Transitional demands
Per Wikipedia:
“In Marxist theory, a transitional demand either is a partial realisation of a maximum demand after revolution or an agitational demand made by a socialist organisation with the aim of linking the current situation to progress towards their goal of a socialist society.”
But as the idea was taught to me it basically means a demand that A) In principle is not incompatible with capitalism but B) in practice would make administering capitalism virtually impossible, so would probably never happen under capitalism.
I’m using the term in a broader sense and including things that aren’t directly related to capitalism. By a transitional demand here, I mean a demand that is probably thoroughly impractical in practice, but that through its impracticality reveals interesting limits to our form of life.
Making the proposals I discuss here happen wouldn’t require abolishing our form of society, let alone that far more general beast, capitalism, but they would require reforming it in fascinating, difficult, and politically fraught ways.
Only by bumping into the glass does the fish learn of its condition. Give your own examples in the comments.
Have juries (or judges, in jurisdictions where judges act as finders of fact in criminal cases) give probabilities of guilt with their verdicts
Why this would be a good idea in principle: It would allow us to calibrate the justice system. There are methods- albeit somewhat speculative- for estimating the false conviction rate. We could contrast this with the probabilities given to prove that the justice system is malfunctioning. On the whole, transparency would be increased, and people would have to think more concretely about the tradeoff between the risk of jailing an innocent, and the risk of letting an offender go.
Why this might be infeasible in practice under current conditions: We are not taught to think in probabilities, and people tend to fuck them up badly when they try to use them regardless. It is likely that this would bring the justice system into disrepute.
Aside: But would that be entirely a bad thing?
Limit the maximum hourly pay rate of the highest-paid public servant to twice the hourly pay rate of the lowest-paid public servant, or at most, three times
Why this would be a good idea in principle: Many have complained about inequality, there is evidence that inequality has bad social effects, and insomuch as income has declining marginal utility, it represents a kind of distributive inefficiency as Abba Lerner argued. A fairly commonsense first step for the government to combat inequality would be for the government to stop promoting it through its own pay schedules.
Studies of executive performance and compensation have suggested there is no relationship. The idea that the capacity to perform as a high-level public servant (or corporate executive for that matter) is very, very rare is not supported by the evidence either. Even if there are a few wunderkinds(1) who can perform these roles better than anyone else there is little evidence our current processes select for them. There is good reason to think that senior management pay in both the private sector and perhaps the public sector may reflect institutional capture rather than competitive pricing.
Assuming the lowest public servant hourly wage was set at $18, that would put the highest wage at $36 dollars an hour. Assuming senior public servants work more than the average- say 50 hours a week, we get $94,000 a year. This should be adequate for anyone.
Why this might be infeasible in practice under current conditions: Although executive performance may be unlinked to salary, and although there may be scope to reduce senior public servant pay, reducing it by this much would risk a higher turnover rate due to private sector poaching.
Link all wages to inflation. All inflation increases legally must result in a wage increase.
Why this might be a good idea in principle: Wages are sticky. It’s hard to move them up or down even when there’s a good economic case for it. Employers have found that not raising wages and just dealing with the increased turnover from job-hopping is a reasonable strategy. This situation is unfair on those without negotiating skills. Further, it increases financial instability for the typical household in the face of inflation. There is no good reason totally external events to your workplace performance should result in a de facto wage cut.
Why this might be infeasible in practice under current conditions: It would be massively inflationary.
Open borders
I don’t think I need to comment both on why this has an undeniable logic and justice, and on why it might be politically and perhaps even economically infeasible in practice.
Abolish unemployment. If there is any unemployment, simply subsidize or otherwise encourage employing people till there is zero unemployment
Why this might be a good idea in principle:
Keynes, in a quote that I cannot find at the moment, put it beautifully when he said words to the effect of: “I cannot help but doubt the Conservative doctrine that as much as one-tenth of the population must be deliberately kept in idleness and misery for the system to function”.
Why this would be infeasible in practice under current conditions: It would be massively inflationary.
Aside: There are Keynesian methods to attempt to manage the inflationary effect, but they would require an entirely different political economy than we have, where wages and profits are set as much by negotiation between unions and business as by the market.
Triple public investment in science, especially basic and intermediate rather than applied research.
Why this might be a good idea in principle: Basic science is the driver of so much progress. Ultimately it determines the rate of economic growth. Yet as far as I can tell the US government only spends a few scant tens of billions on it, something in the ballpark of 100 dollars per American per year. This makes zero sense. So many economists claim that their primary concern is with economic growth since longterm this has the highest welfare effects and differences compound. Why are they running around arguing about investment credits when this massive, almost free pile of money is lying on the table?
Why this might be infeasible in practice under current conditions: Basic research is a global public good. That means that the benefits are not experienced just by the country that does the research. That leaves every country in a position where it has to decide “will I invest the amount in research that will capture its full social value, or will I free ride on other countries”. A massive global tragedy of the results of the commons, where basic research is under-invested.
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Footnotes: (1) The word “Wunderkind” can be used ironically to mean a brilliant and exceptional person regardless of age right? As I was writing this, that was my impression, but when I Googled it, it seems like maybe I hallucinated that meaning?