Part of the Marxist Leninist approach to political economy is that markets are actually good signals. Even if those signals are the actions that the bourgeois take.
You do have to go through some slog to gather data on how the market actually functions. The NEP was short lived and revealed a lot to the USSR, and China has the Special Economic Zones that exist to gather data on how the global market works.
The isolationist states have everything pretty well figured out, but they’re excluded from the collective labor of the international proletariat. It’s important to remain connected to the global economy in some way so you can understand exactly how the international proletariat is being exploited.
That doesn’t really answer the question of materially providing for everyone, it is only part of the picture. I’m sure the answer will simply be, the railways aren’t simply for moving people around in the end. I’ve noticed a lot of the “developed” world has production down, but waste is as abundant as the products. Now that I’ve been talking to the bears for about a year, I should look more into how China is doing on the “providing for everyone” front and try to find eastern sources. I’m sure theres political nerds who have done the leg work on the whole world no matter how the state is run. I’d like to see that too.
That doesn’t really answer the question of materially providing for everyone
the railways aren’t simply for moving people around in the end
I think you may be misidentifying the problem. Distribution logistics are not the problem. We already have both the resources and the means to distribute those resources such that everyone on the planet has more than enough to live a fulfilling life free from fear of starvation or any other unmet basic need. We also have the ability to deal with the resulting waste which is trivial in comparison to the real roadblock in the way of worldwide universal post-scarcity.
The real problem is political. The real problem is the prevention of the sequestration and hoarding of wealth and resources. The hoarding of wealth and resources also creates the conditions for concentrations of power, power that is used to maintain and enforce the system in its inequitable state. That is what has to be overcome. And socialist countries (countries in transition and led by a communist party) have overcome that to a significant degree, but it can never be complete so long as so much power is concentrated in the hands of those whose interest lies in maintaining the global system already in place, a system based on exploitation (i.e. imperialism and unequal exchange abroad and capitalism domestically). That is what we are up against as people who want to bring about worldwide post-scarcity equity, we are not up against a mere failure to map out the most efficient distribution networks, because that latter problem, despite what you’ve been told, is already solved.
Nothing is perfect, but we do have the systems to properly manage and allocate resources now.
The real value of the internet and computers is the ability to break through the barriers that limited the old revolutions. Administration can be automated in a way that liberates is from a managerial class and a large amount of labor (assuming that production is done on an as needed basis).
The Soviets knew this, and the West knows this. It’s why the systems backing modern LLMs can draw a direct line from Gosplan production matrix planning through Stafford Beer and Cybersyn.
Those systems were coopted by western financial corporations to create the modern stock trading markets and algorithms, and they’re incredibly effective since they are able to drive production through allocation of capital.
Part of the Marxist Leninist approach to political economy is that markets are actually good signals. Even if those signals are the actions that the bourgeois take.
You do have to go through some slog to gather data on how the market actually functions. The NEP was short lived and revealed a lot to the USSR, and China has the Special Economic Zones that exist to gather data on how the global market works.
The isolationist states have everything pretty well figured out, but they’re excluded from the collective labor of the international proletariat. It’s important to remain connected to the global economy in some way so you can understand exactly how the international proletariat is being exploited.
That doesn’t really answer the question of materially providing for everyone, it is only part of the picture. I’m sure the answer will simply be, the railways aren’t simply for moving people around in the end. I’ve noticed a lot of the “developed” world has production down, but waste is as abundant as the products. Now that I’ve been talking to the bears for about a year, I should look more into how China is doing on the “providing for everyone” front and try to find eastern sources. I’m sure theres political nerds who have done the leg work on the whole world no matter how the state is run. I’d like to see that too.
I think you may be misidentifying the problem. Distribution logistics are not the problem. We already have both the resources and the means to distribute those resources such that everyone on the planet has more than enough to live a fulfilling life free from fear of starvation or any other unmet basic need. We also have the ability to deal with the resulting waste which is trivial in comparison to the real roadblock in the way of worldwide universal post-scarcity.
The real problem is political. The real problem is the prevention of the sequestration and hoarding of wealth and resources. The hoarding of wealth and resources also creates the conditions for concentrations of power, power that is used to maintain and enforce the system in its inequitable state. That is what has to be overcome. And socialist countries (countries in transition and led by a communist party) have overcome that to a significant degree, but it can never be complete so long as so much power is concentrated in the hands of those whose interest lies in maintaining the global system already in place, a system based on exploitation (i.e. imperialism and unequal exchange abroad and capitalism domestically). That is what we are up against as people who want to bring about worldwide post-scarcity equity, we are not up against a mere failure to map out the most efficient distribution networks, because that latter problem, despite what you’ve been told, is already solved.
Nothing is perfect, but we do have the systems to properly manage and allocate resources now.
The real value of the internet and computers is the ability to break through the barriers that limited the old revolutions. Administration can be automated in a way that liberates is from a managerial class and a large amount of labor (assuming that production is done on an as needed basis).
The Soviets knew this, and the West knows this. It’s why the systems backing modern LLMs can draw a direct line from Gosplan production matrix planning through Stafford Beer and Cybersyn.
Those systems were coopted by western financial corporations to create the modern stock trading markets and algorithms, and they’re incredibly effective since they are able to drive production through allocation of capital.