I published another post the other day, thought I'd share it here and see what you folks think:
https://www.haerdin.se/blog/2022/11/21/shadow-plans-and-ghost-shifts/
Very interesting! What be really useful is if we had a socialist planning/accounting software which would allow people to do this on the fly. Resources brought in from ghost shifts could be laundered through legitimate enterprises via a phantom increase in productivity of existing operations.
Btw, if you like you can also repost your blogs in Casper Forum, that way when people click on your profile in the forum they can see your work.
Very interesting! What be really useful is if we had a socialist planning/accounting software which would allow people to do this on the fly. Resources brought in from ghost shifts could be laundered through legitimate enterprises via a phantom increase in productivity of existing operations.
Yeah quite a sophisticated system would need to be put in place to avoid paying undue tax. Here abusing bourgeois company forms and internal accounting tricks may be useful, as multinational corporations already do.
Btw, if you like you can also repost your blogs in Casper Forum, that way when people click on your profile in the forum they can see your work.
It's already mirrored on the frontpage, but it doesn't hurt linking it in more place. I post it here to get a discussion going.
I will also note that turning bourgeois structure against themselves is something that is already done in the free software world. Free software is of course quite limited in scope, but the concept can be extended to physical goods and other services as well.
Btw, if you like you can also repost your blogs in Casper Forum, that way when people click on your profile in the forum they can see your work.
It's already mirrored on the frontpage, but it doesn't hurt linking it in more place. I post it here to get a discussion going.
Ah I meant using the blogging function. If you click on the +New you can create blog posts to your profile. that's how I create posts like this, which I copied from my substack Capital, Capitalization, and Capitalists - CASPER Forum
I will also note that turning bourgeois structure against themselves is something that is already done in the free software world. Free software is of course quite limited in scope, but the concept can be extended to physical goods and other services as well.
Are you familiar with the telekommunist manifesto? it suggests creating a new form of copyright which doesn't allow any capitalist institutions to utalize the software The Telekommunist Manifesto | Telekommunisten
This is such a cool idea!
I personally feel some of the best propaganda is showing how taxdollars could have been spent (compare military aid to ukraine with the cost of feeding every hungry american child) but this sort of breaks down a bit with things that aren't taxdollars or billionaire wealth.
BUT! local communist and labor orgs could publish their own versions of this using the method!
"This new luxury condo complex took X hours, yet a new housing development for every single mother would have taken 0.5X" for example. or "using just Y labor hours, we fed every hungry child in the city".
@casperadmin Yeah I've read the telekommunist manifesto. As I recall it proposes a license that is not GPL compatible, and which appears still possible to circumvent via suitable ownership structures. I am a proponent of just using the AGPL, because FAANG all hate it. I also find the "no license" approach by the post open source people to be interesting, where practices replaces licenses. But it has its own problems.
@joe Indeed. I would focus on how capitalists spend their unearned income rather than where the tax money goes, since the latter does benefit workers to an extent. Except the war budget of course, as you point out.
This is quite excellent! I think an interesting scenario to simulate would be the growth of a co-operative/ communal industry in the context of a strike in it's privatized counterpart. i.e in agriculture for example; might be a way to "prime the pump" on communalization.
I had a thought this morning that I shared with some local comrades who thought it was a decent idea: Swedish unions are currently in negotiation season. Since inflation is at 10% but pay raises are likely to be at most 4%, workers should take out the difference in natura. The kind of schemes we discuss on here would be very useful for this. Of course this would put workers in conflict not just with their employers but also the union confederation (LO) leadership and the Swedish model in general.
@thardin Strike when the iron's hot! The leadership of a major union in the U.S (the UAW) is currently having it's first direct election because the olde labor aristocracy was caught in a massive corruption scandal (conspiring with management).
I think cybernetics is necessary to overcome the contradictions between unions and their governance; these contradictions are embodied in the present labor aristocracy so we should get comfortable coming into conflict with them.