Worker Self-Management vs. Nationalization [Archive]

Rowan Duffy

20th April 2011, 14:32

The matter of self-management and its coordination is actually a complex issue. What can not be solved easily with nationalisation, can also not be solved by slogans of workers self-management. If we want to move from a market economy to the free association of producers we need some trajectory by which this direction is opened up.

Nationalisation could in fact make sense in the context of the belief that the state itself would become the effective expression of class power. As we've seen repeatedly, this does not turn out very well. Bukharin and later Djilas speculate that this is due to the fact that the state organs of power are not designed to carry out such as a task and so the project becomes a radical extension of state power. Instead of finding themselves in a situation as in the French revolution where the flood of bourgeois economics could be let loose simply by clearing away the debris of the Old Regime, the attempt to produce proletarian economics through the state nationalisation required an entire reconstruction of the economy from within the state. I tend to think that this argument is fairly persuasive.

The mass party approach has had more than one answer to the question historically. The nationalisation answer was not always the one given by adherents to the mass party idea. The idea that the mass party can be a coherent influence in the coordination of the means of production - to supervise the process through its existence as the democratic expression of the class - is not a million miles from the idea that anarcho-syndicalists in the one-big-union camp have taken.

The use of a single anarcho-syndicalist union as the effective bureaucracy to coordinate production is similar, though perhaps in some ways better as it is closer to the process of production in the first place, it could also be argued that it is in some ways weaker as it does not directly represent the consumer interests. The CNT however dealt with this problem with the institution of the consumer organs necessary.

Problems with the syndicalist approach are magnified if there is not a single hegemonic union to serve as broker. It would lead to a site of potential conflict. In addition where there are not unions or where the unions are weak, such an approach would be much harder to envision as functioning at all, though perhaps we could see a radical upswing in membership as we saw in the CNT. If in fact mass unions can not easily be constructed in our present circumstances we are going to have to think long and hard about how to overcome this difficulty.

The CNT approach however was never a raw "economism" unionism. It was in fact a politically directed movement with the idea of the cooperative administration of the entire economy under the direction of the working class. The idea that this was apolitical is wrong - it was expressed as apolitical by the CNT and anarchists - but mostly as posturing with respect to bourgeois political parliaments and parties. It however unfortunately leads to a fair bit of confusion.

The slogan that is generally given by anarchists that the workers should just expropriate the means of production leaves the question open of how exactly this takes place and why. Because of this vagueness, it is not necessarily useful. There have been cases where workers simply liquidated assets when they came under "ownership" of enterprises as in the collapse of the Soviet Union. A lack of political ideal and direction - a more collapsist view - could make such view prevalent - and this would pose a very big problem. Instead there must be a clear widespread view amongst the sections that are undertaking this project towards a collective administration of production.

Additionally, claims of being anti-bureaucratic are the most useless sloganeering in my opinion. They can't be anything but idealist. There is no such thing as administration without bureaucracy. What we want is not to be anti-bureaucratic, but to be democratically bureaucratic under the executive direction of the proletariate, and without unnecessary bureaucratic structures or autocratic direction.

Some questions regards the development of workers self-management that in their particulars must be resolved for the working class movements with respect to the current terrain are:

* How will the coordination of production and consumption be undertaken

** Which organs will cary this out
** How will these organs be created
** How will these organs be staffed and funded

* What (propagandistic/political/economic) pressures will be exerted and in what manner to ensure the greatest unity in the free association of producers
* What time scale should we imagine for this process
* What are the greatest obstacles to such a process
** How can these obstacles be removed
** How should we organise now to remove them

Die Neue Zeit

20th April 2011, 14:49

tracher999

20th April 2011, 15:43

the first i love to do my work on my way no bullshitting people around me

syndicat

24th April 2011, 18:10

Additionally, claims of being anti-bureaucratic are the most useless sloganeering in my opinion. They can't be anything but idealist. There is no such thing as administration without bureaucracy. What we want is not to be anti-bureaucratic, but to be democratically bureaucratic under the executive direction of the proletariate, and without unnecessary bureaucratic structures or autocratic direction.

this shows a rather slipshod use of the word "bureaucracy," with no clear understanding of what it is...or what the basis of a bureaucratiic class is.

A bureaucratic class is based on the relative monopolization of decision-making authority and key kinds of expertise needed for decision-making. So this class has power over workers in virtue of its effective possession of the means of decision-making and key information. This is typically organized in a chain of command hierarchy, so that decisions flow downward.

This is inconsistent with worker self-management and liberation. What's required is that the worker movement that takes over the running of production must work to re-organize jobs and training so that every job involves some area of skill, knowledge. As the skill levels are increased, people are better able to participate effectively in the making of decisions.

Jobs can be defined so that doing some of the physical work is mixed with doing some part of the conceptual or decision-making work, such as participating for a time on a coordinating committee, as part of a job that consists in sharing in the physical labor part of the time also.

This kind of re-org of work is needed if we are to fulfill the requirement of real access to means to develop potential, which is a condition of working class liberation.

Consumption is a distinct sphere of decision-making and it requires self-management also...people making their own plans for what they want to consume, what they want to request for production.

The Spanish anarcho-syndicalists in the '30s had assigned to the neighborhood assemblies, "free municipalities", the role of collective discussion and decision in regard to public goods, such as health care, education, and so on. What was missing in their thinking was how to link this to the decsion-making structures in industry, so as to ensure accountability of the worker self-management organization without creating a bureaucratic hierarchy.

This is where the concept of participatory planning can fill the gap, since it envisions a process of society-wide negotiation and coordination between self-managing communities and workplaces.

ckaihatsu

24th April 2011, 18:54

This is inconsistent with worker self-management and liberation. What's required is that the worker movement that takes over the running of production must work to re-organize jobs and training so that every job involves some area of skill, knowledge. As the skill levels are increased, people are better able to participate effectively in the making of decisions.

Jobs can be defined so that doing some of the physical work is mixed with doing some part of the conceptual or decision-making work, such as participating for a time on a coordinating committee, as part of a job that consists in sharing in the physical labor part of the time also.

...And/or mechanizing heretofore physical work as rapidly as possible so as to relieve people from such menial tasks.

I'll go so far as to say that a shifting of burdens onto technological solutions may even become the greatest "selling point" that a revolutionary politics has to offer. As long as labor is commodified / chained while humanity's *tools* are given free rein around elite circles, we'll continue to be doing things ass-backwards instead of being *entirely* liberated by our collective creations.

Also:

Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

http://postimage.org/image/35ru6ztic/

Red_Struggle

24th April 2011, 19:13

Rooster

24th April 2011, 19:52

No to state control! All power to the soviets!

Nationalisation might be useful during the DotP but it's fundamental concept, industry being run by a nation, I think kinda goes against class emancipation.

ckaihatsu

24th April 2011, 20:09

"New Albania" covers this extensively.

Okay, I'll bite.... Which airlines do I go to...?

= D

Seriously, though, wtf is "New Albania"???

syndicat

24th April 2011, 20:16

Vladimir Innit Lenin

25th April 2011, 00:26

Nationalisation is a broad concept. It can mean anything from hands off government ownership (a la the current British banking system) where the market still rules, to something not dissimilar from worker self-management.

The important thing to recognise is that worker self-management and the destruction of large entities (aside from, perhaps, key national areas as healthcare, education and similar) are the eventual goal: communism, the classless society.

Thus, one can then formulate plans whereby nationalisation becomes a means to an end. The post above regarding meaningless sloganeering is particularly relevant here. There is no either/or solution here. Anybody who says there is no need for any 'nationalisation' transitional stage whatsoever is placing their hopes in far too idealist an approach. Such utopianism could simply not work on a mass scale, though it would of course have far more chance of success on a limited, commune-style scale. The relevance of such an approach to world revolution is questionable, therefore.

For me, it is key that in any nationalisation, low-level workers - the working class, in effect - have at least a veto power for all organisational decisions. They will then retain, as a class, their consciousness and political power. Such an approach would stop a bureaucratic caste from forming and prevent the mistakes of the USSR 1920s-1930s happening, though of course this is dependent on the wider political circumstances.

Red_Struggle

25th April 2011, 02:25

wtf is "New Albania"???

"New Albania is pamphlet produced by a number of Albanian friendship associations in the United States, along with the US Marxist-Leninist organization. It's divided into far parts that are available in PDF here: http://www.enver-hoxha.net/content/content_english/books/books-new_albania.htm

sure, and I used to work for a company that said it was based on our "participation." But they -- the tops -- made the decisions, held the power, decided distribution of resources etc.

The country's economic was not run the way you describe above. If you read the above link I posted:

"The Albanian governrnent today is headed by the People's Assembly at the national level and the People's Councils at the local level. The deputies to these organs are elected democratically by the people. The selection of candidates takes place in the Democratic Front. The Dernocratic Front is the successor of the National Liberation Front built during the revolutionary war and it ernbraces all sectors of the population. The candidates of the Democratic Front are then subrnitted to the entirepeople to be voted up or down. After the elections, the people have the right to recall their deputies at any time if they are dissatisfied with their actions. The People's Assembly appoints the ministers of the administrative organs of the government and exercises direct control over their activities. lt also appoints the Supreme Court and has the final say in the interpretation of the laws. Local and district judges are directly elected by the people." -New Albania, "The People's State Power"

"Social ownership of the means of production rnakes possible the central planning of the economy. The goal of this planning is to continually raise the material and cultural well-being of the working people and to strengthen the independence and defense of the country. Since 1951, regular five year econornic plans have been developed to ensure overall socialist econornic development. The central plan mobilizes the country's human, material and financial resources in such a way to to assure the proportional and harrnonious growth of all sectors of the economy. What is produced, how rnuch is produced, how much is traded with foreign countries and how rnuch is reserved for internal use, what rnajor new econornic projects are undertaken, the prices of all goods and the level of pay of all workers is decided in a unified plan for the whole country. The national incorne is consciously distributed according to the plan. Two great funds are created -- the fund of accumulation and the fund of consumption. The fund of accumulation is dedicated to the building up of the country's economy. The fund of consumption is dedicated to meeting the social and individual needs of the working people.
This kind of planning is irnpossible in capitalist society because the means of production are privately owned by capitalists whose only goal is to maxirnize their profits. This results in anarchy in production, economic crisis, stagnation, unemployment and inflation. Albania has not suffered from these crises which plague the capitalist world. ßecause of the superiority of the socialist system, the Albanian people can consciously plan the country's economic developrnent for the collective well-being. Over the last 40 years there has been a steady and rapid rate of economic growth. During the current five year plan social production is projected to grow by 36-38%. In contrast, the actual output of the U.S. economy has declined over the last five years. Central planning, like all of socialist society, is based an democratic centralism, i.e., central leadership as well as the conscious, general and direct participation of the working rnasses. A Central Planning Commission works out a draft five year plan. The draft is then thoroughly discussed at mass meetings in every work place. During the popular discussion of the five year plan for 1981-86, 69,000 concrete proposals were made by the masses of working people. Of these, 40,000 were adopted in the plan and 20,000 were held for further discussion. The trade unions in Albania play an important role in the planning and carrying out of production. In socialist society the workers' trade unions not only concern thernselves with defending the workers' rights, welfare and working conditions, but also take an active part in the management of production and the political and economic life of the country. In the trade union meetings the workers discuss and criticize the draft economic plan and control the implementation of the plan in their plant." - New Albania, "Socialist Economy"

Jose Gracchus

25th April 2011, 10:01

Authentic soviets cannot be built by the state. The Soviet state strained and destroyed the soviets beginning in 1919, really being confirmed in 1921, and dead-end-buried shortly thereafter.

Red_Struggle

25th April 2011, 14:24

Authentic soviets cannot be built by the state. The Soviet state strained and destroyed the soviets beginning in 1919, really being confirmed in 1921, and dead-end-buried shortly thereafter.

Actually, the soviets remained quite active throughout the USSR's lifestime. From "How Soviet Democracy Worked in the 1930s:

"I had the privilege of observing the nominations and elections in the district in which I lived and worked from beginning to end. The particular election which I referred to was the All-Union elections for selecting of delegates to the All-Union Soviet Congress, that being equivalent of our choosing of members of the United States House of Representatives in Washington. Each institution in the congressional district in which I resided and worked held meetings of the people to nominate candidates. Meetings were held in factories. The Moscow university, which was in this district held a meeting. The Great Lenin Library held a meeting of its staff to put forward candidates. So did all of the cooperative stores associations that operated there. So did the trade union organisations, the Communist Party, the youth organisations, etc. etc. A great many candidates were put forward in each meeting. The procedure for each candidate was to stand up and give a brief biography of his life and reasons why he should or should not be nominated. It was considered a lack of civic responsibility for a candidate to decline out of hand. If he thought he should not be elected it was has duty to take the platform, provide a brief biography of his life, and give the reasons why he should not be accepted. Two whole weeks were set aside for this procedure. Some organisations met every night for the entire period and examined thousands of people who were put forward as candidates there. Each candidate had to submit to questions from the floor. At the end of that time one or more nominees were put in nomination for the entire district with the endorsement of the body choosing him or her."

Or there are bits and pieces of "Liberty Under the Soviets" that you can read online:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015019117889;page=root;view=image;size =100;seq=14;num=x

Oh, and for the hell of it: :lol:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/picture.php?albumid=871&pictureid=7320

syndicat

25th April 2011, 20:10

Red_Struggle

26th April 2011, 05:08

you've contradicted yourself. the self-serving bit from the Albanian MLs says that the economy is organized around central planning. Right there we know that it is controlled by a bureaucratic elite. In central planning decisions flow downward, and the elite central planners will inevitably ensure that their managers onsite hew to the plan. Also the "Democratic Front" [sic] is simply a vehicle of the beaucratic class under that regime. The fact that you write positively of "councils" in the Soviet Union shows that you've got yourself caught up in hype.

If I didn't know better, I'd say you're in denial. You keep going back to this anarchist dogma that central planning is bureaucratically dominated and does not allow worker participation in the economic planning process. If that's what you still think in light of the sources I've given you, then whatever. You don't even provide a proper response. You just cry "bureaucracy" no matter what evidence is available to you describing just the opposite.

syndicat

26th April 2011, 16:20

If I didn't know better, I'd say you're in denial. You keep going back to this anarchist dogma that central planning is bureaucratically dominated and does not allow worker participation in the economic planning process. If that's what you still think in light of the sources I've given you, then whatever. You don't even provide a proper response. You just cry "bureaucracy" no matter what evidence is available to you describing just the opposite.

only a tiny handful of ML cultists would deny that the socalled "socialist" countries were class societies, in which the party-state was the basis of a dominating, exploiting class. and you haven't provided any "evidence."

Jose Gracchus

26th April 2011, 16:52

There is no serious historical argument that the soviets ceased functioning meaningfully by late 1918, and entirely by 1921.

RED DAVE

26th April 2011, 16:54

If I didn't know better, I'd say you're in denial. You keep going back to this anarchist dogma that central planning is bureaucratically dominated and does not allow worker participation in the economic planning process. If that's what you still think in light of the sources I've given you, then whatever. You don't even provide a proper response. You just cry "bureaucracy" no matter what evidence is available to you describing just the opposite.Let's start with this question: if, in fact, there was workers control of production, and therefoer the workers were the ruling class, which is socialism, how is it that Albania became capitalist without a counter-revolution?

RED DAVE

Red_Struggle

27th April 2011, 01:38

Let's start with this question: if, in fact, there was workers control of production, and therefoer the workers were the ruling class, which is socialism, how is it that Albania became capitalist without a counter-revolution?

It was a mix of a number of factors. Most notably, Albania was pretty isolated. It had no allies in the world and despite the astounding amount of industrial and agricultural growth that occured during the socialist system's lifetime, it still remained the poorest country in Europe, which will definately have an impact on the consciousness of the people. Although socialism did do away with a lot of social ills (feudal relations, monarchy, illiteracy, the code of leke, etc.), but in terms of economic development, it was still behind it's neighbors such as Yugoslavia and Greece.

Second, there was a counter-revolution of sorts that began with the power grab of Ramiz Alia.

In an interview with a member of the Communist Party of Albania http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/ALLIANCE48InterviewsCPA(UNITED).html: (initials are used to protect the identities of the interviewed and the interviewee)

[SPOIL]"HK: Can you describe for us your political involvement in the United Communist Party of Albania?
LS: Yes. In 1991, when the counter-revolutionary forces pulled down the statue of Enver Hoxha in Tirana, I, together with many friends, organised the movement -- revolutionary movement – of protests of the masses and especially in support of Enver Hoxha. In Gjirokastra, I was chosen as the chief of the ‘Enver Hoxha Society’ and was put at the head of the organisation of the movement and meetings -- big meetings -- in the north of Albania. Later, it was my duty to organise, together with my friends, the National Conference of the ‘Associations of Enver Hoxha’ in Gjirokastra.
After the 10th Congress, when the Party of Labour was destroyed by the Ramiz Alia faction, I, together with many friends, began efforts to reorganise the communists who had now gone to the Socialist Party. In Gjirokastra, three committees had formed a single organisation that was at the forefront in organising the Communist Party, I was chosen by my colleagues as chief of this ‘Initiative Commission’ and the representative of Gjirokastra in the Initiative Commission centre."

LS: After the death of Enver Hoxha, the Party and the people’s power were undermined by liberal progressive protests which step by step led the Party to paralyse the economy and to become indifferent to the masses. One fact is very important. In the time of Enver Hoxha, everyone responded to every trouble by saying, "I am writing to Enver Hoxha to rectify these problems which have come about because someone in the party has not followed his duty correctly". After the death of Enver Hoxha, people thought more about the current problems in the conference and in the organisation of the party, and discussed the right problems for the Central Committee to select to investigate, but the response was silence, not consideration of the problem. This made the cadres impotent and the masses indifferent. This separation of the cadres and the party from the masses had tragic consequences for faith in socialism in Albania -- and festered like an open wound. In 1990, this tactic was pursued with the aim of destroying socialism, and in this it was ultimately successful.

In 1985, after the death of Enver Hoxha, Ramiz Alia was chosen as the First Secretary of the Party of Labour with just a one vote majority. With great difficulty, after this time, to sweeten the alternatives to the communists and to the people he began a process which in time was to have bad consequences. At first he began to speak every day of Enver Hoxha -- not to promote the life and work of Enver Hoxha (because the people knew what Enver Hoxha stood for) -- but to firmly associate himself with Enver in order to create support for his future actions. During this time, he erected many statues of Enver Hoxha, in Korca, Tirana, and other cities and also named various organisations, places and enterprises after him. After this, he began to undertake certain actions. Every weekend there was a requirement to do ‘voluntary’ work and yet during the week there was little work to do because of the liberalising of the organisation of work. Despite this, voluntary work still had to be done all day on Sunday. So, Ramiz Alia became unpopular and had little authority. In 1990, he wrote a book and began to give interviews to People's Voice where he said, 'I have begun this process and taken it step by step in order not to create contradictions and clashes between the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces’. I tell this story to illustrate clearly that Ramiz Alia has been an enemy of the Party of Labour, and was not a follower of Enver Hoxha, but rather the enemy of both the Party and of Enver Hoxha.

LS: Ramiz Alia is viewed by the people as a revisionist. During the gatherings where the people rose up against the vandalism of the counter-revolutionary forces in Tirana -- when the statue of Enver Hoxha was pulled down -- thousands and thousands of people thought that Ramiz Alia had betrayed them. This was the perspective of the people as far as Ramiz Alia was concerned."

Or you could read this interview conducted with Hynsi Milloshi:

H. Milloshi. You need to know what really happened. In his funeral oration for Comrade Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985, his successor Ramiz Alia promised to continue with the same policies. But in the actual facts he gradually deviated from socialism.

However, it was the people who took down the huge statue of Enver Hoxha in Tirana. It was in the papers.

H. Milloshi. This was organised by the Democratic Party, which was then in the opposition. But Ramiz Alia knew of it and encouraged them. The night before, this sturdy statue had already been dismantled by Alia's men, so that it would come down easily.

When the people saw what had happened to the statue, many peasants came marching to Tirana from all parts of the country. For seven days and nights they beleaguered the Communist Party headquarters. They demanded that Berisha's party be banned and that the terrorists who demolished cultural monuments be arrested. But Ramiz Alia refused to cooperate with them.

What were you doing at that time?

H. Milloshi. l never foresaw that I would play an important role. I see myself simply as a small intellectual. But when I observed Ramiz Alia not taking up his responsibility, I wrote a long letter in defence of Comrade Enver Hoxha. Excerpts were published in the press. Immediately committees emerged in defence of Enver Hoxha. 750,000 people affiliated with them! (Note Albania has 3 million inhabitants.)

Unfortunately, the communist leaders didn't dare to take the lead of this people's movement. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they feared a bloodbath.

Translated from Solidaire No. 27, June 25, 1997

Jose Gracchus

27th April 2011, 03:28

That's not reputable evidence.

syndicat

27th April 2011, 03:30

in other words, everything depended on one guy. that tells us Albania was a dictatorship, a set up run by a party elite, not the collective power of working people.

Red_Struggle

27th April 2011, 05:20

Ok, I'm done. arguing in this thread is pointless. I'm wrong no matter what. But hey, I can't expect too much from revleft. Shame on me for being optimistic for once.

Rowan Duffy

1st May 2011, 19:55

this shows a rather slipshod use of the word "bureaucracy," with no clear understanding of what it is...or what the basis of a bureaucratiic class is.

I don't think it's a very slipshod use of the word "bureaucracy", as the meaning I was using is the usual meaning of the word. I think quite the reverse is true regarding how socialists use "bureaucracy" as a derogatory term. This tends to work in populist rhetoric as most people are not enamored of process, however, I think it is in fact "slipshod" to use it in this purely derogatory way as it tends to obfuscate the reality that we will need to have administration.

For instance, the definition given in wikipedia is:

The purpose of a bureaucracy is to successfully implement the actions of an organization of any size (but often associated with large entities such as government, corporations, and non-governmental organizations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization)), in achieving its purpose and mission, and the bureaucracy is tasked to determine how it can achieve its purpose and mission with the greatest possible efficiency and at the least cost of any resources.

My claim is that bureaucracy is a necessary function, but you seem to either claim that it is not, or that it can be shared in such a way as to eliminate the danger of a bureaucratic class developing.

A bureaucratic class is based on the relative monopolization of decision-making authority and key kinds of expertise needed for decision-making. So this class has power over workers in virtue of its effective possession of the means of decision-making and key information. This is typically organized in a chain of command hierarchy, so that decisions flow downward.

This is inconsistent with worker self-management and liberation. What's required is that the worker movement that takes over the running of production must work to re-organize jobs and training so that every job involves some area of skill, knowledge. As the skill levels are increased, people are better able to participate effectively in the making of decisions.

Jobs can be defined so that doing some of the physical work is mixed with doing some part of the conceptual or decision-making work, such as participating for a time on a coordinating committee, as part of a job that consists in sharing in the physical labor part of the time also.

This kind of re-org of work is needed if we are to fulfill the requirement of real access to means to develop potential, which is a condition of working class liberation.

I think it's definitely the case that we should try to find ways of balancing job complexes for more empowering or cognitive tasks with other tasks which are manual labour.

However, I also believe that there is an important and necessary role for the division of labour. Bureaucratic management is not in fact something which is trivial and can be shared out equally amongst all workers. Even more, there are people who are quite capable and interested in performing bureaucratic roles and many who would take great pains to avoid it. Should we be forcing people into bureaucratic positions? I'd say forced manual labour is much more likely to work out well than forced bureaucratic labour.

Imagine the administration tasks for the planning of bus routes, schedules, managing the labour allocation in these projects and testing and ensuring of optimality of these plans.

Clearly there are roles for the bus drivers and the public in terms of ensuring accountability and quality of service here. However, accountability of the decision management and planning and the generation of the plans themselves are not the same things. Indeed they can not and should not be made the same.

Another example would be the cost assessment of externalities of industrial production. This task requires the compilation and review of studies scientific research and programmes of experimentation to ensure the most accurate cost assessment possible. It would be absurd to assume that a car production plant would be capable or accurate in determining the externalities of the car production plant by sharing out this task to its workers. It instead requires a bureaucratic organisation capable of doing it properly.

Self-management does not mean that everyone should get an equal share out of the bureaucracy as if it was a giant pie of bureaucratic tasks. This would be impossible to achieve even in principle, excepting in the most primitive societies.

ckaihatsu

2nd May 2011, 00:47

[It] is in fact "slipshod" to use it in this purely derogatory way as it tends to obfuscate the reality that we will need to have administration.

My claim is that bureaucracy is a necessary function, but you seem to either claim that it is not, or that it can be shared in such a way as to eliminate the danger of a bureaucratic class developing.

I'd like to jump in here and point out that you're making a valid distinction -- the inherent societal need for administration vs. a functional layer that develops its own self-preservation (quasi-"class") interest to cling to power, even if it requires corrupting / sacrificing its *intended* societal functioning.

I think it's definitely the case that we should try to find ways of balancing job complexes for more empowering or cognitive tasks with other tasks which are manual labour.

However, I also believe that there is an important and necessary role for the division of labour. Bureaucratic management is not in fact something which is trivial and can be shared out equally amongst all workers. Even more, there are people who are quite capable and interested in performing bureaucratic roles and many who would take great pains to avoid it.

Right here you're forgetting the *social* construction of personhood / individuality -- there is no valid argument that some people are (intrinsically)(idealistically) "quite capable" and others would "take great pains to avoid" certain social duties.

If a collective administration was set up and functioned in a genuinely level, equally-shared-responsibility way -- with no sinkholes of private interests to "escape" to / fall into -- then being part of a common administration *and* doing some manual-labor tasks would be as normal and accepted as paying bills or taking out the garbage / recycling is today.

Should we be forcing people into bureaucratic positions?

There is no "forcing" people into bureaucratic positions as much as there is a society existing to administrate -- one that is currently being *mis*-managed by the towering sway of private capital interests.

I'd say forced manual labour is much more likely to work out well than forced bureaucratic labour.

With this statement you've abandoned the revolutionary endeavor altogether.

Imagine the administration tasks for the planning of bus routes, schedules, managing the labour allocation in these projects and testing and ensuring of optimality of these plans.

Clearly there are roles for the bus drivers and the public in terms of ensuring accountability and quality of service here. However, accountability of the decision management and planning and the generation of the plans themselves are not the same things. Indeed they can not and should not be made the same.

You're discussing an *internal* distinction -- one of potentially different roles and/or tasks within an organization -- and you're *externalizing* it into an argument for, essentially, the *retention* of a privileged bureaucratic caste, one that is decidedly white-collar, according to your description here, and is distinctly *apart* from the manual labor it governs.

With this line you're not suggesting anything different than what we already have -- with the reminder that such a bureaucratic caste would seek to generalize / centralize *its* operations, possibly through the use of accumulations of capital-based ownership, thereby bringing us back full-circle to capitalist financial management.

Another example would be the cost assessment of externalities of industrial production. This task requires the compilation and review of studies scientific research and programmes of experimentation to ensure the most accurate cost assessment possible. It would be absurd to assume that a car production plant would be capable or accurate in determining the externalities of the car production plant by sharing out this task to its workers. It instead requires a bureaucratic organisation capable of doing it properly.

Certainly a post-capitalist workers' co-administration would have to deal with material realities -- quantities, time-frames, planning, logistics, and the like -- and so would have to make considerations within the realm of the finite. The *fundamental* difference, though, would be in its *basis* of value -- how would such an administration, and society, define what 'cost' is -- ?

Self-management does not mean that everyone should get an equal share out of the bureaucracy as if it was a giant pie of bureaucratic tasks. This would be impossible to achieve even in principle, excepting in the most primitive societies.

I would like to see what people's responses to this 'value' question are, and also to disabuse those -- comrades included -- who may be too fond of elaborate mathematical systems of computation that ferry quantities of *abstracted* valuations, as we're used to seeing under capitalist commodity production and/or Stalinistic top-down officially set exchange rates.

Die Neue Zeit

2nd May 2011, 02:46

"Tenacious Proudhonism" is the line which rejects all forms of nationalization (outright expropriations, tax-to-nationalize, Meidnerism, etc.) as even but one of necessary parallel circuit paths to the ultimate goal. It goes right into the heart of the matter of generalized commodity production but ignores property relations and market relations.

black magick hustla

2nd May 2011, 07:38

Paulappaul

2nd May 2011, 08:22

robbo203

2nd May 2011, 09:36

Let's start with this question: if, in fact, there was workers control of production, and therefoer the workers were the ruling class, which is socialism, how is it that Albania became capitalist without a counter-revolution?

RED DAVE

If the workers were the ruling class who could the subject class possibly be except the capitalist class - the only other class in capitalist society? That being so, why would they be deemed a subject class if they happened still to own the means of production that defined them as the "capitalist class" in the first place? This would seem to be an inversion of a historical materialist approach in which economic structure has primacy over the political superstructure of a given society

I favour the complete abolition of the working class - and therefore of the notion of worker self management - which, it goes without saying must also entail the abolition of the capitalist class. You cant have one without the other

Rowan Duffy

2nd May 2011, 11:59

Right here you're forgetting the *social* construction of personhood / individuality -- there is no valid argument that some people are (intrinsically)(idealistically) "quite capable" and others would "take great pains to avoid" certain social duties.

I don't believe that creating arbitrary capability is something that is within the scope of what a social revolution can manage. To understand how intricately complicated this is, take for instance two children who grow up in the same household - one who thoroughly enjoys legos, the other who only likes to read. The environment is largely the same, and while environmental factors may have contributed to the divergence, discovering and controlling them is not necessarily possible.

If a collective administration was set up and functioned in a genuinely level, equally-shared-responsibility way -- with no sinkholes of private interests to "escape" to / fall into -- then being part of a common administration *and* doing some manual-labor tasks would be as normal and accepted as paying bills or taking out the garbage / recycling is today.

I agree, and quite like the idea that undesirable tasks should be made social. I just don't think all administrative tasks can be shared out, in the same way that you can't share out rocket science to each person to ensure that nobody controls ICBMs. There are important skills that effective administrators have. I think not recognising this would be a disaster.

There is no "forcing" people into bureaucratic positions as much as there is a society existing to administrate -- one that is currently being *mis*-managed by the towering sway of private capital interests.

I'm not suggesting that we have forced bureaucratic labour, but if you want to ensure that everyone takes equal part in bureaucratic labour, that is indeed what you will need to do. I was merely pointing out that the goal is in itself necessarily going to lead to coercion.

My comparison with forced manual labour was meant to contrast it to a form of forced labour that might actually be possible, despite being undesirable. Forced bureaucratic labour is effectively impossible so you're just going to have to cope with the fact that you can't do it.

Now, whether this leaves the realm of the revolution or not, is, I think, an important one. Supposing that because we are educating peasants at a much greater rate there is a decrease in effective labour in agriculture. We can fill this by taking voluntary labour from the cities by rota. But what if there is insufficient labour. How will we encourage the intelligencia to take part in devoting their labour towards the revolution? In some agrarian economies that still exist in the world this is a real potential problem. Some level of coercion is probably in order. Perhaps simply having full access to the social product contingent on conscription service.

In developed countries the problem would probably be less relevant, but might still occur in areas such as sewer repair labour or other such undesirable jobs.

You're discussing an *internal* distinction -- one of potentially different roles and/or tasks within an organization -- and you're *externalizing* it into an argument for, essentially, the *retention* of a privileged bureaucratic caste, one that is decidedly white-collar, according to your description here, and is distinctly *apart* from the manual labor it governs.

I don't believe that is the case. I think administration is not entirely a task for the control and manipulation of the working class as many seem to think, and neither do I think it's something that everyone can attain competence in without costing us unnecessarily in other areas. The administrative tasks for various functions in the civil service for instance can not just be shared out. They are specialist tasks. We must come to terms with specialisation and find ways to avoid to great a level of differential control arising from it.

With this line you're not suggesting anything different than what we already have -- with the reminder that such a bureaucratic caste would seek to generalize / centralize *its* operations, possibly through the use of accumulations of capital-based ownership, thereby bringing us back full-circle to capitalist financial management.

Are you claiming that specialisation leads us necessarily back to capitalism? If so, then I think we're doomed. Personally, I don't think it's true.

Certainly a post-capitalist workers' co-administration would have to deal with material realities -- quantities, time-frames, planning, logistics, and the like -- and so would have to make considerations within the realm of the finite. The *fundamental* difference, though, would be in its *basis* of value -- how would such an administration, and society, define what 'cost' is -- ?

I would like to see what people's responses to this 'value' question are, and also to disabuse those -- comrades included -- who may be too fond of elaborate mathematical systems of computation that ferry quantities of *abstracted* valuations, as we're used to seeing under capitalist commodity production and/or Stalinistic top-down officially set exchange rates.

I don't think there can be any escape from the complicated nature of calculating value. We can neither abandon formulaic approaches, nor can we assure that they are simple. They have to be as complicated as necessary to enable a highly complex society.

What "cost" is, is certainly something that runs into complexities. The question in capitalism forgets the question of externalities entirely. When assessing externalities you come into the question of exactly how much external labour is in fact necessary to effect a reasonable limitation of adverse effects. Should we build a staircase to every roof to increase the safety of roof work? Should we reduce arsenic levels to A or B, when A gives 1 micro-mort per person per year, and B gives .1 micro-mort per person per year for the cost of 10 million labour hours?

These questions can't be *solved* by calculation, they can merely be investigated with the help of them. They must be resolved by political discussion with the aid of specialists.

ckaihatsu

2nd May 2011, 14:43

I don't believe that creating arbitrary capability is something that is within the scope of what a social revolution can manage. To understand how intricately complicated this is, take for instance two children who grow up in the same household - one who thoroughly enjoys legos, the other who only likes to read. The environment is largely the same, and while environmental factors may have contributed to the divergence, discovering and controlling them is not necessarily possible.

This is basically the current, prevailing paradigm of psychology talking here. People have been "geneticized" and "medicalized" into convenient storybook-like 'character traits' that make it easier for us, the public, to bureaucratically process and pigeon-hole the "characters" we see and come across like so many processable commodities.

Under capitalism this *cognitive* paradigm reinforces the market-based commodification valuation and sorting paradigm -- it's far easier to mentally track and remember "that kid who enjoys legos" and "the other who only likes to read" than it is to conceptualize (correctly) that both exist as a potential of a multitude of possible traits and actions, enabled and constrained to such by the social world as it is.

[I quite] like the idea that undesirable tasks should be made social. I just don't think all administrative tasks can be shared out, in the same way that you can't share out rocket science to each person to ensure that nobody controls ICBMs. There are important skills that effective administrators have. I think not recognising this would be a disaster.

Fortunately you've specified an approach to all of this at the end of your post:

These questions can't be *solved* by calculation, they can merely be investigated with the help of them. They must be resolved by political discussion with the aid of specialists.

If we understand political consciousness to be a mode of social interaction that (potentially) includes all relevant subordinate information and collective decision-making processes, then it's not so difficult to imagine that each and every person in such an integrated, inclusive political economy would be in about the same vantage point as everyone else, ready to share and receive topical knowledge and positions on the matters at hand, and to constructively add to a resolution of those matters.

I'm not suggesting that we have forced bureaucratic labour, but if you want to ensure that everyone takes equal part in bureaucratic labour, that is indeed what you will need to do. I was merely pointing out that the goal is in itself necessarily going to lead to coercion.

My comparison with forced manual labour was meant to contrast it to a form of forced labour that might actually be possible, despite being undesirable. Forced bureaucratic labour is effectively impossible so you're just going to have to cope with the fact that you can't do it.

No, not at all -- you're merely *contending* that this is the case but you certainly haven't *made* a case for it.

Consider that a worker-collectivized society would look to its *workers* as the source of actual-experience empirical-information input, as over actual issues of labor and its resulting administration. This would be a massively parallel process, necessarily sourced from the point of production to produce a *bottom-up* political culture of co-administration (and implementation).

Now, whether this leaves the realm of the revolution or not, is, I think, an important one. Supposing that because we are educating peasants at a much greater rate there is a decrease in effective labour in agriculture. We can fill this by taking voluntary labour from the cities by rota. But what if there is insufficient labour. How will we encourage the intelligencia to take part in devoting their labour towards the revolution? In some agrarian economies that still exist in the world this is a real potential problem. Some level of coercion is probably in order. Perhaps simply having full access to the social product contingent on conscription service.

In developed countries the problem would probably be less relevant, but might still occur in areas such as sewer repair labour or other such undesirable jobs.

A revolution, by composition, would have a material interest in reducing its dependence on manual labor tasks and also in spreading a revolutionary political influence to all corners of the globe -- in combination these two dynamics would assert a political consciousness that aims to liberate all technology and machinery from private, constrained holdings, thereby *increasing* productive capacities across-the-board through *collectivized* usage.

What you're outlining is decidedly *constrained* in scope and really smacks of a bureaucratic / Stalinistic approach to revolution.

I don't believe that is the case. I think administration is not entirely a task for the control and manipulation of the working class as many seem to think, and neither do I think it's something that everyone can attain competence in without costing us unnecessarily in other areas. The administrative tasks for various functions in the civil service for instance can not just be shared out. They are specialist tasks. We must come to terms with specialisation and find ways to avoid to great a level of differential control arising from it.

The dynamic of specialization would be counteracted by the dynamic of un- / non-proprietization (collectivization) of information and knowledge. *Many* presently specialized areas of knowledge could simply be made open and accessible to all, in the interests of increasing mass interest and co-participation.

Are you claiming that specialisation leads us necessarily back to capitalism? If so, then I think we're doomed. Personally, I don't think it's true.

Yes, left to itself the dynamic of specialization encourages proprietization and private property -- the only thing that can cut against this tendency is to insist on political *openness* and putting all such currently specialized fields under the scrutiny and mass co-administration of the working class.

I don't think there can be any escape from the complicated nature of calculating value. We can neither abandon formulaic approaches, nor can we assure that they are simple. They have to be as complicated as necessary to enable a highly complex society.

What "cost" is, is certainly something that runs into complexities. The question in capitalism forgets the question of externalities entirely. When assessing externalities you come into the question of exactly how much external labour is in fact necessary to effect a reasonable limitation of adverse effects.

Should we build a staircase to every roof to increase the safety of roof work? Should we reduce arsenic levels to A or B, when A gives 1 micro-mort per person per year, and B gives .1 micro-mort per person per year for the cost of 10 million labour hours?

These questions can't be *solved* by calculation, they can merely be investigated with the help of them. They must be resolved by political discussion with the aid of specialists.

Okay, I basically agree here with this approach to a collective political economy.

Die Neue Zeit

2nd May 2011, 15:31

the state can't "enact" workers' councils. workers councils are special not necessarily because of its "democratic" aspects, those aspects can be mimicked more or less by the state, but because they emerge from workers' self-organization and act as an organ outside the state which functions as both legislative, executive, and sometimes judicial.

Yes, this was the failure of the Yugoslavian and Venezuelan "Workers' Councils". The Council system does not have any definate form or structure, but is merely a reflection of the most advanced and resolute forms of worker organization corresponding to the material conditions at hand.

One still cannot deny that Venezuela's system of communal councils and communes, with mostly economic "workers councils" on the side, augmented by PSUV influence, is a huge step forward. Note the political "state aid" (setting up, PSUV influence) vs. the economistic "self-help" (self-limitation to economic issues).

Rowan Duffy

2nd May 2011, 16:30

This is basically the current, prevailing paradigm of psychology talking here. People have been "geneticized" and "medicalized" into convenient storybook-like 'character traits' that make it easier for us, the public, to bureaucratically process and pigeon-hole the "characters" we see and come across like so many processable commodities.

Under capitalism this *cognitive* paradigm reinforces the market-based commodification valuation and sorting paradigm -- it's far easier to mentally track and remember "that kid who enjoys legos" and "the other who only likes to read" than it is to conceptualize (correctly) that both exist as a potential of a multitude of possible traits and actions, enabled and constrained to such by the social world as it is.

I don't really care what the prevailing psychological paradigm is. I'm quite certain that various different people express various different predilections and that these are not within our capacity to control. I based that observation on two children I know, who display wildly different interests. I have no idea how they got that way and I'm additionally quite sure that you haven't the faintest idea how to have raised them both to have an equal interest in those tasks.

If you can't even effect such behaviour at the micro-level - what hope is there that we can effect it at the macro level.

If we understand political consciousness to be a mode of social interaction that (potentially) includes all relevant subordinate information and collective decision-making processes, then it's not so difficult to imagine that each and every person in such an integrated, inclusive political economy would be in about the same vantage point as everyone else, ready to share and receive topical knowledge and positions on the matters at hand, and to constructively add to a resolution of those matters.

I find it incredibly difficult to imagine myself an integrated inclusive political economy with everyone at the same vantage point as everyone else.

I think we can give people the greatest amount of access to self-empowerment and educational possibilities within the scope of our ability to produce what is considered an acceptable level of social product. I think we need to encourage all sectors to be emancipated by way of increasing their self-involvement and self-direction in the pursuit of knowledge. I don't however believe that you can eliminate the existence of vantage points.

Consider that a worker-collectivized society would look to its *workers* as the source of actual-experience empirical-information input, as over actual issues of labor and its resulting administration. This would be a massively parallel process, necessarily sourced from the point of production to produce a *bottom-up* political culture of co-administration (and implementation).

Being a bus driver does give one special knowledge about driving buses. It does not on the other hand mean that one would be effective at maximising route efficiency. While it's conceivable that route planners could be asked to drive buses as it was an undesirable job, it wouldn't necessarily make sense to do so. The route planners might rather have a stint picking oranges or shoveling cow manure. Requiring that everyone take part in a pie-slice of their current job organisation is - I think - very peculiar and unlikely to work. How many people who enjoy driving buses are going to be enthusiastic at studying over optimisation codes?

In my opinion it is much more important is giving accountability and democracy to the process of work and it's allocation than it is to ensure that everyone is a part time bureaucrat.

What you're outlining is decidedly *constrained* in scope and really smacks of a bureaucratic / Stalinistic approach to revolution.

Comparing what I've been saying to Stalinism is hyperbole. I think we need democratic accountability and that is clearly not Stalinist. I think that you are denying necessary functions in favour of something which you think is "ideal" - but something which I believe to be unpracticable.

To give you a very concrete example. Which workplaces and in what manner and measure should these workers be responsible for the logistics of the distribution of goods? Do we not need a distribution bureaucracy to make assurance of the most equitable and reasonable distribution of such goods? If not, how will each different workplace allocate workers to the task of coordinating large scale distribution of goods on a global scale? It certainly doesn't appear to me to be a reasonable goal to share such a task out in equal measure.

The dynamic of specialization would be counteracted by the dynamic of un- / non-proprietization (collectivization) of information and knowledge. *Many* presently specialized areas of knowledge could simply be made open and accessible to all, in the interests of increasing mass interest and co-participation.

If we are going to eliminate specialisation, we're doomed. Even primitive petite bourgeois society had its potters and shoemakers. To try and make everyone an equal share of everything is totally impossible excepting in a very primitive society - and even there it was very rarely done.

We must recognise the need for specialisation and find processes to cope with it.

syndicat

2nd May 2011, 17:18

Imagine the administration tasks for the planning of bus routes, schedules, managing the labour allocation in these projects and testing and ensuring of optimality of these plans.

yes, let's talk about service scheduling. i happen to know a bit about this. in fact the math in this is relatively simple. many bus drivers could be taught how to do this. many drivers are actually quite interested in this. and one of the things drivers complain about is having no control over things like how much time is at end of run by a break, eat etc. Drivers have a lot of practical knowledge this is very relevant to doing this. Thus there is simply NO justification for some bureaucratic management in this case.

moreover, driving a bus is a very stressful line of work. bus drivers tend not to live as long as others. i've heard many stories from drivers I've interviewed of a driver who dies shortly after retiring, because of all the years of stress. It's completely unfair to force someone to do a life of stressful work of this kind.

And in general when you advocate "bureaucratic management" you're advocating the continued existence of a boss class. This is inconsistent with the liberation of the working class from class domination & exploitation.

There needs to be things like coordination but there can be an elected coordinating committee with term limits. The job can be combined with still doing some part of the physical labor such as driving a bus for a certain proportion of their hours. And with term limits they can be rotated out and someone else gets the opportunity to have this experience...so no one is indispensable and there is no entrenched bureaucracy.

A bureaucratic class exists only when there is a separate group who monopolize the decision-making tasks and information related to such tasks.

ckaihatsu

2nd May 2011, 17:31

I based that observation on two children I know, who display wildly different interests. I have no idea how they got that way and I'm additionally quite sure that you haven't the faintest idea how to have raised them both to have an equal interest in those tasks.

If you can't even effect such behaviour at the micro-level - what hope is there that we can effect it at the macro level.

I don't really care what the prevailing psychological paradigm is. I'm quite certain that various different people express various different predilections and that these are not within our capacity to control.

Yes, I agree -- the point isn't to attempt to *control* people's inclinations, but rather to fight in common for a political openness, equal access, and co-participation based on people's actual work contributions.

I think we need to encourage all sectors to be emancipated by way of increasing their self-involvement and self-direction in the pursuit of knowledge.

Yes.

I think we can give people the greatest amount of access to self-empowerment and educational possibilities within the scope of our ability to produce what is considered an acceptable level of social product.

Here you're implying a zero-sum environment for resources in relation to end products and services -- I'll posit that such a calculation, or balancing act, is *not* required. There does *not* have to be a set ratio or relation between what is "consumed" in "preparation" for effecting work output.

I find it incredibly difficult to imagine myself an integrated inclusive political economy with everyone at the same vantage point as everyone else.

I don't however believe that you can eliminate the existence of vantage points.

By 'vantage point' I mean the resources openly available to all (workers) who would participate in a collective co-administration over their work product in common.

Being a bus driver does give one special knowledge about driving buses. It does not on the other hand mean that one would be effective at maximising route efficiency. While it's conceivable that route planners could be asked to drive buses as it was an undesirable job, it wouldn't necessarily make sense to do so. The route planners might rather have a stint picking oranges or shoveling cow manure. Requiring that everyone take part in a pie-slice of their current job organisation is - I think - very peculiar and unlikely to work.

How many people who enjoy driving buses are going to be enthusiastic at studying over optimisation codes?

You'd be surprised.

In the example you're using the "optimization codes", or overall process of route planning and administration, is an integral, organic aspect of the bus driving manual labor role -- it's a generalization of that particular task, one that *all* bus drivers would *likely* find to at least be interesting since it's directly related to their everyday work (life) experience.

(Administrative -- or any other -- roles or tasks could never be a "requirement" or "forced", since such a construction implies an *external* authority that exists *outside of* the self-liberated working class itself. Rather the issue of who does what tasks, and for how long of a workweek, would be an issue that's *internal* to the functioning of liberated labor (society), for its own self-propagation going forward in time.)

(I personally am of the position that the very principle of self-determination, by definition, precludes the use of *any* political coercion -- or otherwise -- to compel labor under socialism against one's own will. A revolutionary movement, though, may find the need to exercise political authority in the process of advancing its collective interest for revolution against private interests counterposed to it.)

In my opinion it is much more important is giving accountability and democracy to the process of work and it's allocation than it is to ensure that everyone is a part time bureaucrat.

Okay.

If we are going to eliminate specialisation, we're doomed. Even primitive petite bourgeois society had its potters and shoemakers. To try and make everyone an equal share of everything is totally impossible excepting in a very primitive society - and even there it was very rarely done.

We must recognise the need for specialisation and find processes to cope with it.

Yes, agreed -- neither of us is suggesting an identical-timecard approach to society's work time and work roles.

Comparing what I've been saying to Stalinism is hyperbole. I think we need democratic accountability and that is clearly not Stalinist. I think that you are denying necessary functions in favour of something which you think is "ideal" - but something which I believe to be unpracticable.

To give you a very concrete example. Which workplaces and in what manner and measure should these workers be responsible for the logistics of the distribution of goods? Do we not need a distribution bureaucracy to make assurance of the most equitable and reasonable distribution of such goods? If not, how will each different workplace allocate workers to the task of coordinating large scale distribution of goods on a global scale? It certainly doesn't appear to me to be a reasonable goal to share such a task out in equal measure.

There is certainly room here for a variety of proposals, and, of course, it would be up to the revolutionary workers themselves to settle on some kind of system to this end.

I have developed my own approach to this post-capitalism systematization process -- a model framework that I advocate, attached. (Feel free to query me on particulars of it -- here, via PM, email, or at another thread.)

communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

http://postimage.org/image/35sw8csv8/

Rowan Duffy

2nd May 2011, 20:58

yes, let's talk about service scheduling. i happen to know a bit about this. in fact the math in this is relatively simple. many bus drivers could be taught how to do this. many drivers are actually quite interested in this. and one of the things drivers complain about is having no control over things like how much time is at end of run by a break, eat etc. Drivers have a lot of practical knowledge this is very relevant to doing this. Thus there is simply NO justification for some bureaucratic management in this case.

Routing and scheduling is in fact a very hard problem. That it wasn't actually done at all excepting in a completely ad hoc way in the case in which you were involved is hardly proof that it easy as there was evidently not any but a basic attempt at optimisation.

In addition, I never claimed that drivers do not have special knowledge, in fact if you read my post I claim the opposite - and this information is indeed deeply relevant. They do not, however, know how to optimise their routes for coverage or how to collectively optimise them based on their experience as drivers. While drivers need to be involved in the process of deciding schedules and need to have control over the constraints exercised in routing and scheduling - this is not the same as being responsible for the task of searching the solution spaces for optimal routes.

Neither does driving a bus mean that the intellectually stimulating labour one should take part in should be route optimisation. There needs to be participation and accountability in every process. This does not however mitigate the need for specialist administrative functions.

The bureaucratic management of finding optimal routing and scheduling problems does not preclude workers and community control over its implementation. It should rather facilitate it if it is done properly. The constraints acceptable to those concerned with its implementation should be key in the implementation.

moreover, driving a bus is a very stressful line of work. bus drivers tend not to live as long as others. i've heard many stories from drivers I've interviewed of a driver who dies shortly after retiring, because of all the years of stress. It's completely unfair to force someone to do a life of stressful work of this kind.

I never said that we should force anyone into a life of stressful work such as bus driving. I think additionally that assessing which such jobs are damaging in their effects is another example which can not be fully understood without some bureaucratic agency responsible for quantifying such impacts and attempting to recommend processes to ensure more equitable allocations of such labour tasks.

And in general when you advocate "bureaucratic management" you're advocating the continued existence of a boss class. This is inconsistent with the liberation of the working class from class domination & exploitation.

What I'm advocating is not in any way consistent with ensuring a continued boss class any more than its consistent to ensure that we have a continued "potter class", a "doctor class" or any other specialist "class".

What we really need to be concerned with is ensuring that people are not privileged in their access to education and labour opportunities and that they do not abuse positions through corruption for personal enrichment. Ensuring that this does not occur will itself require bureaucracy and balance. It simply can not be eliminated by claiming an end to bureaucracy since this just can not happen. There is no such thing as an advanced society that does not have organisational process and people devoted and specialised in their labour for this purpose. It may not be the only job that they undertake, but neither can it be shared out equally.

There needs to be things like coordination but there can be an elected coordinating committee with term limits. The job can be combined with still doing some part of the physical labor such as driving a bus for a certain proportion of their hours. And with term limits they can be rotated out and someone else gets the opportunity to have this experience...so no one is indispensable and there is no entrenched bureaucracy.

So you then retreat from no bureaucracy to no entrenched bureaucracy by means of ensuring accountability. Really, this is exactly what I mean when I say that it's pretty disingenuous when socialists claim that they are opposed to bureaucracy.

A bureaucratic class exists only when there is a separate group who monopolize the decision-making tasks and information related to such tasks.

So really you are opposed to the formation of groups with differential power - and this is perfectly reasonable. It doesn't make it reasonable to claim that we are in opposition to bureaucracy as it is simply untrue unless bureaucracy is conveniently altered to mean: "every kind of administrative group which is unaccountable, undemocratic and abuses its power" in which case obviously everyone agrees. Hence my charge that it is completely vacuous sloganeering.

ckaihatsu

2nd May 2011, 21:09

Jose Gracchus

2nd May 2011, 21:27

If one group of while collars gets to sit in the A/C and do computer simulations, and submit a few cut-outs for empty 'ratification' by the menial workers, this is a class society. In a classless society, there would be no basis for a division of labor that grants all kinds of initiative, authority, empowerment, privileged access to information, and comfortable conditions vs. dangerous ones for some workers over others. Today we have janitors because our class society produces an underclass.

The class division of labor should be eradicated. I have no problem with functional or utilitarian divisions of labor, under self-management. However, the mix of work-roles acceptable in an authentic democratic society for a given industry, workplace, and region or even world, will need to be determined democratically by the workers themselves.

In the real process of revolution, historically we do see workers move to take direct control of workplaces, to develop technical and administrative self-capacities, and for workers to generally take direct control over the circumstances of their lives. Suppressing these tendencies and moves has always been part of the tendency toward counter-revolution. DNZ and other statist bureaucrats' opinions aside, in real revolutionary history, the means of production are taken into the hands of the workers themselves in a stochastic and spontaneous manner. Both in Spain 1936, a bottom-up collectivization rush by CNT and UGT rank-and-file revolutionary workers, in Russia 1917-1918 most of the expropriations were made at the initiative of the factory committees, and in the Italian bienno rosa work was made by factory organizations toward taking over production.

No glorified Second International statist dream of nationalization has ever worked out in practice. There's only been counter-revolutionary nationalizations and revolutionary expropriations. That's the historical, real world record. Self-management is the means of the socialization of the means of production.

I think Duffy is pretty misled as to how the white collar normative division of labor contains all sorts of power and class relations within it. I don't think a club of people who do what the bosses and coordinators do now can simply be "elected" and "challengable" by the workers, and then everything will change. There can be specialists, but they should just be balanced-task workers who prefer and are adept at performing organizational and coordinative tasks. But all workers should participate actively in the productive process. No division of labor should exist outside of that at the immediate utilitarian disposal of the workers themselves. I could imagine a system of work-point and task organization enterprise-by-enterprise.

Rowan Duffy

2nd May 2011, 22:04

I think Duffy is pretty misled as to how the white collar normative division of labor contains all sorts of power and class relations within it. I don't think a club of people who do what the bosses and coordinators do now can simply be "elected" and "challengable" by the workers, and then everything will change. There can be specialists, but they should just be balanced-task workers who prefer and are adept at performing organizational and coordinative tasks. But all workers should participate actively in the productive process. No division of labor should exist outside of that at the immediate utilitarian disposal of the workers themselves. I could imagine a system of work-point and task organization enterprise-by-enterprise.

I'm not "mislead" if you mean that I'm unacquainted with the methods of management in keeping workers in their place. I'm actually very well informed about what it means to be an exploited manual worker having worked in several extremely exploitative labours.

I'm also aware of and well acquainted with the role of management in suppressing workers or driving workers to perform more labour with their labour power under duress.

Indeed electing a boss would additionally not remove the problems of management - though the right to do so would certainly make things vastly better than they are now. To be accountable does not necessarily mean elections for CEOs. I believe many current management functions are unnecessary.

It is however a disservice to pretend as though the bureaucracy evaporates with the support of self-management. It does not, should not, and can not. Historically, the CNT simply grew to fill the role of distributive and other bureaucratic functions. In the future we will need this role fulfilled a specialised bureaucracy for the assessment of externalities of production. It's pretty optimistic to think that this will easily be parceled out to random plant workers. We will need investment planning agencies. These can't be fully developed from any individual workplace - they will require a bureaucracy. We will need agencies to assess dangers in workplace conditions. These sorts of statistics are not possible to tabulate or compare on an industry wide basis from the vantage point of a single workplace.

Let's think carefully about how these bureaucratic roles could be filled in an egalitarian manner. I fully subscribe to the opinion that we should not allow a class of people to be exploited for their labour and denied access to safer and more enriching labour. How then will this be accomplished. What non-air-conditioned jobs will be shared out from the future EPA equivalent.

Does it make sense to only share out these jobs, when, for instance, the coal-mining administrative duties turn out to be vastly smaller in proportion to its necessary manual labour? Shouldn't we rather try to equalise the distribution of the most undesirable and dangerous labour?

If we have a society that maximises the amount of self-directed desirable and voluntary labour without coercion, how will we fill the role of sewer worker? What if the sewer administative overhead is tiny with respect to the undesirable labour that need be performed. This would mean that the sewer collective is doing almost all the shit work with no real "emancipation" from bureaucratic control.

Equitable distribution, especially in the immediate period that seeks to break down the current strangle-hold of both the bourgeoisie and the white-collar privileged workers, will require some way of ensuring this redistribution. To do it fully equitably would probably require conscription. How far down this path are we willing to go? Is it better to do it slowly over generations, by giving more access to further generations by quota and educational opportunities throughout life and to all - how much coercion should we be willing to use?

It's been claimed a number of times in this thread that I'm supportive of the current structures of oppression because of my opposition to the removal of bureaucracy. I think the reverse is true. The anti-bureaucrats are suggesting that we can produce an egalitarian society in a manner that is far more idealistic than we should think possible by looking at historical revolutionary struggle. It is not realistic to believe that bureaucracies can be replaced simply through workers taking over the management of their current workplace and that a local sharing out of administrative duties is a sensible, egalitarian or rational way of dealing with the problem.

Kiev Communard

2nd May 2011, 22:39

Nationalization doesn't mean the workers can't control the means of production. Through socialist production relations and a series of councils or soviets, they can indeed have a healthy say in what get made and how much of it. For example, Workers could submit their ideas to the planning bureau in socialist Albania and decide upon whether they agree with the main outcome of the plan or not.

"New Albania" covers this extensively.

Funny as it may be, but the system you advocate is actually close to that which we in the former USSR actually used to have under Khruschev :rolleyes:. Excuse me, but the position you used could be employed by supporters of social-democratic capitalist economy as well. They would point out that they are not opposed to works' councils involvement in the planning of production, only that it should have a 'healthy' say within a structure dominated by 'socially responsible' employers.

The Marxist-Leninist notion of "workers' control" subordinated to dominant bureaucrats-planners is fundamentally similar to the 'social partnership' idea of social democrats, only in this case a class structure is based on 'social partnership' of subordinate proletarians with the dominant State-corporation, not with capitalist corporations as it used to be under social-democrats. In any case, workers remain waged employees, but now the exploiters pretend that they are workers, too.

ckaihatsu

2nd May 2011, 22:53

Equitable distribution, especially in the immediate period that seeks to break down the current strangle-hold of both the bourgeoisie and the white-collar privileged workers, will require some way of ensuring this redistribution. To do it fully equitably would probably require conscription. How far down this path are we willing to go? Is it better to do it slowly over generations, by giving more access to further generations by quota and educational opportunities throughout life and to all - how much coercion should we be willing to use?

It's been claimed a number of times in this thread that I'm supportive of the current structures of oppression because of my opposition to the removal of bureaucracy. I think the reverse is true. The anti-bureaucrats are suggesting that we can produce an egalitarian society in a manner that is far more idealistic than we should think possible by looking at historical revolutionary struggle.

If we have a society that maximises the amount of self-directed desirable and voluntary labour without coercion, how will we fill the role of sewer worker? What if the sewer administative overhead is tiny with respect to the undesirable labour that need be performed. This would mean that the sewer collective is doing almost all the shit work with no real "emancipation" from bureaucratic control.

Just for the record, I'll address this by reiterating that a mass self-liberated workers' co-administration would be *in control* of *all* of society's technological implements, with full collective discretion as to their use, disuse, simplification, improvement, or replacement by other technologies.

This is to say that there's no reason to consider a civilization's tasks of sanitation to be *fixed* as a set process, and unalterable.

Given a mass revolutionary displacement of capitalist control the revolutionary workers would definitely *not* be glad about inheriting such work roles as sewer worker. It would be in their common interest to *supersede* that method of sanitation altogether in favor of some satisfactory method that is far less work-intensive, if not simply automated altogether. (My favorite example of "automation" is the use of plumbing for carrying water, etc.)

A revolution, by composition, would have a material interest in reducing its dependence on manual labor tasks and also in spreading a revolutionary political influence to all corners of the globe -- in combination these two dynamics would assert a political consciousness that aims to liberate all technology and machinery from private, constrained holdings, thereby *increasing* productive capacities across-the-board through *collectivized* usage.

It is not realistic to believe that bureaucracies can be replaced simply through workers taking over the management of their current workplace and that a local sharing out of administrative duties is a sensible, egalitarian or rational way of dealing with the problem.

Your formulation / premise here implies that the administrative workload that *currently* exists under capitalist financial (mis-)management would be the exact same workload that would exist under a *post-*capitalism workers-collective co-administration.

I'll argue that a worldwide workers' self-liberation from capitalist rule would enable a *reconfiguration* of *how* civilization is accomplished, altogether.

Paulappaul

3rd May 2011, 00:27

One still cannot deny that Venezuela's system of communal councils and communes, with mostly economic "workers councils" on the side, augmented by PSUV influence, is a huge step forward. Note the political "state aid" (setting up, PSUV influence) vs. the economistic "self-help" (self-limitation to economic issues).

It's a step forward, not a "huge" step though. There is still a struggle aganist these communes, aganist these councils and aganist the state by the working class.

Jose Gracchus

3rd May 2011, 01:00

There may some utility in Venezuela's "councils" and "communes" [in reality either crude populist mobilizational politics, or Porto Alegre-style 'participatory planning'], but I'm beginning to think in the long-run they are a mystifying alternative to rank-and-file militancy, and probably increasingly harmful as time goes on without change.

Die Neue Zeit

3rd May 2011, 01:41

So really you are opposed to the formation of groups with differential power - and this is perfectly reasonable. It doesn't make it reasonable to claim that we are in opposition to bureaucracy as it is simply untrue unless bureaucracy is conveniently altered to mean: "every kind of administrative group which is unaccountable, undemocratic and abuses its power" in which case obviously everyone agrees. Hence my charge that it is completely vacuous sloganeering.

Well said, comrade! Bureaucratic processes are fundamental to modern societies, to class-based institutional organization, you name it. I think what you have in mind instead is "red tape." I think everybody here on this board doesn't like "red tape," and that term is more acceptable to use for derogatory purposes than "bureaucracy."

While syndicat is for elections, though, I'm for random selections. If necessary, use stratified sampling to make sure qualified candidates get the job, but of course educate to make sure the pool grows.

Suppressing these tendencies and moves has always been part of the tendency toward counter-revolution. DNZ and other statist bureaucrats' opinions aside, in real revolutionary history, the means of production are taken into the hands of the workers themselves in a stochastic and spontaneous manner. Both in Spain 1936, a bottom-up collectivization rush by CNT and UGT rank-and-file revolutionary workers, in Russia 1917-1918 most of the expropriations were made at the initiative of the factory committees, and in the Italian bienno rosa work was made by factory organizations toward taking over production.

No glorified Second International statist dream of nationalization has ever worked out in practice. There's only been counter-revolutionary nationalizations and revolutionary expropriations.

I'm not for "capturing the existing state apparatus" as if said apparatus is neutral. That was a fundamental mistake of the Second International. Bureaucratic processes in general are, however, class-neutral (as exhibited by the possibility of rotations, randomness, etc.). The rejection of this was a fundamental mistake of the ultra-left inside and outside the SI.

You forgot "progressive nationalizations," by the way. It involves, among other things, having more guts on the eminent domain question.

It's a step forward, not a "huge" step though. There is still a struggle aganist these communes, aganist these councils and aganist the state by the working class.

Against the state, yes, but I don't see struggles against the communal councils and communes. I see participation in them as a means of countering, say, bourgeois federalism (governors, mayors, etc.).

There may some utility in Venezuela's "councils" and "communes" [in reality either crude populist mobilizational politics, or Porto Alegre-style 'participatory planning'], but I'm beginning to think in the long-run they are a mystifying alternative to rank-and-file militancy, and probably increasingly harmful as time goes on without change.

Guess what? I agree with you on this one. "Monarchy" and "democracy" allied against "aristocracy" can only be progressive for so long.

Jose Gracchus

3rd May 2011, 04:26

Well said, comrade! Bureaucratic processes are fundamental to modern societies, to class-based institutional organization, you name it. I think what you have in mind instead is "red tape." I think everybody here on this board doesn't like "red tape," and that term is more acceptable to use for derogatory purposes than "bureaucracy."

It is quite simple, actually, decision-making and policy-making should not be alienated from the class itself: the emancipation of the working-class is the task of the working-class itself.

And no, DER ARBEITPARTEI is not "the working class itself". Now if one wants to call the CNT-FAI Zaragosa Program or soviet democracy or factory organizations or the Paris Commune or whatever 'bureaucratic', that's fine. The facts are what matters - that decision-making, policy-making tasks are not the reserve of a small fraction of the overall labor force, monopolizing those empowering tasks, and that all those in a position of decision execution, policy drafting, or relative authority, should do so on the revocable mandate and initiative of the class itself.

While syndicat is for elections, though, I'm for random selections. If necessary, use stratified sampling to make sure qualified candidates get the job, but of course educate to make sure the pool grows.

I do love the arrogance and absurdity of you wandering around calling councils "fetishes" and "infantile" when you propose a decision-making institution unseen in the modern world - in fact, totally unseen since Middle Antiquity - as a panacea to replace the intuitive form of election.

Demarchy is thousands of times less proven, more absurd, than any quibbles over councils and delegates. But of course you want "representatives" because delegates might regulate hair cuts, or some such nonsense [it would help your case if you could demonstrate even a single case in actual delegate or radical democracy where "mob rule" was an authentic problem for the emancipation of the working class and proletarian democracy, rather than a boss-class slur against working-class agitation].

Syndicat deals with the real history of the real working class. You go on-and-on about a working class you'd like to exist but doesn't. I mean you don't think class struggles even exist outside of a proper party [and naturally, by 'proper party', we mean one constructed on grounds you alone have divined].

I'm not for "capturing the existing state apparatus" as if said apparatus is neutral. That was a fundamental mistake of the Second International. Bureaucratic processes in general are, however, class-neutral (as exhibited by the possibility of rotations, randomness, etc.). The rejection of this was a fundamental mistake of the ultra-left inside and outside the SI.

Bullshit. Bureaucratism was even noticed by Lenin and Trotsky as a symptom of the revolution's isolation and austerity [and also, their commandism and repressions, as it happens].

You forgot "progressive nationalizations," by the way. It involves, among other things, having more guts on the eminent domain question.

I don't mention this shit because that's what it is. Useless shit. In real working class history, in real revolutionary situations, workers occupy productive enterprises, and run them according to their own institutions. State-party, top-down nationalizations have only occurred in order to secure the basis of capital by reform or subsidy.

You grate on me with your insistence on seemingly refusing to read the actual content of your debate opponent's remarks: no state nationalizations have ever driven the formation of a workers' socialized economy. In the most successful revolutionary upsurges known to history, socialization took place at the base at the initiative of the working class masses, both Spain, Russia, and to a lesser extent Italy, Germany, Hungary, ROC 28, PRC 68, France 68, etc.

You can't see anything socialist in content if it doesn't pass in-and-out of the party's CLASS WAR COMMAND CENTER. Not my problem.

Against the state, yes, but I don't see struggles against the communal councils and communes. I see participation in them as a means of countering, say, bourgeois federalism (governors, mayors, etc.).

The PSUV is a bureaucrat party based around personal populism of Chavez. Therefore, any interaction it has with the working class will certainly not be proletarian proper in content, mixed at best.

Guess what? I agree with you on this one. "Monarchy" and "democracy" allied against "aristocracy" can only be progressive for so long.

Pre-modern political science gobbledegook.

Die Neue Zeit

3rd May 2011, 04:56

It is quite simple, actually, decision-making and policy-making should not be alienated from the class itself: the emancipation of the working-class is the task of the working-class itself.

And no, DIE ARBEITERPARTEI is not "the working class itself". Now if one wants to call the CNT-FAI Zaragosa Program or soviet democracy or factory organizations or the Paris Commune or whatever 'bureaucratic', that's fine. The facts are what matters - that decision-making, policy-making tasks are not the reserve of a small fraction of the overall labor force, monopolizing those empowering tasks, and that all those in a position of decision execution, policy drafting, or relative authority, should do so on the revocable mandate and initiative of the class itself.

The real class movement isn't the class itself / in itself, but is definitely the class for itself.

Since the two of us debated recently re. policy (i.e., program), I stated before that policy ratification should be thrown wide open (well, not open to agents provocateurs, of course). Policy drafting, however, needs to be representative (again, my "Renaissance Education" thread), as per the German precedent.

I'm not a dialectician, but the language that could describe my position re. authority vs. execution would be representative authority and delegative execution (delegative because of multiple avenues for recall).

I do love the arrogance and absurdity of you wandering around calling councils "fetishes" and "infantile" when you propose a decision-making institution unseen in the modern world - in fact, totally unseen since Middle Antiquity - as a panacea to replace the intuitive form of election.

It has been implemented here and there in lesser institutions.

But of course you want "representatives" because delegates might regulate hair cuts, or some such nonsense [it would help your case if you could demonstrate even a single case in actual delegate or radical democracy where "mob rule" was an authentic problem for the emancipation of the working class and proletarian democracy, rather than a boss-class slur against working-class agitation].

Given the level of gossip and slander in the corporate media today, I'm just following all of that to the logical conclusion of premature delegative authority, where "politics" degenerates from policy debates and such to mere trinkets.

I mean you don't think class struggles even exist outside of a proper party [and naturally, by 'proper party', we mean one constructed on grounds you alone have divined].

I have not "divined" it. Look at my Politics thread vindicating my party-movement position. It's being adopted by key sections of the PSUV.

Of course, my critique apart from the working-class stuff is that the "party-movement" resolution doesn't take institutionalization seriously enough, but it's a step forward.

Bureaucratism was even noticed by Lenin and Trotsky as a symptom of the revolution's isolation and austerity [and also, their commandism and repressions, as it happens].

Bureaucracy, or more properly called "bureaucratic processes," propelled the worker-class movement in Germany. It was the influx of tred-iunion influence that did in the SPD.

Their rants against "bureaucracy" were a knee-jerk reaction to what happened in the rest of the Second International.

In real working class history, in real revolutionary situations, workers occupy productive enterprises, and run them according to their own institutions. State-party, top-down nationalizations have only occurred in order to secure the basis of capital by reform or subsidy.

Occupation isn't the same as expropriation. There's a reason why Russian workers clamoured for the Bolsheviks to nationalize occupied enterprises. Likewise, re. Mike Macnair, removal of constitutional guarantees to private property isn't the same as completely altering property relations.

That's not a "grate," but a legal and sociological tidbit.

You can't see anything socialist in content if it doesn't pass in-and-out of the party's CLASS WAR COMMAND CENTER. Not my problem.

I would hardly describe workers' central institutional organizations outside a revolutionary period as some sort of a "class war command center." Per Revolutionary Strategy, it is the ability of the party-movement to flex its muscles externally and internally during a revolutionary period that propels the class to power, not flexing those same muscles prematurely and thus succumbing to what Macnair mistakenly called "bureaucratic centralism."

The PSUV is a bureaucrat party based around personal populism of Chavez. Therefore, any interaction it has with the working class will certainly not be proletarian proper in content, mixed at best.

I'm not denying that. What I am saying is that any worker-class movement in Venezuela needs to learn positive lessons from the PSUV (mass character, programmatic commitment, "party-movement" rhetoric) and negative ones (lack of class independence orientation and lack of institutionalization like, for example, why all those "missions" are state bodies and not party bodies).

Le Socialiste

3rd May 2011, 05:54

The subject itself is, indeed, a complicated issue. However, I would contend that the very maintenance of the state (be it reactionary, revolutionary/capitalistic, socialistic, etc.) runs counter to the end goal of the stateless, classless society. One cannot abolish the State with the State; no matter its claims, it is essentially the restructuring of existing structures under the management of the ascendant ruling-class. The expectation that a workers’ state can successfully enact its own destruction is naïve, and beyond salvaging. By its very nature, the state is an exploitative system, a representative and upholder of the minds that crafted it. It matters little whether this system allows party representation or not, nor does it naturally seek out the betterment and alleviation of the proletariat from its ills. It seeks to manipulate it, to shape and mold it according to its vision, its will.

States will forever rely on coercion to further their own interests; thus, it stands in the way of the establishment of a truly revolutionary society, a classless, stateless society. As such, the only solution is to abolish the state, along with all its methods of oppression. (By extension, this includes the very elimination of all political parties and divisive agencies.) The people have no allies, save for those within their vast number. It is the masses that must carry the revolution to its stateless end—not the state. We cannot expect that the replacement of a capitalistic state with a socialistic state will bring “salvation” to the proletariat; rather, it can only exacerbate the current tensions inherent in maintaining a subversive, divisive, oppressive class structure. Inevitably, we would simply witness the rise of yet another—more “friendly”—manifestation of state coercion.

The proletariat can solve this issue by abolishing the state immediately following the revolution. What use have we of a structure built according to the interests and needs of the ruling-class? None. Through the organization of the workers into revolutionary committees, councils, syndicates and unions, one can eliminate any need for the state’s existence. It is not difficult—not at all. Through the coordination and linking of the means of production, the people can govern themselves in a manner that upholds democracy, liberty, and freedom.

Kotze

3rd May 2011, 10:30

It is quite simple, actually, decision-making and policy-making should not be alienated from the class itself
(...)
The facts are what matters - that decision-making, policy-making tasks are not the reserve of a small fraction of the overall labor force, monopolizing those empowering tasks
(...)
Demarchy is (...) absurdThis sounds contradictory. If you trust ordinary people, what's your problem with demarchy? Like most criticism of demarchy I've read here, this comes across as somebody projecting elitist personality traits on others.

As somebody who has both mathematical and practical understanding of elections I found your claims about elections being "intuitive" absurd. A nipple is intuitive. Election rules are more complicated than random selection. Here's an incomplete description of what an election rule on the local level in some parts of Germany looks like: You get 51 candidate votes. You can give up to 3 marks to the same candidate, you can also strike out candidates, and you can mark a party, but only 1 party.

I was involved in counting such an election (fun!). Of the quarter of those allowed to vote that showed up, 6% filled it out wrong, as in completely wrong, as in their ballots got on the heap of disqualified ballots. Had those voters intended to stick it to the man? Well, there was also another much more straightforward ballot about another political thang filled out at the same date and place, with a 3x lower number of disqualified ballots. Of the 6% ballots in the complicated election that were disqualified, most actually looked like the voter had some opinion different from all sucking equally, it's just that according to the rules they don't count. For example, some marked 2 parties in pairs that you often see in the federal elections (where you have a candidate vote and a party vote, and you can support different parties with them). The 6% figure of voters doing it wrong doesn't even include undervotes. When you don't use your party vote in that local election, and you only put 10 marks down, your voting power doesn't get concentrated, you just have less power.

When people survive the task of actually filling out this cumulative-plus-something-else clusterfuck, it usually gives the local clergymen and doctors a boost.

You think extending jury duty to other decisions than crimes is less intuitive than that?

If people are better at judging issues directly than making judgements about people who then make these decisions, demarchy is better than elections. I find it easier to think about an issue than about a person that has to make a decision regarding that issue, because in the latter case I don't really feel relieved from thinking about the issue(s), and then I have to deal with whether I trust this or that person in addition to that. When people vote for people and they don't have a duty to vote, there's everywhere a pattern of young people and women and poor people voting less. When there is a duty to go voting, this still doesn't solve the bias in the "representation" you end up with, with less than half being women, and there's of course underrepresentation of people with a usual income level.

Demarchy is no panacea. Who claimed it was? What advocates of demarchy do claim however, is that current electoral systems are part of what enables bourgie rule, which is true.

Jose Gracchus

3rd May 2011, 16:43

My problem with demarchy is it is advocated by people clueless about the history of Athens and how it worked in the historical constitutional system, and regard it as a political panacea for instant democracy that can just be enacted over-night. Randomly-filled legislatures will not become chambers of socialist democracy overnight. I think the concept is worth mining for ideas, and maybe in higher communism it could be substituted more and more, but I doubt it.

All your remarks are presented from the position that I support bourgeois electoral democracy - I don't. The council-delegate form is at least intuitive to class struggles. You'll have to point me to where anywhere demarchy has existed aside from limited local implementation in Classical Athens and the discussions of people on the internet.

ckaihatsu

3rd May 2011, 17:08

If we acknowledge that material conditions -- economics -- are what determines social reality then it follows that *day-to-day* politics are merely a *formality* around such conditions. This includes whatever the decision-making bodies may happen to be -- whether executive command, corporate boardrooms, legislatures, judiciaries, etc.

Power is currently in the hands of the bourgeoisie, of course, but if world events usurped this particular kind of rule then we would see a fundamental, real change in objective social material conditions, as towards a classless society.

A post-capitalist, post-class-division world would be the determining basis of social life, then -- the *formality* of how policy details might be decided and carried out in such a societal makeup would be of far less importance and consequence than the fact of worker collectivization itself.

syndicat

3rd May 2011, 21:12

Routing and scheduling is in fact a very hard problem. That it wasn't actually done at all excepting in a completely ad hoc way in the case in which you were involved is hardly proof that it easy as there was evidently not any but a basic attempt at optimisation.

In addition, I never claimed that drivers do not have special knowledge, in fact if you read my post I claim the opposite - and this information is indeed deeply relevant. They do not, however, know how to optimise their routes for coverage or how to collectively optimise them based on their experience as drivers. While drivers need to be involved in the process of deciding schedules and need to have control over the constraints exercised in routing and scheduling - this is not the same as being responsible for the task of searching the solution spaces for optimal routes.

Neither does driving a bus mean that the intellectually stimulating labour one should take part in should be route optimisation. There needs to be participation and accountability in every process. This does not however mitigate the need for specialist administrative functions.

The bureaucratic management of finding optimal routing and scheduling problems does not preclude workers and community control over its implementation. It should rather facilitate it if it is done properly. The constraints acceptable to those concerned with its implementation should be key in the implementation.

what a presumptious ass you are. I never said what I was "involved in." so how the fuck do you know? you exhibit the sort of sense of entitlement I find chacteristic of members of the bureaucratic class.

Whether route & service planning is "intellectually stimulating" or not it is more emowering because it would give the drivers more control over their work. something that is of interest to them even if worker control is not a priority for you.

the rationalizatons you offer are typical of bureaucratic socalled ""socialism".

I never said that we should force anyone into a life of stressful work such as bus driving. I think additionally that assessing which such jobs are damaging in their effects is another example which can not be fully understood without some bureaucratic agency responsible for quantifying such impacts and attempting to recommend processes to ensure more equitable allocations of such labour tasks.

Forcing people into the stressful work of a life of driving a bus is an implication of your defense of "specialist management". If the empowering work of planning and decision-making is concentrated in a hierarchy, they will 1. have the power to ensure that the empowering and interesting work is done by them, and 2. the remainder of the workforce will find themselves forced into rote labor. hat is the tnire logic of a taylorist division of labor.

So you then retreat from no bureaucracy to no entrenched bureaucracy by means of ensuring accountability. Really, this is exactly what I mean when I say that it's pretty disingenuous when socialists claim that they are opposed to bureaucracy.

bullshit. you've offered no analysis of what bureaucracy is. and apparently you don't know. So let me repeat my analysis: a bureaucratic class is based on an institutional set up where there is a relative monopolization of decision-making and expertise & info related to decision-making into the hands of a few.

Now, if there is general training and re-org of work so ev3ryone has skill and participates in the decisions, where is there a bureaucratic class? the mere fact there is an elected coordinating committee does not show there would be a bureaucratic class as I defined it above. the supreme power would still lie in the assemblies, and people would be trained and have the skills & info to participate effecticely in all aspects of the planning & decison-making.

So really you are opposed to the formation of groups with differential power - and this is perfectly reasonable. It doesn't make it reasonable to claim that we are in opposition to bureaucracy as it is simply untrue unless bureaucracy is conveniently altered to mean: "every kind of administrative group which is unaccountable, undemocratic and abuses its power" in which case obviously everyone agrees. Hence my charge that it is completely vacuous sloganeering.

again, go back and examine my definition. right here in this passage you are running a fallacy of false dichtomy.

Rowan Duffy

3rd May 2011, 21:59

what a presumptious ass you are. I never said what I was "involved in." so how the fuck do you know? you exhibit the sort of sense of entitlement I find chacteristic of members of the bureaucratic class.

It's not presumptuous; I know it was unsophisticated because you said it was simple, which is basic deduction. You were attempting to discredit my argument that special knowledge is require by making a very wide generalisation about the ease by which one can work out routing and scheduling with basic skills. This can only true if very rudimentary approaches are taken.

Does it display a sense of entitlement to point out that area of knowledge is complex? That charge sounds fairly anti-intellectual to me.

While there is software that can assist in the creation of scheduling, routing and planning - the creation and improvement of that software would require some sort of additional organ.

Personally, I think conscription is a reasonable way to perform undesirable tasks in society - such that we ensure that they are not all relegated to an underclass. It would ensure that the current intellectuals would be materially incentivised to think about how to minimise undesirable labour through technology, and it would diminish the likelihood of a manipulative bureaucratic class diverging too far from the population.

Whether route & service planning is "intellectually stimulating" or not it is more emowering because it would give the drivers more control over their work. something that is of interest to them even if worker control is not a priority for you.

Performing surgery on myself would also give me more control over my organs. It's still not a priorty for me.

I never said control over their lives was not a priority for me. I think it's critical that we maximise the amount of power people have over their own lives and working conditions. Giving bus workers additional administrative tasks - including in scheduling and planning would not necessarily make bus driving much less arduous - nor would it ensure bus workers of more equitable and empowering labour as compares the general population. Neither would having the tasks be performed with others in consultation necessarily be dominating.

There are all sorts of technical tasks which must necessarily be done in consultation with experts. You can't sort out your health without a doctor, or the condition of a car without a mechanic and you shouldn't be expected to. Society needs rather to ensure that the material organisation is such that interests are not set too sharply in conflict such that there are big advantages to lording this vantage over others.

the rationalizatons you offer are typical of bureaucratic socalled ""socialism".

I think the onus is on you to demonstrate that the sorts of organs I have outlined are unnecessary before you can safely call my defense of bureaucracy "rationalisations".

Forcing people into the stressful work of a life of driving a bus is an implication of your defense of "specialist management". If the empowering work of planning and decision-making is concentrated in a hierarchy, they will 1. have the power to ensure that the empowering and interesting work is done by them, and 2. the remainder of the workforce will find themselves forced into rote labor. hat is the tnire logic of a taylorist division of labor.

I've never claimed that a caste of people should be lead around by the nose by an unaccountable management. It seems improbable that you actually read what I've written if you think I want to relegate all undesirable labour to an underclass. I want quite the opposite, and believe that the approach of simply claiming that bureaucracy is unnecessary is more likely to lead to these problems that you accuse me of.

You have not answered any of the difficult questions I have posed about how we can best allocate labour in egalitarian way or how we can serve to fill necessary bureaucratic roles such as distributive, planning, educational, investment, environmental, workplace safety, judicial, or any number of other that clearly can not be filled by simply placing workplaces in the hands of workers.

Now, if there is general training and re-org of work so ev3ryone has skill and participates in the decisions, where is there a bureaucratic class? the mere fact there is an elected coordinating committee does not show there would be a bureaucratic class as I defined it above. the supreme power would still lie in the assemblies, and people would be trained and have the skills & info to participate effecticely in all aspects of the planning & decison-making.

This makes me suspect you haven't read what I wrote very carefully. It appears from this statement that you aren't opposed to bureaucracy at all, but merely the exploitations of vantage points in society for differential benefit.

ckaihatsu

3rd May 2011, 22:32

Personally, I think conscription is a reasonable way to perform undesirable tasks in society

Some "choice": Either a bureaucratic collectivism that uses conscription, or the default feudalistic fascism that uses elite control of capital....

There are all sorts of technical tasks which must necessarily be done in consultation with experts. You can't sort out your health without a doctor, or the condition of a car without a mechanic and you shouldn't be expected to.

The class division of labor should be eradicated. I have no problem with functional or utilitarian divisions of labor, under self-management. However, the mix of work-roles acceptable in an authentic democratic society for a given industry, workplace, and region or even world, will need to be determined democratically by the workers themselves.

syndicat

4th May 2011, 01:56

It's not presumptuous; I know it was unsophisticated because you said it was simple, which is basic deduction. You were attempting to discredit my argument that special knowledge is require by making a very wide generalisation about the ease by which one can work out routing and scheduling with basic skills. This can only true if very rudimentary approaches are taken.

Does it display a sense of entitlement to point out that area of knowledge is complex? That charge sounds fairly anti-intellectual to me.

man, what a wanker. your statements were overtly class biased but you're so blind you can't see it. what the hell do you know about the human potential of bus drivers? nada. your arguments are typical of the rationalizations offered in defense of the bureaucratic class.

capitalism since the late 19th century has systematically re-defined work in such a way as to minimize the amount of skill required by workers. they do this to 1. lower labor costs by not hiring as many people with scarce skills, 2. they can reduce the leverage of workers by diminishing their dependence on them, reducing their knowledge of how things are organized, 3. increase management power over planning and day to day control.

this means that the existing lack of skills required of workers does not happen because of "human nature" -- it was designed to be this way. in the early 19th century when workers were artisans and farmers they posssesed the relevant technology in their heads. so, why think technology today is "too hard" for workers to learn? That is a grossly class-biased claim on your part.

and, like i said, you don't know jack shit about what i've done or what i know. it's offensive for you to be making presumptious remarks.

Performing surgery on myself would also give me more control over my organs. It's still not a priorty for me.

your reasoning skills are subpar. when I was a logic teacher you wouldn't pass with the kind of bullshit you're running here.

surgery is by definition on others. the surgeon has control over his own work, capiche? so why shouldn't bus drivers have control over their own work?

I think the onus is on you to demonstrate that the sorts of organs I have outlined are unnecessary before you can safely call my defense of bureaucracy "rationalisations".

socialiism is perforce the movement of, by and for the working class, it is a movement of self-liberation. the working class cannot liberate itself unless it gains complete power over social production. if it is subject to a boss class, it is still a dominated and exploited class. therefore the burden of proof is on you to show that your advocacy of "specialist management" is consistent with real working class power.

you've also refused to examine or discuss the analysis of bureaucracy that I provided. instead you throw around the word "bureaucracy" without any clear analysis of what it is. this is shown by the following:

You have not answered any of the difficult questions I have posed about how we can best allocate labour in egalitarian way or how we can serve to fill necessary bureaucratic roles such as distributive, planning, educational, investment, environmental, workplace safety, judicial, or any number of other that clearly can not be filled by simply placing workplaces in the hands of workers.

these functions do not require a bureaucracy, as I've defined bureaucracy. nor did i say that libertarian socialism would simiply consist of workers controlling workplaces. there are decisions that affect others in society such as consumers or people living in neighborhoods near workplaces.

there also needs to be a structure rooted in direct democracy of assemblies in neighborhoods, and delegate congresses for cities and larger regions. these bodies can allow the construction from below of plans with respect to what is requested for production, for consumption. these bodies can have associations of workers who assist in developing plans in various areas. like other worker groups, they would self-manage their own work.

worker organizations can plan there own work. among the things they will be interested in, and can develop in their own planning are enhancements in the workplace or industry in regards to making for greater safety, better health and more worker friendly technology. but these things need to be controlled by the workers in that industry. they can have their own local assemblies, industry wide congresses, and so on.

their accountability to the larger society, i would suggest, should be thru a participatory planning process that allows for interactive working out of a negotiated solution, that is, negotiated with consumers, communities. not imposition of some management elite to rule over the workers. whether the products a group of workers are making are socially worthwhile depends on the demand in society for them, and the costs of production. this is part of their accountability. but thru participatory planning the flow of resources to different production groups...investment...can be determined.

"management accountability" raises the question, "Accountable to who?" "Management" itself implies bosses giving orders to workers. it implies subordination and control of many by a few.

Rowan Duffy

4th May 2011, 11:10

You are imputing arguments to me that I don't have. I am not in any way defending the need for a bureaucratic class - you've made that up entirely by yourself.

I have never claimed that bus drivers are somehow incapable of performing advanced mathematics by nature. Many people will, however, find advanced mathematics to be tedious. Similarly many people will find administrative tasks to be tedious. By not allowing these sorts of tasks to be filled by people who do not find them tedious you will in fact be expanding the pool of undesirable labour.

this means that the existing lack of skills required of workers does not happen because of "human nature" -- it was designed to be this way. in the early 19th century when workers were artisans and farmers they posssesed the relevant technology in their heads. so, why think technology today is "too hard" for workers to learn? That is a grossly class-biased claim on your part.

This is missing the point entirely. The point isn't that technology is too hard for any one person.

A) It's impossible to know everything

Number theory may not be "too hard" for me to learn, but I know very little of it simply because I can't be bothered to spend 10 years learning the ropes at the expense of pursuing my other interests. You are arguing as though it's possible to avoid vantage points by spreading out knowledge. It isn't. We can give people roughly equivalent experience knowledge and vantage points, but it will not be entirely the same.

B) Some things any one person will not enjoy doing while another might.

Are you contending that B is untrue?

and, like i said, you don't know jack shit about what i've done or what i know. it's offensive for you to be making presumptious remarks.

your reasoning skills are subpar. when I was a logic teacher you wouldn't pass with the kind of bullshit you're running here.

Do you not find your statement here a bit ironic? Are you attempting to find a vantage point in your superiour intellectual skills thereby using your class power to sweep away arguments of lesser proles? :)

Really, a logic teacher would point out something fallacious in the reasoning rather than harping on about how things are sub-par. I think as yet, you've merely misrepresented my arguments (strawman) or misunderstood them and additionally you've made several attacks against me personally (ad hominem).

surgery is by definition on others. the surgeon has control over his own work, capiche? so why shouldn't bus drivers have control over their own work?

The surgeon is unlikely to determine the schedules of surgery.

you've also refused to examine or discuss the analysis of bureaucracy that I provided. instead you throw around the word "bureaucracy" without any clear analysis of what it is.

The problems with vantages points and using differential access to process knowledge are real problems. I've not refuted them simply because I do not intend to. What I have done is note that your "analysis of bureaucracy" is weak because it fails to deal with other, very real problems. The need for division of labour, the need for specialisation, and the need for access to specialised knowledge for administrative processes.

these functions do not require a bureaucracy, as I've defined bureaucracy.

And we are back to the crux of the issue. You're using a definition of bureaucracy which is both non-standard, excepting perhaps in some socialists circles, and which through its very definition excludes any positive role which bureaucracy might play. It is not the definition that I've used as I've taken some pain to point out.

I think the basis of this disagreement lies in semantic shift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation#Semantic_shift).

"management accountability" raises the question, "Accountable to who?" "Management" itself implies bosses giving orders to workers. it implies subordination and control of many by a few.

Unfortunately, management is not so clear cut. Decisions which effect the work schedules, work conditions, location etc. will have to be made in assessments of externalities such as mitigating pollution. You simply can not cut it up into little pieces to give to each worker to make it go away.

I've had managers which were useless, slave-drivers and/or totally incompetent. I share every workers distaste for the manager who would cause no harm if they suddenly disappeared to be replaced with a tea-pot. I've also experienced people who performed secretarial functions that were vital and incredibly useful and which have said they enjoy the type of work.

I know for myself that I find it an almost unbearable burden to perform process functions and would much rather be involved in heavy labour if I'm needed in some way to fulfill a social duty. Are my experiences merely a product of my bureaucratic-class interest?

Rowan Duffy

4th May 2011, 19:55

I think the following is a useful essay on dealing with problems of control, specialisation and dangers of permanence and centralisation in necessary bureaucracy (http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/pubotbin/toccer-new?id=burisde.xml&data=/usr/ot/&tag=democracy&part=3&division=div).

Rowan Duffy

5th May 2011, 10:27

I'm curious whether the Inform Candidate, ckaihatsu or syndicat would advocate abolishing the civil service after the revolution. If so, how would these people find productive labour, and what would be used to fill the role that they were occupying? Surely no-one believes that the civil service serves purely a managerial role to keep the working class in its place?

I think the abstractions in the argument especially with respect to the semantics of the word bureaucracy may be obscuring the content of the dispute.

ckaihatsu

5th May 2011, 11:17

I'm curious whether the Inform Candidate, ckaihatsu or syndicat would advocate abolishing the civil service after the revolution.

Yeah, briefly, we'd have to first define what 'civil service' means exactly. Are you thinking in terms of public safety, or maybe governance of some sort?

If it's safety we could take a step back and look at the actual social-physical environment that people are in -- would there be cause for concern over *industrial* implements, as in *occupational* safety? That would be *work* related and could be handled by the respective local workers' collective. If it's more about *residential* safety people could form appropriate networks and agree on certain protocols for getting information around and responding to specific events.

Without any remaining private property to fuss over anymore any and all motivations towards controlling material implements or resources of any kind (beyond one's own personal possessions, of course) would necessarily be socio-political *issues* that could be covered generally by social policy and/or would be brought up into active mass consideration and decision-making.

Any work duties / roles that resulted from mass-approved, standing social policies would have to be appropriated as such, and funded appropriately as (liberated) labor.

If so, how would these people find productive labour,

Same as anyone else, really.

and what would be used to fill the role that they were occupying?

This just loops back into the question of what work roles are being actively called for on a mass (or personal) basis.

Surely no-one believes that the civil service serves purely a managerial role to keep the working class in its place?

Under present-day capital-based social relations it's undeniable that government policy favors the holders of wealth. Working-class interests, like calls for improved wages, benefits, and say-so over working conditions, are inherently counterposed to the interests of capital are thus are not even considered to be under the heading of 'civil service' whatsoever.

[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

http://postimage.org/image/1bygthl38/

syndicat

8th May 2011, 15:26

A) It's impossible to know everything

Number theory may not be "too hard" for me to learn, but I know very little of it simply because I can't be bothered to spend 10 years learning the ropes at the expense of pursuing my other interests. You are arguing as though it's possible to avoid vantage points by spreading out knowledge. It isn't. We can give people roughly equivalent experience knowledge and vantage points, but it will not be entirely the same.

B) Some things any one person will not enjoy doing while another might.

Are you contending that B is untrue?
You seem to be arguing that either we must advocate that there is no specialization and everyone must know everything, or there must be an empowered professional bureaucracy. this is a false dichotomy.

the idea of "balanced jobs" means that conceptual and decision-making tasks and some element of expertise they presuppose is re-integrated with the physical doing of the labor.

it doesn't follow that in a job someone has to know everything about some particular industry or that there can't be specialization. if person A knows about bus drive train design and maintenance and person B knows about customer information systems, and has thus an area of expertise, they will be in a good position for effective participation in decision-making...even tho each specializes in a different area or has different elements of expertise. but with re-integrated labor, each also must do some of the rote/physical labor. this could also be different aspects of it.

and, once again, you've used "bureaucracy" without providing a clear analysis of what it is.

"demarchy" is being promoted by statists like DNZ who don't believe in direct democracy. they want a statist regime but hope, unrealistically, that past failures can be avoided merely by tweaking the method of selection of people who will be in political command of a bureaucracy. this won't work.

what's required instead is subsidiarity that pushes decisions to the extent feasible down to the local assemblies so as to give everyone some element of direct, partiipatory power...a base from which they can control delegates and make proposals that are sent on to broader delegate bodies. Delegates can be controlled by having an easy system of forcing controversial decisions back to the base assemblies for discussion and vote. it's impractical for everything to be so voted, but the people can decide what is important enough to them to force such a discussion and vote.

in regard to "councils", "coops" and the like in Venezuela, it's important to realize these are often merely a clientelist and corporatist scheme. The Chavista regime may use "socialist" rhetoric but it's another populist government based on a charistmatic caudillo...very much in the tradition of Latin American populism, such as the regime of General Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico in the '30s. for example, cleaning coops have been used as a way to convert stable jobs into precarious contracted out jobs.

meanwhile the chavista regime attacks public sector unions...refusing to negotiate or even saying that "unions are incompatible with socialism"...meanwhile with the state bureaucracy very much intact.

Kotze

8th May 2011, 15:55

All your remarks are presented from the position that I support bourgeois electoral democracy - I don't.My remarks are presented from the position that the criticism of demarchy presented here by you and others consists of non sequiturs and making up stuff ("unseen in the modern world - in fact, totally unseen since Middle Antiquity - as a panacea to replace the intuitive form of election").
You'll have to point me to where anywhere demarchy has existed aside from limited local implementation in Classical Athens and the discussions of people on the internet.A specific example from the aughts would be the Citizens' Assemblies on Electoral Reform in British Columbia and Ontario. In general, words like jury or poll should ring a bell.

If the empowering work of planning and decision-making is concentrated in a hierarchy, they will 1. have the power to ensure that the empowering and interesting work is done by them, and 2. the remainder of the workforce will find themselves forced into rote labor.Nobody denies that concentrating all decision power in the hands of a few will mean that there will be... a few holding all decision power and that's a bad thing. Division of labour has to do with conserving power, nobody denies that, and compartmentalization of work shouldn't be done entirely based on what immediate increases in physical output suggest, given how awful it is to always to do the same rote work. Again, I don't see anyone denying this. Entireley abolishing division of labour is unworkable, as you know. Even if all people had the same talents and interests it would be asinine to give everybody the same task mix, because one gets better at tasks through practice.

What I don't see in what you have written is even trying to set apart what really are the core decisions that have to be shared to avoid the rise of a new ruling class. I think inside the core are "hiring" and remuneration. A working group should not have an absolute right to block somebody from working at "their" plant (otherwise it would be truly theirs), minimum and maximum income limits that apply to any position in the economy economy should be set by voting, and pay bonus decisions at the individual plant could be done by those working there via a proportional voting scheme (meaning a minority with a distinct opinion doesn't control nothing of that fund, but something in proportion to its size).

Die Neue Zeit

8th May 2011, 16:18

"demarchy" is being promoted by statists like DNZ who don't believe in direct democracy. they want a statist regime but hope, unrealistically, that past failures can be avoided merely by tweaking the method of selection of people who will be in political command of a bureaucracy. this won't work.

"Direct democracy" is characterized usually by plebiscites. Random selection is the means of having the most direct access to execution of plebisicite and other decisions.

Nomenclatures (position lists) and job slots aren't exactly "failures" in and of themselves.

fishontuesday

8th May 2011, 16:25

I think the state should support successful cooperatives such as Twin Oaks products, Upstate Farms, Ocean Spray, etc.

Rowan Duffy

8th May 2011, 16:48

the idea of "balanced jobs" means that conceptual and decision-making tasks and some element of expertise they presuppose is re-integrated with the physical doing of the labor.

How will this work with, for instance, the assessment of externalities? How will these balanced jobs be arranged? Is the bureaucracy necessarily tied to a particular manual labour? I think this is part of the confusion that a simplistic self-management view encourages.

In fact the assessment of externalities may be associated with some sorts of manual labour, janitorial and other, but it may not be so balanced as the entire amount of undesirable labour in society. Introducing more undesirable labour to the job-complex of someone in the socialist version of the EPA wouldn't further reduce the necessity of this purely bureaucratic task of assessment of externalities itself. Therefor this bureaucracy is necessary - and not directly tied to any (large amount of) specific manual labour. How does the simple elimination of management and balanced job complexes deal with this problem?

These abstractions about self-management need to be taken down to the concrete so we can better see what they should mean in practice.

"demarchy" is being promoted by statists like DNZ who don't believe in direct democracy. they want a statist regime but hope, unrealistically, that past failures can be avoided merely by tweaking the method of selection of people who will be in political command of a bureaucracy. this won't work.

"Demarchy" is also being pushed by anti-statists. Sortition is a mechanism for ensuring fairness and means for promoting a selection process that is more likely to favour the working class and avoid the creation of centres of power in politics that revolve around the bourgeoisie.

Demarchy is no panacea, but it does have a mechanism that is sufficiently different from electoralism that its less likely to reproduce the same sorts of problems. Workers councils are not somehow immune to the sorts of processes which tend to elevate the privileged into power through elections, nor the tendency to reinforce the control of the necessary bureaucratic functions of any movement - including workers councils, by a clique.

syndicat

8th May 2011, 18:02

What I don't see in what you have written is even trying to set apart what really are the core decisions that have to be shared to avoid the rise of a new ruling class. I think inside the core are "hiring" and remuneration. A working group should not have an absolute right to block somebody from working at "their" plant (otherwise it would be truly theirs), minimum and maximum income limits that apply to any position in the economy economy should be set by voting, and pay bonus decisions at the individual plant could be done by those working there via a proportional voting scheme (meaning a minority with a distinct opinion doesn't control nothing of that fund, but something in proportion to its size). these two things are entirely consistent with a dominating, exploiting class. this was shown by fake "self-management" in Yugoslavia where the workers councils had these 2 powers....but workers were entirely subordinate to a class of managers and high-end professionals.

what you ignore is that having control over your own work activity is critical, and this includes control over the planning of the work activity, the decisions about how tasks are distributed and work flows organized.

syndicat

8th May 2011, 18:09

How will this work with, for instance, the assessment of externalities? Externalities occur where a group is denied control over decisions that significantly impact them, and thus human costs can be dumped on them. This happens in work where stress and overwork and unsafe technology can be imposed on the workforce because they do not control these decisions. For example, farm workers being exposed to pesticides.

Pollution can be imposed on communities, such as toxic pollution from refineries or air pollution from coal powered electric power plants because the population lack control over who has access to the enviro commons. This is where the importance of the neighborhood assemblies comes into play. This residence-based system of direct democracy is needed so that pollutants can be banned, or, if there isn't yet the technical meas to obtain the needed benefits from production without allowing some of it, then costs can be imposed on the production organizations, via the participatory planning process, to force them to internalize the costs and motivate the search for less polluting methods.

In fact the assessment of externalities may be associated with some sorts of manual labour, janitorial and other, but it may not be so balanced as the entire amount of undesirable labour in society. Introducing more undesirable labour to the job-complex of someone in the socialist version of the EPA wouldn't further reduce the necessity of this purely bureaucratic task of assessment of externalities itself. Therefor this bureaucracy is necessary - and not directly tied to any (large amount of) specific manual labour. How does the simple elimination of management and balanced job complexes deal with this problem?
EPA has no way whatever to determine the actual social cost of any pollutant. That's because it requires decisions by the people impacted which will provide info about how strongly they desire to eliminate certain pollutants or their effects. In fact EPA and similar bureaucracies merely provide cover for capitalist industry by creating an appearance of public protection.

Relevant technical inputs enter the picture only where we examine the technical alternatives for elimination of a pollutant, or investigate the real health effects caused by it, and so on. And here we can have self-managed R&D organizations as part of self-managed worker organizations performing this role. No statist, managerialist bureaucracy required. and these orgs act in an advisory capacity to relevant democratic bodies, such as neighborhood assemblies, city wide congresses, self-managed production orgs.

"Demarchy" is promoted by people who are preoccupied with how the leaders who make the decsions are selected...and thus they are not concerned to avoid concentration of decisions into the hands of "leaders"

RED DAVE

8th May 2011, 18:23

"Direct democracy" is characterized usually by plebiscites.The socialist conception of direct democracy involves workers control of industry and society from the bottom up. I find little role for plebiscites in such a system, which assumes a bureaucratic state hovering over society.

You don't get it, do you.

RED DAVE

syndicat

8th May 2011, 18:28

DNZ:
"Direct democracy" is characterized usually by plebiscites.as usual, you don't know what you're talking about. by "direct democracy", i, like libertarian socialists in general, mean that there are base assemblies, in workplaces and neighborhoods, and these don't just vote. they have discussions, people can make proposals, amendments, and they socially interact and come to a vote once they've discussed the matter and need to make a decision in a situation where there is some disagreement. so authentic direct democracy involves collective deliberation and decision-making in a face-to-face context. as dave points out, it's part of the direct control exercized by the working class in a collective way.

Rowan Duffy

8th May 2011, 18:58

Externalities occur where a group is denied control over decisions that significantly impact them, and thus human costs can be dumped on them. This happens in work where stress and overwork and unsafe technology can be imposed on the workforce because they do not control these decisions. For example, farm workers being exposed to pesticides.

Farm workers can't evaluate the impact of exposure to pesticides by virtue of being farm workers. This requires specialised chemical and medical knowledge, clinical research and evaluation and finally deliberation with the farm workers and society in general.

EPA has no way whatever to determine the actual social cost of any pollutant. That's because it requires decisions by the people impacted which will provide info about how strongly they desire to eliminate certain pollutants or their effects. In fact EPA and similar bureaucracies merely provide cover for capitalist industry by creating an appearance of public protection.

I think this exaggerates the access to special knowledge held by the public. While it's certainly true that the public is the only one that should decide which trade-offs in terms of cost are acceptable, it is necessary to have a technical bureaucratic organisation like the EPA to translate something like pollutants into measures that are sensible for the public to evaluate.

A really good example is radiation. People treat radiation as though it's something that is clearly so damaging in any measure that it's obvious immediately that we should eliminate all of it at any cost.

If instead we present things in terms of the likely probability of a lost hour of life, things like going out in a canoe for an hour or drinking a half a bottle of wine could look vastly worse than some particular radiation exposure. In this case it's absolutely necessary that experts are able to translate this information into a form where people can effectively reason about the trade-offs.

Relevant technical inputs enter the picture only where we examine the technical alternatives for elimination of a pollutant, or investigate the real health effects caused by it, and so on. And here we can have self-managed R&D organizations as part of self-managed worker organizations performing this role.

I disagree with this. I think it enters in prior-to, during, and after the evaluation for the reasons presented above. It has to happen in dialog and in discourse and with an eye to providing everyone involved with reasonable power over the situation. It is not however possible to do it without actively promoting organisations which specialise in the application of this knowledge.

"Demarchy" is promoted by people who are preoccupied with how the leaders who make the decsions are selected...and thus they are not concerned to avoid concentration of decisions into the hands of "leaders"

This is a very unfair characterisation.

Not all decisions can always be made by all people. Not even all decisions that impact anyone in particular can be decided by those people. Therefor some representative sampling is the most fair way to cope with it.

To pretend that we can avoid it through voting - either for delegates (which is likely to be more oligarchic for structural reasons - but may be necessary or desirable in some circumstances) or by way of referendum - which is strictly impossible on all issues - is to have faith in something impossible to implement.

I'm impacted by the manufacturing process of my razor-blades but it would be madness to force me to vote on it as well as the thousands of other products that I use daily without thinking about it.

Out of curiousity, is the jury selection process merely supported by those interested in keeping "leaders". Would you propose a delegated system? You don't suggest we could put each trial in front of the entire population to vote on do you?

Sortition is a reasonable approach to selection of juries - and a democratic one at that. I think suggesting the use of sortition be expanded to other areas in which decisions need to be made fairly, but which can not by the nature of the raw numbers, be placed in the hand of the entire population is hardly in support of "leadership".

Jose Gracchus

8th May 2011, 20:02

Oh God. The random pickers come out of the woodwork. :rolleyes:

ckaihatsu

8th May 2011, 20:43

Relevant technical inputs enter the picture only where we examine the technical alternatives for elimination of a pollutant, or investigate the real health effects caused by it, and so on. And here we can have self-managed R&D organizations as part of self-managed worker organizations performing this role.

I disagree with this. I think it enters in prior-to, during, and after the evaluation for the reasons presented above. It has to happen in dialog and in discourse and with an eye to providing everyone involved with reasonable power over the situation. It is not however possible to do it without actively promoting organisations which specialise in the application of this knowledge.

The entire topic of discussion boils down to this point of exchange since it deals with the crux of what a 'bureaucracy' is (how it's defined), especially in relation to workers collectives.

It really looks like hair-splitting to say that there have to be "organizations which specialize in the application of [environmental] knowledge" *instead of* "self-managed R&D organizations as part of self-managed worker organizations performing this role". Whatever the specialty, there's no reason to say that collectively self-liberated liberated laborers could not organically form their own groupings and interact in professional ways (as like academia, for example) in the interests of a post-capitalist public.

In fact the assessment of externalities may be associated with some sorts of manual labour, janitorial and other, but it may not be so balanced as the entire amount of undesirable labour in society. Introducing more undesirable labour to the job-complex of someone in the socialist version of the EPA wouldn't further reduce the necessity of this purely bureaucratic task of assessment of externalities itself. Therefor this bureaucracy is necessary - and not directly tied to any (large amount of) specific manual labour. How does the simple elimination of management and balanced job complexes deal with this problem?

These abstractions about self-management need to be taken down to the concrete so we can better see what they should mean in practice.

'Externalities' only exist because of the (extraneous) dichotomy that exists between the public as a whole, and the elitist interests of privilege, whether by wealth and/or by the state.

Revolution is *needed* so as to flatten the topography of favoritism in these matters -- this entire *category* of 'externalities' could be imploded and made obsolescent with the rise of self-determining workers collectives that directly control humanity's own efforts and productivity, as with the use of natural resources. 'Externalities' should just be an aspect of overall workers' collective co-administration -- if everything is "internal" then nothing is "external".

In my model, posted at post #39, I posit a post-capitalist politics by self-selection, with the policy backers themselves then becoming politically responsible for implementation upon receiving a priority of mass approval:

communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

This is an 8-1/2" x 40" wide table that describes a communist-type political / economic model using three rows and six descriptive columns. The three rows are surplus-value-to-overhead, no surplus, and surplus-value-to-pleasure. The six columns are ownership / control, associated material values, determination of material values, material function, infrastructure / overhead, and propagation.

http://postimage.org/image/35sw8csv8/

Infrastructure / overhead

communist administration -- Distinct from the general political culture each project or production run will include a provision for an associated administrative component as an integral part of its total policy package -- a selected policy's proponents will be politically responsible for overseeing its implementation according to the policy's provisions

Rowan Duffy

8th May 2011, 21:05

ckaihatsu

8th May 2011, 21:28

'Externalities' only exist because of the (extraneous) dichotomy that exists between the public as a whole, and the elitist interests of privilege, whether by wealth and/or by the state.

That's just not true. Production creates externalities with or without capitalism.

No, this is idealism -- you're incorrectly contending that 'externalities' are *inherent* to production, like a force of nature like heat.

Rather, 'externalities' is a *social* creation, one that only exists according to the nature of the accounting of materials used, including monetary valuations and risk assessments.

The mitigation or elimination of these externalities or even recognising that these externalities exist requires technical assessment.

As an example, CO2 gets produced by burning natural gas whether it is done by communists or capitalists. It absolutely doesn't matter. Realising that this is a problem requires scientists to assess the likely repercussions.

I don't see any disagreements here on the *technical* need for collecting information and building knowledge for deciding on appropriate productive activities.

The slippage here has to do with the *social organization* of how this technical aspect is achieved. It's fair to say now that you're decidedly pro-bureaucratic-caste and *not* worker-collectivist.

'Externalities' should just be an aspect of overall workers' collective co-administration -- if everything is "internal" then nothing is "external".

Die Neue Zeit

8th May 2011, 22:51

The socialist conception of direct democracy involves workers control of industry and society from the bottom up. I find little role for plebiscites in such a system, which assumes a bureaucratic state hovering over society.

You don't get it, do you.

RED DAVE

"Direct democracy" /= delegative democracy /= (statistically) representative democracy /= broad oligarchy

The first, again, is characterized usually by plebiscites. The second is characterized by recall on a whim, even if the delegates followed their respective mandates to the letter from below (so this includes the fulfillment of, say, mob prejudices against funky delegate hairstyles). The third is characterized by random selection (raw, stratified, etc.) and more judgmental instances of recall (like for abuse of office).

The fourth is characterized by elections as the method of selection.

DNZ:as usual, you don't know what you're talking about. by "direct democracy", i, like libertarian socialists in general, mean that there are base assemblies, in workplaces and neighborhoods, and these don't just vote. they have discussions, people can make proposals, amendments, and they socially interact and come to a vote once they've discussed the matter and need to make a decision in a situation where there is some disagreement. so authentic direct democracy involves collective deliberation and decision-making in a face-to-face context. as dave points out, it's part of the direct control exercized by the working class in a collective way.

You're confusing deliberative democracy with direct democracy.

"Demarchy" is also being pushed by anti-statists. Sortition is a mechanism for ensuring fairness and means for promoting a selection process that is more likely to favour the working class and avoid the creation of centres of power in politics that revolve around the bourgeoisie.

Demarchy is no panacea, but it does have a mechanism that is sufficiently different from electoralism that its less likely to reproduce the same sorts of problems. Workers councils are not somehow immune to the sorts of processes which tend to elevate the privileged into power through elections, nor the tendency to reinforce the control of the necessary bureaucratic functions of any movement - including workers councils, by a clique.

Comrades, I wrote a partial self-criticism of random selection panaceas, especially stratified sampling panaceas, in my programmatic work:

As a class, coordinators prefer scientific management and social engineering. However, since these would-be technocrats share the same ownership relationship to the means of (societal) production as the proletariat, this class tends to be not so vocal about it, and in fact qualified random selections can partially realize their preferences.

So you have elections favouring the propertied classes (bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie), and random selections favouring the non-propertied classes (workers and "aristoi" coordinators).

Oh God. The random pickers come out of the woodwork. :rolleyes:

I think they we should be called randomers, thank you very much.

Randomers, not demarchists?

ckaihatsu

8th May 2011, 23:46

As a class, coordinators prefer scientific management and social engineering.

Yes, but scientific developments are a *creative* process that involves subjective discretion for "steering", not unlike artistic endeavors. While many *routine* scientific processes may be based in unimpeachable logical steps, the overall policy *direction* cannot be decided on in any objective non-partisan way.

However, since these would-be technocrats share the same ownership relationship to the means of (societal) production as the proletariat,

We all know that one's relationship to the means of mass production is measured using the yardstick of *capital* ownership, with any other considerations being *secondary* to that.

Technicians are considered to be in a 'skilled labor' bureaucratic role and are part of the "middle class" -- which is *not* synonymous with the proletariat. Members of the "middle class" often find individualistic rewards through limited wealth ownership and/or political alignments with *bourgeois* policy positions, but may identify themselves more with the working class, usually depending on overall economic conditions.

this class tends to be not so vocal about it, and in fact qualified random selections can partially realize their preferences.

I agree with whoever said that this is merely an opinion about the technicalities of political process, or words to that effect. The preferences of the middle class should *not* be taken as a guide for working-class-minded activity in its own interests.

So you have elections favouring the propertied classes (bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie), and random selections favouring the non-propertied classes (workers and "aristoi" coordinators).

This is quite a stretch to conflate process technicalities with distinctly different modes of political social organization.

Rowan Duffy

8th May 2011, 23:58

Randomers, not demarchists?

It was a, perhaps poor, attempt at humor. There wasn't much of content to respond to.

syndicat

9th May 2011, 02:19

DNZ:
You're confusing deliberative democracy with direct democracy.

there can't be a direct democracy that isn't deliberative. the main historical advocates for rebuilding society around direct democracy are libertarian socialists. so you're saying we don't know what we're talking about even tho we invented and promoted the concept for over a hundred years? you're an idiot.

Die Neue Zeit

9th May 2011, 02:26

Yes, but scientific developments are a *creative* process that involves subjective discretion for "steering", not unlike artistic endeavors. While many *routine* scientific processes may be based in unimpeachable logical steps, the overall policy *direction* cannot be decided on in any objective non-partisan way.

"Scientific Management" is in reference to regimental stuff like Taylorism and other managerial fancies.

We all know that one's relationship to the means of mass production is measured using the yardstick of *capital* ownership, with any other considerations being *secondary* to that.

Capital ownership is only one "yardstick" in the production process.

Technicians are considered to be in a 'skilled labor' bureaucratic role and are part of the "middle class" -- which is *not* synonymous with the proletariat. Members of the "middle class" often find individualistic rewards through limited wealth ownership and/or political alignments with *bourgeois* policy positions, but may identify themselves more with the working class, usually depending on overall economic conditions.

Most academic Marxist definitions of the "middle class" are incoherent, save for those that can be counted on one hand that are based on the production process. These overcome the new set of incoherencies posed by overemphasizing the coordinator class as the "new middle class."

DNZ:

there can't be a direct democracy that isn't deliberative. the main historical advocates for rebuilding society around direct democracy are libertarian socialists. so you're saying we don't know what we're talking about even tho we invented and promoted the concept for over a hundred years? you're an idiot.

The wiki on Deliberative Democracy doesn't mention socialist contributions. Even liberals like John Rawls are mentioned.

BTW, I know my provocative History thread "Participatory Economics: Was Khrushchev a pareconist?" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/participatory-economics-khrushchev-t150768/index.html) old, but one thing I forgot to mention in addition to the sovnarkhozy was the history of "control" in the Soviet era, from TsKK-RKI ("Rabkrin") to parallel State Control and (internal) Party Control to combined Party-State Control (under Khrushchev and the ambitious Shelepin ;) ) to parallel "People's Control" and (internal) Party Control.

syndicat

9th May 2011, 02:40

Farm workers can't evaluate the impact of exposure to pesticides by virtue of being farm workers. This requires specialised chemical and medical knowledge, clinical research and evaluation and finally deliberation with the farm workers and society in general.

As with most of your comments, you take for granted the existing distribution of knowledge and expertise as a given...as if it were due to human nature, not capitalist social organization. And you call yourself a "socialist"?

I would assume that under self-managed socialism, agriculture becomes an integrated affair of highly trained workers in agromony, pest management, and the various issues that confront that industry.

But notice that in your reply you're changing the subject. The question of how one evaluates "externalities" is not the same as technical knowledge about abatement or consequences of use of particular technical means.

"Externality" was invented by bourgeious economists to refer to costs/benefits that do not accrue to buyer and seller in a transaction. It would be better to understand this as cost-shifting behavior. An oil refinery generates huge amounts of toxic pollution. It may dump this onto the working class neighborhood nearby. They are not required to test the consequences or compensate the neighbors for harm.

Within capitalism the state arrogates the right to allow access to the enviro commons, and does so in order to allow capitalist firms to freely use the air and water as sewers, dumping uncompensated costs onto others.

This happens because capitalism is a system of social domination. Capitalist firms can "externalize" costs onto workers because they assume the workers are "fully compensated" by the wage bargain...ignoring the huge structural inequality we call the class system. Similarly, they can also dump costs onto neighbors of their plants...externalizing costs onto them.

The only way to know what the costs are would be for the people being harmed to be able to prevent it. Then they would be in a position to demand an appropriate compensation. And thus production orgs would have to internalize their costs. For example, a community might ban a pollutant altogether or allow a certain amount in exchange for benefits provided to their community.

Only if the community had this power to prevent the pollution onto them would the institutions exist that could actually capture (i.e. measure) a real social cost.

And if workers controlled industries, such as agriculture, they would be in a position to prevent use of techniques such as pesticides that would harm them.

Now, of course, it's true that information has to be available about what the likely health impacts would be of various kinds of chemical treatments or approaches. But, 1. the workers could train many of their people in this if they controlled the industry, 2. would be in a position to ensure that these studies are done if they controlled the industry, and 3. could then make a decision about what methods to allow based on that information. But as long as they do not have the power to prevent the pollution, the poeple who do control the industry will be likely to continue to exteranalize costs onto them

I think this exaggerates the access to special knowledge held by the public. While it's certainly true that the public is the only one that should decide which trade-offs in terms of cost are acceptable, it is necessary to have a technical bureaucratic organisation like the EPA to translate something like pollutants into measures that are sensible for the public to evaluate.

that's a perfect example of your confusion. all the "special knowledge" in the world can't deliver an estimate of social costs. that's because costs are costs to humans. and something is a cost to them based on how much they don't want it. something is a benefit to them based on how much they want it. to put this in terms from neo-classical economics, costs are about relative preferences.

now of course people need information about the consequences of some action or technique X to know how much they prefer or don't prefer it. you're confusing this issue of information with the question of the cost itself. The cost is about the actual pain, harm, disutility to people.

and you also assume without argument that distribution of expertise and "special knowledge" that exists is somehow not due to capitalism and over a hundred years of taylorism, class differences in education and many other things, but is simply a matter of "nature." in other words, you assume a bourgeois point of view.

syndicat

9th May 2011, 02:44

The wiki on Deliberative Democracy doesn't mention socialist contributions. Even liberals like John Rawls are mentioned.

and does this wiki talk about worker and neighborhood assemblies as having power at the base, as being the ultimate control in society? if not it's not "direct democracy" as libertarian socialists have advocated it...and as i just laid it out before. and in that case it logically follows you were wrong when you said i was talking about "deliberative democracy" not "direct democracy." in other words, you can't have it both ways. In fact direct democracy as understood by libertarian socialists is deliberative, and necessarily so. if liberal sources don't talk about direct democratic control of workplaces and direct governance, as understood by libertarian socialists as "deliberative demoracy" who gives a fuck?

ckaihatsu

9th May 2011, 05:00

"Scientific Management" is in reference to regimental stuff like Taylorism and other managerial fancies.

Okay.

However, since these would-be technocrats share the same ownership relationship to the means of (societal) production as the proletariat,

We all know that one's relationship to the means of mass production is measured using the yardstick of *capital* ownership, with any other considerations being *secondary* to that.

Technicians are considered to be in a 'skilled labor' bureaucratic role and are part of the "middle class" -- which is *not* synonymous with the proletariat. Members of the "middle class" often find individualistic rewards through limited wealth ownership and/or political alignments with *bourgeois* policy positions, but may identify themselves more with the working class, usually depending on overall economic conditions.

Capital ownership is only one "yardstick" in the production process.

You weren't talking about the production process -- you were talking about technicians' objective relationship to the means of mass production.

Most academic Marxist definitions of the "middle class" are incoherent, save for those that can be counted on one hand that are based on the production process. These overcome the new set of incoherencies posed by overemphasizing the coordinator class as the "new middle class."

This is the definition I'm using:

[A] 'skilled labor' bureaucratic role [is] part of the "middle class" -- which is *not* synonymous with the proletariat. Members of the "middle class" often find individualistic rewards through limited wealth ownership and/or political alignments with *bourgeois* policy positions, but may identify themselves more with the working class, usually depending on overall economic conditions.

Die Neue Zeit

9th May 2011, 05:58

You weren't talking about the production process -- you were talking about technicians' objective relationship to the means of mass production.

My definition is based on what I wrote in Chapter 2 of my older pamphlet, the CSR chapter on class relations (and you have this). Workers and coordinators share the same ownership relationship to the means of (societal) production as the proletariat. Coordinators are not the same as senior management or massive capital fund managers who themselves don't own the MOP like multi-millionaire capitalists. The latter two have more in common with each other than with coordinators, since they are in fact bourgeois (emphasis on the latter as a modern phenomenon).

In the production process as a whole, however, there are productive workers (proletariat) and unproductive labour (proletarii), and there are also productive coordinators and unproductive ones (depending on the nature of their work, so "civil service" managers are most likely unproductive coordinators). Each of these four distinctions constitutes a separate class.

ckaihatsu

9th May 2011, 06:07

My definition is based on what I wrote in Chapter 2 of my older pamphlet, the CSR chapter on class relations (and you have this). Workers and coordinators share the same ownership relationship to the means of (societal) production as the proletariat. Coordinators are not the same as senior management or massive capital fund managers who themselves don't own the MOP like multi-millionaire capitalists. The latter two have more in common with each other than with coordinators, since they are in fact bourgeois (emphasis on the latter as a modern phenomenon).

Okay, agreed.

In the production process as a whole, however, there are productive workers (proletariat) and unproductive labour (proletarii), and there are also productive coordinators and unproductive ones (depending on the nature of their work, so "civil service" managers are most likely unproductive coordinators). Each of these four distinctions constitutes a separate class.

What is the extent to which the service sector has been closely examined in Marxist theory?

I've generally seen two schools of thought on the subject: one being that service workers aren't "real proletarians" because they don't meet some level of physical "productivity" when compared to the manufacturing sector, and the other saying that of course they're "real proletarians" because they have to sell their labor for wages to survive.

I guess I don't find either of these answers completely satisfying. Aren't service workers essentially the end of the chain of production? For example, without a driver, a taxi cab is just a car. I'll admit that I haven't read Das Kapital three times in the original German, but isn't the cab driver creating both use-value and surplus value? I hope the microcosm is coming across here.

Obviously no idea's original; I'm just curious as to whether a) I'm stating the obvious, and/or b) I'm completely wrong and misinterpreting Marx's economics, a field that has never been my strong suit.

Service sector workers are, of course, part of the working class. The definition of "working class" simply means or embraces anyone who is obliged by economic circumstances to sell their labour power to an employer i.e. they dont possess sufficient capital to live upon

What you are alluding to is unproductive labour - labour which does not produce surplus value (not simply use value) but is, rather, paid out of surplus value. This is not to be confused with the concept of socially useless value which looks at what a person does from the perspective of whether or not it actually contributes anything to human welfare and wellbeing

Some jobs in capitalism can be unproductive and yet be socially useful e.g a teacher employed in a comprehensive school

Some jobs in capitalism can be productive but socially useless e.g. an arms manufacturer

Some jobs in capitalism can be both unproductive and socially useless e.g. banking

The productive/unproductive dichotomy is useful to exame the internal dynamics of capitalism itself since it is all about weath transfers within the capitalist system itself which is usually effected through taxation and so is a burden on the surplus-value producing sector of the economy. This is why modern states are faced with a dillemma - they need an unproductive sector for the efficient functioning of capitalism but they have to balance this against the need for businesses to generate a sufficient profit from which the state acquires its revenues via taxation

The socially useful/socially useless dichotomy is useful for comparing the productive potential of a non-market moneyless future socialist economy with capitalism. Most of the work done in the formal sector of the capitalist economy today is socially useless - meaning that we can more than double the available manpower and resources for socially useful work in socialism. That means socialism would be a vastly more efficient arrangement than capitalism ever could be.

Most of capitalism's necessary (to capitalism, that is) but socially useless labour e.g. banking, insurance, tax collectors, pay departments etc etc is located in the services sector and this, I suggest, is where the real significance of the service sector lies from a revolutionary socialist standpoint. It signifies the enormous potential of a future socialist society to meet our real needs

Rowan Duffy

9th May 2011, 08:38

ckaihatsu

9th May 2011, 09:07

A) Not every enterprise can develop the expertise for every technical task confronting them. You simply can not spread knowledge out like butter on toast. There is too much of it for everyone to have all of it.

We've already experienced and are living in the Information Revolution, so any issues that can be solved with open, published, transparent information shouldn't be too difficult to do -- I conceptualize a system of (major) asset co-administration being done on Wikipedia-like wiki pages, with the same process used by a liberated labor for running its factories collectively as we see today in determining what information is most appropriate for any given Wikipedia page.

B) Externalities of production may have been recognised by bourgeois economists, but then so was the LTV. The origin is not particularly important. The fact is that production necessarily produces side-effects.

Neither of these points is bourgeois.

A proletarian revolution that usurps bourgeois rule can put laborers directly in control of a *collectively conscious* planned economy. As things are now there is far too much -- "externalities" -- left out of the standard decision-making process. Sure, a collectivized process will not be "perfect" in the sense of foreseeing all possible implications of every action, but at least it will be structurally *inclusive* of mass concerns and participation, and not led by the interests of the profit motive.

Rowan Duffy

9th May 2011, 09:37

But notice that in your reply you're changing the subject. The question of how one evaluates "externalities" is not the same as technical knowledge about abatement or consequences of use of particular technical means.

I didn't change the subject. I gave you an example of CO2 which requires evaluation to even *find* the externality, it requires assessment of the risks, and it requires abatement or mitigation. That is before, during after, so you're wrong here.

The only way to know what the costs are would be for the people being harmed to be able to prevent it.

No, the only way to prevent the costs is for people who are being harmed to have some power over the situation. This fact doesn't deal with any of the technical considerations, including knowing what the costs are as I've demonstrated with CO2 but which could be demonstrated with any number of toxins.

that's a perfect example of your confusion. all the "special knowledge" in the world can't deliver an estimate of social costs. that's because costs are costs to humans. and something is a cost to them based on how much they don't want it. something is a benefit to them based on how much they want it. to put this in terms from neo-classical economics, costs are about relative preferences.

It's not my confusion. All the special knowledge in the world can't by itself deliver an estimate of costs. It is, however, a necessary component, just as the advice of a doctor is necessary in evaluating the risks of some disease - something which you are unqualified to do.

and you also assume without argument that distribution of expertise and "special knowledge" that exists is somehow not due to capitalism and over a hundred years of taylorism, class differences in education and many other things, but is simply a matter of "nature." in other words, you assume a bourgeois point of view.

I have given you examples: number theory with mathematics and toxicology within medicine. You're completely deluded if you think that you can know even one of these subfields completely yourself, much less know a sufficient amount about every subfield. It amounts to an amazing hubris to think it is possible and demonstrates a fantastic ignorance on your part.

The particular character of the distribution of knowledge is impacted strongly by capitalism. It doesn't change the fact that some distribution is necessary and all knowledge can not be held by all. In my own field even people who have been doing it for 40 years do not understand everything. It's a fact that has nothing to do with capitalism.

syndicat

9th May 2011, 17:45

A) Not every enterprise can develop the expertise for every technical task confronting them. You simply can not spread knowledge out like butter on toast. There is too much of it for everyone to have all of it.

Farm workers can be involved with a greater amount of technical or administrative tasks. That doesn't mean that every farm worker is going to become an expert on the toxicology of pesticides.

B) Externalities of production may have been recognised by bourgeois economists, but then so was the LTV. The origin is not particularly important. The fact is that production necessarily produces side-effects.

Neither of these points is bourgeois. I'm not going to respond to any more aspersions that I'm a failed socialist until these complications are dealt with seriously.

i can't decide whether you're simply dishonest or have poor reading comprehension or are thick-headed...or are simply desperate to defend your privileged position or a privileged position you aspire to. Once again you try to run the same fallacy of false dichotomy that I've refuted several times. I said, to repeat, that re-integration of labor -- re-integration of expertise, concpetualization and decision-making with the physical doing of the work -- does NOT require a worker to know everything or have all the kinds of expertise pertinent to operation of some industry. It only requires that they have SOME area of expertise, some area of skill.

The growers who are descendants usually of the original family farmers often send their kids to ag school to learn about a variety of topics, including financial management, agronomy, plants, chemistry and so on.

With an agricultural operation run collectively by the farm workers, they don't need to try to have one person with all the knowledge, nor does each of them have to have all the knowledge. Their children can be educated to know the various areas of expertise...integrated pest managment (AKA organic farming...we need to get away from pesticide, herbicides and petro chem fertilizers), animal husbandry, seeds, equipment design and maintenance, etc. The point is that all the workers would have significant skills, expertise, so they are able to participate effectively in a collectively managed operation.

As Harry Braverman put it, what's needed is to return to craft level of skill for all workers, but on a new level, founded on science-based worker education.

You are frightened by this idea because it would mean elimination of the privileged status of the professional/managerial class.

RED DAVE

9th May 2011, 18:09

"Direct democracy" /= delegative democracy /= (statistically) representative democracy /= broad oligarchySomeone needs to learn some math.

Revolutionary democracy is the constant participation of workers in the day-to-day running of society from the workplace level upwards. It has little or nothing to do with your bureaucratic fantasies. The missing element in all your work is consciousness.

You don't get that so your entire opus is based on a fear if democracy.

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

9th May 2011, 18:14

The particular character of the distribution of knowledge is impacted strongly by capitalism. It doesn't change the fact that some distribution is necessary and all knowledge can not be held by all. In my own field even people who have been doing it for 40 years do not understand everything. It's a fact that has nothing to do with capitalism.You sound like the Technocracy crew whose asses we have been kicking around here lately. They make a fetish of technique and knowledge and so, apparently, do you.

The fundamental flaw of the capitalist mode with regard to technique and knowledge is the alienation of these from the point of production. The possessors of knowledge and masters of technique, instead of being integrated democratically into production are removed from it. The engineer's white shirt, so he can show s/he doesn't get dirty, is proverbial. And engineer, originally, was merely a chief or guiding worker. The usage is till used in train engineers.

RED DAVE

Zederbaum

9th May 2011, 18:16

i can't decide whether you're simply dishonest or have poor reading comprehension or are thick-headed...or are simply desperate to defend your privileged position or a privileged position you aspire to.
Why allow your psychological musings, which, after all, only lead to indecision to manifest itself as abuse in a political debate?

You are frightened by this idea because it would mean elimination of the privileged status of the professional/managerial class.Do try and keep your psychobabble to yourself.

Tim Finnegan

9th May 2011, 18:35

In the production process as a whole, however, there are productive workers (proletariat) and unproductive labour (proletarii), and there are also productive coordinators and unproductive ones (depending on the nature of their work, so "civil service" managers are most likely unproductive coordinators). Each of these four distinctions constitutes a separate class.
Out of interest, what is the distinction between "productive" and "unproductive" labour? I'm assuming that it's something more essential than a value judgement of the output.

syndicat

9th May 2011, 19:44

The particular character of the distribution of knowledge is impacted strongly by capitalism. It doesn't change the fact that some distribution is necessary and all knowledge can not be held by all.

same fallacy of false dichotomy. knowledge "can't be held by all" because there's too much to know. that's trivially true. it does NOT follow that a bureaucratic hierarchy is required, with knowledge & expertise concentrated into the hands/headsof a few.

that's because it's quite possible to have some of the expertise in the heads/hands of each worker, to such a degree that it is distributed and not focused on a minority, as it is in capitalism and bureaucratic pseudo-socialism.

skill, expertise is the practical knowledge that requires a relatively long period of training/education/apprenticeship. there's no reason that this can't be the situation of all workers. but it does NOT follow that each and every one would have to have the same knowledge.

moreover, integrating the practical skill of doing the work with a science-based education can overcome one of the inefficiencies that is caused by the present concentration of knowledge into the heads of a few.

When i worked in a particular engineering department at a large manufacturing company, one of the problems was that most of the engineers...especially the younger ones hired from college...had zip practical experience with the kinds of production situations where the product would be used. they had only a theoretical knowledge of the product. i knew skilled workers who had a much better grasp of the product because they were users of it in a production environment. this split leads to inferior products.

Die Neue Zeit

10th May 2011, 02:26

Out of interest, what is the distinction between "productive" and "unproductive" labour? I'm assuming that it's something more essential than a value judgement of the output.

Here's an interesting paper on the subject:

http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/unprod3b.pdf

Rowan Duffy

10th May 2011, 09:59

same fallacy of false dichotomy. knowledge "can't be held by all" because there's too much to know. that's trivially true. it does NOT follow that a bureaucratic hierarchy is required, with knowledge & expertise concentrated into the hands/headsof a few.

It is a false dichotomy, but one that you've constructed yourself, since I've never insisted in a bureaucratic hierarchy with the concentration of knowledge in the hands of the few.

I'm very much in favour of making undesirable labour socially shared and giving maximal access to empowering tasks. However, the attempts at socialism in one workplace are doomed. Concretely:

A) Any particular workplace will have extremely uneven levels of undesirable labour dependent on the organisational goal.

B) Particular areas of specialist knowledge should not and can not be cultivated at the entirely local level.

C) Specific technical experience is better developed on an organisational basis.

C, would be for instance would be the communist equivalent of the EPA or the FDA or DOE.

that's because it's quite possible to have some of the expertise in the heads/hands of each worker, to such a degree that it is distributed and not focused on a minority, as it is in capitalism and bureaucratic pseudo-socialism.

skill, expertise is the practical knowledge that requires a relatively long period of training/education/apprenticeship. there's no reason that this can't be the situation of all workers. but it does NOT follow that each and every one would have to have the same knowledge.

Absolutely, but even further, it's not reasonable to assume that each farm collective will have it's own toxicological assessment team. You're trying to extend craft localism to industrial scale society and trying to circumvent the creation of positions of vantage by making microcosmic self-sufficiencies.

moreover, integrating the practical skill of doing the work with a science-based education can overcome one of the inefficiencies that is caused by the present concentration of knowledge into the heads of a few.

When i worked in a particular engineering department at a large manufacturing company, one of the problems was that most of the engineers...especially the younger ones hired from college...had zip practical experience with the kinds of production situations where the product would be used. they had only a theoretical knowledge of the product. i knew skilled workers who had a much better grasp of the product because they were users of it in a production environment. this split leads to inferior products.

This is certainly true.

Revmind84

10th May 2011, 14:47

Yugoslavia

syndicat

10th May 2011, 19:31

A) Any particular workplace will have extremely uneven levels of undesirable labour dependent on the organisational goal.

this sentence has no clear meaning. you might mean that the amount of less desireable work tasks or harsher environments will vary from industry to industry, which is probably true. this is why Albert & Hahnel advocate cross-industry jobs. but we can start the process of job re-org within each industry and ensure that the expertise and skill and decision-making in that industry are systematically shared out within that industry.

moreover, the workers movement that brings about the self-managed socialist system of production would need to have as part of its program an emphasis on, and program for, this kind of job reorganization, so that the revolutionary labor movement is the enforcement arm for this process of social transformation in social production.

to say "there can't be socialism in one factory" is just to run a strawman fallacy since that's not what I've advocated.

B) Particular areas of specialist knowledge should not and can not be cultivated at the entirely local level.

another sentence whose meaning is as clear as mud. do you mean that the educational system in society that develops skills and preparation for work is not organized merely locally but may have various centers that attract people from a wide area? yes, and so what? or do you mean that the job re-org and training system needs to be organized, say, throughout an entire industry. Again, that's fine with me. nothing inconsistent with what i've said. and perfectly within the capability of a self-managing industry.

C) Specific technical experience is better developed on an organisational basis.

what does this sentence mean? all development of knowledge and skill that would be of use in social production would presuppose that there is systematic organization to achieve it, both internal to the industry as well as in broader systems of education in society that tie into social production in various ways. but organization is not inherently bureaucratic. if that's what you're assuming, that's just another of your errors.

C, would be for instance would be the communist equivalent of the EPA or the FDA or DOE.

C. is complete nonsense. EPA is a bureaucratic chain of command hierarchy that is needed to ensure that the tops control what is done, to ensure that capitalist firms and elite elements are not pissed off by things like fines or overly stringent rules.

we don't need EPA. what we need is control over access to the enviro commons by the people who would be polluted on, that is, the residents in the various neighborhoods and regions, thru the directly democratic structure base assemblies and then congresses of delegates for regions, and so on.

Having control over the right to emit a pollutant ensures that communities can extract compensation, in the form of enhnacements to their budgets and charges to budgets of polluting production organizations. the participatory planning process ensures that an efficient price per unit of pol,lutant will be agreed on.

a statist bureaucratic hierarchy has no way to even know what an efficient price for a pollutant would be since that depends on how much those who would be polluted desire to not allow that pollution to take place.

And, yes, of course, the communities who make these kinds of decisions about whether to allow a pollutant, or how much, need to have advice from technical organizations that can assess things like likely health consequences, likely economic effects of a ban on pollutant X, and so on. that only requires that they have staff associations, which can be internally horizontal and self-managing in their organization, to give them advice. but the efficient prices would fall out of the back and forth negotiation between communities and production organizations envisioned in the participatory planning process.

fishontuesday

11th May 2011, 03:05

Kind of hard not to support both. Nationalization would be my preference for certain industries though because the state can use it to make money by means other then taxing! I know everybody loves self management but how is society supposed to advance if we're still competing! These are very general statements however, I support self management in many given situations, I support nationalization under many given situations, and I support a healthy mix somewhere between a lot to.

Rowan Duffy

11th May 2011, 11:14

moreover, the workers movement that brings about the self-managed socialist system of production would need to have as part of its program an emphasis on, and program for, this kind of job reorganization, so that the revolutionary labor movement is the enforcement arm for this process of social transformation in social production.

You took my meaning for (A) properly, and I absolutely agree that a special bureaucracy should be created to assist in the reorganisation of industries by assessment of which labour is most undesirable/dangerous etc and to encourage a fair programme of equalisation. At least we agree on something.

to say "there can't be socialism in one factory" is just to run a strawman fallacy since that's not what I've advocated.

But you did advocate socialism in one workplace when you advocated that everything from workers safety to assessment of the toxic nature of pollutants could be sorted out without organisations which develop expert knowledge in these areas.

You've retracted at least part of it by describing a need for a global reorganisation of labour, but re-asserted it below with the rejection of organisations that provide expert support for critical tasks such as externality assessment.

These tasks are necessary regardless of the technical composition of the legal structure you propose e.g. where final decisions are being made by some mechanism of coordination between the community and the workplace.

do you mean that the educational system in society that develops skills and preparation for work is not organized merely locally but may have various centers that attract people from a wide area?

No. I mean that the experience for workers safety, toxicology, environmental process, water use, industrial best practice, assessment of divergences between current production per labour hour in one production plant regards another, product safety etc. all are not possible to develop locally in each production plant. They require organisations to develop special technical expertise in these areas which can then be applied to assist workers and communities in ensuring the most effective means of dealing with the problems which relate to these specific areas.

but organization is not inherently bureaucratic. if that's what you're assuming, that's just another of your errors.

I think this idea is a part of the problem we're having. Bureaucracy doesn't develop simply in order to boss people around. The trade-union bureaucracies aren't the result of a purely middle-class group of leaches trying to destroy the militancy of the trade union. They are created by real pressures to provide necessary coordinating functions, education and recruitment in periods of reduced worker militancy and because specialisation of function is more efficient.

In periods of low militancy - which always occur - these bureaucrats can often become comfortable in their positions and develop interests which are not directly aligned with those of the workers. In certain circumstances they can be 100% diametrically opposed.

The outrage against bureaucracy doesn't however cope with this problem at all. It's a moral view of bureaucracy rather than a systemic view.

The anti-bureaucrats claim it is systemic, and not moral at all. However that could only be true if organisational process did not repeatedly create it or suffer from such ineffectiveness and inefficiency that those that do not create it are destroyed. Even the CNT had bureaucratic organs. It is an inevitability.

If we simply make slogans against bureaucracy - and pretend we can live without it, we will never learn how to create organisational process that mitigates the most onerous demerits.

C. is complete nonsense. EPA is a bureaucratic chain of command hierarchy that is needed to ensure that the tops control what is done, to ensure that capitalist firms and elite elements are not pissed off by things like fines or overly stringent rules.

we don't need EPA. what we need is control over access to the enviro commons by the people who would be polluted on, that is, the residents in the various neighborhoods and regions, thru the directly democratic structure base assemblies and then congresses of delegates for regions, and so on.

It should be obvious that I'm not suggesting a hierarchical chain of command organisation that ensures top down control.

However, even in current practice, the EPA hardly imposes it's environmental will on industry as you yourself have stated. It exists in consultation with powerful interests and negotiates more than it commands.

A libertarian communist EPA would fill a similar role, but in consultation with communities and workplaces.

My point is that we do need a special organisation for the assessment of the costs of pollutants. Contrary to your opinion that common sense is sufficient, the assessment of the costs of pollutants can not be obtained without experts.

While you are correct to say that it can't be obtained without the public, that misses the critical point that the public can not understand the real impact of, say, benzene without assistance from experts. Neither can we expect an industrial plant to have cultivated expertise in the statistical likelihood of failure of particular machines and attendant rates of death. In fact such statistics, by their very nature of requiring large numbers, can not possibly be cultivated locally.

Shutting down food safety inspection in a post-capitalist world would be similarly ill-advised. The fact that pressures do not exist to systematically externalise costs does not mean that the dangers of Listeria will magically vanish. Laziness, ignorance or any number of other factors can lead to poor management of externalties. Not only that, but knowledge of the very existence of externalities requires constant vigilant study. Neither will the workers spontaneously cultivate expertise or increasing knowledge about which food processes are most likely to lead to public danger. It absolutely requires organisations specifically for the development of such knowledge.

Shutting down OSHA, EPA, FDA and other such organisations would be a double mistake. While they are currently far less than ideal, they do employ experts that are not uniformly evil bureaucrats. You would have a large number of unemployed immediately if you tried to eliminate it. The moment there was a listeria out-break, people would have you swinging from trees for having shut down food-inspection. It would be much more sensible to encourage an egalitarian structure and the institution of democratic controls.

Having control over the right to emit a pollutant ensures that communities can extract compensation, in the form of enhnacements to their budgets and charges to budgets of polluting production organizations. the participatory planning process ensures that an efficient price per unit of pol,lutant will be agreed on.

We need to be realistic. You probably know more about car-exhaust than your average punter but do you think you're qualified to assess the cost in hours of life lost due to 1km by train versus 1km by truck weighed against the worker-life lost in the construction of the various modes of transport?

I believe that you, or really anyone sufficiently interested, could make an informed judgment after sufficient study and given access to sufficient training. We can't however do that same thing for every important decision which impacts us.

You could probably reasonably assess the outcome of studies which attempted to resolve the question. But those studies are going to require an organisation whose purpose is to make such studies occur.

Being too utopian about the capacity of democracy to enable everyone to make informed judgments is dangerous. Democracy provides a critical check-and-balance. It does not magically make us experts in everything.

You have stated that you know that knowledge can not be universally held, but then you propose systems of process which will inevitably fail because this knowledge can not be held universally.

syndicat

11th May 2011, 18:50

You took my meaning for (A) properly, and I absolutely agree that a special bureaucracy should be created to assist in the reorganisation of industries by assessment of which labour is most undesirable/dangerous etc and to encourage a fair programme of equalisation. At least we agree on something.

don't put words in my mouth. i never agreed that any "special bureaucracy" (whatever the fuck that is) is needed. a workers movement does not need a bureaucracy and it won't be revolutionary if it has one.

once again, i will point out that you've not provided any clear meaning of the phrase "special bureaucracy." on the other hand, i've offered an analysis of what a bureaucratic class is, that is, what is the basis of its power as a class. no such bureaucratic class is needed.

But you did advocate socialism in one workplace when you advocated that everything from workers safety to assessment of the toxic nature of pollutants could be sorted out without organisations which develop expert knowledge in these areas.

now you're making shit up. socialism is the whole social formation. what i have said, repeatedly, is 1. workers self-management is a necessary condition of liberation of the working class from a dominating, exploiting class, and 2. it is not sufficient, and 3. workers self-management must be grounded in, controlled from, the direct democracy of the base assemblies in workplaces, but also extends outward via federation to include whole industries and the whole economy.

I've never said or implied that each workplace would be competely autonomous.

Every workplace must be accountable to the larger society insofar as there are decisions related to that workplace that affect others in society such as the kinds of products produced or external impacts such as pollution.

Moreover, I've indicated how this accountability is to take place: via the dual governance structure and the participatory planning process. By dual governance structure i mean there are both workplace assemblies and federations of these, and neighborhood assemblies and federations of these.

The issue is: Who is most affected by a given area of decision-making? The decisions about the governance of one's work and the workplace affect workers far more than others and these are thus to be made by the workers.

Pollutants that spread out over the region around the production faciliities affects everyone around there. These are emissions into the enviro commons. And it is the role of the structure of governance based on neighborhood assemblies that is to have control over access to the air and water. Without this control, there would be no possibility whatever of determining an efficient price because the negative value of the impacts depends on how those who are affected see it. This depends on their informed decision about how much, if any pollutants to allow.

as to the toxic affects of pollutants, i said, to repeat, that the neighborhood assemblies and federations of these need to have technical advice, which can be provided by staff associations, which can be horizontally organized, self-managing worker groups.

I never said no technical advice is needed. you're not paying attention.

but re-asserted it below with the rejection of organisations that provide expert support for critical tasks such as externality assessment.

i've already pointed out that "externalities" can NOT be determined by any technical bureaucracy or group of technical experts whatsoever. That's because a negative externality is a social opportunity cost, and a positive externality is a benefit. A benefit or a cost only exists in relation to the relative preferences, desires, of the people who suffer the cost or gain the benefit.

you keep ignoring this and repeating the same elitist bullshit.

The anti-bureaucrats claim it is systemic, and not moral at all. However that could only be true if organisational process did not repeatedly create it or suffer from such ineffectiveness and inefficiency that those that do not create it are destroyed. Even the CNT had bureaucratic organs. It is an inevitability.

more of your elitist bullshit. unionism has historically exhibited a tendency to two kinds of organization, an autonomous grassroots direct worker demcocracy tendency, and a tendency towards the coalescence of a separate layer that doesn't work the job and concentrates expertise related to a union's role and concentrates control over levers of decision-making.

note that this satisfies my earlier definition of bureaucracy: a relative monopolization of decision-making into fewer hands and also expertise related to this decision-making.

so what happens historically is that some activists elected to office learn various thuings by doing that...how to negotiate with employers, how to understand contracts, how to deal with lawyers, schmooze with politicians, links to various people in management or the community, public speaking, etc.

they don't share these skills or organize for training more members in these skills because that would weaken their personal control over the union. the relative concentration of knowledge and connections they have makes members dependent on them, and builds a political machine to control the union.

in the USA there are over 10,000 officials who make more than $100,000 a year in their union offices. these people don't work the jobs the members do, they have a separate existence. the members are also a factor in the life of the organization, but the bureaucracy are a separate layer, and i regard them as members of the bureaucratic class, even tho most of them originated in the working class (as do most foremen and cops).

but in various times and places there is a different unionist tendency, towards the creatiion from below of new organization, workplace meetings, elected steward councils and a variety of forms. this is where the real social power of workers lies...in their directly controlled organization and direct willingness to support each other in actions, in their organized ability to stop production.

now, in certain times and places this grassroots, autoniomous, more directly democratic tendency becomes dominant. and this is what revolutionary unionism or syndicalism requires. and the CNT was a movement of this kind. the union was run thru general assemblies and elected shop steward committees. in the spring of 1936 there were only 3 paid officials in a union with nearly 2 million members. and they were just clerks to provide informaton and do prep work for conferences and things like that.

Jose Gracchus

11th May 2011, 18:53

Why couldn't government bureaucratic functions, if they provide a socially useful function, could not be self-managed industries to the extent that it was still necessary to provide 'civil servant' functions, for the self-managing communities and workplace assemblies.

syndicat

11th May 2011, 19:15

I think it would be best to separate the function of a government agency from the bureaucratic control structure of the work in that department. The bureaucratic control structure is not unique to the state but exists also in private corporations. so "bureaucracy" is not peculiar to the state tho it is a necessary condition of the state.

public transit systems and public hospitals can continue to be run by their workers, same for sewer systems and park and recreation departments, government-owned railways.

but "government regulatory agencies" are not needed. these tend to exist because in the past there were various protests over predatory or aberrant behavior by the private corporations. to answer the protests and provide some semblance of oversight, to make it look like the corporations are being adequately controlled to protect the public, various regulatory agencies were created...ICC, FCC, FDA, the various state PUCs, the air quality management districts, the California pesticide regulatory agency, etc.

This is not an effective way of dealing with the problems that these agencies were created supposedly to deal with.

for example, the pharamceutical companies need to be seized by their workers and integrated into a worker-managed health industry.

the "regulation" or public oversight would be replaced, under participatory planning, with staff associations that provide technical advice to the democratic mass bodies that deal with the development of plans and requests for public goods. for example, there is, let's say, a national or regional delegate congress that works up the annual budget in regard to the public goods and infrastructure plans, such as the extent of overall health care coverage, the creation of new clinics, and so on.

there might be a health staff association to provide them with advice, from the consumer's and patient's point of view, and help work up proposals for the budget for the region with regard to health. or there could be a single R&D association for the regional congress that deals with the various areas of the regional public goods budget. this might include a regional rail system, the regional health system, protection of air and water quality in the region, etc.

now, it could be that some of the staff from these staff associations may have had previous experience at the time of transition in government regulatory agencies. that's likely because the regional congresses will be trying to find people with relevant knowledge. of course, there also needs to be greater public education on all the relevant areas so that the delegates who come to the congresses have enough knowledge that they can't be simply snowed by what the members of the staff association say.

now, you might say that what I'm suggesting here is to retain the staff of regulatory agencies as members of the "staff associations." but it would be misleading to say that "bureaucracies" are being preserved. the proposed organizational structure is different, and has to be different if it is to support a classless society, based on mass empwerment, mass education and rooted in direct democracy at the base.

some of the regulatory agencies would not have even that degree of survival. consider FCC. here I would suggest we can simply have a decision by the regional congress of a vote, as part of its budgetary decision, on total resources provided to the media. then have an annual vote by residents in which they can allot their share of the total regional budget to whichever mix of media worker groups they want. media worker groups then divide up the spectrum and budget in proportion to votes received. people who are consumers of the products of the media groups are the people who know what they want.

Rowan Duffy

11th May 2011, 20:52

once again, i will point out that you've not provided any clear meaning of the phrase "special bureaucracy."

I provided a definition of bureaucracy at the very beginning of my exchange with you. It also happens to be a definition which has greater currency than the rather peculiar socialist definition which is most likely of Trotskyist provenance. A "special bureaucracy" would be one devoted to a special purpose.

I've never said or implied that each workplace would be competely autonomous.

Good, I think we're in agreement that we'll need special technical organisations for various purposes.

you keep ignoring this and repeating the same elitist bullshit.

With regards to my "elitism", it's simply untrue that I think cost assessment of externalities should be done without any democratic control, I've not once said it. I said that assessment required technical assistance and this is best developed in organisations devoted to a purpose.

Now, aside from whether it is desirable, is it possible to obtain a reasonable cost assessment of an externality without democratic control. I think the answer to this is yes. The cost of mitigation of something like CO2 release can be approximated by the amount of labour required to deal with attendant effects. This of course requires that you don't take a completely subjectivist view of economics however, and accept that the LTV is a reasonable way of describing value, and therefor cost.

the "regulation" or public oversight would be replaced, under participatory planning, with staff associations that provide technical advice to the democratic mass bodies that deal with the development of plans and requests for public goods. for example, there is, let's say, a national or regional delegate congress that works up the annual budget in regard to the public goods and infrastructure plans, such as the extent of overall health care coverage, the creation of new clinics, and so on.

I would contend that most people would consider the above, either a regulatory organisation or a bureaucracy or both.

Avoiding such groups attaining some level of power over time is going to be tricky. And that would lead to what I would describe as an analysis of bureaucracy. That is, a study of how differential power comes to be, and mechanisms to avoid it, that realises the need for the accumulation of special knowledge into organisations devoted to a purpose.

I think what you have given is simply a definition of bureaucracy.

The danger of the definitional approach is that rather than presenting us with plausible ways of avoiding mistakes of organisational process - within and between - organisations, it is only capable of recognising problems after the fact.

ckaihatsu

11th May 2011, 21:21

Avoiding such groups attaining some level of power over time is going to be tricky. And that would lead to what I would describe as an analysis of bureaucracy. That is, a study of how differential power comes to be, and mechanisms to avoid it, that realises the need for the accumulation of special knowledge into organisations devoted to a purpose.

I think what you have given is simply a definition of bureaucracy.

The danger of the definitional approach is that rather than presenting us with plausible ways of avoiding mistakes of organisational process - within and between - organisations, it is only capable of recognising problems after the fact.

I'll just briefly note here that the *political* orientation / vision thing *can't* be ignored.

Everything you're saying here, RD, is *empirically* true as a timeless socio-political dynamic, but what you're *willfully* not partisan to is a grassroots internationalist movement that can *overcome* this tendency towards bureaucratic inertia and compartmentalization of specialized knowledge.

One kind of objective, non-intentional, emergent societal dynamic that cuts *against* this tendency towards proprietization is simply the ease with which information and knowledge can break free of elitist control "on its own" and become freely available to the public. The printing press is the prime example of this, where the main source of scholarship and mass culture -- the bible -- became available for reading and interpretation *outside* of the authority of the church.

This same dialectic reiterates over and over through historical time, as now we have Wikipedia and many, many books available online for at-will public consumption. There's no good reason why the same process of increasing transparency couldn't -- or doesn't -- apply to the areas you're addressing.

syndicat

11th May 2011, 23:34

you say:
I provided a definition of bureaucracy at the very beginning of my exchange with you. It also happens to be a definition which has greater currency than the rather peculiar socialist definition which is most likely of Trotskyist provenance. A "special bureaucracy" would be one devoted to a special purpose.

this is what you quoted towards the beginning of this debate on what a bureaucracy is:

The purpose of a bureaucracy is to successfully implement the actions of an organization of any size (but often associated with large entities such as government, corporations, and non-governmental organizations (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization)), in achieving its purpose and mission, and the bureaucracy is tasked to determine how it can achieve its purpose and mission with the greatest possible efficiency and at the least cost of any resources.

this mentions only a very abstract and vague set of activities that something called a "bureaucracy" does. It is so vague and general that it could apply to a mere general assembly or any organization whatever. It is exremely implausible to call this a "definition" of bureaucracy, as you did.

hence in fact you've not provided any analysis at all of what a bureaucracy is.

me:

I've never said or implied that each workplace would be competely autonomous.

you:
Good, I think we're in agreement that we'll need special technical organisations for various purposes.

you have an annoying, offensive tendency to try to put words in my mouth. you've never defined "special technical organizations" nor does it follow from the quote from me.

On the contrary, what I actually said is that there needs to be mass democratic bodies based on assemblies in the neighborhoods, because there are decisions that affect people as residents, as consumers.

an assembly of people residing in a neighborhood is not a "special technical organization:"...whatever the fuck that is.

This of course requires that you don't take a completely subjectivist view of economics however, and accept that the LTV is a reasonable way of describing value, and therefor cost.

desires are exhibited through behavior. in particular, having to make hard choices between alternatives A and B. desires thus are relational and are about A's preference for X over Y. but valuation, cost and benefit, can only be based in relative preferences.

maybe you could explain what "subjective" means.

the labor theory of value is a theory of commodity prices. it is in particular a cost of production theory of commodity prices. it is not about human costs and benefits. and efficiency and "externalities" are understood only in terms of human costs and benefits. the time someone works in production is not the only cost to them of that work. it may also affect their health, it may be harsher or less harsh, it may be harder or not so hard, it may be a way for them to grow their skills or it may be totally de-skilled, it may be work where they have some say or they may be subject to a brutal work dictatorship. the conditions of work or exposures to chemicals may have important health impacts.

is it possible to obtain a reasonable cost assessment of an externality without democratic control. I think the answer to this is yes. The cost of mitigation of something like CO2 release can be approximated by the amount of labour required to deal with attendant effects.

you're wrong. that's because you need to know what the other things are that people desire that could be done with the resources that would be needed for some mitigation. what we have to give up to get X is the social opportunity cost of X.

also, different kinds of labor have different values because that depends upon how important to people at present are the particular skills embodied in that kind of labor. and how important those skills are depends upon how strongly they want the things that need those skills to make them.

in regard to my description of staff associations that advice and work with delegate congresses:

Avoiding such groups attaining some level of power over time is going to be tricky. And that would lead to what I would describe as an analysis of bureaucracy. That is, a study of how differential power comes to be, and mechanisms to avoid it, that realises the need for the accumulation of special knowledge into organisations devoted to a purpose.

no, it's about how to avoid the concentration of decision-making authority and expertise related to that decision-making into empowered minorities.

moreover i didn't just "provide a definition" of bureaucracy, actually of the basis of the bureaucratic class. I've also said how to avoid such a bureaucracy. that is the point to 1. the structures of decision-making focused on the base assemblies, and 2. re-org of all the jobs so as to distribute expertise & skill among all workers and avoid a concentration of decision-making authority and expertise into few hands, by sharing these things out collectively among all workers. this is required if the working class is to be empowered and able to run production and society.

and we can't develop a conception & strategy of how to avoid coalescence of a bureaucratic class unless we have an analysis of what it is, of what the basis of its class power is.

Die Neue Zeit

12th May 2011, 05:37

but "government regulatory agencies" are not needed. these tend to exist because in the past there were various protests over predatory or aberrant behavior by the private corporations.

This is off the mark. Remember Chernobyl?

Even a proper approach to state ownership should separate the business function from the regulation function.

Zederbaum

12th May 2011, 11:50

On the contrary, what I actually said is that there needs to be mass democratic bodies based on assemblies in the neighborhoods, because there are decisions that affect people as residents, as consumers.

an assembly of people residing in a neighborhood is not a "special technical organization:"...whatever the fuck that is.

You've also said
the "regulation" or public oversight would be replaced, under participatory planning, with staff associations that provide technical advice to the democratic mass bodies that deal with the development of plans and requests for public goods."Is every decision going to be made at the level of the mass assemblies and will the role the staff associations be confined to advice? Or will more minor decisions and implementation of previously agreed policies be directly regulated by the staff association? The burden of information would be far too great for mass assemblies (or even delegates thereof) to deal with every decision, irrespective of the intelligence of the participants. They should be focusing on higher order problems.

If the staff associations do take on something more than a purely advisory role then they are coming pretty close to having bureaucratic functions.

Personally, I think that is necessary. It takes the burden of mundane administration and frees up people's time to consider other issues. We do want the mandates of such administrative centres to be either democratically decided and/or to be dominated by the democratic polity. But even that isn't, in principle at least, very different from the current set up (the reality being somewhat short of the theory, no doubt).

A bureaucracy becomes a problem when it fuses the administration and implementation of policy with policy making power itself. Perhaps one of the differences in this debate is that syndicat, if I may put words in his mouth, understands bureaucracy as doing more or less that and therefore restricts decision making power to an exclusive minority. Naturally, this is not viewed positively.

On the other hand, my fellow peasant Rowan Duffy, views that type of bureaucracy as a possiblity, perhaps even a strong probability outside of a democratic socialist society, but by no means an inevitability. Such a bureaucracy has a function - a limited one it is true - and can be democratically controlled. This view, I should point out given some of the language used in the thread, is not in the least elitist.

The difficulty we have is that what starts off as low level policy making by the bureaucracy can creep into an accumulation of more serious policy making power. This is a real problem, but the solution is not necessarily to ditch the bureaucracy (or separate staff associations with administrative and regulatory authority) but to ensure it is a tool of working people rather than our master.

ckaihatsu

12th May 2011, 13:11

The difficulty we have is that what starts off as low level policy making by the bureaucracy can creep into an accumulation of more serious policy making power.

I agree with this.

We do want the mandates of such administrative centres to be either democratically decided and/or to be dominated by the democratic polity.

Agreed.

The burden of information would be far too great for mass assemblies (or even delegates thereof) to deal with every decision, irrespective of the intelligence of the participants. They should be focusing on higher order problems.

If the staff associations do take on something more than a purely advisory role then they are coming pretty close to having bureaucratic functions.

I'd say that the way to prevent such a stratification of function (and power) is to *politicize* the bureaucracy / administration.

One of the reasons it's *able* to consolidate such power is because it's seen and treated as being "non-political" and merely functionary, or advisory -- "neutral", "scientific". In practice, though, we know that it effects monopoly power over policy direction since it's the main organ of the monopoly-empowered nation-state system of governance.

The bureaucratic-minded mode of behavior is to stay interconnected, no matter what the cost, so as to keep the machinery running as a cohesive whole. This is compatible (symbiotic) with the ruling class' conservative nature, and so the bureaucratic strata *complements* those who are ultimately calling the shots in favor of the interests of capital.

Revolutionary control of state power, once accomplished, should force bureaucrats and specialists into *politically minded* roles that complement their technical function. This would help to dissolve the bourgeois state apparatus as quickly as possible so that it wouldn't become the focus of a power-struggle turf battle.

Politicization means that any and all technical advisors, no matter what the field, would have to justify -- and even argue -- their particular chosen policy advice on the basis of gaining popular support and ultimately mass approval. This would force the specialists to "translate" the technical (arcane) particulars of their field into regular everyday language in an effort to *convince* people that their take on the matter is sound. Much of academia, in the spirit of the scientific method, has to do this already, but much of academia and government *don't* since certain areas enjoy a protected privilege by simply accommodating to the status quo on legacy, unchanging policy positions.

Forcing a politicization and internal competition that caters to the best interests of the public would break apart the ossification that currently guards and undergirds present-day elitist perches.

Rowan Duffy

12th May 2011, 16:27

now, in certain times and places this grassroots, autoniomous, more directly democratic tendency becomes dominant. and this is what revolutionary unionism or syndicalism requires. and the CNT was a movement of this kind. the union was run thru general assemblies and elected shop steward committees. in the spring of 1936 there were only 3 paid officials in a union with nearly 2 million members. and they were just clerks to provide informaton and do prep work for conferences and things like that.

I think it's counter-productive to mythologise the CNT in this way. This really understates the reality of the situation, which will lead people now to attempt to copy something which never existed. The structure of the CNT was such that it was comprised of smaller unions. The CNT itself might have only had 3 official paid positions on the books for national executive, but that leaves a lot left unsaid.

the CNT in the '30s had at least two local daily papers: Castilla Libre in Madrid and Solidaridad Obrera in Barcelona. Eduardo de Guzman was the managing editor of Castilla Libre. You can't produce a big circulation daily newspaper without a paid staff. The CNT in Catalonia owned an entire city block in central Barcelona that contained the printing plant and editorial offices of Solidaridad Obrera. The paid staff included I think something like half a dozen writers, plus the printing staff. The paper was run as a commercial operation. It was hawked in the streets by newsboys.

Martha Ackelsburg's book "Free Women of Spain" notes that the Barcelona metal workers union paid Soledad Estorach a stipend to organize women workers. So it seems that CNT unions were not opposed to having some staff organizers.

As we see from a former comment by you, we have the news paper and paid organisers of some unknown number. There may also have been paid executives for locals.

In addition, there are all the funds provided by illegal activities like bank robberies that would have enabled full time activism without going on the books. Of course, these people would have not been subject to any democratic oversight whatsoever.

syndicat

12th May 2011, 17:19

Is every decision going to be made at the level of the mass assemblies and will the role the staff associations be confined to advice? Or will more minor decisions and implementation of previously agreed policies be directly regulated by the staff association? The burden of information would be far too great for mass assemblies (or even delegates thereof) to deal with every decision, irrespective of the intelligence of the participants. They should be focusing on higher order problems.

If the staff associations do take on something more than a purely advisory role then they are coming pretty close to having bureaucratic functions.

Personally, I think that is necessary. It takes the burden of mundane administration and frees up people's time to consider other issues. We do want the mandates of such administrative centres to be either democratically decided and/or to be dominated by the democratic polity. But even that isn't, in principle at least, very different from the current set up (the reality being somewhat short of the theory, no doubt).

i think you're not paying attention. so i'll highlight two parts of my proposal that you overlook:

1. the staff associations are only providing advice for the development of requests in regard to what the population want produced. these are proposals that go into the participatory planning process, which is an interactive process involving back and forth social interaction.

to understand this you have to understand the idea of a dual governance system. A dual governance system means there is a decision-making democracy that is based on the worker assemblies in workplaces, and another decision-making structure based on residence, rooted in neigborhood assemblies.

the reason for this is because it's necessary in order to generalize self-management. people need to have self-management over decisions about their consumption, as well as workers having self-management over their work. that's because the idea of self-management is direct control over the decisions that mainly affect you.

different decisions affect different groups of people. decisions about work flows and work governance affects primarily the workers. but decisions about our consumption affects those who consume. decisions about access to the enviro commons affect people based on the region or area where they live, work, play.

having separate channels of decision-making also enables information about both projected supply and projected demand to enter the planning process. a central planning system that doesn't split the channels of decision-making between consumption and production has no way to obtain accurate information of this sort and will inevitably trample, deny self-management.

2. decisions need to be pushed down as far as possible to the base assemblies in workplaces and neighborhoods. participation and control won't be real if there isn't a significant realm of decision-making for the base assemblies where everyone can participate directly.

decisions about consumption are mostly decisions that should be made by the households and local communities where people can participate and make their own decisions.

the decisions that need to be made at a broader level are mainly related to widespread systems of social provision or large-scale infrastructure projects. because of this, the number of decisions made at these broader levels can be kept to a manageable level.

Now, you talk about "implementation" of decisions being done by some bureuacracy under the congresses. What do you mean by "implementation"? What you fail to consider is that under self-managed socialism they only control their own work. They do not give orders to anyone else. Hence no managerial hierarchy. what they would "implement" would be the working out of plans for things like infrastructure or social service provision which would become part of budgeted proposals that would have to be approved by the congresses. and these would be merely requests, not orders. there would still be a back-and-forth negotiation process with the worker organizations. this is necessary in order to obtain accurate information about costs and benefits. in other words, prices require information about total projected supply and projected demand, and that can't happen til there is a collection of information from all groups about what they are requesting, and from all worker groups about what they propose to produce. so the plans for the congresses can't be complete before this interactive process since they won't have accurate prices and won't know what they can do within the constraints of their budgets.

syndicat

12th May 2011, 17:26

As we see from a former comment by you, we have the news paper and paid organisers of some unknown number. There may also have been paid executives for locals.

they had no paid executives of locals. the local unions had administrative committees that were, without exception, unpaid volunteers. they also had very few paid organizers. the newspaper staff were not elected officials. the editor was hired by the regional committee.

In addition, there are all the funds provided by illegal activities like bank robberies that would have enabled full time activism without going on the books. Of course, these people would have not been subject to any democratic oversight whatsoever.

if they donated funds to the CNT, then the funds would be under democratic oversight. here you are engaged in speculation without benefit of any evidence. and funds stolen from banks were not a significant part of the budget of the CNT unions. the unions were built on the dues of the members. that's how they built up the daily papers in Barcelona and Madrid for example. dues plus sales revenue. the papers were run on a commercial basis, and were hawked by paper boys on the streets.

the three paid officers were the national secretary, the regional secretary of Catalonia, and the secretary of the industrial federation of the fishing industry. it's possible there could have been paid secretaries for the other two industrial federations, for the railway industry and the telephone system. these people were merely clerks who helped coordinate the organizations that were separated over distance by providing things like newsletters. but they were restricted in their powers. for example when the union federations were having congresses or industrial conferences, they were not permitted to make their own proposals. they could only circulate the proposals that were approved by a local assembly. all proposals at congreses or plenaries were supposed to originate from the local assemblies. sometimes in emergency situations this didn't happen. in particular in July of 1936 the decision to not overthrow the government in Catalonia was made by the delegates without first invoking assemblies. but these were the shop floor delegates, that is, the shop stewards.

Rowan Duffy

12th May 2011, 22:55

they had no paid executives of locals. the local unions had administrative committees that were, without exception, unpaid volunteers. they also had very few paid organizers. the newspaper staff were not elected officials. the editor was hired by the regional committee.

I'd like a reference for this because I'm highly skeptical this is true.

if they donated funds to the CNT, then the funds would be under democratic oversight. here you are engaged in speculation without benefit of any evidence. and funds stolen from banks were not a significant part of the budget of the CNT unions.

It's definitely not speculation that Durruti et al. robbed loads of banks. What was that money used for? It's doubtful they would have given it directly to the union. More likely FAI members would have informally run various programs under the aegis of the CNT. This is unlikely to have been very democratic.

The idea that a voluntary organisation was performing the necessary coordination for 2 million workers with 3 employees beggars belief. I've seen film footage of more than 3 clerical workers in the CNT performing administrative duties.

Even the GAA in Ireland which has enormous volunteer support, volunteer coaches and lots of private donations has more permanent staff than you are claiming the CNT had to administer a revolutionary union for 2 million workers.

The claim is so extraordinary, that I suggest it requires extraordinary evidence.

syndicat

12th May 2011, 23:30

It's definitely not speculation that Durruti et al. robbed loads of banks. What was that money used for? It's doubtful they would have given it directly to the union. More likely FAI members would have informally run various programs under the aegis of the CNT. This is unlikely to have been very democratic.

in other words, you have no evidence. you're just bullshitting.

illegal activities like bank robberies occurred during the period when organizing was banned and the unions were banned, during the long military dictatorship from 1923 to 1931. Durruti et al did not continue in these kinds of illegalist activities under the Second Republic. for evidence take a look at Abel Paz's biography of Durruti.

what "programs" did the FAI run? they produced a newspaper for soldiers but they didn't have a lot of "programs." the FAI mainly consisted of anarchist caucuses whose main field of activity was in local CNT unions. for evidence take a look at the history of the FAI by Juan Gomez Casas.

the anarchists were heavily involved in setting up and running neighorbhood centers called ateneos...centers for popular education. but these were not run by the FAI. they were autonomous centers. they had periodic assemblies, at least once a year, and each year they elected the volunteer administraive committee. these centers had literacy programs, spaces for neighborhood group meetings, women's groups, had cultural programs such as plays, and so on.

I've seen film footage of more than 3 clerical workers in the CNT performing administrative duties.

in what year? the CNT unions, as I said, had some staff members, to help in organizing in some situations, or to put out newspapers. but the main center of gravity in the union were the workshop delegados, who worked the job, they were not paid, and they had to stand before regular assemblies to get approvals and were elected by the assemblies. when they held plenaries or congresses, it was the delegados who made the decisions. and the existence of staff, such as a clerical worker, does not show that the members of the administrative juntas of local unions were paid officials.

until its bureaucratization and centralization in the '70s, favored by the employers, the UK shop stewards movement of the '60s also had relatively few paid officials.

i will also add that the tradition of opposing careerism in the union is a tradition that survives in certain labor organizations in Spain influenced by the revolutionary tradition of the CNT. the CNT-AIT today does not allow full-time paid officers. this organization has somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 members. the Coordinadora of lonshore workers is an independent union influenced by anarcho-syndicalism. as of the '80s they had only 1 full time paid officer, their national coordinator who was elected every year. under the Spanish collective bargaining system elected delegados are paid a certain amount but the Coordinadora requires delegados to give that money to the union.

the CGT, another union that follows the CNT's legacy, does allow full time paid officers, but their rate of pay is limited to what they made on their last job, and they cannot hold any job at any level of the union for longer than 10 years.

Rowan Duffy

13th May 2011, 10:12

in other words, you have no evidence. you're just bullshitting.

I made clear in that paragraph that it was surmise. Yet we know for a fact that Durruti was often acting in support the CNT. If he was unpaid then he was probably "paid" out of funds obtained illegally.

Where do you imagine the money went? What do you think is the most likely use?

In any organisation the most organised faction wins. If you have a relatively sparse bureaucracy with mostly volunteers, a separate organisation which can fund volunteers is liable to win out. It was the self-stated purpose of the FAI to guard the libertarian character of the CNT.

A speculation stated as such is not "bullshitting". I'm actually very curious in what you think of these questions.

in what year? the CNT unions, as I said, had some staff members, to help in organizing in some situations, or to put out newspapers. but the main center of gravity in the union were the workshop delegados, who worked the job, they were not paid, and they had to stand before regular assemblies to get approvals and were elected by the assemblies.

How many? 10? 20? 30?

Seriously, we start with 3 and the number continues to grow. These clerks may have had no official power in voting or other matters, but bureaucrats often have no explicit executive powers. It's not about the official conferring of power, it's about control over the flow of information and the manipulation of special knowledge for a purpose and the relative expediency of conferring some executive powers towards those who are most capable of carrying them out efficiently, a process which tends to happen naturally as the route of least resistance.

I contend that you've simply obscured the CNTs structure with rhetoric. It is especially unhelpful for our current needs since the promulgation of this myth serves to reinforce ultra-leftist notions that we can function without the need for full-time organisers.

the CGT, another union that follows the CNT's legacy, does allow full time paid officers, but their rate of pay is limited to what they made on their last job, and they cannot hold any job at any level of the union for longer than 10 years.

The CGT seems to be realistic about the need for organisers. We have a need of official positions, but we need to guard against their undemocratic use.

Zederbaum

13th May 2011, 13:05

i think you're not paying attention.
A request for clarification does not indicate a lack of attention. I am familiar with the participatory model of organising the economy and society.

Your outline of the participatory model is fine but unnecessary as it is very possible to have that system but explicitly delegate power to staff associations to implement the policies decided by the polity. Your answer did clarify a key difference between us: you prefer an advisory system, we think delegated executive power and subordinate policy making power is necessary.

Now, you talk about "implementation" of decisions being done by some bureuacracy under the congresses. What do you mean by "implementation"? For example, a policy of regulating river pollution from sewerage run off in agricultural areas (a common problem in Ireland that leads to large amounts of fish deaths). The environmental authority should have the capacity to draw up standards, investigate reported cases of pollutions and compel compliance. Naturally there should be consultation, oversight and rights of appeal but it should run under its own steam.

Zederbaum

13th May 2011, 13:23

the CNT-AIT today does not allow full-time paid officers. this organization has somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000
Does it? I'm skeptical of those figures. I'm not saying you're making them up as I'm familiar enough with the WSA's history with the AIT to know you aren't one of their fanboys but I've seen pro-AIT folks bandy about such numbers and to be frank I don't trust them. I do wonder where the data comes from. What workplaces have they organised? Does the Spanish labour ministry have statistics? In books on Spanish anarchism from the pre-Franco era you occasionally see figures from the state that details impressively large membership for the CNT. I haven't seen anything comparable for its modern incarnation.

In contrast, in the case of the other inheritor of the CNT tradition, the CGT, we know that it won 900,000 votes in the workplace committee elections a few years back and that they have members in the public transport sector and the Seat company amongst other places. So there's is a reasonable basis for believing the figure of 35,000 to 50,000 that one often sees as their number of members. That's well down on the pre-civil war organisation, but still a substantial membership for a libertarian socialist union.

For the CNT, however, I am very skeptical and would appreciate some independent confirmation of their numbers as my confidence in the AIT is limited.

The CNT back in 2002 was said to have around 3-5,000 members and even that comprised a fair number of lifestylist elements. Either it has been growing significantly (but where exactly) or extra zeros have crept in somewhere.

The relative strength of the CGT and the CNT indicates the need for full time organisers. Starting from the same base in post Franco Spain, the CNT, with the advantage of the brand, has been left behind by the CGT which must be 10 times larger at this point. The range of activities by the CGT is very impressive, both in day-to-day organising but also in anarchist education.

It'd be interesting to know more of their internal practice as they are by far the most successful libertarian organisation in the world. Do they full time paid organisers to widen their membership; how are their workplace representatives organised; how vibrant are local branches, how does their delegate system work; where does power lie and how is it exercised; is a site of political struggle amongst different tendencies; do they have full time organisers of their considerable programme of educational activities?

It's difficult to get hard information on the CGT in English, which is odd as one would think that they would be held up by anarchists as example to follow. Instead they are almost airbrushed out of the tradition which is a real pity.

syndicat

13th May 2011, 17:12

I made clear in that paragraph that it was surmise. Yet we know for a fact that Durruti was often acting in support the CNT. If he was unpaid then he was probably "paid" out of funds obtained illegally.

after the end of the dictatorship in 1930, Durruti and his group went back to working in industry and doing rank and file work in the CNT. they weren't doing bank robberies during that period. And i've not seen any evidence that Durruti ever did any bank robberies, tho i know that some anarchists in the '20s did. but in the '30s they were, as I said, back into building up the union. after the abortive uprising in 1933, Durruti and some others were imprisoned. but that was for an abortive revolutionary general strike. but all the prisoners were releasted by Feb 1936.

in the spring of 1936, when Durruti was the chair of the workers defense committee in Barcelona, he was working as a mechanic in a textile factory.

a separate organisation which can fund volunteers is liable to win out. It was the self-stated purpose of the FAI to guard the libertarian character of the CNT.

but you've provided no evidence that the FAI was funding members. in reality it was the rank and file worker activists of the FAI who were the organized tendency in the union. in Catalonia they competed for influence with the BOC (Workers & Peasants Bloc). BOC was a more tightly organized Leninist group. But the FAI out-organized them.

Seriously, we start with 3 and the number continues to grow.

the number hasn't grown. I said I only have seen evidence of 3. Since I don't claim omniscience, I'm willing to allow there may have been a couple more. But there were only 3 industrial federations in the CNT prior to 1936. so there could not have been more than 3 secretaries of industrial federations. many FAI groups were opposed to the industrial federations because they believed they would be a source of a potential bureaucracy. that's why there were only 3 such federations formed after existence of industrial feds was approved at the 1931 CNT congress.

besides, it is completely uncontroversial that the CNT of that era had very few paid officials and staff compared to bureaucratic trade unions.

further, i know from personal experience that it's possible to run a union without paid officers or staff. i helped build an independent union from scratch that had 350 members, carried out a strike, won various victories. and all without any paid officers or paid staff. it was a union run thru departmental assemblies and elected shop stewards. the executive committee consisted of all the shop stewards plus the president and secretary-treasurer.

I contend that you've simply obscured the CNTs structure with rhetoric.

what an ass. I've made claims. I can point to a long list of articles and books as a basis for my claims. you're the one who spouts a lot of vague generalities and osbcure abstractions as a part of your apologetics for the privileges of professionals and managers.

syndicat

13th May 2011, 17:25

For example, a policy of regulating river pollution from sewerage run off in agricultural areas (a common problem in Ireland that leads to large amounts of fish deaths). The environmental authority should have the capacity to draw up standards, investigate reported cases of pollutions and compel compliance. Naturally there should be consultation, oversight and rights of appeal but it should run under its own steam.

The only way to prevent or minimize pollution is for the people who would be polluted to have power to prevent it, by not allowing the emissions of pollutants to take place, or to force a compensatory price for a permission to emit the pollutant.

so you're starting back-asswards. you assume, as capitalist legality does, that firms have the legal right to emit discharges into water and air systems. and then you're going to after-the-fact investigate and regulate.

that won't work. the purpose of these agencies in capitalism is to give some assurance to the public that everything is fine, but inevitably behind the scenes the managers of these agencies make deals with the companies to let the pollution continue or the policians restrict their authority etc.

now, if the neighborhood or town assembies and regional congresses have the power to prevent or allow acces to the enviro commons, then they must give permissions, and they can exact prices per unit of pollutant. this is the only way to obtain an efficient price for a pollutant and provide incentives to make technical innovations to reduce them.

of course there will be worker organizations that do testing of bodies of water and air samples to measure or test for pollutants. and of course the health worker organizations will have R&D activities that study things like effects of various kinds of substances on human and animal health. this is all part of the public health function. and testing the air samples near production facilities and bodies of water is also part of enforcement of the agreements between the production organizations and the regional federations of residents.

but the determination of the price for the pollutant or the permissions for the pollutants has to lie with the residents in the areas that would be affected, that is, the people who would be polluted. that's because a pollutant does potential damage to their health. only they can say how intensely they want to get rid of the pollutant. and this will be reflected in their proposals for the pollutant's elimination, a decision to ban it, or a decision to request a certain target for percentage reduction in a certain period of time. and of course their deliberations and decisions will have to be informed by the educational efforts of the worker public health organizations so they know what the risks to themselves are posed by the particular substances at various concentrations.

Rowan Duffy

13th May 2011, 18:03

desires are exhibited through behavior. in particular, having to make hard choices between alternatives A and B. desires thus are relational and are about A's preference for X over Y. but valuation, cost and benefit, can only be based in relative preferences.

maybe you could explain what "subjective" means.

Your description of relative preference above is a purely subjective theory. It attempts to place everything in terms of relative wants as if these relative wants can provide a coherent framework for understanding value. It is in fact the underpinning of marginalism, a bourgeois theory of value.

the labor theory of value is a theory of commodity prices. it is in particular a cost of production theory of commodity prices. it is not about human costs and benefits. and efficiency and "externalities" are understood only in terms of human costs and benefits. the time someone works in production is not the only cost to them of that work. it may also affect their health, it may be harsher or less harsh, it may be harder or not so hard, it may be a way for them to grow their skills or it may be totally de-skilled, it may be work where they have some say or they may be subject to a brutal work dictatorship. the conditions of work or exposures to chemicals may have important health impacts.

The reason I used CO2 in my example is that it does not present immediate health impacts and falsifies the idea that a purely objective measure of the cost of an externality is impossible. If you can entirely recapture the CO2 given X labour hours, then it has a cost of X.

It's true that you can't quantify in terms of labour hours how much I'm willing to obtain liver failure probability of 2% per annum as opposed dementia at 1% per annum. For this reason any partial mitigation has to be decided by a polity determining the trade-offs.

However, supposing we are measuring micromorts or a similar quantifier in some trade off, we can come up with relatively objective measures that are infinitely better than an uninformed subjective opinion.

Optimally, you have the technical-scientific apparatus of discovering precise measures of such trade-offs under democratic control.

also, different kinds of labor have different values because that depends upon how important to people at present are the particular skills embodied in that kind of labor. and how important those skills are depends upon how strongly they want the things that need those skills to make them.

This statement demonstrates a total lack of comprehension of the labour theory of value. It's the same ultra-subjective theory you describe above.

People surely want air more than they want toasters, but the pay rate for obtaining air is zero, while people are actually paid for toasters. The difference is not how much people want it.

syndicat

13th May 2011, 18:32

Your description of relative preference above is a purely subjective theory. It attempts to place everything in terms of relative wants as if these relative wants can provide a coherent framework for understanding value. It is in fact the underpinning of marginalism, a bourgeois theory of value.

you didn't answer my question: What do you mean by "subjective"? you have a tendency to throw around vague verbiage as if you think it means something.

so let me suggest that we understand "objective" the way it is in the philosophy of science: if independent investigators or observers have some way to verify something, then this makes it "objective."

now, the behavior of people is "objective" in this sense. and desires or relative preferences are in fact exhibited in behavior. if someone has a limited budget and chooses to spend their limited funds for X rather than Y, we have an objective basis for saying they prefer X over Y.

efficiency is about how well human desires are satisfied. that's because benefits are things that satisfy people's desires, things people want. and disutility or cost is about what people don't want, what is injurious to them, is contrary to their interests, is damaging to their health. what is in someone's interests is a fairly objective fact because it refers to things that people could use to satisfy whatever wants they have. damage to health impedes people doing what they want, thus it diminishes their freedom.

it is only people themselves who can indicate what is of value to them because this depends on what they want, on what their desires are, what will make them happy. and the indications or behaviors of people show what people want, for example, choosing one thing rather than another or organizing to get something or fighting for it, etc.

now leftists of the parternalistic variety may not like this conception of value because they want to arrogate to themselves the decisions about what people will get "for their own good." paternalism is itself a characteristic of the ideology of the bureaucratic class along with "meritocracy"...the conceit that only they are well suited to making the decisions because of their educations and expertise.

The reason I used CO2 in my example is that it does not present immediate health impacts and falsifies the idea that a purely objective measure of the cost of an externality is impossible. If you can entirely recapture the CO2 given X labour hours, then it has a cost of X.

this is a meaingless claim. that's because how long it takes to do something is not an accurate measure of cost. we have to know what people want and what else could be done with those hours of work. and hours of work are in fact not commensurable because different hours of work involve the deployment of very different skill sets.

the cost from global warming is virtually incalcuable. how do you calculate the "value" of a threat to the survival of the species?

there have been attempts to try to get a handle on the cost thru things like looking at property damage near costs from sea rise. but these tend to be calcuated in terms of market costs.

This statement demonstrates a total lack of comprehension of the labour theory of value. It's the same ultra-subjective theory you describe above.

People surely want air more than they want toasters, but the pay rate for obtaining air is zero, while people are actually paid for toasters. The difference is not how much people want it.

LTV is a theory of market value of commodities. but market prices are a very poor measure of actual human value...and your example here illustrates why.

you seem to think that calling a theory names refutes it. that's rather childish.

syndicat

13th May 2011, 18:53

Does it? I'm skeptical of those figures. I'm not saying you're making them up as I'm familiar enough with the WSA's history with the AIT to know you aren't one of their fanboys but I've seen pro-AIT folks bandy about such numbers and to be frank I don't trust them. I do wonder where the data comes from. What workplaces have they organised? Does the Spanish labour ministry have statistics? In books on Spanish anarchism from the pre-Franco era you occasionally see figures from the state that details impressively large membership for the CNT. I haven't seen anything comparable for its modern incarnation.

it's hard to know for sure what the CNT's membership is because they don't participate in the elections of delegates to the collective bargaining councils, and statistics for unions in Spain are mainly in regard to those that participate in these elections.

some years back the CNT's membership was somewhere in the range of 6,000 -- i heard figures in this range from different sources. but in more recent years the CNT has grown quite a bit, has had various strikes and been conducting quite a few struggles. to some extent they function like what would be called a "workers center" in the USA...that is, they take up cases of workers who aren't paid wages, are fired unjustly etc. and they protest in front of the company to get the person some justice. if you go to their website they post the latest struggles they are engaged in. so i think it is okay to give some credence to more recent membership estimates i've seen that range from 10,000 to 30,000.

the CGT's membership also has been variously estimated at 60,000 to 80,000. they do receive the votes of more than 900,000 workers in elections of delegates to the bargaining councils. this union exists only at larger companies and in the public sector.

there is also a third anarcho-syndicalist group, Solidaridad Obrera, that was a split from CGT and exists mainly in the Madrid area. it has a membership of anywhere from 600 to 2,000...again, i've heard varying stats. there are also some smaller anarcho-syndicalist union groups, such as the Assemblyist Health Union in Madrid (split from CGT) or CNT Joaquin Costa in Catalonia (split from CNT-AIT).

i've also heard estimates of 100,000 for the total membership of all the anarcho-syndicalist groups in Spain, not including Coordinadora, which isn't officially anarcho-syndicalist tho it has anarcho-syndicaliist members.

Kotze

15th May 2011, 17:05

how long it takes to do something is not an accurate measure of cost. we have to know what people want and what else could be done with those hours of work. and hours of work are in fact not commensurable because different hours of work involve the deployment of very different skill sets.Sounds like something an elitist would say :P

If somebody tells you something has a length equal to an elbow do you go on and on about different and incommensurable elbows and that the very concept of elbows is an illusion? There is something like an average elbow, and if several people are tasked with doing a report on the length of a thing measured in elbow units, averaging the feedback regarding that thing will get closer and closer to average elbow units the more people are doing it.

How long it takes to produce something is a good measure for what consumers should pay in an egalitarian society. The idea in Towards a New Socialism is that you basically receive the results of people devoting their time supplying things and services in proportion to the time you give to society.

In the model described there are some modifications: Some services are provided to those in need regardless of ability to pay, and everybody able has to help running these either directly by working in such a field or by the fact that some of your output is consumed by those working there. There's another modification to deal with shortages and oversupply, making consumer stuff more expensive or cheaper respectively, and there is yet another modification to motivate people who have potential to be particularly productive to do so. How big are these modifications?

Directly or indirectly, you contribute work to the sector of "free" services without having a guarantee of getting back the results of an equivalent amount of work. However, everybody does receive some benefit from such a service, and even those who end up needing these services much less than most others at least receive alleviation from worrying too much about certain risks of life. The modification rule for shortages and oversupply usually only affects a small part of the price of consumer items and services, and over the course of your life in such a society you can expect to experience the same dosage of paying more and paying less because of that, so this particular modification has virtually no effect on the truthiness of the time-for-time claim. I also don't see how a bit of a pay bonus to induce productivity makes a huge difference, I don't see that there's a need to pay some special people 10 times more than the average, or 3 times more for that matter. So all in all, I believe that with all these modifications it still holds true that you basically receive time for giving time.

In a model where everything is produced in fixed quantities forever, labour time as a measure of cost is not wrong, but not special either. If every worker drinks a beer a day, the ratio of labour time going into the production of X compared to the production of Y will be the same as the beer-fuel ratio. In the real world, there's a correlation between physical quantities of an input and prices of a good, and the correlation does not have the same strength for any input. It is the fact that we don't know precisely the future and the flexibility of humans compared to machines that gives labour time a special role.

syndicat

15th May 2011, 20:26

How long it takes to produce something is a good measure for what consumers should pay in an egalitarian society.

no it's not. because:

1. hours worked is not an accurate measure of the human cost to the worker. this must include the conditions under which they work, dangers to them such as chemical exposures, how harsh the work is. harms or disutilities to workers are social costs and not accurately measuring them leads to inefficiency, i.e. by not accurately measuring real human costs.

2. hours worked is not an accurate measure of the social cost of the labor itself because that depends on the social cost of building the skills and knowledge of the workforce and providing the right sort of environment for them to work in. treating each hour as of equivalent value will lead to excessive demand for forms of work that are very socially expensive because of the amount of education and training required. hence it would lead to systemic inefficiency.

3. hours worked doesn't take into account effects on other people apart from workers such as pollution effects or effects on consumers of inadequate products. hence it is not anything like a complete account of social costs.

and if you're proposing to impose costs on workers and not allow them to have the power to force them being recognized in social accounting, then you are the elitist, not me. this logically follows from saying only how long one works counts as a cost.

EDIT: moreover, to think of labor hours as the sole cost worth considering is a rather bourgeous way of looking at things. within capitalist commodity production, human costs only register on the system of production insofar as they take the form of expenses the firm must pay out. when Marx made use of the labor theory of value to account for market prices, this made a certain sense in a capitalist context because the main expense to firms is usually labor, and this is paid out per hour. but firms can externalize costs onto workers, consumers and the environment and it's an essential profitmaking strategy to do so.

Kotze

16th May 2011, 01:28

1. [The concept of human cost to the worker] must include the conditions under which they workI agree with that of course and I have mentioned that several times (eg. when I mention a remuneration multiplier for arduous work here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/super-computers-and-t154397/index.html?p=2105677#post2105677)), I can't always write a reply the length of a book.

2. hours worked is not an accurate measure of the social cost of the labor itself because that depends on the social cost of building the skills and knowledge of the workforce and providing the right sort of environment for them to work inThat is already part of the production cost measured in labour. I suggest that you (as well as those who favourited your comment) actually read Towards a New Socialism.

3. hours worked doesn't take into account effects on other people apart from workers such as pollution effects or effects on consumers of inadequate products.Like with the first point, I have also mentioned several times that pollution should be priced in (eg. here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/value-commodities-t140260/index.html?p=1834678#post1834678)). Pollution should not be addressed by a sin tax however, but by setting a limit on the aggregate physical amount. There is admittedly a political dimension to it, think about long-term justice, people 200 years from now probably won't be able to punish us for whatever we do now.

And yet, time accounting still plays a big role here. It plays a role when weighting different health hazards in the form of lifespan-reduction estimates. Or consider a recreational drug that is also a health hazard. With the help of statisticians the treatment expenses can be estimated in terms of labour time and priced in.

and if you're proposing to impose costs on workers and not allow them to have the power to force them being recognized in social accounting, then you are the elitist, not me. this logically follows from saying only how long one works counts as a cost.I'm not saying only how long one works counts as a cost, I modify that statement in several instances, among these instances is the post you reply to. I do say however that it's good as an approximation.

My impression is that your hostility stems to a large extent from having different definitions (and no, this doesn't mean that I invented my own definitions like some other user here is famous for) — eg. when you mention building skills as a part of cost as if that were opposed or an addition to the concept of necessary labour time — and from different assumptions about unsaid things. I do not state my assumptions about every single thing, nobody does.
moreover, to think of labor hours as the sole cost worth considering [well, not sole, but the primary thing] is a rather bourgeous way of looking at things.ABSOLUTELY NOT. The bourgie style of arguing for the last 100 years has been to downplay the role of labour and talk about "brave" entrepreneurs taking risks and supply and demand as if they were equals when determining price. I have also encountered among fellow leftists talk about some purported big importance of demand on the price level of everyday items, which to me looks like a leftover from the neoclassical indoctrination they have for the most part overcome — and that's what some bits of what you said also reminded me of (eg. "how long it takes to do something is not an accurate measure of cost. we have to know what people want..."). In the real world, there is a lot of regularity in what people consume, and if a new society curbs the effects on price that barriers to entry and price-fixing by cartels have what will remain there for the most part is production cost.

And now something about one of my unstated assumptions: One of the reasons I don't give much weight to other things besides labour time even when I mention them, like how arduous work is, is that I don't believe a market-like mechanism can deal efficiently with much variation. The claim that limited stuff goes to the one who needs it the most if it goes to the highest bidder falls apart if there is much variation in wealth. I don't believe that highly contaminated food or electronical toys that can occasionally taser you should be cheaper to make up for the bad quality, this stuff shouldn't be sold to begin with. Since people aren't informed in detail about everything they buy, we cannot relinquish minimum standards for quality and expect the market to give goods of vastly different quality a fitting price, what rather happens
when it's hard for buyers to get adequate information is that the bad and cheap to produce stuff drives out the good.

Likewise, I do believe that there will be some variation in how arduous work is and that the more arduous work should have extra compensation, but when I say arduous work I don't mean the worst work that exists today, but the worst work that will exist within a smaller spectrum. When I think about the future society, I think about higher safety standards at the workplace and higher quality standards for consumer items and less variation in quality, so such considerations play a smaller role when it comes to cost calculations.

Like I said in one of my posts:
However, the apparant simplicity of pay differentials is somewhat misleading. Suppose, due to no fault of my own, I get the tip of one of my pinkies chopped off in a work accident. Suppose there is an insurance system in place for accidents like this and a compensation-payment list is consulted. This list can have an inner logic that is plausible, like demanding more compensation for a whole lost pinky than for the tip and more for a lost hand than for that finger — but there is always an arbitrariness to saying this loss is worth that amount of euros or consumption points or labour vouchers or whatever, and there's no escaping it, it's not that the required compensation likely misses the right amount, it's that no such amount exists that makes me truly equal to my former self, we are just pretending that it does.

Finally, a bit about elitism/authoritarianism/bureaucracy: I find it quite funny* how much self-described libertarian socialists/anarchists/Pareconists talk about how important it is to avoid these aspects, and what they then end up suggesting, inasmuch as they suggest anything:

Central planning is too bureaucratic, let's have decentralized planning, whatever that means. Let's have also nosy neighbourhood consumption councils, what could be less bureaucratic (eeh, regarding consumption, for example what we have now?). Demarchy and referenda are too indirect, let's have instead delegates that will vote for delegates who vote for delegates who vote for delegates who vote for delegates who delegate delegates to delegate the delegation of delegates.

This has 3 nice properties:
1. It's not bureaucratic, coz you're against bureaucracy.
2. It's direct, coz you say it is.
3. It doesn't lead to cliques, coz that would suck, therefor that won't happen.

All other proposals are worse, not because of some dynamics that would unfold, but because of the evil intent you guys feel in those who propose them, whereas you have good intent, which solves everything.

*and by funny, I mean pathetic.

syndicat

16th May 2011, 04:07

Central planning is too bureaucratic, let's have decentralized planning, whatever that means. Let's have also nosy neighbourhood consumption councils, what could be less bureaucratic (eeh, regarding consumption, for example what we have now?). Demarchy and referenda are too indirect, let's have instead delegates that will vote for delegates who vote for delegates who vote for delegates who vote for delegates who delegate delegates to delegate the delegation of delegates.

strawman fallacy.

1. I've explained the dual governance system and the importance of subsidiaerity -- pushing down decisions to the extent feasible toward the base assemblies to maximize participation...which is a public good and necessary for class liberation, i've talked about the aggregation of proposals for production and requests, thus giving projected supply and projected demand for efficient non-market prices. so you're "whatever that means" is not responding to what I've spent quite a bit of time discussing and describing.

2. neighborhood assemblies (i don't use the word "council"...my name is not Michael Albert) only have purview over collective goods, not private consumption of individuals or households. so the "nosy" bit is another strawman.

3. I've never advocated indirect election of delegates. My name isn't Steve Shalom. where i do agree with Shalom is on his proposal that it should be easy for people at the base level to force decisions of delegate bodies back to the base level assemblies for vote and discussion. i think this is essential for the empowerment of the working class.

if you want to argue with those other guys do so, but your remarks are completely irrelevant to what I've said.

and in regard to how your proposals are necessarily going to be inefficient, nothing in your proposals tells us how the system of economic planning and decision making can obtain accurate estimates of human benefits and human costs.

and, no, you don't have a way to accurately measure the social value of different jobs.

and you seem to confuse the issue of remuneration with value of the work. there is no reason whatever that people should have an entitlement to consume based on the value of their work, that is, the value of the products. that's because the value of their work is to a large extent a social and collective product, such as the social system that provides them with free education and the social economy that allocates for the equipment that increases their productivity and so on.

Jose Gracchus

16th May 2011, 07:46

Geez, I'm starting to think that strict labor voucher advocates are the goldnuts of revolutionary socialism.

Thirsty Crow

16th May 2011, 08:26

1. hours worked is not an accurate measure of the human cost to the worker. this must include the conditions under which they work, dangers to them such as chemical exposures, how harsh the work is. harms or disutilities to workers are social costs and not accurately measuring them leads to inefficiency, i.e. by not accurately measuring real human costs.

2. hours worked is not an accurate measure of the social cost of the labor itself because that depends on the social cost of building the skills and knowledge of the workforce and providing the right sort of environment for them to work in. treating each hour as of equivalent value will lead to excessive demand for forms of work that are very socially expensive because of the amount of education and training required. hence it would lead to systemic inefficiency.

3. hours worked doesn't take into account effects on other people apart from workers such as pollution effects or effects on consumers of inadequate products. hence it is not anything like a complete account of social costs.

As far as I'm aware, all of these points are valid, and could be easily integrated into the basic mechanism of "social accounting" which takes labour time as its primary unit of measurement. I don't see how your critiques amounts to a rejection of LTV (since it seems to me that you're aiming at that), and not a rejection of a specific kind of use of the theory in a socialist society.

Kotze

16th May 2011, 10:27

Oh God. The random pickers come out of the woodwork. :rolleyes:I guess you are too "cool" to admit you said something that had a pretty amazing wrong-stuff density ("unseen in the modern world - in fact, totally unseen since Middle Antiquity - as a panacea to replace the intuitive form of election"), hmm?
Geez, I'm starting to think that strict labor voucher advocates are the goldnuts of revolutionary socialism.I'm starting to think that the "decentral planning" guys have lost the debate, which is understandable, because they are wrong (also lol at your comment in another thread about how in the USSR THEY EVEN USED SHADOW PRICES OHNOES).

Work time is stressful. Nobody enjoys following orders. Reducing hierarchy doesn't mean you won't have to follow orders, just that these orders won't come anymore from people in a very small well-connected group who live very different lifes. Many on the non-authoritarian left use a rhetoric with heavy emphasis on local decisions and not having to follow orders, which is not convincing, as production processes are too connected for that. (The amount of control individuals have in an economy with less central planning and co-ops is illusory, since you are de facto always dependent on suppliers and customers.) So if means of production are to be owned by everybody, this can't be implemented in a way that everybody individually or as a part of a small group owns and controls an "independent" piece. So the control a normal person will have will be exerted through being part of a big group of normal persons, which means you being pivotal in a decison will be unlikely, which means control will have a rather abstract feel to it — though somewhat moderated by society being more socially homogenous, so other people are likely to vote in similar ways as you. This makes work more tolerable, it doesn't make it fun.

Radical decentralizing is a romantic notion, we cannot turn back time a couple of centuries.

Working conditions can be improved, but work as play is not achievable in the foreseeable future. Hence it is important that the time people must work is kept to a minimum. The concept of social necessary labour time is key to efficient planning. This doesn't mean that labour-voucher advocates demand that everything at every moment has to have a price that exactly reflects that, there are things like short-term rigidities (which is what shadow prices are about).

Rowan Duffy

16th May 2011, 11:32

you didn't answer my question: What do you mean by "subjective"? you have a tendency to throw around vague verbiage as if you think it means something.

I was referring to the Subjective Theory of Value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value). I had in mind a rather concrete meaning. Sometimes it's hard to know what other people have in mind when they say a word.

efficiency is about how well human desires are satisfied. that's because benefits are things that satisfy people's desires, things people want. and disutility or cost is about what people don't want, what is injurious to them, is contrary to their interests, is damaging to their health. what is in someone's interests is a fairly objective fact because it refers to things that people could use to satisfy whatever wants they have. damage to health impedes people doing what they want, thus it diminishes their freedom.

Inter-subjectivity doesn't lead naturally to objective value. Arrow’s paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem) essentially makes this a concrete proposition. Even if we choose some arbitrary mechanism for social ordering, we end up with the question of how strongly people actually mean for things to be ordered.

Humans aren't particularly good at working out utility. Doing so requires going beyond peoples immediate desires and actually using reflective research. What is injurious to someone is probably more correctly settled by experts than by people who are not studying the question. People can't actually keep million-dimensional indifference curves in their heads. People don't actually know what they want and people can't actually sort out exactly which things are likely to be more risky than others on the fly. I think Dan Ariely's work on choice in behavioural economics shows how true this is with empirical backing.

The reason for democratic control is not because people actually know these things, it's because without a check on power, we'll form a bureaucratic or technocratic elite.

now leftists of the parternalistic variety may not like this conception of value because they want to arrogate to themselves the decisions about what people will get "for their own good." paternalism is itself a characteristic of the ideology of the bureaucratic class along with "meritocracy"...the conceit that only they are well suited to making the decisions because of their educations and expertise.

Nobody is suggesting "meritocracy" or paternalism. Indeed those who suggest people should to first-approximation be payed by non-circulating labour time vouchers are suggesting that people not be advantaged by special education and expertise.

the cost from global warming is virtually incalcuable. how do you calculate the "value" of a threat to the survival of the species?

My example is correct. Complete recapture or avoidance of CO2 is a calculable cost in terms of labour time. You're right that the attendant effects of not doing so can not be quantified directly in terms of labour time. You can't cost premature death from flooding.

However, nobody is suggesting we do that. I simply pointed out that it is not true that it is always impossible to cost mitigation. I agree with Kotze that certain types of toxic substances should have hard limits - essentially giving them infinite cost. However, the question of where we should draw this line will require assessment of relative labour costs versus total mitigation of health effects. Number of labour hours per micromort/year of population would be a reasonable measure. It's likely to give us a much better idea of how we should act than a gut feeling.

syndicat

16th May 2011, 17:49

However, nobody is suggesting we do that. I simply pointed out that it is not true that it is always impossible to cost mitigation.

you've not provided any analysis or plausible understanding of what cost is. instead you throw around a lot of vague verbiage.

a cost can only be calculated if we know how much the people to whom it is a cost want to avoid it. this will be indicated by them indicating how much in the way of possible other benefits they are willing to give up to avoid it. this is why ultimately the control over permissions for pollutants must lie with those who are potentially harmed by it.

in the case of global warming, this will be shown by the willingness of people do things that will reduce CO2 and methane emissions. but the elites who profit by allowing these emissions now have the power to block an effective price for the emissions. this is shown by things like the various Euro and US bodies insisting on clever "offset" systems and giveaways or grandfathering of permits, and so on.

Inter-subjectivity doesn't lead naturally to objective value. Arrow’s paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem) essentially makes this a concrete proposition.

now you're falling into methodoligical individualism...which Arrow's impossibility theorem is based on.

what he ignores is that there are separate collective and individual rationalities. people adopt a "we" as a subject and can deliberate on what is best for that "we"...as when members of organization adopt an attitude of looking at what is best for that organization such as union, or what is best for their family or their community or their class.

hence there is no reason to require that collective rationality be reducible to indiviidual preference rankings because there can be collective preferences also, which need not be reducible to individual ones.

Kotze

16th May 2011, 19:48

now you're falling into methodoligical individualism...which Arrow's impossibility theorem is based on.

what he ignores is that there are separate collective and individual rationalities.As I have already told you (twice, here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/modern-anarcho-communist-t149776/index.html?p=2023023#post2023023) and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/arrows-impossibility-theorem-t151610/index.html?p=2054036#post2054036)) that presentation of Arrow is quite absurd. Arrow pointed out problems that exist when there are cyclic majorities. These won't magically disappear under any -ism.

Jose Gracchus

16th May 2011, 22:00

I guess you are too "cool" to admit you said something that had a pretty amazing wrong-stuff density ("unseen in the modern world - in fact, totally unseen since Middle Antiquity - as a panacea to replace the intuitive form of election"), hmm?

Uh no. You never demonstrated demarchy is workable, because it is not, and is just some fantasy. You guys are a bunch of abstract-system builders who belong in the Green Party pitching vague notions of "participative democracy" without class content. What is absurd is imagining random statistical selection is usable for something other than the Boule being checked by an immediately participative popular Ekklesia [naturally you and your great leader, DNZ, write that little bit out, since you all have no faith in the average worker's direct contribution]. You also totally ignored how greymouser documented that historically in fact that all power and decision-making inevitably coalesced among the elected Strategoi. Of course, this is ignored, the fact that only elected officers have the personal authority to actually get things done in democratic practice. This should be obvious to anyone who has actually done any social decision-making or organization.

I'm starting to think that the "decentral planning" guys have lost the debate, which is understandable, because they are wrong (also lol at your comment in another thread about how in the USSR THEY EVEN USED SHADOW PRICES OHNOES).

What is your point? Do you even have one? I'm pointing out the Soviet directive planning requiring goods "for use" was a farce, and the USSR is better described as an anarchic system of state bureaucratic offices and largely autonomous 'state' firms which made extensive use of capitalist exchange? That is exhibited general commodity production?

Work time is stressful. Nobody enjoys following orders. Reducing hierarchy doesn't mean you won't have to follow orders, just that these orders won't come anymore from people in a very small well-connected group who live very different lifes. Many on the non-authoritarian left use a rhetoric with heavy emphasis on local decisions and not having to follow orders, which is not convincing, as production processes are too connected for that. (The amount of control individuals have in an economy with less central planning and co-ops is illusory, since you are de facto always dependent on suppliers and customers.) So if means of production are to be owned by everybody, this can't be implemented in a way that everybody individually or as a part of a small group owns and controls an "independent" piece. So the control a normal person will have will be exerted through being part of a big group of normal persons, which means you being pivotal in a decison will be unlikely, which means control will have a rather abstract feel to it — though somewhat moderated by society being more socially homogenous, so other people are likely to vote in similar ways as you. This makes work more tolerable, it doesn't make it fun.

This totally misses the point, and reveals you to be a hierarchically-minded, probably upper middle class, social democrat, nothing more. No one is saying that planning will not be 'centrally' coordinated and finalized. What we object to is whether systemic decision-making is alienated from the producers and coalesced as a matter of general practice in professional decision-makers, who purportedly make decisions on the basis of pure science on behalf of the producers. I think it will take a lot of things, delegates, assemblies, even some random selection and voluntarism, as well as social labor. It will be a long process before alienation is fully eliminated, but I don't think we should commit ourselves to an outlook and process that guarantees its privileges and advantages.

Radical decentralizing is a romantic notion, we cannot turn back time a couple of centuries.

We're not talking about radical self-reliance or de-centralization. We're talking about working people being able to exert meaningful control over the content and circumstances of their own lives, and being able to generally have a society structured around working-class needs and interests, and the real social control of production by the producers.

Working conditions can be improved, but work as play is not achievable in the foreseeable future. Hence it is important that the time people must work is kept to a minimum. The concept of social necessary labour time is key to efficient planning. This doesn't mean that labour-voucher advocates demand that everything at every moment has to have a price that exactly reflects that, there are things like short-term rigidities (which is what shadow prices are about).

I'm totally for labor time as a major determinant, even the primary determinant, of cost. But the idea there are no other organic ingredients, at all corners of social production, is madness, I think. I do think we need something like a computerized decentralized network of socialized workplaces and communities, which will re-work the industry and resources of today into a collaborative, cooperative system that will provide people's needs adequately and uniformly, wants fairly, and distributes social responsibility and labor fairly and uniformly and efficiently.

Die Neue Zeit

17th May 2011, 03:27

You guys are a bunch of abstract-system builders who belong in the Green Party pitching vague notions of "participative democracy" without class content.

Nonsense. There is lots of class content to what we're proposing. We don't treat random selection as a one-trick panacea (just re-read the attempt to go beyond "average workers wage" and directly into standard of living questions, or disenfranchising the bourgeoisie from more than just the "right" to vote and be elected).

What is absurd is imagining random statistical selection is usable for something other than the Boule being checked by an immediately participative popular Ekklesia [naturally you and your great leader, DNZ, write that little bit out, since you all have no faith in the average worker's direct contribution].

You also totally ignored how graymouser documented that historically in fact that all power and decision-making inevitably coalesced among the elected Strategoi. Of course, this is ignored, the fact that only elected officers have the personal authority to actually get things done in democratic practice. This should be obvious to anyone who has actually done any social decision-making or organization.

Graymouser ignored my own rebuttal on stratified sampling (http://www.revleft.com/vb/questions-demarchists-t152645/index.html?p=2071172), which Ancient Athens never had. He also ignored:

Demarchy, "Lassalleanism," and "Stalinism" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/demarchy-lassalleanism-and-t153585/index.html)

syndicat

17th May 2011, 23:05

As I have already told you (twice, here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/modern-anarcho-communist-t149776/index.html?p=2023023#post2023023) and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/arrows-impossibility-theorem-t151610/index.html?p=2054036#post2054036)) that presentation of Arrow is quite absurd. Arrow pointed out problems that exist when there are cyclic majorities.

and you've never provided an actual counter-argument. Arrow assumes the neoclassical conception of rationality as individual utility maximization. what he shows is that democratic decision-making can lead to paradox on this assumption. but we can also assume that there is such a thing as a collective utility or collective benefit. we don't have to suppose it is reducible to individual utility.

Jose Gracchus

17th May 2011, 23:22

Nonsense. There is lots of class content to what we're proposing. We don't treat random selection as a one-trick panacea (just re-read the attempt to go beyond "average workers wage" and directly into standard of living questions, or disenfranchising the bourgeoisie from more than just the "right" to vote and be elected).

What's the class content? Appeals to the Athenian constitution, without any Ekklesia? A slave-holding antique farmers' "democracy"? Give me a break. Workers' committees and councils have much more working-class content than that. For one, they are a tool of the working-class. So can to some extent bureaucratic organizations like unions and parties, but to an attenuated extent.

Graymouser ignored my own rebuttal on stratified sampling (http://www.revleft.com/vb/questions-demarchists-t152645/index.html?p=2071172), which Ancient Athens never had. He also ignored:

Demarchy, "Lassalleanism," and "Stalinism" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/demarchy-lassalleanism-and-t153585/index.html)

No one wants to read through that shit. I can't even slog through two paragraphs, and I've read some opaque stuff before. I cannot conceptualize at all how a demarchic system could function without total hand-waving fantasy on a scale greater than demotic.

Kotze

18th May 2011, 01:17

I guess you are too "cool" to admit you said something that had a pretty amazing wrong-stuff density ("unseen in the modern world - in fact, totally unseen since Middle Antiquity - as a panacea to replace the intuitive form of election"), hmm?
Uh no.Let me refresh your memory:

1. The part with "unseen in the modern world - in fact, totally unseen since Middle Antiquity" is wrong, as pointed out in post #64 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/worker-self-management-t153273/index.html?p=2104676#post2104676).

2. The claim that it's presented as some panacea by anyone is made up, and has been pointed out to you I don't know how many times. DNZ isn't a pure-lottery-for-everything advocate and talks a lot about qualifications. I'm certainly not an advocate for powerful boards with a single-digit number of seats to be filled via direct population lottery.

3. The part about elections being somehow intuitive in comparison to random selection is absurd, as pointed out in post#52 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/worker-self-management-t153273/index.html?p=2099449#post2099449). Describing random selection as a selection method doesn't take longer than describing any voting method, and it's logistically easier by several orders of magnitude.

I'm starting to think that the "decentral planning" guys have lost the debate, which is understandable, because they are wrong (also lol at your comment in another thread about how in the USSR THEY EVEN USED SHADOW PRICES OHNOES).
What is your point? Do you even have one?
The point is your economic illiteracy.
Blahblahblah reveals you to be a hierarchically-minded, probably upper middle classTip: When attempting a bit of more-radical-than-thou posturing, don't use the language of liberal sociologists.

Arrow assumes the neoclassical conception of rationality as individual utility maximization.What you say has nothing to do with his proof of incompatible criteria.

You are wrong.

This is not based on a hostile reading, for somebody who grasps Arrow's proof there is no way to interpret what you wrote in a more flattering way.

You are wrong.

This is a fact.

You are wrong.

Concepts like utility and dishonest egotistical voters of course appear in voting theory literature, and some findings about vulnerability of voting methods to strategic voting are related to Arrow's proof, but his proof itself is not based on egotistical voters, it's not based on strategic voters, and it's not based on some utilitarian analysis.

You are wrong.

Mathematically.

You are wrong.

I don't know where you got that nonsense from. I guess it's secondhand knowledge from some crappy essay, and after that you have been too full of yourself to read my plain language explanations and try to understand.

You are wrong.

Of course I can't say I'm surprised that you, Inform Candidate, and RED DAVE aren't familiar with basic building blocks of voting theory. (This also shows in other parts of what you guys have written, like about how wonderful delegation is. The dynamic that unfolds in a delegation cascade (http://www.revleft.com/vb/workers-power-t145122/index.html?p=1926380#post1926380) should be obvious to anyone who has actually done any social decision-making in an organization that consists of more than a dozen Trots or Anarcho-whatevers.) The question is what makes you write such humiliating things.

You are objectively wrong.

Look up Arrow's theorem. And while you're at it, Dunning–Kruger effect.

syndicat

18th May 2011, 02:32

You are wrong.

you can huff and puff and repeat that all you like. it doesn't tell us anything or prove anything.

to do that you'd need to actually be able to explain his argument in intelligible language.

now, i have read his argument and what I say is my take on it.

his argument is based on the premise that preference is a transitive relation: If x prefers A to B and prefers B to C, then A prefers A to C.
this is supposed to be a basic condition of individual rationality.

now, it doesn't take very much to show that majority democratic decision-making will violate this principle of the individual rationality of the individual decision-making.

but what the methodological individualists do not consider is that there is a separate rationality of collective subjects, not reducible to individual preference rankings.

Die Neue Zeit

18th May 2011, 04:36

What's the class content? Appeals to the Athenian constitution, without any Ekklesia? A slave-holding antique farmers' "democracy"? Give me a break. Workers' committees and councils have much more working-class content than that. For one, they are a tool of the working-class. So can to some extent bureaucratic organizations like unions and parties, but to an attenuated extent.

We already criticized the class structure of ancient Athens. It doesn't mean that lessons can't be learned from there.

Workers committees and councils, like unions, are tools of the immediate working-class demographics participating in them (as evidenced by a producer focus and not consumer focus), not of the class as a whole.

No one wants to read through that shit. I can't even slog through two paragraphs, and I've read some opaque stuff before. I cannot conceptualize at all how a demarchic system could function without total hand-waving fantasy on a scale greater than demotic.

Comrade Q fully understood my proposal re. a single party-wide position up for election ("Lassalleanism") and re. stratified sampling ("Stalinism").

Jose Gracchus

18th May 2011, 04:50

Juries and the Canadian Citizens' Electoral Commission are nothing even close in role to that of central decision-making governmental institutions. I meant like the Boule council, you jackass. It exercised a substantial role in a state's high political apparatus. But of course, there's a reason you only have juries and the like for examples: even in Athens (antique empire though it was), you had power ultimately accreting among the elected Strategoi, at the expense of the sortitive offices, and that is with the immediate check of a popular assembly, which your demarchic model does without. Nope, all jury. This is plainly ridiculous and will not work, and that's why I cannot find a bingo game that organizes itself by fully random selection of a board.

Where's the concept of working-class power? I know DNZ has an idea of a centrally-commanded party-movement monolith which would coup or somehow be elected in and then institute socialism by blueprint and schematic from the top-down upon the silly stupid workers who might legislate fancy haircuts. You guys clearly do not have belief in bottom-up initiative, the role of the strike and a working history of how working class breaks with capital really have occurred. Therefore you conjure up some Master Plan and hope to propagandize and rote it into enough activists and workers that maybe someday the Central Committee will from its lofty bridge navigate the ship of state to socialism.

I just challenge anyone with a real history of real working class struggles to see where any of this comes out of a vision of the real working class, its historical and contemporary struggles, and what is unfolding out of them. It just seems totally alien and like some professor's creation that I cannot imagine ever being a central article of an authentic workers' society.

Die Neue Zeit

18th May 2011, 04:56

I already mentioned the key role stratified sampling could play in those very same central government institutions:

For example, which qualified comrades would be randomly selected to administer the security apparatus at key points in that apparatus (nomenclature), and would the leading position of that security apparatus be entitled to a seat on the central party-movement leadership body (job slot)?

[On the latter question, "No" would be the answer of those fearing any institutional clout by the security apparatus, as was the case of the lack of KGB heads in the Presidium of the CC CPSU from Beria's demise to Andropov's ascent.]

Another example: Which qualified comrades would be randomly selected to administer the economic planning at key points in that apparatus (again, nomenclature), and would the leading position of that planning apparatus be entitled to a seat on the central party-movement leadership body (again, job slot)?

[Gosplan had no direct representation in the Politburo since the downfall of Saburov in the Anti-Party Group affair.]

Last example: Which qualified comrades would be randomly selected to positions in some department within the central party apparatus (again, nomenclature), and would the leading position of that department be entitled to a seat on the central party-movement leadership body (again, job slot)?

[The CC CPSU department for the defense industry had candidate seat representation in the Politburo until Dmitry Ustinov became Defense Minister.]

You guys clearly do not have belief in bottom-up initiative, the role of the strike and a working history of how working class breaks with capital really have occurred.

Out of three points you've got one-and-a-half right: the role of the strike is overrated, and initiative can be horizontal or mid-level and not just "bottom-up."

I just challenge anyone with a real history of real working class struggles to see where any of this comes out of a vision of the real working class, its historical and contemporary struggles, and what is unfolding out of them. It just seems totally alien and like some professor's creation that I cannot imagine ever being a central article of an authentic workers' society.

The model is the party-movement that was the pre-WWI SPD.

Jose Gracchus

18th May 2011, 05:14

I'm not replying to you now, nor will I later.

I don't think it will be productive for me or anyone else. I don't recognize anything you talk about as workers' socialism anymore.

Kibbutznik

18th May 2011, 05:21

I already mentioned the key role stratified sampling could play in those very same central government institutions:

For example, which qualified comrades would be randomly selected to administer the security apparatus at key points in that apparatus (nomenclature), and would the leading position of that security apparatus be entitled to a seat on the central party-movement leadership body (job slot)?

[On the latter question, "No" would be the answer of those fearing any institutional clout by the security apparatus, as was the case of the lack of KGB heads in the Presidium of the CC CPSU from Beria's demise to Andropov's ascent.]

Another example: Which qualified comrades would be randomly selected to administer the economic planning at key points in that apparatus (again, nomenclature), and would the leading position of that planning apparatus be entitled to a seat on the central party-movement leadership body (again, job slot)?

[Gosplan had no direct representation in the Politburo since the downfall of Saburov in the Anti-Party Group affair.]

Last example: Which qualified comrades would be randomly selected to positions in some department within the central party apparatus (again, nomenclature), and would the leading position of that department be entitled to a seat on the central party-movement leadership body (again, job slot)?

[The CC CPSU department for the defense industry had candidate seat representation in the Politburo until Dmitry Ustinov became Defense Minister.]

Out of three points you've got one-and-a-half right: the role of the strike is overrated, and initiative can be horizontal or mid-level and not just "bottom-up."
If you want to change people's minds, you're going to have to be less deliberately obtuse.

You spend a whole lot of time talking about "stratified sampling" to fulfill bureaucratic posts, but you never once stop to consider that bureaucracies are in themselves terrible decision-making systems. You are right to call what these bureaucrats do "administration". Bureaucracies are fundamentally organs designed to process and transmit information, and to apply pre-set policies to do the brute-work of of administering the daily minutiae of preset policies.

Bureaucracies are naturally conservative, because that is their role. They're bad at innovating, at looking at broader pictures, or taking into account political legitimacy or social needs. They're a cybernetic system designed to process information, so it's little wonder that the increasing use of information networks and computers has greatly lightened bureaucracies across the industrialized world.

The bottom-line, though, is that bureaucracies, in order to function, must always be accountable to other institutions. Whether it's a system of participatory democratic nested councils, popular assemblies, or even a representative parliament, bureaucrats can't function properly without an institution built on some conception of democratic legitimacy.

Die Neue Zeit

18th May 2011, 05:23

I don't recognize anything you talk about as workers' socialism anymore.

The kind of bureaucratic processes I've mentioned arose from the working class as much if not more than councils arising from sections of the working class.

If you want to change people's minds, you're going to have to be less deliberately obtuse.

You spend a whole lot of time talking about "stratified sampling" to fulfill bureaucratic posts, but you never once stop to consider that bureaucracies are in themselves terrible decision-making systems. You are right to call what these bureaucrats do "administration". Bureaucracies are fundamentally organs designed to process and transmit information, and to apply pre-set policies to do the brute-work of of administering the daily minutiae of preset policies.

On the contrary, what I'm saying here is that bureaucratic processes are in themselves terrific decision-making systems. You confuse bureaucratic processes with "red tape." Every major meeting should have procedures of conduct, for example, and these imply a bureaucratic process, instead of yells and fist fights.

They're a cybernetic system designed to process information, so it's little wonder that the increasing use of information networks and computers has greatly lightened bureaucracies across the industrialized world.

Wrong. Information networks and computers have increased bureaucracies as much as they have paperwork. It's the Productivity Paradox.

The bottom-line, though, is that bureaucracies, in order to function, must always be accountable to other institutions. Whether it's a system of participatory democratic nested councils, popular assemblies, or even a representative parliament, bureaucrats can't function properly without an institution built on some conception of democratic legitimacy.

Random selection plays a role in the other side (outside the bureaucracy), too.

Jose Gracchus

18th May 2011, 05:33

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burnheim

John Burnheim is a former professor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor) of General Philosophy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy) at the University of Sydney (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Sydney), Australia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia).
In his book Is Democracy Possible? (1985) John Burnheim utilized the term "demarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy)" (created by Friederich A.Von Hayek in his Law, Legislation and Liberty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law,_Legislation_and_Liberty)) to describe a political system without the state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_state) or bureaucracies, and based instead on randomly selected groups of decision makers. This has striking resemblances to classical democratic ideas, as reported by Thucydides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides). In 2006 Burnheim published a second edition with a new preface in which he directed the reader to an emphasis that "a polity organised by negotiation between specialised authorities would work much better than one based on centralised authority".[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burnheim#cite_note-burnpref-0)
Burnheim used to be a Roman Catholic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic) priest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest)[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burnheim#cite_note-stove-1) and, from 1958-1968, was rector of St John's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John%27s_College,_University_of_Sydney#Rectors. 5B12.5D), the Catholic college attached to the university. He was a major figure in the disturbances of the 1970s that split the university's Department of Philosophy.

There's some working class content right there. You practically insert yourself into the annotated Communist Manifesto beside "bourgeois socialism". It is as if the slur "abstract system-builder" and liberal idealism was dropped from the sky especially for you.

RED DAVE

18th May 2011, 05:42

The model is the party-movement that was the pre-WWI SPD.In other words, your model is the organization hat consciously and deliberately accomplished perhaps the greatest sell-out in history.

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

18th May 2011, 05:45

The kind of bureaucratic processes I've mentioned arose from the working class as much if not more than councils arising from sections of the working class.As I've suspected, you can't tell the difference between stalinism and socialism.

On the contrary, what I'm saying here is that bureaucratic processes are in themselves terrific decision-making systems. You confuse bureaucratic processes with "red tape." Every major meeting should have procedures of conduct, for example, and these imply a bureaucratic process, instead of yells and fist fights.And you can't tell the difference between bureaucracy and democracy.

RED DAVE

Die Neue Zeit

18th May 2011, 05:46

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burnheim

There's some working class content right there. You practically insert yourself into the annotated Communist Manifesto beside "bourgeois socialism". It is as if the slur "abstract system-builder" and liberal idealism was dropped from the sky especially for you.

He's not the only advocate of random selection in modern times. I already referred to Kojin Karatani's comments in his Transcritique.

There's some working class content right there. You practically insert yourself into the annotated Communist Manifesto beside "bourgeois socialism". It is as if the slur "abstract system-builder" and liberal idealism was dropped from the sky especially for you.

Burnheim hates bureaucracy. I don't.

As I've suspected, you can't tell the difference between stalinism and socialism.

And you can't tell the difference between bureaucracy and democracy.

RED DAVE

And I thought my Third World Caesarean Socialism platform riled you up so much to yell "Stalinism" :p

Rowan Duffy

18th May 2011, 08:52

There's some working class content right there. You practically insert yourself into the annotated Communist Manifesto beside "bourgeois socialism". It is as if the slur "abstract system-builder" and liberal idealism was dropped from the sky especially for you.

Nevertheless, no profound social change can take place in a conscious and deliberately controlled way unless there is a very wide consensus that it is at least acceptable, and a substantial group that is both strongly motivated and organized to bring it about. I concede that the central requirement in our present historical situation is that the working class should become conscious of the need to abolish the sources of class division at every level of social life. This is especially the case in the matter of control of the means of production. To that extent I agree with the classical Marxist analysis.

Now, it is true that later Burnheim retreated from this. However, it's not the case that every idea has to come from communists to be useful. The LTV came from bourgeois economists. It however required modification to be of use.

Origin doesn't immediately contaminate an idea.

Kotze

18th May 2011, 09:49

[Arrow's] argument is based on the premise that preference is a transitive relation: If x prefers A to B and prefers B to C, then A prefers A to C.
this is supposed to be a basic condition of individual rationality.

now, it doesn't take very much to show that majority democratic decision-making will violate this principle of the individual rationality of the individual decision-making.You don't understand Arrow's theorem.

People have different opinions how to handle an election with more than 2 candidates. Commonsense says what to do in the case of 2 candidates: Select the one preferred by the bigger group. It is also a popular wish that candidates shouldn't spoil anybody's victory aside from by winning themselves. This is what Arrow calls independence of irrelevant alternatives. The winner shouldn't change if we delete a non-winning candidate or any combination of non-winning candidates from the ranked ballots and run the counting algorithm again. Arrow showed that there is no known voting method that always satisfies both wishes, and worse, that there is no way to construct a method that does.

The point made by Arrow is not that a majority's decision may run counter to what a specific individual wishes. The point is that there are opinion patterns that can't be made into an ordered list where an option A is ranked as better than an option B whenever the group that prefers A to B is bigger than the group that prefers B to A. Majority opinion isn't always transitive, even if all individual opinions that go into the aggregate are.

Let me say that again: The point is not that majority opinion isn't always consistent with every individual's opionion, it's also not related to how civic-minded people get in groups. The point is that majority opinion isn't always consistent with majority opinion. In these situations, the 2 commonsense criteria mentioned above are incompatible.

What Arrow said is mathematically true. I don't expect you to admit that what you presented as Arrow's argment has no connection whatsoever to it, because people having the humility like DNZ or The Vegan Marxist to occasionally admit being wrong about anything are very rare on the internet.

Rowan Duffy

18th May 2011, 09:52

The problem with value theories which are subjective (whether or not there is some claimed difference between collective wants and individual wants as cat claims) is that they do not respond to the constraints imposed by reality. They are essentially christmas wish lists.

Humans, having, to first order approximation, the capacity to achieve virtually arbitrary tasks, given sufficient tools (including cognitive ones) create a substance which can apply to satisfying wants. This substance, labour, while an approximation, is a reasonable measure of the realisability of wants.

The question of assessment of externalities will require deliberation about what goods are desired, including goods such as being free of noise pollution, but only subject to the cost of achieving them. These costs of achieving the various mitigations of externalities will be either forgoing the good, or mitigation at some level. The cost of doing so is not a purely subjective question.

Jose Gracchus

18th May 2011, 09:56

So majority voting is always useless? You don't always encounter circular majorities. What majoritarianism is good for is maintaining at least a relative core zone of decision-making which is made on the basis of majority consent. Some decisions are much less subjective or political and nature, and yes, can be made institutionally, scientifically. The scientific collectives will advise the assemblies properly, and I'm sure that democratic culture will involve respect for useful information. The idea no decision-making can be accomplished in the set labeled clear majority preferences is ridiculous. Are you claiming there are no correctly framed prompts for which the statement "over 51% agree with X" is the case?

RED DAVE

18th May 2011, 12:19

Jeez haven't any of you people ever belonged to a union and run for shop steward in a democratic election?

RED DAVE

syndicat

18th May 2011, 18:44

Let me say that again: The point is not that majority opinion isn't always consistent with every individual's opionion,

why should it be? again, people can function as part of a "we" and deliberate on that basis. the preferences of the "we" need not be reducible to the preference orderings of individuals separate from their role as part of a "we" they work as part of.

syndicat

18th May 2011, 18:48

The problem with value theories which are subjective (whether or not there is some claimed difference between collective wants and individual wants as cat claims) is that they do not respond to the constraints imposed by reality.

once again, you're refused to explain what you mean by "subjective" or show why this tag is in any way relevant to my line of argument.

when people are in pain, or strongly dislike things, or simply would prefer something else, this is very much a part of reality.

moreover, as I pointed out, preferences are exhibited in behavior, they are exhibited when people make choices. this is especially the case if they must choose between A and B and can't get both. As for example when people or communities have budgets they normally must stick within, and then make decisions related to the self-management of their consumption in that context. and behaviors are quite objective.

Effectiveness of an economy is its effectiveness for people. And this must be in terms of what they want, not what some paternalistic bureaucracy thinks is best for them.

Die Neue Zeit

19th May 2011, 01:51

Jeez haven't any of you people ever belonged to a union and run for shop steward in a democratic election?

That's the stuff of tred-iunionizm and mere labour disputes.

Tim Finnegan

19th May 2011, 02:29

In other words, your model is the organization hat consciously and deliberately accomplished perhaps the greatest sell-out in history.

RED DAVE
To be honest, that doesn't strike me as a particularly substantial criticism of the SPD model. There are certainly criticisms that can be made, I do not disagree, but the "sell-out" in question was at best facilitated by that model, insofar as it was the means by which a reactionary leadership was able to act over the head of a timid membership. One could just as easily wheel out the dusty old cliché of "democratic centralism causes Stalinism", which I'm sure you're far more well acquainted with than you would ever wish to be. We should really be past the point of blundering around declaring that "organisational model X causes event Y".

syndicat

20th May 2011, 02:55

perhaps another criticism, a deeper one, of the SPD is that it's methodology...of focusing on a parliamentary role, of building up a professional trade union bureaucracy...contributed to draining life of that movement and over time of draining socialist content from it as well.

Die Neue Zeit

20th May 2011, 04:11

I agree with you on the first part, "focusing on a parliamentary role." It was a disgrace that the entire party's activity was controlled by the parliamentary fraction, and not even by a bureaucracy outside that fraction to the point where the parliamentary leader and fellow parliamentarians could be parachuted in and yanked out by such a bureaucracy without notice.

I also agree with you on the second part, "building up a professional trade union bureaucracy." Ideally, it would have been better if a worker had to be a party member in order to join an party-organized union.

Fortunately, you didn't touch on a third part where I'm sure I'd really disagree with you on. ;)

Ilyich

20th May 2011, 04:27

workers self-management is a necessary condition of working class liberation from class domination & exploitation. if workers don't directly, collectively manage their own work & industries they work in, who will? Workers will be subject to a bureaucratic class of managers & high end professionals like we see in the capitalist corporations and in state-run industries everywhere.

"Nationalization" always refers to the state taking over ownership and management of industries. This means a bureaucratic apparatus to which the workers will be subject. It means society hasn't gotten beyond the class system.

Of course, state run industries are nothing more than statist capitalism.

Paul Cockshott

21st May 2011, 16:10

That's not reputable evidence.
Why not

Die Neue Zeit

21st May 2011, 21:32

Where's the concept of working-class power? I know DNZ has an idea of a centrally-commanded party-movement monolith which would coup or somehow be elected in and then institute socialism by blueprint and schematic from the top-down upon the silly stupid workers who might legislate fancy haircuts [...] Therefore you conjure up some Master Plan and hope to propagandize and rote it into enough activists and workers that maybe someday the Central Committee will from its lofty bridge navigate the ship of state to socialism.

I forgot to note that it would not be a coup d'etat relative to the working class if a worker-class party-movement commanding and retaining majority political support from that class by various means (including that most reliable means that is concrete party-movement citizenship - signifying economic support, commitment, etc.) comes to power and shuts down spontaneous councils external to the party-movement.

What made the Bolsheviks' anti-soviet closures in 1918 coups d'etat were two things: loss of political support and the earlier slogan "All Power to the Soviets":

"All Power to Independent Social Democracy": the possibilities of 1918 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/all-power-independent-t155105/index.html)

Jose Gracchus

25th May 2011, 23:56

Why not

I don't know where this remark was plucked from, so you'll have to indulge me and remind me what evidence I dismissed in order for me to reply intelligently.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

27th May 2011, 12:38

I forgot to note that it would not be a coup d'etat relative to the working class if a worker-class party-movement commanding and retaining majority political support from that class by various means (including that most reliable means that is concrete party-movement citizenship - signifying economic support, commitment, etc.) comes to power and shuts down spontaneous councils external to the party-movement.

What you're essentially saying in this unnecessarily jargonistic paragraph is that if the people vote for centralised, hierarchical dictatorship a la USSR, then that is a legitimate method of rule.:rolleyes:

Die Neue Zeit

27th May 2011, 14:50

^^^ Did you even read my Independent Social Democracy (USPD) thread in the History forum? :confused:

Jose Gracchus

29th May 2011, 04:41

And if your little party loses majority support, then what? Its bureaucrats will politely step down from power, having eradicated all the independent political institutions? :rolleyes:

Die Neue Zeit

29th May 2011, 06:02

It would be quite an embarrassment, to say the least, for "bureaucrats" (in your jargon those who pretend to be, in my jargon, revolutionary careerists) to see a precipitous drop in dues and other means of political support that define honest party-movement citizenship. Besides, the carrot of multiple tendencies would increase the chances of the party-movement overall not losing majority political support (after slandering outside sects and using other sticks).

Jose Gracchus

29th May 2011, 13:00

So you're response is to assert it cannot happen? That's certainly a creative ex cathedra way out of having no response. And where's your evidence that the USPD had anything like the support you would have your fantasy party have?

Die Neue Zeit

29th May 2011, 21:48

As I said in the "conscious party" thread, at one point just before the ultra-left KPD splits, the USPD had more members than the MSPD.

Jose Gracchus

30th May 2011, 03:33

So? That's not a "majority" of "the class." And I love how you've boiled this literally down (though failed to meet the standard of evidence), to counting heads to 50%+1 worker, at which point the Central Committee of group X may speak on behalf of ZE ARBEITER.

Die Neue Zeit

30th May 2011, 04:03

^^^ I'm sure that at that critical juncture, the USPD polled more "mere" votes than the MSPD as well. I didn't want to include "mere" votes into the equation because, as you already know, electoral support /= political support.

counting heads to 50%+1 worker, at which point the Central Committee of group X may speak on behalf of ZE ARBEITER

Honest worker-class party-movement citizenship is by far and away the best gauge of class-based political support, and I would say that the closer said party-movement is to obtaining majority political support from the class, the harder it is to yell "substitutionism" and argue against the position that said party-movement is in and of itself the working class for itself and thus (with its own internal workers councils and bureaus) entitled to a CPSU-style monopoly on all class-for-itself activity.

Jose Gracchus

30th May 2011, 04:14

Except the USPD was not your imaginary party, and all the gobbledgook conditions provided have nothing to do with the empirical historical relations between the working-class and the USPD.

You're imparting your imaginings onto a historical institution which shared nothing with them.

Die Rote Fahne

30th May 2011, 04:55

Nationalization, organization, then worker self-management.

Rodolfo

26th June 2011, 00:00

I personally advocate a "mixed" socialist economy made up of workers' self-management, central planning and private (yes, private) ownership. First of all, what makes our state a capitalist state? It is one because those who currently own the means of production buy it. They do this through direct cash contributions and by providing organizational support and institutional legitimation. Political representatives are invested in like stocks. For them electoral success is dependent on establishing the broadest base of elite support. Candidates whom have best *internalized* investor values see their "portfolios" grow exponentially at the expense of candidates who have not internalized these values. So what you have is a filtering system in which only the most indoctrinated and business friendly of the intellectual class advance to state power. This explains why the state largely functions to serve elite business interests on the domestic and international stages. How do we get rid of the capitalist state? By extending democracy into the economic realm. We, the workers, take over the means of production and smash it. The corporation is replaced by the workers' council. Unless workers' self-management is at the heart of the social revolution the true owners of the means of production will own the state. But from here on I disagree with most of my anarchist comrades. There is no reason why a healthy, centralized workers' state cannot co-exist with worker self-management. Some tasks, like food production, funding for healthcare, labor safety and defense will have to be nationalized administered by elected representatives and hired and appointed staff. I don't think bus schedules can be left solely to the bus workers' co-op. The local community through its elected representatives in local government will have to make that decision. Since these representatives will not be able to be bought by a non-existing capitalist class, there is no reason why they should not make their decisions after listening to represenatives of the bus drivers' co-op and the local community. I don't see any reason to fear the existence of an administrative policy-making group (a bureaucracy). I also don't see any reason to fear private small business. Actually, there is, but only if antagonized. The petit-bourgeois is where fascism comes from. Come the revolution we will be at war with the capitalist class. This war will be necessary since they have undemocratically come to control the state but a war with the local ice cream shop owner is completely unnecessary. We will need all the allies we can get.

syndicat

26th June 2011, 01:00

But from here on I disagree with most of my anarchist comrades. There is no reason why a healthy, centralized workers' state cannot co-exist with worker self-management. Some tasks, like food production, funding for healthcare, labor safety and defense will have to be nationalized administered by elected representatives and hired and appointed staff. I don't think bus schedules can be left solely to the bus workers' co-op. The local community through its elected representatives in local government will have to make that decision. Since these representatives will not be able to be bought by a non-existing capitalist class, there is no reason why they should not make their decisions after listening to represenatives of the bus drivers' co-op and the local community. I don't see any reason to fear the existence of an administrative policy-making group (a bureaucracy).

what you're proposing would simply empower a bureaucratic class. workers self-management would not last long. it would be a figleaf, a fake veneer, as it was in Yugoslavia, where the bureaucratic class dominated the "workers councils" as well as the state.

any central bureaucratic planning group would want to have their own managers onsite to ensure their plans were adhered to.

moreover, it will necessarily be ineffective for providing people what they want. there is no way that central planning can gain accurate information about consumer preferences, individual or collective.

also, you talk about "coops". but that assumes a market economy. that's another feature that will empower people with greater advantages in the labor market, such as more education and expertise, and they will be able to enforce greater privileges for themselves, because the coop will be dependent on them for its survival.

we've already had a century of experience with the bureaucratic mode of production in various forms. why go down that deadend path again?

Rowan Duffy

26th June 2011, 21:02

any central bureaucratic planning group would want to have their own managers onsite to ensure their plans were adhered to.

Isn't any group of workers collectively responsible to the community to ensure that they adhere to various plans, such as plans for food safety, plans for CO2 release, plans for externality production and at least have some reason to do what they say they will in terms of planning for production itself?

A democratic centralisation of the planning of externality production and quality control seems to me to be inevitable if it is going to serve human needs collectively since these things are not diffuse problems. If it requires the existence of an unaccountable bureaucratic class, then we're probably doomed to bureaucratic modes or capitalism, but I don't think that is the case.

I'm starting to feel a bit like César De Paepe. Should an insistence that public goods production be managed collectively causes one to be expelled from the libertarian camp as a statist?

Rodolfo

26th June 2011, 22:56

You can either have a market economy or you can have central planning. There is no other option. Parecon itself is a(n inefficient) mixture of both systems.

ckaihatsu

27th June 2011, 00:17

Generally speaking I haven't seen any outright dismissiveness or rejection of the necessarily required *components* of a post-capitalist economy from any particular revolutionary leftist camp -- rather the differences tend to be on sliding scales regarding *how much* influence one variable or another should have over the rest.

So, to list them, there's obviously the collectively self-liberated working class itself, some sort of derived administration for the same, the larger consumeristic community / society, and the means of mass (industrial) production. One's ideology is determined by the relative emphasis given to one or another -- I have these depicted in a generic framework, for purposes of illustration:

[8] communist economy diagram

http://postimage.org/image/1bvfo0ohw/

Kiev Communard

27th June 2011, 14:00

You can either have a market economy or you can have central planning. There is no other option. Parecon itself is a(n inefficient) mixture of both systems.

I agree with you on Parecon, but I strongly object to your first assertion (the one concerning the dichotomy of "market economy vs. central planning"). In fact, the modern capitalism itself is neither completely market, nor fully planned economy, comprising the features of both (i.e. internal production planning within transnational corporations and state regulation at the national level, on the one hand, and relatively unrestricted movement of capitals, labour force (the latter with significant exceptions) and physical commodities, on the other hand). I would advise you to look at this article on Anarchist FAQ site for some options alternate both to Parecon and capitalism, as well as more closely grounded in actual praxis of previous revolutionary movements - http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/the-economics-of-anarchy

Jose Gracchus

27th June 2011, 14:23

I agree with you on Parecon, but I strongly object to your first assertion (the one concerning the dichotomy of "market economy vs. central planning"). In fact, the modern capitalism itself is neither completely market, nor fully planned economy, comprising the features of both (i.e. internal production planning within transnational corporations and state regulation at the national level, on the one hand, and relatively unrestricted movement of capitals, labour force (the latter with significant exceptions) and physical commodities, on the other hand). I would advise you to look at this article on Anarchist FAQ site for some options alternate both to Parecon and capitalism, as well as more closely grounded in actual praxis of previous revolutionary movements - http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/the-economics-of-anarchy

So you're now fully against pareconist conceptions? The proposals in that link lack much of the practical detail of the parecon model, in my humble opinion.

Kiev Communard

27th June 2011, 14:30

So you're now fully against pareconist conceptions? The proposals in that link lack much of the practical detail of the parecon model, in my humble opinion.

Yes, they lack "practical details", but in a sense Marx's or Bakunin's proposals about future society lacked detailed exposures of some utopian models that the likes of Weitling, Fourier and Saint-Simone (i.e. the original "utopian socialists") were fond of constructing. Besides, if you read the Anarchist FAQ's part on economic issues (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secI3.html) of anarchist society (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secI4.html), you may find that McKay and his co-authors present a much more realistic and well-grounded ideas on both communist economy and the transitional stages thereto (i.e. mutualist and collectivist economies) that Albert and Hahnel ever managed with Parecon.

Jose Gracchus

27th June 2011, 14:34

Yes, they lack "practical details", but in a sense Marx's or Bakunin's proposals about future society lacked detailed exposures of some utopian models that the likes of Weitling, Fourier and Saint-Simone (i.e. the original "utopian socialists") were fond of constructing. Besides, if you read the Anarchist FAQ's part on economic issues (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secI3.html) of anarchist society (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secI4.html), you may find that McKay and his co-authors present a much more realistic and well-grounded ideas on both communist economy and the transitional stages thereto (i.e. mutualist and collectivist economies) that Albert and Hahnel ever managed with Parecon.

Syndicat claimed the CNT Zaragosa Program presaged the consumer-worker parecon model with the "dual governance" system of workers' organizations and residents' assemblies, while the British guild socialists conceived first of the idea of reiterative rounds of negotiated planning between workers and consumer organizations.

Kiev Communard

27th June 2011, 14:40

Syndicat claimed the CNT Zaragosa Program presaged the consumer-worker parecon model with the "dual governance" system of workers' organizations and residents' assemblies

If I am not mistaken, this idea actually goes back to Kropotkin and early 20th century FORA theorists in Argentina.

while the British guild socialists conceived first of the idea of reiterative rounds of negotiated planning between workers and consumer organizations.

I cannot claim to be an authority on British guild socialists' theory, but still I think they would have hardly endorsed balanced job complexes' conundrum (instead of more practical job rotation system or simple elimination of most unpleasant rote tasks by automation altogether) or a totally subjective system of remuneration "for effort" (instead of labour hour credits system or a communist remuneration by needs), which would be most unlikely to be implemented in actual life. Actually, these are my main criticisms concerning Parecon's feasibility (together with infamous "personal consumption plans").

Jose Gracchus

27th June 2011, 14:49

If I am not mistaken, this idea actually goes back to Kropotkin and early 20th century FORA theorists in Argentina.

Interesting indeed.

Too bad Argentina's workers' movement got co-opted by obscene Peronist messianism (those portraits of "Evita" beside the Virgin Mary make me sick).

I cannot claim to be an authority on British guild socialists' theory, but still I think they would have hardly endorsed balanced job complexes' conundrum (instead of more practical job rotation system or simple elimination of most unpleasant rote tasks by automation altogether) or a totally subjective system of remuneration "for effort" (instead of labour hour credits system or a communist remuneration by needs), which would be most unlikely to be implemented in actual life. Actually, these are my main criticisms concerning Parecon's feasibility (together with infamous "personal consumption plans").

I agree. But I don't necessarily the balanced job complex should be boiled down to such a crude implementation, but rather merely looked at as an organizational strategy for ensuring there is no semi-permanent locus of decision-making power in a few workers' jobs, nor are some disadvantaged workers left consistently with the least desirable tasks. Labor division in the interests of management and capital here has moved to a maddening and psychology-destructive extent, and I do think it is worth thorough and dedicated worker commitment to systematic redesign of labor roles and organization of the labor and production process.

Rodolfo

27th June 2011, 16:54

I agree with you on Parecon, but I strongly object to your first assertion (the one concerning the dichotomy of "market economy vs. central planning"). In fact, the modern capitalism itself is neither completely market, nor fully planned economy, comprising the features of both (i.e. internal production planning within transnational corporations and state regulation at the national level, on the one hand, and relatively unrestricted movement of capitals, labour force (the latter with significant exceptions) and physical commodities, on the other hand).

Obviously. I didn't mean to suggest a dichotomy. As I said, parecon itself is a mixture of both. What I'm saying is that markets and central planning can exist within capitalism (with private ownership) and Communism (with state ownership). Both can also exist within socialism (worker ownership). Every scheme for resource allocation is ultimately either one of markets or central planning.

Kiev Communard

27th June 2011, 22:15

Obviously. I didn't mean to suggest a dichotomy. As I said, parecon itself is a mixture of both. What I'm saying is that markets and central planning can exist within capitalism (with private ownership) and Communism (with state ownership). Both can also exist within socialism (worker ownership). Every scheme for resource allocation is ultimately either one of markets or central planning.

To my mind, what you called "Communism" (you seem to have referred to USSR-style societies in this instance) was just an example of highly centralized capitalist system that still had important elements of commodity production within it, while its external exchange was completely subordinated to the laws of commodity exchange.

In addition, it should be noted that according to Marxian concept of private property it is actually not a property of isolated individuals/enterprises but the property of one part of the society (i.e. the ruling class) the access to which is controlled by the ruling class in order to extract surplus product from the other segments of society (i.e. toiling masses) that lack any property rights over it yet depend on this access for sustenance. In that sense the state property should be regarded as a type of private property, rather than its opposite, both under the ruling class organized as a singular centralized corporation (as it was the case in the USSR) and in cases of its pluralist/oligarchic structure (i.e. similar to the situation in the modern USA, where several dozens of dominant corporate bodies co-exist and compete with each other).

EDIT: It should also be noted that neither "pure" commodity exchange (the so-called "market") nor allocation of resources by the socially privileged group of planners is adequate to the needs of socialist/communist commonwealth. Rather, what is needed is participatory planning, which would both eliminate information problems inherent in both competition-based ("market") and centralized ("central planning") versions of capitalism and provide for more thorough involvement of community members in the decisions relevant to social production/distribution.

syndicat

27th June 2011, 22:23

Isn't any group of workers collectively responsible to the community to ensure that they adhere to various plans, such as plans for food safety, plans for CO2 release, plans for externality production and at least have some reason to do what they say they will in terms of planning for production itself?

the way to ensure accountability to the community in regard to enviromental externalities is for the assemblies and regional federations based on residence to have control over access by production groups to the enviro commons. they could ban a pollutant, or, if there is no current technology that allows complete elimination of a particular pollutant but they want the products of that industry, they can require compensation for the right to emit a pollutant.

an efficient price for the pollutant can emerge out an interactive process of negotiation. if the community proposes to eliminate, say, 50 percent of the pollutant currently emitted, and to do so has X costs, the community may decide that these costs are not acceptable and may then reduce its request to, say 25 percent reduction. thru this kind of process a price per unit of emitted pollution can be derived.

thus production organizations are forced to internalize their external enviro costs as the prices of the pollutants they emit goes on their budgets. if the organization has a ratio of benefits to costs that dips below the social average, it would have to provide reasons as to why it shouldn't be dissolved and its means of production and workers distributed elsewhere.

You can either have a market economy or you can have central planning. There is no other option. Parecon itself is a(n inefficient) mixture of both systems.You can either have a market economy or you can have central planning. There is no other option. Parecon itself is a(n inefficient) mixture of both systems. Yesterday 20:02You can either have a market economy or you can have central planning. There is no other option. Parecon itself is a(n inefficient) mixture of both systems. Yesterday 20:02

Assertions without argument don't prove anything.

In a market economy, the production entity is what David Ellerman calls the "residual claimant." It is responsible for the costs of production and also it can claim the revenue. If there is a surplus of revenue over expenses, there is a profit.

Workers can then distribute this surplus among themselves as they see fit. so their remuneration will be based upon revenue and thus on their market power. Firms that are better placed will have much higher incomes.

Now, all of that is in violation of the basic elements of participatory economics. A worker production organization under particiipatory economics is not a "residual claimant." It cannot capture revenue. The workers are alloted, socially, a pool of consumption entitlement based on total work effort/sacrifice (based on critieria such as harshness of the work, total work hours). Participatory economics is thus consistent with the principle of equal pay per hour of work, if we assume that we expect a shared distribution of work effort/sacrifice in the economy.

To put this another way, if for the sake of simplicity we assume that the society has agreed to the principle of equal pay per hour of work and the worker organizations have put in place a job reorganization program to re-integrate skills and expertise for all jobs together with a share of the physical work, then it is this principle that determines remuneration, not market power or market success.

within participatory economics, the means of production are not the collective private property of the workers but are socially owned and assigned to the worker group to control as long as certain conditions are met.