Varn Vlog
Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
Varn Vlog
Realities of Modern Socialism: A Critical Exploration of Sam Gindin's 'Socialism for Realists'
Is modern socialism merely a revenge fantasy against historical colonizers? Join Elijah Emery and C. Derick Varn as we critically examine Sam Gindin's "Socialism for Realists," tracing our journey from initial excitement to ultimate disillusionment. We argue that Gindin's vision lacks the aspiration for a classless society and falls short of traditional socialist ideals. Reflecting on the Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn movements, we discuss how their promise has fizzled, leading the left to either concede too much to mainstream parties or drift towards third-worldism.
Explore the intricate challenges of socialist politics in the UK and US with us. From Jeremy Corbyn's struggle with party divisions over Brexit to Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All proposal, we dissect why these attempts at left-wing politics haven't lived up to their potential. Touching on left populist movements like Syriza and the contributions of figures like Giannis Varoufakis, we highlight the practical impediments to implementing socialism, including constitutional barriers and legislative hurdles.
We then delve into the intricacies of socialist economic systems, questioning the role of markets within a socialist framework and the feasibility of central planning. From environmental standards to the historical context of Technocracy Inc, we examine the balance between centralization and decentralization in a socialist society. Finally, we tackle the contemporary landscape of socialism, critiquing its current pitfalls and stressing the need for realistic, sustainable structures that engage people from all walks of life. Join us for a comprehensive critique and a call for a pragmatic approach to building a socialist future.
Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn
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Hello and welcome to Barn Blog, and I am finally doing a commission that was commissioned probably two fucking years ago. This is a discussion on Sam Gindin's Socialism for Realists and in a way I'm glad I held off on it and in a way I'm glad I held off on it. I've read this piece oh, probably 10 times now getting ready for this, and I can be honest with you. My response to this piece has varied wildly from oh, this has some interesting incorporations of different tendencies of socialism in it, to what is this reformist horseshit and why can't we kick this guy out of our movement. To um, uh, well, I guess things are better now than they were when this was written. To where I am now like, like, oh, this is pretty terrible, but what's replaced it is even worse. So, um, where to go from there?
C. Derick Varn :And and I know that sounds unfair, I'm just giving my biases out in the beginning, but, like when we got to the conclusion of the piece, uh, for example, the transformation of the peace.
C. Derick Varn :For example, the transformation of the state. The state is not diffused with the revolutionary party, nor does it wither whether it's transformed in terms of its planning and superintending role, the democratization of planning, the relationship to various layers of planning and new capacity of state, much encouraged, including red expertise and commitment to develop among public employees. That's not even aiming for a classless society. For me, which means out the gate, not aiming towards the goals of communism, not even really aiming towards the goals of what I understand socialism to traditionally be, really aiming towards the goals of what I understand socialism to traditionally be. So it was part of my initial reaction of the Bernie wave, which is like during the Bernie Kerbin period. Socialism became viable for a lot of people, but it also lost its vision of the future in a lot of ways, in that it was mainly the status quo, but nicer with some which I mean this does. This does imply some major reforms to the entirety of society.
Elijah Emery:I'm not which which it should be said, this is considerably more demanding than what the vision of either the bernie or corbin campaigns were right, absolutely.
C. Derick Varn :In fact, this may be the most ambitious uh thing out of that milieu from the time, and I and it's weird because in some ways to me this does like catalyst doesn't feel like a very old magazine, even though it's been around for a while. This does not feel like a very old article, although it's the better half of a decade old. Um, and a lot's happened in the intervening time. When this was written in 2018 I mean, this was fall 2018 when this came out, people were still discussing it probably me in 2021, but it feels very different from what you're going to see coming out of the DSA now, which is either going to be, frankly, either going to be frankly borderline, third worldist, or it's going to be even more concessionary to the democrats, depending on what side of that debate you're on. Um, and I find that interesting. I mean, we can go to the prescriptions, but also we need to talk about how this is set up and I know you and I are going to talk about some things that it indicates that this feels so incredibly of a different milieu than the left does right now and, in a way, I'm going to go ahead and front load this as well. I feel like the left right now is dysfunctional in a way that I'm used to, the left being that the years of 2015 to 2021, uh, were actually dysfunctional in an interesting and different way than the left is right now, and we'll come back to that. But I do find it interesting, as a vision for the future, how this, in trying to be for realist, ends up doing something that mark says you should never do, which is try to put every card on the table ahead of time. Um, that you know this is awfully close to a brew plant for a utopia. It's not quite, it's toast utopia, but let's go into it. So we were talking off air a little bit about this and I just did my normal beginning monologue, but Gendon's work and this article will be in the show notes, you know came out in 2018.
C. Derick Varn :I was familiar with Gendon from his work with Leo Panitch, the making of global capitalism and the socialist challenge to Reza Sanders and Corbin, and it's actually interesting to me how this even feels like a ratcheting down of panic. Uh, who's now? I interviewed panic a long time ago, um, I guess over a decade ago now, um, and he died shortly after this was written, I believe, maybe even right before it. But I associate Gendon with Panitch for that reason, and I feel like reading this, that Panitch was actually maybe more radical in his socialism. But it is interesting even the title of his other book with Panitch, the Socialist Challenge, teresa Sanders and Corbyn.
C. Derick Varn :Well, let's look at what's in that second thing Teresa Sanders and Corbyn Failed, failed and failed Like, and in the case of Sanders and Teresa, failed bad, failed, really bad, like. Actually took power, but Syriza's taking of power went ultimately so poorly that you almost wish they didn't win. And so this also feels out of that moment, this kind of for lack of a better term technocratic end of left populism. So that's my preface what are your initial thoughts before we go into this, elijah?
Elijah Emery:so I had a kind of a similar feeling in reading it. Um, I've read it like two or three times um, and I do think this is very 2018. This is kind of a vision of a socialist political system which emerges from a context where, if an immediate victory of a democratic socialist politics in the US and UK was not necessarily realistic, it was at least possible in a way that it's not now and from that, I think that it is from that moment, I think it was a good idea to ask questions like this about how can we actually redesign systems rather than just tinkering around the edges. And I do think one thing which has always been striking to me about the Sanders and the Corbyn campaigns and I don't know as much about Cicero because of my Anglo bias my Anglo bias, um, I guess um, or Anglosphere bias, um is how backward facing in some ways, both of those moments those movements were, um, like I always found Bernie's 2016 slogan a future to believe in much more inspiring than the 2020 slogan of not me us, um, hogan, if not me, us.
Elijah Emery:And the principal movement that was added in between 2016 and 2020 was, of course, the Green New Deal, which was added to an existing agenda of Medicare for All and Universal Free College, and two of those three policies consciously call back supposed victories of left liberalism in the past A full extension of Medicare from the 1960s. Transformation of the American economy. In the same way, the New Deal transformed the American economy and even in the case of Corbyn, his hallmark or one of his hallmark policies was calling for a green industrial revolution which, in the same way, kind of rhetorically looked backward to a new vision of the industrial revolution which originally brought Britain to prominence on the world stage. Which originally brought Britain to prominence on the world stage. Yeah, go ahead. Relationship to the past and to the missed opportunities of the past or incomplete elements of the past, rather than actually asking well, what would this look like in the future? That's my two cents here.
C. Derick Varn :No, I think that's a great way. I mean, I used to chide Corbinistas for asking them how are you going to do your industrial labor policy that you want to do to bring back British labor unions in the industrial sector without empire, given your fucking Island? And I never got a realistic answer once. The green industrial revolution to me was even more utopian than the green new deal. Um, in that, uh, it was an international project being sold in a methyl. International project, particularly for britain, more than even the us. International project, particularly for Britain, more than even the US, is that they don't have the raw materials to do that within their own borders. They would have to get them from somewhere else.
C. Derick Varn :And it was already clear that Corbyn didn't have a coherent answer to how to keep the remainders and the left Brexit people together, even though the remainders and the left brexit people together, even though the remainders were the majority of his party, he wasn't really one of them. Um did not have a real vision for like what a british-led internationalism would be. The number of lack of visions actually is astounding. And instead of how most of the left has interpreted his loss is they focus in on the smear campaign on anti-Semitism, which is admittedly a smear campaign. I don't think that's why he lost. If I'm quite honest, I think that was used primarily to discipline corbin later. Um, I think why he lost was an incoherent response to brexit which made neither the remainders are the left brexit people happy, and the fact that his vision for how to rebuild um industrial, rebuild industrial, ironically wasn't believed in the industrial areas. It was believed by proletarian ish young people, but mostly in in the South and London, which tells me that he didn't really get the people he really needed on board to his coalition.
C. Derick Varn :Now, I think you're right that that has to do with the fact that both the British and American left feel so defeated that being offered the scraps of a prior broad program from the 60s seems radical given what you've been given in the 80s, 90s and in aughts. But ultimately it's nostalgia. It is a you know, for lack of a better term a hauntological nostalgia, almost like, oh, we can finally do these reforms. You know now, whereas I'm not sure free college means the same thing now, um, that it would have been in 60 and 68, 70, um, I'm not sure that. Uh, well, I I'm I'm very much for at least socialized insurance as an immediate demand for any socialist platform. But I actually thought that Medicare for all was still somewhat of an anemic policy.
Elijah Emery:I mean it replaced it internally compromised for no reason the broader demand for an NHS in the United States, for example. So it's you know. I mean Medicare is popular, but prior to the support for the Medicare for all policy from the left, the most well-liked option for reform was to implement something like the Veterans Health Administration, which would look like the NHS, and it no longer is.
C. Derick Varn :I mean, you know we chastise Obama for starting out of the gate compromise, but in some ways that was still the impulse of the left populist in both the US and America.
C. Derick Varn :Syriza is a different case. It has still left populism, but it was one more internally rife and was full of all kinds of different tendencies. Giannis Varoufakis has made himself kind of a heroic martyr for it, although he's very much still alive and talking. In fact, the man never shuts the fuck up but, um, and he gets made a hero in a lot of ways, and the more I learned about actually what he did in syriza, I have to admit I I hated his guts going in because I thought he sold the vision of of left nationalism and Greek independence that they had not prepared for. But I always did admire him, at least for being willing to pull the the uh, the trigger when the troy, when the troika screwed them, um, and when they weren't willing to do that, they basically got as bad of a deal as they would have gotten trying to go on their own, I think, um, whereas at least they would have had some self-control over currency matters that they'd gone on their own.
Elijah Emery:I mean, another big difference is that they won electoral power Right, although in a weird coalition with a right-wing party that does need to be noted, Sure.
Elijah Emery:And neither Corbyn nor Sanders did no. But from that perspective, I think that, to return to this article, what it asked is it asked well, like what would an actual socialist government look like in the US? And you know, it kind of, I think, has the underlying assumption that a Bernie Sanders victory is like the easiest way to get there when you can't even you know you can't with the president just like go over the head of Congress. It is literally unconstitutional to abolish the Senate, because the Senate is like the basic body of the American Constitution, and so there's a lot of practical problems before we even get to the practical problems of this utopian vision. But just to introduce the article for people who haven't read it, it essentially has three sections. It essentially has three sections. First, when hope rings oddly in our ears, which is, uh, basically a call to have some type of utopian vision amongst the left as a means of, uh, animating a kind of radical change.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, it's basically radical change is a rebuke to the manifesto critique of not doing that um which I actually like don't really have a problem with.
Elijah Emery:I'm fine with that.
C. Derick Varn :I think utopianism as a vision is different from utopianism as a practice this is my issue here is, this is somewhere in between the vision and the practice. I mean, like I do think we need clearer visions of what we talk about when we talk about socialism, and I do think even marx, like basically in private letters, fucks up and gives us some of it, but but even for him it you know, like I, I did find it interesting that this quotes the manifesto so much but basically avoids critique of the Goethe program which is, you know, the only real place other than maybe, like the Civil War in France and a couple other things, that you have Mark stating what he kind of thinks this positive vision would look like again have Mark stating what he kind of thinks this positive vision would look like again. You know, because after the manifesto you very much get like they're not doing programs for a while, like we're just not there yet. I mean Mark's has programs. He endorses the left parties in Lincoln, yeah, but he doesn't have.
C. Derick Varn :We don't get a Marx-pinned program after the manifesto we get basically, ironically, the only positive visions we get is when he's trying to smack down another program. So I found that interesting, I mean I was actually. Even the references to the right in this article feel weirdly dated for something that's only six years old yeah, I mean it's like well, it starts out with a reference to thatcher thatcher and roffbart I mean, and then it has like a bunch of like time later discussing like hayek and like de maistre, I think right um is it the maestro?
Elijah Emery:I think it is the maestro and then, like it does not mention the Don. Oh, no, no, it's Van Mises, excuse me oh yeah, yeah, van Mises, not Demastra, no. And then it doesn't discuss Trump at all, which is, you know funny, or Johnson. Basically, it shies away from a critique of the contemporary right in any way no, it's, it's.
C. Derick Varn :It's going after early liberal and libertarian neoliberals, which is, I mean, von hayek is a neoliberal. Uh, von mises is not even a neoliberal. He called the neoliberals communist verb coolest thing he ever did. No, um, uh, it probably is coolest thing he ever did, honestly, um. But and I mean it's interesting because when, when leftists misunderstand what neoliberalism is, they take neoliberals at their word and actually the leftist scholars who study it closely, like Philip Mirowski not so much David Harvey, but Philip Mirowski and people around them will point out that, like no, bombisa was crazy, but it kind of has a point in that there is a lot of state intervention in neoliberalism and there's a lot of partnerships which I believe we've talked about in previous episodes.
Elijah Emery:Absolutely, if people want to look them up. But I do think like one thing about this is what we're picking up on is who? Well, what are these guys fighting? Well, what are these guys fighting? They're fighting neoliberalism. The implicit, whatever anybody uses the there is no alternative quote.
Elijah Emery:What they're saying is that neoliberalism has, at this point, been naturalized, and kind of implicitly saying like hey guys, like fukuyama was like right, um, for the time being, we have to figure out a way out. Uh, or you know, picking up on the Mark Fisher, uh, you know, capitalist realism argument, when I think that one of the things which the past decade has demonstrated is that there are alternatives to neoliberalism maybe not capitalism, but neoliberalism which are emerging from the right and are bad. And I don't think it's so forceful of an attempt to consciously change the economic system as occurs on the left or as is fantasized about or talked about on the left. But it is true that the style of management of, say, like a successful republican one-party state in the united states, would not, uh, look like the bush years anymore, right, um, and in this way, I think that the question and definitely one more like Reagan or Thatcher.
Elijah Emery:Definitely not. And the question then arises that are you proffering simply an alternative to a non-reformist, maintained neoliberal program, or do you also have to suggest that there's an alternative to the alternatives which are emerging and are bad, even if they're not, you know, really theoretically coherent? You know, and come up looking batshit, crazy and stuff like the 2025 project, which we've argued about how real it is, but I think we both agree that it is at least a blueprint for the kind of governance that the Republican Party wants to do in this country, even if they may not succeed in doing it.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, I mean my, my take on on Project 2025, which you and I should do a show on actually coming up before the election so people can understand our differences in the take on on the project 2025, which you and I should do a show on actually um coming up before the election so people can understand our differences and the take on this. But also, we'll give us a chance to talk about what right-wing strategy is that? I think that your fear of elements of it are is justified, um, but it is not actually aiming to do what it sells itself as, which is to overthrow the currently existing order. Um, it actually wants to posit up a counter elite and weaken certain areas of the administrative state to raise up others, which is yeah I do.
Elijah Emery:I do agree with that. Um yeah, but my the broader point and what matters for this article is just that, like you know, there's other reformist programs out there. I don't know if you can really call the rights program reformist, but there's other programs out there now which are distinct from the neoliberal order in a way that this article doesn't really address, and that's not the point of the article exactly, but it is something which doesn't even appear in the background to it.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, well, that's what makes that whole introduction so interesting to me, because, while I do think this is very much of 2018, the enemy it's positing is actually very much of 1990 to like 2007. Yeah, um, it's, it's a, it's a right. That was already irrelevant by this time and I I think that has to do partly. I mean, we have to give Sam Gendon a little bit. I think it's Gendon, you know, he was a otter worker.
Elijah Emery:In Canada.
C. Derick Varn :I think yeah, research director in. Canada from 74 to 2000. And he was like a social justice chair at York university after that, um, and he wrote a lot of books with Leo Panage. He's an older dude, um. I mean he is in some ways of the similar generation to Bernie Sanders and, unlike a lot of people, he was born in the Soviet union, in Siberia, so he gets some crap there.
Elijah Emery:Um he For staying socialist.
C. Derick Varn :But he grew up in Winnipeg, so he comes from Russian expatriates. I find him to be quite good when understanding the 2007 to 2012 financial crisis. Actually, I think his book willing and panicked, and that's actually very good. Um, but I mean, the two books that I always tell people to read on it is one, is that one? And then, uh, one by paul matic jr, and then there's one other book. It's hesitant to tell people to read it because this author hates my guts personally, but, um, it's the climbing book on the matter. Um, the, but again, that's already old news by 2018 so it's like it's kind of like.
Elijah Emery:I wish this article was from 2012 instead, you know what.
Elijah Emery:I mean, it would have been forward-facing then, it would have been very forward-facing then, and it still feels like even if it feels out of date now like thinking back to that moment. It was of the moment in the sense that it was like, well, we got to do something because there's a chance of us winning, maybe, but it doesn't really articulate what you're trying to do, which is not even posit an alternative to liberalism in and of itself, but also an alternative to national conservatism, post-fascism, whatever. Should we move on, then to the alternative that he comes up with, because this is my least favorite part of the article.
C. Derick Varn :So you don't like the selection, the section on what is to be done. So let's talk about that a little bit. What do you like about it?
Elijah Emery:So I think that it backtracks way too much on itself. For one thing it also sorry, I'm navigating to the section so I can pick out bit by bit. It starts with the market thing and it's like some markets are good, some markets are bad, which to me kind of seems like a truism. But you may disagree with it for other reasons.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, you know that I maybe you don't know, know but that I do not see markets as having a place even in a socialist society, much less a communist one. However, I do not think markets in and of themselves are capitalistic. There are non-capitalist markets, and I am open to the idea that something like markets would be useful for getting feedback on good production, and so a market socialism in quotation marks might be a viable way to start figuring out how to build the feedback loops and to get goods and services responsive to public need.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, go ahead. I mean, that's similar to my feeling. It's like they're useful, possibly about addressing any information problems which exist, but I want to focus on this paragraph here. On the other hand, who can imagine a socialism without a marketplace of coffee shops and bakeries, small restaurants and varieties of pubs, clothing stores, craft shops and music stores? If the underlying conditions of equality are established so that these markets are by personal preferences, not expressions of power, there's no reason to be defensive about welcoming them.
Elijah Emery:It is when we turn to the commercial activities of workplace collectives that the role of markets takes on their greatest and most controversial significance. So there's no theory in there, really, but I think it speaks to the underlying assumptions of this middle section about markets in a way that I find negative. I don't think that markets should necessarily be welcomed. They should be used and tolerated, and I think that the best way of selling socialism to people is to focus on what will be removed from the market rather than, like reassuring them that a market will still exist for these other things, like. I don't really think it's going to be the job of a socialist government to eliminate, like local bookstores, um, but it clearly will be to eliminate, like markets which, to be fair, this guy says he wants to eliminate, at least in the current form they're in.
C. Derick Varn :I just don't know how these kinds of stores would work as recognizable to what stores are in petite bourgeois culture right now, without a labor market. I'm actually like what does that even mean? That's the other thing.
Elijah Emery:It's like how can imagine like socialism without restaurants? And like, apparently, on twitter people fight about this all the time but it is true that the restaurant industry is, like, entirely reliant on incredibly low wage labor. Right, which is not me being like we have to live in like communal kitchens or cook at home. It's just that, like you can't, you can't really say, well, the things you like about contemporary society will stay. If you like your contemporary, this part of contemporary society, you can keep it um, I'm pro communal kitchen, by the way, just so I'm not against it either.
Elijah Emery:like I'm, I'm in favor of communal kitchens and restaurants and cooking at home. I just like food yeah.
C. Derick Varn :No, I mean like restaurants or restaurants, or restaurants and pubs are an interesting example, because I could imagine what's let's like. Part of the problem here is like what's undergirding this market? Is it labor tokens or is it?
Elijah Emery:cash. It's never addressed. That is the fundamental thing missing from this middle section. It says we'll keep markets. It doesn't say what the thing directing the markets is.
C. Derick Varn :It's a big difference whether or not it's labor Left communist council, communists are okay with labor tokens in exchange for goods, and in that sense, there would still be, you know, something like markets. They wouldn't necessarily even all be owned by the state, but they would not be profitable. Why? So it's, it's just the, the, the, the two things that the, the two things that are missing from that is are these things about profitability or not? And, and if there's no profits, what, what, what is your actual signal? Yeah, um, you know it gets like it.
Elijah Emery:He talks about like a social wage, which I guess implies that there's going to be some form of cash or some form of labor tokens though again he doesn't say what it is. But the primary remediation included in this article is just like well, you know, we're going to give everybody the basic necessities and then distribute surplus and also have a stipend for people unwilling to work, which is like okay, you know great, like that's super cool, but it doesn't really tell me anything.
C. Derick Varn :I mean that is like the bare minimum of socialism. I'll critique of the growth of program, like people will earn their living. Bare minimums will be taken care of. There'll be a social fund for reinvestment and for taking care of those who can't work.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, and then, like there's this whole, there's this middle section about credit, which I find to be a little annoying because of my, like, somewhat MMT sympathies, which is, you know, he talks about how there's going to be credit for, like, starting a co-op or something, and then for consumption, where, like I don't, I don't like credit for consumption is to me much more suspicious than like broader economic forms of credit, uh, in certain ways, because I think it promotes, uh, it promotes debt, and I don't really know how debt would work in like a socialist economy, um, whereas the type of like national, uh, you know, credit creation that comes from, say, a central bank, um, would still probably be necessary, assuming that not every country in the world is socialist. You have to deal with foreign powers, uh, and currency reserves.
C. Derick Varn :Unless you're dealing with bombs elijah yeah I'm kidding I know I know, um, I mean, uh, no, I mean I I do, I do think a central bank is okay. So this is real controversial here. Um, I'm one of those people who is who thinks mmt is a mostly true thing for the developed world. I mean, I have my caveats on very specific issues, but I think, like you know, the, the basic description.
Elijah Emery:It's basic description of how the economy works is accurate. It the way? It's?
C. Derick Varn :no, it's basic description of how the economy works. It's accurate. No, it's basic description of how currency works in the economy is accurate I actually don't agree with a lot of what they a lot of my bigger issues comes from stuff downstream from that.
Elijah Emery:But the currency question is, I mean, since we're talking about credit and stuff like that, that's the central thing here.
C. Derick Varn :Right, I mean, since we're talking about credit and stuff like that, that's the central thing here, right? And so I like you go. Why in the hell would we want in a socialist society Like this? Is to me almost like one of the things. This is socialism for realists, right. But I'm like looking at this and I'm like, well, there's some key unanswered questions that happen to be the biggest unanswered questions of socialism. Is money savable to accumulate value or not? People who don't know the difference between a labor token and currency? There isn't much difference. In some ways, they can both serve as a. I mean they're both serve as a. As a, I mean they're both means of exchange. They're both means of exchange.
C. Derick Varn :They both measure time.
Elijah Emery:They're both used to buy or acquire, I guess, consumer goods, but I don't believe and you can correct me if I'm wrong that labor tokens can be utilized to transform into, like, acquiring capital and reinvesting that's, they're specifically designed.
C. Derick Varn :And when marx talks about them which he doesn't talk about them very, very much, but that's to not be that like. Exactly like. Reinvestment is on the level of um, community and social property uh, in the early stages, national governments and later stages not um whereas labor tokens are just a way to account for labor put in, labor put out, so you could have something like fairness. Like fairness, the equalization of the wage and marks is an incentive for people to work. The difference between this and capitalist society now is, since you're not working for a singular boss, you can actually get labor tokens in multiple ways, so you could have multiple different kinds of job. And the other thing that people are aiming to do is to stabilize the labor tokens and reinvest in long-term productive development in such a way as you can lower necessary labor hours and still increase the value of the labor tokens because the social surplus is higher. That's the way Mark's hints at this is going to work.
C. Derick Varn :I actually am not sure that labor tokens are still the best way to do it. There's like there's been. You know, I do think there's some cybernetic theories of input that, while I have a little bit more skeptical on cybernetics than I was in 2020? Um, because because of assumptions it makes about human minds, um, I don't think it affects this as far as, like, figuring out inputs and these and getting input information accurately what this goes around is like, uh, that there's like a tacit endorsement in here of markets which I personally am ambivalent about Me too.
C. Derick Varn :Although I'm more anti-market in the long run than you, but I am ambivalent about it, yeah, without really understanding well how are these markets going to function.
Elijah Emery:Understanding well, how are these markets going to function? Because if you're saying we're going to have markets but you're not saying what the means of organizing the market is, then you're not really doing anything and you know, I'm left just assuming that we're still going to have cash in some form. It's going to be more equally distributed in some way, but at the end of the day, be more equally distributed in some way, uh, but at the end of the day, uh, you're going to have a pretty similar um market system in some ways the one we have now, except with more goods removed from the market and, for some reason, uh, you know, limits on what types of credit are available um, but there is credit, which again there is credit, which again is like fine, but like you know, I I don't think a socialist society should promote you.
Elijah Emery:Taking out a loan to buy a car right like that is not really a useful priority personal credit in all forms of my ideal society in all of its stages basically doesn't exist.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, and I'm with.
Elijah Emery:I'm with you on that like and you know, maybe I like I do understand the idea of like credit on like an industry wide scale, or for for a business of some kind, uh, or, you know, a co-op or something like there's better reasons for it, but like those are, it just goes into like there's very little understanding that I see from this article in suggesting the underlying means by which the market mechanism operates, and from that I think we've exhausted the markets. So let's go on to the structures.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, I do want to get into this. So there's one thing I want to quote. Western the markets is in the market section. Workers do not work for others, but collectively organize their labor power, with after-tax surplus shared amongst them. Ben Burg has a similar theme about this. Yeah, income wouldn't be based on receiving the fruits of one's own private labor.
C. Derick Varn :Since work is collective, not private activity, those working to get, uh get, paid for their work hours based on hours worked in the intensity or unpleasantness of the work. Okay, now I want to point this out. Marx makes a big deal out of the the former. You get paid for hours worked. He says nothing, nothing at all, about the unpleasantness of the work or value added. Now I think it's interesting that there's no like this value I've seen socialists argue about, like we need value added in socialist society. How else we motivate people to do more? And I'm like you recapitulate, in class society, the reason why people would do more is Because there's other social status that you get in assuming relative egalitarianism from, from being good at certain kinds of things and needing certain kinds of social goods. And, honestly, most of human history has evidence that people operate that way. They don't usually operate Procedures actually weirdly not normally accompanied with money in non-bourgeois societies.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, but I mean it like basically yeah, there needs to be some form of incentive operating.
C. Derick Varn :But I do agree that actually, maybe dealing with unpleasantness of work, I don't know that it should increase someone's pay, but I do think maybe, like I don't know, I've thought about like well, certain kinds of work, maybe you count for more hours because they're more physically intensive or grosser or whatever.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, you count it by calories burned. That would be hilarious. Well, I actually have thought about like no, you can't do that, I'm going to the law. No, I'm joking, I'm joking.
C. Derick Varn :No, I have thought. Well, no, I've thought about the One of the things that came out of Technocracy Inc. And I have a lot of critiques of Technocracy Inc and I've ranted about it because I think a lot of left communists end up being technocrats without realizing it. But for people who don't know, old, technocrats doesn't mean what the word means now. They were basically like socialists who wanted an energy-neutral society in the 20s. Guys, they were on on that gig in the 20s and they wanted to account for everything in like basically a currency that was equivalency to well, a token that was equivalent to energy use Both labor and also non-labor energy use, both labor and also non-labor energy use and for the energy accounting to basically end up neutral at the end of all transactions.
C. Derick Varn :I have no idea how the fuck you do that, but that's an interesting thing we'll develop to account for stuff to account for things, right, um, and it would account for stuff like intensity of labor, because that would actually require more energy. Yeah, um, because I have thought about the labor tokens, like not dealing with intensity of labor at all, uh and that. And marx doesn't. And I get why he doesn't because he is worried about, like, certain kinds of labor being valorized over others um, I think it's.
C. Derick Varn :It's also true that there were not as wide of variations between the intensity of labor and marxist day no, although he does talk about like collapsing the difference between blue and white collar work even his day, so yeah, no, I'm not saying they didn't exist.
Elijah Emery:I'm just saying that they're like more on the nose now than then. Oh yeah, especially as socialists are increasingly like downwardly mobile professionals rather than like factory workers.
C. Derick Varn :So they're like although not all factory work actually requires a whole lot of physical labor, but yes, you're you're, you're, you're right. Yeah, so should we talk about work? Yeah, let's get into the work in the sections. I mean, I just um, oh yeah, sectoral council section layers of planning I do want to talk about.
C. Derick Varn :There's a couple mother, this that I guess we didn't get because we don't. We, you're right, he doesn't answer markets and he wants to get rid of labor markets. Yeah, but part of this is I. This is wild to me and I'm just read it. While authoritarian market discipline imposed under capitalism will no longer exist, workplace collectives will still generally operate in a market context of buying inputs and selling their goods or services or, if the final project has no market price, of measurable output targets. That's a big caveat. Asterisk like okay, so there's some stuff we know doesn't have a market price, but we're going to maintain markets. And we're going to maintain markets for profitability, but the profitability is going to be shared between co-op firms. Um, to me that's just co-op capitalism. But anyway, incentives to act socially sensitive ways, such as operating efficiently, uh, consequently remain necessary. This would take the form of a person, a portion of the surplus being generated by the collective going to its members as a collective good, housing, sports, culture, or as an income for private consumption.
Elijah Emery:I'm also anticipating the absolutely fantastic social criticism and realist fiction which will emerge from this, as one social co-op becomes a guild and refuses to allow anyone else in.
C. Derick Varn :Which is obviously going to happen in this setup. Obviously going to happen in this setup. This brings a mechanism for bringing opportunity cost into decision making, such as how valuable an input is if used elsewhere and how valuable others consider the final product those good old market vibes. This, however, also reintroduces the negative side of markets. Why the fuck would we want to do that? The incentives that imply competition, which means rizzers and losers and therefore non-egalitarian outcomes like I I don't think like that's.
Elijah Emery:This is my like overall thing like I don't necessarily think any of this is totally unrealistic. In demonstrating what possible aspects of a transitional state would look like, yeah, there'd still be some markets, we'd still have some of the negatives, but it's really great that he's like, yeah, we're going to reintroduce some of the negatives, we have the opportunity to start completely fresh because we're designing utopia, so let's just make sure we have all of the negative aspects of markets still taking place. But but?
C. Derick Varn :but they're just collectivized now, like that's yeah, it's like all right. Moreover, if those workplaces earn large enough surplus to choose to invest more, their competitive advantage would be reproduced. How? Also like that?
Elijah Emery:this is like another thing where it's like if there's a business which is like measurable or how, also like that, this is like another thing where it's like if there's a business which is like measurable or worker co-op which is like measurably better than another one, um, and it's not like for some immobile reason, like I don't know, particularly like cool guy works there or it has like easy access to nearby natural resources, I would want to replicate this If they figure out something at one place, then you want to implant it in other business or other cooperatives doing the same thing. Right, you don't want to just be like, yeah, the wisdom of the market will figure it out, especially because later, when they're talking about the efficiency, they're like the information problem will be solved because people will share their information and it's like okay, so a lot of the major reasons why we have unequal competition then go away.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, this is why I was confused by this, because I'm like, in some ways, this is not, when we're talking about socialism, for realist. I'm like you're maintaining things that are contradicted by other things you're maintaining, and I don't know why you're maintaining them, except that I guess you don't want to scare people off, because one of the things that's interesting about this is this is social democracy plus syndicalism plus Plus I'm going to actually be a little bit controversial. There's some integralist implied here, because there's still classes. There just isn't a capitalist class and what else.
C. Derick Varn :Plus councilism plus some other shit like it. There's always. There's still the plan, right? Yeah, oh yeah, there's a goss plan element. So there's classical marxist leninism in here.
Elijah Emery:It's just like I actually don't. I don't have a problem with, like, mixing all these things together.
Elijah Emery:No, either like they were, like I think they should be mixed together. Uh, I don't think that like it's realistic or even like desirable in a moment of like weakness, to insist on your like own section. Um, not like a no enemies, the left type of thing, but just like. Oh you know, we have the freedom, because we're so weak, to borrow from one another. Well, the way it works here is it just like takes a bunch of like elements and like throws them together and it's like this kind of works. It's like, does it?
Elijah Emery:I'm not sure, yeah, but but as we're talking about these markets, it doesn't answer significant things, the significant questions it doesn't borrow from like different tendencies within the left to be like ah well, if you combine these like two things, we solve this question which, like to be fair, is a big ask. Um, because that's the reason we're still arguing about all this stuff.
C. Derick Varn :Uh, yeah, I mean, I don't even try.
Elijah Emery:It just skips over, like a lot of the principal differences.
C. Derick Varn :Right. I mean, I do think, for example, the age-old battle between syndicalist anarcho and otherwise and councilist communist are. Who else is councilist? I think it's only really communist. There might be council anarchist, I guess. And the reason why those distinctions came up is the the councilist would say like, look you, you communize a firm, but overall production still works capitalistically. So we need councils to develop, you know, based off of the soviet and german council model in 1918 and 1919, to actually administer this shit, which is also very similar. I mean, I will say this I think the difference is councilists in the anarchist world don't call themselves councilists, they call themselves platformists. So, um, but it is those combinations. I actually kind of like those combinations as like ways to nest worker organization, um, as opposed to like the, say, bordigas, or marxist leninist answer, which is like the party state.
Elijah Emery:Yeah and I do. I mean I think it's to uh the author's credit that is opposed to the party state um uh, explicitly, that's one of the few things he actually hard cuts out like we're not doing that yeah, which is not like. Also, it's not like eliminating parties or the state. It's like so it's not, but it is saying we're not going to have a party state.
C. Derick Varn :No it is saying we're not going to fuse the party with the state and have the party be the state, which I, to me, is a good call. Um, yeah, I mean, I would say the Bordigas are somehow are slightly better than the MLs sometimes, because they believe that the party should represent all the proletariat, but then they're also weirder because they somehow think the proletariat would be homogenous. Yeah, which is just weird to me, that that would be a conclusion you would draw, but they tend to Anyway, be a conclusion you would draw, um, uh, but they tend to anyway.
Elijah Emery:Um. So I mean, so after this we have like sectoral councils, yeah, and I think this is not.
C. Derick Varn :This is a. This is fine.
Elijah Emery:This is like I would do this. Like this part was good. It was like it's like we should have people who are like work in the jobs, uh, of a particular sector have control over that sector. I mean like duh, that makes sense, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, though, it does like start out at the beginning with this like really funny thing. It's like overly ambitious planning in the soviet case and overly autonomous workplaces the yugoslav case have both failed as models of socialism. It's like time for a third position.
C. Derick Varn :No, but no, there are some times where I'm like this sounds like national syndicalism and we're just not going to talk about where that ended up. Huh yeah, but I was.
Elijah Emery:I was kind of picking that up but like that's like a very uncharitable reading of this it's the most uncharitable reading I would not call sam fascist.
Elijah Emery:It's completely not intentional. It just like speaks to the fact that there's a lot of tensions between different elements. However, the sectoral councils element is pretty reasonable and I think one probable reason for that is that his background is as a research director in the automotive industry, which is one of the industries which could perhaps best be represented by sectoral councils, which is one of the industries which could perhaps best be represented by sectoral councils and indeed has the most uh worker influence over boards of like any major industry in the united states right, and in canada too, I think, and and in canada.
Elijah Emery:Um, and it does work well. For that, I mean, I it like, doesn't it obviously is not worker controlled, because that's illegal for some reason. Uh, even if they buy it through the market, um, you know, thanks supreme court. But, um, like, the point of this is like, yeah, sectoral councils are good. Uh, they're going to have to discuss things with one another. Um, it's a good way of sharing information and it's a good way of governing things as sectors rather than, uh, either as individual companies or some like overall state apparatus run exclusively through a ministry, which will probably not be as successful, in my mind no, because it would be too externally bureaucratic, and the other thing is that all these people would have skin in the game in their own industries.
C. Derick Varn :Thus, the mentors, you know the red experts are organic and provisional, which meets my acceptable temporary hierarchy criterion. For those of you who don't know, like I think hierarchies don't require classes if they're provisional and removable. You know um, because I I I admit that we're not all equal in capacity, like we're just not like. You know um, every cook can govern, but not every cook can be a nuclear physicist, so, or a weightlifter, for that matter.
C. Derick Varn :I mean like yeah, or a trash man so, and some of us can't even be cooks, like you know, um so you know I, I do, um I do like this idea that it both is relatively flattening, has people advising um. You know larger sectors of planning from, from expertise.
Elijah Emery:Learn by doing the work, as well as any additional training that they get and, like I also think that this is uh a more compelling vision than the earlier section is absolutely.
C. Derick Varn :There's no like we're not sneaking back in capitalist incentives.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, it's just like you will be in charge of your workplace and your workplaces will be more cooperative, uh, in some way, uh, on a sectoral basis, and it's easy to understand. Also, like you know, sectoral bargaining is already extant in a lot of the world and sectoral governance is, you know, not that far away from that. We currently have, in sectoral bargaining, a type of sectoral governance. It's just one which includes management Right.
C. Derick Varn :And this year you're a manager. I mean, like you are, you're, you're, you're a manager plus whatever the larger section of society doing the planning is. And I like this idea of, like, nested governments, because I do worry about this and people who have listened to the show know that I worry about this way a lot. People who've listened to the show know that we're about this way a lot. This tendency that marxists have to have a naive 19th century view of efficiency and centralization that, like, just ignores even lessons from fucking physics about the limits of that. Um, whereas having nested levels of control, government and expertise that are all you know, you're, all these kinds of yes, it's still somewhat representational, although I I would actually say at the level of the firm it wouldn't be representational, it'd be direct.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, um, at the level of like, I mean this is the layers of planning section, basically right, yeah, let's get into the layers of planning, because I actually think this is this I also start with fairly smart, so to give, uh, yeah, I thought I thought this was pretty reasonable.
Elijah Emery:um, I did think it really like, did like again, I kind of thought it was like a little mundane, because it was like ah, in some cases we will need centralization and in some cases we will need decentralization.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, I'm like yeah that's true.
Elijah Emery:And it's like and planning should occur at the best possible, uh, like level Um. And it's like yeah, that's that's also true. Uh, and it's like yeah, that's that's also true. Uh, and it has like this list of things that like would be important for the central planning board to do, um let's go through that, because I actually find this sort of I'll just read all 10.
C. Derick Varn :I thought it was really funny. Guaranteeing full employment, universal access to necessities and a living income that sounds good. Okay, sure. Setting the relationship between the present and future consumption through determining the shared GDP to be allocated in investment why the fuck do we still have GDP in socialism? That?
Elijah Emery:was what made me laugh. I was like I guess that it's like like explaining what it means to the lay reader who's operating ostensibly unless they're reading far in the future from a capitalist framework. Just such a funny idea to me to have like central planning board is like this year we're doing two percent more gdp to investment and growth and it like that's like just the phrase that they're using like it doesn't capture anything but whatever yeah, I mean.
C. Derick Varn :It's just I I'm trying to figure out, particularly if they're, if you're not in market competition with non-capitalist society, I mean when non-socialist societies, what would that even mean? Like I don't have any idea really pointless and it's countervailing.
Elijah Emery:To like the efficiency argument later, which I also thought was fine, where he's like the efficiency argument. I'm just going to sum up right now because it's really boring. It's saying we shouldn't necessarily measure socialism through the standards of capitalist efficiency, but it has to be reasonably. It has to be reasonably efficient so that we can produce sex. Yes, I agree with that. Um, so we're going to skip that entire last section yeah, we'll come back.
C. Derick Varn :We'll come back to that because I was just like okay, duh, also that the the hint about you know, discussing efficiency that way is always my way of talking about when we hit the growth or degrowth Socialism.
Elijah Emery:Which this just skips over. It's like we don't even care about that.
C. Derick Varn :That was barely a debate when this was written, to be fair.
Elijah Emery:It exists.
C. Derick Varn :Let me go through this list, allocating investment to sectors and regions which, in turn, would reallocate Within their respective jurisdictions that makes sense, generating revenue for its activities which, in turn, would reallocate within their respective jurisdictions. That that makes sense, generating revenue for its activities. So the central planning we had earlier the central planning has to generate revenue for its activity. I guess that's why we still have taxes, although, again, I don't know. I actually don't know why you why you need taxes in a socialist society, since, since you're already controlling income distribution.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, I mean it's like you're just distributing, but anyway curbing impediments to society's solidarity and equality goals, not only across individuals slash households but across workplace, collective sectors and regions. That is so unclear to me because like is this?
C. Derick Varn :the wokeness council, or is this something else?
Elijah Emery:like I actually couldn't even figure out what he was talking about like like, like I feel like like I was like is so we have like the bureau of woke within the central planning committee, um, and it's like okay, that's like fine, but it's just like really funny. It's like, yeah, you know the central planning board, um, one of its most important roles, in addition to directing the entirety of the economy, is like making sure that solidarity isn't affected. We hire like 10 psychoanalysts to like sit in a room and be like what the psychological effects of the plan will be, um, which, like again, like it.
C. Derick Varn :I actually don't I mean, part of me doesn't think that's a bad idea if that's what it said, but like it's not clear, because I, because it's just not clear what it means, like.
Elijah Emery:It's like should we like fight racism?
C. Derick Varn :yeah, I think that's a pretty good idea, like, but it's also that necessarily be handled by the central planning board, like maybe I'm not sure but also like the way it's worded it could also refer to other things because, like, if it's just about fighting racism, I don't know why you need to look at it at in collective sectors and regions. So there's other things he's attaching to that, but I don't know what they are.
Elijah Emery:Like one of the things I like really dislike about this is that, like regional inequality is like mostly it like it's illogical in the way it operates now, but it is logical that there would be like differences between regions, which is like what inequality is fundamentally difference? It's just that certain forms of differences are fine and certain forms are like on, are bad. But like what does this mean? Therefore, the same thing as like 0.3, where it's like ah, you know, coal is cheap here, but fish is cheap here. Let's make it so that there's like an efficient, like national markets that we can get things the same price in two places. It just doesn't tell you what it means, right, yeah?
C. Derick Varn :Yes and again. So one thing if I'm going to be like, if you're going to draw these blueprints for the future, you either need to be vaguer or more specific. But you are somehow neither warm nor hot or cold. I mean, it's just you're kind of slightly below the temperature of spit.
Elijah Emery:Let's keep going because this is so fun. The constant development, through educational institutions and at work, of popular functional skills and democratic and cultural capacities.
C. Derick Varn :What the fuck does that mean?
Elijah Emery:It's like good things will be promoted, governing the pace of demodification, decommodification through the distribution of expenditures between collective and individual consumption. But we still have commodity markets. We established that earlier, so it's like we'll temporarily this guy is like governing like how quickly the market for widgets gets abolished.
C. Derick Varn :Um yeah, I was actually saying like, because the market section doesn't imply that the markets are temporary yeah, like if they're temporary, that's like a completely different thing.
Elijah Emery:But also there's going to be like, once you have like a market established, it's going to like sink in, right, and so you again doesn't mean that like you have to do it all at once, it just means that like you can't then be like no, it's cool, we got our decommodifier on it.
C. Derick Varn :Um, his name's klaus, you know, like whatever he's from the auto union sector, like, um yeah, it's just okay. Sure, uh, regulating the production leisure trade-off by influencing the share productivity that goes in producing more versus producing the same in fewer hours I like setting labor hours. Yeah, this is the, and this actually is implied in marx, like one of the goals of communism is reduce the hours of work period. What? Why are you reinvesting to create workouts?
Elijah Emery:yeah, this part, this one, I don't really have a problem with like right as, so long as it's obviously like different, based on sector or whatever right and for those of you who don't know what we're talking about.
C. Derick Varn :We're reducing the hours of work. We're reducing the hours of work you have to do for work you don't want to do so. Like, the more we can automate for shit work, the better. Because when people are like, oh, you're gonna be a poet and the new society are a laborer and I'm like you're gonna be both motherfucker, that's a fucking point.
Elijah Emery:Like like you do. You do both now. You just have like less time for the one you want to do right, it's about the state.
C. Derick Varn :It's not like I get to like as a poet, I I would just like, I don't know. I feel like I would have a very in regards to being both an artist and something else. I think I would actually do that in both societies. It's just, it's way easier for me in a socialist society and I know that I'm probably gonna have to cheat queen.
Elijah Emery:I'll be a workaholic in both. It's just that I'll be working in like a law firm and in the future I'll be working in a gulag as a prisoner.
C. Derick Varn :Because you worked at the law firm, I mean I know I worked at the law firm. We know one of the ironies of training our best PMS strata that's a redundant acronym. But anyway professional strata peeps is that we're eventually going to have to make them do what they do now in a gulag until they commodify themselves. I'll just flee if it's necessary, but anyway enforcing the stringent, it'll be nice Gulag I'm basing gulags off of the Swedish model. Okay, go ahead, that'd be nice.
Elijah Emery:Enforcing the stringentent it's like my current apartment, except with worse furniture. Enforcing the stringent adherence to environmental standards, with the state ownership and pricing of resources, as well as allocation of investment, being critical here okay, okay, okay, oh, we have state price fixing and a market what awesome. Maybe there's just like like price ceilings, or maybe there's price like uh floors so is it price?
C. Derick Varn :I mean, is it pricing for, for like?
Elijah Emery:crucial, because it's like how much nickel will cost, right, so it's correct, that's right. That's like literally just determined by how much you can produce, right, um, so it's just like, I don't know.
C. Derick Varn :It's like addressing the information problem anew just for like inputs, I guess it's addressing information problem for inputs and I guess also saying you're gonna factor in environmental we've got the best.
Elijah Emery:The best one is number 10. Navigating the relationship with what will likely still be a predominantly capitalist global economy.
C. Derick Varn :Again, how do you navigate that Warplanes?
Elijah Emery:Well, unfortunately you can't navigate it through credit markets because we've abolished those in international currency, but not for buying a car. But no, that's like.
C. Derick Varn :Oh man.
Elijah Emery:I'm going to read the footnote for this one. International relations raise a host of issues not addressed here, ranging from complex relations with capitalist countries to relations of solidarity with the global south, passing on technology and skills and paying fair prices in parentheses to negotiating planned relations with other socialist countries. Um so, like I, I do love that one of the implications there is that the global south will still be capitalist. And also like how do you do trade between? Anyway, whatever.
C. Derick Varn :How do you trade between a poor capitalist country and a rich socialist one?
Elijah Emery:Yeah.
C. Derick Varn :I don't know, man. Fair prices. The fact that this is methodologically nationalistic strikes me as Canadian brain rot, which is the least fair thing I can say.
Elijah Emery:This is actually what America would look like now if we'd annexed Canada in the War of 1812 and therefore abolished slavery democratically.
C. Derick Varn :You know what as an alternate history. I think Jinden and Panitch would be vindicated by that. Every now and then I am sort of finished the War of 1812 and Canadians get all huffy and I'm like, look, you're going to make us better. I don't know what your problem is.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, it's like all of our problems would have been fixed if we had had like Hundreds of thousands of angry Quebecois serving in the Union Army. But anyway completely beside the point. Part three socialist efficiency.
C. Derick Varn :And that is, we can be pretty efficient, but we don't need to be as efficient as capitalists do, because we're not trying to generate profits that way.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, it's also like people will innovate because they like it and it's like okay, great, nice. Yeah, I think that's kind of like the article.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, I mean there's a conclusion and I guess I can go through his bullet points of the conclusion real fast and then we can talk about it.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, let's do that.
C. Derick Varn :Because this is his vision really. Worker collectives, worker control of their workplaces is fundamental to socialism, but fragmented control forces the question of how workers' particular interests can be mediated with the social interest and how to retain worker autonomy against the directives from above. Essential to addressing this is a role for markets. This is actually the cynicalist versus communist debate. Answered Okay, fine, we can have syndicates, but you still have to answer to larger social planning stuff. All right, markets, markets that simply accommodate choices, are welcome to socialist project. But but labor and capital markets which undermine primary socialist principles must be prohibitive. And I am with you. Like how the fuck do you get rid of capital markets if you're still assuming a capitalist world?
C. Derick Varn :order yeah, um, I guess he means domestically maybe, um, which is like still impossible basically, but whatever, and then I I don't know how, how, how the other markets are profitable if you don't have a labor market what if we just like, have like a national investment fund?
C. Derick Varn :it's just like and that is the central planning board yeah, commercial markets and the workplace collectives are embedded are practical necessaries, but they also bring in competition. They, they threaten egalitarian goals. I also want to point out here uh, maybe, elijah, you're different than me, I am only a power egalitarian.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, I don't really care, if like, about other forms of equality like I'm not a social status egalitarian no, I just I, I like, I'm, I, I have a problem with classes, so so I don't want the ability of like things to be, the division of labor to be so strict that there's that, there are social goods that you can only get from that, etc. Etc. Etc. Uh, and yeah, I also want people to have basic dignity. For you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm a power egalitarian, and I think if you are a power egalitarian, then there's a lot of other stuff like racism and sexism, etc. You gotta tamp down on. But like I don't care if like someone's better at baseball than me, I'm not trying to like like socialism is not a Harrison Bergeron universe, and so all this focus on egalitarianism and threatening egalitarian goals, I'm like. Well, I don't have a problem with difference, I have a problem with like. I have a problem with like.
Elijah Emery:With like somebody ruling somebody else Right Like I guess unreasonably. Which I would mean like you can still have like democracy and be like you're in charge of the shop floor.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah, although I should be able to get rid of you by democratic vote on, like at an instant like honestly, um so, so I mean this is, uh, this I would.
C. Derick Varn :I just don't. I I don't. The markets part is the part where I'm like I get what you're trying to do, but I don't understand. Like you don't work out enough how this actually works for me to know if I think this is a horrible regression which is my inclination because there's a whole lot of language of capitalism in those sections still or if it's like fine, but then I'm like the idea you can have markets for you, like, but not anything that's important, is also weird, like yeah, all right, sectional cancels, the conversion of state ministries to sectional workers cancels constituted by delegates from each workplace collective in the sector, serves two critical purposes.
C. Derick Varn :I guess the council list would have a problem with this because there's delegates, but anyway, it brings about a major shift in the balance of power between workers in the state, between collective worker and the central plan, and provides sectoral councils with the capacity and authority to regulate markets to the nearing down of productive gas between workplaces. This is the only thing in here that I think like I do think well. Well, workplace collective and workers councils together, you could probably sell people on like as a vision of the future. Well, you know who tried to do.
C. Derick Varn :That is ronald reagan also I mean shush, yes, but spatial devolution, okay. This I don't remember until here. Um, the regional evolution of planning highlights the importance of urban restructuring, local services, community and culture. Now I would I remember when he was talking about this.
Elijah Emery:He was like. He was like there were experiment. This is one of the funniest references in here, which is like the references, the soviet, like de-urbanization projects, um, where they were like we love cars now because it means you can like live in like a commune that you like share with people on the communal, like farm or whatever. Uh, but I mean it's anyway, it's beside the point point, I mean this is interesting.
C. Derick Varn :There's really crazy experiments that never actually happened in the Soviet Union, but during the early planning phase when, like when Lenin was still alive before the Red Terror, like so very early, but like they were like had this vision of like everything, including houses and apartments and stuff being on rails.
Elijah Emery:That's sick.
C. Derick Varn :We should go back to that Like so that you could just like move your communal apartment in with your partner's communal apartment, then you like move it around on rail somewhere else, because again, no cars yet, um or not not in russia, um the I think it.
Elijah Emery:This proves that, like the particular type of neurodivergence where you love, trans has always been overrepresented within the socialist movement uh, yes, this is why enzo traversa starts his book of revolution with trains but I also do have like five minutes left, so let's speed through the rest okay, um, it brings planning closer to those affected.
C. Derick Varn :I I also do think this is fair in the trying to deal with the problems of town and country here, which is normally just, socialists don't even touch that. Layers of planning. We've talked about it.
Elijah Emery:There's multiple layers Central planning board, this I mean there's so many hedges here, it's great, it's like uh. While the move to layers of planning undermines the power of the social oligarchy, it does not necessarily undermine the capacity of the central planning board. Parentheses cpb no longer is overloaded. The cpb may become more effective. The new sector of regional capacities may become useful vehicles for carrying out the center's key plants. And as the cpb gives up for some functions, others may become even.
C. Derick Varn :You know what's interesting I don't know what's become necessary. How is the central planning board decided on again? I wasn't, it wasn't said, it wasn't said.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, that's weird it's selected amongst whoever writes the best performing Jacobin magazine article in the past year yeah, transformation of the state.
C. Derick Varn :We don't try to get rid of the state, we just try to fully democratize everything. Yeah, and I'm like you know, if you fully democratize everything. Yeah, and I'm like you know, if you fully democratize everything, why the fuck do you need a state? Do it like it's. It's a question of what a state is is not answered here. No, because, like, a state for me involves a standing military and you might need that where there's capital societies, but the goal is going to be that you don't ultimately need that. But he's saying societies, but the goal is going to be that you don't ultimately need that, but he's saying no, no, no, it's going to be there. We're not going to try to get rid of it anymore. Like, and I'm like, but okay, you seem to like democratization, I'm planning, but you're not thinking of the fact the state's a fucking army, like it's just it's. It's weird.
Elijah Emery:Uh, liberal political freedoms, uh, contested elections, political parties I mean cool, uh I like this last one socialism's messiness against notions of socialism's omnipotence, omnipotent capacity to plan for what is to come. It is likely to be an especially messy form of social organization. This should not be taken as a slur. Rather, it follows from everything that is inspiring about socialism. Its contingency is a contested process of experimentation, discovery, learning, most ambitious democratic and egalitarian goals, the opening to creatively participate in the great variety of life. An inspiring call to be a little messy sometimes.
C. Derick Varn :I feel like this was written by a guy who came to social democracy because he was a Trotskyist but then decided that he liked contemporary China, and I don't actually I don't know that to begin with politics, to be completely honest, but it does feel a little bit like that. I want to talk to you, though I guess we've been kind of slagging us, particularly on this last part. I would say 60% good, 40% bad. I love, as a good socialist, making up percentages for shit.
Elijah Emery:That's actually the first thing that the Central Planning Board will do. They'll have a bureau of invented percentages.
C. Derick Varn :Exactly so that when we comment on the past, we can buy from Lennon 70% good, 30% bad. George Washington, 50% good, 50% bad. It's going to be one of the central things they do, but we talked about this, though. I find only three elements of this to be inspiring as a vision of a future, and everything else just seems kind of muddled.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, and weirdly unnecessarily, because some of the muddledness is maintaining elements of capitalism while not clarifying what these elements you're maintaining really truly are um, I think, I think the parts of this article I liked, um, which is like probably the same ones as you, which is, the sectoral councils, like layers of planning was fine. The efficiency thing was fine. Um, or the components which I wish this had just like entirely been about, because I think they were the most like viable components for what this was trying to do in 2018, which is, like you know, hey Bernie, like you don't have to limit yourself to this stuff. You can like do other things and like a sectoral council, for example, would be a radical redistribution of power in actually existing society which would afford the opportunity to develop further. Yeah, um, so, like the parts we liked, are the parts which were basically like reformism done right?
C. Derick Varn :reformism, as actual reformism is not just fucking band-aids. Even though I'm not a reformist, this is what it would be.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, and the parts we didn't like were like revolution done wrong, which is like we're going to abolish markets and then put them back in.
C. Derick Varn :But only in the parts we like. If somehow we're not going to have them in the parts we don't like, yeah Well that's what socialism is all about.
Elijah Emery:The things I like will be free and enforced for everyone, and then the things I dislike will be illegal and punishable by death.
C. Derick Varn :So you know what's notably I mean actually disturbingly, as I was kept on joking about hey, we deal with this problem of internationals with bombs, and I'm joking, I'm joking people, but in a very real sense, what are you a Posadist now? No, well, I mean, if you nuke the capitalist powers, they're no longer there. No, I'm kidding, I don't actually believe that. I don't believe in mass death of that scale. The issue that I have with this, in the other sense, that's both bad for this but actually interesting to compare to what we kind of feel like is the vision of socialism today. Um, so I feel like this has something like it is incoherent about what is maintaining from current society and it just doesn't deal with the international question whatsoever. It implies that this can happen within one country and be viable.
Elijah Emery:And then promptly assuming that that country is the US or the UK gives away its biggest asset, which is its fiscal capacity or monetary capacity. Excuse me. Sorry.
C. Derick Varn :Still annoyed about that, but keeps it internally, yeah, and also trades with capitalist nations and doesn't go to war with them, even though it's lost its ability to leverage international currency so like, which would imply that war really would be the only option um, or would be at least more likely, right um and so okay, but I'm gonna give it credit. You know what it doesn't have in it socialism as a revenge fantasy. That's completely true.
Elijah Emery:Which is.
C. Derick Varn :Kind of the predominant mode of socialism, but when I was growing up and it's back being the predominant mode today, I think.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, yeah, except like instead, now it's like it's like socialism is the revenge fantasy Of whoever was the second most recent population to administer a territory for some reason. Um, which is like even less, that's going to make some people angry. Um, which is, I think, like a less useful revenge fantasy in some ways than revenge fantasy against like boss, or the capital or the capitalistsists, which actually has like more of a chance of happening.
C. Derick Varn :Um, or it can lead to something more productive well, this is socialism, as just geopolitics done shitty um is a terrible, terrible idea and it leads to third worldism, which I have been on record as saying. I don't just find to be theoretically wrong, although I do. I find it to be morally reprobate on what it's asking for the most oppressed workers to do.
Elijah Emery:Yeah, especially since it seems, especially as it manifests in the developed world, right. I have a lot fewer qualms with a third-world-esque living in the developing world.
C. Derick Varn :Yeah well, I mean you know fair. But the weird thing is I'm not saying there's no third-worlds in the developing world. There's plenty, plenty. But I I meet the most batshit ones where their worldism and developing world is often I want decolonialized, I don't want you know, and I want independence from these major powers and we'd like to, you'd like you to leave.
C. Derick Varn :A lot of it ends up being methodologically nationalist too, in a way that's not particularly helpful, but like but like it's understandable, completely understandable um, whereas in the developing war, in the developed world, it's like I'm asking someone to do all this stuff who's far away, that I don't have a relationship with, and also I'm implying that every person who's beneath me in my own society is shit, which is the other implication. It's why it's like a double immorality and it comes from giving up. And the other political subject that we've gone back to, despite years of criticizing it, we're back to the students as the primary like mode of history, as, uh, you know that that somehow 19 to 21 year olds from elite schools are the. I mean, I've heard it from from liberals and leftists lately. They're the conscience of, of the progressive movement or the conscience of the left, and I'm like in a decade they'll be making a lot of money.
Elijah Emery:It'll be fine, um, no, but I that that was a little tongue-in-cheek, yeah, I mean I'm. I'm also as we've discussed many times during our last episodes incredibly skeptical of students, like not just as committed revolutionaries, but especially as leaders of any like theoretical revolutionary movement. When the point of being a student, uh, or the the effect of being a student, is that you're in one place for four years, sectioned off from the rest of the world four to eight years, whatever, like I'm still here.
C. Derick Varn :But With relatively few social responsibilities compared to everybody else, yeah, and also, you're there to get skills Questionably at this point, but to get skills to then refine an actual work. The fact I mean I think lash is right that the reason why students, uh, are the primary actors is cynical but also kind of inevitable given the structure of our current society. In some ways, because we don't try to organize where people can integrate their lives into this political uh situation. And as long as we don't do that, it is. You know what is. What is the thing about occupy of? Well, if you really take David Graeber's thing seriously, you don't have demands and the ultimate goal is the occupation, but the only people who can really can participate in that are the richest students and the poorest unemployed.
C. Derick Varn :Um and uh, and I've seen a lot of that as a as a as like a left strategy. I used to like get into fights with my partner about it, actually, because she like we go out and help the homeless people, which I very much believe in doing. But I would point out like, well, it's a bunch of like future lawyers from rich families trying to protect the poorest people, or we're not talking about the people just above these homeless people um who are not out here helping because they have to work, because they have to work and because, frankly, a lot of these homeless people complicate their lives, um uh.
C. Derick Varn :Whereas for you, this is a way to express conscious and solidarity with someone who is way further down, but it's effectively a form of noblesse oblige, and when it comes to third worldism, that's.
Elijah Emery:That is that on a global scale yeah, I mean I I also think, like I mentioned this right before we got on um, and it's kind of the thing I'll leave the audience with, because I do have to go To me.
Elijah Emery:Ultimately, the thing which makes socialism for realists better than what I see in the contemporary moment, which is socialism for unrealists, is that the claim in socialism for realists is that we should design structures which will bring about a better world, and that it's going to be a lot of hard work and that we have to convince people close to us, uh and farther away to get on our side. And the activating principle I see most prominently now, uh, in the post bernie movement or moment, is basically a replication of the sorelli and uh general strike myth, um, except with the general strike substituted for uprising of some kind, uh localized basically a sorelli and misreading of france phenomenon yeah, exactly, um, and that you know, based on the vibes of revolution we get from that, we'll be able to keep going forever and ever and ever, and I don't think that's true totally exhaust society or kill thousands of people needlessly or anything like that.
C. Derick Varn :No, you're like, you're not gonna unlock a, a social floodgates that starts with getting rid of actual enemies but ends with the with someone getting mad at their girlfriend and turning them over to a terror squad. Yeah, you know which. By the way, it's historically what happens when you do that kind of shit. So, yeah, I'm with you on that.
Elijah Emery:I think it's good to assume that people are people and the assumption. I see that assumption in socialism for realists by trying to design a different society for humans, however far short it falls and whatever it misses, whereas there's an oscillation between a utopian vision of what humans can be and a dooming of people who have acted incorrectly to the status of enemy for all time from a lot of people in the current moment, and I don't think that's helpful no, I think that's, that is carl smith plus sorrel.
C. Derick Varn :I mean, you know, it doesn't help that two out of the three people I've mentioned are fascist. I'm just like, uh, sorrel was, yes, sorrel ended up endorsing Mussolini guys. So, just so you know, he dies. He doesn't explicitly join the fascist party, but he dies more or less. Uh, endorsing the fascist. Yeah, um, and honestly, the Sorrelian myth stuff is the part of lash that one day we'll have to talk about that, because that's late, late, late, late lash, but like it's a part of lash that I find the most disturbing is he's got a real soft spot for sorel at the end of his life and I'm like, uh, bad idea. Um, but anyway, thank you so much. Elijah, the second most regular Person on the show, I've decided to not Name your segment Because if I do, you don't get put on the main, the main podcast feed, anymore. Weirdly, I don't know why, them's the rules, but somehow them's the rules. So, thank you, have a great. People can find your work here and whatever else you do, what else do you do?
Elijah Emery:I'm probably going to be coming out with a note and an article of some kind in the near future. I'm not going to spoil the topics because people just get mad at me, but when it comes out you can read them and then yell at me in person and I just want to say thanks for having me and thank you listeners, for listening in.
