Paul Cockshott

Yes, i agree that we should not underestimate the ruling class to adapt to new material conditions, but the vast majority of people in western society are proletarians while the capitalists are few, and in a crisis of the expected mass scale, the majority of people would protest the injustice.

What is though clear, is that ruling classes in history have always grown very attached to their institutions, and i can only with difficulty imagine capitalists getting rid of markets, which their abolition will be necessitated to sustain material industrial production, life itself, by a planned economy. Socialism is inevitable, at least "I'll see you either in Hell or Communism" as Zizek wisely said.

Check out today's news on Merkel calling for political union.

why have 6 workers work 8 hours and there be 6 unemployed workers on the street. when the factory can have 12 workers work 4 hours.

I meant that labor done by workers will reduce by
1. gains in efficiency
2. workers will be accepted into factories no matter how many workers are in the factory, with workers being distributed by need, so there will be no unemployment.

why have 6 workers work 8 hours and there be 6 unemployed workers on the street. when the factory can have 12 hours work 4 hours.

with unemployed workers being assigned to factories, based on the demand of workers the factory has.

what do you think of my latest blog entry, feel free to poke holes.

That is true to some extent in the developed countries particularly with respect to technologies associated with information and the internet, but we should not be too quick to write off the ability of the system to adapt

I agree very much with your view that the development of the productive forces bring with them new property relations and that until the capitalist institutions become unable to reproduce and expand material wealth, there should be a transition.
But, do you not think this 'point of no return' is already reached or very near? I definitely do think the productive forces are outgrowing capitalist institutions.

This is what i was thinking as well. I wrote a thread here with a graph that i think is relevant to what i want to communicate, namely the time until that "point of no return" is reached. A Comrade of mine Norbert Nelte who is in the ISO wrote a book about this in 2007, and he says that Germany reached this "point of no return" in 2009. He said that then, and the industrial production has still not caught up with the loss made in 2009 and it new data just said that the GDP of Germany just shrank again etc.
So i guess my question is, what time were you having in mind when you had the idea for a state capitalist transition moving into socialism? Because as it looks to me, the profit motive is becoming increasingly obsolete, a Liberal even said this on t.v. yesterday!

Yes, but what i was thinking is, does this developed stage of the productive forces not mean that the "state capitalist" socialist transition will be impossible? I mean, when the rate of profit for the production process is lower than for other sectors of the economy, does this not also create problems in a state capitalist transition?
Also, since i know Japan has a lot of government debt to keep their economy going, what will happen when the state becomes unable to support the economy, say when lenders stop lending? How would a state capitalist transition be possible in such an instance?

I have another question, how long (if socialism were to be implemented within the next ten years, globally) would it take for a communist society to replace it? This might seem rather obtuse a question, but I am wondering whether the end of capital-ist production would mean the productive forces are advanced enough for a communist society to be possible, or if a truly socialist economy would mean the productive forces would regardlessly be ready for communism.