Sep 25, 2026 · 2 hr 35 min · 14 segments
In this sequel to Benenav's first essay we examine his ideas on planning and how they fit into the possibility of a socialist commonwealth. Many of the criticisms we have of Benenav are addressed in…
James McCumberHost
Yeah, and he starts off again talking about our favorite Viennese, Otto Neurath.
He talks about how Otto Neurath's thesis was that you should not be trying to simplify the needs or desires or emergent behaviors that come from these disagreements, but actually to make them easier to communicate with each other so that a social consensus can be achieved.
um norrath was working on this but you know as with all things good and nice in the world that was
stopped by nazism
so i think he begins with the fairly uncontroversial point that uh there are just going to be variables or goals in society that are not substitutable so for example you cannot increase environmental protection at the same time that you need to increase uh forestry, for example, cutting down more trees.
But say for some reason those two came into conflict, you would need to find a way of democratically making a choice between those two desires or needs for the society.
Which, you know, I think is something that people do in terms of like land use plans or like working with Angela Espinoza, you know, she talked about how like the viable system model could be used to develop these kinds of resource usage plans for like a whole ecosystem.
Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society, the Viable System Model in Action.
There's some references in that book to environmental management systems and case studies that are worth looking into, but we'll maybe get into that a little bit later.
However, we start off pretty quickly with this discussion of the digital dual currency system.
that Beninab proposes, and if, for those of you who are really well-read in the subject, this might remind you a little bit of Daniel, is it Daniel Saros? Anyway, Saros' book, Information Technology and Socialist Construction, which came out, I think, a little bit over a decade ago.
Unfortunately not covered yet by the podcast, but he elaborates on this a little bit more, but with the... historical inspiration of this having been applied to a degree in the USSR.
Beninov acknowledges that that system was not quite functional or the dual currency system as it had been introduced in that society or economy did not quite function as intended.
This line of thinking is left a little bit open-ended by the article, and that is definitely a cause for concern for me because I'm not quite convinced that from his initial premises that the system he's outlining here avoids the problems that the Soviets experienced with their attempts to do so.
And we talked about this a little bit in the previous episode, but if you were living in a society with... a low resource endowment or a not very diverse resource endowment.
So let's say you are independent Scotland and you have a lot of steel and coal, but you don't necessarily have a lot of land to farm bananas and pineapples on, but you would really like to import bananas and pineapples.
Yeah, and he starts off again talking about our favorite Viennese, Otto Neurath.
He talks about how Otto Neurath's thesis was that you should not be trying to simplify the needs or desires or emergent behaviors that come from these disagreements, but actually to make them easier to communicate with each other so that a social consensus can be achieved.
um norrath was working on this but you know as with all things good and nice in the world that was
stopped by nazism
so i think he begins with the fairly uncontroversial point that uh there are just going to be variables or goals in society that are not substitutable so for example you cannot increase environmental protection at the same time that you need to increase uh forestry, for example, cutting down more trees.
But say for some reason those two came into conflict, you would need to find a way of democratically making a choice between those two desires or needs for the society.
Which, you know, I think is something that people do in terms of like land use plans or like working with Angela Espinoza, you know, she talked about how like the viable system model could be used to develop these kinds of resource usage plans for like a whole ecosystem.
Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society, the Viable System Model in Action.
There's some references in that book to environmental management systems and case studies that are worth looking into, but we'll maybe get into that a little bit later.
However, we start off pretty quickly with this discussion of the digital dual currency system.
that Beninab proposes, and if, for those of you who are really well-read in the subject, this might remind you a little bit of Daniel, is it Daniel Saros? Anyway, Saros' book, Information Technology and Socialist Construction, which came out, I think, a little bit over a decade ago.
Unfortunately not covered yet by the podcast, but he elaborates on this a little bit more, but with the... historical inspiration of this having been applied to a degree in the USSR.
Beninov acknowledges that that system was not quite functional or the dual currency system as it had been introduced in that society or economy did not quite function as intended.
This line of thinking is left a little bit open-ended by the article, and that is definitely a cause for concern for me because I'm not quite convinced that from his initial premises that the system he's outlining here avoids the problems that the Soviets experienced with their attempts to do so.
And we talked about this a little bit in the previous episode, but if you were living in a society with... a low resource endowment or a not very diverse resource endowment.
So let's say you are independent Scotland and you have a lot of steel and coal, but you don't necessarily have a lot of land to farm bananas and pineapples on, but you would really like to import bananas and pineapples.
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