28
Any of you guys read "Towards A New Socialism - Paul Cockshott" ? If so is It worth a read?
(hexbear.net)
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2026
28 points (100.0% liked)
askchapo
23331 readers
97 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I have not read it. But I have had it on my reading list and skimmed some parts because it is considered an important text in socialist planning debates and some introductory econophysics and cybernetic socialism. But I also have been de-prioritizing it since Cockshott is weird, a transphobe and his takes on AI makes me think that he does not understand value theory at all. Also the main contribution that is usually cited from the text is that the classic input-output matrix method of planning is actually much easier than usually stated, since most commodities use a very small fraction of all available inputs in the economy, so mapping outputs to how much of what needs to be produced is actually easier for a real economy than the general case.
From a review a trans comrade I know that has read it, his transphobia doesn't come up or in the text, but his political economic analysis is really weird and confused. If I remember correctly he is something like a Trotskyist that is pro-Stalin and anti-Soviet Marxism-Leninism.
CW: Math Stuff
If you have the math background to understand this, his main contribution is that in the simple input-output matrix formulation understanding of planning, where you have a matrix that describes how much of each input you need to produce a commodity and you find what needs to be produced by inverting that matrix and multiplying it by the vector of desired outputs needed. He points out that since every commodity only needs a small number of inputs compared to all things in the economy, so it is a sparse matrix making it significantly easier and actually practical to invert. He also supposedly lays out the algorithm for inverting this sparse matrix step by step in a way that tries to make the reader think that he invented that algorithm rather than pulling it from a linear algebra textbook.So, to sum up, it is probably worth reading mostly only if you are really interested in a very mathematical treatment of the socialist planning debate and some quantitative macroeconomic modelling. Otherwise you would be better served reading something else. Even then, you should start with other books like Farjoun and Machover's Laws of Chaos, rather than using this as your starting point.