[baursak]

It's an issue of central planning and information arbitrage I guess. Unless the entire society is equally involved in economic central planning (which is absurd), a small group of people will be doing it, thus having access to more information, which is power.

Which is not to say that is not a problem in capitalist society or something that strong democratic foundations cannot alleviate.

[kunimu]

Of course not everyone can be directly involved with the allocation of resources, however as with all scarce resources decisions need to be made from time to time on which usage would best benefit society; in this case, I'm an advocate for democratic management of such resources. I don't think that power only comes with information, the power comes when people are given extra abilities to deal with that information (such as using personal preference to dictate allocation) so I think that protections are needed.

I think the problem with central planning stretches further; the goal of the Communists is to avoid alienation from one's labour, the non-commodity of labour-power, however having labour being externally imposed (whether by the capitalist and the "market" within capitalist society, or by the central planner within Socialist society) is alienation by definition. Therefore some change in the method of planning is required. Marx wrote that there are four forms of alienation, one which I think is important here is alienation of the worker from the act of production; the Communist movement aims to reject this alienation through making the whole productive capacity of society available to all such that the worker can in almost all cases direct his own labour, all production is social therefore, as all workers contribute.

So the kind of planning in higher stage Communism is much past the idea of a government planning, rather, as Marx wrote (to what some consider a contradiction), society regulates general production. To quote,

>For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

[baursak]

Sure, Marx was smart and all, but practically, what it comes down to, is a few options.

- Capitalist markets

- USSR style central planning

- Anarchist-leaning gift economy, not scaleable beyond n=1000 or so

- Market socialism strains like mutualism or ParEcon, both of which have major issues of their own

- Any mix of the above, e.g. "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", which has been the best economic performer of the last 30 years or so.

In other words, at some point you need to come down from pie in the sky Marx quotes and make physical implementations, which is always more difficult than theory.

So if central planning is problematic, what do you choose then?