Paul Cockshott - Cyber-Communism

Taken from his book, Towards a New Socialism, audiobook here, and specifically his youtube lectures Going beyond Money, and Getting down to details.

How it works

• Production takes place. All goods / services are valued by their composite labor time (in labor voucher hours, see below). Factor in depreciation and education into cost. For example, a smartphone might cost 0.5 labor hours. Goods that have neglible marginal cost (~ 0 labor hours) would be free.
• Open, publicly funded research and development is shared by all, with the goal of decreasing the labor time cost of every good.
• Workers are paid in labor vouchers per hour work performed. Working 8 hours would earn you 8 LVH (labor voucher hours) (or a bit less to cover social services). Multipliers may be used if certain work is deemed more necessary, or dangerous, but most likely limited by a certain ratio to foster community.
• Goods are sold in public shops.
• Shop managers are instructed to adjust labor prices so that all goods are sold. While a good selling out is itself an indicator of demand, adjusting by a certain limited ratio gives more demand information, and prevents unwanted goods from going to waste.
• Each good now has a ratio of its sold labor time to actual labor time cost.
• If goods are selling above their actual labor cost (ratio > 1), that means society wants more labor allocated to produce that good. Below that means they want less labor allocated.
• Planners adjust output targets based on this demand.
• Planners do material balances to derive gross output requirements (raw materials + intermediate materials + labor). Input-output tables are solved using linear algebra.
• They compare these requirements with the actual resources available. Some of these might be set by environmental constraints, or limited quantities.
• Population uses direct democracy to vote on how much labor to allocate to non-consumer goods (see below).
• They see if the final output targets can be met, and if not, go back to the adjust output targets step.
• Finally, form a detailed production plan, broadcast it over the internet to all productive facilities, monitor production (and sales) in real-time. Adjust plan accordingly.

Essentials

Labor vouchers

• Earned by workers. 1 LVH = 1 Labor Voucher Hour earned per hour of work (or less to cover social services)
• Attached to a single person / family, likely through a credit card.
• Can only be exchanged for consumer goods. You cannot transfer them to another person. Buying absentee property is illegal.
• Are destroyed after being used in shops.
• Possibly destroyed after a certain amount of time (to prevent hoarding)
• Labor time across the economy is preserved. If there are 8 million workers in a country :
  • Lets say 2 million workers are devoted to social services, 6 million to consumer goods.
  • Labor ministry issues 6 million person-years vouchers to workers, split among the 8 million workers.
  • Labor hours used producing non-consumer goods (2 million person-years) + labor hours used in consumer goods production (6 million person-years) = cost of goods in shops (6 million person-years) + (2 million person-years cancelled for social tax bin)
  • Workers spend 6 million in the shops, social income tax of 2 million ( to provide for social services ), and the 8 million labor hours are fully canceled.
  • This defetishizes consumer-producer relations, since you can see exactly how human labor is being allocated, and spent.

Direct democracy for non-consumer goods

• New enterprises, entertainment, research and development, social services are all examples of non-consumer goods.
• Society votes on how much labor to devote to social services: education, health care, child care, environmental protection, national defense. If a country has 6 million adult workers, it might allocate 2 million people to non-consumer goods.
• Major strategic decisions taken democratically by all the interested population. Minor decisions left to planners. Information open to all, voting available to all.

Foreign trade

• Uneven development of technology and natural resources means that external trade with capitalist nations will still be necessary and sometimes preferred during the transition to a global socialist economy.
• Imports (or buys) from capitalist countries are paid for with labor credit certificates issued from the foreign trade ministry.
  • Capitalist countries (which already have freely circulating money), could then decide their own exchange rates for the labor credits, and circulate them as they would any other currency. The rates would come from the demand for goods our country produces, and isn’t a concern for our planners.
  • This is the reverse of the USSR’s system, which was to pay for imports in held dollars or marks, and restrict the export of its own currency.
• Exports (or sales) to capitalist countries are either an exchange of goods, or labor vouchers they sell back to us.

• Planners decide whether to import a good, or produce it locally, based on the offered price vs domestic cost.

  • Sell the good if the labor voucher price offered is higher than the actual labor-time cost, buy the good if its less than the domestic labor-time cost.

  • Example:

    Good	Domestic cost	Price offered	Decision
    Oil	1 million hrs	1.5 million hrs	export
    Cars	2 million hrs	1.5 million hrs	import

    Value of exports	1 million hrs in domestic units
    Value of imports	2 million hrs in domestic units
    Labour-time trade deficit	1 million hrs in domestic units

  • Since prices and speculation fluctuate wildly in capitalist countries, the planners will have to make import/export decisions based on long-term trends rather than short-term variations.
• Foreign currency is outlawed. Fight black markets by making sure that labor vouchers are not overvalued. Planners track these markets, and ensure that demands for foreign-produced goods are being addressed by either increased local production, or official international trade.
• For visiting tourists, an arrangement could be made with capitalist banks to allow the use of their credit cards, at the moment-in-time exchange rate. Tourists from our country could use their labor credit cards externally, which would effectively sell their labor vouchers to an external bank for that exchange rate of capitalist currency.
• Trade with other socialist nations, would be a 1-to-1 equal labor-time exchange.