Serious question for syndicalists, co-op socialists, market socialists etc:

Serious question for syndicalists, co-op socialists, market socialists etc:
What if the car factory and the knife factory vote to increase production but the steel factory votes to decrease production?

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The car factory and knife factory team up to make cars covered in knifes to ram the steel factory and seize the steel.

Killdozer 2: serrated boogaloo

good idea

it seems logical that the people who use the goods would decide how production for use will proceed.

i.e.,
a. consumer demand places order for cars,
b. car factory places order for steel,
c. steel factory places order for coal + raw materials.
d. coal mine places order for machinery,
…etc.

what now

You have inter-worker councils that discuss these issues, each factory shouldn't be operated without input from the rest of the society

so
or
The latter sounds more democratic to me.

because each facility doesn't exist in a vacuum. if the car factory wants to increase production, they'll have the steel foundry in on it. if the foundry needs to decrease production (due to less available material, for example) then the car factory won't be able to. each factory, farm and so on will reach a concensus with their connected elements.

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The car factory and knife factories in question mobilise their workers militias and stage an attack upon the steel factory.
If the armed workers of the steel factory are able to repel the combined attack of the car and knife workers, then their position to not increase production stands.
If however they are beaten by the attacking militias, then they will be forced to agree to increase production.

After securing their desired production quota from the steel factory, the car and knife militia-men will likely put the head of the steel factories elected leader on a pike as a warning to other local worker run factories about defying them, before returning to their own factories.
Since the army of the wider national steel union would have a hard time being able to beat the combined worker-armies of the car and knife manufacturing unions, they are confident that they will face no retaliation.

Have none of you transporkies and anarkiddies ever heard of making do, or engineering?

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I can live with that

why would the car factory vote to decrease production if demand exists for their products?

maybe they want to focus on quality over quantity? maybe they need to conserve parts and materials? maybe they're making a new model and want to step back up gradually?

Well, first of all, that wouldn't happen. If the demand for cars and knives is high, there's no reason to decrease production of steel or knives and cars. If the demand for both cars and knives is low, decrease their production and steel production.
Now, if demand is only high for one of the two (knives or cars) increase steel production and production for whichever cars or knives has high demand and keep a surplus of steel and cars or knives, depending of which had less demand.

The Gulag Factory has voted to decrease production of syndicalists, co-op socialists, market socialists etc. What do you do?

what if the steel factory workers just want to work less than all the other factory workers

...

They should just suck it up, why should they have the option of working less than everybody else?

the most rational way to organize production would be like this:

a. consumers buy cars. (labor credits are deducted from their accounts and deleted.)
b. the car factory sets a production goal based on consumer demand.
c. the car factory places an order with the steel mill to acquire materials.
d. the steel mill sets a production goal based on orders from the car factory.

The limiting factor on individual production goals will be the immediate demand. The limiting factor on consumer demand (and thus industrial demand) will be the costs of production. Overall demand will fall as the cost of production rises. (demand = desire + ability to pay.)

Consumers and producers will not exchange money or labor credits. Neither will different industries "pay" each other credits for deliveries of products or raw materials. A planning institution will give every enterprise a budget of labor credits based upon the above factors, which will include their own self-reported costs of operation, i.e. how many man-hours it will take them to produce X cars. Everyone will have access to costs, budgets, order placement, production, etc.


i agree these decisions would be rational.


this.


it would raise the cost of their product and possibly reduce demand, causing their budget to be reduced.

Think of it like this.
Car factory has a budget of 8,800 man-hours. It can produce 50 cars. Let's say that the factory workers are lazy and begin producing only 25 cars. The cost of a car will now double since it takes twice as many man-hours to produce the same good.

Old price of a car: 176 hours
New price of a car: 352 hours

Maybe consumers will pay the new price. Maybe not. But if demand drops then so will the car factory's budget. The workers in the car factory would now either be forced to work part-time or some of them would need to find new jobs.

this of course is simplifying things by not mentioning taxes or "fixed capital" investment.

I'm not asking real socialists, I'm asking syndies. How can you just democratically make them suck it up?

Same thing that happens when that occurs with private businesses. Negotiation or government intervention.

Jesus will deal with it

This but unironically.

On a more serious note this would never happen under market socialism since there will always be a price of steel that entices producers to produce.

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In regard to other posters, I don't think de Leon ever advocated labor vouchers (although it's quite possible he and other historical syndicalists might have if adequate computer technology such as what exists now was around then), which would imply some form of market at least in consumer goods. Imagine basically if Gosplan was staffed by trade union reps and maybe had some more autonomy factored in for local soviets. The alternative is that the trade unions themselves are basically mutualized firms (I believe this might be closer to the anarchist model, though I know Catalonia did seem to promote nationalization to some extent so idk) that organize trade between eachother based on market prices.

Not even a syndicalist tbh but from what I understand there would be national and regional parliaments/boards of elected representatives from every industry (elected from workshops by their workers) which would deliberate on a production plan or even prices. If you think this might cause issues where political deadlock could create economic crises or populism might result in unrealistic or dangerously subsidized pricing you're probably right. Syndicalism, anarchist or not, presents some pretty considerable problems in that regard that I really don't think can be justified when more efficient (and possibly more democratic) theories of planning exist.

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Followers of De Leon do advocate for that. De Leon mentioned vouchers in the short book 15 Questions about Socialism.

Sounds bourgeois to me.

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN DANIEL

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Co-ops buy it from another steel factory? Pretty shit thread imo.

lol, I recently read a (very interesting and detailed) paper about Yugoslavia's self management system and it mentioned that sometimes the workers' council would spend hours arguing who could have access to the coffee cart at night then defer to the professional managers for most of the actual business decisions.

The car and the knife and the steel factory also convene it an over arching syndicate.

/thread.

we will call this new kind of labor "meeting-labor," it will be the dominant mode of production in FALS

Why is everyone assuming that there is only one car manufacturer and one steel manufacturer? They would just get it from someone else.

so are you just gonna keep sending wages and materials to the less productive factory?