Cálculo en especie

El cálculo en especie o cálculo in-natura es una forma de valorar los recursos y un sistema de contabilidad que utiliza magnitudes físicas desagregadas en lugar de una unidad de cálculo común. Como base de una economía socialista, se propuso sustituir el dinero y el cálculo financiero.^[1] En una economía en especie, los productos se producen por sus valores de uso (su utilidad) y se contabilizan en términos físicos. Por el contrario, en las economías basadas en el dinero, las mercancías se producen por su valor de cambio y se contabilizan en términos monetarios.

El cálculo en especie cuantificaría la utilidad de un objeto directamente sin recurrir a una unidad general de cálculo. Esto difiere de otros métodos propuestos de cálculo socialista, como los precios contables de Taylor-Lange y el uso del tiempo de trabajo como medida de costos.^[1]

El cálculo en especie fue fuertemente defendido por el filósofo positivista y economista político Otto Neurath cuando trabajaba en la República Soviética de Baviera. Esto llevó a una discusión a principios de la década de 1920, en la que gran parte de la discusión sobre el socialismo se centró en si la planificación económica debería basarse en cantidades físicas o en contabilidad monetaria. Neurath fue el defensor más enérgico de la planificación física (planificación económica mediante cálculo en especie), en contraste con los economistas neoclásicos socialistas de mercado que defendían el uso de precios nocionales calculados mediante la resolución de ecuaciones simultáneas.^[2] Los críticos del socialismo de la escuela austriaca, en particular Ludwig von Mises, basaron su crítica del socialismo en el problema del cálculo.

El defensor moderno más prolífico del cálculo en especie es el informático escocés Paul Cockshott, quien se diferencia de Neurath en que aboga por el uso de vales laborales para establecer una restricción escalar del consumo.

Los defensores del cálculo en especie argumentan que el uso de un medio común como el dinero distorsiona la información sobre la utilidad de un objeto. Los socialistas a favor del cálculo en especie argumentaron que, en un sistema de cálculo en especie, se eliminarían los residuos asociados con el sistema monetario y, en particular, los objetos ya no serían deseados para fines funcionalmente inútiles como la reventa y la especulación – sólo serían deseados por su valor de uso.^[3]

Véase también

Referencias

↑ ^a ^b Steele, David (1992). From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court Publishing Company. p. 123. ISBN 978-0875484495. «The term ‘calculation in kind’ is normally reserved for attempts to dispense with any general unit of calculation. It is usually not taken to include cases where a general unit of calculation is arrived at without reference to money or markets. Thus it is not applied to Taylor-Lange accounting prices, nor to notional ‘prices’ ascribed to all commodities in an attempt to replace the market by solving a large number of simultaneous equations, nor to the use of labor time as a measure of cost.»
↑ Feinstein, C.H. (September 1969). Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth: Essays Presented to Maurice Dobb. Cambridge University Press. p. 168. ISBN 978-0521049870. «In the years between 1917 and 1925 Viennese socialists were heavily engaged in disputes about these themes. Among the main contributors were O. Neurath, K. Polanyi, O. Baur, O. Leichter and W. Schiff... Much of this early discussion turned round the question whether planning should be in physical quantities or whether monetary accounting should be used. Otto Neurath, a remarkable personality, was a forceful advocate of physical planning.»
↑ The Alternative to Capitalism. Retrieved July 05, 2010, from wspus.org "The disappearance of economic value would mean the end of economic calculation in the sense of calculation in units of value whether measured by money or directly in some unit of labour-time. It would mean that there was no longer any common unit of calculation for making decisions regarding the production of goods...Calculation in kind is an essential aspect of the production of goods in any society, including capitalism. A commodity is, as we saw, a good which by virtue of being produced for sale has acquired in addition to its physical use value a socially-determined exchange value. Correspondingly, the process of production under capitalism is both a process of production of exchange values and a process of production of use values, involving two different kinds of calculation. For the former, the unit of calculation is money, but for the latter there is no single unit but a whole series of different units for measuring the quantity and quality of specific goods used in the process of producing other specific goods (tonnes of steel, kilowatt-hours of electricity, person-hours of work and so on). The disappearance of economic or value calculation in socialism would by no means involve the disappearance of all rational calculation, since the calculations in kind connected with producing specific quantities of goods as physical use values would continue."

Otras lecturas

Cockshott, Paul. "Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich" University of Glasgow, 2008.
Huerta de Soto, Jesús (1992). Socialismo, cálculo económico y función empresarial. Unión Editorial. pp. 201-206. ISBN 9788472092525.
O'Neil, John (2002). "Socialist Calculation and Environmental Valuation: Money, Markets and Ecology". Science and Society 66. 1: 137-158.

Enlaces externos

Partido Socialista Mundial (EE.UU.) (wspus.org citado anteriormente)
An Anarchist FAQ, I.4.5, "¿Qué pasa con la oferta y la demanda?"
Esta obra contiene una traducción derivada de «Calculation in kind» de Wikipedia en inglés, concretamente de esta versión, publicada por sus editores bajo la Licencia de documentación libre de GNU y la Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional.
- Datos: Q5018881

[Steele_1992_123-1] Steele, David (1992). From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court Publishing Company. p. 123. ISBN 978-0875484495. «The term ‘calculation in kind’ is normally reserved for attempts to dispense with any general unit of calculation. It is usually not taken to include cases where a general unit of calculation is arrived at without reference to money or markets. Thus it is not applied to Taylor-Lange accounting prices, nor to notional ‘prices’ ascribed to all commodities in an attempt to replace the market by solving a large number of simultaneous equations, nor to the use of labor time as a measure of cost.»

[2] Feinstein, C.H. (September 1969). Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth: Essays Presented to Maurice Dobb. Cambridge University Press. p. 168. ISBN 978-0521049870. «In the years between 1917 and 1925 Viennese socialists were heavily engaged in disputes about these themes. Among the main contributors were O. Neurath, K. Polanyi, O. Baur, O. Leichter and W. Schiff... Much of this early discussion turned round the question whether planning should be in physical quantities or whether monetary accounting should be used. Otto Neurath, a remarkable personality, was a forceful advocate of physical planning.»

[3] The Alternative to Capitalism. Retrieved July 05, 2010, from wspus.org "The disappearance of economic value would mean the end of economic calculation in the sense of calculation in units of value whether measured by money or directly in some unit of labour-time. It would mean that there was no longer any common unit of calculation for making decisions regarding the production of goods...Calculation in kind is an essential aspect of the production of goods in any society, including capitalism. A commodity is, as we saw, a good which by virtue of being produced for sale has acquired in addition to its physical use value a socially-determined exchange value. Correspondingly, the process of production under capitalism is both a process of production of exchange values and a process of production of use values, involving two different kinds of calculation. For the former, the unit of calculation is money, but for the latter there is no single unit but a whole series of different units for measuring the quantity and quality of specific goods used in the process of producing other specific goods (tonnes of steel, kilowatt-hours of electricity, person-hours of work and so on). The disappearance of economic or value calculation in socialism would by no means involve the disappearance of all rational calculation, since the calculations in kind connected with producing specific quantities of goods as physical use values would continue."

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