- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Exactly!

In Reply to: Production posted by David on January 16, 19100 at 16:36:56:

Stoller: However, to answer your specific question ('would I still be able to, say, get a recording of Rigoletto?'), you might want to consider a democratic conception of production in which the products that are made (in the socialist future) will be determined by the worker's themselves (instead of the 'profit motive,' market anarchy, etc.). What this means is that if enough people want recordings of Rigoletto enough to MAKE THEM, then there will be plenty of recordings of Rigoletto. If only one or two people wanted them, then , fine, they could make them---with the means available to one or two people. Get it? I mean, if only I wanted Lenin's collected works, you wouldn't want to have to print them for me, would you?

: That is rather curious; it essentially emulates the markets supply and demand reflexives except on the production level rather than on the consumption level. It works rather similarly if you look at it closely, just as if only two people wanted a certain recording of Rigoletto, than it would probably be quite expensive (as the company would have to recoup its losses) in the same way that two people producing the copy would be less efficient and probably require a lot more resources per unit than if 1000 people were producing it.

Exactly, precisely, perfectly!

The aggregate social desire for commodities would be determined on the production level (the level of labor of workers), not the level of consumption (presently determined by the capitalists).

Let me add here that public libraries would mitigate (through rationalization) the problem of minority tastes (and corresponding lack of production efficiency) regarding culture in a democratic conception of production.

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