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There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek
incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring
about the very largest total of good which we can see.
-William James
The Moral Philosopher and
the Moral Life
Those workers who contribute more than the rest to the general
good have every right to receive a larger share of the socialist product
than layabouts, idlers, and the undisciplined.
-Trotsky
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the
fish that hath fed of that worm.
-Shakespeare
Hamlet
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Necessity is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.
-William
Pitt Jr.
Assume our workplaces,
consumer units, and allocation system have all been transformed, years
of successful economic operations have been pleasurably experienced,
and
people are old
hands at participatory economic planning whatever other ills and idiosyncrasies
they may have. Here's how they might make yearly production plans in
the context of reasonable choices by other actors throughout the economy.
Planning
at Northstart
Participatory
planning occurs as each unit makes, debates, and amends its own proposals
and evaluates the proposals of others. What does this process look like
at Northstart publishing house?
Last Year at Northstart
When workers
begin their yearly planning, first they review the prior year's plan
and particularly any changes from what they initially proposed. We remember
that work always uses inputs including social relations in the workplace,
workers with specific skills and social characteristics, and resources,
equipment, and intermediate goods produced at other workplaces. Work
also generates outputs including altered social relations, personalities,
and skills of workers as well as products others will use. Workers'
plans thus always include three lists: material and social/personal
inputs; work relations, policies, motivations and logic; and material
and personal/social outputs.
Then, regarding the composition of these lists, more outputs require
more inputs, certain choices of work relations require more inputs for
given outputs, and a different mix of inputs with a fixed set of work
relations may yield different outputs.
Northstart's
primary outputs are computer records of books, communication of books
to readers, modified relationships with readers, and changes in worker
attributes and plant social relations. Secondary products include a
small number of bound books, waste materials, used equipment, and leftover
supplies of paper and other materials. Primary inputs are workers' skills
and efforts, plant social relations; utilities such as gas, water, electricity,
and communication, a building, old equipment, new equipment, paper,
and diverse supplies like light bulbs and pencils.
Inputs are broken
roughly into two major categories: investment goods which allow alteration
of the scale or methods of production, and production goods which allow
operations at a chosen scale with determined social relations. The main
"work relations choices" determine how work will be organized,
how many hours will be expended each day, and what technologies will
be employed. Any change of work relations will likely require some changes
in inputs and outputs, and vice versa.
One way to envision
these relations would be to graph outputs for varying combinations of
inputs for each possible choice of technology and work relations. A
more practical tool for local analysis would be simple programs showing
inputs required per outputs preferred for possible work relations. These
programs would make possible an easy estimation of workplace plans for
each possible work-relation decision by helping workers highlight how
choices affect productive possibilities.
On the following
page we display a computer screen view of such a program. Any Northstart
worker can call it up on a computer, enter choices for technology and
social relations, and see what inputs would yield a given list of outputs,
or what outputs a given list of inputs could generate. The technology
required to create such programs already exists. To use them one needs
only have a good understanding of workplace relations. No sophisticated
programming knowledge is required. The assumption that a simple program
can incorporate alternative choices of social relations is not so reductionist
as it may at first seem to some readers. We imply only that the program,
properly prepared by iteration workers, can quickly show the best estimates
of the material implications of alternative options. It could even list
the qualitative features that differ from option to option, as these
were determined by workers themselves and entered in the program by
facilitation workers prior to the planning period. Of course, when people
finally vote on options, the spreadsheet only facilitates manipulating
information. Workers' feelings about what they envision to be the implications
of the different choices guide the decisions they make.
Next, a brief plant meeting informs everyone of national IFB projections
of trends for the coming year including initial projections for overall
growth, incomes, and indicative prices, as well as
industry IFB
projections including qualitative summaries of publishing's impact on
readers last year, explanations of changes expected this year, and plant
IFB proposals for changes in plant organization, technologies, or policies,
including detailed descriptions of human and social implications of
projected changes in material inputs and outputs.
We should note
that for purposes of simplifying discussion, here we ignore long-term
investment planning which we treat in chapter 9. So, assuming long-term
investment decisions have already been settled, in assessing last year's
data and this year's projections workers begin weighing their own desires
and prepare to register the social relations, technology, and input
and output levels they prefer for Northstart. The first and second round
of plant decision making require workers to choose individually with
no requirement that their selections be mutually compatible.
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