going to face walls with raw materials and ecology. What if you realize that everybody is using X or wants X thing, and the system in place prioritizes supplying it according to a growth model so that it is abundantly available, but somebody identifies a way in which a substitute for X could be provided that would optimize production, or something? For a basic illustration, think energy or something. Imagine a socialist model in which we just pumped out dirty power plants really quickly to stop the rolling blackouts from high energy consumption instead of investing in more long term projects that were sustainable, because the system simply prioritized the promise that it would allow everyone to take whatever they wanted.

This might all be uncharitable to his position, but then imagine that you start putting qualifiers on to make it not so absurd. You actually monitor individual's consumption to make sure they aren't taking too much, or identifying who is pushing the system to hard. Maybe you even have records of who works where and how much, and you start checking the consumption data against the work data to get a broader picture of who is taking too much. Now it seems as though you are creating this patchwork accounting system of production and consumption that arose out of the original directive that everybody would be able to take things freely. You've made the accounting system itself invisible to everyone participating in it.

I'd argue that the voucher system simply makes this information apparent to everyone. You're making the costs of everything apparent as well as approximately how much you are producing relative to the costs through your vouchers (I say approximately because I'm not convinced a labour voucher system would actually be 100% accurate, but neither is the pricing system we have now). Either the "take everything for free" system is ideal and we don't have to worry about how much everyone is taking, or it has qualifiers which create a shadow accounting system that tries to reconcile what is produced with what is being consumed, and sometimes reaches out to restrain the consumers or producers. If it is the latter, then to me it seems like one is just suggesting a different form of the accounting purpose that labor vouchers basically serve.

Reminder that non of these "Nobel economics prize" winning Austrian Economists are legit
the "Nobel" Prize for economics is awarded by an entirely different organization funded by a consortium of banks

That being said, the price wasn't always shit. Kantorovich got it too.

Cockshott made a short agitprop vid:
youtube.com/watch?v=z8rnWRfcQzQ

Why the fuck is everyone shilling this crap?

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What's this from

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Eagles

i dont know, but its super popular among younger people.

When I was teenager we only used TeamSpeak. Nowadays everybody seems to be on Discord, but to try to shill Cockshott there is fucking retarded, Discord is for kids. Share you ebin Stalin memes there if you want.

The best way to shill Cockshott is to organize events in parties, preferably during an umbrella event where not everybody is already a communist. If you could get Jimmy Dore or Richard Wolff mentioning him it would also be great, but be aware that Cockshott has a video out where he sort of passive-aggressive attacks Wolff for his market socialism.

Thank you comrade

ease of use, free and widespread adoption by gamers

I play with mostly 30+ ppl and we use discord. Kids aren't the only users, gaming has become quite popular with older ppl who grew up with it

Yeah, I don't think I'll ever stop playing videogames, but I wasn't thinking about just "using" it with your friends. The original poster obviously implied to agitate in the popular Discord channels, which is mostly populated by kids. I mean, if someone were to show me a leftist political Discord channel with not only teenage retards in it I'd be changing my mind. I especially think these channels are cancer because they are just mirroring the alt-right with their own culture. "Soycuck" becomes "Kulak", etc.

Cockshott's books, including econophysics:
8ch.net/netcom/res/2.html

posted that link under his youtube vid and it got deleted almost immediately. not sure who/why :/

could our more autismal comrades at least try not to completely sperg out in the comments of every video? he does a video on why theory is important and you motherfuckers are talking about nipples or whatever.

Probably by the man himself; Econophysics and his other books are sold by publishing companies for a reason

yes please

this is an important call for action

to make profits?

even the kindle version costs fucking $50 USD. physical editions cost over $100. nobody is going to buy that shit.

Can this idiot fucking stop with his autismus maximus under every Dickpunch video? We are dealing with an old man here.

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this. if he's making this video because he feels like it's just nobook memelords watching his stuff he's being proven right very quickly. leave your epin maymays in whatever shithole discords you frequent for god's sake, if he stops making videos because of this sort of thing I swear to fuck I'll castrate you all

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Libraries usually buy these things.

Usually the big ones, depending on how many requests for buying of new books. So if you want to lay your hands on a physical copy, request it at your library. And you can have other people request that book too.

Or not bother and download it off of library genesis.>>2649097

nips…lmao

A good example of why people under 25 shouldn't be in politics. Every adolescent human is a degenerate that needs to outgrow it.

Someone asked for Cockshott's econophysics book in the comments section of one of his recent videos. Well, here it is.

ikr, they're such immature children, geez
nips
he…

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I know for a fact that fucker reads this thread. Hide your power level better you tard, Cockshott isn't some fucking autistic shitposter like you.

now that i think of it isn't this the same guy that asked Cockshott to debate Sargon on like the first video he ever uploaded?

Are you sure? He said that for some reason he can't access Zig Forums. If he really reads here, I am sorry for the namejokes. But if he really does this is a great opportunity for feedback.

Yeah, he's a "special" guy.

I think he's talking about gentoo-man (the special guy). I doubt that Cockshott lurks on leftypol.

This , sorry for the confusion comrade.

The biggest and most advanced revolutionary communist struggles are in the Philippines and India, two semi feudal semi colonial nations, is there any Cockshott-ist prescription for these circumstances? Does cyber communism mean we can skip the new democratic/NEP phase of party rule?

I've posted that on Sargons channel as a joke from someone recommending some other left youtuber to debate him.

Why? Pic related.

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It would probably follow the program that Lenin originally intended. That is, waiting receiving resources from a more advanced country after it has gone through a revolution. That way, there is no need for an NEP or anything like that.

Because, you fucking idiot, if he gets the impression that the only people watching the videos that he puts effort into for free are children whose only response to the content presented is shit like "lol nipples XDDDDD", he might just decide "fuck it" and not bother.

Could you just exercise a tiny bit of the self-discipline you're expected to have as a communist and not piss all over yourself in the comment section? The man is obviously just confused by your ebin menes and it absolutely cannot be giving him a good impression of the internet left.

His videos are serious discussions about serious topics, if you want to have fun you can easily post somewhere else.

Thought about memes but I think the problem is that you can't put down the kind of informative details i'm trying to get across.

okay both good ideas but I don't think it'd make a difference in what i'm talking about. Best way I can describe it, I was engaged in a conversation with someone that was interested enough to want to know more. But that conversation stalls out when you present the other with something like a video, or a shorter video, or an animated gif. Because people can't continue a conversation from there. And I think there was a greater chance of getting things across when it comes from one person to another rather than through those other forms.

So what I'm asking for is more like written notes. I don't wanna say script because I don't think that'd work either as it'd sound unnatural. But more like bulletpoints I guess. The way you would explain to a person you were having a conversation with in person and so couldn't point them to a video or a gif or a book.(yeah i know you could pull out your phone or whatever, not the point)

okay well two things. First is that its not horrible there. You can't say slurs but i'm just saying on the scale of here to /r/communism banning catgirls, its a lot closer to the rules here. I'm not there to hang out anyway. Its just the first place I thought of that one could easily talk to a large group of people that are already open to socialism.

But I would eventually want to also enter /r/communism so its a true problem. But i think the solution is surprisingly simple. Just don't mention cockshott at all. I mean i'm thankful for his ideas obviously, but i'd smother the old man with a pillow if it brought communism a step closer and i'm sure he'd agree. If the need arises for some kind of context or historical flourish, there's always mentioning that it was inspired by allende and cybersyn.

I don't only bring this up in the case of "pandering" to radlibs. I want to try and reach out to nominally conservative people. white working class, the people that voted bernie but not hillary. I don't think they would be receptive if you told them "hey wanna do socialism?", but listening to their problems and repeating them back with a marxist analysis and proposing a solution, without ever using taboo'd words like socialism and communism, might get through to them.

I'm not gonna link cockshotts video on socialist strategy, but specifically in part 1 he does what i requested in another thread. Examine the contemporary political-economic situation and from that prescribe not just what to do, but how to do it. Unfortunately he's doing it for the UK but I think roughly the same can be used here. Relate the change from industrial to bank capital, etc.

I do like the idea of people here working on something together. I'm generalizing from my own experience but i think there's a marked difference between being a socialist more generally and cybercom. Knowing down to the details just how possible socialism is today, gives an extra determination to try and see it. However the reason I asked if there were other places that talked about cockshott and his work is because as I'm going on these attempts to talk to people about socialism, I want to write about it somewhere, what was useful, what wasn't, etc.. But i'd feel like it was blogposty in this thread that's useful being kept as discussing the theory. I'd rather post that on a reddit or somewhere that wasn't limited in the sense that this is a single thread.

So I recently just watched Cockshott's videos on socialist strategy, and since it is clearly a program for the U.K. I believe that we should create a dual U.S. / U.K. labor program that could be shared between comrades in the United States and the U.K. Obviously this shouldn't be too hard, as Cockshott himself states in the one of the comments section of his videos that the US and the UK share many simialirities regarding trade deficit, monetary policy and etc. Briefly looking up U.S. economic data regarding the trade deficit, and the overvaluation of the U.S. dollar, this is an easy target to achieve. However, there are some points that need to be addressed when it comes to the United States, particularly the differences in lack of council housing, lack of as far reaching labor party and using feudal laws to reclaim land from the landed aristocracy. So I feel that we all must figure out if there are U.S. comparisions that can be drawn in these areas, and, or the need to review the current US situation that could achieve similar goals. Cause I know that in the United States only about 28% of all land in the United States is Federally / State controlled, while the rest is in the public interest - while in the videos Cockshott explains that according the British Government, technically all land belongs to the Crown. Also, I have attached the PDF slides for the Socialist Strategy videos along with the two Labor Party manifestos which Cockshott cites with Tony Benn's Alternative Economic Strategy proposed in the 1970's Labor Party program.

For some reason the other files did not attach. Well, here at least is the PDF slides for Cockshott's socialist strategy.
Also, I was thinking that we should form a discord to discuss Cockshott's proposals of a transitional program towards socialism in real time. Is anyone down for a discord channel, or perhaps any other means of communication?

No bump - because I meant to say that 28% of US land is federally controlled, while the rest is privately held.

Seriously, what is up with you people and discord? Matrix, tox, Pidgin, IRC literally ANYTHING is better than discord.

The technology needed isn't expensive, a network of cellphones can do it really. So, yeah.

Agree with you that it's good to depersonalize discourse and to get away from politics as celebrity gossip and to focus on issues. But I think it's mistaken to go to liberals with red aesthetics who have often already encountered socialist arguments and made up their mind to be not part of that. I think it's better to talk to people who are just frustrated and see themselves as non-political or new to politics.

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youtube.com/watch?v=T3lTJ9sba8A

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none of these are socialists

Not plebs, COINTELPRO looking for the most pozzed shit to get socialists on.
Also self projecting teenagers that doesn't who think a youtube comment section is for serious discussion only, no fun allowed.

Alright, I agree with you on that, but it would have been nicer if you said that rather then being hostile.

Find me a socialist group that isn't in the third world and has some significant membership roll. Because at the current moment, other then Britain's Labor Party and perhaps the Democrat Cops of America in the US (even though it's not even technically a political party, since candidates run on the Democrat ticket) the only thing still clinging on is Social Democrats. And since they too are contracting and growing ever more right wing, along with the destruction of the Soviet Economies, the left is not in a good position whatsoever. A Socialist Populist Party with a clear transitional program like the one Cockshott has outlined would be a great success, but it needs to be organized.

When the man uploading the videos literally doesn't get your memes and in fact takes offense to them, I'd say yeah, you should probably take your "fun" somewhere else. Like, can you just stop and think for a moment? Cockshott isn't some edgy memelord that makes his videos so people can meme at each other in the comments; they're serious videos for serious discussion, and meme-poisoned retards like you going off in the comments about titties in a way that he doesn't even have the "meme knowledge" to understand really isn't good encouragement to keep putting his time and effort into these videos.

Can you actually not see what the point we're trying to make here is? Would it really fucking kill you to leave your memes for places like Bat'ko's videos or whatever, and just engage with the man on a similar level of seriousness to his own?

Alright, I created a Tox group called Cybernetic Socialism. Also, my username is cyberneticgang. So everyone download Tox and lets start discussing stuff.

I'll be there in six hours.

I guess I'll take your advice. It's more important for communication to be understandable.

sounds good comr8. i'll check it out.

also, people need to relax about the nips comment, jesus christ…

the parties this picture is refering to are not even social democrats. this is why they are crashing to the ground. all the traditional """Socialist Parties""" in Europe are entirely Tatcherian by now. even the "left populism" renewal of Mélenchon/Podemos/Corbyn are barely social democrats and not socialist.
sure, never said the contrary.