SSDR wrote:
Gold is more rare than flowers because gold can't be grown like how flowers can. In a non socialist economy, the more rare something is, the more it's valued. But in socialism, no matter how rare a material or a natural/artificial resource is, it would not be valued more or less because in socialism, the concept of value doesn't need to exist.
To clarify / refine the first statement, I think we need a 'multiplication' of both *exchange values* ('price'), *and* use values (tangible utility, including beauty / aesthetics).
State capitalism / Stalinism *constantly* ran into exchange-valuation problems, and still does, as with Venezuela, because it attempts to *carve out* a mainly locally-*circumscribed* economy, out of the larger global sea of capitalism. By doing so it becomes *difficult* to establish politically-*commanded* currency exchange rates with other / major capitalist currencies, and also suffers from lack of global popular acceptance of its *own* domestic currency because the country is certainly not king-of-the-hill in the global geopolitical context, and is probably also anti-imperialist, or at least geopolitically *independent*. So its currency suffers from inflation, with high black-market exchange rates with major capitalist currencies.
The political *point* of all of this iconoclasm, though, is that the domestic / internal economy for that country *could* be much smoother, internally, similarly to the way any private *corporation* is structured internally, with a *bureaucratization* ('politicization') of internal material movements, so as to generally avoid interfacing with external market exchanges as much as possible.
As long as a political-type pyramid-shaped *hierarchy* can be maintained, all internal economic transfers are tacitly accepted by all, internally (and even externally), and thus no longer require (two-way) *exchanges* for any given transfer. (A manager could readily requisition *materials* for an approved project, from any other division, without necessarily having to 'pay', in cash, in a market-type *exchange*, since the approved project is under an *authority*, the manager's boss.)
This is also the structure and functioning of any kind of *syndicalism*, btw, as in the military, or with a locally collectivized enterprise like a workers co-op. By internally eliminating *exchange values* that entire 'middle layer' of valuated exchanges can be bypassed altogether, in favor of enterprise-defined *use values*, as *qualitatively* defined by managerial *authorities*, with *internal politics* providing flexibility and fluidity, going-forward.
This is the way that *abundance*, particularly, can be handled, so as to get around capitalism's inherent dynamic of 'enforced scarcity', usually through the destructive function of *warfare*, over anything that becomes *overproduced*. (The present-day is notably *different*, with popularly disallowed warfare, so *that* conventionally economically destructive function is now *forestalled*, which is an interesting development in and of itself.)
True workers-of-the-world socialism would just be an *expansion* of this basic corporate-like / Stalinist-state-like bureaucratic functioning, but it would better correspond to actual realities / facts, because the overall 'pyramid' (of relative individual social prestige, or reputation) would be much *flatter* than we're used to seeing, historically, due to historical *caste*-like bureaucratic *elitism*, or *top-down* administration of the workers themselves.
In the absence of caste / class / careerism / heredity / elitism, the 'base' of the 'pyramid' would be much, much *broader*, to enable a broad-based *bottom-up* dynamic of dynamic social planning, with far less institutional *rigidity*, if at all.
However, this is all *prelude* to address SSDR's statement that 'in socialism, no matter how rare a material or a natural/artificial resource is, it would not be valued more or less because in socialism, the concept of value doesn't need to exist.'
I'll actually *beg to differ* on this point, because certainly *use values* (per individual) would continue to exist under any conceivable post-capitalist socialism -- maybe some artist produces a new, novel, ultimately popular *song*, and most people in the world want to *hear* it over and over again. How would this balance of *use value* supply-and-demand be handled, exactly, when there's *mass organic demand* for this very particular material 'supply' -- ?
Should the hit artist be satisfied with *notoreity* alone, since there would, by definition, be no money or commodity-production, or 'sales' -- ? Should everyone else in the world be entitled to get the song for 'free' with absolutely *zero* material compensation to the artist who produced this wildly popular work of art?
Also, relatedly, who mines the gold and who grows and picks the flowers, if such tasks were no one's *first choice* for liberated-labor in such a society? (No *coercion* could be used to force any kind of labor, since there would be *no state*, by definition.)
Or, conversely, what if *lots* of people inherently *liked* to mine gold and grow and pick flowers, to the point where gold and flowers started *accumulating* (hypothetically speaking), because there was not enough *organic demand* to consume such -- ?