Thinking Forward
Lecture 3:
|
|
In this chapter we are going to try to refine our general
values into a set of more precise requirements for production
relations and workplaces generally. First, however, here my
answers to the questions raised last lecture.
Answers to Lecture 2 Questions
- Beyond some
vague notion of equity what should be the actual criteria of remuneration
and disposition of economic responsibilities?
Well, this was a thought question, the answer to which
doesnt arise in lectures until later. Possibilities would be that
we should remunerate for property held, productive output,
the value of ones contribution, prior education, skills, effort,
sacrifice, or need. Choosing among these depends in part on
ones aims, of course, but also on a clear understanding of
the implications of each for the values we hold dear. You
might want to think about this, preparatory to future discussions.
- We have deduced
the possibility 3x3x4 = 36 different conceivable economic systems
including unique combinations of the components. How come we are
able to boil this down to only four broad economic types?
Because most of the combinations are not viable. The idea
is simple enough. If we are putting together a stereo system
from components, each has to have requirements and
implications compatible with the context established by or the
conditions needed by other components. We cant have speakers
that require a whole lot of power, and am amp that gives off
very little power, for example.
Well, it is similar in an economy. For example, you cannot
have markets or central planning and non-hierarchical work
places because these allocation systems impose hierarchy on
workplaces and dont operate properly in its absence. This is
most of the answer, the rest is that I cheated. That is, I left
out some conceivable options. For example, private ownership
plus central planning by the state (generally called a fascist economy) was left out.
- Who advocates
these different models, and why?
Beyond academics playing games, people advocate visions because
they want the outcomes those visions promise to deliver. Those
who will wind up owning (or who already own) the means of production
will most aggressively advocate capitalism. They will also
try to convince others of its value (by hook or crook).
Those who will wind up (or already are) coordinators will
most aggressively advocate coordinator economic systems
(usually called, misleadingly, to entice other supporters,
market socialism or centrally planned socialism).
Politically identified elites (fascists and Stalinists)
will prefer variants on capitalism or coordinatorism in which a
one party state runs the show by monopolizing planning posts
and the government.
Ultimately, I would argue, working people will most
aggressively advocate participatory economics, it being a system
that elevates them to optimal status (as the only economic
actors and thus the dominant ones, as well).
This is all, of course, a bit oversimplified, as one may
prefer the least evil, having ruled out the best option as impossible:
the excuse given by many who profess left values but advocate
market coordinatorism, despite its many failings.
- What are the
class relations of each of the four models and how do they arise
from the basic institutions employed?
The ownership relations and hierarchical production
relations of capitalism generate a three tiered class
structure of capitalists (owning the means of production),
coordinators (monopolizing knowledge and skills and job slots prerequisite
to control over not only their own economic circumstances,
but those of others lacking these claims), and workers (who
simply sell their ability to do work for a wage and follow
out orders given by others, carving out the best existence
possible by organizing to increase their bargaining power).
With the private ownership of capital eliminated in the
post capitalist societies I call coordinatorist, the remaining
allocation and production relations demarcate two classes,
coordinators and workers, and elevate the former to dominance
over the latter.
In participatory economics, or parecon for short, there is
no class distinction generated by ownership, production, or
allocation relations (not consumption either), and, on the
contrary, these aspects of economic life all generate classless
dynamics.
- Explain structurally
how markets impact on peoples personalities and preferences?
This is a big and a bit unfair question.
Briefly, markets compel us to consider our own well being
and ignore (as well as be ignorant of) the well being of
those who produce what we consume or consume what we produce.
We must compete. We will try to fulfill ourselves in
consumption and due to the biased pricing of products under market allocationthose that
are private will be under-priced and those that are public
will be over-priced. We will, in reaction, bend ourselves to
prefer the former.
Instead of markets delivering what people want, therefore,
people come to want what markets deliver. Thus our beings
follow a trajectory of preference development that arises
outside ourselves in the dynamics of markets and the reproduction
of the conditions of profit of the few. We become self-centered and
egocentric due to market impositions, rather than markets
delivering every more egocentric and self-centered products
because the drive for these is built into our beings.
- Do markets
deliver what we want, or do we want what markets deliver, and what
difference does it make?
In the first case markets would be a kind of neutral
conveyor belt of economic life letting us manifest our preferences
freely. We, our beings and preferences, would be determinant.
In the second case, regardless of who we are and what we
might want in the most free conditions, markets will contour us
in predictable ways. In other words markets affect us,
causing us to evolve preferences for what markets are biased
to deliver to us. These results are aggravated when markets
are combined with private ownership, but they exist even when
property is socialized, but markets are retained.
To understand it, think in terms of someone being
deposited in prison and developing (sensibly) a taste for
what the prison commissary has to offerthough, if the
same person were outside the prison, he or she would dismiss all
the offerings as horrible, not distinguishing among them. The prisoner reconstructs
his/her preferences so as to be able to get the best out of what
is available. Notice then that what is made available is
critical to the prisoners evolving preferences, as are the
prices attached. If some things are under priced and others
over priced relative to their true worth, we incline toward
developing preferences for the former and away from the
latter.
Markets do not just make any old thing available, and only
at correct prices. Rather they impose biases into what is
provided and at what prices, and we then operate in context
of these biases (just as the prisoner operates in context of
the biased/limited offerings of the commissary) and the
result is that we learn to like what is available, rather
than what is available coming into accord with what we freely
want. This is the difference between freedom and alienation.
- What about
complete decentralization and no allocation among separate regions.
How do we evaluate it?
I suppose we could argue about this. Many people do. But
to me, to be blunt, it is an idiotic notion. Not that there isnt
a kernel of wisdom in it. Sure, face to face relations are
sometimes preferable to larger scale arrangements. And if we
make these face-to face structures democratic and
participatory, thats all the better. But small is good is
not some kind of unbridgeable principle. It will be valid when
it is the better way to attain aims like justice, equity,
solidarity, diversity, ecological balance, efficient use of
productive assets, and so on. But when it doesnt better
propel these ends, then it is a bad choice. Elaborated into an
entire economic visionlittle self-sufficient communities acting
in isolation from one anotherit means either gargantuan redundancy
of effort and huge inefficiencies, waste, and ecological
harm; or extreme deprivation. It also means, inevitably, gross
inequality between regions that have different local assets (and
to redress this by allocation, is to argue for a different model).
It seems also to curtail diversity and variety, to even be inconsistent
with the idea of universal entwinement (which it tries to
sunder) that is generally typical of ecological thought.
What is sought in this vision, ecological balance,
participation, no alienation, etc., is not, in fact, attained.
So why people advocate the view is a bit of a mystery to me.
It seems almost like an intellectual fetish, incompletely thought out.
- If the above
(in the lecture) is an account of participatory planning, what might
be our evaluation of it by our criteriawhat questions about
it do we need to answer (design) to evaluate it?
It seems to me that if the brief description I offered in
our multi-economy discussion was valid, then we would know
that Parecon fulfilled the values we set out for a visionary
economy. The questions, of course, are can it actually work?
What are the details? Why wont it just collapse in chaos or stasis,
etc.
- How do we evaluate
capitalism as we know it in the U.S.?
It is, by our criteria of judgment, a dung heap. It
destroys solidarity, creates inequity unparalleled in history,
gives some people almost unlimited power over outcomes while
denying most people even marginal say over their own economic
circumstances, and it even distorts personalities and preferences
in such ways as to homogenize outcomes and reduce diversity.
The fact that most academics would be horrified by my
terminologyit is a dung heapis no testament
to their civility or integrity.
- What about
social democracy (and what is it, compared to the U.S. economy)?
Social Democracy is capitalism with a more powerful
working class (and coordinator class) and a weaker capitalist
class. It is, as a result, better, with a variety of reform
structures incorporated to ameliorate and even, in some instances,
redress problems arising from the underlying capitalist structure.
It is a quite unstable economic structure, however, as a
shift in balance of economic power can quickly cause
reversion to more aggressive capitalist dynamics. The
structure is capitalism, but the balance of power between
class is less favorable to those at the top.
- And why might
we have hope for something better than the above options?
Either because we have thought long and hard on the issues
and decided that some alternative arrangement has much better qualities
and is possible, or because we have no compelling answers of that
type but we realize that without hope for something better,
we will only get worse. This latter, I suppose, is a kind of
religious belief and historically it is not so easy to say which
type of hope serves a progressive movement better… I myself
think having both at once is a nice combination.
And, now, on to the new material for lecture 3.
Production Values
So, what norms do we want to have guide our design of workplace relationships?
Well, we know from the prior discussions we have had that my answer
is equity (of material and circumstances), solidarity,
diversity, and participatory self management, plus efficiency
(in the sense of attaining desired outcomes with as little
waste as possible). But what does this set of aims translate
into in a workplace environment? What, more specifically and precisely,
are our goals for workplace life?
I want to point out, as a kind of sidebar, that you should
see the methodology at work here. Its obvious and easy, once
one gets into it. If you want to follow along using other
values that you prefer to those I am using in the lectures,
by all means do so.
Establish general values. Apply them in specific contexts
to get more refined and specific goals. Then move on (in
later lectures) to actually designing systems to attain the
goals. Be sure your choices are compatible, from one
domain of the economy to another.
A workplace involves tasks that need to be done and
decisions that need to be made. There will be a host of roles people
fill which is what makes it an institution, in my view. And
so, the question becomes, what goals do we have for those
roles (in light of the need to get work done and decisions made)
to meet our overarching aims of equity, solidarity,
diversity, and self-management, plus minimizing waste (of
things we care about)?
So lets take each value in turn, and assess its broad
implications for production relations.
Equity
Equity, remember, doesnt mean a fair race, in our usage.
Instead it refers to fair outcomes. So what does it say to us
about workplace role structures, for example?
Somehow, it must be that in each workplace what people
do is fairly apportioned. What you do, and what I do has
to be seen as fair, by our standards, in every workers eyes.
More, this is true if we are in the same work team in a
workplace, if we are in the same workplace but dont have
the same responsibilities, and even if we are in different workplaces,
across town from one another, or in San Francisco, on the
one hand, and Charlotte, on the other.
Well, the possibilities for role defining would seem to
be
- Apportion responsibilities
so we all do the same exact things as one another at work under
the same exact conditions.
- Apportion responsibilities
so we all work the same length of time, but we do whatever we are
best at.
- Let everyone
do whatever they want, for however long they want to do it.
- Let everyone
judge the available options and negotiate with one another for who
does what, and then work the same amount of time as one another.
- Divide up stuff
into jobs all of whose responsibilities require some fixed level
of background or skill and maximally utilize it, and then have people
compete for who gets what jobs, but have all work the same length
day.
- Do either of
the prior 3 options, but juggle the time required at work to offset
any differences in job quality by requiring extra or less time on
the job depending as ones work situation is better or worse.
- Apportion tasks
into jobs that are comparable in their quality of life impact, and
let everyone then negotiate for who gets to have which jobs, all
worked the same length of time per day.
And, perhaps, you can think of some other options as well.
And the thought questions that arise are:
- How do we rate
these options (and any others you wish to add) if we are taking
into account only equity? Which options are equitable, and which
arent? And why. Remember, we are only talking about equity, at
this point.
- Refine our
equity aim, regarding workplaces/production…
Solidarity
A condition of solidaritywe will defineis that
people care about each others well being and assess their own
actions in part in light of the effects on others. Optimally,
in includes a high degree of empathy.
So, again, we have the problem of figuring out what kind
of relations among actors, what kind of apportionment of tasks among
them, and what kind of distribution of decision making power
are consistent with promoting solidarity, and what kinds are
contrary to promoting solidarity?
Before you get irritated about my lecture approach to
piling on these questions, please remember this is a book about conceptualizing
new economic models…not about learning a particular one or
merely hearing an argument in favor of this or that
perspective. If you dont try to do some conceptualizing, well, you
arent going to get as much out of the lectures. And, anyhow,
I will also provide answers, all in good time. So:
- Think in terms
of roles, as in the above list under the equity issue, but also
think in terms of distribution of decision making power and actual
interactions among actors, and try to enunciate a variety of options,
and their merits and debits vis-à-vis solidarity, and, for the purposes
of this question, only solidarity.
- Refine our
aim for solidarity into workplace aims.
Diversity
Diversity is simply a condition of many outcomes, many approaches
to accomplishing ends, many variants and circumstances which
one can either choose among, at different times, or benefit vicariously
from, via the different effects on others, seeing others in
different forms of action, etc.
- With the earlier
listed 7 forms of workplace organization, and any others you might
care to evaluate, consider the implications for diversity of outcomes.
Participatory Self-management
Well we have already refined this into a notion that
immediately translates to production and the workplace. We want
each actor to have a say in outcomes proportionate to the
effects the outcomes have on that actor. Can we translate this
more, in light of the details of the workplace context?
- What does our
self-management aim tell us about one person one vote in the work
place? Think about some decisions and whether it makes sense that
everyone have equal say, everyone vote, etc.
- What does it
tell us about power being vested in the hands of only a subset of
the employees?
- What does it
tell us about limits on the workers impact on decisionsvis-à-vis
community residents, consumers, etc.?
- Finally, if
you can rule out some options for workplace organization in light
of our self management aim, can you also say anything positive or
prescriptive about what we might incorporate into workplace decision
making to meet this aim? Either institutions or methods?
Efficiency
Remember, the idea of efficiency is that we dont want to
set a goal for the actions of a workplace and then meet that
goal, but in a way that wastes things we care about in the
process (time, materials of value, energy, whatever).
On the other hand, efficiency does not mean that the only
thing that matters is quantities we can enumerate on some scale
of measurement.
- So what does
the efficiency aim tell us about meeting all the others that we
also have? Do any of your ideas about the implications of the other
values for workplace organization and institutions and decision-making
come into conflict with the desire to avoid needless waste? Do they
facilitate efficiency in the best sense of the term?