Political education expertise? (And stratified sampling for sortition)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Over three years ago, I advocated that the left promote "Renaissance education" in certain subject areas related to developing political programs: http://www.revleft.com/vb/educate-educate-agitate-t143439/index.html

Becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none is counterposed to mastering one and not being as knowledgeable in others. This is a false dichotomy. However, since Equality By Lot had a recent response on stratified sortition (http://equalitybylot.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/stratified-sortition/#comment-8162), another response was needed:

Expert Bodies

Policy proposals in party-movements should be the exclusive domain of program-related expert bodies filled by random selection, with the general body being left to vote up or down on each line of every policy proposal. In other words, this is stratified sampling.

A certain degree of expertise is required for any given policy proposal / plank / demand / etc. included in the final document. That expertise should be recognized formally, in accordance with the above, having the exclusive authority to suggest any policy proposal / plank / demand / etc. while some broader organizational congress / conference / convention holds mere up and down votes.

This does not preclude the broader membership from participation in the brainstorming of what will be submitted to the congress / conference / convention, but again this is a recognition of the expertise needed for policy proposals / planks / demands.

It took experts to spell out “Separation of [...] schools from the church.” (http://www.archive.org/stream/EisenachProgram/725_socDemWorkersParty_230_djvu.txt)

It took experts to spell out “State support of the cooperative system and state loans for free producers’ cooperatives
subject to democratic guarantees.” (same)

It took experts to spell out “Suppression of the public debt.” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm)

It took experts to spell out “Legal minimum wage, determined each year according to the local price of food, by a workers’ statistical commission.” (same)

It took experts to spell out “Taking over by the Imperial Government of the whole system of working people’s insurance, though giving the working people a controlling share in the administration” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1891erfurt.asp) or “Takeover by the Reich government of the entire system of workers’ insurance, with decisive participation by the workers in its administration.” (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm)

Further on, it took experts like Hyman Minsky and Rudolf Meidner to spell out other policies.

Qualifications

Qualification examinations by party-movement schools for these bodies should combine varied forms of objective format questions, short simulations (including those consisting of a few short-answer questions), mathematical problems, and case writing.

Multiple-choice questions are too cheap, while short simulations test what writers are able to do more effectively than knowledge-based short-answer questions, and case writing is a lot less hazy than generic case studies.

These should be the pervasive and knowledge skillsets developed and evaluated in an intensive qualification or certification program:

PS1 - Political Conduct (pervasive skillsket which promotes integrity and prohibits bullying, making identity-based discriminatory remarks, purely self-serving activities while doing political work, etc.)

PS2 - Decision-Making Process (the pervasive skillset which includes problem solving)

PS3 - Communication (the pervasive skillset ranging from case writing ability to reaching working-class audiences through computer presentations)

PS4 - Self-Management (the pervasive skillset ranging from improving one’s own work to seeking help from fellow experts and other comrades)

PS5 - Group Interaction (anti-bullying, anti-sexism, and other behaviour fall more under Political Conduct, while Group Interaction is the pervasive skillset of one’s ability to work with others overall, and not just in teams)

KS1 - Labour law (knowledge skillset)

KS2 - Labour economics and/or “critical labour economics” (knowledge skillset)

KS3 - Labour history and/or “critical labour history” (knowledge skillset)

KS4 - Heterodox economics (knowledge skillset that includes the MMT / Post-Keynesian school)

KS5 - Political economy (knowledge skillset that critical enough of “economics,” but this is needed these days before being critical of “political economy” once more)

KS6 - Democratic theory and general political science (knowledge skillset with, again, the possibility of “critical,” and one very recent work on this is Paul Lucardie’s “Democratic Extremism”)

KS7 - Sociology and/or “critical sociology” (knowledge skillset)

Note that, nowhere in the above list is any mention of philosophy. Though it has relevance for the last three knowledge skillsets, the absence of philosophy is in accordance with the axiom on interpreting the world vs. changing it. Sorry, Badiou, Negri, and Zizek.

Skills Expertise and Skills Breadth

To be qualified for selection into a policy proposal body relating to the above, individuals would have to have all five pervasive skillsets, be skills experts in labour law or labour economics (which helps with practical careers outside political work, not to mention reaching working-class audiences more generally), be skills experts in two areas other than labour law or labour economics, and show skills breadth in all other areas.

[CyM]

This is insane. Random sampling? What made you decide to wake one day and think "you know why revolutions fail? Becauze we didn't just randomly choose our leaders".

What chances are there of a randomly chosen Lenin? Instead of one that had to fight tooth and nail for decades to get where he got?

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[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

This is insane. Random sampling? What made you decide to wake one day and think "you know why revolutions fail? Becauze we didn't just randomly choose our leaders".

What chances are there of a randomly chosen Lenin? Instead of one that had to fight tooth and nail for decades to get where he got?

On the other end of it, this also represents the formal institutionalization of the worst aspects of centrism, wherein "experts" (the would-be Lenins who pass DNZ's bizarre proposal for a test) run the party as revolutionary technocrats. That they might be chosen for a particular task by lot hardly serves to address the professionalization and specialization of a small strata of decision makers who are effectively severed from effective relation to any class base. Rather than a typical selection by lot, promoting the generalization of leadership skills, technical knowledge, etc., this model treats the mass of the party as something like American Idol spectators (which, one will note, hardly produced a flowering of popular music critique or participation).

To conclude, even assuming a method of stratification that weren't as politically backward as the neo-Kaut/DNZist example given, the idea itself is, on the surface, terrible, compared to either simple "by lot" selection or democratic delegation of necessary technical tasks.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Oh dear, I hope that your seemingly extended absence from posting wasn't because you were spending your time working all this stuff out, DNZ.

What a waste of time.

:rolleyes:

[Sabot Cat]

This is insane. Random sampling? What made you decide to wake one day and think "you know why revolutions fail? Becauze we didn't just randomly choose our leaders".

What chances are there of a randomly chosen Lenin? Instead of one that had to fight tooth and nail for decades to get where he got?

And that turned out well, didn't it? That's not what's being proposed here anyway. A law drafting board is not the same as revolutionary leaders or anyone with real power; furthermore, sortition would be a great way to have recallable delegates be drawn so no one can use their charisma or institutional privileges to corrupt the system of workers' democracy once implemented, while the law drafting committee could improve the quality of policy proposals of such a body.

[CyM]

And that turned out well, didn't it? That's not what's being proposed here anyway. A law drafting board is not the same as revolutionary leaders or anyone with real power; furthermore, sortition would be a great way to have recallable delegates be drawn so no one can use their charisma or institutional privileges to corrupt the system of workers' democracy once implemented, while the law drafting committee could improve the quality of policy proposals of such a body.

Wrong. He specifically says "policy proposals of party-movements". That is, like most neo-kautskian obscurantism, gibberish. But it also means he expects this sort of rotation of tasks in the movement, not in some future society.

If it was limited to the communist society, no one objects, not even lenin, who put rotation of democratic tasks as one of his 4 points on the transition from worker's state to stateless communism.

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[Die Neue Zeit]

CyM, it has application for the broader society. My focus was on party-movements, since class-strugglists can't be seen as hypocrites advocating extreme democracy on one end and practicing something else on the other.

Besides, I support a genuine one-party system (vs. Moshe Lewin's "no-party state"), so a properly organized party-movement is already the structure of workers councils.


Oh dear, I hope that your seemingly extended absence from posting

Non-political but working-class matters pre-occupied me, something which you probably still have to gain experience in.


would-be Lenins who pass DNZ's bizarre proposal for a test

It's not bizarre. Go look up career professions all over the place, if you aren't already taking up degree study in one of them.


That they might be chosen for a particular task by lot hardly serves to address the professionalization and specialization of a small strata of decision makers who are effectively severed from effective relation to any class base.

That's hardly the case. I've advocated before and again that those who go through this expertise program have working-class occupations and backgrounds. How are the pervasive and knowledge skillsets above "severed from effective relation to any class base"? Expertise in labour economics and labour history, for example, leads to improved quality in the demands of any political program when in opposition, and in the related public policies when in power.

[Q]

This is insane. Random sampling? What made you decide to wake one day and think "you know why revolutions fail? Becauze we didn't just randomly choose our leaders".

What chances are there of a randomly chosen Lenin? Instead of one that had to fight tooth and nail for decades to get where he got?

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You might get yourself a little more read, like here (http://www.matzpen.org/english/2009-10-10/collective-decision-making-and-supervision-in-a-communist-society-moshe-machover/). This is hardly something DNZ came up with.

[CyM]

Rotation of bureaucratic tasks is a goal under stateless communism. That does not change the fact that applying this in a revolutionary party working against capitalism is absolute insanity.

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[Q]

Rotation of bureaucratic tasks is a goal under stateless communism. That does not change the fact that applying this in a revolutionary party working against capitalism is absolute insanity.

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No, you're just raging about something you clearly don't understand. Please stop making a fool out of yourself like that, I know you're better then that.

[CyM]

Policy proposals in party-movements should be the exclusive domain of program-related expert bodies filled by random selection, with the general body being left to vote up or down on each line of every policy proposal. In other words, this is stratified sampling.
I think I understand it perfectly well. Random selection in a political party operating under capitalism is absolutely ridiculous.


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[Die Neue Zeit]

That they might be chosen for a particular task by lot hardly serves to address the professionalization and specialization of a small strata of decision makers who are effectively severed from effective relation to any class base. Rather than a typical selection by lot, promoting the generalization of leadership skills, technical knowledge, etc., this model treats the mass of the party as something like American Idol spectators (which, one will note, hardly produced a flowering of popular music critique or participation).

I will argue the professional worker's argument that professionalization is the superior alternative to leaving the expert-level knowledge to an even smaller group of "red professors" and all that academia lot. With a larger pool, that knowledge can actually be applied. This applies even to those prospective policy candidates who fall short of exhibiting all five pervasive skillsets, skills expertise in labour law or labour economics, skills expertise in two areas other than labour law or labour economics, and skills breadth in all other areas.