Direct Democracy

[SeaSpeck]

About how many people can efficiently participate in democracy on one level before power needs to be delegated?

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't think that there's an exact numerical answer to that question.

[Zanthorus]

Dunbar's number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number) maybe?

[syndicat]

i think it's best to think of direct democracy as occurring in layers or levels. At the lower end, the idea is to have base groups where people are familiar with each other so that they understand their concerns. for example, a departmental assembly in a large workplace that has various departments. Or a residents' assembly in a not too large apartment building or a group of houses. So this might be in the range of 20 to 80 people. Dunbar's number is 150 and we can think of that as an outside limit.

The next level of direct democracy would be larger assemblies, limited to maybe a couple thousand people, such as a neighborhood assembly or a worker assembly in a largish plant or workplace. Here we do not make the assumption that people will know everyone (an assumption that lies behind Dunbar's number). But because people will have enough commonalities there are likely to be a limited number of perspectives on the issues that confront such a body and time enough for some people from each perspective to lay out their view.

The next level does introduce indirection, and this is where the base assemblies elect delegates to larger regional or industry wide congresses of delegates. But even here it is possible to have direct democracy. A constitution for such a federative unity could have a provision for a relatively small number needed to petition to force a controversial decision be sent back to all the base assemblies for discussion and vote. In this case there is direct democracy, but distributed in the various assemblies. But the congress has worked as a filter to deliberate, based on concerns from delegates of various base assemblies, and reduce the issue to a limited set of options.

[SeaSpeck]

So, would you say it would be possible to make a "world decision" or would something like that require too much time and delegation?

[thomasludd]

So, would you say it would be possible to make a "world decision" or would something like that require too much time and delegation?

Would there be a scenario that a "world decision" would be needed?

The only one i can think of right now would be "extra-terrestrial" invasion.

[mikelepore]

I think the big policy decisions are more easy to handle through direct democracy, and the small daily details are most in need of delegating to planners. You could have everybody vote on a world-shaping issue. It's the heap of minor details that bog people down, like a building process that needs the excavator called on Tuesday, then the mason on Wednesday, then skip Thursday due to some personel reason, and also skip Friday morning, but get the framers here on Friday afternoon. For the coordination efforts, we would find it best to delegate decisions to someone who can shuffle all the details in one place. Maybe some people here were thinking that we need to delegate the formation of major social policies, and take care of the small details of implementation ourselves, somewhat spontaneously-- I think it's just the opposite.

[mikelepore]

Would there be a scenario that a "world decision" would be needed?

The only one i can think of right now would be "extra-terrestrial" invasion.

Everything that needs to be standardized is a world decision. If the electric power lines are going to be 120 volts 60 hertz, if the internet is going to use 8 bits per byte, if web browsers are going to understand HTML tags, if airplane pilots have to check with someone before changing altitude, if we want a wrench to fit the bolts that we use it on, even the fact that there are 24 hours in a day, these are all world decisions.

[thomasludd]

Everything that needs to be standardized is a world decision. If the electric power lines are going to be 120 volts 60 hertz, if the internet is going to use 8 bits per byte, if web browsers are going to understand HTML tags, if airplane pilots have to check with someone before changing altitude, if we want a wrench to fit the bolts that we use it on, even the fact that there are 24 hours in a day, these are all world decisions.

I see your point. :)

[Crusade]

Everything that needs to be standardized is a world decision. If the electric power lines are going to be 120 volts 60 hertz, if the internet is going to use 8 bits per byte, if web browsers are going to understand HTML tags, if airplane pilots have to check with someone before changing altitude, if we want a wrench to fit the bolts that we use it on, even the fact that there are 24 hours in a day, these are all world decisions.

Keep saying BS like that and I'll have to send you a friend request. You nailed what I was gonna say. And syndicat also, as usual.

[AK]

Keep saying BS like that and I'll have to send you a friend request. You nailed what I was gonna say. And syndicat also, as usual.
Labelling what they said as "BS" and then complimenting them for it just confused the fuck outta me.

[syndicat]

Everything that needs to be standardized is a world decision. If the electric power lines are going to be 120 volts 60 hertz, if the internet is going to use 8 bits per byte, if web browsers are going to understand HTML tags, if airplane pilots have to check with someone before changing altitude, if we want a wrench to fit the bolts that we use it on, even the fact that there are 24 hours in a day, these are all world decisions.

at present electricity isn't 120 v 60 hertz everywhere. that's what it is in USA but not Europe. so what happens then is that appliance manufacturers have to develop for two different standards. in regard to bolts and wrenches, also the U.S. standard isn't the same as the European since USA doesn't abide by the international metric standard.

in regard to the broad use of metric standards around the world (except USA), this wasn't imposed by some world government. same with rules about behavior of airplane pilots. it's actually sufficient if the air transport industry work out a standard, and the same is true for electric power production.

so in regard to how such standards could be decided under socialism, why can't this simply be worked out by worker industrial federations in the respective industries? users of computers don't care whether bytes are 7 or 8 bits.

[el_chavista]

About how many people can efficiently participate in democracy on one level before power needs to be delegated?
I think that the Socialism of the 21st century's approach to direct democracy is the use of the Internet. So every one that can send a message may participate in the making of political decisions -like approving the national budget.

[mikelepore]

at present electricity isn't 120 v 60 hertz everywhere. that's what it is in USA but not Europe. so what happens then is that appliance manufacturers have to develop for two different standards. in regard to bolts and wrenches, also the U.S. standard isn't the same as the European since USA doesn't abide by the international metric standard.

in regard to the broad use of metric standards around the world (except USA), this wasn't imposed by some world government. same with rules about behavior of airplane pilots. it's actually sufficient if the air transport industry work out a standard, and the same is true for electric power production.

We don't yet have a world government, although that would be my preference, so today the issues are national ones. Still, that's enough to show the pattern that that too much decentralization would be an idea that goes against technical efficiency. The need for nothing smaller than nationwide uniformity is enough to make my point, because, when I call for a minimum size of national-level centralized socialism, the anarchists here tend to freak out have a fit disagree with my suggestion.


so in regard to how such standards could be decided under socialism, why can't this simply be worked out by worker industrial federations in the respective industries? users of computers don't care whether bytes are 7 or 8 bits.

Even if the users don't care, the programmers might care, and they are another population group that has to be satisfied. I might want to live in North America and do some programming for Australia. Someone has to decide whether there will be a common language.

I addition, I happened to pick an example that's mostly hidden from the user, but I might have picked any example that affects the user, the design considerations that are visible on the screen or the keyboard. The capitalist system has private industry acting as a form of government for all, for example, DVD-RW's everywhere fail due to CRC errors because someone in a committee meeting at Microsoft decided not to implement the known method of parity error correction.

Some other issues are literally worldwide. Air and water pollution anywhere on earth harms the whole earth. People don't agree on whether a given chemical compound is hazardous or not, so a conscious policy has to be adopted by some means.

[syndicat]

Lepore's fallacy is two-fold. 1. he assumes that decentralized planning precludes nation-wide decisions. 2. he assumes a single central body is required to impose uniformity. Both assumptions are false.

The relevant question is: How are people affected by a particular sphere of decision-making? The vast majority of decisions do not affect people everywhere or not to the same extent.

There are many decisions that affect primarily the people who work in a particular facility, such as a regional telecom net, a factory making bicycles, a steel mill, whatever. Even within such a large facility, there are many decisions that affect mainly the people in a particular department.

This means decisions that there are assemblies to deal with issues that mainly affect people in a department, larger assemblies and councils to deal with the fewer issues that affect an entire large plant.

There are also issues that affect the people who use or consume products. Communities around plants will be affected by pollution or noise. Control over your own consumption is a part of control over your life. This means there needs to be a way for people as consumers and residents to make requests or proposals for production and have these affect what is produced or how production affects them.

As with workplaces having spheres of decision-making that affect people first in some places, and then some decisions that affect roughly equally larger numbers, this would be true, too, for residents.

There are many issues affecting consumers and residents of regions that affect mainly the people in a particular neighborhood. So there are assemblies and elected councils there, and there are other decisions that affect, shape the lives of people in the larger urban region where that neighborhood is, and so there are congresses or conferences of delegates here. For example, we might consider the base unit to be relatively small assemblies/associations that are responsible for common aspects of an apartment complex or group of houses, and then a larger assembly of maybe up to a couple thousand in the surrounding neighborhood.

Now, in what I've described there is a widening federative unity for decision-making, in that there are local spheres for consumers and residents and local spheres for workers, but also federative organizations with their congresses and so on that cover whole regions. And there can be subregions in larger regions.

There are some decisons that do affect very large regions such as a whole "nation" or continent. I'm not going to talk about the world because i think a world wide classless federation is too far off. It doesn't really matter because what will work for, say, all of North America will work for larger "regions".

For larger regions where there are issues that are of common importance...and some standards may legitimately fall in this area, as well as in general certain kinds of wide infrastructure, transportation and communication and utility and defense planning. In these cases the federation of all the subregional federations, going down to the various neighborhood assemblies, can itself develop, through its research associations and its regional congresses, the relevant plans and proposals.

But I think here, as at all levels, there needs to be a process of negotiation between people as residents, consumers, citizens, and people as workers. Participatory planning does not assume, contrary to Lepore's assumption, that there can be no proposals in the planning system initiated at national or large-scale levels, via the national or regional federations. In fact there can be, and likely will be. Thus there is in fact no problem at all with decentralized planning scaling up to a national or multi-national regional level.

At the same time, Lepore's preferred centralized government planning scheme would, in reality, quash any real self-management. It would likely lead to a bureaucratic class regime. To have real self-management means that people must at the local level, where they can interact face to face, some significant area of control. And this is precisely the point to having local workplace groups develop their own planning propals for their facilities, and for neighborhoods to develop their requests, and cities doing their own participatory planning based on the neighborhood assemblies.

Thus it may be that the national congress develops a proposal for a certain minimum level of health care service to provided to everyone throughout the nation. The health workers organization may respond with estimates of what resources are needed for this, how much it would cost. Even at this level some negotiation is needed, in order to gain an accurate assessment of costs. People can propose or request what they want for their consumption, but the total set of things people request may cost more than they expected. And in that case they need to respond by changing their plans in some way. The costs consumed by health care service may require a reduction in planned requests for production in other areas.

Now, lepore assumed that with decentralized planning there is no way to make decisions about standards with national application. But this is false. That's because there would also exist bodies at the national level (or multi-national regions if the revolution expands throughout such a wide area). There would exist both worker bodies and bodies representing the entire population as residents and consumers. But the point to decentralized planning is that, because decisions are made by people in proportion to how much they are affected and everyone throughout the country is not affected equally, there are a limited number of decisions that are likely to require being discussed and approved and negotiated at this wide level. Certainly defense of the revolution is one of these areas.

The problem with a single central body trying to do the planning is that they will have no way to actually acquire an accurate assessment of costs and benefits, and centralizing all decision-making would quash actual self-management.

[FriendlyLocalViking]

Well, small groups can decide things quite nicely through DirDem, as Unions and the Viking 'Thing' demonstrate, but something that idealists don't seem to understand is that countries are too big for DirDem to work anymore! Even my native Canada: we're nearing on 40 000 000 people. You cannot POSSIBLY ask for everyone's opinion on anything.

[ContrarianLemming]

Well, small groups can decide things quite nicely through DirDem, as Unions and the Viking 'Thing' demonstrate, but something that idealists don't seem to understand is that countries are too big for DirDem to work anymore! Even my native Canada: we're nearing on 40 000 000 people. You cannot POSSIBLY ask for everyone's opinion on anything.

And that, my friend, is a demonstration that you don't know enough about dirdem! delegates! Delegates everywhere!

[AK]

Well, small groups can decide things quite nicely through DirDem, as Unions and the Viking 'Thing' demonstrate, but something that idealists don't seem to understand is that countries are too big for DirDem to work anymore! Even my native Canada: we're nearing on 40 000 000 people. You cannot POSSIBLY ask for everyone's opinion on anything.
Maybe the question you need to ask yourself is "Can a few hundred politicians really efficiently administrate a population of 40 million whilst also listening to needs, wants and concerns of local populations?"

Of course not.

[FriendlyLocalViking]

And that, my friend, is a demonstration that you don't know enough about dirdem! delegates! Delegates everywhere!

Well then that's not DIRECT democracy! ;)

You seem to be the logical type who supports DirDem. I was talking to the "we should get every single person's opinon!" type. The idiots. xD

[ContrarianLemming]

Well then that's not DIRECT democracy! ;)

You seem to be the logical type who supports DirDem. I was talking to the "we should get every single person's opinon!" type. The idiots. xD

That is direct democracy

What you consider direct democracy isnt direct democracy as most of us see it

[Ovi]

Well then that's not DIRECT democracy! ;)

You seem to be the logical type who supports DirDem. I was talking to the "we should get every single person's opinon!" type. The idiots. xD
Delegates are not contrary to direct democracy. One important thing about delegates is that they don't posses any authority themselves. They are instantly recallable and whatever decisions were taken by the delegates must be approved by the same assemblies that delegated them. In this sense, delegates are not leaders or representatives, but administrators/coordinators between mass assemblies; it is these mass assemblies that hold the entire governing power. What we call representative democracy today is nothing more but dictatorship, we elect who should have the power to dictate over our lives for the next 4 years or so; we don't participate in any decision making process and we are supposed to silently agree to whatever they do since we chose them democratically. Electing dictators is not democracy which is why I am against it.

Second of all, mass assemblies are not only for governance, meaning taking decisions that would affect all, but they may also have an organizational role, which I think would be far more prevalent. Deciding whether a byte should have 7 or 8 bits, whether to use 120V or 220V doesn't have much to do with governance, but with organizing for efficiency and interoperability; such decisions would most likely be taken by those in the know how and nobody would be forced to obey them

[AK]

Well then that's not DIRECT democracy! ;)
Do you actually know what a delegate is, as compared to a "representative"?
A delegate is essentially a messenger that represents a larger population whereas a "representative" is someone elected by people but does not represent their voice - rather, they do whatever the fuck they want and make their own decisions.

[mikelepore]

Lepore's fallacy is two-fold. 1. he assumes that decentralized planning precludes nation-wide decisions. 2. he assumes a single central body is required to impose uniformity. Both assumptions are false.

Please pick a technical standard as an example, and show me how it could be handled without a central decision of some kind.

Say, whenever a television dial is turned to "channel 6", that's going to mean that the tuner is detecting a carrier at 88 MHz. That's an example of a standard. No matter whether the whole human species votes on it, or whether a parliament votes on it, or whether the electronics workers in Kansas City vote on it, or the desision is left up to an office clerk to just pick something, no matter what how it's done, once it's announced it's subsequently handled as a universal truth. Everyone who works on TVs in any capactity will strictly comply with it. There can be a great dialogue about how to make the decision more democratically, but the universality of the result will remain the same. If someone won't admit that this is centralized planning, then they're just having a reaction to the phrase itself.

When capitalism seems to "arrive" at technical standards without any central office decreeing the answer, it's usually because capitalism is such that someone in business literally defeats someone else. A well-known case of this is the power struggle that occurred within the Sony Corporation that resulted in selecting the VHS video specification and discarding the Beta video specification.

Sometimes capitalism goes for a long time without picking standards, and as a result computer users need to waste time looking around for the right file type and the right driver software and the right cable. Eventually one powerful company will defeat the others in the "free market" and then each such question will be settled by raw power. The older problem that an Edison light bulb wouldn't screw into a Westinghouse lamp is now moot, and in its place we now have the problem that an MP3 editor won't work with an MP4 file. The general aspect of chaos and confusion is the same.

The choice is between centralization and confusion.

[mikelepore]

At the same time, Lepore's preferred centralized government planning scheme would, in reality, quash any real self-management. It would likely lead to a bureaucratic class regime. To have real self-management means that people must at the local level, where they can interact face to face, some significant area of control.

That's a stretch, to say that without anything having been said yet about the kind of system, its interactions and participation and representation, but based solely on the group size.

[Tablo]

Direct democracy would be very efficient in a post revolutionary society as I see most decision making being done on a local level. I say it is best to give all the decisions that affect people most to everyone and then minor details can be left for their instantly re-callable delegates.

[syndicat]

Please pick a technical standard as an example, and show me how it could be handled without a central decision of some kind.

I already did:


For larger regions where there are issues that are of common importance...and some standards may legitimately fall in this area, as well as in general certain kinds of wide infrastructure, transportation and communication and utility and defense planning. In these cases the federation of all the subregional federations, going down to the various neighborhood assemblies, can itself develop, through its research associations and its regional congresses, the relevant plans and proposals.
....
Thus it may be that the national congress develops a proposal for a certain minimum level of health care service to provided to everyone throughout the nation. The health workers organization may respond with estimates of what resources are needed for this, how much it would cost. Even at this level some negotiation is needed, in order to gain an accurate assessment of costs. People can propose or request what they want for their consumption, but the total set of things people request may cost more than they expected. And in that case they need to respond by changing their plans in some way. The costs consumed by health care service may require a reduction in planned requests for production in other areas.


the important point here is that 1. there are relatively few kinds of decisions that need to be made at the level of the revolutionary federation as a whole, and 2. many decisions do mainly affect people in particular workplaces, particular towns or neighborhoods, and can be made locally. there needs to be a sphere of decision-making of workplaces or neighborhhoods in order for people to have a sphere of face to face decision making, to make self-management real.

talking about standards is not a reason to centralize all decision-making.

[syndicat]

Delegates are not contrary to direct democracy. One important thing about delegates is that they don't posses any authority themselves.

well, i don't agree with this. a delegate body such as a city wide congress of delegates from all the neigborhood assemblies does have authority. it has authority to develop relevant plans for the various service levels that people want and to make rules for the city. of course the proposals come from the base assemblies, but they have to be made consistent with each other, and delegates will hear the differing proposals and priorities of other neighborhoods. for example, there are a number of cities around the world now that use participatory budgeting. this involves citizen assemblies where people say what they want for their neighborhood. but the proposals then need to be adjusted to each other.

now, i think it is very important that there be a feature of the constitution where a relatively small portion of the population could force any particular decision of the congress to be sent back to the base assemblies for discussion and decision.

this is because it's not efficient to load up the base assemblies with having to decide everything. for many questions people would not mind the delegate body making the decision. but for controversial or important decisions...and what is important depends on what the people think...there needs to be an easy way to force a directly democratic decision.

also, a delegate is not a professional politician. they are not being paid full time to just work as representing people. they have a regular job. they are a coworker and neighbor, and share the same conditions of life as those who they represent. they should be paid for the time they spend as a delegate, since it's work, but that shouldn't be the only work they do, as continuing to do their regular job for part of the time is important to them continuing to be in touch with their coworkers and sharing their conditions.

[Ovi]

well, i don't agree with this. a delegate body such as a city wide congress of delegates from all the neigborhood assemblies does have authority. it has authority to develop relevant plans for the various service levels that people want and to make rules for the city. of course the proposals come from the base assemblies, but they have to be made consistent with each other, and delegates will hear the differing proposals and priorities of other neighborhoods. for example, there are a number of cities around the world now that use participatory budgeting. this involves citizen assemblies where people say what they want for their neighborhood. but the proposals then need to be adjusted to each other.

Exactly. That's the whole point of delegates; but what is crucial is that those delegates cannot force the decisions on the same assemblies that delegated them, meaning there should be no difference whether the decisions were to be taken directly by the mass assemblies or by their delegates. Of course that doesn't mean one commune could refuse a decision if that would affect others far more than the opposite, which is where I think you were getting at. It is however the relation between mass assemblies that matters in this case, not that between delegates and the assemblies.


this is because it's not efficient to load up the base assemblies with having to decide everything. for many questions people would not mind the delegate body making the decision. but for controversial or important decisions...and what is important depends on what the people think...there needs to be an easy way to force a directly democratic decision.

There are two different things here: one is governance, second is administration; governance belongs to mass assemblies and delegates themselves should not posses any authority upon the same assemblies that delegated them; second, we have administration; for instance, once mass assemblies decide how each job should be paid, it the the task of a bank of exchange to establish what should be produced, where to be produced, where to be distributed and issue payment to workers, according to those decisions. This is simply doing the math and exchanging goods, but it is where much of the organizational work will be done and it has nothing to do with governance itself, but about actually putting into practice the decisions that assemblies take. It is the same role that delegates have. And as I said before, it is not my job to decide how many bits there should be in a byte, this kinds of decisions are about coordination and it's the people in the know how who are responsible to ensure interoperability. It's not about governance, it's not even about democracy, since no one can be forced into accepting it, but about organizing. It is policies on how things should be done that belong to mass assemblies, while actually putting them in practice belongs to workers in the specific field of activity, whether engineers, factory workers or exchange bank workers.

[ContrarianLemming]

Theres mention that delegates would be elected. Why not randomly choose them among a list of those competent enough to do such a simple task?

[syndicat]

There are two different things here: one is governance, second is administration; governance belongs to mass assemblies and delegates themselves should not posses any authority upon the same assemblies that delegated them; second, we have administration; for instance, once mass assemblies decide how each job should be paid, it the the task of a bank of exchange to establish what should be produced, where to be produced, where to be distributed and issue payment to workers, according to those decisions.

This makes no sense to me. First of all, in a libertarian communist society where all means of production are owned by the society, and allocation of resources derives from an interactive bottom up planning process, there is no point to having a bank. Banks exist in market societies.

second, I don't know what you mean about "mass assemblies deciding how jobs should be paid." Perhaps you mean that there is some society-wide decision via some congress of delegates throughout the revolutionary area, ratified by assemblies, to use a certain principle for remuneration, such as equal pay per hour or remuneration based on work effort. Or you might mean that a worker assembly in a particular workplace makes decisions about how their pool of allocated remuneration is to be distributed.

third, to have a bank decide what is to be produced is to have a kind of bureaucratic dictatorship, incompatible with libertarian socialism.

What is to be produced needs to be driven by what people want. This will be expressed in things like assemblies making proposals for various public goods they want for their neighborhood, city, region. or if there is a system of household plans being submitted, then households or individuals might submit their proposed consumption budgets.

the point is we have input that indicates projected demand. another form of input that is needed is information about projected costs. worker organizations can provide information about this, as well as their own proposals for production.



This is simply doing the math and exchanging goods, but it is where much of the organizational work will be done and it has nothing to do with governance itself, but about actually putting into practice the decisions that assemblies take.

sorry, but this is nonsense. an economic plan isn't just "doing the math." there has to be decisions by worker orgs about what they propose to produce and by households and communities about what they want produced. and then there has to be a decision-making process to work out the plan. the decision-making over what is agreed on in regard to production represents social power and is in fact a part of governance.

for example, workers govern their work places and construct their proposals for what they will produce. this is a form of governance.

now, the assemblies of workers and of residents do make decisions about the content of their own plans, plans for production and consumption. but many aspects of this will have to be proposals taken by delegates to delegate congresses for larger regions because the proposals will be about things that affect the whole region.

but I don't see any role for any other structure apart from workplace assemblies and councils, worker congresses, neighborhood assembllies, regional assemblies of delegates from neighborhood assemblies, and coordinating councils elected by these. there would need to be some worker group who collect all the proposed plans and do the number crunching on the projected supply and demand. but there is no need for them to give orders or decide what is to be produced.



It is the same role that delegates have. And as I said before, it is not my job to decide how many bits there should be in a byte, this kinds of decisions are about coordination and it's the people in the know how who are responsible to ensure interoperability. It's not about governance, it's not even about democracy, since no one can be forced into accepting it, but about organizing. It is policies on how things should be done that belong to mass assemblies, while actually putting them in practice belongs to workers in the specific field of activity, whether engineers, factory workers or exchange bank workers.

but a standard applies over a large territory. Let's say throughout the revolutionary territory which might be multinational. So it's not about local assemblies doing things on their own.

[mikelepore]

I already did:

There are no examples given in your post.

[syndicat]

There are no examples given in your post.

what i said:


Thus it may be that the national congress develops a proposal for a certain minimum level of health care service to provided to everyone throughout the nation.

As I said, it depends on who is affected. To the extent decisiions affect people who use products or services, then it is relevant if research associations linked to regional federations (which may have sub-regions and so on) propose a standard. The most extensive regional federation is an organization throughout the entire revolutionary territory.

But some may be things about which consumers don't care, such as 50 hertz vs 60 hertz as the electrical standard. In such a case the worker federations that produce and distribute electricity and those that produce electrical appliances are the bodies who are affected and have relevant knowledge. It's about how they coordinate their production plans where this affects the entire revolutionary region (which may encompass an entire continent). All the worker federations of the entire revolutionary area are federated together and this federation has a congress, where issues of overall coordination like this can be brought up for decision.

But a decision of this might have effects also on consumers. For example, one standard might be more costly. And in that case it does affect consumers in general. And this is where, as I see it, an interactive planning process comes into play. In other words, workers can propose what they aim to produce, and can work up coordinated plans on a wide basis.

but if decisions like this have either environmental affects on residents (as for example pollution due to decisions about what production technique to use, such as how to generate electric power), or if it affects the costs of the products, then decisions of consumers/residents should have an impact on the decision precisely because they are affected. In the case of communities or regions who are subject to pollution, they can ban a pollutant or force a price being paid for it. In the case of costs of the products, communities or households thinking of consuming that product may decide not to given the increased cost, and thus there may be a drop in projected demand for the product.

This affects the worker organizations because their accountability to society has to be measured in terms of both benefits and costs. The efficiency of allocation of socially owned resources has to have some standard, such as a level of cost per unit of benefit. And worker organizations that fall below that standard should then have to show why they shouldn't be dissolved and their resources assigned elsewhere.

thus, to the extent that proposed standards have environmental effects or effects on costs to consumers, then the decision-making of residents, local communities, regions will have an effect on the acceptability of the proposed standard.

but standards that would apply throughout the entire revolutionary territory are the sort of thing we can expect to be developed by research organizations attached to regional federations and worker federations. the point is that there are both worker organizations and residence-based organizations that have federative expressions at the level of the entire revolutionary territory. and the point to this is precisely because there are some things that affect the whole territory.

you seem to think that a decentralized planned economy doesn't have any organizations at the level of an entire nation or multi-national region or an entire revolutionary federation. but that is not the case.

[ContrarianLemming]

Theres a lot of talk of "government" here, which find sort of funny, because we talk about how we are anti government all the time, but we arn't, we're anti state. If we understand government simply as being the practice of governance then anarchists are pretty pro government right? I always try to mind my language at that point.

[syndicat]

yeah, we don't really disagree with the Marxists on that. it has to do with the nature of governance....state versus direct popular power rooted in direct democracy. anarchists have traditionally used the term "self-management" but this can be translated as "self-government". self-management is the opposite of hierarchy.

[AK]

Theres a lot of talk of "government" here, which find sort of funny, because we talk about how we are anti government all the time, but we arn't, we're anti state. If we understand government simply as being the practice of governance then anarchists are pretty pro government right? I always try to mind my language at that point.
This actually raises a point to do with the "anarcho"-capitalists; do they believe in any form of governance? Or do they hate the state, like we do? I'm asking this because I always see ancaps talking about how "government" is the problem. So do they wish to create chaos, or what? Because I can't imagine how ancaps could possibly install direct democracy anywhere like what we propose - workers councils and peoples assemblies and all. Then again, we do have different definitions of the state, too.

[ContrarianLemming]

This actually raises a point to do with the "anarcho"-capitalists; do they believe in any form of governance? Or do they hate the state, like we do? I'm asking this because I always see ancaps talking about how "government" is the problem. So do they wish to create chaos, or what? Because I can't imagine how ancaps could possibly install direct democracy anywhere like what we propose - workers councils and peoples assemblies and all. Then again, we do have different definitions of the state, too.

Actualy, ancaps also make the same mistake we do, there also pro gvoernment, there just anti state, they confuse state and government too. They don't wnat chaos

[AK]

Actualy, ancaps also make the same mistake we do, there also pro gvoernment, there just anti state, they confuse state and government too. They don't wnat chaos
What kind of government do they propose; how will it be structured?
Somehow, I can't imagine them setting up workers' councils.

[ContrarianLemming]

What kind of government do they propose; how will it be structured?
Somehow, I can't imagine them setting up workers' councils.

As far as I know, it would look something like it does now, except that everything is privatized. They could have direct democracy and local councils in ancap, but I have never heard ancaps talk about this, it's not very elaborated.

I guess it could be decentralized and democratic (you're free to starve)

[Tablo]

Ugh, I hate the term "government" as it infers an elite minority governs the lives of others. Whether or not we support government really just depends on your definition of the term.

[AK]

As far as I know, it would look something like it does now, except that everything is privatized.
And that the government does not command a military. Police would be a different question - but it doesn't really matter considering private police forces exist and are growing in number and size and most prisons have been privatised. In fact, we also have private military companies. An anarcho-capitalist society might look the exact same as today except that the police and military are under direct private control.

[ContrarianLemming]

And that the government does not command a military. Police would be a different question - but it doesn't really matter considering private police forces exist and are growing in number and size and most prisons have been privatised. In fact, we also have private military companies. An anarcho-capitalist society might look the exact same as today except that the police and military are under direct private control.

Ever played the games "MAG" or "Metal Gear Solid 4" or "Eve Online"? Thats what it would look like :P

[Ovi]

This makes no sense to me. First of all, in a libertarian communist society where all means of production are owned by the society, and allocation of resources derives from an interactive bottom up planning process, there is no point to having a bank. Banks exist in market societies.

Just because those who thought of the concept called it a bank that doesn't mean it has to do with usury. Section B of Ideas on Social Organization (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/guillaume/works/ideas.htm) by James Guillaume provides a good introduction on the subject.


second, I don't know what you mean about "mass assemblies deciding how jobs should be paid." Perhaps you mean that there is some society-wide decision via some congress of delegates throughout the revolutionary area, ratified by assemblies, to use a certain principle for remuneration, such as equal pay per hour or remuneration based on work effort.

Yes, this is what I was talking about. Once mass assemblies decide that, calculating what each should receive in a collectivist anarchist society no longer has to do with governance. It is not mass assemblies who are supposed to do the math.


third, to have a bank decide what is to be produced is to have a kind of bureaucratic dictatorship, incompatible with libertarian socialism.

No. It is mass assemblies who decide what should be produced, but in real life that's not the end of story. You might have 20 factories producing the same thing and 1000 stores who sell that. It is the task of mass assemblies to decide how production should be spread to all factories who wish to produce, but it is the task of simple workers to do the math and actually say where each product should be sold, how much should be produced according to consumption and so on. These things have nothing to do with the democratic decision making of mass assemblies, it is pure and objective economics.


What is to be produced needs to be driven by what people want. This will be expressed in things like assemblies making proposals for various public goods they want for their neighborhood, city, region. or if there is a system of household plans being submitted, then households or individuals might submit their proposed consumption budgets.

the point is we have input that indicates projected demand. another form of input that is needed is information about projected costs. worker organizations can provide information about this, as well as their own proposals for production.

Indeed, but this has nothing to do with what I said. If the demand of chairs increases by 10% this month, it is not the task of mass assemblies to inform the producers about that. That would be insane and it has nothing to do with the actual role of assemblies.


sorry, but this is nonsense. an economic plan isn't just "doing the math." there has to be decisions by worker orgs about what they propose to produce and by households and communities about what they want produced. and then there has to be a decision-making process to work out the plan. the decision-making over what is agreed on in regard to production represents social power and is in fact a part of governance.

for example, workers govern their work places and construct their proposals for what they will produce. this is a form of governance.

Ok, we talk about the same things but we use different wordings. If I buy a chair, I don't call that governing. If I decide to build one, I wouldn't call that governing either. It is the task of mass assemblies to decide what is needed, it is the task of worker assemblies to decide what they want to produce and how much, but you completely ignore the economics behind it.


now, the assemblies of workers and of residents do make decisions about the content of their own plans, plans for production and consumption. but many aspects of this will have to be proposals taken by delegates to delegate congresses for larger regions because the proposals will be about things that affect the whole region.

but I don't see any role for any other structure apart from workplace assemblies and councils, worker congresses, neighborhood assembllies, regional assemblies of delegates from neighborhood assemblies, and coordinating councils elected by these. there would need to be some worker group who collect all the proposed plans and do the number crunching on the projected supply and demand. but there is no need for them to give orders or decide what is to be produced.

That was exactly what I was saying all along. That's what a bank of exchange is supposed to do, gather all data regarding production and actually come up with numbers. It is simply an issue of administering based on the decisions that people make. It is the same role that delegates should have, they should not have the authority to give orders. If mass assemblies agree with the position that their delegates took and can void their contribution if not, then it is mass assemblies who do the actual governing, not delegates.

[syndicat]

That was exactly what I was saying all along. That's what a bank of exchange is supposed to do, gather all data regarding production and actually come up with numbers. It is simply an issue of administering based on the decisions that people make. It is the same role that delegates should have, they should not have the authority to give orders. If mass assemblies agree with the position that their delegates took and can void their contribution if not, then it is mass assemblies who do the actual governing, not delegates.

but in "coming up with numbers", the economic information group does not decide what prices will be. That falls out of supply and demand and pricing rules that the society has agreed to, such as "If projected supply exceeds projected demand by N percent, raise the projected price by N percent."

but let's suppose that the delegates have been elected to a regional congress to decide to ban a certain pollutant. then production orgs in that area can't simply disobey this and continue producing that pollutant. so in that case they are "giving orders." now, the decision could be challenged, and the matter forced down to the base assemblies, which would debate it and take a vote. but if it's not challenged, then the decision of the delegates at the congress holds.

[mikelepore]

Syndicat, thank you for taking the time to write those lengthy answers to me.


you seem to think that a decentralized planned economy doesn't have any organizations at the level of an entire nation or multi-national region or an entire revolutionary federation. but that is not the case.

I'm okay with that, the fact that although you say "decentralized" while you also you also see some role for those larger groups. Where I differ is that I see only the most insignificant issues as being suitable for decentrralization. My home town has a strawberry shortcake festival in the park by the river every summer. That's an example of planning that I would like to see decentralized. Why? Because it's relatively insignificant to the well-being of the human race. I believe that decentralization is inappropriate for anything important.

In your references to industrial costs, I see the need for the largest possible scale of central planning. All of the production outputs of all of the industries should be combined into a single inventory, out of which the resources for operating all industries should be allocated. I see no place in the locality for even mentioning costs, except for the need to have each locality upload its measurements into to the central accounting. To do anything else, I would consider the system to be a competitive capitalist market system with all that this implies.

[syndicat]

on that i think you are mistaken. in the participatory planning model, which i use, there is one thing that is centralized. all proposals for production by worker groups and all requests by individuals, local communities, regional federations for product are collected by a single worker information group. Their role is to tally total projected supply and projected demand for the various products. using pricing rules that have been set up by the society, they can then work out what the prices will be.

Since all groups have budgets they have to stay within, the plans of every group will have ripple effects throughout the economy. this means that plans of worker groups and of local communities, households, regions will have to be adjusted to stay in budget.

but it is up to the local worker groups and local communities and households to make their own decisions, in light of updated prices, as to what the content of their plan is.

There is no point to have some bureaucratic class -- and that is what it inevitably will be -- giving orders to workers...and then inevitably wanting to have bosses onsite to ensure they orders are carried out. and then we're back to some dismal state centralist regime.

there are some other decisions that need to be made at the broadest scope. defense, various kinds of standards, various kinds of infrastructure planning. but as many decisions as possible need to be pushed down to local planning if there is to be real power in people's hands in an everyday sense.

[mikelepore]

There is no point to have some bureaucratic class -- and that is what it inevitably will be -- giving orders to workers...and then inevitably wanting to have bosses onsite to ensure they orders are carried out. and then we're back to some dismal state centralist regime.

You said that without any structure having been defined yet. I wrote above in favor of central administration, but no particular method. For all we know, people might have 90 percent of the central administration carried out, not by individuals at all, but by computer software with all local parameter inputs, and the remaining 10 percent that requires some human judgement carried out by a board of delegates elected by the workers to a term of office of ten days. If the form of the central planning hasn't been defined yet, objection to the new "bureaucratic class" and its "dismal state centralist regime" seems misguided to me.

Bureaucracy arises, not from being centralized, but from specific practices, such as:

(1) administrators having greater than average incomes or other privileges that are not directly related to doing their jobs;

(2) long terms of office that make the administrative seats into personal careers;

(3) weak or absent provisions for recall;

(4) job descriptions for administrators that are overly broad, such as "run everything", rather than narrowly focused, such as "coordinate the manufacture of paper clips";

(5) central administrators having the power to make appointments to middle-management, and then to transfer decision-making authority to their appointees;

(6) closed meetings and memos that prevent proceedings from being viewable public records.

The proper focus should be to identify which daily practices should be included and which excluded, where this implementation has to be written inflexibly into the charter or constitution that outlines the structure of the new system.

You have been giving weight to the issue of precluding central planning, whereas I would make the axiom that central planning is necessary in any case, and only worry about how it should operate.

**************************************

"All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate one." -- Marx, Capital, chapter 13

[syndicat]

The feature of a bureaucratic class is that it is based on a relative monpolization or concentration of decision-making authority and key kinds of expertise and information into its hands. To have economic planning centralized into a particular group is already to create the basis of such a class. It also takes power away from workers in particular facilities if they are simply expected to obey orders from the central planners.

Moreover, it's unrealistic to talk about limiting their incomes and such if you concentrate knowledge and decision-making into their hands. Given that power, they will inevitably end up having higher incomes.

Central planners will inevitably prefer to deal with a single on-site middle manager rather than a collective. They will argue it is more "efficient" etc. They will work to have the power to appoint managers onsite to ride herd over workers.

Central planning has other problems. It can't obtain accurate information either about production capacities or about real preferences of people for products. It can't make use of the tacit knowledge that all workers possess. Workers will have an incentive to dissemble in what they say to the central planners, to get an easier job. This is another reason central planners will want to have their own management onsite.